August 28th 2011
When you are writing a humanities thesis you are consumed with reading; wrapped in it and floating across it.
Every new idea throws you off in a thousand directions and every key point must be backed with scholarship, proven or argued. My thesis has a literature review within a review of literature about other literature – the layers of texts about texts boggle my mind and clutter up my bibliography. I know I am not alone in finding it throws reading for pleasure off kilter but what about other academic reading.
How do you keep up with ideas in your field not specifically connected to your research without wasting time you should be writing? How do you get over the itch to try and find a way of connecting an interesting article to your thesis or the guilt of reading something just because the idea fascinates you?
Am I the only person who has this problem?
Belerion in my Mind 