Chrissymas

Am now drifting glassy-eyed and circling the black academic sink-hole that is Christmas. Despite my best intentions I still haven't managed to tackle my supervisor's comments concerning my thesis chapter. But I have decided to wait - for the sake of the family - until at least Christmas and Boxing Day are over for that and content myself instead with some background reading during the periphery of the day. I am tackling a revised and expanded edition of Lev Vygotsky's Thought and Language which is absolutely fascinating. He critiques Piaget's hypothesis that children's language moves from personal ('autistic') speech towards the communicative and social and offers his own view that, as speech is primarily about the communication of need, it starts as social and ends up as inner locution. 'Egocentric speech' (speech to oneself) instead of being, as Piaget suggested, a half-way house in the process of the externalisation of the child's language, emerges rather - according to Vygotsky - when 'the child transfers social, collaborative forms of behaviour to the sphere of inner-personal psychic functions'.
I can kid myself that this may be useful! It probably will not be, but at least I feel that I am maintaining a toe-hold in the academic process.

Not too far down the Primrose Path...

Bwahahaha! The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but at least the German reading skills grammar test is now out of the way, so I can concentrate on the task in hand.
So how am i doing? Well, generally I have managed to sit down at my desk at around the 9.30am mark, having delivered the Boy to school and made myself the obligatory espresso. Don't always manage to start work straight away though....
I did do the German revision though, and hopefully this has paid dividends: I certainly felt pretty confident during the assignment today.
I have to hold my hands up concerning my marked up chapter....it requires me to spend some hours at a stretch to address my supervisor's comments.....
I have finished parsing 1Corinthians, and have just started on 2Corinthians: plenty to go at over the Christmas break! (...and then onto Romans...)
Haven't managed to fit in much Greek translation: must do better!
Two hours of secondary reading? What was I thinking? Bit ambitious for every day, I think. Still, I'm fitting in a goodly bit when I wake up extra-early because of insomnia! Grrr!
So overall, not too bad. I also spent a bit of time reorganising and tidying my 'satellite' study in advance of the school holidays. Huzzah.
So: I'm hoping to look over my chapter in the very near future and clarify some paragraphs, introduce some more extensive quotations from scholars ("..you don't like quoting big chunks of text, do you?" Er, no, that seems like cheating to me...) and tidy up some generalisations and focus more on my study questions; carry on parsing (ooh er! Matron!) and read, as and when possible. Bibliography to follow....Translation may be done more by reading practice rather than more formally, in order to build up speed. I've got a new Greek New Testament on order from the Book Depository, so I can leave my trusty old NA27 as my working copy, and save the pristine new one for reading.

Working Schedule

I have finally turned the corner after a couple of weeks of assorted illnesses and issues that have rather absorbed my time and halted progress on my chapter. It hasn't been helped by the distraction that is the German reading skills course (enjoyable as it would be if I didn't have so much to do), more specifically a looming grammar test in class next week, which makes up part of the course's overall assessment. I managed to get 70% in the translation/literary appreciation assignment, so I'm hoping that that will make up for any deficiency in the grammar section! I must stop competing with myself on this one - it matters not a jot how I do in this module, I just have to be seen to be doing it!!! Absolute madness, this training needs business. So why am I wasting time blogging if I have so much to do? So I can monitor myself: here's my commitment.

i) Start work every morning by 9.30 latest

ii) One hour of German grammar revision, primarily tense forms.

iii) Read through my supervisor's comments on my last tranche of work, consider his suggestions and apply if appropriate.

iv) Parse the remaining chapter of 1 Corinthians and then move onto 2 Corinthians (ongoing over holidays at a rate of at least 1hour per day except Christmas, and possibly Boxing, Day.

v) Note and consider variant verb forms in 1Corinthians.

vi) Try to undertake a regular session of Greek translation, tentatively scheduled at three times a week.

vii) Two hours reading of secondary literature per day, and work on assembling an annotated bibliography.

There! Now it's in print it feels more organised and possible! Fingers crossed that I manage to avoid the nasty cold currently circulating the household.....

OK...let's get going....Will try and keep a daily update on progress.

The worm is feeling a little worthless today, seasonably SAD and a bit sleep deprived. I went down to uni yesterday for the second time in a week. This doesn't sound much unless you remember that I live in York and the university where I am registered as a doctoral candidate is in Birmingham. I was a bit knackered before I left, as one of the children has started having debilitating anxiety attacks, mostly to do with school. We've tried pretty much everything, and the school has been marvellously tolerant and supportive but it's pretty hard to deal with an incoherently hysterical child through the night and then be on the ball studies-wise. With my marvellous husband-and-family safety-net in place, I made my way to the Midlands, if somewhat uneasily.
The department is a little odd to say the least, looking like a 1970's old folks home set amid gloomy pinetrees and dankly dripping foliage, up a little pointlessly meandering mossy path. The blinds are always drawn and the carpets ruckled. It definitely feels a little....odd. All it needs is the solemn ticking of a pendulum clock, or a childish voice singing a nursery rhyme unseen in the distance to make it the set of a psychological thriller/horror story.

Anyway - my supervisor is a most pleasant person, and massively knowledgeable. So much so that I am constantly faced with my own ignorance. And not a little overwhelmed by the whole process. I am trying so hard to be competent and punctilious about doing what I should, but am not at all sure about my progress. It would appear that I am doing OK - that's what the supervisory reports say - but sometimes I feel that it's all a bit beyond me, that I am a fraud and it's going to become obvious to everyone that I know next to nothing about the subject that is supposedly my speciality. Everyone is much cleverer than me, and can probably smell a false premise and a flawed argument as soon as I walk in the room. It's probably got something to do with the fact that I am unable to devote myself 24/7 to the academic process and in addition to feeling a pretty inadequate and helpless parent at the moment, I'm feeling an inadequate student too.

Roll on the Christmas break: I really need to recharge the batteries.

Box ticking and the like

I've managed to squeeze out my German Reading Skills assignment today: translations of 2 Berthold Brecht poems and a 500 word literary commentary on each. I've been deferring doing it so that I can make some solid progress on my chapters before next week's supervisory meeting, but with hand-in at tomorrow's session I could procrastinate no longer. The stupid thing is that I've actually started to care about doing well in something that is a relatively unimportant supplement to my main studies. I only need to improve my German so that I can read the poxy but abundant secondary literature in the field of Pauline studies. I resent the time it takes up, but need to tick the box on my training needs programme. Likewise, a two-hour presentation skills 'workshop' will entail two three-hour trips down to uni and back. Basically, a whole day used up (never mind the expense) so that I can tick a box. And I spent an entire day at a very dull conference (on a Saturday, for crying out loud) for the same reason. This can't be right, can it? The whole system has become so obsessed with measurable targets and learning outcomes and investing in students that the whole ethos of research - actually doing the research is being dangerously undermined by the pursuit of demonstrable objectives. If I'm spending less time on my doctoral studies in order to fulfil these peripheral goals - and my time is pretty constrained at the best of times - then the main body of my PhD will suffer. No argument. Forty hours a week (full-time study) minus the twelve or so hours spent on peripherals does NOT add up to a satisfactory week's output.

