On Balance (or off it)

This week will be the first week since the start of June that I've been able to divide my time equally between my PhD and all the other commitments I've racked up. And to be frank, the lack of balance has been throwing me off recently.

This isn't really a complaint: I've done amazing things since the start of June that I never would have thought would be achievable in the next three years, let alone within four weeks. (If you're wondering how the Aspire conference went - it was amazing. I've actually not blogged about it yet because I want to do it justice.) But the lack of balance has been worrying me: suddenly my PhD seemed a remote idea; something quaint and loose and not pressing; something removed from my everyday life.

As a part-time PhD student and sufferer of imposter syndrome (you too? Wow! Great! We should talk.) this had been really worrying me over the last two weeks. If I can go a month doing barely any PhD work and not really minding, does that mean I care enough? Should I even be doing this? Who was I kidding, I'm not made for PhDing - I love public speaking and coaching and innovation...maybe this is a sign. Maybe I'm wasting my time!

And so on.

But, I also know that I need to be forgiving. I need to make the same allowances of myself that I do of everyone else. And I need to remember that having other elements to your identity, to your life, doesn't invalidate your identity as a researcher. (Even if the consistent noise on twitter about wordcounts and editing progress make me think every other PhD student doesn't sleep.) This isn't because I'm a special snowflake: even the most dedicated stay-in-the-lab-till-midnight PhD student is more than just that.

I suppose that for a part-timer, you have to prioritise all those other bits at the very least because otherwise you don't have money for food. But the last few weeks have done more than that: rather than seeing my enthusiasm for other times as a weakness, I'm trying to remind myself that I LOVE enthusiasm. I love it in others, and I love it in myself. And having more of that, for more things, surely can't be bad?

And speaking of enthusiasm, guess what?

I can't WAIT to get back to research later this week. 

On Panels

Last week, I was lucky enough to be invited to speak on a panel as a student panellist.  Having seen the verbal mauling that can happen at academic panels, I was nervous (read: terrified). But I said yes: I need to get over this fear, and what amazing opportunity to do it.

I was lucky - the panellists were supportive, the audience posed interesting questions, and I was able to answer them! Here are a few things I learned from my first ever panel.

1. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

With other types of public speaking, I actually try to go in feeling that I don't know everything. This gives me wiggle room, so I can respond to the people in the room rather than reading off my script. But normally when you do public speaking (a talk, a training session, a briefing) you control the content; a panel is audience-led.

Fearing the hostile questions, I read. A lot. I summarised articles for myself, wrote down key facts. This meant I was able to go in with bullet points of things that I wanted to mention in response to the areas of discussion. If anything, I wish I'd prepared more. When asked to introduce myself, I didn't have a pithy, witty summary like the other panellists. And a few questions threw me off.

2. Meet the panellists (and the chair) before the start of the panel.

As I mentioned, the other panellists were great. I met them briefly before we went on and had a quick chat. This helped me remember names and made me feel more comfortable going on to the stage. It meant I had a feel for who I could bounce off in the discussion. (Which it turns out is great if you're a bit stuck for an answer!)

But since the panel was right at the start of the conference, we didn't have much time beyond introductions. Given more notice, and more time, I think I would make sure I had longer to get to know people.

3. You're allowed to make jokes.

I am a chronic wise-cracker.  I am perfectly capable of speaking in public without making a joke, or a wry comment, or a witty riposte, or a humorous barb....but I hate it.  So, going into a very formal industry panel, I was desperately trying not to be light hearted.

Of course, I cracked. Trying to be po-faced just made me more nervous: it was another thing to trip up on. It isn't anything like me. And, really? It was fine. A few people laughed (ok, I got a chuckle or two). But, the point is that in actually acting like myself, I was much more relaxed. Of course, I wasn't doing a stand up set, or being inappropriate. But just that touch of levity was well-received (I think) and more to the point: stopped me freaking out.

4. Be prepared for people to introduce themselves.

This was the most pleasant surprise of all. I expected that I'd get up, say my bit and get on with my day. But throughout the day, people were introducing themselves, commenting on the panel and picking up on some of the discussions we'd been having.

