I want to start a series of posts about my Dissertation. I am going to e-mail these blogs to some people, people to whom I want to stay accountable until my Dissertation is finished. Readers who also want to challenge me to finish my Dissertation, are welcome.
I am goint to try to blog every two weeks about how I am doing.
These posts will be short. Of course it must not keep my away from the actual work of writing my Dissertation. Sometimes it will be in the style of a blog post and sometimes in the style of a letter – depending on what I write first.
This series will be in two languages – Afrikaans and English. I have two blogsites – an Afrikaans blog and an English blog. I want to have people from both sites to go on this journey with me. I write in Afrikaans first, and then I translate it to Afrikaans. I expect that my writing style will change in this translation. The email version will be one document. [You are welcome to read both blogposts; I will include both links.]
The reason for this decision? I have come to realise over the years that there are truth in the teaching that we are part of a community of people, that we can’t function optimamly [I hope there are a word like that!] outside of that community (That is also a reason for the choice of part of my Dissertation theme). I also experienced that, with some projects, I need a community of people.
Each person’s community differs. For the sake of this Dissertation, there are a few Theology students, as well as some current pastors that I want to “use” in my community. I am mailing this to people without even getting their permission to be part of this community. If you don’t want to be part of it, please let me know.
I am writing this post before I even know whether I will be allowed to finish my Dissertation through University channels. I started in 2007 at Tukkies. I finished my degree within 4 years. After that (2011), I started with my church-specific degree. {I can’t actually remember which one is MDiv and which one is BTh; I am sure someone will comment about this.}
Different things happened that caused me not to finish my dissertation earlier. In following posts I will share more in this regard – as part of my own process of transparency.
I have works on it over the last few months. It is not on an academic standard, though. In Rustenburg, I had three pastors (Riaan Steyn, Herman Jansen and Pieter Jordaan) who has helped me correct my standard and style. My hope was to get as much work as possible done, maybe even up to 75% or more, before finding out whether I can register again. I never realised how much of the sources I photocopied. [After all, students know that they have to make copies of parts of their sources if that don’t want to or can’t work in the library.] As a result of some wrong methods of referral (wrong or incomplete), my dissertation went from 45% done, to 15% done.
That is why I need to register as a student again – so that I can get into the library.
This is my first hurdle toward finishing my dissertation. Will I be able to register as a student again, dispite already registering for this specific part of my studies 2 or 3 times already?
It is amazing (maybe I should have realised this) how much of the student-processes a person forgets if he/she doesn’t go to campus anymore. So I am a little unsure how to find out whether I can register again.
I’ll keep you posted.
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