Swings and roundabouts

I haven't posted anything for a while because all my time has been taken up with stuggling with some of the ideas I've had about my thesis. It's been a bit of a business and seemed to take over my life. I don't recall doing anything for the past three weeks other than think things through, write them down, delete them and start again. However, on Monday I began a paper for a seminar that I had to do as part of the department's research training programme. I started by trying to give an overview and a bit of background to what I've been up to, which prompted me to return to my aims, objectives and research questions. In turn this prompted me to do a stock-taking of where I am. To cut a long story short, I then was able to clarify and crystallise some of what had been giving me sleepless nights. When I tried to find a metaphor for this process I came up with the title of this post. It's amazing how I seem to swing away from thoughts and concepts and theories only to return to them later. Or when it seems I have been aimlessly and unproductively going round in cirlcles I discover that I have been observing what is around me which has given me a richer perspective overall.

To put some flesh on these somewhat esoteric bones, I was writing and deleting paragraphs in my paper when it suddenly dawned on me that, actually, at one point ,I had known what I was aiming for. So, after returning to my original aims, I started writing in earnest, pulling out books I had read and returned to the shelf and notes I had made and then stuck in a drawer (being me, all alphabetically order and filed). I was still amending the paper when I delivered it on Thursday. Obviously it had its 'follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies' but it still made fundamental sense to me. I can now stop wondering what the heck I'm doing. And actually, I have always known. All that has happened is that I haven't stayed rooted to the spot. I've been on my travels but now I'm back with some of my old familiar ideas. I look forward to settling down with them and a cup of tea to negotiate how my adventures can be woven into our relationship.

What this means in practical terms is that the paper I'm doing for the DPR conference at the beginning of April suddenly seems do-able, although is miles off what the abstract said it would be. Hey ho.

Becoming a PhD student

I've been on a workshop! And I, yes the person who is still amazed she can switch a computer on and never learned how to work a video recorder (remember those?), have now made a series of short 'movies'. I have taken Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads' as my inspiration as I am obviously a Puritan at heart. I assure you, it was an aesthetic and methodological decision and not just coz I am rubbish at technology. In fact I have rather taken to this moviemaking malarky.

During the workshop we were asked to reflect on the critical incidents that have peppered our research journey, our becoming a PhD student. I also used it as an opportunity to do something for the blog. And it has certainly given me much food for thought on what I am prepared to reveal as well as raising certain ethical issues (of which more later). In short it dovetailed with all the issues I was hoping to work with by having a blog in the first place.

This is the first clip and I talk about how my journey began.