Intermesso in the last weeks of the PhD thesis, part 3 - out of doors

The thesis is still progressing and I have not lost my optimism yet. In order to keep things that way, I tend to escape from the office walls for shorter periods and make use of the little courtyard we have beside the common room. It is a good way to get some fresh air, some sun, and most importantly a change of scenery.

In the past weeks there has been a lot of writing going on, either writing things from scratch or editing things that I wrote months ago, or reformulating things I wrote months ago by writing sections from scratch. I'm now at the point where I need to write a chapter that ties the case studies together, and this will be the last major step towards finishing. Today, however, I found that I was so tired of writing on a computer that I decided instead to put things on paper, writing coherent prose by pen rather than by keyboard. It was a welcome change, and a good reminder of the need for such change lest the final stages just wither away into stagnant routine.