For someone like me who hates small talk, this was perfect. It was a great way to meet lots of people, to talk with them about something consequential, and then introduce ourselves. And more than that: people were really sincere in taking an interest in what I'd said: that was incredibly heartening.

5. It's like riding a rollercoaster.

When I've been on rollercoasters, I think it's a great idea. I get all excited. I queue for ages. I get in my seat. And as soon as the safety gear comes down, something in me changes. "Why I am I doing this? This is terrifying. This is really happening. Oh god, we're moving. Oh Christ, we're all going to die. This is awful it's too late to get off. Oh god, we're at the top, oh no, oh no oh - WOOOOOOHEAYEAHEYEAYH!!!! Oh. Is it over? Oh.......LET'S GO AGAIN!!!"

The same was true of the panel. First comes excitement. Then comes blind panic. Then comes adrenaline-fuelled excitement.  And, much like my first go on a roller coaster, my first experience of a panel has taught me that you just have to ride it out.

Trailblazing Women 2015

(Isn't it just the way? Not long after I resolve to start posting on a weekly basis, things get busy and I get behind. It’s not strictly PhD-related, but I wanted to use this post to talk about a conference I’m attending soon. I should be back to PhD-relating things soon.)

The Aspire Foundation aims to create a world ‘where women and girls are empowered and authentic leaders in both the developing and developed world for the sake of equality, justice, balance and success.’ They’ve worked with over 1 million women since they were founded by Sam Collins in 2001: as part of their aim to reach even more women, they’re running a two-day Trailblazing Leadership event. Which I am absolutely honoured to have managed to secure a scholarship for.

At this point I should give a shout out to Karen, my former colleague (hi!). Without her insistent encouragement, I would never have heard of Aspire. Last year, she suggested I attend an Aspire webinar. I was starting to get cold feet about the prospect of quitting my job, moving across the country, taking on 6 years of self-funded study and then having no guarantee of security afterwards. (Can you blame me?) I think the webinar was ‘Strategic You 2015.’ The aim was to discuss what goals you had in mind for the year ahead, how to implement them and how to balance them. That webinar really helped me: by the time that hour was up, I felt this quiet, diamond-hard certainty that I was ready to take this chance.

Between then and now, I’ve learned a little more about academia. And I wasn’t comfortable with everything I learnt. Some of that diamond-hard certainty was being undercut by the feeling I’m getting (at this early stage) that academia isn’t for people like me. 

So, when I got an email about the ‘Trailblazing Leadership’ event in March, I naturally thought “that sounds great, but it isn’t for me.” I don’t think of myself as a leader. And I certainly didn’t have enough money to fund my attendance. But the more I read about the conference, the more it seemed to me that people like me are exactly the sort of people who don’t have a voice in academia. And when I heard that Aspire were offering scholarships, I felt that same diamond-hard certainty that I should at least apply.  So I sent an email. I was invited to apply. And I did.

I applied because I’ve had female mentors for most of my academic career. These people took an interest in me. They challenged me. They held me to account. My personal and intellectual development has been thanks to them. The only problem is that there seem to be fewer and fewer women available to lead, or to mentor. I’m very lucky that I like and respect my supervisors immensely, but academia doesn’t encourage a culture of mentoring outside of that supervisory relationships. If I look to my peers (fellow PhD students) we’re all competing for finite resources: funding, conference papers, jobs. And I don’t think that this intense culture of peer competition and lack of mentoring makes for happier graduate students, better researchers, or improved academics. In fact, I feel the opposite is true.

I applied because the whole thing about this PhD thing is that I’d quite like to be an academic. (I know, I know. It’s unlikely. But I could post a whole other post about my issues with that. So humour me for now.) So, I’d like to be an academic. Which means I’m effectively training for a career that favours people who aren’t like me.  Peer reviewers will assume my work is biased because I'm a woman. So, this means that when I am trying to publish and get a permanent job I'm less likely to get a permanent, full-time contract than a male. And if I do have children, I’ll be seen as less productive than my male colleagues: in fact, they’ll gain a net benefit from having kids.

