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.