I finished a chapter of my thesis. Finally. I realized last week that what I thought of as one chapter was really two. So I split it in half. The good news is of course that I ended up with a completed chapter, completed by my self-imposed deadline. The better news is that this means that I’m also more than half-way towards finishing the next chapter.

I’m thinking of posting the text on the site to get feedback from who ever will read it. We’ll see. The chapter is entitled “A Brief Social History of Tourism in the Bahamas 1740 – 1967″ I’m trying to give background information for the Fergusons of Farm Road. It’s impossible to understand what is going on in the scripts without first understanding their context. Chapter three is tentatively title “A Brief History of the Bahamian Courtesy Campaign 1955 – 1970.” To the best of my knowledge no one has written about this before. I’m pretty sure there is no Bahamian literature on it. The most I see is a sentence that describes “a friendliness campaign” that happened in 1970, this thing goes quite a bit deeper than that. (Well at least I think so anyway )

Good news to report to on what will happen with all of this when I graduate. I got a grant from the Cable Bahamas Cares foundation to get the scripts published. I hope to do a great deal more than just publish them too. Big plans. We’ll see if they become reality soon enough. First the thesis!

I’ve also fixed up the website a bit, as regular visitors will know. (Who, pray tell, are these regular visitors?) It now looks good enough and works well enough that I can post-pone the major surgery that I had intended for it. The essays are gone from the page list and they live in their own little parallel universe away from the blog posts. The home page has gotten a nice little picture. (With unintentional symbolism no less, thorny problems, and a thorny fence!)

I still need to fix up the blog page and get some air on the page, and I think something is wrong with the sidebar in archives view… I guess the main thing I want to do is to get a projects page going, one that outlines my evolving Fergusons work and let’s you know what’s going on. I guess this blog will still serve that purpose.

When I started this dot info site, I didn’t realize how much content I had to put up here. And it looks like much more to come…

Here is the poster from the upcoming LACS conference. If you are in Ottawa on the 27th of February please stop by.

Inaugural Ottawa Latin American and Caribbean Conference

I’m pleased to report that the presentation in Toronto went well. Here are a couple pictures of the event with me in front of the presentation machine.

Now that I have returned back to ‘life as usual’ I have to come to terms with my being almost a month behind the schedule that I established for myself in September. The schedule went something like this:

• September – Send in my applications for funding / ethics approval.
• October – Read all of the Ferguson scripts that I have and create notes on them.
• November – Get my research trip planned.
• December – Go on that research trip to Nassau.
• January – Return to Ottawa and begin writing the thesis.

At present, I’ve read all of the Ferguson scripts that I have. (Well all except one.) And I have taken notes on 20 of them. So I’m half way through with that.

I just got approval from the ethics board. And my funding applications have been in for awhile. So Septembers to-do list is finished.

So here it is at the end of November and I’m not finished my October to-do list. Not good.

If I must assign blame, I can think of two reasons why I’m behind. First has been my TA assignment. This year I’m a marking-only TA, but thus far there has been a good deal of marking. I just finished marking another mid-term exam, so this term I’ve marked over 150 pieces of work. Although this work-load is substantially less than what I did for last years TA assignment, where I was leading two tutorials, marking weekly assignments plus two 5-6 page essays per term, it still takes its toll on my schedule. For example I’ve essentially been marking papers non-stop for the last month. This takes a chunk out of your productivity.

Second, the Conference in Toronto, while being a wonderful experience did take a lot out of me. There was the weeks before, getting my paper and presentation together for it, (while marking of course) and then the 5 days that I spent in Toronto which were so sleep deprived I was sick on my return.

So there are my excuses. Both are non-issues going forward. For instance, my TA work drops substantially in the coming months. There is only one other assignment to mark, and that comes in March-April. Conferences won’t be a problem again. Although I have signed up for another two conferences, I don’t have to re-do the presentation or the paper. And the aforementioned conferences are in Ottawa, so there won’t be any travel involved.

So looking forward, things are good. And truth be told, by forcing me to write that conference paper, I have a jump on some of my work for a thesis chapter. I’ll discuss this more later. For now, I’ll try to get back on track.

I thought you would like two little links here. This is the conference website and a link to the panel where I’ll be presenting.

I think that’s enough for now, I have to go mark some papers.

Why am I doing this again? Yes. This is supposed to represent my academic doings and be a place where I can rant on my topic, rail at my school and complain about my superiors.

It is a place for mourning. It is a place for things academic. It is where the 150 pages that will be my thesis project will unfold.

Enjoy