Viva Two

My viva was unusual in a number of ways, before the day itself, I knew that:

• my supervisor was not going to be around. I had arranged for my friend Fleur to provide moral support
• my external examiner was coming in through Skype
• my chair had been changed to someone who knew nothing about the subject area

I arranged to meet with Fleur at New Street Station. It has changed dramatically that even though I had done a fair bit of looking at the plans in the last couple of weeks I was bewildered at first. I had arranged to meet up with Fleur at 12:30 pm at Costa Coffee.  As I was about an hour early I decided to look around the building. There was a multitude of top end shops rather similar to those at St Pancras' in London. I had checked on the plans to check that there were not two Costa Coffee and so was slightly perturbed when I discovered that there was a yet unopened Costa coffee in the shopping area of the station. The good news was that Fleur was sitting in the Costa Coffee I had planned when I turned up at 12:20 pm!

I had been saving up points on my Costa card and was able to buy us both lunch with what was on there.  It is not that Costa is the best food there as New Street now has endless smart eateries, but it is serviceable and decent and gave us sustenance.

Afterward we got the train to Selly Oak, Fleur uses public transport more than I do and walked from there up to Woodbrooke Hall. As we walked up to Woodbrooke she talked about the research she was doing on John Oman, including he stayed in a house between the Selly Oak Colleges and Woodbrooke Hall. There are not many houses in between today and the one that is has a blue plaque on it to a leading Quaker at the time.

We arrived at about one thirty and after finding the garden room we went into the garden and Fleur asked me to show her my thesis. This was brilliant move from my perspective. Fleur has limited eye-sight and by doing this I had  to explain my thesis to Fleur not assuming she could read it. That got me talkin about my thesis. It is odd but unless I am in thesis talking mode I find it quite hard to talk about my thesis.The result was that I was had really switched mental channels by the time I went into my thesis. However we quickly run out of time and I have to head back to the room only there is still my internal examiner and me present. It is not until about ten past we learn that the chair is delayed due to traffic and the viva will not start until half past.

So I go back to Fleur who I find reading a display on Woodbrooke during the first world war. The fact that Fleur is partially sighted has never stopped her reading. It is just an non negotiable. In some ways it is quite a compliment that she will let me read for her at times. The problem with the delays is they are bitty so I have we briefly talk for ten minutes and I need to be heading back. Some of the reason I do the search is I feel a discomfit by my internal examiner with me being in the room. Not really surprised, we are met for a purpose and the purpose cannot occur until other people are present. it is a bit like making small talk with your surgeon before a major operation.

The viva gets going just after 2:30 pm. My chair definitely sees herself there for me, but as she does not know how my internal and external have planned the viva she is almost immediately sidelined.  Both my examiners thanked me for making the changes and also for providing a cover sheet. Questions included the reason I had called my final chapter "epilogue" rather than "conclusion". At one stage I am asked whether I deliberately set out to not provide a normal thesis. I replied that I had originally intended to and had the set chapters in the outline originally. I could have been stronger, there are too many students I have advised to write in the normal form that I found it ironic that my thesis seemed to obdurately keep away from that form. However the content was such that I concluded nothing in the final chapter and calling it a "conclusion" therefore was misleading.

Another question was with respect to my use of Weber or rather my lack of use. I finally got what the problem was and then it was clear. The assumption was that I thought because Weber was influenced by the tradition his understanding was invalid. This was not the case. The problem was circularity, Weber speaks as someone who really though not holding to the Christian faith, was strongly influenced by and then strongly influenced the tradition I was exploring ethnographically. The problem therefore was circularity, and that I was using the tradition to explain the tradition. If I was looking at a distinctly different tradition e.g. Roman Catholicism then using Weber would indeed be interesting. It really is quite peculiar reading Weber because he is "formed" (in quotes because I am not sure that is the right word, maybe molded/shaped etc) by the tradition. Things he says just fit with the patterns that are part of the tradition that it is quite peculiar. Anyway I strongly believe that new knowledge at least culturally is generated when we bring those that are different together.

At about this point it the questionner was changed to my internal examiner. His questions in someways were more technical. He asked about how the fact that I had I had been an insider had affected my ethnography. Was there really a difference between "native" and "outsider" ethnography. I think I was able to answer that question with reference to the difference in similar settings between mine and those of my supervisior. My supervisor had found no mention of worship within the setting but I had found a clear practical discourse. The fact that the discourse was practical and therefore only of interest to people who may be practitioners meant that I as an insider had a different experience to my supervisor who was an outsider. It takes years to cross that field of expertise and I still do not know how congregations perceive that someone has that experience but they do.

There was another round of questions from each side. As I got to the end the questions became less challenging. I was for instance asked why I thought my thinking on flows was minor. This was a matter of familiarity and the fact that the models were often secondary to the finding. My internal examiner felt however that that in particular needed publishing. What you do by instinct never feels as special as the stuff you struggle to grasp, so for me the struggle is to link it with the current debate. The stuff I naturally do is explore the metaphor that I use for thinking about the topic. That is the way my brain works and I only semi believe everyone elses does not automatically. Then I must remember how much better than reality Fleur thinks my French is. She is brilliant at French while I scraped O'level.

Then I was asked to leave, I found Fleur this time in the lounge and we just got a coffee when my internal examiner came back. We went in. That my internal specifically invited Fleur was a relief. It was the one stage where they could have denied her access and yet if she was to support me properly then she needed access. I was hoping and knowing that I had performed well in the viva half expecting a pass with minor corrections. They could not at this viva award major corrections, but I suspected that limited corrections could be required. I was therefore surprised when I got a pass with no corrections although typographical errors would need correcting. The suggestion by my chair that I had a holiday was not just totally out of context, what sort of university person takes a holiday in October, but had Fleur desperately not looking in my direction as it was so out of context.

We went back into the lounge and let the examination committee finish its business in private. Fleur commented that I was sparkling when I came out of the viva. Most people at Woodbrooke are quiet and so it was a complete contrast. Also that she was suspicious that I had passed as my examiner had been "coy" when he came to collect us for the result. I interpret this as trying to keep back the result because it is in an extent the external examiners role. It took a while even for us to start to think about heading back home. Indeed far longer than I think with the previous bad viva result.

Shortly after 4:00 pm we started heading back to New Street. Fleur said she wanted to buy champagne to celebrate and I thought with all the posh shops there must be somewhere at New Street selling it. The trains to New Street were crowded with commuter traffic but we got there and found a stall  called Fizzi sellingN proscecco on the upper fall with strawberries in. Just as we ordered their barrel of white ran out so we had rose. Oddly enough it went to our heads so we ended up back in Costa ordering coffees before I saw Fleur to the platform for her train

Really the Last Supervision!

Sometimes you get things wrong. My previous Supervision was actually my last supervision before submitting and today I had a pre-viva supervision. If this sounds different to last time then that is because the time between submission and viva. Firstly it has been longer about four months as opposed to just six weeks last time. Secondly there has been a lot of difficulties with the arrangements. So much so that there is a Small chance that it will be cancelled on the day itself. The reason being that my external examiner may not, for legitimate reasons, be able to make it.

Today I overslept, partly due to waking with nerves in the middle of the night. I did set my alarm but did not really register it until half an hour after it started going off. It is one of the dawn simulators and I am such a light sleeper that usually the click of the bulb starting to glow wakes me.Not so today. l did not realise how late it was until notices for the day started going off on my phone. However, I realised that I had plenty of leeway built into the day. As it was I got to the station in plenty of time to pick up my ticket. I then discovered that the train before mine was running late. The question was whether l caught it or waited for mine. I decided l had the time and I would risk my train being held up by the late train. As it turned out the delay was negligible.

