budding scholar

I’d seen a few yellow-splashed trees around campus and the city, but hadn’t yet seen a deep red fall leaf. And finally, a month into the autumn, I’m feeling fall here in Barcelona. Maybe it’s because along the Mediterranean it comes later. Or maybe because without classes, I didn’t have that feeling of settling into school. But now here I am, sitting at my desk at the university, looking out on pines and spots of yellow-dotted poplars. My project papers are spread around me, and the idea of research design is starting to feel less like something other people do and more like something I might get good at.

I’ve got a long list of things to do (people to contact, websites to read…) in this first week of real fall work on my research project. And I’m going to work on these. But I have one simple goal that is at the top of the list, part of a long-term goal of becoming a writer and researcher in my field: start writing 700 words every day. At first. And then once I settle into that, perhaps a bit more. The goal is to work on making daily writing a routine during the next month. I’ve tried this before, but it’s usually fizzled if I don’t have a deadline. So I’m trying anew, inspired by writer blogs I follow and their efforts to write furiously during the month of November.

What are you working on this Fall? How’s it going?

Tags: dissertation project, fall, Writing

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 7:43 am and is filed under Dissertation, Goals, Ups and Downs, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.