The Bubble

I think one on the most difficult things about doing a PhD the way I'm doing it (a hundred plus miles from the campus) is the sense of isolation. But not just the sense of isolation from my department colleagues, but a sense of isolation from almost everyone that I come into contact with on a day-to-day basis. My family are great (in that they have realistic expectations about what sort of tea will make it to the table and whether socks come in pairs anymore: I'm 'on-site' when it comes to that sort of stuff, so it would be perverse to wait for others to do it) but it is just not fair to buttonhole them with an assessment of, say, how Jewish Paul the apostle really was, or how Jesus is always written of as physically making the first move in a clause and what verbs are involved. So I don't tend to. The husband will make a reasonably convincing attempt at interest and comprehension (and he is excellent at spotting a false premise or typo) but it's difficult to give him the sort of background knowledge (in a nutshell) to an argument that I've spent the last four or so years accumulating. So I confine myself to generalities. My parents (into their eighties) do show an interest, but have to keep asking me what it is I'm doing exactly. My parents-in-law (just into their sixties) show no interest at all. When I tell them I've been 'working', they never ask 'what doing?' I think they'd prefer it if I worked in Spar or an office or something, then they'd feel comfortable asking questions about my daily round. As it is, there's just an uninterested silence. I'm presuming it's uninterested - wouldn't you ask if you were the slightest bit curious? God knows what they think I do all day! Self-flagellating? Running a crack-den? The children are just lovely but still think that I'm vaguely Classics-based. So nothing doing there. I do have a couple of post-grad friends, but no-one that I see on a regular basis. So my thoughts just end up going around and around in my head like flies trapped in a jam-jar.

And to tell the truth, I don't mind too much. I've always been a bit of a hermit: give me a good book and a glass of wine and I'm happy. And since these studies are what I've chosen to do, and enjoy doing, I can happily spend all day picking through texts and assembling thoughts. Occasionally though, I get the sort of feeling that I imagine horses getting when confronted with a jump they just don't wish to take: gut-based refusal. I have to snap my laptop shut and run off, usually into town for a well-earned latte and a bun.

Hello?

I spent ten minutes or so last night tackling a blog of a certain persuasion that had posted a translation of a portion of a Pauline epistle that contained a number of blatantly biased interpolations i.e. words had been added to the base Greek text to form a value-judgement that simply were not in the original (it was a quote from The Message bible). I've noticed before that this blog has a very conservative worldview and the contributors by-and-large clap each other on the back and tend to end up agreeing amongst themselves. I guess I was putting my head into the lion's jaws, but I get very, very annoyed by the casual skewing of scriptural texts to present an agendum/world-view that reflects that of the translator NOT the 'author'. I always look at the original Greek text (OK - I admit that the word 'original' is fraught with difficulty: we don't actually have any biblical texts that come straight from the author's pen/mouth/amanuensis/best mate ['autographs', as they're known]; the oldest copies that we have are probably appreciably later than the 1st century CE, and have probably undergone numerous alterations in the interim. When I say 'original', I mean the text that has been assembled by biblical scholars as the nearest to the 'autograph': also contentious yada yada yada...) and see what is there. Only then can we try to think about what it means (not 'what we want it to mean' or 'what we think it should say' or 'what the author really meant, given what we clever moderns know about his context').
So when I see a biblical translation that is, by the mildest judgement, wildly inventive or, by the most critical judgement, wilfully misleading, (this poster actually admitted he doesn't read Greek: how could he uphold any particular translation?), I feel aggrieved on behalf of the original text. So I made my point and, with the exception of one other poster, I might as well have textually invisible! I have read before that this particular blog doesn't really welcome posts from women - I think we're probably supposed to be raising the young 'uns or patching clothes in the kitchen or something* - so I shouldn't have been entirely surprised. However, I had nodded towards the problem of the subjective/objective genitive ('the faithfulness of Christ' versus 'faith in Christ...yawn...unsolvable dichotomy) in my post. Lo and behold, a subsequent poster raised this very issue as if I hadn't, and was treated to a fulsome reply by one of the blog-hosts. Hello? Hello? And people wonder why there aren't more women bibliobloggers!

* my own bit of blatantly biased interpolation.

Tuesday, and it's Goethe.

Fortunately, this week, due to notes being plastered all over the house and well-intentioned texts from daughter #2, I not only remembered - but also attended - the German Reading Skills class. And I really enjoyed it. The tutor has devised a pretty agreeable mix of grammar (all basic stuff, I'm pleased to say) with literary appreciation. The initial tranche of work tackled this morning consisted of reviewing three translations of Rilke's poem Der Panther, discussing the merits of literal v. dynamic translation, alliteration, rhyme schemes, enjambement and the like. I have to say I felt quite at ease with this sort of thing and it scarcely made any difference that my knowledge of German is rather limited. We then tackled the pluperfect tense (das Plusquamperfekt) and attempted a few sentences. Fortunately, it's all quite bolt-together stuff, so not too terrifying. Then on to an examination of the text of Goethe's Erlkonig poem, working in pairs, dissecting the language, working out the subtext, looking at imagery etc. All good fun, but other than gaining a familiarity with the written German language, I'm not really sure it's going to pay dividends when it comes to tackling Theological German. Never mind! I am presently enjoying it to the extent that I'm actually considering (given that I pass my year-end assessment) continuing onto the next level, where the study is devoted to the works of Goethe all year. And as I have to pay for it myself, I might end up looking at it as an indulgence, something that I'm doing because I enjoy language for its own sake - not merely because it gives me another skill-setto put on my training needs form.

