Of course I am not literally pregnant, just borrow this metaphor of "writing a thesis is like conceiving a baby", I'd like to keep a dairy on my master thesis.
And of course this is not my first day of writing, in fact, it has been more than 2 months since I have presented my research idea at the colloquium as the very first presenter of the whole group (yes, I am a typical Aries), and I have also wrote 3 proposals and met my supervisor for twice so far. The idea of documenting my process of writing has popped up for quite a while, but it never came to reality due to the lack of progress. Three things that helped me to make up my mind to start this dairy today. First, I just came back from a one-week "vocation" with tons of regrets, I checked my calendar and realized that I should do nothing but writing in the following 3 months if I want to graduate this semester, although I am still waiting for the answer from HD; second, I read an article from a partial acquaintance at 15 Yan (the Chinese version of Medium. Although I also think this is nothing but a tedious copy, everything could make sense on the Chinese Internet...) yesterday, he is doing his doctoral research in international politics at a renowned university in Germany, I had a mixed feeling when I found that I knew this author. This guy is really arrogant, but I have to admit that he has the reason to be arrogant after reading his article. Still, I hate him anyhow; last and most importantly, I read a very good book on academic researches for social science. There are so many handy advices with clear examples and useful information which helped me a lot in writing my 4. proposal, I really hope that I could find this book earlier!!! So here I am with this dairy, I will document all the books, papers, instruments etc. which inspired me along this lonely road. It is an urge and memory for myself, but if any mistake or progress I have made could benefit anyone for saving his time or amusing him in any sense, I would be very glad; if anyone could read my words and like to discuss with me or give me advices, I would be very appreciate. I will write this dairy both in English and Chinese, since my master thesis is about the Chinese audience research and the questionnaire I conduct will be first conceived in English and then translated into Chinese.
----------------------------------------------------- Day 1 ------------------------------------
1. This super little book is called "Surviving Your Dissertation", a reference book with more than 1000 citations in Google Scholar. It will guide you through the whole process of your academic research.
http://book.douban.com/subject/2903676/
Maybe it is too fundamental for some master students, but for me it is quite helpful. Because in our "Research Design" course, our professor has chosen one book as the main reference, which is written by his colleague and applied very unfashionable concepts like"factor-centric and outcome-centric" instead of the popular definitions like "quantitative, qualitative or inductive, deductive". I really hate that book, because it is in English but written by German, and Germans have this ability to make every language difficult to understand;( So most of my energy in that course was contributed to the fuzzy concepts and obscure usages, such a sad story... Anyway, this book has filled my vacancies of knowledge with reader-friendly language, self-explained charts, handy advices, and many examples. By the way, this book is also a classic
http://book.douban.com/subject/4819469/
I finished reading 4 chapters and made an Excel table for literature reviewing today. Here are some bullet points which are most useful for me:
Differences between mediator and moderator;
How to generate research questions and hypotheses;
Differences between quantitative and qualitative researches;
How to do literature review;
How to write the statement of problem;
Some writing pitfalls. This page is highly recommended, even more handy than "The Elements of Style".
http://people.stern.nyu.edu/wstarbuc/Writing/Fussy.htm
2. Revised my reference list in Zotero and on cards
Build your own databank as soon as possible, Zotero is an outstanding free software that could save a lot of time.
3. Revised my research questions and hypotheses, but I am still not sure about them ;(
4. Outlined my thesis
5. First draft of my questionnaire. I compared the SurveyMonkey and FluidSurvey and chose the latter. Wish to have some personal user experiences. And PayPal could not work, strange.
6. Started writing this dairy, really hope that I could keep it going till the end.
----------------------------------------------- End of Day 1 -----------------------------------
当然我没有真的怀孕，而是借用那个常见的把写论文当做生孩子的比喻，所以我现在做的只是记录下我的硕士论文过程而已。
当然今天也不是我写论文的第一天。事实上，从我作为整个课程的第一个在研讨课上做了个囧囧的报告之后已经过去两个多月，而且我也已经写了3个提案，见了两次导师。关于记录我每天的工作过程的想法由来已久，但是因为一直没什么进展也就搁置一边了。大概有三个原因吧，最终促使了我今天开始动笔。一是我刚刚从为期一周的”假期“中回到MA，本来要争分夺秒的我在过去的一周内几乎什么都没做，等回来看了下日历我就只能”呵呵“了。如果想这个学期毕业，那在可以预见的三个月内我的生活将除了论文没有其他；二是昨天偶然在15言（虽然我也同意这是对Medium赤果果的抄袭，但是在中国神奇的互联网世界中，什么东西都要有一个中文版本才合理）上看到了一篇文章，发现作者竟然是一个我认识的人。此人在一所老牌学校读国际政治，虽然很有才华，但是为人很傲慢。我们认识的过程也很有趣，但后来就相忘于茫茫江湖之中了；最后也是最重要的一点，就是我读到了一本对我很有帮助的人文社科类专业研究的指导手册，实在是相见恨晚啊！！所以我想用一个工作日志的方式把我每天读到的书、文章、方法、信息都记录下来，对我自己也是一个敦促和提醒，当然也方便日后对资料的整理。如果能借此机会找到一些在相同志趣和目标的小伙伴就更棒啦~~为了使自己“保持状态”，每天的记录都会有中文和英文两个版本。
-------------------------------------第一天-------------------------------------------
1. 那本很棒的指导手册名叫“Surviving Your Dissertation”，
http://book.douban.com/subject/4819469/
，谷歌学术上有1000+的引用真的不是浪得虚名啊。它会手把手从头教你如何确定选题，寻找文献，研究方法，写作技巧，直到出版等等等等。或许对于一些硕士研究生有些太基础了，毕竟里面的东西都不陌生，可是对我却有系统性的帮助。话说当年我上“研究方法”课的时候，教授选择了一本相当小众的书作为主要参考文献，书中使用了生僻又难懂的“factor-centric, outcome-centric"等概念而不是其他书中都用的“定性，定量，演绎，推理”。加之这本书是教授的同事也就是德国人用英语写成的，并且德国人实在是有一种可以把任何语言使用得及其难懂的天赋，所以这堂课的大部分精力都被我用来区分概念和查找生僻词。。这是个遥远且悲伤的故事。。但是直到我看到了这本书，它用浅显的语言、易懂的图标、实用的建议和大量的例子填补了我多年的知识空缺啊！顺便，推荐一本同样的经典，
http://book.douban.com/subject/4819469/
，可惜当年在课上只读了两章就被那本讨厌的书取代了。。
今天我读了前4章，并且按照它的内容做了一个文献检索评估表格，下面是一些要点：
mediator和moderator的区别
如何产生研究问题和提出假设
定性、定量的区别
如何做文献综述并且评价
一些写作陷阱。这个网站很棒，比E.B.White的那本更容易上手
http://people.stern.nyu.edu/wstarbuc/Writing/Fussy.htm
2. 重新在Zotero和卡片上整理了文献
在我对比了几个软件之后，最后选择的Zotero真是太好用了啊啊
3. 重新写了RQ和假设，但是我还是不确定
4. 写了文章的大标题和框架
5. 做了问卷的初稿，在SurveyMonkey和FluidSurvey之间选了后者，感觉更容易上手一些，如果能问下有经验的人使用体验就好了。还有就是PayPal竟然支付不了，奇怪
6. 开始这边日记，希望能坚持到最后
