what makes a draft a draft?

I had a productive supervision meeting yesterday. Very good for the ego, my confidence and enthusiasm for the tasks ahead. I'd like to say more about this comment, but let's leave it there for now.

The first draft of the thesis was discussed - I've been thinking about this for a while. Well I think about this all the time actually, and have various 'what if scenarios' that I play around with in my head. Usually about when this magical first draft will be ready and why it needs to be ready at this point rather than that. Before I went into supervision I had sort of agreed to myself that I wouldn't talk about the draft because it feels too premature to talk about it now when I don't have enough draft chapters under my belt. All a bit unpredictable, risky, uncertain. But there is a whole logistics process underpinning the reading and providing feedback on a first draft and these things have to be planned. So the topic came up and some dates where suggested. Oh and the other factor that also comes into the mix is the fact that I leave for Cape Town on 23 September.

So I asked the question that's been mulling over in the head for a while too - what makes a draft a draft? (an issue I've pondered over before) What are the expectations for what the first draft of a PhD thesis should look like? Did my understanding of what this entity is match up with what my supervisors had in mind? And all importantly - did I have enough time, a realistic amount of time to ensure that whatever I submitted matched the expectations of all parties concerned? The first draft is a big thing - this is what I believe and it certain seems to the case for most people I've talked to. It takes a lot of energy to read it and provide solid feedback on the contents. That feedback is vital in determining whether the thesis is going to be 'ok' or simply 'not ok'. Basically you can't fuck with it. I don't want to waste anyone's time handing in a sloppy effort just to tick off the box that I've done it. I'll piss my supervisors off because I've wasted their time and in the end I'll short change myself because they can only comment on what I give them and if it really isn't 'complete' (as complete as it can be at that stage) I can only get partial feedback. What I realised is that the kind of first draft I want to submit and the type of first draft my supervisors would expect is something more than 8 individual chapters that have somehow been glued together into a whole thesis document courtesy of some formatting in MSWord. It has to have a story (even if the story isn't watertight just yet), it has to have cohesion and connections between the different parts and each chapter needs to have incorporated all the suggested changes made when it was first read as an individual component of the thesis.

So what does this all mean for me and my deadlines. Well at the moment all I'm doing is trying to get the initial chapters written and this pretty much takes me to August on a very, very tight deadline. I now have 6 chapters to write in 4 months. My workplan doesn't make provision for any individual chapter corrections or time needed to craft 'that story' or build cohesion. This is my reality. Interestingly, my supervisors are very happy with my progress and feel that if I can have a first draft by the end of my 3rd year this would be simply marvellous (my words not theirs!). This doesn't fit so comfortably with my expectations - carefully primed by the fact that PhD students only get 3years funding and so the expectation being communicated to everyone is that it should be done and dusted within that period. Common sense practice however suggests otherwise with most people, at the OU certainly, needing at the very least 3 more months. Completing the whole process in 3 years is the exception rather than the rule. And this leaves me where?...well with a more realistic expectation of what I need to do, with the understanding that my supervisors are happy with my progress at this and confident that I can't make this 'thing' a reality even if the deadlines don't match those set externally. All I have to do is to keep working, working and working - do as much as I can by August.