#phd progress

[elderlingacademic]

Update

So, tumblr just saw fit to tell me that this blog is now nine years old, which is... wild and strange to me. It's been a long time since I've been on it, and some of the posts are still getting notes, so I thought I'd stop by with a catch-up on how things are.

So:

I've finished my PhD. The process was bad enough to make my mental health plummet to previously unseen depths (for me, anyway), which is why I dropped off the face of this earth blog. I managed to pass with technical corrections only, which is a huge achievement that I think one day I might figure out how to feel about, but it's too soon right now.

My mum has read it, and thought it was very good - I'm hoping sometime (it's gonna be years, but) to be able to reread it with a clear head and appreciate it. Same with Realm of the Elderlings, honestly.

End of PhD meant some big life changes, some of which I'm still in the middle of. I live in a different city now, and I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, because academia is no longer the answer.

I guess for the last year since I finished I've been wanting to post something about this but trying to work out how, and I think that the core of it is this: it is okay for things to not work out how you expected. If you are neck-deep in academia right not, it is not the whole world, I promise you. I finished my PhD, but I seriously considered quitting, and I still don't think that would have been the wrong decision. (Neither was carrying on. They were both acceptable options, no matter how fraught I felt about them at the time).

We are taught to view our lives like a kind of funnel - we start with a plethora of options, and then we narrow down further and further until we specialise (oh we might have other unrelated hobbies, but the core of it is Our Thing). But that's not how that works, that's not how any of this works at all. The world is wide. I can choose anything now. I mean, most of the things I've thought of so far I don't actually want to do for various reasons, but I know myself well enough to know that I'll figure it out eventually. If I just let it simmer in the back of my head, and give it time. You don't have to know the answer; in a way, you are the answer, if that makes any kind of sense.

I stuck with the job that I picked up part time to fund my PhD, and took it full time. It's definitely not a forever option, but it was a blessing to be in a new city, strangely liberated from the PhD that took up eight years of my life (and the general academia that took up the majority of my whole life before then), and doing something I already knew how to do. It's helping rebuild my confidence, and I know that whatever come next is going to be something I can make something of.

I hope that's not so rambly as to be incoherent; regardless, I'm glad I wrote it. I do still see asks on this account, so if you ever have any queries about academia (not the technical side, but what it feels like to get through sometimes), let me know. I can't promise quick answers, but I'll try to answer most things.

I hope you are all well, and thank you for the notes that remind me this blog still exists - a testament to the love and enthusiasm I had for this project at the start, and that I still hope to rediscover some day.

[crochetingdoctorate]

PhD progress accountability (?)

Ok, so I’m actually going to give this a try.

My PhD, that big elephant that lives in every room I walk into but constantly try to ignore. I’ve defended my proposal, finished my classes, and am just doing research. That should be the fun/exciting/“easy” part, right?

Then why do I keep trying to run away from it?

Maybe it’s because I’m not actually doing the research yet, but learning methods, organizing files, and planning, planning, planning. All of which feels more daunting as the days go by.

I’m also TAing this semester, and it’s so much easier to put in the work every week to make sure I stay up with that schedule than to try and break my PhD work into manageable chunks. However, this coming week is spring break. If I can keep myself from my “normal” break schedule, I might actually be able to make significant progress.

To start, I’m going to make a list of “things to do,” which I never actually write:

Grade labs

Practice ordination methods

Continue compiling list of section data

Continue organizing relevant sections into separate folder

Continue reading about morphometric measurement methods

Continue compiling list and data on potential field sites

On top of that, I have a crochet commission to complete and I want to spend time with my boyfriend and friends. Here’s hoping I can garner the motivation I need!

[elderlingacademic]

Tunnels, lights at the end of

Popping on here to post personally for the first time in a long while just to say that I’m currently researching how best to write a conclusion, and it’s like getting a faint glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel.

I had intended this blog to be much more full of my thoughts on doing a PhD thesis, but as it turns out if you have stress-related meltdowns over writing your thesis you tend not to have the capacity to write much of anything else. Which is frustrating. But a quick update now, then, as the stars seemed to have briefly aligned.

