Categories: phd
Date: 08 February 2007 20:20:52
I haven't written much for a while about my PhD (the basic intention of this blog, though more often than not I get distracted into writing vastly more intellectual material such as the last post). To be honest there's not much to say at the moment, I'm feeling a bit behind having been ill last week, but had some good feedback from one of my supervisors on some work I submitted recently, and today I had one of my periodic bursts of printing out lots of journal articles, which should fool me for a few days into thinking I've done some work (what do you mean, I'm meant to read them?). I have supervision in a week and a half's time, and need to produce something by next week in order that we'll actually have something to talk about when I see the supervisors the following week. So yeah, the PhD - a bit "same old, same old" really. Oh yes, I got some library books out today, which look a bit unreadable. I'm very aware that my academic weakness is in theoretical perspectives - all of my various degrees, including my Masters, have been practical/vocational so although I have scratched the surface of lots of theories, I don't feel grounded in any one of them and I really don't think I could hold my own in any complicated theoretical discussion. That's not the end of the world of course, but I'll need to be a bit more up to speed before I start to write up and then (horrors) have my viva, so I may as well start trying to rectify that now. Unfortunately the books I have got out seem to be written in pretty dense academese, so they're not exactly inspiring.
I've also decided to apply for an extra grant from our professional assoc for fieldwork costs. They're not huge grants (max £400) but that will pay for some language school lessons and leave me with more money for other things (I suspect most of my fieldwork budget will be disappearing down a black hole marked "transcription costs", as although I'll be doing the interviews in a foreign language, transcribing them is another matter entirely. I'm starting to feel a bit anxious about that.).