Birmingham New Street is in the final stages of its transformation which meant I was disorientated again and there were workmen everywhere. Still found WH Smiths were selling Graze products including protein nuts and as I was not feeling like lunch this was a useful substitute. I then caught the train out to University and set about finding the ERI Building which took me down the road by the hospital which is lined with horse chestnut trees. It is the conker season and inevitably I picked up a pocketful. As I was ridiculously early (12:30 for 2:00 meeting) when l found the ER1 Building I walked past and went on an explore. Well, sort of, the next building l encountered was the Computer centre which I had 'visited about 3 years ago for work. So I had obviously been in the area before.

Walking on past l encountered Winterbourne House and Garden. The opportunity to sit quietly in the garden seemed to be ideal so I paid the entrance fee and went in. They have a popular restaurant but the quiet of grass and big trees were more important to me at the time. There is also a path from the garden to a large pond with ducks on. Most ducks were at the far side and without binoculars I could not identify the actual species. There were a couple of coots nesting near the path. I also found the loos so used these t prepare for the meeting then realised it was a quarter to two and I needed to get back to the ERI.

I arrived at the ERI building at about 1:55 pm and got to the meeting place about five minutes before my supervisor. He had not booked a room but, fortunately, it was the week before pre-sess so no rooms were booked! That meant we just went into the first available room. I think that Martin had realised by the time that we got to the supervision that quite a bit of my being awkward was actually strategic rather than me just being contrary. The talk was mainly on the discussion for my viva including the need for me to have to know pretty well what my corrections were as if the examiners went beyond that I had to pull them back in line.

That does not mean that I have a lazy two weeks although I was pretty quick on answering questions today. I need to be up to speed on the major thinkers in my thesis. I need to know my thesis and I need to know what correction I have made. It was also clear that while the thesis was there, there is also work that needs doing before the whole work is publishable. Quite often in a book that is a book of the thesis there is a ghost of the thesis hanging around. Here I am going to have to exorcise the ghost rather more thoroughly as there is new material but it is only becoming accessible now which means it cannot go into the thesis.

Finally, I gave my supervisor a secondhand book. It was one of those occasions when something had come into my possession and I knew that it was destined for someone else, I was but the carrier. Oddly when I normally get these I pass them on as quickly as possible but this time something stayed my instinct until this supervision. The passing on of the book today did more than it would have done earlier and I was right about my supervisor valuing it. 

The supervision over and me feeling happier about my viva than I have done for several weeks, I went to Costas and got myself a meatball wrap and a soya latte before catching the train home. The train home was busier than I was expecting but then I do not normally get the train on a Friday. 

So twelve days to my viva!

The owls in the pictures are  the two of the statutes that are part of the Big Hoot that I saw today.

Last Supervision

I am in Costa surrounded by exam anxious students. I have about half an hour before I need to head off for my superiors leaving do. The department at the last minute decided to invite his Phd students Normally l would send apologies but as I was in Birmingham for a supervision it felt churlish not to go. So I am off for an Indian with a group of people I vaguely know.

Today is anyway my last supervision so may be there is something of an end term feel about it for me to. I made the mistake of trusting the Met Office forecast and I brought a coat. It has of course been sunny all the time I have been here. Oh well perhaps I will need it on the journey back.

The supervision consisted ofworking through many minor edits. The biggest one is the requirement to assert my originality. It is no longer good enough to be original (my examiners are quite clear that I am) you also need to be prepared to shout to the world that you are. Anyway the abstract needs rephrasing to say so and l need to add one paragraph to the belonging chapterand rewrite a section in the epilogue to cover this.

That does not sound much but I have to cut 20, 000 words from the thesis. This is going to be a painful tedious edit as there is no extraneous sections. Thus, I will have to edit the whole thesis cutting small diversions and trying to shorten sentences. I will do it at the same time as working though the minor corrections. As this is pure editing andnot rewriting I am giving myself a fortnight to do it. So I am looking to submit early June.

Onwards and Upwards!

Another Draft

This is really a quick note to say that as of tonight I have a semi-final draft for this submission. This is not the resubmission, it is however the start of the process of resubmission. I still have to do a few minor corrections but it is in the state my supervisor can read it.  The process from here on is as follows:

• minor corrections and check abstract
• draft cover document for the examiners
• have supervision which will give the last changes my supervisor wants
• make the corrections and do a basic format so that the full text can go to the editors
• break while I let the editors work
• revise and if I make alteration send back to editors
• submit

It feels so different this time. The thesis is more like a thesis. The argument is contained really within a single chapter with three data chapters. It is not totally usual as I have an epilogue rather than a conclusion as basically I finish the argument at the end of the previous chapter. The epilogue deals with the relevance of my research. It is a hard task to negotiate the Scylla of making claims that are far to far reaching for the research and on the other hand the Charybdis of claim so little that your work seems irrelevant. Anyway it is done.

Well next weekend will be spent in minor editing.

Heads down, time to get this thing finished

I have been to supervision today, sorry no pretty picture as I did not see anything I felt like photographing. I have managed to redraft the three data chapters, and it was time to review progress with my supervisor not least because my supervisor has a new job that he will start in May. I needed to check my broad assumption that because I was so close to him leaving I did not have to do anything. Universities are not exactly quick on the uptake when it comes to working out how research students are affected by staff changes. The result is they probably will not have noticed that he legally should not be supervising me without special permission. There is no way they will have worked out whether to give him special permission (preferred option) or what alternative contingency arrangement should happen. Also, my notice to submit will have gone in before he leaves;  we did the signing part today.

Anyway I caught a nasty bug last week, I am describing it as a cold officially, but it seems to have been more of a sinus infection with earache and headaches the dominant two features. It was particularly bad yesterday, and I was expecting today to be surviving on decongestants and pain killers. Fortunately, I hit crisis about midnight last night. I still required pain killers to control the throat/ear pain but no headaches!!!! These were not migraine headaches; I could still speak coherently, but they were painful.

Anyway over the last four to six weeks I have revised the methodology and the introduction chapters and make the changes to the data chapters. These were relatively straightforward changes. I was supposed to:

• upgrade the usage of the literature slightly (the main upgrade being in the introduction and the belonging chapter), 
• include stuff from the flows chapter that they wanted cutting, 
• put in quotes from the interviews. 

These tasks are relatively mechanical as writing goes. I was surprised at the way quotes worked. The request was for quotes from interviews to be included. I have problems with quoting out of context. I have heard too many diatribes against doing that with the Bible to happily do it with another source. So I had to find a way around.  It is not entirely satisfactory. However, as my supervisor pointed out having found a way around I need to explain why I am doing that in my Ph.D.

My supervisor also wants me to reference the place in the interview that will be intriguing. There are two options. Firstly to allocate quote numbers to the segment. If done this way it allows you to put them in order, but gives no idea of spacing. The second is to put in line numbers within interviews. The line numbers gives more detail of position but would mean exporting all the transcripts, putting them into work and then getting it to number the lines.

I have finally sorted how at present to deal with food. The last few times I have been buying food and then not wanting to eat it. Sometimes I would eat it and other times I would throw it out. Today instead I decided to buy when I wanted food. The result was that at about noon I had a soya latte and some trail mix and I had yoghurt and green tea about tea time. Neither was really a meal but neither was totally unhealthy and I had a meal waiting at home to be eaten.