It's been quite hard getting back in to the swing of things since the half-term break, during which we spent a couple of days in Barcelona. It's amazing just how tiring travel can be - not just the getting there and the navigating our way around a strange city - but the rather more subtle strain of understanding foreign language, transport and mores, just having to be fully alert at all times. I generally sleep like a dead thing when I return from a trip: I guess I just have to recharge the batteries! Monday was also a write-off as it was my birthday, so I had to be generally sociable, which was quite nice. Actually, there was no way I was going to do any work, but I did feel slightly uneasy that - once again - time was slipping away from me. I started again in earnest on Tuesday, but somehow (horror of horrors!) it completely slipped my memory that I had a German Reading Skills tutorial in the morning. Not good! The rest of the week was pretty productive though and I've managed to put together some pretty cogent thoughts on 'authorial intent' and 'reader response' - not that it forms a big part of my thesis, I just have to address them as valid concerns. The chapter is looking pretty reasonable now, so I'm trying to look ahead to the next one in which I'll attempt a survey of ancient opinion on Paul's writings. Actually, not too ancient, as the first person who has a substantial amount to say about the apostle (as opposed to just quoting his words) is Augustine of Hippo who was around in latter half of the 4th, early 5th century CE. I'm finding Augustine increasingly fascinating: he had some pretty interesting stuff to say about language and signs (as later did Thomas Aquinas), prefiguring Locke's conceptions by nearly 1400 years! In fact the whole of the north of Africa, from Alexandria to Carthage, was a hotbed of religious intellectual activity in the early hundreds and a number of the fathers of the church, including Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen and Clement hailed from that part of that continent.
Augustine was of Berber descent, son of a pagan father and devout Christian mother (Monica, latterly Saint Monica). He initially had no religious calling at all, maintaining a concubine and the son he had by her until he got turned onto philosophy. He embraced, by turn, Manichaeism, academic Skepticism and neo-Platonism before undergoing a conversion experience that saw his baptism, along with that of his son, Adeodatus. His ferocious intellect and copious writings ensured that it was a spiral to the top of the church tree from then on. Sadly his concubine - actually two concubines (plus a fiancee) - were forgotten about in the surge of his new pious existence, which seems to have only got of the ground once his libido started to decline in his forties....

Bloody Computers!!!!

I am incredibly annoyed! Having reset my password, as suggested by the IT department, to a 'stronger' one, I find myself now unable to log-in to any of the university facilities. And, yes, I did make a note of it so that I'd get it right, and check the caps lock.....only now it doesn't want to work at all! I tried resetting again, but I think that the security is 'suspicious' of my activity, and my frenzied attempts to access my email has been interpreted as an act of hacking or something, as my account has been temporarily disabled. Grrrr! I was just trying to be efficient and security conscious, too. Should have left it as it was, and the stupid thing is that I kind of knew that something like this would happen. Nothing to do with computers is ever easy, and even as I entered my new, improved password, I was thinking to myself that it would all go horribly awry and that I should leave well alone. Bugger. Now I'll have to wait until tomorrow to ring eHelpdesk. I'm not entirely sure that the identity checking bit of it is actually working properly...it did seem incredibly slow, so my new password is probably trapped in its constipated bowels somewhere....dammit!!!!

Reading German: Part One

Just got back from the first lesson of my Level 2 German Reading Skills course: it was a bit of a shock to the system, I can tell you! The main problem is that there isn't a level 1 reading skills class, which would have been my preferred starting point, but - really - I don't want to have to go through the whole 'which way is the airport/can I buy two beers and a sandwich please'. That would be of no use at all in my quest to acquire a reading knowledge of theological German. I need to be able to read it - speaking it be darned! That having been said, I last did German in earnest about 36 years ago, just before I dropped it in favour of the physics option (why did I do that?) at O-level. I have some familiarity, but not much, so that when the tutor asked us to introduce ourselves and tell a little about ourselves (in German), my mind went blank and I nearly passed out. Fortunately, she is excellent - patient, helpful and very encouraging. My frozen panic subsided a little as she went through the course path and aims and we started with some tense recognition and revision. I am quite lucky in that I know quite a lot about grammar, if not German grammar as such, and can understand the mechanics of it, thanks to many years of Greek and Latin, if not the precise application. So far so good. Most of the class were undergrads - English Lit. students mainly. There was one other mature student - married to a German (as I understood it) - who seemed to have a more than adequate grasp of the language. We completed a few simple exercises: simple for them, I mean, I struggled somewhat and it was only when we moved onto literary appreciation that I started to feel slightly more comfortable. I can read far more than I can speak, and lit.app.is a piece of cake, and a very enjoyable one at that. So, in my favour I have: a very, very rudimentary knowledge of German; a sound grasp of the universal principles of grammar and a feel for literary writing. By the end of the session I'd started to feel more like I could do this rather than dumbstruck horror. We have a little homework and actually, as I look at it, I'm starting to feel quite a bit more positive about the whole experience!

I haven't moved away from the computer much this week which has paid dividends in that I have pretty much completed the next tranche of work required for my next supervisory meeting next week. But I have to say, it's been a bit like pulling teeth, or giving birth to a mountain....Stuff that's been floating around my head for the past couple of years, vague, puffy half-thoughts have been plucked out of the ether and given verbal form and I now have my 'scope of thesis down' on paper (or on the computer, at least). This has generated some useful study questions that will help delineate forthcoming chapters. When I first considered doctoral work I was a bit sniffy about study questions, considering them a hobble to creativity, but having realised that I could go off tangentially forever, I am quite pleased to have some cogent guidelines for thought.

Academic Down Time

I admit that I have NOT done well on the work front today: daughter #3 had a teacher training day, daughter #2, spouse and Bouncing Babba came round early desperate to show me photos of their trip away (mostly of the BB enjoying himself). I was anticipating the Oldies rolling up mid-morning, as is their want on a Friday, but as luck would have it, the Tesco man arrived earlier than usual to deliver the week's food. This meant that I could put plan B into action and pop into town to see the relics of St Therese of Lisieux at the Minster before they continued on their journey. This was duly achieved and distracted by the delicious sandwiches in Olio & Farina (gorgonzola, mortadella and salad on ciabatta) we dived in for a spot of lunch. We then spent a bit of time looking for a suitably lightweight rowing jacket for #3 (result!) and a new purse for me as my bank cards had annoyingly just all spilled out into my manbag for the nth time (again, result!). By the time we got home it was already half past one and I spent a little while looking for articles on the 'fallacy of intention'. Three fifteen and it was time to pick up the Bright-Eyed Boy and get #3 to the boathouse in time for her training session, which we nearly didn't because of the horrendous road works that have locked the centre of town solid.

I've developed this annoying mental countdown machine in my head and I'm all too aware that I've lost a number of working hours today through a combination of factors: being too available, being easily distracted, being a chauffeur (chauffeuse?). I'm thinking about getting a sign made that reads 'The (potential) Doctor is unavailable for consultation. Please come back after 5pm' and hang it in the front window. Unfortunately, many of the distractions come from within....and not just from within the house! I shall try to be good, however, and take the laptop to Starbucks whilst #3 is rowing again tomorrow morning. Must remember the blinkers and earplugs though.......!

And, yes, I could have spent the time that I spent writing this working, rather than blogging, but -hey! - it's 5pm Friday evening now. Where do the days go?

Pardon?

I regularly read a number of biblioblogs (blogs that deal with theology, religion and bible studies) and occasionally they yield up some reasonably interesting nuggets, but I came across two today - of a certain theological persuasion - that were literally begging for money for the upkeep of either their sites or some associated mission. I was quite astonished, and yet there were replies saying things like 'Yeah...sorry to hear about your financial worries, have X number of dollars.' What? Isn't this open to all sorts of abuse? How do people know where their money goes, or are they all so anxious to buy a bit of heaven-time that they daren't go 'Hang on a minute....' How is this so different from the selling of indulgences that the Reformation got all hot under the collar about way back when?

