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!

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.