07/03/2012 by lizit.

The past three months have been the most difficult of my doctoral journey so far. I did start to write a blog post a few weeks back, but was not really able to express what I wanted or needed to say. I am now in a better place and able to reflect on the experience and look ahead.

In the draft post written at the end of January/beginning of February, I said:

I’ve been pondering whether or not to blog the ups and downs of the last few weeks and have decided that now is as good a time as any to do so. If I had been writing just before Christmas, what I would have written would have been very different. I was at a very low point and seriously questioning whether it was worth continuing with my DPhil. I have turned a corner, but am still feeling very fragile and doubting whether I can actually complete the journey, but I am able to look at things more rationally.

Anybody following this blog would know that up until the end of November, I was in a good place with my work. I felt that I knew what I was trying to do and I was doing it. I had set myself some fairly demanding writing targets and was achieving them. I had restructured the way I was presenting my work in a way that made sense to me and I was generally pretty happy with the way things were progressing. So what went wrong? And why is it coming together now?

What went wrong?

Around the end of November, beginning of December, three things happened, each of which contributed to me becoming very depressed about my work - and very angry that I might not be able to do what I had set out to do.

Firstly, my supervisors cast doubts on the way I had re-organised my work. I was not following a conventional thesis format and this was likely to cause problems when it came to the thesis being examined. I considered I had strong reasons for wanting to structure my work in the way I was doing and that my theoretical stance was not understood. I had a sense of being required to write something that was not going to be ‘my thesis’ in order to comply with convention, whether or not convention made sense in the context of what I wanted to say.

Secondly, I got ill. OK, it was only flu-like cold, but as I am asthmatic, it went to my chest and I spent a couple of weeks feeling really grotty and took about a month to begin to feel well again. Truth is, I was probably mildly depressed as a result of being definitely under the weather and feeling totally stressed out about my thesis.

Thirdly, I got comments on the writing I had been doing during the previous weeks. Although I could see the rationale behind some of the comments, others I felt much less happy about as they were encouraging me to put more weight on some parts of my work than others in a way that made no sense to me.

What happened to resolve the dilemma and put me back on track?

Firstly, I realised that I was not powerless but had choices. I could choose to walk away completely, or to present my work other than in a thesis. I have learned a great deal over the past three and a half years and I could choose whether to complete my planned journey or head off in a different direction.

Secondly, I had supportive friends. Not friends that tried to comfort me, but friends who listened to my tale of woe, accepted my account and gave me space to be angry, frustrated and depressed, only offering advice once I was in a place to hear. Those folk know who they are, but they are found in #phdchat on Twitter and amongst colleagues at University of Sussex.

Thirdly, although my supervisors were not happy with what I wanted to do, they had confidence that I could complete my DPhil and one in particular took the time to explore why things had gone so radically wrong. This gave me a sense of being understood and provided a platform for negotiation and agreement on a way forward based on an honest appraisal of the potential risks.

What are the outcomes of this process?

Perhaps the most important thing to come out of the past three months is a very real sense that I own my work. I owned it back in November, but now I simultaneously have both more invested in it and less. That may seem odd, but I have accepted that what I am doing does not follow conventions and that may not meet the approval of examiners. That is OK and my decision and if it means I do not get to wear a floppy hat at the end of the process, that is fine. At the same time, I do believe in what I am doing, and do regard not only the content but the approach I have taken as valuable. If it is not valued by formal academic measures, that does not make it less worthwhile, but it places more responsibility on me to find ways of disseminating my work.

Secondly, there is a change in my relationship with my supervisors. From my perspective, there is a new honesty in our exchanges, perhaps because we have locked horns, and found a way forward. When I get to the end of the journey, I will be interested on getting their thoughts on this perception.

Thirdly, I think my writing is improving. I am more self-critical, in a positive sense, and more aware of the need to ensure the rationale for my approach and argument is transparent, even if it sometimes means labouring the point. Because my approach has been challenged, I have read more, understood more and am more confident.

Where now?

Get the thesis written!

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23/10/2011 by lizit.

A fortnight ago I wrote of a new sense of direction with my thesis writing. That has continued.

On a practical level, the buckets have been moved around, some have had their contents split into smaller buckets and some buckets have had their contents mixed in the same container. That represents more than just moving jigsaw pieces. It has led me into thinking more deeply about what it is I am saying and, perhaps more importantly, how I am saying it. I am also a lot happier about my theoretical positioning. For months now I have been trying to get my head around the various theoretical standpoints open to me, half the time not understanding them and the the rest of the time not seeing how they applied to me either. Through thinking about how to organise the various material in my thesis, I have recognised that I am not coming from a single theoretical standpoint - or if I am, I don’t know what it is and at the moment it is fairly irrelevant. What I am doing is embracing a systems approach. It always was there in the small print of one of the chapters, but I’ve now realised it is what is holding the whole together.