Mars to the Rescue!

Despite the fact that the children are back at school again, I am still largely working in the bedroom/'satellite study'. This is because many of my textbooks are upstairs at the moment and I can't be bothered to haul them en masse downstairs at the moment. Plus when the Bright-Eyed Boy arrives home from school, he is eager to get onto the family computer which occupies the big desk in the downstairs 'study' and hops about until I give in and move my laptop and books upstairs. Although I do work on my laptop there, I unplug it and take it upstairs for safe-keeping if I leave the house: the front room windows are a bit to close to the pavement and I haven't got the blinds I've been hankering after yet. Actually I have been working downstairs today. It's much brighter and the proximity of the street is a welcome distraction if I'm feeling gormless. At this time of year the south-facing aspect is really a pleasant bonus rather than a hindrance. I'm making reasonable progress at the moment trying to verbalise the scope of the thesis, but am constantly tempted to go off at a tangent on some sub-topic that I really intended to expand upon later. I keep having to rein myself back in and just put up 'signposts'. I've also discovered that my brain works better on a high-sugar intake - it really does! If the words start to fail, it's a fair bet that a coffee and a Mars Bar will ensure a return to full fluency. It's a dangerous precedent to set at such an early stage, particularly as I spend much of my time just sitting about. At this rate I could double in size before I finish my PhD!

Routines and Expectations

OK...I've set myself the goal of starting work by 9.30am latest each weekday morning. This allows me enough time to get up (6.30) and make sure that the children (and dog) have been fed and are ready for school, get any washing on and sort out what we're having for dinner (i.e. peer into the freezer) before walking the bright-eyed boy (and dog) to school. Fortunately, the husband is brilliant and makes tea, empties the dishwasher, assembles packed-lunches and walks the girl to the bus before taking himself off to work. If he's got to go on site, I have to incorporate his duties into my routine too. I usually get back home by 9.00: Radio 4 on, coffee on, sit at computer mug and marmalade toast in hand to check emails and facebook/blog for about half an hour. This short respite is very important to my psychological well-being being, as it represents a buffer between family and 'work' life. I won't do anything even remotely domestic, not even hang up laundry, until the late afternoon when I have to pick up the boy and daughter #3 arrives home: my study time is way too precious. It also provides me with the chance to limber up my word processing skills (mentally as well as actually), much as an arthritic must stretch their limbs before attempting any physical exercise.

I was somewhat disturbed, whilst in conversation with a friend, that a mutual academic acquaintance of ours (NOT at my currently uni.) whose doctoral studies had seemed to have run like a dream - had been told at the viva that the submitted thesis did not contain enough original scholarship to merit a PhD - it had to be extensively rewritten over the next 12months, or submitted as an MPhil. The student was naturally enough devastated, as was their supervisor, who had assured them throughout the whole three years that their doctoral programme was a paragon of scholarly virtue. Their organisation and commitment was second to none; the relationship with the supervisor one of friendly mutual respect. It was only when the appointed internal examiner eventually looked worriedly over the completed dissertation that alarm bells began to sound. So what went wrong? And how can this dreadful and wholly traumatic situation be avoided? I really feel very, very sorry for candidate, supervisor and their department. If regular reviews have been carried out to the satisfaction of all concerned, what more can be done? And what is to say that the external examiner hasn't just got out of the wrong side of bed, is having a bad day, or just doesn't like the thesis or the arguments therein? (That, too, happened to my friend's partner: they had 'the' expert in their particular field at the viva, who didn't seem to like the fact that their scholarship was repeatedly taken to task). Apparently, our mutual friend's work was stunningly well-written in beautifully polished prose -and that may have contributed to the situation: did the well-turned phrase camouflage the apparent shortfall of original content? But surely the supervisor would have realised this? And how much original scholarship is sufficient? When reviews of literature are practically mandatory, and one is called to engage continually with accepted scholarship on one's topic, it is very difficult to crank the argument around to display just how different our own argument is, without looking too deliberately perverse or obstreperous. On the other hand, we owe it to ourselves to reiterate that what we are doing is a departure from what has gone before!
Perhaps a process of self-review is in order (and this is what I intend to incorporate into my chapters) whereby we provide meta-comments about what we have said and its place in scholarship both pro and contra received wisdom. I've already got this underway, highlighting it as blue text. At the completion of each chapter, I'm going to assemble these meta-comments into a final summary, ultimately deleting the blue mid-text insertions. That way I can both monitor my own progress and point out original contribution to other parties (supervisor and examiners). It should also act as an alert if I'm falling short of content, or the argument is faltering. It could also be used as a pointer for what lies ahead. I think that I'm also going to insert (as a temporary measure) a chapter-by-chapter bibliography so that I can keep tabs on the spread of scholarship and note/reassess any gaps/over-dependence. God, it's so difficult to be interesting, cogent, objective and original! But at least I am now aware of the need to say what I'm going to do, do it and then tell everyone what I've done - and how brilliant it is!

Nose to the Wheel....Shoulder to the Grindstone etc...

Back from uni. and quite inspired on the academic front: it's really good to feel a part of an academic community rather than hovering around on the periphery as I have done for the past couple of years (since I finished my MA, I suppose). My supervisor seems to think that I'm basically heading in the right direction (which is quite heartening) and is urging me to consolidate my random thoughts into some solid doctoral writing. And I wholeheartedly concur: I've identified that (just) one of my personal failings is an inability/unwillingness to pursue a topic, pin it down, wrestle it into submission and tie it up in a pretty bow of words. I'm really good at appropriating research, hounding out papers and digging up references only to let it drift and move onto new areas of interest. I've got to ditch the heavyweight butterfly approach and follow my current topic to its natural conclusion. That being so, I've been tasked to produce 3000 or so words (by our next meeting - in 4 weeks time) tackling the status questionis, specifically the scope of my thesis.
If I consider that I will probably have a total number of seven chapters, and seven terms left until a nominal submission date in 2012, that falls out at one chapter per term - an entirely reasonable rate of work. I've decided that a good way to mentally and physically organise this will be with seven actual 'chapter boxes' (boxfiles) wherein I shall keep all the references, bibliographies, references pertinent to that particular section. This will impose a sense of order as well as a satisfying visual indication of progress. Obviously, some chapters will prove far trickier/time-consuming than others, so I am not going to be too pedantic about it. But at the same time the background reading will be enormous, and it's all too easy to postpone it as 'not really productive' (although it is absolutely essential!) or, conversely, kid oneself that any sort of reading is 'doing work'. So what with that to contend with, plus the German Reading course (starts next month too), the conference circuit (which I'm really looking forward too) and the dreaded papers that I'm expected to present, it is clear that the academic writing is the very tip of the iceberg. It's the bit that showcases everything that underlies it, its consummation if you like. I'm all too aware it's time to buckle down.
(And, since you ask, the campus Starbucks was full of students!!! Can you believe it? Grrr! Couldn't get near the counter.....)