The other nice thing was that with the cold when I bought my latte I left my credit card in the reader and the Costa Barrista on finding it called me and returned it to me! That was enough to persuade me to use a Costa later in the day. Needless to say the sun was shinning and it was a pleasant day while I was in Birmingham.

So with all that out of the way, I need to get my head down and write the Belonging chapter and the Epilogue.  I have started on the Belonging chapter and have spelt out in minute detail the difference between faith membership, institutional membership and community membership.  It feels a bit like giving the primary school guide to congregational structure but as my examiners do not get this when I made more oblique reference I am having to spell it out in detail. The Epilogue is where I need to assert originality which basically means that I am going to have to relate the argument of the thesis back to the literature in the Introduction plus maybe one or two other items.

Well it feels like progress

When I got my to do list it felt like a huge mountain to climb and I was already exhausted. There were only ten of them but some were huge and with some I was not sure how much underneath would need changing once I started. My supervisors kept telling me that the corrections were not that huge. I did not believe him.

Well I am prepared at the moment to accept a bit of humble pie. Since Christmas I have done a second edit on the the two chapters with major corrections that I saw him about before Christmas and I have also sent him two other chapters. One chapter does not need any changes although I may just do some for the heck of it well actually I have some nice quotes from interviews that might just go in.

The work since Christmas has persuaded me that I did base my findings on my observations. I have put in quotes all through two chapters and they provide strong evidence for what I have concluded on many points. They also do something very interesting as I have not worked them into the text (many are too long for that and others are tangential). The quotes interact both with the text I have written and with each other. The result is far closer to the thesis my supervisor originally wanted with multiple voices working through the text. I have enjoyed creating questions and patterns that placing the quotes next to the text creates. I know many ethnographers suggest this as a method but when I have read texts set out like this the interaction seems minimal. The texts remain largely separate and linear. With my thesis this has not happened. For instance I assert one thing in the text and there are three snippets around it. One is a senior member saying what I have said about another, the next is a junior member who addresses the senior member and final one is a story told by the person the other two are talking about. It shows without doubt the inter-textual nature of the interviews. I could not read one separate from the others.

However I am also very glad that I have used narrative fact-ion within the thesis. These set the context for the happenings within the thesis and for the exploration. They also bring to prominence the anthropological element of the thesis rather than the interviews.

However I suspect my examiners were wanting a linear thesis and what they have now got is a tightly woven one instead. I am however enjoying creating the weave although I expect I will not find rewriting the chapter on Belonging nearly as much fun though I know where I am going with that.

Just after Twelfth Night

Entrance below Old Joe

Well, these posts seem to have become like buses. That is there are long spells where there are none and then you get several all at once. Anyway today I had a supervision and that meant a trip to Brum. l had sent a couple of chapters to my supervisor; one was sent just before Christmas and the other last weekend.

The trip down was good for birding with a flock of fieldfares in the bushes as I walked through the estate, a flock of geese flying along beside the train at one point and a flock of swans feeding in a field. Although I suspect the geese were Canada, the swans I suspect were not Mute. This is simply  I have not seen flocks of Mute swans which contained over a dozen swans feeding in a field. Otherwise, the journey was uneventful and I arrived at the University Railway Station without incident. The temperature was a degree or two warmer than Sheffield. I do not know whether this is due to longitude or height.

Key fob

The university was in pre-exam mode.There were students around but not as many as in full term mode. Also, those that were there, were quietly studious. This gave a quiet feel to the campus without it being too clattery and echoey. With my supervision being an hour later than usual at 3pm, I had time to prepare and to have lunch despite being slightly later than usual.  On going to the ladies to get ready for supervision I noticed the following key fob on the shelf below the mirror.

The supervision took the form of working through the chapters and looking at changes. Most of the changes I need to make are minor: one or two times when I have lost the thread or edited out too much, some correction of detail and the occasional reordering of paragraphs. There is one section which needs adding which will require more work on self, going native and emotion.I need to think if I need to pull a section which I wrote later on Foucault and put it in the introduction. If I do I need  to write something on Amelie Rorty and her analysis of person.

The supervision took an hour and a half and it was dark by the time I left irth a decided chill in the air. I was hungry so called in at the fruit stall and bought a banana before I made my way back to the train station.

The aim this weekend is to get through the revisions of these two chapters. I then need to code up the interviews and get on revising the three data chapters. At present, I am skipping the tradition chapter. It really needs a change of tone but as it is a change in style rather than substance, I can decide not to make it. 

Supervision coming up and another chapter off

I know a long time and no posts! I did finish my introduction before Christmas and get it off to my supervisor about the 20th but it was late that evening and there is a restlessness with little bits I want to add and correct but we shall see when I talk to my supervisor this week.

Christmas was a break from thesis although not without its own stresses. Not sure I have properly recovered from it quite yet. However, I have got down to the Methodology chapter and made quite a few changes on that.  I would have been finished mid-day but I lost all yesterday's corrections at 10pm last night! I am using Grammarly and it shuts down if I save a document. So I tend to save less often and yesterday I was on a role and really sorting things out. The result was I forgot to save at all. Then Word crashed and I had forgotten Word does not save interim versions if you are using Grammarly. Needless to say, I have been saving regularly today, but I do think I have lost some really good writing.

Anyway needs must, so today I sat down and just worked solidly through editing. It was helped by the fact that last night I discovered how to stop it telling me every time I used a passive verb and a personal pronoun. I know passive verbs are not good writing style and that in academic writing the personal pronoun is frowned upon but put the two injunctions together and it is nigh impossible to write anything. Indeed historically scientific writing has always used passive verbs for this reason.  Annoying is that I can only turn off both. I would like to turn off personal pronouns and not passive verbs.

Anyway tomorrow is largely a day off. I have got an appointment on the morning, will then go swimming and attend my writers group on the evening.

St Andrew's Day End to Acwrimo, but not finished

Well I am writing to the line as today is the Acwrimo. I technically have failed to get through what I set myself to do. I wanted this chapter finished and I did not get there. It will take me the next two weekends to get to the stage when I can send it to my supervisor. This was the original plan before AcWriMo  but I was hopeful as I have useful ways to spend the extra two weeks. I have however finished expanding the section on Congregational Studies and am largely happy with it. Indeed it has become a lot stronger and more interesting. All I really need to do is think whether I need to give one of the questions of my thesis around what role worship plays within the identity.

In some sense the easiest bit is the bit I have left to last. So I hope that next weekend  I can expand the literature review on the theorising of identity so that it looks and feels more like a traditional literature review. In some parts that is the easiest point as it is the stuff that I have revised most often in the process of putting this thesis together. Ironically it is also the most wide ranging of reviews.

Time wise however next week is time poor with respect to thesis. This week for work I am at a focus group in London.  It is a once in six month meeting and it just happens to be next week. It is in London because it is winter, and coming further North in the UK is fine for Southerners when there is a chance of decent weather but not when it gets dark early in the evening. So all us Northerners (some  have to travel over twice the distance I do) have to head down to balmy London. I wonder if the Scots fly down to these events. Then next weekend my nephew is coming to stay for a weeks work experience. So I need to fit working around him as well.

Anyway there are some good aspects to having had a go at Acwrimo as well.

