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. 

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.

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.

Well I have managed to re-draft the introduction

The photo was taken a couple of weeks back but it is late already and I still need to tidy before I go to bed so it seemed appropriate.

Most of the weekend I have spent getting the introduction up to scratch. I struggled at a couple of points. The first was that Laurie Green says he uses the work of Freire and Segundo when he talks about the pastoral cycle. Now I can not say that he does not but the connection between the pastoral cycle and "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" is tenuous to say the least. I am hoping that Segundo's classic has more in it. The thing is that I suspect that there is much more radical behind their thought than Laurie Green expects. That is a theology that is based on the way people who do not have specialised theological training do theology. To get at that you must first of all listen to people who do it. When people do this, they are often shocked at the things people come out with. I know I was. However when you listen harder you realise they do not work in the same theological framework that theologians do and the answers theologians give therefore are nonsense to them. If these people are to be able to talk with theologians then theologians need to learn their language, not the other way around.

I also spent a considerable time on Foucault and am pretty sure I am getting more and more familiar with his late thought although I do not stick with it. The penalty is that there is now quite a big section on my bookshelf with his work on it. I am still looking for a really neat quote when Foucault explains what technology is. I have it quoted as from him but with no reference. This is very frustrating. I have to use a reference by Rose to cover it. This is despite Foucault having a paper out called "Technology of the Self"

To add to the difficulties last night I discovered that getting a Word version out of Scrivener is not as simple as just compiling it! I have to do quite a bit of reformatting work on top of re-entering the references. I need to investigate further as some parts of Scrivener are just opaque to me. I will get there but it will take time.

Today the frustrations have been technological. My router decided to misbehave badly and as I was using Grammarly at the time this was not good news. So I installed the replacement one I have had for when this happened. It gives me faster connection but tends to disconnect more frequently. I am considering switching it off when I am not using it. I do know the installation did not work particularly well as I had to reset one variable so as to get the wireless working.

Anyway I have sent the chapter off to my supervisor with a request for a date for the next supervision. Hopefully he will spot that my diary is busy and realise that his is probably also filling up.

A lo-ong weekend on thesis

Part of a local bench

Well this has been a long drawn out weekend working on thesis. It started on Thursday, and I really go back into work tomorrow. Two of the days were thesis days from work. These will be some of the last I ever do. I now have the text largely in proof! It is weird. This whole afternoon I have felt as if something very scary, but very exciting was happening. Now that I am actually pretty close the relief of having a proof version of the thesis text is like bubbles of champagne running through my veins.

It has not been easy even this weekend. I had a friends marriage go through major ructions and the husband ended up briefly sleeping on my floor for one night. I had a migraine at the start of the weekend, and I have had a mild infection or hayfever so did not go over to my parents.

Thursday and Friday only slow progress was made although I got the Worship chapter into proof. Saturday I tackled the Methodology chapter and I can see why my supervisor thought it was good. It was by far the easiest of all the chapters to refine into proof. However in the last three days I have struggled with the introduction and the conclusion. These are the shortest chapters of the thesis, yet they have taken more time and effort than some of the longer chapters which I was doing in a day and a half each,and these, at about the same length when put together, were took three.

However I still have to write the abstract, sort the appendices, put the text together and format it in the right form for the thesis and so on. I have a little time over the next three weeks to put these final touches in.

Slowly getting my focus back

This will be short but I have spent most of the weekend sorting out what needed to be done next and beginning to do it. I had been slowly loosing the focus over the weeks before as other demands encroached on my time. I am not clear next, this week has an elders and there is a communion next Sunday.

I have also been very tired this weekend, more than I have been recently. This may be good news as I had not been sleeping too well for the last couple of weeks due to the stress I felt under. This may mean that I have started to sense an easing in it. However I need more time on my thesis and I am finding it hard to find it. Every one is very ready for me to take time in theory but in practice the reality is different. I can take study days at work but I have to be able to complete my work and there is no let up in that.

