Beginning a Thesis

I have started a Thesis Log, separately from this blog (and just for me).  My professor for my thesis research methods seminar recommended writing for 25 minutes a day-- and by writing she also meant reading/thinking/note-taking.  But I like the idea of writing and reflecting on my reading for (at least) 25 minutes a day.  I'm approaching it a bit like The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, so my Thesis Log includes bits and pieces of my life, too, and personal thoughts and reflections.  I'm hoping that, like Lizzie, I may be able to look back over my Log and discover how my thoughts were shaped, what it is that I enjoy about what I'm doing, and that these discoveries will help me both with my writing and with my future career goals.  I loved getting the backstory on Lizzie's thesis-- why the videos were relevant to a thesis topic and not just a girl with a camera-- and even though my thesis has nothing to do with video blogging, I think writing about it for 25 minutes a day will help my ideas.  At the very least, it might make good reading material for me once this whole thing is over.

As of right now, I've been doing the reading/thinking/note-taking recommended, but I still feel a bit panicky over it all.  I am trying to remind myself that when I started out my history masters I still hadn't read the book that would end up informing the 'thesis' part of it.  I didn't really think about the stakes of a thesis then: I just knew that I had to compare two things (it was a comparative history degree).  I found a colonial American theater company and knew a bit about London theatricals, and thought, "Well, this seems perfect!  I can just compare what shows they put on and their staging.  Done!  And they all speak English!  No need for a translator!"  And, at the time, that seemed like enough-- as if a thesis were nothing more than a glorified research paper.  Of course, over the ensuing year and a half I learned quite a lot-- both about 18th-century theater and the purpose of graduate school-- and perhaps I just got lucky that I found a way to say something new in the field.  My thesis chunk that I turned in at the beginning of my second semester (comparable to the one I will have to turn in at the end of this semester) certainly didn't say anything new at all.  But I worked with it, and found my angle.

The thing is, it's easy now to look back and see exactly what I wanted to say in my history thesis, and it's hard for me-- in this program-- not to feel like I'm behind because I can't find the 'intervention' that I want to make in the first week or so.  I mean, I've read a biography and a book of poetry and the (long) introductions to two critical editions, why don't I have an angle?  See, when I say it like that it seems pretty silly to expect to have a grandiose plan at this point.  I have a topic.  I am interested in female Romantic writers.  I am focusing on Mary Robinson and Anna Laetitia Barbauld at this point, letting their works wash over me, and seeing where I might take them.  Maybe I'll find someone else entirely-- a few new names have cropped up in the last few days of reading.  And I need to know that that's okay.  That my history thesis didn't come to me fully-formed.  That I hadn't even read The Marketplace of Revolution when I discovered the Hallams and the London Company of Comedians. 

So, the point of the Log is, then, to provide me with a map, so that I can see where I've been and, perhaps, to point me towards where I'm going.  Here's the journey!