when is a draft really a draft?

I've just sent off a 'draft' for one of my case studies. I've been agonising about it for the past couple of days...it's just too rough around the edges and I probably need a good week to smooth it out. But what is a draft if not rough around the edges? I just haven't been able to get myself to accept this common sense, logical understand of what the term 'draft' might mean. I remember the days when I did have a more realistic understanding and appreciation for the notion of 'draft' when applied to my writing - I had a lot more freedom to express myself and enjoyed more sleep. Now I feel I'm crippled by having to get it 'just right' before I send it off, fearful of what the readers might think of me if my thoughts and ideas aren't tied together neatly and coherently. Anyway it's off and I have the beginnings of a case that can really become something wonderful (if I may say so myself) and insightfully tell a story about some complex practices and inspiring people...all I need is some more time to think, organise my thoughts, and the determination to make it a reality

Trying hard...HARD to make sense of my data

My desk at the OU

Papers everywhere, two computers surely this is a good sign of progress in making sense of one's data? Well I hope so anyway even if it's only symbolic -I'll take any help I can get at this point.

the work/life balance mystery

I took the weekend off and went to Brighton. The drive down was easy and practically stress free, considering the harrowing congestion of the English motorways. Brighton was light, bright, breezy and from my friend's large and inviting sofa I sat and watched a sea of tiny waves bob about. I didn't take my computer along which was bliss and so didn't look at e-mails or constantly check facebook for most of the weekend. It felt almost normal. Sunday was a heavenly day and I went out in only a fleece enjoying the sunshine, seagulls and blue sky, not the mention the non-academic conversation.

But of course by now work was starting to take up space at the back of my mind. I planned to leave at 3pm in the hope of avoiding the Sunday afternoon traffic and getting home with enough time to put in a few hours of work but, as usually happens, I only drove my little Micra pass the Brighton Pier at 4pm and was punished for this by having to endure a 3 hour drive back to Milton Keynes. I arrived drained, tired and certainly not in the mood to work. But I sat down at my computer and worked my way through corrections, to the case I've been working on, for maybe an hour, an hour and a half. I was slow and disinterested - usually a red light indicator to stop and come back to it later - I obliged.

Of course if I didn't take the weekend off I would have been further along, the corrections would have been done and I would have felt more interested in thinking differently about my writing and adding, changing, amending bits and pieces here and there. These tasks would not have spilt over into the new week that had new tasks and activities already assigned to it. Oh goodness and so it goes. Tuesday and I'm still trying to recover from my relaxing weekend away - said with a very sarcastic tone - it feels like 'the work/life balance' is a thing of mystery to me. I can't seem to grasp it - I know it's good for me and essential to my mental health and finishing this PhD but it's a slippery little bugger and my hands don't seem to have enough grip. Crazy!

trying a little positivity

I'm in the final 10 months of my funded PhD and I need to change, do things differently. For most of my time in the UK I've struggled with this experience, feeling more like a fish out of water. But since my return from Cape Town, after my fieldwork period, my levels of negativity towards 'the PhD' (I talk about it as if it were a physical thing, almost human like) have steady risen. And it doesn't really help my cause because I still want to complete this bit of research and I also acknowledge the validity of the outcome. So when I bad mouth 'the PhD' I bad mouth myself and that's not been very good for my general mental health. I realise that the most challenging bits to this whole process is likely be on the road ahead of me, in the next 10 months (and dare I say possible 11 or 12?), and if I want to get to the other side I need to be focused, calm, confident and positive. But above all of this, I don't like what all this negativity to doing to me as a person anyway. I also know that I've been here before - willing myself to be more positive and open towards the process and obviously I gotten a bit lost along the way - but it's only 10 months and I feel I ought to made more of an effort. I don't want my lasting memory of this experience to be one shrouded in negativity, even bitterness. So here I go again...to hope, positivity, tenacity, resilience, endurance and triumph over adversity...lets see if agency can overcome structure.

Sense of urgency

Its strange how time changes things and how new titles, identities and labels have an impact of what you do, how you do it and how you see yourself in the world. I've been a 3rd year PhD students for just over a month now and I feel profoundly different. Other 3rd year PhD students also seem different too. We are all more stressed, anxious, directed, intent. We come to our working space more frequently - especially those of us who have preferred to work from home in our previous life. Well I've made the shift to working at the OU for very practical reasons; a) it's warmer there, b) I have limited space in my new 'room' so all my books currently live on my work desk, c) my work/life balance is so up to shit that going to the OU once a day gives me an opportunity to step outside my flat and at least have some social contact. I think in my fantasy of how I should be 'doing' this PhD I sit working in a warm cosy room, filled with all my academic paraphernalia, and through the window I can look upon the world outside.


The PhD and its deadlines seem to hang heavy on our shoulders. There is a shift in the dynamic that defines this thing called 'doing a PhD'. I'm particularly anxious about my looming deadline - I mentioned, in passing to my supervisor on Monday, that I wish I had an extra three months, she relied calmly 'Well you can have another three months if you want'. But can I really? And if I had those three months would I feel less anxious? At the moment I'm so deadline driven it's insane and I just feel all my time frames are completely unrealistic. This focus on deadline seems to take away and hide the 'juicy' bits , the exciting and explorative dynamic of working with the data and the interpretative and analytical process that I'm currently in the middle of. I know people always lament about the tedium associated with analysis - when you are wrangling with the data in a bid to make sense of it - but I rather enjoy this part. Anyway enough navel-gazing I have a deadline to meet - 18 November!

an encouraging supervision

Yes it was. I was happy with how I managed the meeting and by all accounts my supervisors were happy with the case study I presented. My main concern with the case was understandability - was I able to present the case environment in such a way that my readers would get a comprehensive sense of the various dynamics present in that context. And would my writing be accessible, readable and descriptive enough. It seems I achieved my goal - so I'm relieved and now I also have a basic outline on which to model or structure the next case. Analysis still feels like a long way ahead of me, but it's always interesting when your readers pick up interesting bits from your writing that didn't really occur to you, or highlight issues of significance for them that you overlooked as mundane. I think these are rich moments that can be cultivated and explored to help bring out hidden 'gems' which are visible in ones work but overlooked. To harness the value from these moments I'm thinking that I should compile a list of the interesting questions, comments or highlights made about my research that come from these critical readings of my work - hopefully the list can then act as a reflective point from which I can interrogate my own thinking and assumptions - allowing me to step inside the context in an authentic manner, but also step outside the data and the context offering an critical interpretative view.