Hannah Swithinbank

Acknowledgements

So, yesterday I had my viva. I’m still quite out of it, and haven’t processed the fact that it’s done, I’ve fixed my typos and am about to go pick up the bound copy and submit it. Meantime, I wanted to post up my acknowledgements…
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I owe a great deal more than gratitude to the many people who have supported my progress. My first thanks are due to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the University of St Andrews’ School of Classics, the Thomas Wiedemann Fund and the Classical Association for their financial support and to St Andrews’ School of Classics for their administrative support, without which this project could not have been carried out.

Secondly to my supervisor, Jill Harries, who has been a font of wisdom and support, my heartfelt thanks. I owe much to her ability to encourage her students to follow their odder ideas whilst still keeping them on the right track, and to her understanding of when they need to be pushed and when they should be sent home to put their feet up. I am also indebted to Christopher Smith for his years of support, and to Jason König for encouraging me to read Foucault in the first place.

The School of Classics has been my second home over the past four years. It has been a pleasure to be a part of such a convivial postgraduate community; my thanks to Alexandra Albury, Jeremy Armstrong, Adam Bunni, Ralph Covino, Victoria Crook, Carmen Cvetkovic, Katie East, Susanne Gatzemeier, Joe Howley, Sarah Jordan, Trevor Mahy, Gwynaeth McIntyre, Jamie McIntyre, Daniel Mintz, Sam Moss, Andrew Neill, Mark Philippo, Julietta Steinhauer, Estelle Strazdins, Amos van Die, Allison Weir, Paula Whiscombe, Evan Williamson, Katie Wilson, and Laurie Wilson for making it so. I would also like to thank the staff in Classics their part in making the School such a supportive and vibrant environment in which to work, particularly Ralph Anderson, Emma Buckley, Jon Coulston, Adrian Gratwick, Alisdair Gibson, Emily Greenwood, Stephen Halliwell, Jon Hesk, Harry Hine, Dan Hogg, Sian Lewis, Alex Long, Rebecca Sweetman and Greg Woolf. Beyond the School I am grateful for the stimulating conversation and wide range of ideas provided by Michael Bentley and Anthony F. Lang, and by the members of Theoria, notably Sarah Dillon, Bettina Bildhauer, Christina Chandler Andrews, James A. Andrews, Ben Davies and James Stedman. I would also like to express my gratitude to Henriette van der Blom, Alison Rosenblitt, Malcolm Schofield and Kathryn Welch for their ideas about my work, and to my examiners, Roger Rees and Jonathan Prag.

Gratitude, affection, and a lifetime supply of cookies must go to my wonderful friends who have helped to keep me, if not exactly sane at least tolerably well balanced: Jessica Armstrong, Daniel Bigler, Naomi Brown, Fiona Byrne, Jenni Caldwell, Eleanor Carleton, James Davies, Katherine Davis, Emma Dollard, Krisz Echegoyan, Lisa Evans, Katherine Fletcher, Caroline Friggens, Danielle Gera, Laurence Goodwin, Melanie Hartley, Andy J, Robert Lamont, Zoe Lee, Tom Leppard, Naomi and Malcolm McCloud, Claire Newdick, Fiona Raffell, Hannah Stewart, George Swithinbank, Elizabeth Thomas, Pauline Tucknott, and Stacy Whitmore.

Finally, to my second families at Eden Fellowship and Hayle Methodist, and to my parents, for all their love and support, no thanks can ever be enough.

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…

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.

Is Back Home

Sitting in front of the tennis watching Federer and ignoring Robson (who isn’t doing herself any harm with her performance, even if she does go down to Hantuchova). I have seventy thousand photos to process still, but that’ll happen (slowly), and seventy thousand words to edit. I have a print out of the thesis-so-far and am wielding the pink muji pen over it to try and sort out the two problem chapters to the soothing sounds of tennis balls being hit too and fro (and this is why I won’t be watching much women’s tennis – the grunting, it is NOT soothing).

Tanzania ended in a Battle Royale with Kenedy (albeit with less blood) which we finally won. Fortunately, Zanzibar is such that it’s appeal can survive even his awfulness in the memory. Dar not so much – but then there is so little to do, and it’s horribly humid, so it’s not so appealing. We spent our last day on the Msasani Peninsula relaxing at Sea Cliff Village. I got very excited because there was a Spur, which I know from holidays in South Africa, and so we ate amazing steak, and waffles and ice cream, whcih meant there was no room for plane food at all, fortunately.

‘Tis graduation this week, so I’m trying to pack in the work between catching up with the boys who have come back from New Zealand, the US and Cambridge for it. It’s quite like old times, bizarrely, except now Gwyn and I are hard at work in the office (at Jamie and Jeremy’s old desks), and we can make them tea monkey for us. So it’s all go, and I just decided to add to my busy by booking some Edinburgh tickets for the summer. I’m off to see Moon on Tuesday, and Adventureland on Friday at the Film Festival. Now I have tickets for Neil Gaiman and for Gerald Scarfe for the Book Festival, and the Early Edition on the Fringe – that’s my August treat to myself, as I’ll be desperately wrapping up the thesis.

72,125

That is how many words are currently in the “Thesis Text” document on my computer. All the thesis bar the conclusion is now drafted. This is deeply, deeply, exciting to me. Yes, I have to do a good amount of editing on two chapters, and make sure that I my argument says what I want it to say without deviation, repetition or hesitation. And yes, I have to pick up some bibliography and throw it at the footnotes so that I can fill the ‘learned’ criterion, as well as the ‘orginal’ one. But this is all editing. I have very few New Words to write. It’s actually delicious.

And so I have beer. I have Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. And I have about 500 photos from Rome still to edit… But I like this plan for the evening.

Been here before…

“Dear Hannah
Due to unforeseen circumstances, I must forward [the BP's] apologies as he is no longer available on Wednesday 8 October to meet with you.Would you be free on Thursday 16 October at 4.30?”

1. He can appologise for himself if he wants. He’s a grown up.
2. Unforseen circumstances? As far as I’m aware there has been no major explosion in any university building – it’s a small town, I would have heard it. Are the university administration negotiating a bailout package for a failing back (probably not a good idea, really)? Is the world going to cease spinning on its access if one man bails on an admin meeting for 30 minutes to go to a supervision meeting. If it’s a real emergency he should be bailing on today’s plans – not Wednesday’s.
3. A meeting that was scheduled in MAY. Frankly, I’m a little pissed. That should mark his diary as unavailable for anything other than the university falling down. This is a very much forseen circumstance. And it’s HALF AN HOUR. On my more cynical days I accept that the university doesn’t really believe in educating so much as processing students, but you’d think they could fake it.
4. Yes I am free then, but I would mind. Kthx.

Seriously, I’m not a demanding student. I don’t run round after him going ‘read this, read this, sign this, write this reference NOW bitch.’ I have scheduled meetings. I send him work well in advance, so that he can look over it in time. I know that if I want references or introductions I need to plan ahead. I would like very much not to be considered as a moveable monkey.