Tuesday 30 December 2008

Admin and work

After a few days off, my re-entry to study is relatively low key. Sorting through piles of printed articles, trying to make some order of the large number of PDF files that I have downloaded. These were sorted by broad theme, but it is already apparent that I am having trouble finding a particular article when I think of it. So I am slowly indexing the files in the various folders, working up a more extensive "working bibliography". I am amazed by how many articles from the "sociology of science" or "history and theory" I have.

The working bibliography is now up to 75 pages!

I'm not sure that this counts as real work though. It would if I were a PhD student doing a "literature review" though. I have continued to read bits of the PhD books I have acquired over the last month or so. I am surprised by just how hard they seem to say that a PhD actually is. Apparently, the average time period for a full time student is about 3 1/2 years. I have been working pretty hard on my course since August. Even though the amount of work I could do is enormous, I do think I have made very significant progress on the past 5 months. Indeed I am amazed at just what I have covered in the period.

And of course the biggest eye-opener has been the online availability of journal articles - what an experience that has been!

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