So, anyway, the DLO working on my case now is actually doing her job, which is both refreshing and reassuring!
So, we're seeking either that I can go part time for the rest of my degree, but retain a work station which is usually only allocated to full time candidates. Alternatively, that due to the constraints of my low vision, I be afford an extra 12 months to complete my degree. Hopefully, one or the other solution will be found. The upshot being that I would only be half way through my degree right now, instead of two-thirds through.
I'll admit right now, I have not been working as hard as I needed to be. I plead ignorance. Ignorance that my sight would deteriorate this quickly. Ignorance of what research at a PhD level actually entails. If I could talk to the me who started this PhD two years ago, I'd tell her what's what. She needed to be at her desk a lot more. She needed to really get to grips with her contention a lot earlier. She needed to be much more methodical in everything she did...
She needed to organise her data!
This is something I'm playing catch up with now. It's not that I hadn't heard 'organise your data, keep a database of resources, bibliographies, work notes' before, I had, but somehow I felt I didn't have that much stuff that it needed formal organising.
When doing a PhD, don't live in the moment, live in the future... Plan!
Sources are like bunnies. At first they're just cute and small and innocuous, but those buggers BREED. You start with 10 sources, and then you suddenly have 100, and then 1000. I kid you not.
For my thesis I needed to start tagging my sources with common themes from the get-go, but I didn't. I thought tagging was only for interviews and I wasn't doing interviews. I was wrong. Tagging is extremely useful for people, like me, who read sources and retain a lot of what they read, except probably the most important bit of information; WHERE THEY READ IT!
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It's the 6 Ps: Perfect Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance!
I'm still working on chapter one. Man I'm sick of chapter one.

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