Just the Way I Work and Am.

Am starting to suspect that I am, if not bonkers, then certainly a bit bi-polar (how very trendy!). Looking back over my blog posts for all my blogs (how manic is that?), I seem to be either full of energy and ideas or dragging my sorry ass through the mud, predicting (or at least fearing) gloom and disaster. How dull for all. Still, at least I can get to grips with the fact that if I'm down, it won't get too bad (I am fortunately spared the depths of despair suffered by some poor souls), and I'll soon feel perkier and more energetic.

I seem to have got myself into that silly situation again where I'm counting the days down to my next supervisory meeting and am fighting to get the word-count up. I blame the extended school holidays that have punctuated April and thoroughly disrupted my schedule.
I've realised that I just can't work with anyone else in the house, so that kind of rules out evenings and weekends, despite my best intentions (and the 'satellite study' that I set up in the bedroom).
I'm coming to realise that my working conditions are quite specific: I need total concentration and a looming deadline. This rather contradicts my early-PhD dreams, of endless sunny days reading and making notes, followed by a relaxed and focussed session of writing up.

Nope, my doctoral studies are turning out to be an assortment of panicked pages, sweaty nightmares and pangs of anxiety. And do you know - I'm actually producing some reasonable stuff.....!

Permission to Tread the Primrose Path

Well, I got there in the end and submitted (with surprisingly little angst in the end) virtually 10,000 words to my supervisor. Attending the supervisory yeasterday, I was relieved and pleased that he seemed to like what I'd written. Furthermore, a secret fear that I'd been harbouring for a while that my work was spiralling away from the original brief was put to rest when it was suggested that I state that my approach 'could not be seen in isolation and was part of a wider exegetical toolbox'. Massive relief, because I thought that I might be heading off too far down the etymological primrose path, but as my supervisor said "You can do anything as long as you state in advance that you're going to do it." To be honest, I felt a weight lifting from my shoulders, and this lightening has seen me today at my desk, humming happily, and setting to with a renewed sense of enthusiasm.

Bleeurrgh!

Boy, my mind is just not working today: I've been sitting at my desk since before 8 this morning and still haven't cracked the 8,000 word barrier.
It's like - I don't know - stringing sand today (I can't even think of a decent simile!). I find I'm struggling to keep all the words under control, forgetting stuff I wrote, forgetting references, keep finding myself slack-jawed and staring vacantly with my mind skittering off to some random unrelated track.
I'm blaming the fact I woke up at 4am this morning, heart pounding (we had a splendid family meal out yesterday with a fair - though hardly excessive - amount of red wine) and feeling deeply anxious, worrying about my thesis and where it's going and generally being plagued by those bodily aches and pains thar make one imagine all sorts of terminal scenarios. I didn't get back to sleep, but that's not unusual.
I think I'm a bit stressed, though why I'm feeling it now when I'm just about getting on top of my word-count I don't know.
Could be because I got an email about the mandatory progress review form and, looking at the box titled 'doctoral development'realised I've done chuff-all in the way of the stupid little courses they just lurve to see on such things. I hardly going to travel all the way to campus for two hours on Powerpoint presentations: my 11 year-old told me all I needed to know on that score.
Could be because I have now realised (thanks Prof. Brian Cox) that I am just a bag of atoms sailing on the way to the heat-death of our universe.
Could be because I have been reading Seneca's Moral Epistles, which tell me I have to accept such things with equanimity. Great.
I'm going to take a break now and get some lunch - my blood sugar does feel quite low - and possibly walk the dog.
Hopefully, I feel a bit more enthused and positive and a bit less moronic and jaded when I return.

