05 March 2010

What's left to do

I am coming very close to the end of my thesis work.  There are essentially two chapters that are still in the editing process, but both chapters are pretty short.  I'm somewhere between 2 and 4 weeks to finish.  I won't know precisely until I get some more editing recommendations from my supervisors.  I've got suggestions from two of three supervisors on Chapter 7.  Meanwhile, my supervisor had asked me to largely rewrite Chapter 8 from some general comments that they had (it was a bit short, and needed to really be focused on the summary of work and conclusions).  I've got most of the edits recommend for Chapter 7 done and have resubmitted Chapter 8.  I just have a few diagrams to draw for Chapter 7 and I'll be caught up on that until my last supervisor gets back to me on that.

This ending process has been very interesting for me.  I'm finally spending time to reflect on the work that I've done for that last few years.  I find this to be very rewarding.  Understanding what I've found in my research (as well as what I have learned about the process of scientific research) is probably one of the best rewards I could hope from this degree.  Certainly I hope to see some monetary rewards in terms of better wages etc., but I don't feel that is the ultimate goal of the work that I have done for that last four years.



In addition to the thesis work, I have spent some of my free time lately reading Alan Wolfe's The Future of Liberalism.  Wolfe explains in a way that I, as a layman, can understand, the evolution of liberal thinking from such people as John Locke and Immanuel Kant to more modern thinkers and writers.  In all the book is a very good read and balances its presentation of liberal and illiberal philosophies, contrasting them, without demonizing either.  In many ways, Wolfe allows the reader to make his own judgment at each step. The book is a bit long, which means I'm taking a bit of time to work through it, but I'm pretty sure that I will continue to the end.

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