Hannah Swithinbank

Not in Kansas Anymore

Yesterday I finally met my new supervisor and got introduced to the department by some of his students. Yay for people to talk to who aren’t inside my head!

New boss-man is vaguely suggestive of portly series one Blackadder, but with more brains. He is very busy and likes to refer to himself as Francis Cornford’s Young Man in a Hurry. Who I now have to google. This means I won’t really have to talk work to him for amonth, which is good as it gives me time to do some. He also wants us to only speak German from December. Man the panic stations.

So I now have a desk to work at in the department library in the Philogium (which, btw, is an arcitectural gem featuring permanently broken escalators rising up its core). However, the library doesn’t open till 10am. Which I failed to check because I am so used to the libraries I use opening at 8.30 or being locked with keys of which I possess a copy. So instead of writing job applications/reading Sallust/doing German prep, I’m in the cafe drinking some truly awful espresso, spinning out my time online.

Yay for Post-its.

There’s no easy way to change the name on the post box of my flat (which is why I told everyone to add the name of my landlord when mailing stuff to me) – but there are some people who won’t do that. Like the bank, for instance, who don’t have a ‘z.H’ (c/o) line on their address forms. So I have stuck a post-it on the front of the box, and I’m hoping it won’t get rained off every other day.

I managed to get it up in time for the postman to deliver the PIN number for my new bank account, but the card, which should have been sent out first, has gone AWOL. So yesterday I had a fun Anglo-German phone conversation with the bank to get them to send a replacement. It’ll be nice when it arrives – currently I have money in one account and no way of accessing it, and not much money in the account I can access. And they’re in different countries, making transfers tricky and potentially expensive.

It’s all part of the fun of moving, no?

Well Gosh…

… but it sure does look like I have a website.

At least – it’s as done as it can be for now, until I do some more writing. I’ll sort out some more photo albums soonish, and I have categorising of various things to do, but I can do all of that whilst watching television across several evenings. I don’t have to spend more hours at the computer forgetting that there are things called meals to be eaten and an outdoors to be visited. Oh but it’s going to be nice to get back to that. And even to work – since tomorrow is the first of October, so I should be starting that.

Sorted?

German phone number. CHECK.
Sends messages outside Deutschland. CHECK. Though apparently not to my mother’s phone.
Registered as a furrriner living here for more than three months. CHECK. That one took some time, due to not being able to read the signs very well. Furrrriner fail.
Bank account so I can get my scholarship. CHECK. Easiest bit. Nice bank lady who was happy to speak English to me.

I live here now.

I’m working up to the bit where I do some work.

After yesterday’s adventure to find the International Office was done, I explorationed into the city centre and saw the cathedral (quite stunning but v. busy due to something called Domswallfahrt – I may venture thence for Vespers or Evensung tomorrow though) and meandered a bit, and had my first proper Köln brewed beer, and it was all very civilised.  I spent this morning running around doing busywork, and then pootled back into the Neuemarkt where I had spied a Habitat, for I needed pillows.  Don’t do your household shopping in Habitat, ye godes.  I whimpered and fled from the one-person €30 coffee presses and €50 towels towards a nice department store called Karstadt, where I spent about half the amount on a pair of pillows, a towel and flanel, the fluffiest blankey you ever did contemplate snuggling up in, and a coffee press.  Mmmm. I can have coffee tomorrow morning.

I think tomorrow that I might take myself to the Römisches Museum by the Dom, to see all the ancient things, and then I might be about ready to think about doing some work from next week.  The new supervisor is in the States, but I think I can be brave enough to go and find the department and say hello to the department before he gets back. Hopefully they’ll have heard I’m coming. Oop.  Are all visiting scholary things so disorganised, I wonder, or is it just at this stage of my career. Do I get to have a monkey to do all this organising stuff for me, and tour me ’round and introduce me to people, when I get higher up the academic food chain?  That would be nice.

Arrival

So, I have arrived in Cologne. It was a loooooong day of trains. Left St Erth at 0700, and arrived at Koln Hofbahnhof at 2115, by way of London and Brussells. Did I mention it was looooong. And my big suitcase was superheavy (which was partly why I got the train), and now my arm is so tired from pulling it that I can barely hold a pen to write a list of all the things I need to do tomorrow.