1. It got me writing again and I am enjoying the writing far more this time. I have not got the space in my timetable this revision I had when doing the original writing, but  I do find that writing expands to fill the time I allow it.
2. I learnt again that I need to have music on when I am writing but not Ravi Shankar. I automatically get up and do something different every time he comes on my play list. I guess I better remove him from it before next weekend.
3. Jogging is good for writing. Now I am slightly jogging phobic. This dates back to my late teens when I tried to get into jogging just before I became ill. The result was I associate jogging with being ill. However, as part of my getting fitter, I need to be road fit as well as generally fit. That means I actually need to be either walking or running on tarmac surfaces for quite a distance. Well walking for miles just does not fit into my timetable most of the time. So I gave in and am trying jogging. The surprise is that I have a better writing day if I jog first thing in the morning. It seems to get the antsy mood out of me and I settle quicker into writing.

So yes I have not completed what I set myself to but I am pleased with what has been achieved.

Well New Introductory Section Finally Drafted

It is interesting sitting down and watching my drafting approach to writing. I will start out with a pretty broad remit and go off on lots of tangents. The topics I normally find interesting. I will then spend quite a bit of time deciding what to write. Then I will start writing.

Now that sounds as if it is all drafted but it isn't. Normally I will only gain clarity of what I want to argue when I am drafting. Therefore there is a process of going through and through my text to get it not only to cover the area it has to cover but also to get the argument clear.

I had two things I wanted to argue in this section. The first was pretty clear and that was that there was no right dimensionality to religiosity and the use of apparently simple terms such as "belief" and "belonging" hide as much as they reveal. The simplistic reason for this is that often in the literature they are used in a technical way by the writers but interpreted in a non-technical way. There is also no agreed technical meaning. For instance belonging could mean:

• has formal membership of a congregation
• regularly participates in public worship
• identifies themselves as belonging to

The three are not the same. A paper that takes one of them might differ completely from a paper that takes another. The habit of not clearly spelling this out means that there are difficulties in dealing with the literature but we do not want three dimensions for belonging. The problem really is we think of belonging as a binary, either you do belong or you do not.  Therefore, we feel there ought to be a simple test, but in reality people negotiate belonging in a complex way.

"Belief" is even more complex but perhaps is closer to adequately theorized.  I am not sure whether I should take a "belief" as uniform or "situational". In fact as in a sense the situation is singular this study cannot determine that. However I do think there is elision in Belief between accepting proposition and a performance of belief which has more to do with confidence/trust/allegiance that with propositional truth. In the second sense I can actually see it playing within the congregation. It fits with the occasional comments on an individuals faith that came up in interviews and in conversations. These were not people who usually went out of their way to make statements about what they believed but were people who acted in certain ways.

The later half of this month has to be spent expanding the bibliographic sections of the thesis which basically means writing more about what the people I have cited actually say.

800 words out of a thousand and half the topic not written

Its been one of those frustrating weekends thesis wise.  The task in hand is to write a thousand words on Believing and Belonging and situate my thesis against that debate. Problem one, is that while I have something to say about Belonging I have very little to say about Believing in my thesis. Problem two there is a vast and complex literature which is bigger than the papers in the topic in my discipline indicate. Problem three my thesis is primarily about the third b and that is behaving. Belonging just happens to connect with their behaviour and the topic. What is more that is an ethnographic finding.

Well due to the amount of literature I have spent quite a bit of the weekend going through and back through. Firstly I have to set up why this is relevant to my PhD, which I have done. Then I have to take each of the two concepts Belief and Belonging and discuss them as concepts. The big problem is that I would like to say "Belief" is simple and then consign it to a few lines in my thesis. However, it isn't  and I think my thesis may just have as part of the conclusion some reflection on the absence of belief statements from the context of the ethnography.

I am also beginning to puzzle out the way first person pronouns are used to signal group identity. The use of the "we" pronoun seems to signal a sphere where orthopraxy is expected by the congregation whereas "I" is used when it is acceptable for changes to occur due to the surrounding culture. The problem is that this implies that "you and me Jesus" lyrics are no longer about emotion, but rather a way of signalling wider cultural norms can be brought into the choice of music. This is interesting.

The other thing I am doing now is writing so I have enough to accurately recall the citation within the text. This will expand the literature review quite substantially and I think satisfy my examiners on that score. The interesting thing is that it might also explain why I felt so at a loss at how to engage from my thesis. Unfortunately, this also means I do close reading.  Most writers and readers are not used to this. I have already struck one significant oddity which  I have demonstrated to be odd. If you have two dimension one called "belief" and the other "belonging", then there are problems if "orthodoxy" gets into the belonging one!

Anyway I did not get as much written as I hoped and would at least like to have most on Belief written and have a rough idea where the concept of belonging is going. That means I think that I am going to claim one of my few thesis days tomorrow afternoon from work and see if I can get further on.

Well I think I know what I want to argue

I have spent quite a bit of the weekend just churning through various bits of literature. Let me say that there are three different sets of literature that are relevant to discussion Believing and Belonging.

The first set is the literature that is relevant to the discussion of what is religiosity in the broadest of terms. Grace Davie has set off a plethora of B alliteration when she coined the phrase "Believing but Not Belonging". There now is: 

• "Neither Believing nor Belonging", 
• "Belonging not Believing", 
• "Belonging and Not Belonging" (no I did not make that one up),

 although no-one seems that interested in Believing and Belonging. However, people are also extending the Bs so we now have "Believing, Belonging and Behaving" or even "Believing, Belonging, Behaving and Bonding" only you will never guess what Bonding is. At this point I say stop as the Bs are too disjointed from their actual concepts to make them memorable. I will therefore use the none alliterative form that is also in the paper and turn it into an acronym to remember it by.

However, there are then problems with the literature on Believing.  Grace Davie deliberately does not define what she means by believing and belonging. There is good reason for this, there is a whole literature about what we mean by believing. Ideas that I had up to now accepted as part of the religious/theological discourse around belief are very clearly present within the sociological discourse. Have the sociologists taken it from the Theologians or visa versa? I do not know. This brings me actually to the reason I had steered away from tackling this whole topic in my thesis. I am no longer sure what it means to believe something. Please do not try sorting this out by giving me definitions. The problem is not lack of definitions, but that I have multiple conflicting ones and they do not give a cohesive middle ground. Any further definitions will only add to the confusion. I think I am getting closer to an idea, but it is not really fully formulated and it certainly does not sit anywhere close to the simple taken from granted presumption that was my starting point. Perhaps what I like most about my "new" formulation is it actually asks hard questions of myself and what I do about belief. Then of course there is the whole faith development literature as well.

So we come at finally at belonging. Well this is where the focus of my thesis is. However, though there is some agreement that identity and identification are important to belonging yet there is not much actual definition. However, here too there is a distinction that needs to be brought. Most questions of belonging are directed at belonging to a particular type of religion. I am really not addressing that. What I am addressing is what does it mean to belong to a specific congregation. To answer that question the talk of many of the sociologists of religion about belonging is not useful. The discussion is that of social psychologists who ask what it means to belong to a group. They have a very different formulation. I also think I am going to have to sit down with Amartya Sen again and see if I can find his levels of belonging. This changes belonging completely in that it is no longer a binary (in/out) but some members are more equal than others, that is they have more power to direct the group. These are a useful theorisation along with the dimensions of that the social psychologists bring. The question then is can this low level belonging be transferred to the larger scale of religion.

Plan from here is to write out more fully my argument in the mornings before going to work this week, then to actually write it up formally with references over the weekend. So far as Acwrimo is on track!

Finished the Transcripts now onto Rewriting proper

I know it is a long time since I wrote anything on this blog. All I can plead is that I have been busy. There is less time than I would like but actually having a time limit is focusing me pretty well. Today, I sent off the last of the transcripts to my supervisor. Now I can say that they are all safely transcribed. So that is part of the revisions done.

