Dissertation-gate, Day #1

Today is the first "official" day of not being a student who takes classes.  I am ABD, a doctoral candidate, and... I arrived at the coffee shop this morning at 8:15 to begin work on my dissertation.  To be fair, I began my dissertation last summer, but now it's serious.  Last week I was finishing up the semester and I was released into the wild, with all the other ABD birds and with very little guidance.

I do not have many qualms about writing my dissertation, however.  I'm not at a loss for what to do.  So with that in mind, here is my to-do list:

- Finish taking notes on the resources I have in English
- Look up a handful of resources in the library that I am fairly certain are not helpful
- Updated my annotated bibliography as I go
- Prepare to go to Russia to research in archives
- Get the necessary Russian scholarship translated (I only have the skills to loosely understand what it is addressing, not to understanding the finer points of scholarship)
- Begin my proposal, creating a timeline, honing my methodology, etc.

Each of the above the has many small steps.  My ultimate goal is to have my dissertation proposal approved and a rough draft of my first chapter in by the end of the fall semester, with more being written but not submitted.

I also am going to pick a few pieces to study this summer.  I want to keep working on what I love.  I will likely choose Brahms for one piece, since I have a better idea of how I want to approach him now.  I will look at my other scores at home and also figure out what I want to study.  Perhaps Schütz or Bach.  And then I'm interested in studying Amy Beach's Mass in E flat.