Well it shouldn’t be all work, work, work now should it!?! Managed to get a free ticket to go and watch the mighty Toon in action last night, and they won (shock, horror). It’s bloody freezing up here at the minute, so was rather chilly watching the game. But, no matter who you really support, you’ve got to go to St James’ Park and enjoy a game.
On the PhD work front. Well it’s really difficult to know where you are so early on. As I’ve been saying to people the end is a long way off, and the start is somewhere off in the distance too and I can’t see quite where it begins. For the time being I am quietly plodding through some of the theoretical literature and hope to start writing up some literature review sections in the next couple of days.
I think what has been useful is that I have already made some useful contacts (and hopefully one day friends). Networking is vitally important and as my field is very small, not many people researching Portuguese politics, I am grateful for the help I receive. But also they are all too pleased to help. So this is good. To that end I may be going to Hull in a couple of weeks to see a Portuguese MP. (I may not if the train journey appears too horrific!). I’m also off to the UACES conference for EU studies people in London. I shall report how I get on. Generally speaking I hate ‘the smoke’, but sure it’ll be a useful day.
But there is more to being a PhD student than just working on your thesis topic. Yesterday was our gig. The 4th Tuesday of the month is a topical roundtable discussion in politics, which I along with 2 other postgrad research students organise. It went very well and as the topic was the US Election it was something that everyone thought important so the turnout was excellent. I usually caution people who say Obama is going to win and comment about how the electoral college system will probably screw him up, but thanks to the analysis in the seminar, I think it’s fair to say he’s going to win hands down.
Anyway, despite the fact that the Politics Postgrad Society President has resigned, we have a great community with lots of student and staff organised events to enjoy. It’s not every day you get to go to a politics seminar on Buffy The Vampire Slayer now is it!!??! I know. That’s November 5th so I’ll talk about that in my next post and hopefully have my MA results by then too.