I have (hopefully less than) a year left of my PhD; I have around 57k written of 75k. I’m currently setting up for a big push, to try and work with my own tendency to find “Do It All Now All At Once!” a much easier thing to go with than “pace yourself but do it forever and ever” - I study three days a week, so I’m doing three weeks of writing 1k a day, then taking my two weeks holiday, then doing another three weeks at 1k a day. When I complete this, I should have hit my minimum wordcount (75k). 

The idea behind this is that I’ll have, effectively, a submittable thesis. Not a thesis that I want to submit, but that’s okay. I’ve got more than six months to polish, perfect, edit, cut, or add to it. But it will be Done, in a very specific way, and I hopefully won’t continue to spiral in anxiety over getting enough words (not conducive to working on anything). 

1k a day is going to be very tough for me. I’ve been working on a 500 words per day system for a year or so, which is sometimes easy and sometimes nearly impossible. But hopefully the fact that this push is limited to six weeks (with a big break in the middle) will help me push past some of the problems.

I don’t mind if what I write is not that great. That’s okay. I need bad first drafts before I can have good second drafts. You cannot edit a blank page.

This week I’m doing plans - outlines for chapter five and the conclusion, and some notes on missing pieces from earlier in the thesis. The push starts next Tuesday.

I’d like to aim to post on here more often as I work through the end of this thing, but I also don’t want to commit to that because I can’t be sure of how I’m going to feel. But it’s always something I’m considering.

As always, I’m around if anyone has any questions for me, or anything they want to chat about. In the meantime? Wish me luck. I wish you luck, with whatever your project is right now. Give it a good thumping. I know you’re going to beat it.

H

[johanphd]

Mid-semester/Spring Break Update

This semester has been kind of a whirlwind in terms of dissertation work. I spent pretty much the first month NOT doing any work on it. Distance makes the heart grow fonder type of deal.

I went to a conference on Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education and it was a good experience to set the stage for me to get back into working on this project.

I decided to present in the Spanish math seminar we have (I am not fluent in Spanish, but the seminar is meant for you to practice talking in Spanish about math). It went okay, anxiety kind of got the better of me and I sped through it all in half the time.

Then, my advisor suggested I start the Dissertation document now just to get the formatting out of the way. This took like an hour to do, because I haven't used Word in forever (I use LaTeX or Docs for my documentation stuff before). It was kind of cathartic to see the document laid out though.

As for right now though, I'm reading A LOT about the things I'm studying and that's the main priority this semester. (Besides also studying for my candidacy/comprehensive exam on Partial Differential Equations and Functional Analysis in May/June)

[elderlingacademic]

Looking Forward to 2016

Hello everyone! I’m taking a brief moment in the midst of National Novel Writing Month (1667, 1667, 1667, 1667) to let you know about what’s hopefuly coming in the new year.

I’ve been running this blog for just over a year now, and I’m really pleased with its success - I have 166 followers, and the recent Medieval Fantasy Week went down really well. But 2016 is coming, and it’s time for... not a change, perhaps, but an addition.

One of the things that I love about academia is growing familiar with the jargon, the language, and the complexity of ideas - and learning to pull them out of my head when I need them and applying them to what I’m working on.

One of the things I very much don’t love about academia is how the environment, the culture, and the language is often fundamentally exclusionary. 

There are lots of easy-learning guides out there, but as an academic who wants to teach I feel as though only part of my work is to complete my thesis and make the much-prized “original contribution to knowledge”. Another huge, important part, is communicating what I’m learning to the rest of the world. Not just to my supervisors, to my peers in academia, or to the two or three people who will read my thesis just because I wrote it. But to anyone who wants to know.

I’m still considering how to make my thesis (when it’s published) an accesible piece of work, and I’ve no solid answers yet - fortunately I have more than three years to think it through. But in the mean time, I’m going to be using this blog to talk about the basics of studying English Literature at degree level - BA, MA, and PhD - from the ground up, and to try to break down some of the complexities and mysteries that higher education tends to get fogged by. The project is tentatively titled Layperson’s Lit. 