 

I applied because this is all depressing and awful. But it isn’t just a broad political point. For me, it’s also intensely personal: my husband is an academic. And he’s a brilliant academic. (Again, I could write an entire post singing his praises but I’ll save that.) He’s an innovative, supportive, dedicated teacher. He’s a flexible, incisive researcher. He’s an engaging, personable presenter. All of these things mean that – as far as I’m concerned – he should have all the accolades in the world. But he should get them because of his qualities, not because of his gender. But as things stand, no matter how much we support each other, he is likely to do better because of something he can’t control.

And that’s not fair. So I applied. 
And I was accepted.

And now I’m nervous! At first, it was about what to wear (business casual? Conference wear? What are either of those things? I can’t afford to buy new clothes!! Will people know if I wear second hand stuff? What do I do??)  Luckily, Aspire have clarified that there’s no formal dress code, smart casual is fine. 

 So now I have to be nervous about the usual things. Like the fact that I’m awful at remembering names, and there are no name tags. Like the fact that when I get nervous I talk a lot. And a lot of it’s nonsense. But I’m also nervous about something specific to this conference: all these women are contributing amazing things to the world. And me? I’m contributing a potential thesis that I don’t have a research question for. What can I contribute?

I hope to find out that answer to that question at this conference. And I’d love to let you know how it goes, if you’re interested.

Photo credit.

The Dreaded Question

Right now, there is one question that I really struggle to answer. Every time someone asks, my mind goes blank. So far, I've babbled for a bit until they get bored. But I still dread the simple question

So what is your PhD actually about?

I dread this question because, at this early stage, I don't really know. I don't have an abstract, an argument or any findings whatsoever. But I can tell you what motivated me to do this project.

I am really interested in gender, and how it's taught and how it's performed. (SPOILER - I've been a femininst since before I knew what the word was.) By the time I found out what the word was and what it meant, I was an awkward teenager who felt awful because she wasn't very 'good' at being a woman. So a lot of my early self-centred feminist thought was about what being 'good' at being a woman meant. And while my horizons have broadened since then, I'm still interested in what it means to 'do' gender, for men and for women. (If this is sounding like a poorly-phrased echo of Judith Butler, that's probably because it is.)

More importantly, I'm interested in how people learn to 'do' gender - modern sources are easy to pinpoint and analyse because there are so many (film, television, school, parents, magazines, blogs, music, music videos, peers, adverts). So I wanted to know more about the sources that were available to late medieval people.

I am really interested in 'popular' culture and what 'normal' people were doing. Specifically, I'm interested in the overlap in consumption between 'high' and 'low' culture. Where we see several sources grouped together (as in household books), there are all sorts of texts thrown in there. How did people navigate them? Did they read in different modes for different texts? If similar ideas/concepts are contained in different types of texts, how does the presentation of these ideas differ? How did their response vary depending on which exact member of the household they were?

Again, this stems from my own interests today - I don't exclusively consume 'high' culture: I consume plenty of 'popular' culture too. (Although if watching RuPaul's Drag race is wrong, I don't want to be right.) 

Based on those two things, I am looking at a medieval miscellany aka. household book - Oxford Bodleian Library MS Codex Ashmole 61. It's a collection of 41 texts housed in a pretty unfancy manuscript. There aren't any illuminations, just a few choice illustrations of shields, flowers, and a grinning fish. No, seriously. The breadth and number of texts means that there is a lot of scope for reasearch. 

This brings up the second, lesser Dreaded Question: can this project contribute to scholarly knowledge? Well, yes. I think. Admittedly, a fair bit has been written about some of the texts in the MS, mainly the romances (The Erle of Tolous, Lybaeus Desconus) and the conduct texts. (How the Good Wife Taught Her Daughter and How the Wise Man Taught His Son). So these aren't texts that have been totally overlooked by scholarship.

But there are two main ways that I think this PhD could contribue. Firstly, I'll be looking at some of the more studied texts in this specific context. There are quite significant varitions between some of the version in Codex Ashmole 61 and elsewhere. That'll be interesting, right? Secondly, not much work has been done on this manuscript as a whole: apart from one PhD thesis and two resulting articles from the mid nineties, I can't find anyone else who has written about this manuscript. 

