Settling down to producing a good proof

One of the oddities of this summer is that sometimes to mark the end of a day I am having a gin and tonic. Now do not get me wrong, the surprise is not me having a long slow slightly alcoholic drink in summer; it is that it is a gin and tonic. My usual preference is for Whisky and Ginger, but this year that feels just too strong a flavour set, so a Gin and Tonic it is.  Tonight's is to mark the fact that I have finished the last part of my second draft. I have gone back through my conclusion and sent off a second draft to my supervisor. I am pretty sure that this version is fine. The changes were actually quite small just really connecting my conclusion back to the literature I have used in the introduction. I considered for a while putting in something by my suggested examiner but decided that that is probably better off in the relevant chapter.

So this evening I have spent time checking what pieces I had in proof read form. This is not simple as some chapters have been several times in different forms to my proof readers. Indeed at least one chapter got pulled out of second draft and restructured pretty late on. I had to email my proof readers to see if they had done a couple of chapters that I could not find. However next week I start the process of proof reading and compiling the whole document! I will start with the one chapter that still needs a small amount of structural editing. I wrote stuff that needed to go into it in my initial conclusion instead of what needed to be in the conclusion.

Family wise, we are hoping Dad will come out of hospital on Monday or Tuesday. If that is the case my sister is still talking of bringing the kids over on Tuesday for the annual swim and Chinese. Then deal with anything that needs dealing with in the evening. I think I will also go over on Thursday, fetch anything needed from my parents house and then go and see them. So there is plenty to keep me out of trouble.

Apart from that this week I have to pull together all the bits and pieces dealing with that and hopefully next weekend I can get through that and maybe start on the next one as well. 

Now to put the whole thing together

Train coming into University Station

This was a strange supervision in someways. Not least because this month I was half expecting with the struggle that was going on over previous weeks for my thesis to be delayed again. I really had only had the last weekend as solid writing and though I had played with the introduction in the first few weeks and I had done some reading while sitting my Mum. (For those that do not know there is more info in my previous blog post). So I did not feel as if I had got time to work on it. Indeed unlike last month when I spent a couple of partial weekends not drafting my conclusion, I sat down yesterday with the idea that I had to get something down and ended up with a half way decent draft. It needs some more connecting with the literature which will connect it back to the introduction and the rest of the thesis.

That means several things. Firstly I need to put in my notice to submit in the next few days giving my submission date as 31st October. Secondly I have to pull the full thesis together, go through doing all the proof reading, minor editing and creating the bibliography, page numbering, add the appendices etc. It has to be with my supervisor by 16th September. Finally one more supervision in October to have a full review of the thesis. In other words if life does not bowl me another curved ball everything is in order for submitting in the middle of the autumn much to my surprise.

However I am fighting a battle with University of Birmingham administration to get registered for next year. You would think that Universities would be eager to take money and get students enrolled but at present they will not even investigate why I can not enrol. This means that come September they start hassling me to do things when it is them who have been the delay.

Not to have a proper grump, the rennovations at Birmingham New Street are a total pain at present. To get home I had to:

1. Come up from platform 8
2. Go through two ticket barriers to get to WH Smith
3. Go to where the lift to platform 12 was only to find it out of order
4. Walk back through both ticket barriers
5. Go back down to platform 12 and take the steps down

On the way down I saw a disabled person on crutches struggling to get up to street level. To put it mildly I was not impressed.

Anyway despite the ridiculous amount of hassle this month it looks as if everything is still on line for an October submission.

Family Emergence slows progress

Last weekend I was really looking forward to this weekend and at last a chance to sit down and work solidly on my thesis. That hope lasted until Tuesday and on the evening I got a phone call from my sister to say Dad had collapse while out with friends and she was at my parents' home waiting for a taxi to bring my Mum home. It was agreed she would look after Mum who has dementia that night and I would take over the next day. Whereas I am single and therefore with compassionate leave from work, my sister has a two children and a husband working both for a church and as the book keeper for her husband who is self employed.

So for the last five days my role has been a main carer for my mother. This is not made any easier by the fact that Dad is in hospital 43 miles away, and though Google says it is 48 mins I would say it is more than an hour when dealing with the real traffic. Given that my sister travels for half an hour before starting that journey and on the route calculator from my home to the hospital is the furthest of the three this is not easy. There is also a limit to the amount of compassionate leave I can take.

Unfortunately my father has unrealistic expectations of what I can do. He seems to think I can work, do my thesis and look after Mum 24/7 and also get mum to see him every day. If I  walked out mum would immediately be put in a home with no choice indeed her doctor is not really happy with me doing this as interim. My sister on the other hand has been a brick.

