Monday, August 15, 2005

"Rather blue today..."

Not my morning for virtual communication, it seems...

1. I'm facilitating an online course of Argentinean teachers. 5 days after the first message has been emailed, 20 out of 46 have not replied. I take the trouble to send a personalised message to each, resending info so that they can get started and saying "I'm really looking forward to hearing from you", which of course I mean. This morning I get a reply... "I'd rather you didn't make use of irony". Grrrrr!

2. Sharon got my draft (after several failed attempts) last week. This morning, I get feedback from her ... "crying" 'cause I've failed to leave 2 spaces after periods or respect the alignment she prefers. When I tell her I was unaware of this question of the 2 spaces, she writes back "dgb, take a look some day at all the emails that we've exchanged"... Not really sympathetic, is it? She adds she's spent the whole night awake because of the heat in her area... Well, it only shows she's human, after all...

Gladys
I wanted to document this feeling, but am not in the mood to hear other peope's voices on this right now, so that's why you'll notice you're unable to post comments to this entry. (Sorry everyone!)

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

I keep moving ahead...

Isn't the way our brain works awesome?
After days (nearly weeks) of being unable to sit at my PC and work on my thesis, blaming my husband for selfishness, sharing sorrows with friends facing the same challenges (Silvana and I had some "mates" yesterday morning) and once again begin Mother to look after my younger so that I can have some hours for myself (What? Am I my thesis?!?), I've sat and worked on my ever-growing draft for nearly four hours...
Have I finished my review of the literature? No, not yet! But all of the sudden I grasped a concept that had been troubling me for years (honestly!), and I was able to round off a very important section in the chapter (history of CALL). Now only one section is to be written, and then off to the conclusion of this huge task!
BTW, it is clear now that my thesis has grown out of proportions if all I had as an aim was to get my diploma for my specialization as a Methods teacher (85 pages by now, 7 listing the references and the list is not complete!) . There are, however, 2 "doors" on the horizon that keep me smiling: the possibility of getting it published (Sharon says that's not just a dream, let's believe her!) and my determination to make this my starting point to establish myself as an "expert" in this area (Sharon: you should be proud of yourself, you've drilled this into my brainand soul, now it's my belief!). Whatever path I take after submitting this, I'll benefit for having gone through this, I'm sure!

Best news of all: I still have two hours to keep working on all this. :-) I'd better have some snack and try to get a bit further!