But my new landlord met me off the train, and brought me to the apartment, so I have a very hazy idea of where I live, except that it’s about 10 minutes walk from a direct train/tram (seriously, it starts as a u-bahn, and ends up overground like a tram) into the city centre, and that there’s a nearer stop if I don’t mind changing once along the way.  I know that there’s lots of shops on a street that we walked up, including a supermarket that opens at 7am, which is good, as I will need breakfast tomorrow (having had a cereal bar and satsuma for supper). I know that the university is vaguely ‘up-the-way’, and I’m going to trot off there tomorrow to find the international office, who were supposed to be emailing me about an appointment for tomorrow, but haven’t – but I have been invited to a concert and drinks, and to a reception by the mayor, and a city tour, and offered shiny public transport deals, so I guess I can go find them about the other stuff, like police registration and banks. My German appears to be coming back – at least, I can understand a good deal, but I don’t have the confidence to talk yet. My default foreign language is still Italian, so I need to crack that habit. Tomorrow I think I will be writing lists of conjugations and declensions, and pinning them up around the apartment to help me out.

It’s all very nice in my wee apartment. The internet works – clearly – which is A Good Thing. I have a pretty large kitchen and a large study bedroom, and a wee shower room. I have nowhere to hang stuff, but I will cope, as I have only about two things that need hanging anyway, and my coat is hanging off the end of the bookcase. I have more bookshelves than I can use, since I didn’t even bring a shelf’s worth with me, so the bookcase is being used for trousers and jumpers, and make up and camera gear. I also appear to have a TV with some kind of digibox, and a PS2 for DVD watching, plus there is a copy of a Tony Hawk game a drawer. And I’m here to WORK. yes.

See, dinky wee apartment. Oh, and I have a (somewhat small looking) double bed, so people who don’t mind snuggling can come and stay. Otherwise they may have to bring their own rollmat and sleeping bag. I am going to buy more pillows though.

Hello world!

Brain-stretching time again!

I’ve been thinking for aaages that I should probably get around to sorting myself out a website of my very own, rather than being scattered across the internet at various different places, to create some kind of portfolio-esque spot for my writing/blogging/photography, rather than having to say, in various different places, “Go here to see this.” Of course, this is going to mean a fairly major amount of tweaking to various set ups. Not to mention getting my head around an awful lot of new stuff. But this is good – it will make me more web savvy.

So I have the domain name, the webspace, and now I am fixing up wordpress, and moving everything over from blogger.  Slowly, but slowly, I’ll begin the process of building a website around it. If I can work out how, without spending major spondulicks that I don’t have on dreamweaver.

I be Done.

So, I finished my PhD thesis. Three weeks ago now, actually. It’s deeply odd – especially now I’ve stopped being quite so maniacally busy and actually get to sleep in and do nothing in the mornings. I’m trying really hard not to get lazy, but to get up and do stuff – even if it’s only reading through the really large pile of novels I want to read out in the garden with a pot of coffee.

I think I’m happy with it, the thesis I mean. It’s not quite the thesis I wanted to have written, I think; and it’s certainly not the thesis I proposed to write four years ago (which was going to cover constitutional evolution from Sulla downwards, in 80,000 words. ahahahahaa), but I think it should pass, and I’m mostly proud of it. I could have spent another month or two refining it, but you know what – I would have gone stark staring bonkers. So I let it go. I think by the time I viva I’ll be ready to go back in and really shiny it up. I *am* proud of the theory and I’m 99.99% sure it works – it’s just the expressing it in the discussion of the texts where the problems come, because there are two major-very-interlinking strands, and it all gets a bit complicated writing-wise.

Currently, I’m trying to get my brain enthused about new stuff, which is a bit harder. It’s had a tiny break now, so I’m started to get behind the idea of new projects and work. I had to go back into the office the day after I submitted the thesis to cook up a research proposal for a bunch of fellowship applications that are all coming up in the next month. I had to get it to the second supervisor so that he could read it in time to write me references before he gets caught up in moving to Rome. It was horrible. I sat at the desk and went, “Hi brain, I know you only just got rid of the three year epic project yesterday, but it is now time to kick in and come up with a new thing, in more than just broad brush strokes.” And then my brain fell out of my head and lay trembling on the desk. I got the ‘research completed so far’ bit drafted that day – a good thing, since I can’t do that now! My brain actually no longer wants to think about what it spent the last three years dealing with. At least till the end of November, when it’ll have to, in order to do the viva.

The applications are mostly done now – and for any others that come up I have a 2000 word block of recent work/proposal to edit as required (seriously, Cambridge colleges, you’re full of smart people and you couldn’t come up with a unified application form?). So I moved on to packing and moving and cleaning and painting and gardening, and all those things you have to do when you’re moving new lodgers into your house, and are trying to sort out what you need to take to Germany for the winter. And then I drove from Scotland to Cornwall.

