Mission Control – writing a Harvard thesis

I’ve tackled this “heart of the beast” by dividing it into 3 chapters – one for each hypothesis. I may end up bringing them back into one chapter — not a problem really. I have a week and a half left until it’s due.

Went into Widener at 9:15 this morning. Sat in the reading room on the 2nd floor.  A handful of us worked in utter silence. It was fine! People filtered in a bit over next three hours. It’s so much easier to focus at the library than it is in my office at home. I try to get to the library when I need quiet and no interruptions. (Sidenote: none of us in the room had any books with us, nor were we pulling books off the shelves. We all had laptops and our materials were on our computers. As an older student who remembers card catalogs, that was an interesting observation.  It also occurred to me that this is the last year I’ll be in Widener. Won’t be a student next fall.)

It’s kind of a steady hum lately. Writing, thinking, writing. I have a good rhythm going now. I find getting back into the material is easy when I’m wading through it daily. I’m in the flow.

Took a break over the Thanksgiving holiday. Put all that thesis work aside for two days. Very nice. However, tomorrow will be a mix of activities: get the Christmas tree in the morning (store it in the garage in water for a week), work on the thesis, then go to a wake in the late afternoon (a friend’s Mom died Wednesday). This is one major difference between me as an older student and young (20-something) students I’ve met at Harvard. For people my age, it’s not unusual that some relatives and friends have died. It is still a bit of a mind-bender to think about graduating at an age when my parents’ generation was nearing retirement. This is how much the baby boomers have shifted the thinking about age. And about retirement. With so many of us living longer, 50 ain’t as old as it used to be.

Another movie distraction and recommendation: The Dish with Sam Neill and Patrick Warburton. Based on the true story of the Australian radio telescope and crew that broadcast some of the first images from Neil Armstrong’s moon walk, July 20, 1969.

Good cast, well-written, nicely acted. Both funny and touching. Reminds me a bit of State and Main. In high school at the time of the moon landing, I remember it well and appreciated the intermixing of real footage and audio.