Smokin' Mouse Zombie

I've had to put in some solid desk-work since my trip to the Ancient Languages Taster Day at Liverpool a couple of weeks ago. To tell the truth, I've been procrastinating a bit since my last supervisory meeting at the end of January - not deliberately, but I had to spend some time preparing my presentation for the off-campus Study Day, and then I'd had two days away the week following that. I wanted to get into some good exercise habits since I've been paying a hefty wad of money for gym membership since the beginning of January, so I've been making the effort to get down there first thing in the morning, when the kids leave for school at around half-seven. Eight weeks on, it's pretty much part of the morning routine: I get my swimsuit on under my training clothes and pack my dry stuff, towels, shower gel etc. into a big bag and walk to the sports centre. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays (when I go with the Husband in the afternoon) I spend about half-an-hour in the gym itself working on a split training routine (chest/triceps, shoulders/biceps, back and abs) and then swim for twenty minutes followed by ten minutes in the sauna or steam room. Mondays, Wednesdays, occasionally Fridays and Sundays, I'll swim for forty minutes. Then I'll shower and walk home, via the shop to pick up any supplies we need. Usually I am sitting down at my desk by 9.30-45, feeling pretty good (all those endorphins!) and ready to put in some good study time. The times I've not been able to swim first thing I've spent the rest of the day feeling a bit seedy. I guess it's addictive. Pleasingly, I feel a lot more energetic, and my jeans are getting pretty baggy round the middle.
Anyhoo - when I was last down on campus for my supervisory meeting I'd blithely promised 10,000 words of work for the next meeting which was, in retrospect a bit optimistic. I'd not really factored in my days away, or the fact that one of the weeks was half term. Now the two youngest (11 and 13) are really good and don't mind amusing themselves while I work away in my satellite study in the bedroom upstairs, but by Wednesday afternoon I was feeling a bit sorry for the Bright-Eyed Boy who, unlike his sister who has her rowing to go to and a boyfriend(!), was spending unconscionable amounts of time on XBox live shooting the legs of zombies.
Even HE was bored of it! So I downed mouse and took him into town for a browse and a hot chocolate. Twice. In two days, so I sort of lost the impetus and the 714 words I'd had to commit to writing per day (I can't remember the sum it was 10,000 divided by the number of days available to do it, minus some stuff I'd written already) failed to materialise. I know that isn't a particularly high target word-wise, but it's NOT the writing-up that takes the time as any PhD student kno: it's the reading, assembling and reviewing of arguments, the cross-referencing, quotations, sourcing out-of-print books and articles and deciphering cryptic references in Victorian commentaries that takes the time!
It makes you break out into a cold sweat when you get to three in the afternoon and you've only put a couple of hundred words down BUT YOU'VE ACTUALLY BEEN BUSY EVERY MINUTE! I've had a couple of nights waking up at four or five am with some anxiety issues, sweating, heart pounding and certain that, come my viva, I'll be unmasked as a charlatan and a fraud.
Of course once you fail to make one day's word-count, the deficit is shunted over to be divided up and added to the remaining days' allotment....and of course it's a compound daily deficit, so every day I have a higher target and...o well, you get the idea! Now that the new half-term has started, I'm making a big push with the chapter and I am managing....just....to keep my head above water, and I may not submit exactly the 10,000 I airily promised but -hey! - I AM trying my hardest!

Pan Boiling on the Hob

Had a great day on Friday at the 'Ancient Languages Taster Day' at the University of Liverpool on Friday. Got there slightly late as the train decided it had to terminate at Manchester Piccadilly rather than continue on to Liverpool Lime Street, which meant an annoying unscheduled half-hour wait until a connecting train could make up the rest of the journey. Arriving at last, I jumped into a taxi and managed to miss only the first few minutes of the Hieroglyphics lecture. After coffee (during which I got chatting to two other mature students) we continued with Sumerian/Akkadian and after lunch I sat in on the talk on Coptic. After a valedictory glass of wine, I walked back down to the town centre, calling in at the RC cathedral and a fabulous bookshop called (I think) Reid's Up the Hill (very much like Shakespeare & Co in Paris, an identification that the owner seemed to like very much indeed!). Once I got over my initial and habitual unease of being out and about, I enjoyed the whole day very much indeed and decided I should really tackle learning Coptic. Having some Greek seemed to make it quite feasible, so I've got a book from Amazon Coptic in 20 Lessons to get me started. As usual, it will be a bit of a problem fitting it in: I generally manage to over-schedule my day, and I've already decided that I need to revisit the consciousness studies and their applicability to linguistics. God knows when I'm going to fit it all in! I find micro-managment the best way - divide the day into 15 minute slots so that at any given moment I can cram in some vocabulary or the reading of a specific article.
However, today has been reasonably successful thus far: by 8.30am I had fed the dog, put on a load of washing and cooked tonight's ragu sauce for the pasta (a big pot of it that can be transformed into pastitsio or lasagne and chilli for two other meals) and was in the pool at the gym where I swam for half an hour and steamed for ten minutes. I washed my hair in the showers, so that's done, and called in at the shops on the way home to pick up salad-y stuff and croissants. At home I turned the laptop on (in my 'satellite' study, in the bedroom, because it's half-term), hung up the laundry, put the guinea-pig out in his hutch, sorted the recycling for putting out and made a skinny latte and grabbed a croissant. I managed to sit down at the computer by half-ten, but various annoying admin tasks (freeing up disk-space in my uni email allotment) meant that I actually didn't get down to work until eleven. I put in a good couple of hours before lunch - I've learnt that I cannot function efficiently without regular food - and after walking the dog, another good couple of hours. It was a bit bitty today, and I didn't quite manage the golden 714 words required.
I spent a lot of time chasing up a reference to a fragmentary piece of text by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus which apparently only exists embedded in Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, and generally rooting through various etymologies but, all in all, I stopped at a good place to stop, with some reasonable writing under my belt for the day. Tomorrow, I'll probably be equally late in starting as I think that Daughter #2 and the Bouncing Bubba intend meeting me for a coffee after my gym (shoulders and biceps) and swim session.
I decided I'd got a taste for the workshop thing and booked myself on a 'digital researcher' day at Durham just before the Classical Association Conference kicks off. I haven't really looked at train times yet, but I'm guessing it'll be another very early start!

