Ending isn’t the end

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What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. And every phrase and sentence that is right (where every word is at home, taking its place to support the others, the word neither diffident nor ostentatious, an easy commerce of the old and the new,

T. S. Eliot, Little Gidding

There’s something to be said about endings as beginnings since each age and stage of life provides opportunities to end and begin again. Just as Eliot’s quote suggests, the ending of my dissertation is where I start, where I review that ‘easy commerce of old and new’ as I review the literature upon which my research is founded, and the research that was set aside since it did not support the work. Now is the time for me to review every word and phrase, checking that every sentence is just right, and making sure the old (that research that was written before) supports the new (that which I have shared through these new lenses).

Ending the dissertation isn’t the ending. There’s always more to edit and revise when you complete a dissertation. While I take time to review and revise … just one more time, I also refresh my thinking and refract the research through a new lens from this shifting time and place. Each time I read through the dissertation, I find something to revise, rewrite, re-cite, add and/or delete. While I know that the Scalar site and the PDF versions of the dissertation are untouchable until reviewed by the committee as well as the internal and external examiners, and their feedback is provided, this doesn’t mean I can’t take time now to go through it just one more time.

But the other thing that is happening as I go through the dissertation just one more time, is the framing of my seeing from a lens of ‘what’s important to share outward to others’. This will help me shape the dissertation defense presentation, which I am drafting as I review and revise the manuscript.

One new research objective is puzzling me; how can I capture and graphically render the citations and references for each section of the document. I’m revisiting work that Michael Paskevicius shared openly on his blog site [Beyond the Bibliography]. With over 45 pages of references, it would be interesting to see where and when I cite certain references and in which chapters / sections of the dissertation these references appear. I have some time to think through and plan out how I hope to capture and render this information since I’m sure there’s technology (perhaps an AI) that can do the heavy lifting for this work.

But in the meantime, I have captured the references from my dissertation in a ‘reference dump’ out of Zotero. First I worked in Zotero to create a new folder for all the dissertation references. This ensures that only those references I have used in the dissertation are in the final curated collection. Then I attempted to export the references using a CSV file – but Zotero limited the number of references to 100 per export. Since I have almost 400 references, this took four separate files, which I then had to merge back together into one file, as an Excel spreadsheet. From this Excel sheet, I reviewed the information and removed items and columns that were not particularly helpful or relevant. Once the spreadsheet page was cleaned up, I uploaded the page into my Google drive and converted it to a Google sheet, which can be shared and viewed online. Now I can colour code and annotate the sheet to identify chapters and sections where I used the references.

References

Eliot, T. S. (n.d.). Little Gidding. [poetry]. Retrieved 2023, August 2 from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html