Photos & Words

20 – 30 km: legs feel heavy and tired The time between mid-June and the end of August has been certainly the hardest. Maybe because of the summer, or because the World Cup kept me awake almost every night till late, or because in the desert landscape eat the University with just two or three people in the PC lab working on their dissertations, or maybe because this was also the part were I wondered […]

0 – 20 km: start slowly, find your pace. The first step of the writing process has been the preparation of the dissertation outline with number of chapters, an estimated number of pages, and the main references to be used in the different sections. I found this initial step easy since the articles and project reports I had already written helped to think the dissertation structure. I have to admit that I started with too […]

During ten months, from February to November 2006, I have been writing my doctoral dissertation at the University of Tampere. Simon Down, a lecturer from the University of Newcastle who gave a presentation in a two day seminar at the University of Vaasa in April 2006, described the PhD as the most intense period of the academic life of an individual. During those months I have been thinking about a metaphor that could describe this […]

The marathon is almost over. The PhD dissertation is now back in Tampere to be edited for the book and web pubblications. It gives an odd feeling to be so close to the end and to see, at the same time, that the day of the public defense is real and approaching quickly. In the next days I will post some of my reflections on the process of writing a PhD dissertation that I hope […]