Tuesday, 04 July 2023
Yesterday I didn’t do any uni work as I didn’t feel up to it, or anything else, because of the brain fog and aches and pains I am experiencing on a daily basis at the moment. Today, whilst they are still there, they have all subsided to a level where I feel like a human being again and capable of doing something today. But what?
My priority is my literature review, that is the first task I must address. But where do I start? You would think that doing a PhD I would know where to start but I don’t. I’ve always studied from pure instinct, and this is the first time I can’t, so, I need to form some sort of plan for my literature review, something I can use and refer back to when I need it. But where do I start?
Having a dual diagnosis of autism and dyspraxia gives an insight into the problems I face when it comes to planning and organising. My brain is wired differently and when it comes to planning and organising my brain goes into meltdown and I sit staring out of the window whether I’m in uni, at home or at the library in town. But I need to do something and now. Time is running out and whatever I learn from this experience I can take forward for the other parts of my PhD. So, it’s time to rediscover what I call my ‘ultra-anal’ side, the side of me that does each and every single step to such a deep level it annoys other people. It’s something that I’d had drummed out of me by other people, but it’s something I need to rediscover so that I can move forward with my PhD, because if I don’t I’ll still be staring out of the same window in a hundred years’ time, having accomplished nothing and never knowing how far I could go, never realising the latent potential inside me.
Firstly, I need to decide on a reference manager, somewhere, where I can store all the papers, create notes on them and create references for them. Secondly I need to create reading lists for my three topics for my literature review. This will help me approach the topic in a systematic way.
In the past I have used various reference managers, Zotero, Mendeley, but I have decided to use Endnote now. It is the industry standard, and my university recommends it and uses it, and it links up with all the libraries I will be using for my journal articles, so it makes sense to use it, it’s easy. Now I have to learn how to use it!
So I’ve managed to install Endnote on my laptop, set up a library for my thesis and created some groups for my articles and journals to go in and that’s it. I’ve searched some databases, looked at some papers, but I can’t seem to upload any into Endnote. I’ll try again tomorrow; things might happen tomorrow.
The Autistic FellRunner 