Now I get to try that whole, ‘holiday at home’ thing. It’s been a while – since most holidays involve me running off across the planet with a duffel bag and a pile of camera gear. So I’m going to get back to that pile of novels now…

Of babies and life choices

I am just back from a weekend in Leeds visiting old university friend and her husband, and meeting their 10 week old boy. It was a very nice weekend, with catching up and the chance to read three novels, but frankly, having watched her parent wee George, I have come to the conclusion that I am clearly not unselfish enough to have children and actally raise them properly (as opposed to packing them up in a wicker basket and popping them on a bus across Africa with me).

I really do just like my lifestyle of being able to trot wherever far too much. If a suitable consenting adult would like to sign up to come along, I would be ok with that, but children aren’t so much consenting as dragged. I was listening to Fi talking about how she only wants to go back to work part-time, and would rather not go back to work at all than go back full time while he’s small and my head was just yelling, “I could never do that.” And I barely have a career (this PhD thing is supposed to help with that, though).

So I broke it to my parents on the phone that I thought they might not be getting grandkids. My father laughed and told me I’m clearly not maternal. My mother suggested I might change my mind sometime soon. Then amended her statement and removed the soon as she heard the raised eyebrow down the phone. I remainded ho hummingly non-commital and said, I thought if I had children I’d like to get them when they were two or three, and could be left in nursery for a few hours a day while I had a job/life. To which her response was, “Well, you have them, and we’ll look after them till they’re two or three, and then you can have them back.”

Not exactly what I was expecting…

Woe is Me

I am having a rubbish day. Pah. Rationally I know that I have three weeks left and that it will all be ok as long as I don’t just go to the Edinburgh Festivals for the next three weeks (let’s not talk about how tempting that is, ok). But it has been a fairly rubbish thesising afternoon. So I’m giving up till Monday.

The morning was ok. Yes tired and headachey and grouchy about working on Saturday morning (and can I please not get sick now, k. No being ill for the next three weeks), but I got through the revision of the Cicero chapter and I think the argument now works. I hope. Then I sent the thesis off to the secondary supervisor to give him enough time to get his comments back and do something with them (a bit of me thinks that still won’t happen) – and off course now I am absolutely bricking it. He’s not read anything of mine in ten months, and I’m not convinced he knows what my thesis is trying to be about any more. So it’s effectively a test run for my examiners looking at it, and OMG what if he hates it? So, mildly panicking, and I’ll probably reach the point of hiding under my desk when I next get an email from him.

After lunch it all went to hell – I decided I hated the writing in the Sallust chapter, and I couldn’t get past it to deal with the argument like I was meant to be doing. I was effectively pouting and stamping my foot at a 79,500 word document and it was mocking me with its very existence. So I’ve given up and made a list of all the things I still have to do to the thesis instead. And I *think* that if Christopher doesn’t hate it, I should be able to get it done in the three weeks.
Finish checking the Sallust argument on Monday. Write Abstract. Insert a couple of things into the Cicero chapter that I didn’t have the books for today. Proof for spelling and grammar. Final check that argument works. Format. Write embargo request and get supervisor to sign it. Print. Bind. Submit. Those last I can do in the couple of days in the fourth week from now, before running off to Leeds.

Plus, I have to cook up a 1500 word research proposal on a topic yet to be clearly defined, in time to have my supervisors write me references by the 11th of September for the first of upcoming bunch of JRF applications (I won’t get one, but I have to apply anyway, because academia is about masochism. Clearly).

Now I’m trying not to panic again. It’s. Going. To. Be. Fine. I like the introduction and first two chapters of my thesis. I really do. I just have to learn to like the rest.

The Thesis is Being Edited.

Nearly there. Only about five or six weeks to go. In fact, I shall be on a train to Cologne in exactly two months time, so it’d damn well better be done in five or six weeks!

No, it will be – I have a full draft, bar the conclusion, which I am going to construct once I have finished this particular once-over of the full draft – this being the once-over that tries to make the argument cohere across 70000 words of thesis. This is a particularly bitch-laden processes, as I attempt to work out if I am, in the core of the thesis, in fact arguing what I have said in my introduction that I will be arguing. I *think* I am – or at least, I’m getting there, shaping and pruning and signposting, and anyone who says that writing history isn’t subjective or guided by ideas about narrative is a Big Fat Liar who has clearly never written a doctoral thesis.

I am currently working stupid hours in the office, getting sore elbows leaning on the desk, trying to plug my way through it. I am pretty soon going to be on 12 hour days, just to allow me enough procrastination and donut eating time. In order to make life easier I have ordered the new laptop I was going to need before going to Cologne in advance, as mine is off to the wacky races pretty much. Also the excitment of NEW TOY! should be good to get me typing away like a fiend for at least three days. I am also listening to all the BBC Proms to keep me company, which, yay for listen again.

I shall soon have eradicated my remaining sanity cells, just so that you are all forewarned. Ta-ra for now.