I have sent myself a time line for my 1st thesis draft. It seems pretty impossible but I’m up for a try. My laptop died today and I had sent it to a nearby computer shop for service. I hope I haven’t lost all my data (pray).
Yesterday and today, I went through all the materials I had in hand - newspaper clipping, journal articles, field notes and tape recordings. I read my thesis bible so that I knew how to start drafting my long essay. Feel like it will be a long long journey.
After several months of brainstorming and thinking, I had narrowed down my thesis topic to something that talks about “the meanings of ’success’ in the Youth in Transition Program”. During my fieldwork, I had heard too many positive comments about YITP. In my thesis, I want to find out what these different peoples - program participations, teachers, program staff - meant when they told me that YITP was so successful and so good. Through linking the program to the larger national, educational context of Sri Lanka and the changing nature of young people, I hope to again question/analyze/ those notions of successes and see how this can suggest something youth development endeavor in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. In a simple term, I will be writing about YITP process which includes practices/structures/values that underlie the program. I will also evaluate how successful this YITP process is from multiple perspectives - youth, adults, teachers, me an outsider, Sri Lanka and international academia.
Filed under: Thesis Journey
