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!

While it is customary to start the year with copious amounts of optimism after a refreshing Christmas break, the arrival of 2011 has only filled me with doom! The sheer mountain of work which lies ahead for me this year is scary and the reward of probably not getting a job at the end of it fills me with even more despair.

Some months ago I listed several reasons to be cheerful about my life after England were knocked out of the World Cup. Now the English cricket team are basking in the glory of retaining the Ashes, which I really did enjoy staying up late to watch over Christmas, the sporting glory is at odds with where I find myself in 2011.

Doing a PhD is a very isolating experience, this can be a good thing but is more often than not quite a bad thing. You need to be cut off from the world to focus on writing and nobody really understands what you’re doing and it’s always difficult to explain to them even when they are genuinely interested or bothered about what’s troubling you. I return to Newcastle again on Monday and am actually looking forward to being in my own little bubble again – this time without the distraction of teaching.

My first task is to get my theoretical framework sorted once and for all. Then I can begin to draft my two case study chapters. I then need to rework my theory chapter and my institutional chapter and put my thesis together. I will be presenting to the School of Modern Languages research seminar in February so will have to prepare for that and I will continue to do the plagiarism checking for the undergraduate modules in Politics and Sociology. All of these things will be enjoyable, but I need the time to do them in! I need to find the time and to really get going on these tasks which will not be easy. For this reason my slight nervous twitch on my eyelid has returned, something which has not bothered me since the days of school-leaving exams. I know this work is what I wanted, I just wish that I could get it all done and felt like I could actually do it.

I want to get on and get my PhD finished more than anything, but to do it in the knowledge that there is now no money in higher education to fund lectureship appointments or postdocs means that I’m going to get to the end of my PhD journey only to find that I cannot take it anywhere and that’s not my fault! While I understand the challenges faced by the government and the universities this particular reality is very hard to take and utterly demoralising. And when austerity measures really kick in over the course of 2011 it will create a real misery atmosphere in higher education and the wider country. A tough year indeed!

I shall of course not neglect my blog. Whether it be to update it to share with the world any particular high points or successes, or to blog to procrastinate doing any work, or to really take out my frustrations on the keyboard, as I have done here, I shall continue to keep you updated on my progress throughout 2011. Let’s hope that, although it will be a tough year, some rewards lie at the end of it!

As the end of term, and Christmas, draws closer there a lots of things which need to be done. For this reason I have been especially busy over the last few weeks but the weather this November has insured that I am indeed snowed under at the moment!

Firstly, the craziness of the weather. While Newcastle isn’t, by any stretch the Bahamas, when they said there’d be snow this week I didn’t think we’d get as much as we have done. Literally several inches of the stuff and not just in the sticks but in Gosforth and the city centre. Now I don’t mind the snow at all and it does make things seem properly Christmassy. I haven’t ventured outside today, but I think I shall have a walk in the snow tomorrow for sure.

As part of the getting into that Christmas mood, a visit to the Newcastle continental Christmas market was in order, particularly for some mulled wine! But in order to justify that I needed a good reason. That reason, this Friday, was that I have finished my teaching for the term now. I still have presentations and papers to mark, but the hard work of teaching, and me doing the talking most of the time, is now over. I have enjoyed teaching my seminars this year and I think the group as whole show some promise so I am optimistic that I shall have some good marks to award this year! This week I gave another lecture for the module and had that observed. I think it went well, but I’m sure I will get some useful and constructive feedback. If I’m not too bad on only my second attempt, then with more practice and experience, I should be a more than competent teacher!

The main monkey on my back is the chapter I’m in the process of (re)drafting. I’ve nearly got a complete version, but once I do that it won’t be finished because I need to go through it all and beef it up rather. I have done a fair bit today, but I’ll have to see how I get on tomorrow regarding what I can realistically achieve by Tuesday. But it’s great to have words on the board and to have a whole chapter pretty much ready.

I’m also looking forward to Thursday of next week. António Costa Pinto is coming to give a lecture on Portugal: from Empire to Europe. He is not only a scholar whom I cite in my work but I have met him and when I was at his Institute in Lisbon earlier in the year he pointed me in the right direction to send me on my way for my fieldwork. It will be nice to hear what he has to say, but more importantly to him again – he’s a lovely guy. Also on Thursday, me and my fellow PhD students in Politics have decided to have a bit of a coffee afternoon which will involve caffeine, cake, and moaning about how useless the undergrads are that we teach. That’s the recognised formula! But also we need to get some volunteers to take roles and responsibilities on, otherwise when me and the other 3rd years are gone, there won’t be a Politics postgraduate community to speak of and that would be a great shame.

I’m going up to Berwick next weekend with the girlfriend, which should be nice and from there we’re going to have a day trip to Edinburgh. So I’m looking forward to that, assuming, of course, that I get done all that I want to this week and that the snow doesn’t pile up any higher!

In a very busy month since my last post, I have technically become a lecturer!

But not in the sense of a permanent member of academic staff holding a lectureship, but I have given a guest lecture on Europeanisation to the second year undergrad module of EU Politics and Policy for which I am a seminar tutor again this year.

I have to say it went well enough. I mean, I would have been happy to get out alive, no fires or anything like that. But I think I did a decent job. And, while making a career out of it would be nice but given the state of university finances may be tricky, I know for a fact I shall definitely have another go at it in a couple of weeks when I lecture on EU security policy.