So now I start working on the thesis proper. To get myself going after the break from actual writing I have signed up for #acwrimo. I have been debating whether this is a good idea. My experience is when I do join in this style of competition I promptly perform less well than normal. On the other hand, I really need some trick to get the brain engaged in the hard work it needs to do. The thing is to choose a challenge that will stretch you. I think I have chosen fairly well. The challenge that I have taken is to redraft my introduction by the end of the month. This weekend and next to concentrate on writing the bit on believing and belonging which the three weekends after wards are to concentrate on filling out about the main theorists in my thesis. The first has some new reading in it, while the second part which is three times the length is actually me drawing on stuff I already know. The advantage of this is it will allow me to redraft my methodology before Christmas. Having that out of the way  would be pleasant, as it means that I can then spend the time between Christmas and New Year working on the interviews (editing and coding). Thus, I would be better prepared for tackling data chapters in the New Year.

That said another pressure is I have decided I need to get fit and that means exercise. So I cannot spend all my weekends solely working on  the thesis. I need to be efficient. There is a method in this madness. By the time I got to being examined in June I had become so caught up in the process of finishing my thesis that there was a danger that it would swamp me. The idea is that with the increased exercise it will mean that I have to disengage from my thesis and keep it within bounds.  I also have aims and ambitions for my attempts at getting fitter so I have a focus for that as well. As my plans become more settled maybe I will introduce them to this blog.

Strategy Supervision for doing corrections

I had a supervision yesterday and think it is time I actually filled people in on how things are going. I have been transcribing interviews  as demanded by my examiners simply because:

1. It is pretty straight forward, the task is to capture in enough detail what other people say
2. It is a major piece of work to do.

I have got all the ones from my first congregation transcribed and sent them off about a couple of weeks ago to my supervisor as I was supposed to see him the following Tuesday. This did not happen as he had a tummy bug and probably just as well as when I discovered that I did not need to go to Birmingham I went to bed and slept. Indeed at present he seems to be running through a set of misfortunes because he did not make Society for Liturgical Studies conference either. This was noted because he was the opening speaker. Having the delay proved psychological difficult for me as my body registered I had sent things for my supervision and refused to work on other interviews. The first weekend was frustrating but I persuaded myself that I should draft a paper last weekend instead. As I had to do that soon anyway I think it is probably stopped me from wasting that weekend too.

However, the meeting was rearranged to yesterday, which was the only date he and I could make until late September.  His conferences and mine neatly dovetail to block out the early part of the month. So I got my train as usual to Birmingham and then transport wonders started happening. The connecting train at Birmingham was just further along the same platform as the train I arrived on. This was more than usual relief as New Street Station changes layout every time I go there at present. The result was that I was at the University about two and half hours before my tutorial (you have heard of cautious, well in my family it sometimes gets ridiculous). I spent some time looking around the John Smiths Bookshop and must admit that its range of books made the former Waterstones store look good, but the computers on sale had me coveting. The books tended to be full sets off reading lists. Somebody needs to design a piece of software that allows people to order books through the bookshop and then notes what books people are ordering and what buying and tries to suggest related books for the store to stock. After a while I could well see people dropping in for a look as store browsing is still a much more enjoyable experience than browsing online.

I went up for my supervision. There are a lot of staff moving around in the Arts Tower. The law department is now where Music was and it looks as if American Studies are moving off the top floor. However my supervisor is stationary.

The good news is that I think his assessment of my result is the same as mine. That is they wanted to give me the time rather than it actually being a reflection of the quality and that if I had wanted to I could have challenged the result on the grounds of things they said both in giving me the result after the viva and in the reports. However as the work would still have had to be done, there was little point in doing so. He also approved of my attitude that the task was to view it as references for a submitted paper. The changes needed doing and I should just get on and do them.  We went through the revisions and discussed them. Some it was actually a matter of putting back some of the things I had removed. I was told that I needed to assert my originality (there was not question about me being original, I just needed to assert it). That basically means putting back in the first person pronoun that I had carefully gone through and removed. Some I am realising I am actually relieved to do, in that I was sometimes brief because I was short of space and their revisions have created space to expand these points.

There are some points which are not corrections specified by my examiners but are rather a failure to communicate through the thesis. They have treated the thesis as if it is an interview based ethnography. It is NOT but rather an Ethnography based within the Social Anthropological tradition that depends quite heavily on the participant observation and conversations naturally arising out of the research setting. Therefore I am going to have to strengthen that element within my methodology.

One of the difficulties is that I am going to have to explore again how I treat Weber. It is problematic, Weber is a big theorist but he is also decidedly shaped by the Reformed tradition. I recognise his thought as coming from the tradition and at times the "mythos" of the tradition leads to him cutting corners so as to get the results of his thinking to fit with that of the tradition. The result is that there is a good fit between the general tradition and much of what is in Weber theory.  The difference between Church and Sect works pretty well for those in the Reformed tradition, so much so that it has been picked up by a variety of Reformed Theologians (Troelstch and Richard Neibuhr for starters). It does not fit nearly as well within other traditions.

Anyway we have a basic forward direction mapped out. The first thing is for me to spell it out more clearly. I hope to get the interviews done by the end of October. Then by Christmas have most of the work done on the introduction. This gives January and February for pulling methodology,tradition and the three data chapters into their final form with , March  for Belonging and April to the proof readers.  Its tighter than I would like, but it is doable.

I then started to make my way back but got distracted first to look for a cardigan that I had left in a coffee shop and then to get a bottle of fizzy water as I thirsty. The result was that for the first time ever I was too late for the train I was booked to travel on to New Street. However, when I got to New Street I found that my train was delayed. It looked like half an hour so I decided to miss it as it would be full of commuters. I went up to the main concourse bought a magazine and decided to get ready for catching the later train. However, when I was back on the platform I found that my train was still in and indeed many of the commuters had decided to catch the train that was on time rather than try and save a few minutes by catching my train. Therefore, I got on it and got to my seat in a half empty train.  The journey home was much pleasanter for this although I must have been about three quarter of an hour later than planned.  However I was only back in Sheffield after the social for  my writers group had started and I was tired and emotionally overdrawn with a migraine rumbling in the distance. So I did not feel up to writing yesterday.

Progress has slowed but still steady progress

This is just an update on how things are going. Last week I ran out of time with doing one interview. It is perhaps the longest interview I did at about two hours. The one I did this week was an hour and twenty minutes and I managed to get started on another one. I wonder if I should try and sit down on Thursday night after work and have a go at transcribing part of the next interview. It might mean I am more settled on Friday and I will get more done. I get a lot done in very short bursts, but I am too easily distracted and I really need to get on. If  I can finish the current one and get another one done next weekend then that will be all the Edgerton interviews transcribed.

However, the software I am using is still causing problems. Although I can save work! When I try and close either a document or the whole project it tends to have difficulties. Also, I am periodically needing to switch my computer off and restart it as the sound system is playing up. It goes really slowly and booming. Well it has given up completely now, I am not sure why but my guess is that by the time I next want to use it, it will be functioning fine again. I have long known computers do not like the heat and am putting it partially down to that.