Off down to the university tomorrow - virtually 3 hours to get there on the disgustingly smelly CrossCountry train, and another 3 hours to get back! When I first started down there I thought that I'd never, ever get used to the travelling: but one does. Now that I'm embarking on full-time as opposed to part-time study, I'm expecting to ramp up the attendance somewhat. I'll see what my supervisor says. I don't think supervisory meetings would benefit from being any more regular than once a month, with concentrated periods of reading/writing in between. I just hope that my nearest and dearest recognise that, as a full-time, fully-funded student, it'll be the same as me having a 40hr-a-week, full-time job, and that I just won't be up for casual visits, prolonged lunches or trips into town. I always found it to be a considerable problem when we ran our own business and I worked from home. People didn't consider that I was doing real work, and that because I was at home, I was available at the drop of a hat for this or that. I might have to do some straight talking, never mind drop veiled hints! Got to pick up a new ID card, go to the library and check out a new Starbucks on campus, which is in the same block as the new Special Collections facility.
Wallace Chafe's book is very interesting - I'm going to read it and make more notes on the train. He approaches language from a cognitive point of view as a manifestation of consciousness that reflects the individual's capacity to focus on certain events whilst maintaining the context as a semi-active background programme. His division of information as active, semiactive or inactive fits quite nicely with imperfectivity, perfectivity and stativity in verbal aspect though I'll have to have a good, long think about it. Discourse, Time and Consciousness is such an interesting book that it'll be quite difficult not to forget what I'm supposed to be up to, and get swept into digressive backwaters. I must discipline myself to recognise what is actually useful and what is merely fascinating!

Have finally overcome the moment of inertia and am happily gathering speed on the academic front! The mass - nay, morass - of admin. that cascades through the post and down the wire has been hacked through by the machete of persistence and grim determination. So now I'm officially registered (online) and I've done various lesser tasks such as applying for my NUS extra card, filling in my railcard application, sending off my latest work and routine supervisory form to my supervisor, and booking my train tickets for Wednesday (can't wait until I've got my railcard - it should save me a fortune!). I need to be organised to the nth degree, or I'll definitely forget/mismanage something: I have to have written lists!
I've been reading through my notes to get up to speed on my thesis and it's not as bad as I thought it might be, though I seem to have forgotten a lot of the background argumentation. I think that's what makes it all so tricky....keeping the salient arguments in your head. I'm not sure my mental RAM is very large! (hence the notes). I've got a LOT of books to look through, and it's a bit tricky trying to prioritise: they're ALL clamouring for attention. I think the best ploy is to start anywhere and just let an order evolve. I'm getting quite enthusiastic about the new term and getting down to studying in earnest again. The book I'm going to look at first is Wallace Chafe's Discourse, Time and Consciousness. Although it probably won't deal directly with verbal aspect/discourse prominence, it should be reasonably interesting on the phenomenon of perceived time.
Another good thing is that, with the children returning to school, I have claimed the 'study' room back for myself (at least, in school hours). It's south-facing, so a lot brighter than upstairs, and has my lovely old oak desk to spread my stuff out on. The 'satellite study' (a computer station in the bedroom) has been an absolute godsend over the summer break, and still is when the children need the family computer to complete their homework. I'm going to keep it as a back-up bolt-hole when I want to work on. The laptop is a boon in this respect.

September Already?

Bit of a bad sign really.....I opened the latest publication of the Philological Society ('The Semantic Predecessors of Need in the History of English c.750-1710') and went "Tsk!" and decided that I couldn't be bothered to read it. Oh dear! My brain seems to have atrophied significantly over the summer break: I've noticed an aversion to anything academic that I really need to overcome, especially since I'm moving to full time doctoral studies at the start of October and my supervisory meeting is in less than two weeks time. Deep breath: try not to look at the pile of unread books in every corner of the room, the PDFs crowding the desktop of the computer, the notes that make scant sense after four weeks up on blocks! The summer holiday was great - just what was needed - but now I must get back down to work again, and that means getting back into a routine. Come Monday - this Monday coming - everything should be back to 'normal' (whatever that is!): children back at school, daughter #2 married, Melvyn Bragg back on Radio 4 (oh no....that's Thursday) as well as Paxman sneering away on University Challenge (yeah - I'd sneer if I had the answers in front of me). All will be right with the world and I shall turn to the appropriate page in my diary and smooth it down before jotting down a quick plan of action. I've got a text book on reading German to have a serious look at before I start on the course in late October, plus a number of things that need a good read-through to re-orientate myself thesis-wise. Need to have a look at iReaders (or whatever) too: ink cartridges are too expensive to keep printing off material where only the smallest bit is relevant, plus once PDFs are consigned to the Box of Darkness, I forget what I've got and where it is! The academic year stretches before me......I feel about twelve years old!

I feel an almost physical aversion to work at the moment, a sort of gut-grabbing shudder, a squirming desire to RUN OFF. I think I need a break: a total break: two weeks off and not even think about my thesis. Hols are only a very short while away, so I think that what I'll do is this: Read through my current chapter; note down what I intend to do when I come back to it; read the Searle on Chomsky PDF; look for an overview of Functional Grammar; download it in PDF format to print-off and read; do one more basic German instalment tonight and then back up the hard-drive and not look at my stuff again until I get back from abroad. And try not to let my mind stray back onto it for TWO WHOLE WEEKS. Sorted.

Attribution

Of course (it occurs to me) I could easily attribute it all to Divine Providence - both the placing of the rose and any prominence readings I glean from my studies. God meant it to be there! Hey!I'm just a humble observer of Divine Intention! But I think that it would be intellectually dishonest if I don't really believe that.....and I don't. I do wonder if this convenient approach is used to paper over some pretty wide cracks in scholarship, but to me it seems a form of immense arrogance to subborn the Almighty into one's intellectual pursuits.
How can we attribute intention? I think this problem will run and run...

A Rose is a What.......? You Tell me!

I was walking the dog this morning, pondering as I went (I do my best thinking when walking), when I saw a lovely pinky-yellow rose growing out of a garden that was otherwise desolate and unkempt. 'How wonderful' I thought 'to see such beauty amidst such ugliness!' And as soon as I'd thought it, I had to do a mental readjustment. This was me projecting my emotions on to what was a biological accident. It was a random event that caused the rose to grow where it did. It's just a plant that is blindly following its genetic blueprint in a not too inhospitable environment. It just exists. I thought that it looked beautiful, but of what import is my interpretation?

I suppose what emphasised the plant's attractiveness was the contrast that it formed with its surroundings. It stood out by its seemingly unusual placement. But that was completely arbitrary. No authorial hand had placed it there to delight, or draw attention: there was no motive, either conscious or subconscious. It meant nothing: it just was.

