So I mentioned in my previous post that I was aiming to have the thesis drafted by Christmas. In light of the amount of teaching I might be doing this term, that might not happen, but I’m going to get as close to done as I can. Finishing by Christmas means I will have drafted the thesis in just over two years. Which sounds pretty good, huh? It also means that I can ignore it for a bit and try to get some academic publications out before going back for editing. I’m hoping to submit it around April, which gives me 6 months to complete corrections and finish within my three years. Fingers crossed.
I’m feeling really positive about teaching. I’ve got creative writing students this year, which I’m really excited about. I’m going to try some different techniques. I look forward to discovering how my new students learn best, probably as they do the same. I’m going to be teaching on what is essentially a year-long study skills module that helps their transition into HE and gives them the skills they need to become fledgeling academics. My aim is to make it as interesting as possible and get them to appreciate how important these skills are for the rest of their university/academic careers.
Regarding my own creative writing, I’ve been on a bit of a roll recently. I’ve just had my fourth piece accepted for publication and I’ve had a couple of really lovely rejections where they’ve encouraged me to submit something to them in the future. Writing is something I let drop a bit when I started the PhD – I felt pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing and felt like I needed to put my whole focus on research and analysis. Actually, creative writing is massively helpful to academic writing – it gets you to really think about each word, what information you’re distilling, if you’re writing it in the best way to get your point across.
Academic writing wise – I finished a rough draft of my third chapter a couple of weeks ago, I’ve written a draft of the paper for the narratology journal that accepted my abstract, and I’m typing up quotes for chapter four. My third chapter is by far the weakest I’ve written, I’m not at all happy with it, but I’m going to let it sit while I write ch4, and then go back for editing. I’m meeting my supervisors in the beginning of October to discuss ch2, so after that I’ll titivate ch3 and send it off for advice.
Things seem to be speeding along at the moment. Not sure if I’m just having a bit of a manic stage or if the productive panic I’ve been awaiting for the last two years has finally kicked in. We’ll see how it goes when teaching starts and chunks of my time are focussed there.
PhDanger 