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?

New Term, New Energy!

Well....that was a hiatusand a half! I couldn't believe how long it's been since I posted here! After the prolonged wintery weather, the spring and then the summer have passed in a blur of activity.

The thesis is progressing apace, I think. I have moved on from general and theoretical stuff to commentary and it seems infinitely more satisfying to see the word count grow without the feeling that I'm trying to nail clouds to the wall.

I've had August off to recoup and unwind, read for pleasure and generally just troll about, which has been wonderful. The youngest, the Bright-Eyed Boy has made the transition from junior to senior school with only the most minor of wobbles (unfounded worries about PE): I am keeping my fingers firmly crossed that he doesn't suffer any of the anxiety attacks that marred last autumn, although he is away from the dreadful harridan of a teacher that sparked them off in the first place!

Having got them to the bus-stop at just gone half-past seven in the morning, and having walked the dog (who, being a greyhound, is more than happy with a 20 minute stroll), I find that I can realistically sit down at the computer by 8am. I could work solidly until 4.30pm, when they arrive home, but don't think that I'll be mentally up to such a long stretch of concentration immediately. To that end, I have decided to slide into it gradually by immersing myself in scholarly material and in fact, have read an entire book today. Consequently the mental cylinders are starting to fire up and I am starting to feel more enthusiastic and energetic about getting some words down. It did get to the stage, before the holidays, where I was accessing academic websites and thinking that I really couldn't care less about what was written there.

So the new term spreads ahead, and I am looking forward to it with the sort of anticipation that I got when I bought a new pencil case and crayons in my childhood. All good!

Paper Cuts

The ongoing gloomy weather has not been conducive to getting out and about which, in truth, has been a godsend as far as my thesis is concerned. I did postpone, during the snows, my January supervisory meeting partly because of the weather, but more because I hadn't added much to it for weeks. Well, that's not exactly true...I've been putting together a parsed corpus of the Pauline epistles (1 & 2 Corinthians complete, Romans and Galatians underway) and I've read an typed up quotable sections from a key book, but although it amounts to many pages of A4, it doesn't count as original scholarship. I don't think my supervisor would be very impressed if I plonked all that on the desk in front of him! So I've spent most of my time since the New Year revising my first chapter, and damned sick of it I am now.
Since it provides an overview of what I hope to achieve in the rest of the dissertation, it can't be too detailed, but as it sets out the principle arguments, it has to be sufficiently detailed to engage interest and look suitably different from any other piece of work in the same field.
The whole question of 'original scholarship' is fraught with difficulties: I know that swathes of quoted text doesn't count towards your word count (if you get my meaning) but it's necessary to include it to show that you're engaging with the accepted authorities (or indeed mavericks) in your field. But if you are a relatively new researcher it really is difficult, especially in the early stages of the thesis to know exactly what it is that you think about the various issues. To engage too hastily leaves you in danger of closing up your arguments too early and admitting no new influences. I've read a few pieces where the doctoral candidate comes across as an obnoxious know-it-alls who've got a bee in their bonnet and are on the offensive from page one. Not to engage leaves you open to charges of colourlessness and being unconvinced by your hypotheses.

But if you are dealing with world class authorities, surely a little hesitance to engage is both acceptable and understandable? I know, at the moment, how little I know, and the more I read around my subject the more convinced I am that of that fact. It's almost as if I'm going to have to put on a fake cloak of argumentiveness and go into battle under false colours!

The arctic conditions have had the benefit of ensuring that I have not been tempted to go out much recently. Consequently I am romping along and making quite a bit of progress with the thesis. The Christmas holidays, despite my best intentions to do a little work, mostly passed by in a blur of eating, drinking, socialising and sledging. Actually, I'm quite glad they did, because I have returned to work with renewed enthusiasm, having devoted time to family and fun. The German Reading Skills course doesn't start again for a couple of weeks, so that's one distraction less for a while. A turning point came with the arrival in the post of Vygotsky's Thought and Language, which I devoured and then precis'd over a couple of days when the house was relatively empty. This book forms an interesting forerunner to Wallace Chafe's Discourse, Consciousness and Time, which I am using to supply insights into discourse prominence, linking it to focal consciousness. Reading Vygotsky re-enthused me to press on gathering material from Chafe and now it's all moving along nicely.
Another task that fell by the wayside over the past couple of weeks is the parsing of the Pauline epistles that I had planned to do, but I've set aside a portion of the day to make steady, plodding progress. An incremental approach always pays dividends and I have now completed all of 1Corinthians, including picking out verbal textual variants using the NA27 apparatus criticus, and am working my way through 2Corinthians. I contacted my supervisor and asked if I could postpone my supervisory meeting so that I could get back on track and fortunately he didn't have a problem with that. Now I have an extra two and a half weeks to revise my chapter, and I am determined not to squander the time. The bad weather that holds all the UK in thrall will see to that!