starting today

so the whole point of making this blog is to force me to write every day -- and to write about my dissertation -- and to think about my dissertation.

The dissertation is about the differences in how Koreans and North Americans interpret the emotions that are communicated by Korean people.

This is what I have so far:

• I've conducted maybe half a dozen focus groups with both Korean people and Western people.
• I have had those focus groups audio recordings transcribed and where necessary translated into English.
• I've gone through and put a preliminary set of codes on those transcripts.
• I've asked my peer reviewer to look over those codes, and she has come back to me with a reply -- that I have not read yet :-(.
• I have indexed all the emotion words in the transcripts in order to cross reference those emotion words to among other things basic emotions.
• I've developed a coding system for categorizing the different sorts of behavioral characteristics that are used to justify the interpretation of specific emotions [ E.g. whether it's tone of voice, facial expression, situational interpretation, or something else ].

However, there is still a ton of further work to be done.

• I need to read the peer reviewer notes.
• I need to take into consideration those notes as I conduct a secondary coding of the data.
• I need to look at the different behavioral characteristics that have been mentioned in the text and code those. Whether they are kinesic, proxemic, or whatever.
• I need to go back in revised my methodology section to indicate what I have actually done in data collection and data analysis.
• I need to go back and look at the edits that Schwandt gave me and incorporate them in the first three chapters.
• I need to... um... write chapters four and five.
• I need to write my thesis advisor.
• I need to contact the program and register for courses.

So, I'm almost done.