This whole belly dancing malarkey isn’t playing out! I went for a few lessons, and now I’ve missed two, so I suspect I might be a bit behind! Last week I was feeling a bit rough, and this week I was so totally engrossed in uni work I missed the time I needed to leave uni to get there. Oh well, I think I might sack it off and take it up again next term. I can’t let my amazing jingly jangly scarf go to waste can I?!

So today has been really good. I had a nice supervisorial meeting. Rob and Elaine liked the photos I’d taken and the notes I’d made, so that’s great. I’m looking forward to summer when exploring these places will be pleasant. The days I went out and took photos were awfully cold and dreary!

I’ve really gotten into the swing of being at uni. I’ve started coming in more frequently, I’ve got a stash of coffee and tea in the office, actually I even have a stash of breakfast cereal and pot noodles. I’m such a student!

I’m quite excited, next week I start my teaching assistant work again. This semester I’m TA-ing on Regulating Sexuality. It was one of my favourite modules as an undergrad so I was pretty pleased to get the gig!

The rest of this week is a little quiet, busy socially but quiet uni wise. Then it reverses next week, and it’s all business! I’m very excited, this week it’s skeptics in the pub on Wednesday, a thing on the science of light on Thursday, tea with a friend on Friday, I’m not sure about Saturday, and tonight I’m off to the cinema to see The Gray. I hear its rubbish, but it’s cheap night so who cares, right? Next week will be all work and no play, teaching, a HASS lecture and I was supposed to have a PGR lecture but it’s been cancelled, so good bye to my free lunch!

Well, it’s been a while hasn’t it?

You would not believe the amount of times that I have sat down to begin writing something for this blog and then stopped. More often than not it’s what you might call “non productive uni work guilt”. You know, when you’re doing something for uni that isn’t uni work, but you have uni work you should be doing? Well…. I know what it is. When its not NPUWG, it’s “ooo my cows need feeding on that facebook game, hang on people are talking at me on facebook chat, ooo I missed Eastenders last night lets watch that on Iplayer.” or as I like to call it semi-professional procrastination. The internet is too full of wonderful tempting irrelevancies!

So, what did I promise to talk about? Oh yeah the Christmas party and the HASS module.

The Chirstmas party was awesome. We had secret santa and a bring something meal. Now don’t get me wrong, the PhD community at Newcastle is a VERY friendly group, but I suspect there’s a lot of competitiveness between us when it comes to baking (yes, baking). So many of us are amazing at cooking, there was mulled wine, mince pies, pizza, Mexican lasagne, so much yummyness. I made pumpkin and apple muffins and chocolate truffles in 3 different flavours. I must admit that I wouldn’t have put so much effort in if I wasn’t trying to make an impression on the other PhD students I don’t know well. I was tempted just to pop into the shops on my way there and bring in a bunch of pre-bought snacks, but I’m glad I didn’t! The secret Santa was fun too. Iain got me a “do your own graffiti” mug. Inspired by my last dissertation on toilet graffiti I’m sure. I LOVE it! It was supposed to be anonymous but I knew exactly who would get me that. I would like to tell you all what I got for someone else, but I think its still a secret!

The HASS module I mentioned was “The nature of explanation and enquiry”. Hand’s down it was by far my most favourite module offering from HASS so far. Basically every lecture is an introduction to different perspectives, for example Feminism or Marxism. I was introduced to ideas like Hermeneutics for the first time and recapped old favourites like Bourdieu. I was so disappointed that I wasn’t offered this as part of my MA, it would have been SO useful to me back then, but now I’m fairly committed to my love affair with Situationist – Psychogeography- reinterpreted sociologically. Also, I would have liked more lectures. I’m sure other students will hate me for saying this but there were weeks where we only had one lecture and others where we had two, honestly, I could have stood for three. I love lectures, it’s like watching TV but more stimulating. So the assessment was 500 words on three different topics. I chose:
Karl Popper- would he think your subject is scientific? (If your wondering, good old Mr Popper slates the unscientific nature of many social sciences, so sociology is a psudo-science, and to be honest I don’t think he would be particularly thrilled by my philosophical perspective. After all, I doubt you can falsify affect.)

Something about Marx’s ideas on how society evolves. (I’m not a massive Marx fan, but it seemed doable in 500 words)

and

How has feminism changed the way your field understands knowledge. Which I found quite fun. A couple of the other PhD students are ardent feminists and I quite enjoy playfully winding them up. So now I feel like I have a little more knowledge with which to back up my playful prodding.

Obviously I’ve paraphrased the questions a little bit, not that I expect next years PhD students to read through this blog, but just in case they do I’ve vague-d it up a bit. I did feel that 500 words was a bit limited as an assessment, but who am I to criticize?

