Merry Christmas to all!

So I thought I better reflect on the term (and the year) which has passed.

I have done my Christmas shopping and have this afternoon sent my project approval form to my supervisor, so as of tomorrow (as I still have a few loose ends to tie up tonight) I will put my feet up for Christmas. Chill out and get started on that garage full of beer!!!

It’s been a great term and I feel I have come a long way already since starting the PhD. The end seems like quite a long way off but hopefully in two years time I will be writing up my thesis over the Christmas holiday. Oh my God that does seem very distant! But I think things are starting to come together and I got some positive feedback from my supervisors when we all met last week. I have done a literature review on Europeanisation which has helped me organise my thoughts and get to grips with some of the reading. I feel I’m a lot more critical about things now (which is a good thing, although I do see myself launching into major rants about minor things which annoy me!).

So after Christmas… I need to get started on my theoretical framework and start planning my methodology. In addition I will have to start to contact people in Portugal and start to get my fieldwork planned. Jens, my supervisor in modern languages, has invited me to give a talk at the Instituto Camões seminars in May. This will be my first major presentation and it will give me the chance to try out what I will have prepared for the Faculty presentation later in that month. A bit scary to think I’ll be presenting my work! I won’t have any hard evidence to present but I hope I’ll be in situation where I can give some insight into what I hope to find out and problematise the concepts I am dealing with and present them in a way that people will be able to understand.

Now all that sounds a long way away, but it seems like only yesterday I started my PhD and I’m already 3 months in!

So Merry Christmas and I’ll look forward to blogging through 2009 and having lots more new PhD experiences.