I have done some reading and even a bit of writing but it is hard to do much concentrated as I am working into the times when Mum does not need my immediate attention. So progress has slowed right down although I am aware that the reading will mean that I better versed that I would have been in British Congregational studies. However even that is not getting much attention. Oh the photo was taken at Dunahm Massey today when I took Mum out to take her mind off things. Unfortunately travel is a very good way of allowing her to forget. Actually it does the worse thing it can for Mum's memory which is ask her to sit quiet for a while.  Train travel at least allows her to interact with me or whoever is travelling with her. If she is active or interacting it seems to keep her memory working.

Actually if you had asked before this who would do the organising and who the hands on care for my Mum I would have guessed that it would be better the other way around but actually Mum seems to be calmer with me and my sister is a whizz at dealing with people in authority and finding out what we need to know such as exactly which ward in which hospital Dad is in.

Sabbactical

This plant is growing at the top of a wall not too far away from here. The wall is about five feet tall! I am not sure where it is getting its nourishment from but it is there. Writing my thesis was beginning to feel like this plant. This blog has been more scanty of recent week. One reason for this is actually I have not been making the progress as I was before. There was very good reason for this, I was not getting the time.

Now I have cut back drastically on a lot of things in life in order to make time for thesis. I have not been going out to events, I have not seen my parents for months and I have not planned a holiday. It simply was not enough.

There are three big commitments in my life at present and in order of priority for attention these are thesis, work and church. I should explain I work 80% in a job that could easily be 100% and if I am ill the work still needs doing and the only one who can do that work is me. When I started my PhD the job actually did fit into four days a week, however two to three years ago that changed. I am working flat out and not keeping all the balls in the air. On Monday I have to go into work and explain why I have taken a nine month break from a project. Simply no time gov honest!

So with thesis not going as quickly as I liked and work being demanding, I found that the expectation that I would be getting more and more involved in church a difficult situation to negotiate. It would work like this, something quite small would be asked of me but then as I explored the ramifications the job would get bigger and bigger. Some of this was deliberate hiding of implications, some of this was my personality. If I am involved in doing something I like to see it done well. Actually it felt to me at times as if people were either plotting to find ways to get me more involved or were using me as a default person to ask to do things.

With my job I edit my thesis at weekends, I find that I can read during the week but I do not have the concentration to do editing. Editing is not easy and involves holding lots of strands together and not dropping any. If you think writing a PhD is just writing three masters thesis then you have got the wrong end of the stick. Not only do you have the practical work of three theses, you also have to integrate them together and find something new to say that runs through all three.

I suspect there is actually no shortage of new ideas in my thesis but it has felt at times as if I was trying to corral at least semi-wild horses. The result is that at this stage of my thesis I need coherent times. I can not just switch onto thesis for a hour or two in an evening and do worthwhile work. If I attend worship on a Sunday that really means sitting down at around 4pm to my thesis if at all, days like today when I was table elder take me longer to settle after church. Basically a day lost and when I have only 2.5 days anyway a day is heck of a lot to loose and to loose that regularly (one for five out of the last six is adding up and the sixth was taken with work). If you wonder why 2.5 then half a day goes with shopping and doing household chores.

Basically I got to the point where the time I had for my thesis was not allowing me to make progress.  Something had to give and the only thing that I could give that would allow the time was church. I was clearly not managing me involvement with church in a way that would enable me to finish my thesis. Seeming as the trying to keep a low level involvement going failed. I could not keep the commitment level low enough. The only other option is to opt out completely. There were people who helped me manage my commitment well, there were people who did not. Some of my keeping going so long was the loyalty to the people who were good at not pushing boundaries.

This was actually decided almost two weeks ago, but there was a communion service and only two active elders available for it, apart from me. To do communion in the style my congregation likes we need eight. Therefore dropping out at short notice seemed unfair especially as I was Table Elder 1. If you want that So I have basically just had communion to do. Today was communion and now I should not be back at church until after my thesis has been submitted, so in November.

That said I have been working on it. The big problem is that to write the introduction I am having to trace books and many are not available directly from Amazon, nor would they be in the University Library as they are far too specialist for that. So it would either be inter-library loans or me purchasing them from other dealers. That means I am writing in the expectation of having to include other work. This is tricky. So for the moment I am going to concentrate on writing a conclusion instead and hope that I can write it pretty quickly.

Hopefully next weekend I will get the 2.5 days and be able to make some good progress.