Richard III & My (belated) State of the Dissertation: January 2013

Oh my gosh, guys, they found Richard III. In Leicester. And they are going to give him a state funeral! And this is all very exciting and I'm *squeeing* because how can you not? And I asked H if I manage to finish my dissertation before 2014 - the estimated guess for the funeral is early 2014 - if we can go.

And, no, I'm not a Ricardian, although I do belong to the society and they have been very good to me. I don't know if Richard or Henry Tudor or a great number of many other people killed the Little Princes in the Tower. And, yes, I think someone killed both of them and, no, I don't think Lambert Simnel or Perkin Warbeck were really heirs to the throne. (Didn't you listen to my podcast?) And, as I've always - since 2002 - argued, none of it matters. All that matters is that Richard lost his crown and head and that Henry VII held onto both and what that says about (medieval) power and kingship. (If you are really interested, I can send you my senior thesis from college, which is completely about this.)

He's found! And there's your history for the moment. But let's move on to less pressing matters. At least in my mind. My dissertation.

First, I'm sorry there was no update last week. I have the 'flu. (The apostrophe is intentional.) But here is the state of my dissertation as of January 31, 2013 as well as an update for Week 4:

Weeks 3-4

Goal: My goal for this week was to finish writing up the section and to also write up a list of questions that I feel I need to address to complete the chapter.

Outcome: I have finished a draft of Chapter 3, which means the only chapters remaining to have the research written up are chapters 4 and 9. I have begun fixing up the tables for chapter 4 and was attempting to input information on 25 sessions a day, but ... 'flu.  However, my 'flu-cation is almost over, which means that I will re-start this process and my goal for the upcoming

Goal for Week 5: Continue to input information on 25 sessions a day into database.

Can I take a moment? I'm a historian. The only computer training I received was your basic gradeschool "turtletracks" thing and then typing in high school. Everything else has been learned "on the job" or by myself - via google and youtube or books. But I have taught myself how to create databases in Access and Filemaker Pro. I can create tables in word and convert to Excel. I can use Excel. Let's not think that the Liberal Arts can't include skills, which can be translated into the working world. It's life and we are all adapting to our ever-changing world, but this doesn't mean we need to focus only on STEM.