Pre Christmas Supervision

A Welcome Mug of Tea at New Street

Its been a long time since my last supervision, the one in October which was suppose to be the last before submission, only it wasn’t. I have been doing a lot of work since then but also had a holiday. The combined effect of having to restructure my thesis and a holiday have led to me being far more creative than I have been for the last year. Creativity is not a process at present of creating out of nothing but far more akin to putting together a collage and changing it from being something that is just a collection of used bits into something that feels a cohesive whole. This is harder than you would imagine not least because I seem to insist on collecting the most disparate of things.

Since last supervision I have reversed outlined my entire PhD using Scrivener, tackled two of the dutiful chapters (introduction and methodology) and also worked on the chapters on flows and traditions. All these had been sent to my supervisor even though at least the traditions chapter was anything but finished.

Well I have been back to see my supervisor today in Birmingham. The place was swarming with the Winter Graduation candidates. I am pleased to note that the University of Birmingham seems to require people to dress semi-formal which for women means either black/grey dress or black/grey skirt and white blouse. For someone whose first degree had the formality of St Andrews this is copable with, and there is little chance of clashes. Actually there was a real beauty about the red brick campus against the frost cold of a bright December day.

However I was not graduating, I am just reorganising my thesis prior to submitting. My supervisors assessment of where I am at and where I thought I was at agreed. He does feel that this time things are fitting together in a way that was just not the case in the previous version and this shows in what I am doing. Two chapters are now in final form (well bar one small change in the one part that can’t be finalised until I have finished in the introduction i.e. the description of the chapters to come).  So that is Introduction and Methodology put to one side until final edit. The other two  under review today require quite a bit of work. One of these was not a surprise, it really was not ready for review but because it showed how my thought was developing I thought it well sending it to my supervisor. The other perhaps is, but it felt a bit skinny as if the bones were there but not the sinews. This is in part because the sinews I had on before had to be removed as they no longer worked, but I need to create new stuff.

The programme now is to get the tradition chapter back to him before Christmas and then to go back to flows after Christmas. The aim being to get the majority of remaining six chapters to my supervisor by 29th February. I may need extra time, but I think it is doable.