I put in a solid few hours working on my thesis today. I did fall rather short of the five pages I was aiming for, but I got two pretty good ones, bringing my total to four. It’s so much slower going when I have to look up references and insert footnotes and all that. Also, I’m waiting for a couple of books that I need to cite, so there are some pretty big gaps in what I can write right now. With luck those books will show up this week and I can get that bit out of the way.

Probably the biggest part of the challenge is that I’m not confident about how to incorporate methodology, theory, previous research, et cetera into a smoothly flowing paper. It all seems so clunky. What’s wrong with just telling an interesting story, anyway? I know, I know, it’s not “scientific,” but damn it, Jim, I’m a historian, not a scientist! In my most recent years of study I’ve learned that “descriptive” is just about the worst thing a proper academic text should be. I don’t know if it’s my age showing, or different systems, or god, who knows … all I know is that I earned lots of As on lots of descriptive papers in my undergrad days. It’s a whole new world, it seems.