Hello!
What do we have here? Hmm, exactly 20 days between this blog post and the previous. Why, how convenient. Makes me look like a slacker, doesn’t it? But honest be to God, I have been doing quite a basket full of work on my thesis (you can imagine the basket to either be the size of a laundry hamper or one sized for muffins for your neighbour, it’s your call).
Anyway, I’ve done about 9k words out of 15k and I’m actually quite pleased with that. I don’t usually have the ability to pull off something quite this big for academics but hey, there’s a first for everything! And the way I’m approaching this is such that shows I’m actually gleaning into sources that are more useful to the thesis as a whole as opposed to how easy it is for me to understand it. I know, I’m not the best person to do close reading because I’m a fast reader and when I read I usually imagine images in my head. Problem is though, with uni and the lot, dossiers, articles, journals and theses don’t always allow me to think in images so they always, always leave me lost in the dark. I hate academic reading, seriously I do. The way I tackle it is to always have pen and paper beside me and whichever paragraph I think might be of good use to my work, I’d usually write them down before I type them into my thesis. Looks tedious but it works for me well. So far, I’m handling close reading one step at a time. I’ve always had a problem with it, even while I was doing my Bachelor but since Honours has been given me such a great time, I seem to be enjoying doing work more. So yeay me!
I did my first presentation for the workshop today and I think the outcome was pretty good. Honestly, I think Honours has stolen from me what I like doing best – presentations. Once upon a time, I used to look forward to presentations and would usually spend not that a lot of time preparing, just let thing flow like the river to the sea, and things would be just fine. But I don’t know what happened to me lately, suddenly things change and I spent the whole of last night and yesterday preparing for the presentation which, to be honest, has only about 8 slides? Awful! I waited almost three hours for my turn and I was ready, I was confident but all those effort and courage just went kaput the moment I opened my mouth and made eye contact. There’s something about my classmates that are really really intimidating. Maybe because their presentations, so far, had been awesome and they presented theirs suavely. Oh this makes me feel real crap!
However, I’m happy to get feedback from Adrian as well as my classmates because now I have a much clearer track to where I’m going with my thesis. I wasn’t sure before but I’m assured now that I’m doing the right thing. Adrian suggested that I eliminate putting the RTB Media Carnival topic in there altogether because my thesis concentrates on Marketing and PR. I have actually been thinking about that because sources that leads to the RTB Carnival chapter isn’t that convincing so this is something that I need to think through before deciding to cancel it out. Need to talk to my supervisor, Philip, first, before barging into making any decisions.
Hayden actually made a very very good comment. Something about “if the product is bad, nobody’s going to want it, regardless”. So I’m thinking, yes, I agree and that is so true! What has been the problem with RTB at this moment and why are people consistently watching channels on Astro and Parabola? Because of content. The major public know what they want but RTB is not giving them what they want hence, they resort to something that are more meaningful to their lives. Well, I’m doing the same thing. It’s supply and demand and that’s what RTB needs to research on. Then again, they’re a public service broadcaster and they’re adhering to a philosophy.
With that said, I’m going to have yet another read of my thesis, sleep on it and decide what kind of changes I need to give the thesis before I go see Philip this Wednesday. On that note, mid-semester break has started for me! Ohyeahhh!
