Tag: PhD

Acknowledgements

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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.  Read more...

: Academia
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I be Done.

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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.  Read more...

: Academia,Musings
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Woe is Me

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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.  Read more...

: Academia,Musings
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The Thesis is Being Edited.

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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.  Read more...

: Academia
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Is Back Home

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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.  Read more...

: Musings,Travel
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72,125

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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.

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: Academia
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Been here before…

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“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.  Read more...

: Academia,Musings
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