So this weekend I was basically getting my head around the edits that needed doing to my introduction. They are interesting, not on the whole huge things but quite often requiring some reading and thinking about. I must admit I cut out one comment as it was just not worth the effort I would need to do to justify it. I thought when I put it in that it was accepted knowledge. After all most congregations I have ever been in a lot of the lay leadership has been in their sixties and seventies. It is a rare congregation where it is spread more widely although thinking on it Christ Church Parrswood did have quite a few who were younger though church secretary was Bernard and he was in his sixties. The church treasurer was two people in my time, one in his eighties  and one in his forties. I also know I am not alone in this knowledge, Rev Mike Jackson of Park URC Reading also commented on it when I was there. However there is no literature out there that says this is the case.

Anyway I have got the introduction to the introduction written, in the end I took the very straight forward approach of telling my examiners what this thesis was about. I have also done quite a bit on the vision process. Some tidying of the last section. So this week I really need to read enough of a couple more Congregational Studies books to make a complete literature review. I am trying to trace any thesis (masters or doctoral) that has been done within British Reformed or Non-Conformist Churches that is a study of congregation(s) and uses ethnographic method. So far I have found a geographer at Edinburgh University who has done some research on Free Church of Scotland that is Ethnographic (actually I may need to reference that work in a later chapter as well). I also have found a Presbyterian Lecturer in New Zealand who puts his interest as Congregational Studies and knows enough as to list the URC. The major problem is finding a forgotten thesis.

All but the abstract drafted but little actual progress

Alien from post it notes in window
of Computer Science at Birmingham

A bit later than usual, a mix of catching the earlier train home because I am not quite sure where to find a place to write with the building work at New Street and needing to do something when I go in.

The last two weeks on my blog I have failed to write up about thesis work. That was not because I was not doing some, when I got the chance I did. It was that rather the work has been unfocused and I know when I am unfocused that I am usually not producing what I need to produce. Now do not get me wrong, my supervisor actually felt what I wrote was not bad, it just was not what I should have been writing. Indeed he felt that I probably should include the central bit of my draft conclusion in another chapter. It just was not conclusion. He has now told me what to put in a conclusion, not what are my findings but what are the tasks I need to do.

At May’s supervision my challenge for the month was to get the methodology into shape and to get to second draft the introduction and conclusion. I think I did the methodology but the introduction and conclusion were still only in first draft. This has added a month onto my time it will take to finish my thesis.

However there was good reason why I was unfocused, and that was that I was distracted. In April I was so absorbed in my thesis I felt as if I was never without working on it in the back of my brain, May I got by because there were plenty of bank holidays and those allowed me to spend enough time on my thesis for it to absorb me. However June has been a lesson in being over committed. What really happened if I am honest is I did not let go of my last chapter and work out what I had to write for the conclusion.  Therefore because I was not focused on what I needed to write for my conclusion I just continued to writing the last chapter.

I find that I can not just sit down and start writing, I need to spend a while mulling the ideas around, and generally not producing very much. After a while I seem to enter into the writing and then I find that I can actually produce good work pretty quickly. I need to think through what I am writing and if I do not then I do not produce what is required. This last month I tried to do without that time and I FAILED to produce so basically I am back where I was at the start of June with what I need to do.

The good news is that we worked out a submission date for my thesis. I can therefore start to make plans around how things fit together. I may even book holiday for while it is being read by my examiners. Also my supervisor does not expect substantive revisions of my thesis. It really is about getting thing sorted. The one thing that must not be allowed to happen is for me to enter a state where I am endlessly writing up. That will not do me or anyone else any good.

So despite Birmingham being dry and even having time to sit in the sun, it was my toughest supervision to date.

A Wet May Supervision

A Wet View from the Train

I am sitting in the new part of Birmingham New Street Station having just got myself a bottle of water and packet of crisps from Costa. The changes had had me confused all day. This morning I could not even find WH Smiths but the women’s loos were free. The other thing was Waterstones was still open at the University. So I bought a notebook there rather than at WH Smiths.

