![]() ![]() I reviewed the two posts to see what else I might have to say. Even if you don’t have a section in your thesis called ‘discussion’ (I didn’t) there will still be places in your thesis where you must explicitly make new knowledge in relation to the data you have collected and your analysis. The discussion section of the thesis is the heart of the creative endeavour: it’s where you have to be MOST original. I guess we assume that supervisors are helping out, but my search data suggests maybe not. I get the anxiety, I really do. I see very few workshops that focus on the discussion section as a separate piece of writing. I’ve been teaching writing for over 15 years and reviewed lots of development programs at other universities. I drilled down a bit to try and find out: what exactly is troubling people about writing? I thought I would find concerns about productivity, feedback, literature reviews, style and voice, perhaps grammar, but it wasn’t: 75% of the thousands of writing related searches were questions and anxieties about the discussion section. I’ve only written about the discussion section twice in 10 years. That’s not 20% of the effort producing 80% of the reward – It’s more like 0.003% of the effort! I’m guessing this leads people to this old post here, which is a personal favourite ![]() Third most common search term was ‘How to look clever’, which is both funny and sad. ![]() As I expected, the next most popular search type was writing problems, in various manifestations.Thesis Whisperer has great brand recognition: around 50% of people find their way here through typing variations of the name of the blog (far less people come here by typing in my actual name, Inger Mewburn).I immediately dropped everything to repeat the method on Thesis Whisperer, using 10 years of search data from well over 9 million visits. Here’s what I found out: Jonathan’s excellent analysis left me wondering: what do readers think is ‘high value work Thesis Whisperer work’ based on their search behaviour? His analysis showed lots of people were looking for how to make a simple Gantt Chart. Then, late last year, my friend Jonathon, one half of the fantastic Research Whisperer team, sent me a spreadsheet analysis of all their blog search terms. As with most self help books, I finished it and did nothing different. High value work for me is writing and talking to people low value work is email. The trick to an efficient work life, Richard Koch contends, is to identify ‘high value’ work and just do that as much as possible. Koch claims that 80% of value comes from 20% of the work effort. The main message, he said, was in the title – and he was right. To be fair, Jason did tell me, in the spirit of efficiency, that I didn’t really need to read the book. The Serapium, Platner holds, was a separate building from the Isium, as is shown in the Marble Plan (32, 59), - and even of a different style, - although it is never mentioned apart from the Isium O.Some time ago, on the advice of my good friend and efficiency guru Jason Downs, I read The 80/20 principle: how to achieve more by doing less by Richard Koch. The next public building which the biography treats of is " Isium and Serapium", which Alexander is reported (26,8) to have beautified by the " adding of representations", symbols of the mysteries, decorations. Material of all sorts has been gathered together, starting with the unique information given in one of the biographies of the strange document called the Scriptores Historiae Augustae (herein referred to briefly as SHA or Augustan History) -, material wherewith it may be possible, it is hoped, critically to restore some picture of the dramatic and tragic third century, particularly with regard to that famous Roman institution of imperial governmental building. The introduction to the general problem and to the specific one herein investigated, as well as the first half of the report appeared in the preceding issue of L'Antiquité Classique, i.e. This is the second half of a critical investigation into one of the phases of life during one of the most obscure eras of the Roman Empire, - the century following that of the Antonines and preceding that of Constantine and Diocletian.
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