Just as I was about to meltdown from my counterproductive thesis lockdown, D-Crit classmate and thesis soldier Tara gave me a pretty good pep talk:

• You’re taking your sources too seriously. Figure out what you want each part to say and use your sources to support that point. They need to work for you.
• It’s stupid to set goals that end up being unreasonable. Set markers, but generally speaking, allot 2.5 the amount of time something should take.
• It’s not due next week. You have to live like this for over a month, so you need a better game plan than what you have. That’s what your paper and your attitude are telling you.

It’s true, I’ve been setting myself rather unrealistic goals for the last month, and I’ve missed almost all of them. As I keep uncovering new research, I keep trying to figure out how to work it in, and I’ve lost the larger argument in my thesis. I’ve spent most of waking time isolating myself and trying to write but have achieved very little (that I’m happy with) to show for it.

Somehow, I had the idea that I was going to crawl into a hole, write my thesis, then come out. Ha! Ironic because my thesis is very much about the need to be more human, yet here I am trying to be a writing machine, neglecting food, sleep and social needs in order to finish my thesis.

I really need a better game plan.