For once the weather has been wet. Fortunately I walked to Sheffield Station during a let up in the showers and the distance in Birmingham is not far. Just from the University Station to the Arts Building. I know Birmingham Department of Philosophy, Theology and Religion is not in the Arts Building but my supervisors office is and as a result I have not been there since it moved to the Edgebaston Campus.

Well I think I now have all my substantive chapters in second draft. My supervisor actually said he was pleased with the way my thesis was shaping up. However it is clear that I need to work harder at engaging with the literature than I am. I think however some of that is clear because I have not written my introduction and conclusion. Ruth and James I think that means I will be sending you three chapters soon, plus two bits from another chapter which are major reworkings but only of those section.

Equally I am going to have to trace one or two of the books that are Roman Catholic Congregational Studies. I just need to be able to check out their take on tradition. If it is as I expect, then they are actually talking about something different when it comes to tradition than I am in the Reformed sense. What becomes interesting is if that, I have my conclusion, albeit very much in the verbal form at present. I may well need to do a writing brainstorm in order to get it down but it is there. However it does mean my thesis is Foucauldian, in that he is the main thinker that I have interacted with. I am not a disciple, but his ideas do become useful and intriguingly I must admit I have a Foucauldian attitude to Foucault and my discourse with him is pretty wide ranging and eclectic. However where I see Foucault as providing an over arching technology for knowledge systems, I tend instead to see what I am providing is the ability to generate tools that can be useful in the analysis of such systems.

Next month’s challenges is to redraft the introduction, cut by over 50% the methodology and draft the conclusion. That should keep me busy. I may even need to avail myself of the offer of extra time for thesis from work, the only problem is that I am busy, busy at work and finding it difficult to fit things in at present. There also is more I need to do at home.

Minor Redraft of Introduction

coffee table chaos while
preparing for redraft

After my supervision on Wednesday I realised I needed to pretty quickly do a small revision on my introduction chapter. To do this I needed to revisit stuff I have not looked at for some time. That is I had to talk about the theorists I have not used in my thesis to try and place the theorists that I have.

It is an intriguing thing to do as actually quite a few of them do appear but they are bit players rather than major theorists. The major ones are those that I have returned to again and again. This is not to make it in any sense a thesis about them.

Anyway I have got to deal with the worship chapter now. So far I have printed out a copy of the chapter which needs to be shorter and also to decide how to make the argument flow through it rather than have it at the start and the finish. There is now something interesting to say, something which needs to be dealt with but how am I going to deal with that. What does the tension between "I" locus and "we" locus of worship? Does it matter whether the congregations sees itself as gathered individuals or a team. If so what does this imply about worship being a mirror 'of' or 'for'. Plenty of questions to answer and an argument to create. I better get reading my Geertz.

Return after New Year

Sorry no picture this time. I have however been busy. The thesis length now stands at just below the 100,000 mark at 99,888, what is 112 words between friends. Well it means that I have 19,888 words too many for my thesis! I could loose a chapter without difficulties and I still have one to write. However the last few months I seem to have recovered my ability to write to length. Therefore I wrote under 5,000 words for my introduction and if I am honest I already know that some of that is waffle and needs trimming but in the end it was get it down so I continued writing. Actually I am pretty sure there is something else that needs dealing with as part of the preliminaries so that might well replace some of the waffle.

I also have written out a timetable for completing my thesis. Unfortunately this pushes me towards June, which is unfortunate but I cannot see anyway that I can do more than two major redrafts of chapters in a month. My plan is to tackle the most tricky first and get them out of the way, hoping that by doing this when I get to the easier ones it will go more quickly. The only snag being that I have to leave Methodology to pretty late on and it will need vicious editing.

Other than that I get to see my supervisor on Wednesday.