So, if I were to offer you an 'elevator pitch' now, it would probably run as follows:

My PhD explores the reception and audience of Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61. By studying the contents of this household book, I hope to develop our understanding of how gender identities were formed, enforced, and negotiated in the late medieval period.

The First Three Months

Words written: 8,500
Supervisions attended: 2
Cakes baked: 4

I can't believe that it's been just over three months since I started this PhD. The transition has been less dramatic than I thought it would be, although I have learned a lot over the last few weeks. And there's still a lot more to get adjust to. I'm sure in three months time, I'll look back on myself now and not quite be able to believe that I knew so little.

Hopefully, these recaps will give me some perspective, as well as a prompt to set (and reflect on) short term-goals.

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I think part of the reason that this transition has been less difficult than I thought it might be is because I've started developing routines. Some of these relate to my PhD work: for example, I always arrive at the workroom around 8.30 because I know this is when I do my best work. Some are more about making sure I take time away from the PhD. Regular lunch dates and weekly swimming sessions don't take me away from the PhD for that long, but they help me keep things in perspective. Finally, some routines are just as a consequence of moving house and our routines changing: with open kitchen living room, the Doctor and I hang out much more when we're making/washing up dinner. 

I've also made a conscious decision to try my best to attend as many relevant conferences and research seminars as I can. Many people I've spoken to say that they wish they hadn't waited until so late in their PhD to start going to these sorts of events. For me, it isn't so much about networking. (I don't find these events that sociable - is it just me?) It's more about seeing how other people approach and disseminate their research. I figure that once I have any research of my own, I'll know more about how to talk about it.

The only problem I've found so far is that between these events and work commitments, I can sometimes be quite far away from the actual research thing. I'm really excited for a one-day conference this Saturday, but coming after two weeks of lots of travel and very little time in the workroom, I'm a bit anxious that I haven't actually done any research in a while. I think I still need to plan my time better.

The other thing I've tried hard to do is to write. A lot. I get very anxious about putting work out there, and I don't ever want to be in a position where I'm sitting down to start writing my first draft. I figure if I write as I go, I can cannibalise these little snippets when I start writing properly.  Of course, part of my commitment to writing is this blog. Which I am still confused about. I don't know whether I just want to focus on my research, or on this PhD process more broadly. I don't know who the audience is. I don't know who would even care to read it. I don't know how to find the other first year PhD students who might find any of this relevant. Thoughts would be very welcome! At the moment, I'm just intending to keep on doing it and see where it goes. But that isn't a particularly long-term plan.

Goals for the Next Three Months

Reading

• Finish reading my primary texts.

Writing

• Draft a paper proposal for Gender and Medieval Studies.
• Continue to blog once a week.
• Write a blog post that gets a comment.

Events

• Sign up for Parenthood and Childhood in the Middle Ages.

How to Make Every Session useful

Picture the scene.

You're at a mandatory training session. Or a conference session that isn't in your area. Or a research seminar. 

 

You sit down. You get ready to take notes. Your speaker[s] welcome everyone. And they start. And maybe after 10 minutes, maybe after 15, you think 'oh god: this session is irrelevant....and I'm stuck here until it finishes.'

It happens. It may be that the session doesn't match your interests. Or that you don't gel with the speaker's presentation style. Or maybe you're already familiar with the topic. In any case, you can't really leave. As I see it, you've got three options:

1) Sit there, silently fuming at this poor speaker, and hating anyone who asks a question because they're prolonging the agony.

2) Ignore the speaker. Browse the internet, check twitter, send emails. Try not to feel guilty when the speaker catches your eye.

OR

3) Focus on making the session useful for you.

So, before I adopt 1) or 2) and make the speaker very uncomfortable, I try 3). Here's how.

Wait Before you Check-Out

If a session starts off with information you already know, or on a topic you aren't that interested in, it's tempting to disengage and save yourself the trouble. But, if you've given papers, or delivered sessions yourself, ask yourself some questions. Do you always introduce your key points at the start of every session? Every time? Do you sometimes take a while to warm up when you start a session? Perhaps days where you don't feel up for it? Do you sometimes remember a relevant point when you're in mid-flow and add it in?

