fickle

Can one be so fickle? One moment I'm in a complete panic about the amount of time I have to get my thesis together and worrying deeply about the quality of the work I'm producing. Then, after editing a chapter or getting some positive comments, everything feels fine again. I calm down, stop stressing and feel like I'm worthy of this freaking PhD. Up and down, up and down go my emotions. One moment confident, the next complete unsure.

I went to Zumba tonight - just fantastic! The perfect antidote to all my troubles. I can't think about my thesis or my silly emotions because I'm too worried about following the steps and getting my feet to co-ordinate with my arms.

Avoidance

I'm in a state of deep avoidance. I won't touch my literature review - I won't go near it because I fear I can't fix it, sort it out in the way that it needs to be sorted out. So I've been avoiding it, skirting around its edges and now I'm running out of time. I'm getting my knickers in a knot over things, issues not even raised by my last supervision feedback. Dealt with, with a rational mind it would probably take less than a day to deal with. I submit my first full draft at the end of the week. Technically I'm meant to submit it on Friday - cause it's the end of the month. But practically, nobody will even glance an eye at it over the weekend - so I have until Sunday evening to upload it. I'm rushing towards this deadline, like the tortoise, in that fabled race. Yes, I'll get there but in my own time. If only I believed that - deep down I wish I was the hare, racing ahead with determination and drive.

And then to crown it all, I've had a crappy week - filled with emotional, practical and physical troubles. I was down with a cold on Thursday and Friday (but of course doing a PhD means you can't take off because of a pissy, little cold). Now my dodgy wrist is definitely dodgy again. I thought I sorted it out three weeks ago, but the injury has come back with a vengeance. I'm forced to wear the wrist-brace again which just slows me down - but if I take it off, I'm back to square one - where I am at the moment. And of course I'm not sleeping either. And winter has arrived in Cape Town - my fingers are cold as I type these words. Just what you need when you are trying to face-down your 'literacy practice' fear.

But onward I go. Of course I'll submit, of course it will be okay. I fantasize about how good my PhD might have been if I was close to the place I am now, last year. I like having the time to mull over things. To allow life to happen and to be able to deal with life, separately from the PhD. I'm going to try my luck in the place of calm for the rest of the day and maybe the evening too. Break the hold this 'avoidance thing' has over me.

and life gets in the way...again!

This was a crucial weekend for me. On Friday I was filled with an urgency to tie up a series of loose ends and get ahead of my schedule. I just needed to get ahead. I was so determined too, and by Saturday evening even though things hadn't gone strictly to plan, I was still in it with a winning chance. But freaking life! I think one is meant to do a PhD on an island somewhere far, far away from the complications and messiness of life. Where you can focus on only the PhD and not be distracted by reality. Of course I don't believe what I've just said - I just wish it could have applied this weekend, or for the next two weeks. I can't switch off, I can't pull all the personal stuff aside. It's the nature of my 'being' and so I get pulled in all directions, always at the expense of my PhD.

Here we go!

Dear Lynn

Thank you for giving notice of your intended submission. Arrangements are being made for the appointment of an examination panel.

You should now go to our website at http://www.open.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/forms-and-guidance-notes.php

to download a Candidate declaration form, which is for you to complete together with your supervisors.  When we receive this form and your thesis, we can send them to your examiners.

We have your thesis title as follows: Literacy Practices and the Curriculum Context: Exploring the Production of Assignments in a South African Vocational Higher Education Institution.  You can indicate on the Candidate declaration form if this changes.

washing it all down with a bit of 'pink drink'

I've had a pretty crap week. So it seemed fitting to wash away all the crap, this afternoon, with some 'pink drink'. The 'pink drink' was the perfect accompaniment to the robust, stimulating and challenging critical conversation I had with LT, an 'ex' of mine. The edge has been taken off my rather up-then-down and totally frustrating week. I'm tired, so tired. I feel I lack the inspiration, energy and drive that most people say they experience at this stage of the game. I just feel spent already. As I'm thinking through the conclusion arguments I want to make, I know it's all in my head - but I'm spent and frustrated that I can't express my thoughts in the ways I know it needs to be expressed. 

My friend and 'ex'-colleague passed her viva with minor corrections this week. A fantastic result and one I knew she would achieve. Of course this is a result I would be ecstatic to receive myself, but having said that I wouldn't feel any shame if I got major corrections. In fact I've boldly stated that a 'pass with major corrections' would be a perfectly reasonable outcome. I'd be annoyed, but not disappointed. Maybe I'm just being realistic, or maybe it's the tired me talking. I know my research is solid, I know I'm making a meaningful contribution - but I also know that the value of what I have done in this research, can and will live beyond the thesis. That's the exciting part for me. In a way I see the process of putting the thesis together as a necessary evil to get me to that point. Again my anti-PhD self is highlighting the very insignificance of this significant process (to quote LT). So hey ho! Onward I go to pin the conclusion down and move closer still to finishing the thesis.

Writing the conclusion

I’m sitting in the library on a Saturday morning. The sun is shining brightly, and Cape Town is decked in blue skies. I’m trying to write my conclusion chapter. I’m experimenting with a form of free writing, with the aim of producing a spew draft. I’m writing around the themes or ideas I generated during a brainstorming and mind mapping exercise. I’m trying not to impose too many critical observations as I write – the kinds of critical observations that will usually make me stop writing because I judge the idea to be ill-conceived, poorly articulated, disconnected from another idea, lacking substantiation or irrelevant to my developing argument. I want to hold off on all this kind of judgement and questioning until I have written all I need to write about a specific topic or heading in the chapter. There will be enough time and opportunity to critique, rip apart and discard when I take the chapter to the next level in the writing process. I few months ago I found some useful advice about approaching a writing task as having many different stages that demand different things from the writer. An essential element of this approach is not to start the ‘editing’ process prematurely. I've tried over the past couple of days to take this advice on board and use this first level of writing as an experiment of ideas. And it seems to be working for me, I don’t have a blank sheet of paper or screen staring at me admonishingly.

Before I started to work on the conclusion chapter I was silently dreading it. I passively avoided moving myself in the direction of working on the task – playing stupid little games with myself, that all centred around avoidance and denial. When I finally sat down to work on it, a day later than planned, I was pleasantly surprised. It didn't seem so bad after all. I could write stuff. I chose not to judge what I was writing. In addition to the writing approach I’m adopting, I think there is a hint of confidence and clarity about my thesis project finally coming through. This really is my story and I can provided the justification for why I’m sticking with it.