Otherwise, there is really nothing to report. Oh I have found another book in the tradition I am working in. It was published after I did my literature research into the area. It is called "The Anthropology of Protestantism: Faith and Crisis among Scottish Fishermen" and is by Joseph Webster. I would say that his approach is most similar to that of Timothy Jenkins in that he looks at the whole town with all its churches and does it by spending a considerable time in Gamrie. However unlike Timothy Jenkins he does not do it from the privileged position of the Parish Vicar/Minister but as an attender. In his case he attended all Protestant churches in Gamrie something a Parish Vicar/Minister could not do. What has struck me so far is how similar his experience is to mine. He talks of falling in love with Gamrie and wooing them, that was my experience too. He talks of being mistaken for someone who was seeking ordination; again something I experienced in both congregations. As it is he sits someone between Anthony Cohen and mainstream Congregational Studies. There seems to be something intriguing here. Within Anglicanism there is a tendency quite often to have the model of the priest as anthropologist, within the British Reformed tradition there is no equivalent. Indeed most people doing it congregational studies seem to be unaware of the tradition at all and are doing it as part of their own academic tradition. Joseph Webster therefore writes as a social anthropologist doing what social anthropologists do. I have also come across a cultural geographer who has done this. So I need to be reading this as well

Settling Back down

Last weekend should have been my parents golden wedding celebration (my Mum got the whole do cancelled as she cracked her pelvis the morning before) so it is time I settled down to sorting out my thesis post exams.  There are bits that annoy me about the report such as me admitting that on one reference I could not find the original and thinking therefore there were lots. There are exactly two pieces I could not trace and the second is not actually referenced in my thesis. I have now found that reference and found that the reference to it was wrong. The other remains a mystery and if a historian wants an intriguing puzzle I am willing to set out what the problem is. There are other things I will struggle with such as doing a literature review without a topic. My thesis draws on a wide range of literature and doing a review over the thesis would be as long as the thesis.

Anyway today was the day to settle down and get something done. Actually some weeks back I made up a table of the interviews I did and I will send that to my supervisor. I have also found a paper by Voas and will trace others. However, today I sat down and began to go through the audio recordings. I am actually transcribing them. This was something I was thinking I was going to have to twist and only transcribe in parts. Then a couple of weeks back I went to a session by QSR and they talked of three levels of transcribing:

1.  The highly detailed favoured by conversational analyst, which often uses the Jefferson Transcription System. This is what I started out using.
2. The medium one tries to capture words but turns it into good enough English. I tried this and most of the interviews I had transcribed in this was done using a system suggested by Catherine Kohler Riessman book Narrative Analysis 
3. They third is the notes one and just tries to capture the gist of what was being said in the interview.

It is the third form that I am now using. I am leaving out most of what I said and just trying to capture the essence of what was said back to me, although that often means working in the interviewees own words. It will give me enough to code to for the analysis and I will be able to select bits that I want to include into the thesis and then transcribe them up to the second level. My analysis does not justify taking them up to the first level. The difference is remarkable I have transcribed two interviews this weekend and I would have got a third done but for software.

I am transcribing in QSR NVivo and need to because that gives me the ability to select the precise bits I need to code and the ability to link these to the tape recording to later produce the precise transcripts of the relevant pieces. However, the software has crashed most times I have tried to close an recording with a transcript I have been working on. I have checked the software is up to date. I have removed the first recording this happened with and brought it in again. I have waited up to an hour for the software to do its bit. It will fortunately save the transcript just as long as I do not close it! The result is yesterday I transcribed about half an hour of interview three or more times and I have had losses today as well. Now as I finish a section of the transcription I save the project. 

Anyway I hope to get this sorted this week and I have ordered a foot pedal so I do not need to use my hands to control the audio player on the computer. I have also found another book that needs to go into the thesis as it deals with an area close allied to my thesis although not overlapping. I think it was published after I reviewed congregational studies in the Reformed churches and found two studies. This makes a third.

Viva - Not A Good Result

Yesterday was my first viva, even that should give you a clue to the result. I did not write yesterday as there was too much emotion working through me. However after a second disturbed night with signs of anxiety attack around it I decided that going into work today was not sensible and that I needed for the sake of work as much as anything to put some work into getting the emotion hormones out of my system. After a lie in therefore I am going to try and give as clear an account as I can of what happened yesterday.

Pictorial Map of Thesis

I think the story probably starts about 5pm on Monday. That was the time when I stopped working on the pictorial map of my thesis. It is not finished and you will see lots of places where there is only a pencil drawing and towards the end the page references and the theorists are much more sketchy.  The aim is to give me a way to think through what is where in my thesis. Anyway stopping it then was to allow me time to organise myself for yesterday. There  were a number of things I needed to do; not least of which was get the pictorial map down to my table.  The other thing was to pack my bag, make sure I had the details of things like train times, have a bath and get an early night.

In a sense that map makes the basic problem with my thesis visible. There are at least three separate ideas worthy of a thesis within that map which accounts for its business. The first comes from Congregational Studies and is well within the normal sort of theses arguments. Basically, it is an argument that even in a situation like those I studied it is not possible to separate community from worship without doing damage to your understandings of a congregations Identity. The second is a methodological one that seeks to explore more fully the way that scientific understanding of flows changes our understanding of congregations if we explore it. The third and final one relates most strongly to Congregational Identity, is the most developed of the three and is the one I intended to go with. However, the other two muddy the water. The result even though I was not admitting it was that I was not confident in my thesis and felt it needed another go through. Indeed had even started to think about doing this.

Anyway I awoke at 6:00 a.m. yesterday quite easily, although the night had been disturbed, mainly by stomach ache as if I had been doing too many sit-ups on a full stomach before bed. Not good but also not my normal night before nerves which are sort of flurries of excitement that twirl like dervishes in my abdomen.  Getting up at 6:00 a.m. meant I had lots of time to settle myself for the day, and dress with extra care.

I walked down to the station for just after 9:30 a.m. although the train did not leave until 9:55 a.m..  I picked up my ticket. I got on the train and instead of getting out my thesis I got out my Kindle and read "The Solace of Fierce Landscapes". It was deliberate, I rarely settle to fiction these days, the entry into the narrative is something that feels too difficult/dangerous to do. I find myself actually pulling back. So I chose a book on spirituality and I chose one on deserts because there is something within me that is attracted to them. Yet I am not sure that it was a good idea on the way to a viva.  I think it challenged me too much when I needed just diverting.

I got to Birmingham New Street and the first sign of nerves occurred. I found that I could not drink coffee from Costa, officially because it was too hot but also because my throat constricted as I tried to sip it. I did give in a go for half an hour or so, but it did not cool down enough so I left it on the side and went to catch the train out to the nearest station to where my viva was to be held. I crossed across the road (very busy) and had a sandwich at the local Sainsbury's supermarket. I checked email and such and put my phone onto silent. Then at 1:00 p.m. I walked up the road to the venue and arrived at 1:15 p.m.

a tree in the grassland

This was too early so I went for an hexplore (basically a diversion around the area to keep me from turning up too early, I spell it with a "h" to differentiate it from proper planned exploration trips). I found that just down the road is a piece of suburban grassland. It had a stream passing through, a path, quite a few trees and a couple of benches. Really not enough to really be a park but enough of space to have a brief walk and to sit in the sunshine for a while. I also had a chat with a man who was out walking his dog. Well he was sitting on a bench and the dog was enjoying exploring the surroundings.  The tree in the photo caught my eye,  possibly because it looks like a tree costume  with its short sprouting foliage after clearly having had its main boughs cut off.

Anyway I returned to the venue and let the reception know I was there. I asked if I could go to the loo. That was a mistake as it was past the dining room just as my examiners were coming out. This fussed me somewhat. Then went to sit and wait  in the lounge to be called.

