It's Done (kinda)

Last Friday, I submitted a draft of my final dissertation chapter (chronologically, my first chapter) to my advisor. This means that I now have a rough draft of my entire dissertation (excluding a conclusion). On one hand, I still can't quite believe I did it. I wrote four chapters and an introduction, and this is a dissertation draft. Holy cow...

On the other hand, now I must turn to revision. I've already revised one of my chapters and received feedback on it from my advisor, so there are only minor changes to make to it. That leaves three chapters to be revised, some needing more extensive revisions than others (I hope). For example, I'm pretty sure chapter one, which is mainly a descriptive/survey chapter couldn't be so bad as to require major revisions. I mean, how badly can you screw that kind of chapter up?

Turning to my second chapter yesterday, I could already see where I'd gone wrong in certain sections; where I need to qualify my claims; where I need to clarify my argument; and where I need to cut/add deveopment. This is good, I suppose. I have a very good sense of what needs to be done to improve the chapter. The bad things is that I don't have a good way of prioritizing the revisions that are needed. Should I first explain why I'm using city comedies? Or, should I first deal with revisions to the biographical info about the playwright? Some might say that it really doesn't matter as long as it gets done, but that's not exactly the case. I think there are some revisions that you absolutely can't do without for the defense, and some revisions that can be tackled later, when revising it into a book manuscript. Sometimes the difference between the two is clear, other times not so much.

Anywho, I suppose there is a small reason to celebrate: Once I started writing, I wrote an entire draft of my dissertation in a year and a half. How long will the revisions take? Only time will tell.