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.

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.