It was not long before the chair came to collect me. The welcome was fine, but the setup was adversarial at the start with the table wider than was necessary. I would also say that both my examiners looked grey.  The first question was one of the ones that you expect in that it was a question about the importance of my thesis. Sitting back now I realize that I made mistakes right out at this point. The reason was that I focused on the third concept. What I should have done is placed that within the terms of doing an ethnography!

Another problem I ran into was their interpretation of footnotes. They thought I was dismissing people if I put them in footnotes, often I was not. The problem was that to deal comprehensively with that person would actually have taken three or four pages of diversion into material that was not directly relevant to the thesis. Two debates within sociology of religion that are actually so strongly connected with the tradition that a straight sociological reading of them is not possible and I would have to spend time unpacking the way that it interacts with the tradition. Yet I want to indicate I am aware of the debates. Therefore, the footnotes are not dismissals, but signs that there is a larger and much more complex debate here to be had that is not within the scope of the thesis.

What also happened is this linked into my insecurity about the main point of my thesis. This was poor going. I should also have corrected my external when she started talking about believing and not belonging. My thesis is NOT about that, even though hers was. My argument would be that basically if you want to understand belonging you actually need to look at people who do belong. After all it is not good investigating women's experience by only talking to men! I also am aware that my ability to give a succinct definition of a what I meant as a technology was not in the thesis draft.

In the methodology, I did not transcribe all my interviews. I did do about the first half dozen. There are pretty good reasons. I have a mild dyslexia related problem, and this has implications. First I have a very strong mental recall, I have to have, I cannot rely on myself to pick up books to do it. Secondly I find listening to the recordings easier than reading the transcripts. Yes I have used them even when I have not listened to them for months.  Thirdly transcribing is difficult, ten times the length of the interview and the length varies from 15 minutes to 2 hours with most around an hour. With working four days a week, trying to be in the field as much as possible and keeping the reading and writing, I am afraid that transcription took a low priority. What I did do was often write extensive notes when I got in, this often reviewed the content of the interview as well as the context.  I felt justified in making this decision.

Anyway I was shown out to the garden room where my supervisor was marking scripts. My view was that I had actually enjoyed it but that I expected to be given three to four months revisions.

I was then called back in and my supervisor came too. The faces of both my examiners were a lot healthier colour. I have got to get the next part right.

Firstly I was treated as an "experienced ethnographer".  That is not just an ethnographer but one with some maturity. It was also clear that they thought that my thesis contained "originality" indeed part of the result was to allow me to clarify and strengthen my assertion of that originality. They also were struck by my use of the word "grief" to describe my leaving of the congregations and felt I was still too close to the fieldwork. They however had ten major recommendations to make. Of these three involve a significant amount of work. The largest and the one that I can think of least gain for is that they want me to transcribe all my interviews. To reflect this they want quotes within my thesis from the interviews and also a table with an account of who was analysed. I am seriously thinking of putting quite long quotes into the thesis (not full interviews), but times when people have told a whole story that is relevant to the thesis. This gives the reader more context and indeed will be able to see what was said and what I thought it meant next to each other.

The second significant part was a section doing a literature review on the topics of believing and belonging. I think I will need to do some theology of belief and see if I can explain why I find questionnaire approaches to belief decidedly lacking.  I can only write a personal creed if I can destabilise it and if I can't my honest creed is "God". Everything apart from that needs an essay with footnotes on footnotes to try to capture the nature of God. I am not totally apophatic in my theological bent, but I have been involved in metaphysical theological discussion since a teenager and my concepts of God reflect this. So if I honestly answer the questions "Do you believe that God or gods exists?" then my answer is "no" because existence is a property of the created not the creator. This sort of causes problems.

The final major change they wanted  was for me to take the chapter on flows and incorporate it into the other chapters and cut it by about half. That actually is only a couple of weeks work, it will take some care and I will need to decide which part of the flows chapter to the three descriptive chapters. That gives another shape to them and I will need to think this through.

There were seven others, some of them were fairly short pieces of work; some of them I could sit down and do tomorrow without difficulty, some are quite expensive but do not actually require a lot of extra work by me. None of the requirement in anyway suggested that I should change the basic thesis.

Anyway Martin and I left after brief greetings between Martin and my examiners. We then spent an hour debriefing. It took some time. If I really felt like it I could I think of asked for a major re-write instead with the same corrections to be done!!! The grounds being that on the basis of what the examiners had said I had met the examination requirements.  In many senses the only advantage of this would be less work for them and me not having to have a second viva. There will however come out a two or three reports and one thing they were clear about was that I needed a break to gain distance from my fieldwork. I am therefore taking one until mid August by which time I hope to have properly digested the reports and will meet with my supervisor to discuss a way forward. In some sense the debrief the discussion was very like the talk you have once a paper was rejected and I am pretty used to doing that. In the end you have to sit down and make the changes. This took an hour or more and I then walked back to the station and caught a train back to New Street. Actually remembered the Station has a loo and also sold Coke which as I was exhausted was what I needed at that point.

At New Street I bought a bacon butty and a bottle of water and sat down to inform the world of the outcome. I was using my tablet and my personal wifi network hub not my mobile phone. There is a corner by Costas on the new concourse I tend to sit in. I also realised I did not want to sit down with the book I was reading this morning so I went to W H Smiths and bought "And the Mountains Echoed". It was the best there was in that small W H Smiths and I did not spot that it was another desert book! I think there is a theme there, but it really too much. I would join the narrative only to find that I could not sustain it. So I got the train back and at Sheffield station bought a G&T from M&S then got a taxi home. Then rang my parents as my mobile phone was indicating its battery was low when I got to Birmingham New Street and I knew they would want to talk. A friend rang later on to check how I was.

Last night I did not sleep very well, a weird mix of nerves, the old fashioned thrill dervishes, anxiety attacks and a racing mind. One of the reasons for writing this at length. I decided that this morning I was going to ring in sick, the combination of being exhausted and on an adrenalin rush is not a good mix.

My reflections so far are that I need to have over prepared with my writing. I have to be confident that it is more than good enough before I am well able to stand up viva situations. Secondly I wonder, it is just a vague possibility, that the resubmission was to give me the full year to make the corrections as my examiners feel that having time is important for the changes they want.

Viva Prep at Birmingham

Today I went to see my supervisor at Birmingham for a Viva Preparation session. He offered me one when I submitted my thesis and I took him up on it. However the only date that we both could make was today. Today's session was more relaxed than a normal one

In the weeks since the last blog I have been working through my thesis. The process has focused on annotating the text with post-it notes and pencil. There are three different sorts of annotations. Simple textual correction are corrected in pencil. l will produce a list of these corrections for the examiners, but they can then be put to one side. Then there are the explanations and more in depth corrections that cover actual substantive errors. These are put on yellow post it notes. When I really need to make sure these are mentioned I have also put a yellow tab mark at the top. Finally, there are the key points of the thesis. These are on pink post it notes. However, these are divided into major and minor with pink tabs for the major ones. There are far more pink tabs than yellow, but I suspect about an equal number of post it notes in each colour. I am also doing mindmaps of each chapter. I will also do a diagrammatic picture of the thesis and produce an index for my own use.