Regular blog content will be running alongside it as it runs now - What-If Wednesdays and Fan-Art Fridays will remain intact. But from January 2016, Source-Me Sundays are going to become Study On Sunday, and each week there will be a new topic or concept that I will post on. I should mention here that I am very grateful to @badgerlock‘s offer of support as a beta!

Early next month I am hoping to put up a schedule, which will also be used as a masterpost with links added as we go.

Given the amount of work this involves and also given that I am currently struggling to stay employed in a way that will actually allow me to pay my tuition, I’m also investigating starting on something like Patreon, and I have a few interesting ideas in mind for perks - but more on that later.

As always I very much appreciate your feedback, and your support.

H

[elderlingacademic]

hey! I saw your post and you're writing your phd on ROTE???!! Thats the coolest thing I've ever heard. What's it about? (I know thats a really general question but honestly I want to know everything about it)

I am indeed! :)

The current working title of my thesis is “Non-Binary Gender in Medieval Fantasy Literature: Robin Hobb’s ‘Realm of the Elderlings’ Series”, which is a bit long-winded but I’m working on it. Basically, I’m looking at Beloved as a non-binary character, how they are depicted and what impact that may/may not have and why, within the context of medieval fantasy literature as a genre with a lot of very cisnormative traditions and standards. 

Right now at this moment, I’ve just finished a part of my first chapter listing examples of “non-binary” (though that’s stretching the term) characters in medieval fantasy (and sometimes in fantasy more generally), and now I’m writing about the impact of their presentation - this week I’m looking at the use of “it” as a pronoun and how this is used in the text (it’s obviously hugely derogatory but in varying ways and with varying effects). I’m looking forward to after Christmas, when I’m set to (FINALLY) actually be talking about Beloved specifically, which will be fun!

If you’re interested in reading anything of it, a draft paper that I gave at a conference in August is currently available online here (scroll down to “Of Dragons and Bigotry”), and that’s based on a section from my introduction. It’s hopefully going to be published as part of an eBook in the next year or two!

I always think I should write a little more specifically about my thesis on this blog, but I’m never sure where to start - if anyone would like to ask further questions, however, I’d be happy to answer them! That’s actually easier for me, because I then know what you want to know. 

Thank you for the compliment, I hope I’ve done a good summary for you! Sorry for the delayed response, I had kind of a hectic weekend and wanted to reply well for you!

- H.

[elderlingacademic]

In today's news: the word "fuck" is now officially included in my PhD thesis. Thank you, Robin Hobb.

[elderlingacademic]

Upcoming Events

Hello everyone!

You might have noticed that I haven’t posted for a few days (or you might not). I’m going to be away for two weeks from this Sunday, so I’m going to set up the queue to run. However, I wanted you to know three things:

1. I am always open to suggestions for posts. Do you want more posts about the logistics of doing a PhD? Do you want more updates about my PhD progress/details about my thesis? Do you want more RotE-related posts among all the gender stuff? What would you like?

2. I am going to do a short paper at a conference in August! The paper is drawn from the introduction to my thesis, discusses gender in fantasy and Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings, and will be publically available online before the conference, so I will let you all know when that’s available to read if you would like to. I’m very excited!

3. When I get back from my trip away, I’m hoping to run a medieval fantasy week. I am looking for book recs, book reviews, lists of titles, opinions on tropes - anything of that nature! It can be something you’ve thought of yourself, or you can link me to someone else’s post that you’ve found and I’ll reblog it, or you can request something from me about a medieval fantasy thing that interests you. I’ve got a bunch of things in the drafts, but I’d particularly like to hear your thoughts - what medieval fantasy books do you like/dislike and why, anything you like. You can message me for now (I probably won’t respond until I get back), and when I get back I’m going to figure out how to open submissions.

I hope you’re all doing well!

H