I think that this might symbolise what I am finding my greatest sticking point with my thesis on prominence readings in the Pauline epistles. Linguistic data exists, and my eye will be naturally drawn to seek out contrast. But does it mean anything? Am I projecting authorial intention? Does it mean anything? Or is it just there? I seem to be back where I was a year ago, wondering what meaning means. Time for a revisit to Sinn und Bedeutung.....

Well, haven't I been good! Ever since I set up my 'satellite study' (in the bedroom), I have been putting a good number of hours of work in each day. The stiff neck syndrome seems to have merely a temporary adjustment thing, and although it's not ergonomically perfect, my workspace is pretty tolerable. I've knuckled down to considering the 'big questions' of my thesis and the preparatory Q & A piece that I did last week has really come into its own. I've got a tendency to go of at a tangent, and the slightest distraction can send me on an enthralling (but not generally useful) papergoose chase. You know the sort of thing I mean: you read a book and come across an interesting cross-reference, you Google it and find a host of fascinating stuff, websites off websites, print off a couple of PDFs for later...blah...blah...blah...But I AM getting there, and considering that it's still a few weeks until our summer hol, I'm optimistic about making a fair bit of headway. Talking of PDFs, one of the things I fully intend to buy when my funding comes through is an iReader or similar. I have boxes upon boxes of the damn things that I have to rifle through if want a reference - much nices to have it all to hand. Plus I want a PDF editor so I can cut and paste chunks of text - then I don't have to type big quotations/references out in full.
I've bitten the bullet concerning academic German and the acquiring thereof. I registered for an intermediate German reading course that starts in October at the 'uni. over the hill' (not my own uni) and in preparation I'm going right back to basics with a Pimsleur German course. This is the spoken language but it'll revive the long unused Deutsch circuits in my brain. I am quite surprised at how much I can remember, though. Need to think about what books to take on holiday with me. A lightweight novel for the beach of course and, I think, the Norton Critical Edition of the Writings of St Paul. It's got suitably short chapters, so I can keep my scholarly hand in between times and not feel like too much of a donkey when I get back.

The new desk-space is working out pretty well - I am finding the chair slightly uncomfortable height-wise (after 5 or so hours my neck is feeling tense), but nevertheless I am managing to get some words down whilst the children amuse themselves downstairs. The husband has decided that he's going to decorate the hall and landing, so occasionally I am interrupted by sanding-down noises and general scuffling. Having been taxed by my supervisor to write about 'the big ideas' associated with my thesis, I have spent a lot of time scratching my head. Obviously, I 'know' intuitively what my thesis is about (Aspect and Discourse in the Pauline Epistles), but analysing exactly what I want to achieve and exactly how I'm going to do it has thus far existed as only a nebulous cloud (tautology?) in my head. As I tend to work in a somewhat centripetal way, I sat down at the computer yesterday and started to write, only to find out that I am putting down information that is tangential to the target. How many times can I contrast Porter's view on aspect with Fanning's? Quite a few, it would seem! However, this does have the benefit of fixing the various arguments in my head more firmly, I suppose. Getting slightly annoyed, I decided to tackle it head-on in a simple question and answer dialogue.
Q. What am I doing?
A. Looking for prominence readings and discourse contouring in the Pauline Epistles.
Q. How am I going to do that?
A.1) by examining, with reference to current scholarly thinking, the aspectual nature of certain verb-forms,
2) by deciding what the default interpretation would be for that verb in the Pauline Epistles
et cetera et cetera....
This very, very basic format has helped me to clarify the steps that I have to take to produce a reasonably coherent theoretical model which I can elaborate on and polish into a reasonable piece of writing before September.

A Room of One's Own

Thank goodness for Argos! After yesterday's post, I started to have a good look around the upstairs of the house for an appropriate workspace. I ruled out the 'spare' bedroom pretty much straight away: it's only 2mx3m, most of which is taken up by an L-shaped built-in bed and wardrobe. Besides it's south facing and gets very warm in the summer. Plus the dog has adopted as her room, so it smells of dog farts. We've had a couple of plastic crates full of books - untouched - adjacent the door in our bedroom since we had the extension built nine years ago. I got the tape measure and determined that there was enough of a gap for a compact computer desk if I moved the crates elsewhere. Argos had a suitably cheap self-assemble jobby for a mere £29.99 that fitted perfectly, so I bought it and bolted it together once the children had gone to bed. Success! I redistributed the books and utilised the crates for recycling receptacles and hauled the finished desk upstairs. I'm rather pleased - our bedroom is north-facing and so always stays cool, is away from the main road and thus quiet, and has a phone point in it. True, my books are on the ground floor directly beneath, but the husband suggested I could rig up some sort of basket on a pulley and let it down (with a request note) from our window for a child to fill with either books or possibly chocolate.....

I've spent a couple of hours up there working on the laptop this afternoon and managed to get about six hundred words down which is quite as much as I would have hoped to achieve on a 'good' day.

Virginia Woolf was absolutely right when she identified that women need a room of their own in order to write successfully.

Sanctuary!

The school summer holidays have begun and I have immediately identified a major problem: there is nowhere for me to do sit and do my work! The downstairs room at the front of the house has my desk in it and what we consider to be the 'family' computer, the one where we retrieve our emails, download music, store photos etc. I do normally work at this desk, although I use my laptop which is dedicated to university/thesis stuff. This room can get very hot (being south-facing) so in the summer months I sometimes move through and work on the dining-room table at the north-facing back of the house; this is very pleasant as the french windows open out onto the garden. Trouble is, all the music equipment is in the front room so if daughter no.3 wants to play her bass guitar it gets disturbingly noisy. She quite often wants to go on the house computer too - which is fine, except I can't sit at the desk. The dining-room at the back of the house is a continuation of the living area which contains the television, hi-fi and XBox console. Now, the children do get on fairly well together, but tend to prefer their own personal space. Often, when the bright-eyed boy has tired of telly or playing Gotham City or somesuch, he will move into the front room and the girl will watch music channels. If they are confined together too long they tend to bicker, or the older of the two starts to tease. So where can I go? I've got to press on with my writing if I am to make satisfactory progress towards full-time doctoral work come October. I can't really expect them to confine themselves to their bedrooms (I'd work in ours, but all the books are shelved downstairs and there's no floor space to squeeze in a desk/table), or not to make use of the facilities in the home. Child care, if I can get it is sporadic and of a couple of hours duration at the most. Maybe I'll have to start getting up r e a l l y early and start writing before anyone else gets up? Or go to bed in the wee small hours? Unfortunately, my most productive time is in the afternoon: prime argument time, if there's going to be one. It is quite frustrating. And there's another six weeks of it........

Chicken and Egg

I have been pondering the 'three rules' of gestalt therapy and am intrigued by their possible application to data gathering/imposition of theory:

1) Rule of epoche - set aside biases, suspend judgement, expectation and assumption.

2)Rule of description - describe not explain.

3) Rule of horizontalization - each item of description has an equal value or significance.

