Belatedly, Happy New Year!
Now there is a reason I have left my first post of 2009 until February and that is that I have been rather busy. But not in a bad way!!!
Like in a previous post, there is snow on the ground today and more to follow! So from the snapshots of Newcastle’s weather I have given you through these posts the attentive reader could quite easily deduce that it gets rather cold up here during the winter months and a bit of snow is not uncommon. Even to call it ‘heavy snow’ would not be a huge exaggeration, but it would be ‘heavy snow’ in the very British sense, that one inch of white stuff brings the country to a standstill whereas other countries seem to be able to deal with such, relatively minor, snowfalls without traffic ‘chaos’ ensuing. OK, rant over…!
Today I took the first step towards being a seminar tutor. In order to do that I need to complete a two-day course on how to run a seminar and go through the necessary hoops presented to me by the powers that be in the University. The session was really quite relaxed and interesting full of useful ideas about what makes for a good seminar and we had lots of discussion with the group. As this was something open to all disciplines in the University, and not necessarily PhD students, there was a wide array of people and, unsurprisingly I was left alone to fly the flag for politics (and in fact social science in general with several medical/sciency/mathsy-typed people there). Anyway, this was a useful experience and I hope for more of the same tomorrow. I am looking forward to writing here about the time leading up to taking my first seminar and, hopefully, reporting back on it passing successfully without major disasters or hospitalisations etc.
Throughout January I was reflecting on where I want to be at the end of the term. Specifically, trying to plan ahead for my fieldwork and developing my theoretical approaches. I submitted a literature review on Europeanisation before Christmas and have received feedback from my supervisor who (yes you guessed it…) suggested further reading still. But I do think things are starting to come together now and I’m beginning to see what I want from my research and am getting an idea of how to achieve my goals.
Last Saturday I did something which was long overdue… I sorted out my office space. It now has very little on the shelves, but at least what is on those shelves is now MINE! I needed to remove the stuff of a previous user and box it up and I had been putting that off for most of last term. So now I have a desk and some shelves in the Politics Building, with an office I share with three other people. This makes me feel a bit more ‘academic’ as well as having good practical uses, particularly working in there and making the most of free heating! The shelving does give me lots of room to store the further reading outlined above!
OK well I think that’s enough for now. I think for my next post I shall go into a bit more detail about my struggles (or not?!) with developing my theoretical framework. If I outline what I do in here as I grapple with the thing it may also relieve some of my frustrations with it. So apologies in advance if it gets a bit too scary and if I start swearing a lot!
Até a vista!