Tea shortly after finishing this post, and there's my Tai Chi class at 7pm.
I had strongly considered kicking this last thing into touch but -hey! - what else'd I be doing. Actually, I'd be watching University Challenge and then The Beauty of Books on BBC4 at nine, but I'll set the recorder.
So when I'm going to fit in some Coptic is anyone's guess...or do some academic reading! Although I do have half an hour before I need to get the pasta on so......

Back in the Saddle

This week, I have been inspired by my attendance at the Digital Researcher event at the British Library in London to dust off my academic blog and get down to some serious reflection (although this will be more of a panoramic catch-up).

I note that my last post was somewhat less than enthusiastic about the whole doctoral process, but I think I can put that down to a rather general air of gloom that can seize me as the days get shorter.

Things are moving on apace, as they are inclined to, even given a curmudgeonly outlook.
Christmas was surprisingly excellent, and I was surprised (and delighted) to receive a Kindle reader from the Husband. Turns out that not only can I get digital reading matter for it (no more Waterstone's 3-for-2 offers for me!) but it can store my PDFs on it! Now, PDFs are the bane of my life as I think I have mentioned before, cluttering up my laptop in digital form and desk in hard copy. Using a simple drag-and-drop action when the Kindle is attached via USB, I am gradually rationalising them into logical collections. Fab!

I delivered a short paper introducing my research at a study-day seminar last week, which was held off-campus at the Old Templars' Hall at Bolsall just south of Birmingham. the timing meant that I had to travel down from York the night before, but I stayed at the University of Birmingham Conference Park Hotel at Lucas house on Edgbaston Park Road. This was, pathetically, a bit of a daunting prospect as I haven't actually spent a night away from my family (except for producing them!) in years! I must say I felt a bit anxious on the train down and thinking about it, should have arranged to have arrived before it got dark. My thinking was that I'd still be around when the kids got home from school and then leave at teatime.
As it happened, they weren't terribly bothered (the Husband had promised them a Pizza Hut pizza) and I just felt like I been hanging around all day waiting to set off. I wasn't in the mood to do any writing up, so concentrated on getting my Powerpoint right and rationalising some prompt-notes, but that didn't take very long at all. Arriving at New Street Station, I decided to take a taxi to the hotel rather than negotiate the branch-line train and a walk down a rather dark tree-lined road. Consequently, I got to my room just before nine pm and was pleasantly surprised by the accomodation - simple but comfortable - although the hotel appeared to be a maze of corridors and right-angle turns. Turning in early, I drank tea (eeuw! - Millac Maid UHT milk), ate some 85% choc and watched Big Fat Gypsy Weddings ( the Husband would not be impressed).

The breakfast was generous, but I limited myself to three courses(!) and headed off to the minibus pick-up point. All went reasonable well, I think, although no doubt I would be horrified by my performance had I been captured on video. I ended up doing that thing at the end when you read from the slides (only the last two though!) because you've lost your train of thought. Still (feedback says) I appeared relaxed and confident. I did make the effort to stand up and move round a bit and it felt quite good, if not entirely convincing. The rest of the day was sociable and enjoyable, including a trip back to campus via Tolkien's old haunts.

