Thesis brain

I bumped into my friend Tobias who described feeling, in the final stage of his thesis last year, like one part of his brain got bigger to finish the thing, and so the other part had to get smaller. Yes. What he said.

analysis – critique

It's been two months since my last post, in which time I've been working like a dog to get the thesis finished. I'm aiming to submit on the 31st of August, and using the logic a friend once used to travel to India – if I tell everyone I'm doing it, I'll have to follow through because repeatedly explaining why I'm not there is more hassle than just doing it (thanks, Drew).

One fairly major distinction I still need to clarify, and I'd love some feedback, is the distinction between analysis and critique. At the moment, I'm rolling with the idea that analysis is the process of breaking something apart to see how it works (taking a graphic device, like a photograph, and examining it as an image, but also a device in the context of the novel), whereas critique is making an evaluation of the effectiveness of the device. My issue is this – is critique an intrinsic part of analysis? Maybe, rather than critique, I really mean the articulation of critique ... but is that just a more complicated way of saying critique?

Again, any help here would be greatly appreciated.