I'm sitting in my lounge on my brother's huge leather sofa (the only furniture in this room that I can claim as my own - is a super cheap plastic table) with a huge vodka at hand. I'm not working tonight.
In making the decision not to work tonight I've decided that I've been sufficiently productive to take a night off. So how am I defining that productivity - by the amount of words added to my thesis? Throughout my time at the OU word count seemed to be the only way success was defined. I remember right at the start of my studies there I found this obsession with the word count a difficult thing to get my head around. Over the years however, I've learnt how to take on that discourse myself. But I'm still not convinced it's the only way one can define your success in this PhD game.
This week I went to a really interesting and stimulating symposium - where I realised that Basil Bernstein is very much alive and kicking...kicking arse actually if the intellectual scholarship of the papers presented over the last three days is anything to go by. I had a Skype supervision, a productive critical conversation with a mentor and friend and just about finalised my second analysis chapter...and it's only Thursday. So does this constitute a successful week? Oh and how many words did I write this week...maybe 1500 - 2000?
I don't think I'm ever going to get away from this 'what constitutes success' dilemma while I'm working on my PhD - if I've learnt one thing about this process it's that you're always in deficit. So even if I finished the freaking thesis this week I would still list at least 10 things I should or could have done.
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