I’m feeling pretty good about the dissertation now; I wasn’t just a short time ago. I met with my dissertation advisor and we discussed some higher level topics. The next steps are to complete a high level outline of the proposal—structured but without all of the prose inserted—and we’ll discuss that. Then I can fill in the details and have the proposal ready to go. Once that is done the rest is data analysis and a little more writing.

My goal is to have the outline ready by Thanksgiving. We can discuss it before Christmas break and Christmas can be used to add the prose.