It is, of course, very tempting to gather evidence that fits your hypothesis and ignore the material that doesn't. Gestalt theory encourages us to let the pattern (hypothesis) emerge from the evidence. But it is very difficult to know what data to gather without having some sort of hypothesis in mind, and having one in mind is a hair's-breadth away from imposing it on the data-pool! Chicken and egg.

I found an amusing quote in Simone de Beauvoir's The Prime of Life that seemed appropriate (and wryly comforting) in the circumstances:

'The fact that we had very little idea what to do with the information we amassed did not make its collection any the less valuable per se.'

Summer Projects

We're really coming to the academic doldrums now, with a goodly proportion of the scholarly community away from their desks for the summer break. I, however, am acutely conscious that I have quite a bit of stuff to consolidate before my change from part-time to full-time doctoral study in October. One project that I must concentrate on over the 'holidays' is the acquisition of some skill in (reading) German, in order to cope with the vast quantities of Pauline scholarship in that language. I seem to remember that this was a thought floating vaguely around my head last summer, which conveniently got forgotten by more pressing business. Now it has become pressing in its own right and I have been looking into taking some sort of crammer course in the autumn. Fortunately the university just over the hill from me (literally: I can walk there in 15 minutes - pity it takes me three hours plus to reach the one where I'm registered!) has an excellent language centre running a course that fits the bill perfectly. My lack of German is a particular source of chagrin as my granny was from Cologne (via Antwerp)....although she died when I was seven, and I don't actually recall her ever speaking her native tongue in my presence. I did do about 2 years of it at school, but didn't enjoy it much and dropped it in favour of physics for o-level. So I must pick up where I left off a LONG time ago! There's a few helpful sites online that I could look at too, but I could really do with an audio course to put on my MP3 player that does not concentrate on ordering food or asking directions. I also intend to re-read the Pauline epistles in their entirety (in Greek) again, just to get them more firmly fixed in my memory, and refresh my rather pathetic Hebrew (i.e. remind myself what the letters sound like). I'd like to think that I could continue with the Aramaic, but I think that I'll have enough on my plate as it is - especially as the children break up in ten days time.

I suddenly remembered last night that The Bright-Eyed Boy really needed his passport renewing before too long so, having a blank form to hand, I filled it in and got my neighbour to counter-sign it. Discovered I'd given her some duff gen which rendered it void, so I had to trail into town today to get a replacement form. Consequently, it was gone noon before I sat down at the computer. It's really muggy so I had the back doors open,but that let lots of irritating buzzy flies in. It's far to hot to have them shut though....and my nose is still stuffed up. Spent a couple of hours looking at the verb forms of ἐγειρω again, but without any great insights. Tomorrow I'm going to move onto ἀποθνῃσκω which I'm hoping will illuminate the uses of ἐγειρω.....I have a feeling it might well do!

*groan*

So I'm sitting at my computer with every intention of starting work in a few minutes, but unfortunately I feel distinctly unwell. I've had a dull earache on an off for a week or so and yesterday I woke up with what felt like the start of a cold....but nothing's really developed: I'm still a bit snuffly, but I've definitely got a temperature (uncomfortably hot and a spaced-out feeling). I woke up at 4.15am and couldn't get back to sleep again because my neck and hip were aching. I'm dosing up with ibruprofen and hot black coffee: hopefully that'll sort things out a bit and give me a few hours to get some stuff done.

A couple of days this week have been a complete write-off for reasons that I've blogged about elsewhere http://parablepsis.blogspot.com/2009/06/lumps-and-bumps-on-lifes-road.html, so today I attempted to get going with some data collection on various verbs connected with dying and rising in the Pauline Epistles (hereafter just 'Epistles'). I've been using a pretty good search engine that uses TLG and managed to generate a substantial list on the verb ἐγειρω - to raise. Things got a bit confusing when I realised that a lot of the clauses containing that particular verb also contain other verbs that I'm planning to examine as well, for example ἀποθνησκω or ζωοποειω. Do ignore these latter for the moment, or go off on a tangent to look at them straight away? After a bit of indecision I decided to plough on looking at the incidence of the focus-verb in question, rather than risk becoming embroiled in side issues. When I shift these other verbs into the spotlight, I'll do some cross-referencing, although I've learnt from past experience that cross-referencing is something to be done when pretty near the end of writing up: footnotes and examples get moved or deleted and you can end up in a terrible mess!

Also - dammit! - someone's recalled the Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon that is one of my mainstays - I'm not sure I can run to one of my own at the moment. However, I don't want to start on a game of 'recall ping-pong' (where as soon as I've returned it, I put in a request for it again...etc) so I might just have to bite the bullet. And my trusty Moleskine cahier is nearly full up: that, fortunately is cheaper to sort out.....I caught sight of a replacement in the local Borders branch today, and I think I've got a 20% off voucher somewhere....!

Good Day

Had a good day beetling through stuff yesterday. Actually, it was very helpful in preventing me from thinking about my hospital appointment today: talk about losing yourself in your work!
I actually managed to start analysing the verb-forms dealing with death, dying, living and rising, and had to admit a certain sense of awe when I considered the huge amount of that lies before me! It's a bit like doing my MA all over again...times ten!
Today I only managed to glance at my emails: hospital in the morning (all well, hooray!) and a funeral in the afternoon. Tomorrow I intend to spend the morning hard at it, and pop into town in the afternoon for a Starbucks with daughter no.2 and her gorgeous baby.

A Close Shave

Had a nasty moment this afternoon that made me break out into a cold sweat. I've been merrily chugging along over the past couple of days writing up some notes on my laptop that I put together on pseudepigraphical OT apocalyptic literature and its apparent impact on Paul's thinking and language. When I went out to pick the boy up from school, I put it into sleep mode and, on my return tried to start up Word again. Locked up, no response. Task manager availed nothing so I pressed the 'off' button. It went off all right, but wouldn't turn back on: not even a flicker. Nasty sweaty moment ensued followed by lots of hand-wringing (luckily I'd saved my work onto a USB key before I went out, but all my most useful stuff is on that computer). It was the boy who pointed out that it was actually on at the box, even though nothing was happening. I took out the battery, replaced it then held the on button down for some twenty or so seconds and - it turned OFF! So I then turned it back on and every thing went back to normal. Not sure if it's got something to do with the Windows updates that it took upon itself to install yesterday. I shall be monitoring things carefully, and may do a system restore if it plays up again. it's not the first time a vaunted improvement has caused havoc.

But in the horrible moment when I thought that it had died permanently, I was so, so very glad that I'd had the presence of mind to back up my current document. Let that be a lesson to me.

