Crafting a patchwork thesis

I have used crafting a patchwork to represent the process of crafting a thesis. In the main body of my thesis I write about how it wasn't sufficient for me to keep this just at the level of metaphor (although I have doen this as well). I had to actually do something concrete and produce a tangible artefact and I will be taking the completed item into my viva. However, I also made a movie from the photos I took as I went about crafting the patchwork and I've been in a quandry about whether and how to make this visible to others. Should I put it on to a DVD and enclose that with my thesis? Should I put it on a memory stick? I decided finally to put it here. This blog is also part of my efforts to make visible the parts of knowledge production that usually don't see the light of day and in that respect it provides a more suitable home. I also want to destabilise the notion that knowledge can be delineated by and contained within the covers of a thesis. My idea of the messy text means that it spills out all over the place so I also like the idea of part of my work floating around in cyberspace.

This is the patchwork I originally intended to sew and in fact did start to do - but went wrong. It is hard for me to put , if not my incompetence, then certainly my limited ability, on display but it is part of my enagement with Bev Skeggs' critique of academic 'cleverness' that I do. And of course in doing so I'm probably being too clever by half.

This is the design I finally went with. It may not seem that different but each element of the whole is saturated with the reasons for its inclusion. Changing one thing impacted on all the others. It took days before I was satisfied that this spoke for my intentions and was not just a compromise (although it is that as well).

As an aside, when I do a posting I am usually just writing for myself and for persons unknown (although I do of course know some of the people who have read, and commented on, what I have written). This time I am very conscious that some of the people who might read this are my examiners.

Fond Farewell

When I started this blog I wanted to explore the borders of public and private. It seemed like quite an adventure. However, what I have learned in the past days is that there is a serious side to this. As is my wont, I set out full of hope and excitement and in joyful expectation of the learning that lay ahead, little imagining the mischief some may make of this. I wish wisdom would join me as a travelling companion. Or even common sense. I was aware that 'putting myself out there' would expose me to critical scrutiny but I did not anticipate it would also expose me to personal scrutiny and attack. This has been salutary.

This blog was an academic production - even the posts about my life outside study and the academy were included because I felt they contributed to my project. It was a way of 'doing' reflexivity. I have looked again at my aims and I am pleased with them and I have learned a great deal by addressing them. I will certainly include an account in my thesis of my blog-keeping days and how it has expanded my understanding.

As you may have gathered by now I will no longer be keeping this blog. I did consider keeping it because, in the end, a bit of venom can actually act to fortify one's immune system. However, I did a posting yesterday and was aware that the happiness and joy I had felt in keeping it was no longer there. I actually closed it down for a day or so. But what I have decided is to leave it there in cyberspace so I can use it in my thesis - tinkering with it now and then to keep it 'active'. I'll close it down when my thesis is done.

None so deaf as those that will not hear

My good friend N (and she is a great friend), also doing a PhD at 50+, described doing conferences as 'talking at a load of bored academics who then grill you mercilessly'. I must say that has also been my experience. It has also been the case that I get questions that totally floor me because they seem to have nothing to do with what I was taking about. What I have come to realise is that most people bring their own frame of reference and will ask questions within that paradigm (I have tried to avoid this word but, darn it, it is spot on here). So for example, my work is situated within what can broadly be termed 'narrative research'. So I was once asked about what 'genre' I thought the stories I am writing belong to. Well that threw me coz they don't belong to any genre. I would be horrified to think I was shoe-horning these rich and wonderful and complex tales into some pre-ordained framework. I was even more horrified when it was suggested they were 'fairy stories'. When I got back from conference I spent days researching this 'genre' and could not comprehend what might have prompted this observation.

What this tells me is that when writing my thesis I will have to make sure I explain my view that stories are stories. I do think that we draw on prevailing cultural discourses to tell them and these in turn are dependent on even broader historical circumstances (or 'zeitgeist' if you will). We also tell the stories according to certain specific collaboratively generated but individually enacted scripts (Ivor Goodson gives the excellent example of the script of the 'scholarship boy'). Taking account of this turns life stories into life histories in my view. And this is a country mile away from saying this turns a story into an example of a particular 'genre'. How disrespectful to the storyteller.