Last Monday, as mentioned, saw me at the Digital Researcher event at the BL's conference centre. Early start: the 6.30 train from York to King's Cross, a quick catch-up with London-based Daughter #1 in the St Pancras Pret-a-Manger and round the corner to register and log-on to the facility's network. Things initially threatened to go tits-up as the system didn't seem to want anyone to get online with it and it sulked by going very slowly. Eventually it was sorted out and we had some workshops and a plenary talk before lunch (including being charged with the group-task of producing some reflections on the day to give to the participants later on in the afternoon. After lunch it was a workshop session of choice (I chose Social Citation and Bookmarking), tea and then reassemble to cobble together our piece which took the form of a Blogger blog. The day finished with a talk on the pros and cons of digital research and researchability and finally a welcome glass of wine in the bar. The train back to York was the non-stopping one (save for Doncaster) so I was back home in less than two hours - which is far swifter than the stinky CrossCountry train from Brum, and was altogether a nicer train experience (more leg-room and frequent at-seat service).

I've been trying to fit a reasonable amount of exercise around my studies since Christmas (honestly, my pastry-eating and laziness was getting beyond a joke!) so I've been popping to the gym (ten minutes walk away) and swimming first thing in the morning before I start work on the computer. This has been quite invigorating mentally, but I do feel quite physically tired and sometimes I wonder if I can keep it up (the exercise, not the doctorate). Still, I shall -nay, must! - persist until I see some good results.

Unfortunately, I overestimated how long I had to knock out the 10,000 words I breezily promised my supervisor for our next meeting.
I thought that we had agreed to meet on March 26th, but looking in my diary realise that in fact, the date we eventually arrived at (he had a meeting on the 26th) was the 17th!
Not only had I lost a working week, but next week is half-term which usually seriously compromises my work intentions! I worked out that I had to write 714 words a day to hit the target, but the research that has to be done just eats up the hours available. It's all quite fine-grained stuff at the moment (linguistic and exegetical commentary work) and almost every word has to be minutely looked into, and its usage and nuance examined in depth.
I am trying to be focussed, but things keep cropping up and distracting me. Like I had to re-organise my train ticket for tomorrow (I'm off to the Ancient Languages Taster Day at the University of Liverpool - another cross-country odyssey) because I realised I'd booked on one an hour later than I intended (which would get there way too late).
And books keep arriving from Amazon: I've decided I need to reinvigorate my reading into consciousness, so I'm trying to read some new stuff in the field; Domasio, Rose, and Searle on language. I think I'll take one on the train tomorrow, but I find train-reading doesn't lead to in-depth assimilation. Hey ho! The life of a doctoral researcher! At least I'm back in the academic blog-saddle!

Thoughts on a Rainy Day

I'm sitting at my desk peering out at the torrential rain and the bleak windy greyness of October. My latest tranche of work has been dispatched to my supervisor, so I'm trying to decide which text to do a commentary on next, but I keep getting distracted.
I'm restless and rather bored - even surfing the blogs that I regularly read, I am increasingly finding myself thinking "I really CANNOT be bothered to read all this": similarly, I find myself just deleting e-mails with only the minimum of attention. I've been so deeply engrossed in writing my last chapter that this sudden halt before I get the comments back has thrown me out of kilter. I know I've got lots to do, but I'm struggling to find the motivation to pick it up. I'm missing company. My mum (81 years old) has just embarked on a year-long course of botany and horticulture, complete with an end-of-year exam! Woo-hoo! Good for her! - I'd been nagging her to find a new group of friends - younger ones that didn't keep dying off - and this seems to have provided her with just this, plus an intellectual challenge to stimulate the old grey cells.

But, as I was saying to her this morning, I really miss going to lectures and stuff. Just being in an academic environment was tremendous fun, and I was certainly at my happiest when doing my undergraduate degree. There's not much prospect engaging with my current uni in the same way - living over a hundred miles away is not conducive to forming close working relationships within the department, and although I've been encouraged to drop in at any time, I'm really not going to do that unless I have a supervisory meeting or something.
But I do really miss academic company: my family (God love 'em) are lovely, but needy, and my PhD subject so esoteric that I'm just not going to get any feedback from them.

I really think the problem is that PhD students are, by their very natures, loners, and that can end up as lonely. They have generally started of doing a pretty general sort of degree amongst other like-minded souls and have gradually spun off into some weird orbit of their own, focussing on such minority interest topics that - even when surrounded by other scholars in similar fields - they can't find anyone who knows much about what they actually doing. And that's a bit disheartening. It's a bit like hacking your way alone through a dense forest of thornbushes without a map or a light or someone shouting encouraging noises from the distance. Still, we keep plodding on.

I've put my name down for a beginner's level modern Greek course at the local uni-over-the-hill, having decided that it's ridiculous that I can read ancient Greek but couldn't speak to a real Greek person except to ask for beer and souvlaki. Hopefully, I might meet some new faces and - who knows - maybe end up going to the pub occasionally?