Permission to Submit

Today I have had a supervision again. l know December is a long time ago.However if you have been following this blog you will know l have been anything but inactive. The last few months have seen me rewrite seven chapters of my thesis. Today therefore was tine to review these and indeed the whole thesis and see if it was ready for submission.

The day dawned fair, and I woke early but not ridiculously so. It is funny how if you start early then you run early for a good part of the day. The result was that despite taking a leisurely pace down to the station I just missed the train before the one I planned to get. I did not race to get it choosing to drink a coffee on the platform after all the trains seemed to be running time. The next one left on time, and I found my seat. However l had forgotten that there were rail works around Dronfield and therefore the train took the scenic route around South Sheffield. Now the problem with being late on the hints in if less than 10 min you keep your slot but longer than that and you start to get delayed by other trains. We lost just over ten minutes by the time we got to Derby birth the result that we were over half an hour late into New Street. So I emailed my Supervisor to say l might be late. However, the train came in onto platform 11a and the trains out to the University often go from 11b. l think l must have had close to the shortest change time possible at New Street; I got off one train, ran the distance of about a carriage length then got on the next just before the doors started to beep for leaving. I would guess less than one minute all told. The result was I made up most of the tune I had lost.

The supervision was long. A lot of checking is needed as o need to do things such as reference back through the thesis both when I use ideas I have already talked about and when I muse a reference to an idea by a specific author. l also need to go through and put quote marks around a lot of technical terms used by theorists. There are three pieces that need doing.

• There is an introductory piece in the chapter on the Reformed Tradition that needs largely removing.
• There is a small section on Anthony Cohen that needs putting into the chapter on worship 
• There is a the need to hook through the Belonging chapter to make the connections with earlier chapters clear. 

Then it is proofing, Bibliography and layout. So my plan is to submit the 8th April. I think that gives me five weekends to get it into a final form for examining.

The rest of the time was talking about what next.It is a bigger problem than most people think as l do not fit any of the standard patterns for Phd students as I am in some ways a mature researcher with many years experience from my day job. l certainly have fresh questions that l would like to explore but how? l will need tin to think over the next year when my brain is not totally consumed with academic study.

The daffodils in the photo were tiny about four inches high. That said spring was definitely More advanced in Birmingham than at home. However you can see Old Joe clock tower the in background so definitely Birmingham.