Not Much Progress

I seem to be scuffling about a lot and the moment and not producing very much written stuff. This is starting to worry me a bit as it's less than a month until my next supervisory meeting and I haven't actually added to my word count at all in about six weeks! In my defence, I think I'm approaching it from the 'read first then write' angle, rather than the 'write on the hoof' one. I'm hoping to read and inwardly digest Albert Schweizer's Mysticism of Paul The Apostle and then weave some ideas into my work. It's a fascinating book. one of those that when you read it you think 'Ah! I can see how that works!' It is, however, an old work so I'll have to read up on his critics to get some balance into my arguments.
The most tricky thing about doctoral study is to get away from the 5000 word mindset - that is, imagine that I can read, sum up and dispose of an argument in a short space of time. The PhD timescale is so much longer and the thesis so much more complex and lengthy that it really does have to be approached one step at a time, working through the texts and not trying to have a result in mind before you've done the analysis: let the theory emerge from the evidence, not force the evidence to fit a preconceived notion! Very tricky!

Input v. Output

The problem with doing part-time doctoral work (which I am at the moment, hopefully I'll be moving to full-time in the autumn) is that it's quite hard to gauge whether you're working hard enough. With full-time study, like my research MA, it seemed easier to calibrate - every day for the core hours. Since I started last October, I've never quite decided if it's better to work for a while every day, or condense the effort into larger blocks. The problem with the former approach is that one is just getting into the swing of things when it's time to do something else. the drawback with the latter is that it's difficult to know when to stop. Consequently my research efforts tend to veer from all-out 9-5 (until I get tired, p*ssed off or confused) to days and days of consecutive idleness. Still, even that works out as part-time in its own way! I guess many dedicated doctoral students will furrow their brow and wonder why I don't want to devote every waking moment to it (and there are a lot of pretty humourless beard-strokers out there), but I believe it's all about pacing oneself, appropriate effort, a sense of proportion and having a life. Academia does take itself very seriously, but there again so does building services, or sanitation, or quantity surveying. The inward-turning eye cannot appreciate the magnitude (or otherwise) of the subjects in its field of vision. The objective eye finds the mote therein risibly small. Thus it is necessary to reassess one's output continually, rather than concentrate on the input effort. As my supervisor thinks that I have produced 'eminently' enough work for a student of part-time status, I must be getting it approximately right! Now that I know some potential funding is on the horizon, I have to say that I am now looking forward to going back to full-time study. I'm much better working under a bit of pressure: Less time for procrastination, which as we all know, is the thief of time.

Progress Reviews and Other Stuff

I really, really intended to get around to producing some written work this week. I'm acutely aware, and somewhat uneasy, that I've spent most of the time since my last supervisory meeting reading without getting anything concrete down. It's been fascinating stuff - the Jewish apocalyptic thought, how this mode of expectation appears in the words of JC, and how much Paul was thoroughly of this tradition. I'm hoping that it will give a framework into which Paul's use of language concerning death and resurrection will click nicely. However - best intentions and all that - I never actually got round to committing my thoughts to, I was going to say paper, laptop. The surprise news about my funding necessitated some time online filling in forms and phoning people about filling in forms. Then all of a sudden I received an email telling me that I had to fill a progress review form whose deadline was the next day! I'd previously understood that, as a part-time student I'd not have to bother with this this year as my timescale was double that of the full-time student. Apparently not. Another goodly amount of time form-filling, liasing with my supervisor, drawing up provisional programmes of study - something that hadn't even crossed my mind as I'd been bumbling along. Stuff like this always takes much longer than you think it's going to. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing of emails, it all got sorted in the nick of time. So, no actual work produced. Again. But I'm going to have to get cracking. I noticed that one of my supervisor's comments was that he wanted to see evidence that I was getting to grips with academic German. Ulp! I mean, I've found a website that might be useful, but that's about it at the moment....

There's a lot I should make a point of scheduling in: academic German, more regular Greek reading, brush up on the measly amount of Hebrew that I do know, be more organised in my general reading and note-taking. In brief: Get Serious!

Maybe I should cut down on the blogging, but I not only find it cathartic, but it really does help my writing brain to limber up so that I can put words down more easily. And it is the end of the day now, teatime to be precise, and I have a few moments finally to myself.

Welcome to my new blog....

By an amazing coincidence I set up this blog (dedicated to plotting the vagaries of my ongoing PhD in New Testament Greek linguistics at the University of Birmingham) only a few hours before I received the amazing and most welcome news that my application for AHRC BGP funding had been successful! My supervisor had left a message on my mobile answerphone telling me to check my uni email and, even with the message from admin. open in front of me, I had to read it several times to make sure it really said what I thought it did: that I was finally going to receive funding to support my doctoral studies! I immediately phoned my supervisor back and he confirmed that I had indeed been successful and that, barring a few formalities, the money was as good as in the bank. I still daren't fully believe it. I've self-funded both my undergraduate and master's degree, and after failing to get financial support last year, I've been self-funding my PhD thus far on a part-time basis. And it has not been easy, as postings (moans) in my other blogs (parablepsis and more books than sense) testify. I am extremely lucky in that my husband has been behind me all the way, from my earliest studies with the Open University encouraging me and buoying me up when I've flagged along the way. I could not have done any of it without his unfailing love and support.

What can I tell you about myself?

Well, I came to academia relatively late in life. After the birth of my fourth child in 1999, I joined the OU. My first course was Reading Classical Greek, and I was hooked. The following year I signed up for Reading Classical Latin, then in subsequent years, Advanced Greek, then Homer: Poetry and Society. This gave me a Diploma in Classical Studies and 120 credits. In Autumn 2004, I cashed these in to enter the second year at Leeds University's Classics Department as a mature student 'with advanced standing'. I spent a very happy two years studing Greek and Greek Civilisation, made some good, enduring friendships and emerged with a First Class Honours degree. In my final undergraduate year I was lucky enough to study New Testament Greek Textual Criticism under Professor J. Keith Elliott. I enjoyed this immensely and decided that I wanted to pursue this with a Master's degree by research in that discipline. In 2007 I submitted my thesis, A Textual Commentary on Paul's Letter to the Galatians. This stood me in good stead to apply to my current institution where, under Dr Philip Burton and Prof David Parker (who was the external examiner for my MA viva), I am currently undertaking doctoral studies. The title of my thesis is Aspect and Discourse in the Pauline Epistles. During the first couple of months I was also finishing off the OU Advanced Latin course.

But I digress....this particular blog is not intended to be an academic blog: anything remotely 'intellectual' will be posted on my logois KAI ergois blog. This blog is dedicated to posts detailing the day-to-day feelings, reactions, problems and highlights of a doctoral student. My parablepsis blog contains posts on life in general, particularly family life, and more books than sense contains ongoing confessions to do with my inordinate bibliophilia.

And the title of this blog? 'Skolex medaminos' is (I hope!) koine (New Testament/Hellenistic) Greek for 'worthless worm', a name chosen because, ironically, yesterday I was feeling especially lowly and worthless, having spent the whole day grubbing about and burrowing through texts with few visible results. Little did I anticipate when formulating the name that by that very evening, someone would deem this particular worm to be indeed of some worth......!