Categories: phd
Tags: thesis, supervision, book group
Date: 09 December 2009 22:03:07
... just being boring and unblogworthy.
I had supervision this evening after work; this is the first time I've been back to university since starting my job. It felt very strange being back, but was good to get some positive feedback on the chapter and to talk about something other than the colour/consistency/amount of nappy contents*.
What was encouraging was that my supervisors both felt that with the thesis as it is now - all the chapters except the Introduction and Conclusion in draft form - if my deadline was the end of the year they would be more or less happy for me to submit it, and would expect a tough viva and considerable corrections, but not a fail. What I'm doing instead (aiming to submit next summer) is revising and rerevising to make the viva a more positive experience and to ultimately have fewer corrections. So I felt good about that, although there is still a fair bit of work to do. We also started throwing a few names of potential examiners around - it's starting to get a bit more real now!
In other news, last night at our least successful book group yet, 3 people (none of whom had read the book and at least one hadn't started it) didn't come, and of the 3 of us that did go, one had nearly finished (few pages to go), one (the one who is usually ultrakeen and reads the book and several others beside in the time it takes me to manage a few chapters) was only a quarter of the way through due to the book arriving late from amazon, and I had been so snowed under with marking essays and writing the chapter that I hadn't even bought, never mind read the book. So we have decided to stick with the same book for the next time we meet, and hopefully more of us will have read it by then. I really like my book group, it's full of unscary people who are human and not book obsessives. I'd find that sort of group a bit stressful. Ours is as much about eating cake and drinking tea as it is reading the book :)
* can you tell I'm loving the new job.