The talking has to stop now and the writing must now begin in earnest! I don’t have very long left until the summer and I want to have my two case study chapters drafted by then. Then I can begin redrafting what I have over the summer. That’s the plan anyway. But it would be nice to have a final submission date in mind, but I am meeting with all my supervisors on Tuesday so maybe we will come up with one then.

So as it turns to March next week that will give me a calendar month to draft my chapter before I go home for the Easter break on 1st April. The content I am pretty familiar with and I have already run the revised chapter outline past Jocelyn. She has also seen my revised Europeanisation framework which it seems has some potential. So those things have kept me busy the past couple of weeks.

But, as I said, the talking has to stop. And now I have actually done my talk, so too can the preparing for a talk! That has been my main preoccupation over the last week or so. But on Thursday I gave a talk to the School of Modern Languages Research Seminar Series. Devoted blog followers can actually listen to my talk and see the slides as it was preserved on the ReCap system. Simply follow the link [here]

Although the turnout was not fantastic, I knew full well that many people from politics had classes then either to teach or attend. So I was not at all disappointed. In fact, the audience was rather select as it included the foremost professor of modern Portuguese history and politics from the University of Lisbon Prof. Antonio Costa Pinto. He was meant to be giving a public lecture before Christmas but it got snowed off and rescheduled for the same day as my talk. So in one afternoon Newcastle University had two talks about Portuguese politics – something of a record there I reckon!?! The questions I got from the audience were really interesting, some a little challenging, but I think I answered them pretty well. It was certainly nice to get my talk over with and then go and attend the public lecture and then the dinner with some select guests at one of Newcastle’s finest eateries Cafe 21. Overall Thursday was a very enjoyable day, one of the days you live your PhD for!

But now that’s over it’s back to what being a third year PhD student is really about – drafting those chapters! I shall doubtless returning to blogging again soon, probably sooner than I should as I procrastinate just a tiny bit more!

So what does doing a PhD entail? Well, it’s a difficult process but I guess what gets you through is the thought of seeing your thesis eventually printed and bound and being called Dr Robinson.

D – is for DESIRE. Before you embark on a PhD you need to have the desire to do it. That needs to be more than just simply the desire to stay in uni after your masters, you need to have a research project that you know you want to do and that you know you can stick with for a long time!
O – is for OBSESS. You need to totally obsess over your project. A time will come when you are sick to death of it and those days when you couldn’t switch off thinking about your PhD because you were excited about it seem a long way past. But the obsession of doing a PhD and your enthusiasm for what you are doing is what gets you through and if you lose it during your time working for your PhD you need to rediscover it!
C – is for be CRITICAL. So far during my PhD this is the most important thing I have developed. I have not only learned how to be critical in my work but I have had to be critical of myself and my writing and to provide constructive yet critical feedback for my students. Without being critical of the world I will never have research worthy of being called a PhD thesis. So this one is crucial, or critical if you like, to a successful PhD!
T – is for TIME. This is the one thing you do have plenty of. Unfortunately the nature of the PhD means you have plenty of time to think and waste at the start of your time and then when you have so much to do in writing up and finishing your PhD time seems to be against you. So remember that time waits for no man, that the clock is always ticking!
O – is for your OWN work. When going out to do PhD research you should always remember that it is your baby, your work, your PhD. You set the direction, you decide what’s important and at the end you will be able to look back at what you achieved. Of course with some support, especially from your supervisors along with way, but it is YOUR doctorate!
R – is for RELATIONSHIPS strained. Inevitably your relationships will become strained. You have to immerse yourself into your work and this can often be at the expense of friends or girlfriends/boyfriends. You may be living apart from someone you love and over the course of the time in which you are working on your PhD things can change. At the end of it all when you really despair it is reassuring to discover that you haven’t pushed away your friends and they are often all too willing to help you through what is a very demanding time of your life. But a PhD can be rather a mistress!