A systems approach does not only permit, but insists on looking at things from many different viewpoints or perspectives. It may involve soaring high over the system and taking an overview - looking at the pieces and how they connect - or it may involve getting into the nitty gritty of bits of the system and how they work in the day-to-day. It may involve looking at the roles of the different stakeholders in the system and how they function together and separately. It may involve acknowledging the differences between formal and informal power structures - the importance of the person with the key to the stationery cupboard…

Bit by bit I am making sense of the story I am telling and seeing more and more connections. I am having to be far more organised than I have ever been about noting the insights as they occur - some will find their way into my thesis and others will no doubt be useful in other contexts. I am beginning to write and edit and review and understand and write some more. There is a subtle shift which means I’m engaging with my work in a new way.

So far so good! But why oh why is the technology, which should operating transparently in the background, so difficult to tame? Three times in the last fortnight, I have spent time sorting out broken references. The first time happened when splitting the whole into its constituent parts. Everything seemed to be OK, and then I noticed some of my references were simply not right - they had somehow moved down the document, all still in the correct order but in the wrong places. Then, last weekend, editing a shorter document and noticing again references were not where they belonged. An hour spent cutting and pasting unformatted references sorted that! Then yesterday, a carefully crafted paragraph half-way through the document, and moved on to make further edits, forgetting to hit the save button first. As I made the next edits, a sudden awareness that the reference I was editing had disappeared to be replaced by the page number I was inserting - and then adding insult to injury, it replaced the following reference and all the subsequent references shifted too. This is specialist software provided by large companies and supposedly designed for the kind of task I am engaged in. Why on earth doesn’t it do what it says on the tin? There is more than enough to think about without having to worry about whether my document has edited itself!

So we win some, we lose some. If only the technology worked as it should, I would be a very happy bunny at the moment!

Posted in thesis, personal rant, systems, bibliography | Print | 2 Comments »

28/06/2011 by lizit.

Time spent over the last couple of days reviewing my thesis outline, plus a supervision session and reading a couple of Inger Mewburn’s thesiswhisperer blog posts (PhD Grief and 5 ways to kill your darlings) has got me thinking.

It must be a couple of years now since my supervisor suggested I draft an abstract for my thesis, written as though it was done and dusted and I had achieved what I wanted to achieve. Having a tendency to do as I’m told, I followed the advice and I found it a useful exercise, not only in enabling me to sort out my focus, but also as a document which I could review and revise as my ideas developed. While reviewing my thesis outline over the past couple of days, I realised that I needed to revise the abstract yet again. Having done so, I then looked back over the last year and realised that ideas which were central to the abstract a few months ago, are no longer there, but other ideas which either were not present, or were peripheral are taking centre stage. I am seriously beginning to wonder if rather than me owning my thesis, whether it actually has somehow acquired a life of its own.

In some ways, this follows on from my previous blog where I responded to Jeffrey Keefer’s question about there being no space for communities of practice in my research. It can only be 3 months ago that I was arguing that communities of practice were central to my research and my thesis. Where has all that thinking and work gone? It is clear my thesis is rejecting it as part of itself - I’m sure it wasn’t my decision to put that whole chunk on one side.

Not only does my thesis seem to have decided that things that are meaningful to me have no place in it, but it also seems to have replaced them with things which are more theoretically complex, though possibly ultimately more interesting. And I’m sure it has done this without any assistance on my part!

What I have realised is that the areas that getting chopped are not being chopped because they are not of interest, or are not important, but because they are not central to my research question. They are currently in suspended animation, waiting to be revived and acquire their own lives. The areas that remain and are taking over, are not triffids, but are emerging as I allow myself to look into some of the deeper reaches of the iceberg. They are challenging because they are forcing me to think in ways that don’t come naturally to me. I’m a pragmatist and problem-solver - what am I doing getting caught up in theoretical concepts and philosophy? Come to think of it, why on earth am I doing a DPhil - no let’s not go there today!

I think perhaps it is time for me to take thesis in hand and threaten it with the pruning sheers if it doesn’t stop growing and developing interesting side shoots. Hang it all surely I should be in charge of my thesis and not vice versa!

Posted in experience, personal rant, empowerment, reflections, ownership, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

31/10/2010 by lizit.

Although this blog focuses on my DPhil journey, I am having a bit of a personal rant today.

31st October is a day which I have come to dread. Over the past few years, I have had my car and the front of my house covered with egg. Last year, a double-glazed window was broken by a bolt fired from some form of weapon. I am sitting in my study wondering what might be inflicted on us this year.

I have no personal objection to people dressing up as ghouls and witches if that is what they enjoy. I just want to exercise my right not to be any part of this particular ‘celebration’. In particular, I object to strange children, sometimes accompanied by doting parents, knocking on my door and threatening me if I do not give them some form of ‘treat’. Not opening the door seems to be taken as permission to damage my property.

In past years, we have displayed a poster making it clear we do not do Halloween. This year, we are considering whether to or not, as we wonder whether this is read as an invitation to ‘trick’ rather than a request to leave us undisturbed. Something tells me this is one we are not going to get right whatever we do.

So I am preparing to batten down the hatches and sit in darkness from late afternoon onwards in the hope that it will be assumed the house is unoccupied and unwelcome callers will keep away. On the other hand, maybe that is just inviting trouble. Roll on tomorrow when I can forget this for another year.

Rant over.

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