Rerouting

After a long weekend of entertaining my parents who were visiting from out of town, you can probably guess how productive I was on my dissertation. But it was always on my mind. Because I never had a chance to work, I came to camp fairly unprepared today. 

Last week, I was pretty proud of a transition paragraph I wrote that tied the literature review in nicely with what still needs to be done in the field of evolutionary cognitive archaeology (i.e., my dissertation), and after reading through it again today, I realized this transition came too early in the chapter. I felt stuck for a while because I didn't know which direction to go in, stick with my established outline or go down a new route. Instead of agonizing over this for too long, I decided to read Mithen's The Prehistory of Mind, a somewhat lengthy book. I was hoping to avoid the problem a bit longer, as well as find some inspiration. I needed to read it eventually anyway, so I might as well get it done now. Using my acquired grad student speed reading skills, I got through half of the book during the camp, and I plan to finish it this afternoon. 

While doing this, I decided to reorganize my outline a bit, and it may continue to change as I read more articles in the next few days.

I. Introduction
II. Pre-World War II
III. Post-World War II
IV. 1979: Contemporary evolutionary cognitive archaeology begins
V. 1980s: A Piagetian framework   
VI. 1990s in Europe
VII. Minds and brains of hominins
VIII. A coming of age in the US
IX. New approaches of new millennium
X. Introduction of neuroimaging techniques
XI. Summary

I am thinking of adding a new section (see Section VII) to the outline that I thought would be in a separate background chapter, but everything I'm talking about in this chapter keeps relating back to it, so I figure this might be a good place to discuss it. I don't know if it will ultimately be one section or more or where it will be located for that matter. I think I will try to get through my established outline and then try to work it in wherever it makes the most sense...maybe before the summary of the chapter.

Reflecting back on my goals:

My goal for today was to finish Section V, which I accomplished, mainly because I decided to reorganize the chapter a bit.

Last week, my goal was to finish Section IV and finish the readings so I could move on to Section V. As you can see, I not only met my weekly goal but exceeded it by finishing Section V as well.

New goals:

My goal for tomorrow is to finish writing Section VII, assuming I can read and write a bit tonight.

My goal for this week is to finish Sections VII and VIII, which would exceed my original goal for these two weeks.