The Point when I realise I am scared of Finishing

It is a somewhat weird week in some ways. After discovering my finishing was closer than I thought (see previous blog). I have finally managed to get another chapter off to my supervisor, which is the last of the substantive chapters and I have just to pull together the conclusion and that actually looks like being quite straightforward. I just have to remember what I was writing the last time and update that to reflect the development in the thesis that this last round of revisions has brought.

I also had to fill in the annual progress review. It has always been a matter of all righteousness. The review has slowly got more and more stringent. This time they decided to ask if the thesis had been through an ethics committee. The answer is "No". Now this has nothing to do with disliking ethics committee. Indeed I can remember an early supervision when I asked my supervisor "Do I look for a placement first or prepare for ethics committee?" His answer to that tells you precisely why I have not been "You look for a placement as no ethics committee exists at present if I become head of School I will immediately set one up." So I started my practical work before the ethics committee existed. When they set it up, rather than make it retrospective they allowed people to come if their were ethical issues they wished to bring. However, I had taken the other approach of being exceptionally thorough on ethics. There were several papers where I worked through different aspect of ethics. I have all the forms and permissions. I also set up, at the suggestion of the minister at my first placement, an "advisory group" who were there for people to go to if they did not want to make a complaint but wanted to check it out. However ethics informed many of the decisions and I have written a good section on my thesis. What I do not want to do is to have to stop now, sit down and write and ethics proposal for the work that I have already done. Apart from that  filling in was silly. Training was that I should do the Viva course, plan was to submit by Easter.

That brings me to the other thing. When I first realized I was close to finishing there was a sense of disbelief. This has been replaced by a fear. I have worked for somewhere close to fifteen years (that is seven years of prep and eight years on PhD) and it has slowly but surely taken over more and more of my life.  The effort has been over riding this last year. I am beginning to realise that a person who does this sort of concentrated study does not come out the same person as goes in. The problem is because I have been externally focused I have lost some of the insight into what makes me tick. Somehow I have to find out what those things are again, reorientate myself and decide where to go next. 

The weekend before last I did some examiner academic stalking, that is I read a book by her.  It was interesting and tangential to my PhD but it has started me asking another question. This question asks about what it means to belong and how that connects into belief. Is belief some how separate from belonging or is it a sub discipline within belonging. That is that belonging involves the sharing of common ideas. If so is this becoming a rarer form of belonging and rather are we coming to rely more on relationship belonging? If so how does the church adapt?

Yikes - Another chapter almost there and the finish line is nearer than I thought

A rainy view

The photo is a cheat I have not looked out of my window often enough to take a photo this weekend but it has at times been quite wet and I felt a picture of rain was appropriate although I took this one years ago.

The first piece of news if you have missed it just under a fortnight ago I got an email from my supervisor. This is highly unusual to start with, we tend to communicate only at supervisions but that is partly me. I have been sending him stuff. Anyway the email said that he was making "minor corrections" and that we should book a supervision.  This was a double panic. Firstly I had a supervision booked for the start of next month. Secondly my supervisor only does minor corrections on the draft before supervision! I thought I was a draft before that. So an exchange of emails and I seem to be submitting earlier than I was expecting.

However working in between has been frustrating. I got a cold last weekend and colds mess with my brain. I also decided it was time to do some examiner stalking as my examiner has written on a topic loosely related to the chapter that I am writing. I read the book and it does raise an interesting question but I am not quite sure how to deal with it in the chapter. I was also supposed to go to a study day in Birmingham. My brain did not come back until the Monday indeed most of the weekend I was doing the stare at screen and try to recall what I was doing. Everything I had written felt too hard to read and complete gibberish. Having a cold is a good way to loose all faith in your ability to write a thesis. However on the Monday my brain clicked and I started sorting out the structure for the last substantive chapter. The thing I had not realised is that I had started dumping everything I could not bear to get rid of into this chapter. Having realised that it was time to start cutting.

Thus I really started editing this weekend and indeed those scissors were necessary as there are whole sections I rewrote from scratch. Not so much using the theory as getting the data stuff into a form where I could use it. The major thing was I needed to put into the chapter a section on how historically the tradition had sort to answer the questions "Do I belong?". Surprisingly this time through I have got to the end of the last substantive chapter and I actually feel I have got to an end of the journey and all I need to do now is actually look around and find out where I have arrived because as with all journeys your destination is never in reality the place that you imagined however well you know it. With a thesis you really do not know where you are going to arrive it maybe to be where you started out at the beginning or it maybe somewhere completely different. I need time to look around the landscape. I have for a long time been too involved in the process of traveling.

Admittedly I did not get the chapter on Belonging off to my supervisor and it will take another full day to do it. It needs proofing which in this case involves working with Grammarly to actually check that what I send to my supervisors is actually in something approaching correct English. I do have proof readers who will check the final version but putting through Grammarly means that they have chance to see where I am going wrong. Then I have to put in citations which are in as notes at present. I have learnt this takes a day.

Worship chapter off to supervisor, later than I planned

Blue Sky through my window

Thought I would start with a picture of blue sky that was outside my window this morning. We do not get much of it so it is nice to have a record of when it happens.

This draft of thesis is definitely on the homeward leg now. I have got my chapter on worship off to my supervisor. The strange thing is the way it came together. I am happy with it for the reason that now I have got to the end I find that what I wrote now makes sense at other levels apart from the academic. This is a state I like to get to when I am doing statistics. The findings once I have gone through the process appear to be common sense. The feeling of "of course that is what is happening".  There is something though which is important being said and I think it has been missed in the literature. If that is the case then I think we may need to go back and rethink our approach.

Another thing I think I have learnt is that if people have not the power to change things themselves then they will lobby to get those with power to change things in the way they want them changed. Lobbying is a complex process with both positive and negative lobbying. Positive lobbying is not necessarily about lobbying for, rather it is lobbying that aims to make it pleasurable for the person with the power to change things in the way you want. Negative lobbying aims at making not complying with what you want a negative experience for the person with the power. It is very easy for positive lobbying to become bribery and it is very easy for negative lobbying to become bullying. Therefore it is essential to understand that lobbying originates in wanting a changing and not being able effect the change. They therefore reach for the tools by which they can affect it.

This means that when we get to situations where either bullying or bribery are present we need to ask questions about the power structures in the situation and why people are not happy with them. Sometimes the reasons can be stupid. I know of a situation where people were upping the anti with lobbying to affect a decision while not exercising their right to be part of the decision makers because that meant they would have to acknowledge that things had changed. Equally quite often what is driving them to desire a particular change is not what is presented.  Therefore, I am not necessarily in favour of giving people the power always but I am equally pretty sure that a simplistic attitude of centralising power when this sort of thing happens is just a form of wanting teacher to come and sort things out at best and calling on your big brother at worst. There is something in me that is beginning to ask how do you make direct democracy work.

That said next week will be interesting. There is a Society for Liturgical Studies student study day happening at Carrs Lane in Birmingham. I am not presenting a paper due to finishing thesis but I am going as it is chance to hear what others are saying. There is a paper on studying liturgy historically, I have questions to ask about how well that can be done when a liturgy is as ephemeral as the historic English Dissent, and if it can't cover such cases is it perhaps dealing with a very partial perspective. I would expect folk devotion within Catholicism to be largely as ephemeral as well. Another one looks at "Anglican Mission and Identity: Liturgy and Transformation". This means some moving around of things but I still hope to get pretty well the two plus writing days I am managing at the moment.