Monday I had a meeting with my adviser.  He said I was making good progress and had good sources, but I don’t feel that confident after this week.  Tuesday I continued to tweak my outline until I had a solid one for my chapter.  I started writing on Wednesday, and got through a pretty solid […]

Despite the Homecoming festivities I made a decent amount of headway this week on my project.  Saturday through Tuesday I read Main Street Revisited by Richard Francaviglia, which turned out to be extremely informative.  The book covered the importance of the image of Main Street to American culture and gave an analysis of its history […]

Until Chapter numero uno is due…time to get cracking.  I think I’ve outlined the chapter I’m writing pretty well at this point, now it’s just a matter of getting down to the grindstone and writing.  I’m really worried I won’t have enough research/material to adequately make my points, which will force me to go back […]

Sorry this post is late, it’s been a busy week.
I ACTUALLY HAVE AN OUTLINE!  That means that the outline might turn into words that might turn into a thesis!  I’m a planner at heart, and it feels really good to at least have a vague sense of where I’m heading as I move forward.
I’ve decided […]

I was just brainstorming several commercial areas that I want to look at in detail other than Merchants Square that exhibit Colonial references.  My adviser described the use of Colonial Revival architecture is almost “cliche” now, so there are probably many more examples than the following list indicates.  But anyways, here are the commercial areas […]

This post is really late, I apologize, but my access to a computer was pretty limited over break.
Anyways, this past week I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress.  On Monday I interviewed Richard Longstreth.  He bled knowledge out of his ears.  He helped me clarify questions about my topic and to refine my […]

I went back through one of Longstreth’s bibliographies and found six more sources to look at.  So I may have jumped the gun a little on my secondary source progress.  I’m wondering how many sources other people have?  Obviously, every project will require varying amounts of secondary material, but I’m wondering what everyone’s ballpark figures […]

I know this blog entry is a little late.  I’ll try to make it extra entertaining to make up for that…
I’m starting to realize just how hard it is to balance my thesis with my other William & Mary work while still squeezing in time for a social life.  I was out of town both […]

This week was really busy so I did not get as much done as I would have liked.  On Monday I spent most of the afternoon looking at old photos of Merchant Square buildings before and after the development.  The photos were really valuable because they were labeled with date of construction (or destruction for […]

This week I worked on a refined prospectus that will really lay out my research project and how I’m going to accomplish it.  I’ll attach it to the bottom of this post, but first a quick recap:
I spent a lot of time at the Rockefeller library this week.  George the Librarian continues to be extremely […]