Can you guess what THE most important thing I learned from this entire process was? I learned that I was not on the HASS mailing list, so I’ve been missing HASS emails. Oops!

A serious plus point about the module was having group discussions run by a music student come psycho geography fan, a lovely French lady called Elodie. She was really fun to work with and mediated the group so well! Talking to her really helped me identify more literature I should be reading.

In other news, I took one half of my “how to teach” class. It was supposed to be a two day thing, but alas the guy who was giving the class was poorly on day two. I did pick up some handy hints, I found that having done some teaching and found my strengths and weaknesses it was more useful than it would have been had I had no experience.

On the non uni-personal life stuff, I had a lovely Christmas and New Year, Christmas was quiet, we don’t really celebrate it in our house. New Year was nice. In my family we traditionally go to the beach for a bit of a wander around and to grab some chips during the day on NYE, which is by far my favourite family tradition. On NYE proper I went to a house party and met lots of new people, which is by far my favourite thing about parties! Also, I’ve ALMOST finished decorating my bedroom. I’m can’t wait to move in! I will post pictures soon. I nearly forgot to mention that I went to a friends wedding. It was amazing. The bride and groom looked lovely, and they had a cake made out of cheese as a gluten free alternative to wedding cake! On the same day as the wedding the boy I had been dating decided we should make our relationship “official”. Nothing has changed other than our facebook status’, the internet exacerbates the awkwardness of human relationships sometimes, don’t you think?

Well, this is getting to be another self-indulgently long post isn’t it?

Next time I’ll tell you about how I’m progressing with uni, and tribal belly dancing. Fellow Sociology PhD Emily and I have taken it up. We’re hilariously bad!

So, I popped my lecture cherry with a talk on how I come up with the things I like to look at sociologically and an example of an analytical method I have employed in the past. I called it “ Making Something out of Nothing ”. I was expecting a maximum of about 6 people to turn up, but much to my surprise about half of the class that I’m a TA/discussant for turned up, I think about 25- 30 people, but I didn’t count because it wasn’t mandatory, but that’s not bad going is it?

So I waffled on about finding something that excites you and turning it in to your research. The example I used was a bit of graffiti I found on my way to uni one day. Seriously, I owe the fine art student who did it a pint if I ever find out who (s)he is! That wee bit of vandalism has inspired me on so many levels and provided me with a kicking off point for so much of my work since then. So after I talked about that image, my dissertation on how urban sports (wo)men subvert space and my dissertation on graffiti in women’s toilets (I know more than any one person should about the sociology of women’s loos). I moved on to explaining how I did a Foucauldian genealogical analysis of the photograph I took of that graffiti. I think it went ok, no false modesty, but public speaking is not my strongest point, and to be fair neither is Foucauldian language really, so for a first timer stretching herself I think I did ok. I didn’t fumble too much and I didn’t swear, so I think I’m improving!
My supervisor meeting went ok. I was told in that I need to start writing down what I’m up to, to use as evidence in my progression review. Apparently they won’t just take my word for it that I’ve been filling my time with sociology and not just sitting in my room reading Mills and Boon novels, whilst eating dainty chocolates. I had submitted a small amount of work to them, in preparation for my ethics approval. Basically the ethics approval submission is a form that tells the uni what your up to, (they are probably just checking that your not conducting covert experiments of orphans, or what ever) it lets them decide if they can get behind your research. It’s sometimes billed as a bit of a formality, but I quite enjoy thinking about the ethics of my proposal. I had attempted to cut my research proposal down to 500 words, because that’s what they request, but brevity is not my strongest point (either). So it was a bit naff, I knew it was a bit naff and I don’t think it lit up Rob and Elaine’s world either. Thankfully they told me I could make my proposal longer if I liked. So I went back to my original ESRC application and went to town on tweaking and adding. I was really pleased in the end. Enjoy reading those 3500 words whoever is in charge of approving me!

On Monday I graduated from my Masters in Sociology. My mum and my gran were there to see me get hooded. This is my third graduation now and I must say it was by far the longest. We had two gentlemen being awarded honorary degrees for their work in sustainability. Their speeches were interesting, I couldn’t help thinking: “This would have awesome at my last graduation.” Town Planners love sustainability. Unfortunately their introductions and speeches made the graduation which started at 10:45 stretch till after 12. Just my luck, I had a lecture to go to at 12, I was really looking forward to flouncing in in my gown. (Hey, it cost me £42 to hire, I wanted to make the most of it.) Alas by the time I hit the building my lecture was in it was 20 past-ish, so I decided to miss it. I hate people who rock up late and disrupt lectures. It’s a shame I was quite looking forward to it too. On the other hand I got to chill out with my some friends from the masters and meet their parents. We all stay in touch on Facebook, but it’s not the same. Now everyone has lives it’s hard to get us all in the same room!

