Starting from scratch

Indeed, as bionic-woman wrote, Billie's plan of work sounds like it's at the wrapping up stage, and considering her manifest dedication I'm sure the 75-day deadline is highly feasible.


For me, finishing the PhD this year is a life or death question, at least financially, which is why I must submit by October 20 hoping to have my Viva early in December. So far I've completed my data analysis (of structured interviews, family discussion sessions and diaries), and have written four out of seven chapters. My problem is I just can't seem to be able to put together a literature review. I have written several dozens of pages already but when I re-read they all seem rubbish, too disorganised for my taste. It's getting worse by the minute because I've come to my closed chapters and they look like they need to be re-written too. Just an example: My “diss” working title at the moment is "Viewing globalization in transnational, Mexican-American spaces". Theories of transnationalism are central to my argument and I have explained them in detail in the overview of Mexicans in the U.S. There is stuff there which must be in the literature review, but doing this means parts of the chapter on Mexicans will be redundant. This makes me think the stuff about Mexicans must be altogether in the literature review instead of being part of a single chapter. But if I do this, then the whole structure of the “diss” would need to change.

Well, I've learned in the last three years that what happens to me is nothing special and that everyone pursuing a PhD goes through a very similar process. The thing is that I've been wasting too much time from the beginning starting from scratch whenever I find the organization of a chapter is all over the place, or when I feel I need to take a different theoretical or ideological approach. I'd very much appreciate to have your thoughts.