Writing a literature review for one's phd thesis is not, as it turns out, a matter of finding everything relevant in a fairly narrow topic of study and creating a kind of annotated bibliography (as it was in honours), nor is it the gathering of everything relevant and then evaluating and synthesising the lot in a coherent back history that leads naturally to your study (as it was in masters). So far, it has been the digging up of everything you've read in the past 2.5years, finding stacks of un/half-read papers, coming across new citations that you absolutely must obtain (and then somehow read), and in an iterative process, alternating pedantic criticism (hating it - it's so superficial!) with seeing things in new light and with new insight (Oh the subtlety, the clarity!), all the while making notes in a document optimistically called thesis.doc, hoping it will all come together in the end (the END!). All the while, Not Feeling Any More Knowledgeable, but Quite the Opposite!
Why why why why why why why!
>_<
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