Here are some photos, taken by my mum, who clearly missed her calling as a photographer. Not.

And I clearly missed my calling as a super model.

Well that’s it for the time being. Rock n Roll, eh? Next time I’ll tell you about the post-grad Christmas party, which in actual fact happened last Thursday, but I figure I’ll it’ll give me something to talk about next week whilst I’m on ‘holiday’! I’ll probably also have a moan about the work I’m doing for the last HaSS module I took. If I get a bit too busy to update, have an awesome Christmas!

Initially I wasn’t quite sure what to write about. I doubt my PhD experience is typical. In fact I’m almost sure everyone’s experience is different. Plus beginning this blog at the start of December, when I started Uni in late September, makes me feel like I’m missing a lot out. So instead of going back over the whole term which might be a bit dull both to write and to read I think I’ll enlighten you on the three main highlights of my Autumn term so far:

Amsterdam,
Finding out someone else is using my methodology,
Extreme Strolling.

First, Amsterdam. I’m spontaneous, every now and then I’ll get the travel bug and just book myself a flight. It just so happens that one day I decided I wanted to go on a trip, checked out some flights and moseyed on into uni for a lecture. I mentioned the idea of a trip to Emily (also a Sociology PhD blogger) and that I’d found some cheap flights to Amsterdam. Long story short, the flights were booked within the hour. I had hardly known Emily a month, we’d met in the lift on our way to the school induction, then bonded over finger sandwiches and beer. So I didn’t know her well, but I had gathered we were kindred spirits. So in reading week we hopped on a flight to Holland. It was awesome, very expensive, but awesome non the less. Emily and I are kindred spirits. Both big fans of just exploring a city on foot and drinking in the atmosphere. The Botanic Gardens were a serious and unexpected highlight of the trip! It was also pretty cool to explore the Red Light District with someone who’s area of expertise is women’s sexuality. They say doing a PhD can be lonely, thankfully that hasn’t been my experience so far. I’m sure I’ll elaborate more about Claire the other new PhD student, and the other more established PhD students in future posts.

A photo Emily took of me in the botanic garden.

Second, finding out someone else is using my ‘original’ and ‘innovative’ methodology. Not so much a highlight as a bit of a devastating blow! I’m funded by the ESRC, and as part of that I was invited to a networking conference at The Sage. Alan Bryman (http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/management/people/abryman ) was the guest speaker, I met some facinating new people, such as Verity, a lady who was interested in trying to use some sort of visual methodology to record and interoperate sign language focus groups, all in all it was an interesting and informative afternoon. Then at the end one of the other first year PhD students tells me that my “Walking Elicitation” method of data collection sounded very similar to the “Walking Ethnography” that one of the lecturers at Durham uses. I wont lie. I think I died a little bit inside. On the up swing, I got an introduction to someone who can maybe give me some guidance on how to do my research. So I suppose it wasn’t a total disaster. It just felt like one at the time.

Third and finally: Extreme Strolling. I’ve always thought that Sociology is woefully short of field trips. As a subject that studies people surely the world is your oyster if you want to see theory in action? Often the only chance to “do” sociology students get is when they are doing their dissertation. Extreme Strolling is the catchy title for one of the field trips I helped plan out and supervise as part of my Teaching Assistant work. Elaine Campbell, is the lecturer running the course I’m a TA on this semester, she also just so happens to be one half of my PhD supervisory team too. So, in a nutshell Elaine set some readings for the class, provided the students with a map and some directions and sent them on their way. She asked them to apply the theory from the readings to the cityscape, collect raw data and create a presentation for one of the workshops based on what they gathered. It took a fair bit of planning, luckily I know Newcastle like the back of my hand so when it came to creating the routes I could offer a lot of suggestions. It was really exciting to see a field trip go from the planning stages, through the event and on to the reporting stage. Lots of the students said they’d seen a side to Newcastle they never would have were it not for this walk, a lot of the students also said they had never just “observed” the city before, and that it this had really changed their perspective on existing in a city. I have to say, I was so impressed at the work the students produced. Especially as my own research draws heavily from people and their interactions with the architecture of the city. I felt reassured. Reassured that my own research will turn out okay, that the students were really grasping the concepts that they’d been asked to look into and less importantly I felt reassured that the time I’d spent in helping create the routes had been very well spent!

So that’s it for now. I’m sure my next entry will cover such exciting topics as: my project approval, my latest supervisory meeting and my very first lecture! Next week is shaping up to be busy.