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Corrections submitted and now just waiting…… again.
20 Friday Mar 2015
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Corrections submitted and now just waiting…… again.
08 Sunday Mar 2015
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I’ve finally refound my enthusiasm for my PhD, for history, for the subjects I’ve been studying. I’ve spent the last few days reading, taking notes, exploring new ideas and re-writing sections of my thesis. It’s felt really good to finally have my enthusiasm back again and I hope that this will show in the corrections I have made in the past few days. Writing them has felt easier and happier than the ones I wrote a month or so ago and I hope that my new enthusiasm comes out.
03 Tuesday Mar 2015
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I’ve recently been on a camp with my Scout group. During this, I spent an hour waiting for a load of Scouts. This meant that I had some thinking time. I’ve recently spent a great deal of my time working on my corrections, which has included a lot of reading on the notion of ‘space’ and in particular ‘performative spaces’. During my wait I started to think about Facebook as a performative space for our Scout group. We use the page to post pictures of our activities, for both current parents and future parents. As a result, the facebook page can be seen as both a performative space in terms of marketing and recruitment, as well as for current parents.
In particular, I thought about the way we used facebook during the weekend. A couple of the leaders posted photos – a few of the boys cooking, eating, cycling, building a bridge – standard stuff for a Scout camp. But then I though about who had posted what – the (only) female leader had posted the pictures of cooking and eating and one of the male leaders posted the pictures of the activities. Now, this was entirely coincidence based on who had internet access and phone battery at the time, however, I can read into this a different gender related meanings.
1. Scouts demonstrate that there should be no gender roles – boys can, and do cook.
2. This, however, only extends to childhood. Sure, it’s fine for boys to cook, but not for men. By having a woman post images of cooking, the Scouts are showing that gender roles, whilst not applicable for children, are still relevant to adults.
When I started to think about the facebook page as a performative space, this gendering took on a different meaning. As leaders, we are aware that facebook is a public space and, as our group is public, we know that anyone can see it. Perhaps, subconsciously, the image that we are trying to present to parents and prospective parents, is that we, as leaders, believe that gender roles do in fact have a place in society. Now, this isn’t anything that we as leaders have actively sought to present, however, it is something that we need to bear in mind. We need to think carefully about how we are presenting ourselves and the image that we are giving to young people. If we consistently ensure that women are presenting images of domesticity on our facebook page and men are consistently presenting images of adventure, then we are contributing to notions of gender difference. Even though this is not our intentions – in fact we all participate in cooking and adventure regardless of gender – the way that we perform these roles in public (by certain genders posting certain activities on facebook) shows that we all have a way to go before we can consider ourselves free of gender expectations.
10 Tuesday Feb 2015
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Still working on the corrections. I am finding it hard, but it seems like a really silly option to not bother. Sure, I could not do them and then not finish, but that would be a massive waste of the last three years. So instead, I am keeping going. Plus, pretty climbing picture!
17 Saturday Jan 2015
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Post viva, facing a list of corrections is, if I’m honest not a great start to the year. Staring at the list of corrections feels a lot like staring at a list of failures, rather than the constructive criticism it is meant to be. It’s pretty easy to accept the typos and the obvious mistakes but some things are harder to take than others.
It’s pretty difficult to look through the list and still think that I am approaching the end of the PhD. To me the list seems like a huge wall that is getting in the way of reaching the finishing line. I’m not too sure how to break down the wall, but I have some time to do so. It’s tempting to give up, to ignore looking at the list of failures, but I think that would be a mistake. Right now, my job is to keep working on the corrections – or at the very least increase the amount of time I can look at the list of corrections until I get so angry I throw it across the room!
14 Friday Nov 2014
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I recently had a practice viva as part of our department’s doctoral seminar series. Sure, none of the people involved had read my thesis, and sure, none of them were really in my field (other than in the broad field of Jewish studies) but I actually found it really useful. Here are some of the top points I learnt from my experience;
20 Monday Oct 2014
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inSo, I have now submitted my PhD and I am waiting for my Viva. I have received the date for this – which is in a couple of months and I am completely panicked!
I have written my thesis, read it through, checked for spelling errors and now I am stuck in a place where I have very little to do in order to prepare for it. Sure, I can read my thesis through, become really familiar with my finished thesis, keep up-to-date with recent productions, but this really isn’t the ‘active’ behaviour I am used to. Throughout the PhD, if there was a problem, an issue, a milestone, or anything really, I was able to go out, read/write/work towards a solution. Instead now I just have to wait until I find out what the examiners think of my thesis, and ultimately no amount of preparation I can do between now and then will really change their mind. This is quite a change and one that is taking a bit of getting used to!
17 Friday Oct 2014
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inNow that the PhD has been submitted I feel like I’m at a bit of a loose end. All of the time I previously spent working – reading, writing, planning (or avoiding work) is now just time to be filled by something else. There is no three (ish) year old project that I can use to fill the time, so actually, I’m not really sure what to do now! I have offered to help out friends, to read their chapters, to complete questionnaires, I have spoken at seminars (an drunk the free wine) and started to read around my next project but it just doesn’t feel the same. I suppose it’s kind of like empty nest syndrome.
Here are some vaguely PhD related things I may consider doing now the actual PhD work is over
If I’m honest, I will probably just binge watch various series on Netflix and then maybe spend hours playing the Sims or similar. But it just isn’t the same when I’m not putting of PhD work!
26 Friday Sep 2014
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24 Wednesday Sep 2014
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So, here it is, the final wordle for the PhD. This, is the definitive guide to what my research is about which is a ‘little’ bit scary! Can’t believe I will be submitting in the next couple of days and that the three years of research is finally over.
I think I got the religious and the club element through perfectly, though perhaps I could have tried harder on the gender part. Oops! Oh well, ‘boys’ and ‘women’ are pretty big. Lets just hope the thesis did a better job of talking about gender than the wordle did!