Academic Time Travelling - part 2

I have never been one for wishing my life away - time goes too fast as it is. But right now I find myself wishing I could go forward in time. The 'circumstances' and 'situations' to which I sometimes refer in this blog are overwhelming me at the moment. At times I worry I'll never complete the PhD coz there is too much else to distract me. But I will. I find myself doing the same thing as when my mum died - shut everything else out and focus, focus, focus. So I wonder what kind of dried out old prune I'll be at the end of it?
On a much breezier note I've spent the day thinking about my quilt which will be the visual representation of my methodology. As well as a lot of visual work I've also been writing about whatI'm doing and writing so I get a clearer idea about what I'm doing. I haven't yet got as far as ordering any fabric but I'm getting close - then comes the sewing. That will be fun. But the more I do it the more I appreciate the similarities between doing the thesis and doing the quilt and although I sometimes rue the day I decided to do it, it becomes more and more apparent why I did and that following through on this will enrich my project no end.

Academic Time Travelling

I'm going back in time, to the 70's in England to be precise. Several things have converged to make this happen. Firstly not only am I 50 this year but loads of friends are too of course. I'm very proud of the fact that I still have friends from school and that we still get together from time to time. Now Belinda has sent out invitations for a 70s-themed party - 'pop on your platforms and boogie on down'. So I'm off shopping in cyberspace for a suitable outfit. I knew I should never have got rid of my yellow and purple smock dress and matching platforms. Secondly, at our last supervision meeting, Pat (Professor Sikes - the most amazing person and a wonderful teacher. I totally love her, have total respect and am totally in awe) suggested trying to call up the 70s zeitgeist (coz I'm talking about women who went to uni then and was looking for a way to 'contextualise' the stories they told). So I'll be talking to my friends, surfing the net (get me!), getting out the old photos, watching 70s films (like I ever stopped watching Saturday Night Fever) listening to 70s music (again - like I ever stopped). I already have a pretty good idea what the 70's zeitgeist was for me and putting that across is going to be difficult. I have no idea how to do it. Not least because it wasn't any one thing - it shifted and changed. But, thinking about it, what links the strikes and blackouts to punk, flares to feminism is that it was a time (perhaps - I'm thinking aloud here) when there was a thirst and a hunger for change without any clear idea of how to satisfy them. There was a restlessness about the 70s, a boredom too, and the co-existence of tired old ways with a kind of mad trying on of anything that seemed to break with those. There wasn't much focus to the 70's I don't think, but it was the decade I grew up in and it's going to be hard for me to stick with the zeitgeist and not slide down into nostalgia and sentiment.

Riding the Rollercoaster

In an earlier post I likened doing my PhD to riding on swings and roundabouts. This still holds and in fact, staying with the fairground theme, I would now like to add the rollercoaster to the mix. I have just finished the second of the two papers I committed to, on topics I knew very little about. When I agreed to do them I was obviously riding high. Doing them was that dizzy drop to the depths which is where I find myself now, although my previous two posts are clear expressions of the giddy exhilaration I felt after completing the first paper. Now I just feel a bit deflated, a bit flat. I have been told I don't sound myself.

I think the problem is that I have had to take myself away from my passions - my PhD research and my thesis. I've had three weeks in which I've had my mind on other things (although both papers have been useful to my project - they are not entirely unrelated). How will feel once I have to stop doing it altogether?

I am also concious of the clock ticking. My institution has introduced new rules and if you don't get your thesis in after 3 years there is a cost implication. I am trying to be calm and measured and to stop dwelling on the worst. Nor do I want to climb to the top of the rollercoaster - just want to find my feet on solid ground again.

Drain clearing

I had a really productive weekend, helped by the fact that I managed to sort out a lot of paperwork that had piled up. Even more signifcantly, I looked my financial situation in the eye, something I had been dreading. But having faced it square on, I realised things were not quite as bad as I thought, at least not in the long term. I had been telling myself that I didn't have time to sort these things out because I had too much work to do, but in fact I was bogged down with work because I had these worries on my mind and this was draining my energy. Now my drains are clear, all is flowing nicely again and all is well in my world. Lovely.