Anyway the reason for me writing this is that today I went to see my supervisor to do viva prep.l needed two things from him. First was local information on how vivas work at Birmingham. I know the general stuff, but each university has its own idiosyncracies and thus I needed to know what these were for Birmingham. There is nothing off the wall, but the detail was important. Indeed we got at one stage into a discussion over the affiliated colleges to Sheffield University. The second was to get me talking around my thesis. It actually seems to come quite easily in that I can put things into words. My main difficulty, as Martin spotted, is referencing my thesis. I am going to have to do some thinking. Up today l have assumed that page number was the sensible way to do this but I am realising that there maybe a more natural way. I suspect that the full thesis diagram might produce this and therefore becomes more important than the indexes.

The day was as sunny as it usually is when I go to Birmingham. Many students were out on the grass and few were in the computer rooms. I suspect that it is a pre-exam week although some exams were in progress. It is now less than a fortnight to my viva and as l walked back to the train station it just might be my last time as a student. Birmingham New Street is still a mess and I am not sure whether I should be glad that I will not have to deal with it regularly over the next few months or sorry that after putting up with it in this state I will not automatically see the new look when finished.

Starting preparing for Viva

All right I realise I should have posted here when I heard, but I forgot in the long list of places to post. My viva is on Tuesday 3rd June. That is relatively quick, the University of Birmingham gives two months to arrange for dates and actually my viva is within those two months. In fact it is so soon that my supervisor had advised me to only start chasing my internal the week before if I had not heard.

For those not familiar with the viva process, there is no reason why outside academia should be, it is an oral examination that is the final part of the examining process.  It is based on the thesis that is submitted and it also an assessment of your ability as an academic in the discipline your thesis is in. There is a description of  the precise procedure on the University of Birmingham website so if you want more detail.

I took a fortnight off, well except for agreeing to the examination date, the examiners and sending an electronic copy for my external examiner. It is daft, I have printed and bound two copies at around fifteen pounds each and then the examiner wants it electronically. I actually did that twice as the first time I did it the old fashioned way by printing the Word file to pdf (No I am not going to send my examiner a Word file, as sure as eggs are eggs, if I did when she opened it on her computer it would muck up the layout on several pages immediately).

Before I submitted I wondered how submitting would hit me. I have a friend who submitted in November and she took to cleaning the house completely. I thought if I did that it might be a good thing. However it has not. What has happened is I suddenly have been wanting lots of exercise. The major desire is for walking, but lots of walking and working do not mix. I find if I mix fairly frequent walks with other exercise I just about have it under control. I have therefore been on two long walks in the last month (and have another planned for tomorrow), been swimming thrice and joined a gym and got a routine to help me get fit. I just hope I can keep it going through viva preparation and revisions. Actually in the run up to viva there is a good incentive to keep me going as exercise lowers anxiety levels. There were signs that anxiety was getting to silly levels prior to submission so I did need to do something and the choice was between seeing the doctor or taking exercise and exercise won.

However this last week I have started the viva preparation. It has been fairly relaxed to date, I have set a date with my supervisor to do Viva preparation. I have also started a bit of examiner stalking and went to training at the University of Sheffield (my employer) on Viva Preparation. The training was Viva Survivor led by Nathan Ryder. I was the only part timer in my session (he led two sessions at Sheffield on Friday).  I was attending in my own time as Friday is my day off. The session was good in that it gave us some idea what a Viva might be like. Let me explain, despite the information above, there is very little information given to students on what the viva is actually like. This left me in a state of anxiety/excitedness that is not dissimilar to the state when you are hauled up in a cart on a big dipper before a big drop. You know the drop is coming but have little how deep or how twisted it is. Now it is as if someone has offered you a rough sketch map of what is ahead.

I am also reading Rowena Murray's book How to Survive your Viva which is good and gives very different information. The two do not really overlap, at least as far as I can see, except when discussing what you should take into your viva. Then the lists are identical.  Also, I have been doing some gentle examiner stalking. This has been purchasing some books by them. Several times during my thesis I hunted for books involving Peter Collins. There was good reason for this, from the book chapters of his, I knew that his PhD thesis was probably the closest to mine of any researcher. So I am slightly miffed to find a book published in 2008 that seems relevant, and to only find it when I am stalking one of my examiners. A hint that came up at Viva Survivor, but not from Nathan, was to actually search for podcasts from you examiners. I have found that both of mine have done podcasts and there is a sense in which listening to the podcasts you get a feel for their thought that going through books does not give.

I also have been out to buy paper supplies to start annotating my thesis. I hope to get that started this week and buying clothes for it. Nothing special really but I have not bought summer clothes this year for work and last years are beginning to look tatty. Actually I am aiming at the top end of Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes but not party stuff or highly formal. Being dressed well and comfortably is for me, as for many females, a way to boost our morale.

Oh the other thing I had not realised is how much talking there is to be done in a viva by the candidate (I am glad I am in Humanities as two hours sounds quite long enough). I am going to have to check out techniques to deal with a loss of voice; as one of my anxiety symptoms is that I loose my voice. I have techniques which I have developed over the years; slowing down, deliberately projecting (so treating a small room as if it is a lecture room with hundred of people there) and making sure my face can be clearly seen.

I will add the picture tomorrow after my walk.

 

Submitted

The Library at the University of Birmingham

Well I have finally done it.

On Sunday I had just done the electronic submission via Turnitin which produced a flurry of emails. It seems that my email of thanks for letting me know that my notice to submit had been received has led to a change in response and now I included in official emails about me. Maybe it is just l included my supervisor in it.
Then it was into work to print my thesis out. This took longer than seems it should. There were three basic stages. First a final proof. Mainly small changes to layout. The most common was changing the exact font of the numbers in my footnote. g guile often changed them to Times Roman or did not superscript them. However the real reason and absolute pain is Microsoft Word is lousy at handling figures in an academic text. The result is at least an hour fiddling before each attempt at printing and that is with nine in total. The second stage was the actual print. I spent most of the time standing our the printer. Birmingham University prefers to have 100 gram paper if printing double sided. The paper at Sheffield University is 70 grams. Thirdly there was the filling in of forms.Full marks to the person who created the Abstract and Access form which was in Word and could be typed in. The other forms were all pdfs. It took me well over an hour to get everything correct on three forms including a final word count, 78577 by my calculation. Then it started raining So I ended up being in work until after 5pm on a day when I was not officially in and then left my train tickets for today in the office so had to go back to collect.

So today, after a disturbed night, I got up early, showered, and breakfasted before l headed for the station. µ was only when l got there I realised that my seat was on a later train than the one I planned to get. Fortunately the first cheap train was not busy and I get a seat in the quiet coach. When I got to Birmingham New Street I bought a ticket to Kings Norton where the University Bindery is. The web said that they did a drop in service for temporary binding. I can happily report that they are as good as their word. G took lessthan five minutes between me handing overmy thesis and them being returned bound.

The a slight diversion as I went up to see my Supervisor just for a chat.It was really weird to walk out of his office and realise that there was no date to set. For the last seven and a half years I have always made sure that I had the next date to see him in my diary and even the last time ' had a 'provisional' submission date. It was good to chat. He has offered to do a viva preparation session when I know the date of my viva.

Then it was off to the library to actually formally submit. In the seven years I have been in a University library four times that I can recall: once for a course, once a failed attempt to borrow a book, to sort our my registering last year and finally today to submit. I used online Library services a lot and bought books from Amazon, Abebooks etc.However it does show the change in Libraries in the last thirty years. I was also fortunate. The girl on the desk was training another girl so everything was done very thoroughly except I was not careful enough with checking my repacking and left my handbag behind. Fortunately a student had handed it in.

There that is it. It is in and I have the afternoon and evening free in Birmingham.