This is just going to be one long moan, so perhaps skip it and go and bake a cake or something.
I'm going to sit and write this evening. There's fifty seven other things I need to be doing. But it's time for a reflection before I actually give up on everything.
This dissertation mark the last ever academic piece of work I plan to do in my whole entire life. The whole process has been one long stress inducing, panic overloading nightmare. I've been sick, tired and nervous for months. And it's not getting any better.
In hindsight, deciding to write a dissertation on Mobile Libraries was a poor choice. Yes, it is a neglected research area. But I'm slowly learning why. Mobile libraries are, well, mobile. The communities they serve are rural, out of the way and tiny. Gathering enough data to analyse is difficult. This is not due to the mobile library staff, who are amazing, and have been ever so supportive. This is simply due to the fact that THEY ALL LIVE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Seriously, I was trying to find one of the villages on one of the routes. I passed some houses, kept going, then ten minutes down the road realised that that tiny collection of houses was the village. And I cannot go around knocking on peoples doors or posting things through letterboxes due to the universities ethical guidelines, so I am relying on the help of a few willing local people and businesses who are leaving my questionnaires in waiting rooms and handing them out after church to get data from people who don't use the service. As for gathering data from the people who do use it, I've been essentially taking days off work to stalk the van around it's usual route then hover awkwardly in the vehicle asking anyone who comes aboard if they could possibly spare five minutes to fill in a questionnaire that may or may not be the difference between me passing or failing this thing. I am inept at asking people for things, and it usually ends up with me babbling and melting into an awkward floop.
I love my new job, I really do. But working every weekday, knowing all I have to come home to is an unfinished rambling about elderly library users and grounded theory is soul destroying. And also, most of the time,
I have no idea what I'm even doing.
Like literally.
I have a vague notion of the theories I'm using. I know that my interviews produced qualitative data. My research questions are changing by the minute to fit whatever theories are developing. Does my questionnaire produce qual data or quan? Because I've written an awful lot about qualitative data, then realised a few days ago, that maybe, just maybe, I'm doing a mixed methods approach. Who knows? I certainly don't. All the reading I did seemed to be hell bent on design of the study. Analysis? Anyone? I'm 23, and when I was in my teens, I honestly thought being 23, I would be the ultimate adult. Sure of everything and powerful, like Tina Fey or something. But I'm not. I'm sitting in my old bedroom at my parents house worrying about whether internet access affects mobile library usage in elderly people.
One glimmer of hope is that at the end of November I get to move to my new apartment. But however shiny this thought is, what plays on my mind most of the time, is that that moving in weekend will be a whole other weekend lost that I probably need to spend working on this nightmare. My emotions are warring right now. Sometimes I'm happy, especially at work. I'm doing a job I enjoy. Then half an hour later I'll be in work worrying about data analysis and thinking that I should be at home typing away like some possessed thing. The worst thing is waiting for data to come back. Twiddling my thumbs wondering if anything that comes back will even remotely fit the theories I'd drawn up. Or just wondering if anything will come back.
I'm tired of feeling guilty for doing fun things too. Like at the weekend I'll do some gaming with JJ and spend the next week internally beating myself up for it. It's wasted time. I'm constantly moaning about lack of time, so why take time to game, or watch anime, or see friends. Because I'm a massive hypocrite and my own worst enemy, that's why #emo.
I paid mucho moneys to do this course, which is why I wanted to do this dissertation, y'know, to get the most degree for my money. I have a supportive family, friendship group, supervisor and new boss. I've had so much time to write this thing. Life is hurling lemons at me and I just feel like I'm stomping them into an acidic, pulpy nothing.
This will literally be the most boring, whingey post I've ever written. You probably just skipped all of it. But writing it down helps. It always has. So, sorry, and maybe the next post will be more uplifting (but probably not, unless it's after Christmas). I hope the rest of the human world is happy today.
Over and out.
