Today marks the day that I have been working on my dissertation for one month. By "working" I mean that I have been devoted full-time to the endeavor; last semester the time I put in was severely limited due to the course I was teaching.
And what I have been doing the past month: reading, mostly. A little bit of writing as I try to organize, collect, and synthesize the material I've been reading. But mostly reading.
Reading academic papers is a bit like reading poorly written textbooks. The value in the writing is not in how it is said but in what is trying to be communicated; there is no poetry in these papers. The papers are not entertaining, there is no florid language; at best, they are interesting because of the results they present and the conclusions they purport.
"Reading" is even a strong word for what I'm doing; mostly its just skimming. Read the abstract, maybe a little bit of the introduction, read the section headings, look at the tables, charts, and graphs (even graduate students like pictures more than words), and slowly skim the results and conclusions. I highlight any important details I happen to catch, rate the paper on its expected usefulness, and sort it into folders that I've set up for my dissertation. I "read" most papers I for the first time in less than ten minutes, more interesting ones that I know will be useful I spend a bit more time on, looking for specific details.
So how many of these have I "read" this past month: 214.
I've got 32 in the queue and am constantly adding more, usually referenced from a paper I'm currently reading. There is also a significant subarea of my research I haven't specifically been reading in so you can be sure that there will be more reading once these 32 are done.
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