Acknowledgements

A fellow thesis-wrangler is preparing to submit his thesis tomorrow, so we've been comparing notes on submission processes, forms, acknowledgements etc. It occurred to me that while I had intended to post my acknowledgements here once I submitted, I never got around to it. So here we go, a little bit late in the piece:

The PhD Movie

The PhD Movie came to Perth this week and was shown in joint UWA/Curtin screenings on Thursday, with proceeds going towards supporting Indigenous literacy programs. It's always a bit odd watching films in a lecture theatre - more like watching a really big TV with a bunch of people you don't know - but it was an appropriate setting for the film.

Well Red - A Submission in Pictures

 

A Village

It was my son's birthday party today, and it was glorious seeing six little toddlers playing together and only occasionally toppling over each other. Now, you might think it would be a bit crazy having that many toddlers roaming around, but you would be forgetting that they each brought on average two adults with them.

Thesis-gazing

I'm on the home stretch of getting the thesis finished, and every now and then I'm struck by a very clear memory of writing a specific part of it, or of doing some of the research.

This book, for example, will always remind me of the oddest Australia Day I've experienced so far: it was in 2008, and I was on my first research trip to Finland. I read the book in a cafe at the Messila ski slopes near my parents' home, drinking cup after cup of hot chocolate while my husband snowboarded outside. There I was, all comfortably bunkered in to reading about shame and desire, when the radio started playing Land Down Under. It was all so gloriously, incongruously familiar it's stayed with me. I'm sure that in some bizarre way that moment pretty much encapsulated my whole research experience.

I've also been flicking through my notebooks looking at mindmapped plans of my chapters. I always marvel at the fact that when all those coloured marker pens touched paper significant bits of the thesis were only starting to come together. The progression from notes to actual finished thesis has been long and even painful, but somehow those notes make the early days feel much closer and the progress much more precarious.

(Note to self: backup files) 

When I first started my thesis I kept a diary about my progress with the plan to eventually turn it into some kind of book about writing a PhD - "if I could do it, so can you!". But then I got embarrassed at how slowly everything was going and how little I felt I was achieving I gave up on that project. As nice as it would be to have a record for the future of my possible successes, I'd rather not leave evidence of my potential failures, I reasoned.

I was an idiot.

If it's not too late for you (is there a too late?), do keep notes of your progress: the little breakthroughs, the periods of stagnation and despair. At the pointy end of the process you do want to be able to look back and know how you got to where you are, but the memories don't take form quite as easily long after the fact.

My Word; and Supervisors Say the Darndest Things

I'm going through the comments my supervisors made on the first full draft of my thesis: that's around 400 pages of marginalia.

Should you publish in languages other than English? (The answer, obviously, is 'yes'.)

Publishing in languages other than English... to do or not to do?

Immunity Issues

I completed the first draft of my thesis on Monday. There's still a lot to do, but it is a pretty major milestone. I decided to reward myself by having a couple of thesis-free days, no writing, no researching, nothing. Just a spot of sewing and drinking tea and relaxing.

And then I got sick.

Status Update

I'm getting close to sending a full draft of the thesis to my supervisors (and I mean 'close' in terms of time, not coherence), and while I'm not close to finishing just yet, here is my research to date in (approximate) figures:  

Being and Not-Being Smart

At a recent gathering of like-minded postgrad lady folk we got to the topic of being, and not being, smart. Specifically the kind of smart that makes one postgrad or academic stand out from the rest: we can assume some basic level of intelligence in the cohort as a whole, but there are some people who make the rest of us wistfully sigh with an envious "She's really smart (not fake-smart like me or even normal-smart like him)."

Good Enough

I'm rewriting my thesis. All the parts exist (except for a conclusion, and it's not like that's important...), but they don't flow, and there are still gaps in the literature that need plugging. I'm hoping to get a complete draft ready before the end of semester, which is about ten or so weeks away. For someone who only works two days a week... Well, it's not a whole lot of time, even with my weekend tinkering thrown in.

Still, it will be done.

Wordle Count

I'm clobbering together my last chapter, after which I get into exciting and terrifying intro/conclusion/rewriting- territory. To try to get a slightly different perspective on the whole thing I thought I'd Wordle my thesis. So here it is, a word cloud of a work in progress.

Form and Content

Now, before you panic, I'm not going all Brecht-Lukacs on you.

Instead, I thought I'd spend a little bit of time talking through my thesis. Not the argument, heavens no, not even the general gist of it. You probably couldn't care less. But what I can reasonably hope is that you, too, will care about what it looks like. Because you've been through teh internets and hated on Papyrus and Comic Sans, because you squirm uncomfortably at the thought of double-spacing: it just seems so patronising and vacant at the same time, suggesting that either the writer or the reader has a bit too much space where actual thoughts should be, right?

Just one more thing...

Today I made progress. Teeny-weeny tiny progress, but progress nonetheless.

Onwards and upwards

Over the past couple of days I've been toying with the idea of applying for a job. I won't go in to the details of said job, but it exactly the sort of project-based research/writing position I think I'd be excellent at, and it looks as though the hours could be fairly flexible, so it would suit me fantabuloriffically. Of course, there are the complicating factors of Thesis and Baby.

The one where I discover I'm a fox.

So the semester has well and truly started, and my tutorials are going well so far. Rather predictably the teaching has taken up all my thesis writing time, and it has been weeks since I've even opened the document. What I also knew would happen, because it always has done, is that once I start teaching I start gravitating towards doing research in the teaching field. So for the moment my mind buzzes with research projects related to classic fairy tales, or perhaps even Star Wars (because of the monomyth connection). When I taught Kalevala and national romanticism, I was all about that, and I still think I might one day do a bit more of an exploration of the "Kalevala process". When I teach first-year contemporary Europe topics I go all giddy about EU expansion and integration - that at least I've been able to channel into my Eurovision Song Contest project, which I now solemnly swear I will submit by the end of the year. The Communciation& Culture survey unit, with Habermas and medieval processions and whatnot got me going on urban space and nostalgia, censorship and pedagogy.

...and "action"!

I'm sorting through references and notes, moving things around, changing the structure, looking at all the chapters at the same time and feeling a strange sort of buzz. This is going to get done, not now or next week, but it will be done. And it's exciting.

Even so, I'd much rather the whole writing process could just be replaced with a an action-packed writing montage. Set to It's a Kind of Magic.

***

One dream one soul one prize one goal
One golden glance of what should be
Its a kind of magic

 [...]

The rage that lasts a thousand years
Will soon be done

Woe is me!

Why is it that ideas come together at 1am, when I should be in bed, knowing that I won't be able to get down to kneading the bastard of a thesis tomorrow morning, either?


Curses to you, Muse.

Not Guilty, Your Honour

Yesterday, somewhere in-between leaving the house and sitting in a cafe drinking a weak latte and aiming spoonfuls of yoghurt at the boy, I realised something: I don't feel guilty.