My first final deadline for graduate school applications is the 1st of December - and my thesis chapter is not finished. Oops. After revising outlines and reviewing notes, I think I’ve managed to destroy several sections of the first copy. I have a much clearer idea of how I’m arguing certain points, […]

This week’s progress was definitely hampered by the excitement of a softball tournament all the way down in Wilmington, NC.  Barring the six-hour drive (turned to seven by a dinner break) and wanting to play ball, it rained so much on Saturday that we could play no more than one, sopping wet game.  [[Btw, we […]

So, I made a decent amount of progress on last week’s goals even though I can’t cross them out as completed.  First, I discovered that I could draw out a lot of interview data from handwritten notes, isolating less than four hours of recordings to listen to rather than eight.  There’s a long car ride […]

I had a few good chats this week that made the organization of my thesis quite clear, at least to me.  I think I even explained it well to a professor.
So, two things are obvious to me now.  First, there are gaps in my research.  I do not know much  about Haitian national identity as […]

So after my interviews and literature review, I was under the distinct impression that ethnicity did not play a major role in voting patterns, especially in the case of Haitians.  There was a lot of backlash from the community when Jacques Parizeau, then leader of Quebec and  the Parti Québécois, stated infamously that it was […]

I suppose it’s appropriate to revise my weekly goal now, since, apparently, Thursday got here.  A few days ago, I wrote that my goal was to step back and look at what I’ve got for research so far.  Check.  Thanks to a few class assignments allowing (forcing?) me to re-order my working bibliography and a […]

I realized today in the middle of doing some other class’s reading that it would be really easy to argue that Haitian Montrealers/Haitians in Montreal/haïtiano-québécois have a distinct nationalism that has developed out of their experiences as Haitians and as Montrealers without leaning one way or the other. Admittedly, I need a better, deeper […]

As far as my Monroe project went, I’m not exactly sure what happened.  I sent back a much better draft to my advisor, but haven’t heard anything in almost a week.  Granted, the deadline was last Friday.  I sent my copy to her four days ahead of time… I wonder what happened.
On the honours thesis […]

Do you ever get the feeling that, to do well in field research, you have to be a little sneaky? The little half-truths that are used can be handy when you’re just starting out. The non-disclosures about your pre-fabricated conclusions fog the glass between you and your subject. But is it too […]