What(s) in the name ... (part 2) a.k.a "What you see is what you get"

                             This is mind map. It represents one of the chapters in my thesis-book

I am sharing it with you because I want to explain the tag line in my blog's name: "mind mapping my thesis into existence". Thesis, books or other personally written documents larger than 200 pages don't just happen to randomly appear in one's computer folders or books shelves. If it were that easy, everybody would be a writer or a published author. I constantly imagine how it would be like to wake up one fine morning and find the RoBoPo.dox on my desktop freshly spell-checked, complete with list of figures, bibliography and ad-noted index. Without this mental picture in my mind, anchoring my existence, I would feel helpless, to say the least..The day I will, eventually, live that experience will be the day I will think I've died and went to Heaven (whatever that may be like!) .While the idea behind a book/thesis/(insert document here) can be spontaneous, serendipitous, irrational or it may come by way of dreams, images, connections, flashes of inspiration and any other mental paraphernalia one prefers, getting that idea into print is the result of a long, physically and mentally draining process for people and things. Think of the trees that died to make the paper you print on, or,better yet, think about your committee's hair turning all silver-white, their foreheads wrinkling for all eternity with every "brilliant" comment you come up to hide the fact that you can only present some 3/4 page chapter idea... Thesis writing ain't for the faint of heart and nerves!

 Mind mapping can ease this writing pain and make the whole process more fun. It's a kind of magic :) 

If you are not familiar with mind maps and mind mapping let me "upgrade you/flip a new page/ introduce you to some new things/ upgrade you" ...I'm not trying to be arrogant or anything. I truly believe this to be a revelation that will enrich your studying skills tremendously. It has done so for me and I want to share that joy. Technically speaking, this "thing" called "mind map" has been around for a couple of decades by now. I am surprised that not many people use it on a daily basis. It makes such a difference in everything from simple organizing to planing life long decisions! It's simple, fun, colorful, never boring and, most of all, addictive.Once you map (mind map) you just can't stop! So, thank you Tony Buzan for making my life and my studies that more interesting !

Look at the image and I'll go through some of the the steps of making a mind map. FIRST, start with a 3D picture. Mine is a cube- they're the easiest shape I can draw up instantly. The chapter's name is "Body-nomics". I wrote that on the cube to remember my main chapter idea at that time: to gather all the relevant numbers or statistics that can be used to argue that sociologists should look into what people are doing with/to their bodies because "body means big business". There's a new body-economy (body-nomics) complementing "the somatic society". SECOND, I listed the main topics of the chapter. I want to gather data on physical aspects of the population, the "quality" of that population's embodiment,numbers and figures on body care, the number of surgeries performed. You can see them as lines emerging from the cube: green, red and  indigo., respectively. There are two other lines. The black one is labeled RoBoPocities and the Yellow one is called "cognitive". I got the idea for "Yellow" as  I was reading a book on NLP and I thought I might use that insight for my thesis: how we have the "body" in our "mind" every minute and every second of all our lives. The "black" is what my "other-then-commitee-member" reader(s) might learn from this chapter: how to structure their city into a RoBoPocity , i.e, to perceive their city through the lens of body project availability. Does is make sense so far? The THIRD step is to add more detail, in a way that mirrors the mind mapper's own logic and associations. All the lines are "branching" out with different concepts. The rest is easy as "apple tree". This is my own interpretation of what to do next. Apple tree stands for "A(ptly) P(ursue) P(revious) L(inks) E(xpansion)."Tree" sounds like "three" so you will remember to repeat step 3 over and over again. If you have a very large piece of paper you could go as far as writing down the actual words you intend to type on the computer... Imagining the "details"/ concepts/ words would be more practical, though..  

Think of the trees!

Music

It's a kind of magic : (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mirPnfe6dAE) 

Upgrade you : (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AFbSSjWjh8)

What('s) in the name of....

RoBoPo is short for Romanian Body Projects. This was the first coherent version of a title for my PhD thesis. In our first meetings, my advising committee agreed that it was not methodologically appropriate to say “Romanian” because it gives the false impression I’m documenting every “body project” in all of Romania -which is not true because I am only interested in some of these “projects” and I can interview and question a small sample since I’m basically doing the actual research by myself.  I thought it was best to take that suggestion into consideration and...  that was that:  no more “Ro” in my “RoBoPo”. Like most ideas I come up with, for me, RoBoPo has “the sticky factor” that I can’t ignore. It has a nice ring to it and it’s important for me because it made my thesis real by giving it a name. Since I can't officially parade this name  – for the above mentioned reason - I’ve decided to re-distribute it for this venture. I am writing about things that happen in Romania, after all ..

As a concept, “body projects”was introduced by Chris Shilling in 1993, and it refers to the ways in which individuals are relating to their body in the post-modern era. My own take on this issue focuses more on the “project” part, specifically on the way body objectives – the ultimate goals, the  "personal objectives" (Po) of “body projects” - are being developed.  BoPo stands for "body project/personal objectives" . I use the mnemonic SMART to structure my observations in the beauty salons in four cities in Romania. I am interested in what people actually want to do to their bodies when they visit beauty salons and the like (specific); when will they know they have achieved their goal (measurable); if certain bodily modifications  are more do-able then others: how and why (attainable);are these modifications really necessary and for whom?(relevant) and how much time (and other resources) are people willing to invest in a personal “body project” (time-bound) 

532o:  When I first developed the idea of a blog for my thesis, somewhere in May this year, I inserted the name RoBoPo in the special box on the blogger site (where they check to see if it  is available) and it was already taken. What to do? I looked around for a bit of inspiration and I saw “Acer TravelMate5320” written on the bottom side of my laptop’s frame. I have owned this device since my third year in college yet I never bother remembering this detail. My "travelmate" has really been living up to its name: I’ve written all my projects with it and they’ve all turned out quite well, so far.I thought it was a nice way to show my appreciation for our journey together and introduce the number 5320 in my blog’s name. A little while after that, I’ve received news that the thesis is due to be completed until April next year (although the initial contractual agreement is for September). When I came home, I did the math and there were only 235 days left! As if 3 years to complete the thesis is an eternity and they had to shrink it down to size,I thought. Then I realized that 235 is the mirror of 5320 and smiled the bad news away! Coincidences?! Gotta love them!  They're EVERYWHERE..As I am only now beginning to write this blog I will count down 235 days from today. So, until May 6^th I’ll be posting here whenever I feel like procrastinating. Blogging still counts as writing, doesn't it ? And if what I write is about the thesis then I will be writing something thesis-related, won't I?  .

One more thing: because the site I created in May somehow stopped working (don't ask me why...)  I had to change the title name and the zero in 5320 is now the letter “o”. 

There you have it: enjoy!