Year in review ...

Last year, I made two resolutions:

(1) To have a complete draft of my dissertation done by December 31, 2012

AND

(2) To watch at least one film every month either written or directed by Billy Wilder (other than the ones I had already seen, such as Sabrina or Ninotchka).

I definitely saw both as do-able, but, as it turned out, #1 was actually almost accomplished, while I didn't even see one Billy Wilder movie. For shame, Mom-in-Progress, for shame.

So what is the state of my dissertation? I have approximately 9 chapters (yes, 9. I had some overly long chapters and my adviser made me split them and now I have 9). Out of these 9, 6 are actually in draft form and the other 3 are in varying stages, although none are complete. They probably range from 25-50% drafted. To give you an idea of what this means, last New Year's Day, I had one chapter completely drafted and then a variety of sections with bits and pieces written.

How did I actually manage to almost pull this off? First, I presented two papers - one in February and the other in April - which required me to write up at least two of my sections. Then, when returning from the second trip, I decided to cut and paste a 'mock-up' of my dissertation and found that I had approximately 110 pages written (mind you, not written well, but written). I decided to set a goal of writing 1 page a day and, shockingly, managed to mostly follow it for the next 3 months. There were bumps, such as the orientation for my online course, which pretty much ate up an entire month and then there was the last month of pregnancy (or last 6 weeks, since Rory came exactly 2 weeks after her due date) where my brain turned to mush, but I have over 170 pages written, not including tables and charts.

As for poor Billy Wilder? Maybe this year ... but probably not.