Had a very long and good tutorial with Jill and Imogen. But had a horrendously long journey home, and am now feeling very stressed and upset by it all.
I'm going to be way over on word count. I'm meant to have a total word count of 15,000 words. I've not written the Chapter 4 - exhibition, or the conclusion and I'm over 15,000 already. Yet now I've been told to dump lots of relevant but peripheral stuff into appendices. And my issue with this is that effectively it is just falsifying stats. Yes, the main body of text will come in at 15,000 words, but I've just dumped them elsewhere where they 'don't count for total words' but are taken into account. Which means more pointless messing about cutting and pasting, and more mouse work which knackers my neck.
I've been told that the assessors don't need to come to the show. (Really, so what is the point of it?) But I do need excellent photos of all the artwork, to add into appendices of the essay. Which need to be really high resolution so the detail can be seen. So why don't they just attend the show? And look at the objects for real?
I've also been told I need to consider the grammar of my essay. I've never hyphenated my use of the words working-class or middle-class and apparently they are meant to be hyphenated. To me, this is more mindless detail that adds nothing of value. But it's more fiddling about with mouse work which knackers my neck.
And I've been advised not to use the word Value as it is too slippery a term. But this is actually, really what I'm interested in. I read values through behaviour, and it's women's activity and behaviour that indicates their values. I'm not interested in portraying women's actions - I don't want to portray an action like a sport - I 'm interested in the value that underlies the behaviour. Imogen's suggestion is 'Portraying Women's Actions through Stitch'. It does not really grab me. I know values are not clearly defined for women - this is why I'm working in this area.
And the assessment process is stretching interminably in to the future. I just wanted it wrapped up in September. But now I'm told, if my exhibition is 2nd week in September, final submission date for essay is 20 September, then viva 6 weeks later - this will be November! And I just want it wrapped up and finished so Jim and I can go away on holiday. Some time in November!!!
Imogen likes footnotes, Jill does not. I've never used footnotes, but they seem to be used to indicate you know there is a huge debate about something you touch on but choose not to use your essay word count on, but you need to show you know there is more to it - surely you could footnote virtually every sentence in your essay on this basis!
They want lots of evidence of analysis, evaluation and synthesis. They say I do it, but I'm really struggling to demonstrate it in academic language. Within the word count.
They want multiple references from people who have written about key themes to show the themes are well chewed. Except I've often only read one or two, not the whole gamut.
Imogen wants a list of all the places I've been, things I've looked at, events I've attended, and what I saw when I was there. I'm meant to look at what I've made and research that cascaded from it. I've only ever written from theory leading to practice, not the other way round. I need to reference a book on interview technique so I can account for why I did the semi-structured interviews the way I did. Except I did not refer to a book beforehand.
Montenegrin stitch is very important - all the reasons why I rejected it - but it goes in the appendix, not main body. I really have an issue about fiddling the word count by dumping so-called important stuff in the appendix. I'm also meant to dump a load of stuff from the Introduction in the appendices because it is well chewed ground, that needs to be covered to show I know it but not in the main body.
It seems a lot of pointless fiddling with details that add nothing to the integrity of the work.
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