Supervision goes well.
I had a good supervision session today. Good because it was relaxed and because my supervisors were generally happy with what I had to say and the progress I was making. It was also good because I didn't feel constrained by my language use or unable to express myself. But I guess I'm at that stage of the game where the stakes are pretty low. I'm still transcribing, the analysis hasn't started and I haven't started to write anything related to my research. Well I have been writing, but nothing that could remotely be called academic. So things are wonderful and filled with optimism and possibility. So I don't have to justify anything I'm doing - well I do, but not in the same way as I will have to once I start trying to make sense of the data I've collected and try to construct an argument based on my research. We talked about what I've been doing to date, how my current activities fit or don't fit into my proposed work plan, some of the choices I need to make and how to move forward armed with an awareness of all these variables.
An interesting outcome of this meeting was the unexpected validation of a little document I constructed - that was meant to plot out the 'story of my data collection process'. My intentions for the document was simply that it acted as a record of my fieldwork activities and that it serve as a springboard for further reflective engagements with the activities that comprised my fieldwork experience. I was going to go back to it and continually add notes, reflections, comments as I constructed a more detailed and reflexive account of data collection journey. But apparently in its current form it's providing a valuable roadmap of my experiences that an external assessor might find very insightful as a complementary guide to a methodology chapter. Wow...I certainly didn't see that one coming, but I'm chuffed nonetheless because the document has evolved in a positive way beyond its narrow original purpose. This might be the first addition to my appendix. My thesis has started, albeit with the appendix - who said you need to start at the beginning anyway.
Another positive outcome from the meeting - well not directly the meeting, but more the preparation for the meeting - was that I'm actually using this blog in a productive way to support the reflexive component of my thesis development. I referred to an entry I made a couple of weeks ago regarding how my fieldnote practices evolved. While I have been sensitive about writing about my fieldwork experiences, as an ethical response to protecting the participants of my study, it is acting as a valuable source of reflective commentary on my researcher practices. Again, as I start to construct or re-construct my fieldwork experiences this will be a fruitful and valuable repository of insights.
In six weeks time I will have to deliver my first piece of PhD thesis writing...that is pretty significant. At the moment my thesis world feels like broad brush watercolour strokes on a canvas. You can just about make out defined shapes and elements, but it is mostly sweeping colours, bleeding into each other across the canvas. Lots of finer details that still missing from the picture, lots of finer details I haven't quite figured out yet. And I'm filled equally with excitement, anticipation and anxiety, trepidation at the prospect of filling in that finer detail.
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