I met with my advisor on Wednesday the 12th to discuss the status of my research, my progress to date, and his comments on an outline I have him back at the start of the summer. (The outline was supposed to be the skeleton for a journal article that would in turn be a very high-level rough draft of my dissertation. I even sent him a draft of the article. But I guess he missed that.)

Anyway, he had comments on my outline. Nothing too outrageous, just some additional topics to mention. But he sent me off to begin fleshing it out, and he told me to go into all the depth I could — getting to 120 pages was not a problem at all. This encouraged me to think that this is in fact the start of my dissertation, so I asked him how realistic it would be to graduate by the end of the calendar year.

His reply was that it depended on how much writing I could do combined with whether my committee thought I needed to do any additional work beyond what I’ve already done. He also mentioned that we may want to convene my committee again in October to show them my results to date and discuss the matter with them.

So, it would appear I am actually writing my dissertation, or at least an early draft. I’ve been head-down on it all weekend, and with the original draft material I had I’m up to about 25 pages including references.

I really am starting to glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel. But it remains to be seen whether it is the exit or an oncoming train. Only time will tell.