From experience, I know that the best part of session I've delivered are very seldom the first 5-10 minutes. I know that I'm guilty of all of the above. Because of this, I try to give the speaker the benefit of the doubt. And very often, there is at least one nugget of useful, thought-provking information somewhere in there. 

Take Part!

This is particularly useful for sessions where you already have quite a lot of knowledge in the area. Retention rates are highest when individuals are asked to teach someone else what they've learned. If the session invites small group discussion, don't hang back. Share your knowledge with the people you're talking with, ask them questions.

A while back, I went on a mandatory training session which replicated training I'd had elsewhere. Although I went in sceptical, when we got to group discussions, the people in group actually challenged me on something. And I realised I didn't know the answer. Apart from being humbled by this, it challenged me to go and read up on that particular area, and fill the gaps in my knowledge.

Don't Focus on What They're Saying...

...focus on how they're saying it. If you're a PhD student, the odds are you'll one day be giving a conference paper, or delivering a lecture, or a seminar. Every example of public speaking is one you can learn from, and this session is no exemption. Is the speaker [over]using power point? How do they introduce their points? Do they look and sound confident? Why? How are they providing the right background without boring those in the know? Are they using notes? Flashcards? Are they winging it?

At my first ever conference, I went to a session that was completely irrelevant to my research. But the person giving it had the most natural, authentic and knowledgeable manner I'd ever seen. I spent the entire 20 minutes taking notes on how they did it. I still refer back to my notes if I'm presenting a lot of complex information. 

Not every session you ever go to is going to be relevant. But since I started trying to engage with every session I attend, I spend a lot less time feeling grumpy and resentful. 

How about you: have you been to any sessions that turned out to be surprisingly useful?

On Going the Hard Way

Since starting my PhD, I’ve read a lot about what it takes to make it through. One of the most common pieces of advice is that you have to be willing to fail. Repeatedly, painfully, and constructively.

No-one says you should court failure; rather, you shouldn’t be surprised when it creeps up on you. Some people would argue that the way I’m doing this PhD is not just courting failure, but outright chasing it down. You see, friends, I have to confess: I am an unfunded PhD student. I am an unfunded part-time PhD student. I am an unfunded part-time PhD student who took a few years out of HE.

And while I’m glad I got those secrets out, I’ve got another big one: for me, none of those things are outright negatives. In fact, they’re positives. I know I’m flying in the face of all received wisdom here, but bear with me for a minute.

1) I’m unfunded. This means huge financial headaches (try saving several hundred pounds a month for the next few months and you’ll understand.) However, it means that if something does go wrong, if I do have to drop out, or suspend: I answer only to myself. My worry about the state of my funding won’t stop me leaving if this PhD thing doesn’t work out.

2) I’m part-time. More importantly, I’m part-time because I need to work to pay my fees. Again, this presents more financial challenges, and can cause time management issues. But, all those ‘transferable skills’ PhD students are supposed to be developing? I’m developing them right now. And those horrible periods when your PhD engulfs your life and you find yourself crying onto your keyboard at 3am on a Thursday morning because you just can’t see the end of it? 

Well, I can’t do that. My PhD can’t dominate my life because two and half days a week, I need to be focused on something else. A few days ‘off’ from my PhD means that I come back refreshed every week, ready for more.

3) I took a few years out. My MA was intense. By the end of it, I was exhausted and entirely doubtful of my ability (and my desire) to do a PhD. So I moved in with my boyfriend, and I got a third sector job that was exciting and frustrating and challenging and pushed me to develop professionally. But those two years away made me realise that this PhD is what I really want to do. I know that certainty isn't permanent, and that it won't get me through every hard moment. But, when it gets tough (and it will), I will know that I am doing this PhD because I want to, not because I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

So, I may be chasing down failure by starting off this way. But, for me, I actually hoping I’m staving it off as best as I can.  And I’d be fascinated to know if anyone else is taking a ‘non-traditional’ PhD route, and how you’ve found it.

Photo credit.