So it’s good to be a lecturer, but also good, after my time away on fieldwork, to get back into seminar teaching. It’s definitely a whole lot easier this year, as I don’t have to do the reading all over again! And having the confidence of having done it before definitely helps me this time. And I’m quite pleased with how the five weeks of seminars have gone so far. This week in particular, when we did a little European Council role play. Another two weeks of seminars and then group presentations to mark.

My standing up in front of crowds this past month has not been limited to undergraduate teaching either. I presented my fieldwork findings to our Politics Internal New Voices seminar series. That too went well and I got some useful feedback. I went with another PhD student doing some weird and wonderful research on a Japanese thinker so I really learnt something from his presentation before I stood up to give mine! I hope the audience learned something from mine! But I definitely got asked some challenging questions and got some great feedback – which is the main thing!

So with preparing for my presentation and teaching commitments, I have clearly been busy. But I did pop home at the end of October as it was my Dad’s birthday. That was a nice weekend, and even managed to get a few pints in at the final day of the Norwich beer festival!

But there is a little thing called a thesis which needs writing! Apparently they don’t write themselves!!! So I have also been busy redrafting the chapter I did over the summer and trying to organise my thesis outline as best I can. But I think it’s coming together. I have also blitzed the British Library and got hold of lots of books on inter-library loans not to mention chapters from library e-books printed off and making a few purchases from Amazon! Finding new material in the final year of your PhD isn’t nice, but hopefully I will now not be found lacking in my viva. But a couple of the books I bought were ones I wanted for keeps that I was fed up of having on loan from the library! The book shelf needs to be improved upon to get anywhere near the required standard for a proper academic!

The Christmas decorations are starting to go up in town and the spectacle of the Fenwick’s Christmas window has been revealed to the world. It’s not too bad this year, they went quite traditional with the nativity last year, so this year is more Santa’s workshop. It does look nice, although it’s not quite put me in the festive mood yet.

With all these things to keep me busy I’m sure it will be December before I know it, but hopefully I will find time for another blog update before then. If not apologies in advance, I really do have a good reason!

At least that’s the idea!

Scary to think that my studentship money will run out in less than a year now and I am supposed to have my thesis ready for submission by then! Scary, but not an impossible task! I mean I’m happy with what I achieved in Brussels and in Lisbon and am certainly in a position to do my ‘writing up’. It’s just scary that something which seemed an eternity into the future is now getting close! But then again, when I first arrived in Newcastle as a fresh-faced undergraduate some EIGHT years ago, I wouldn’t have thought that I’d be completing my doctorate within the next ten years!

So I am back in Newcastle again refreshed and ready for another year. A few changes but many thing remain a constant. The postgrad community in politics this year seems to have made an enthusiastic start to the year under the guidance of our new Postgrad Research Director Martin. Derek did a great job before and Martin seems keen to build on what we’ve achieved over the last few years and to get more of the PhD students involved. I am teaching again this year, the same module as I did last year the seminars for which start next week! So I shall report how that goes over the course of the term but it will be nice to meet a new batch of students eager to learn about the EU! (Or maybe not that enthusiastic as 2 of my 3 seminars are at 9am!!!!). With a new academic year means new faces in the department also, including a new face in our office and a new lecturer who has just recently completed her PhD (so there is hope of getting a job after all this!). And I have a new set of housemates this year, except for one of last year’s who has stayed on with me. All very exciting!

I should, perhaps, say a little bit here about my targets for the year. Obviously get through the teaching and try and do a good job there. I am also going to report my fieldwork findings to the Politics Postgrad Internal Seminar next month. That will be good as I stood in front on them November last year and told them what I was planning to do on my fieldwork! If nothing else it should bring home quite what I have been doing over the past year and hopefully they will see it as fruitful work!

Above all, my target is to get the bloody thing finished! I am, more or less, in a position to begin drafting one of my substantive case study chapters in the next week or so. I reckon concentrate on writing that up between now and Christmas. I want to be somewhere close to putting the complete thesis together by Easter time and then setting about the business of redrafting it all. That is quite a tight timeframe and it would be best to concentrate on getting the chapters in good shape first rather than rushing through it. But I do think I’ll be able to edit and rework sections better once I have completed all my sections roughly, only really then can I tidy up my theoretical framework, introduction and conclusions. So start with getting the guts in place and then build the nice-looking stuff around it! Well that’s the plan at least.

So lots to be getting on with. Now it’s time to get on with it…!

My time in Brussels is now ticking away fast, in less than 10 days I will be out of here! Fortunately, I have now begun the difficult process of conducting interviews.

As I probably won’t get another chance to post while I am here, and before the hectic return to England and eventually a new term up in Newcastle, I should talk a bit about the city in which I am staying. I do think Brussels is growing on me. My supervisor says you need to spend a year here to know if it’s really for you. I haven’t spent a year here obviously, and am not likely to any time soon so I am, therefore, unable to pass judgment on the place. However, as much as I do like the place, I don’t really think I could live here and I certainly don’t feel like I could live the life of a Brussels ‘Eurocrat’ either. I have taken lots of nice photos of Brussels, looked in awe at the shiny glass buildings of the EU institutions and enjoyed many a Belgian beer, waffles, mussels and chocolate, but I’m still not in love with the place. It’s a strange vibe and although I am happy enough here and would sure come back here, and definitely to Bruges, I know it’s no Lisbon!

But it was a nice feeling on Friday morning when I walked down Rue de la Loi (where the main Commission and Council buildings are) towards the Portuguese Permanent Representation to conduct my first interviews. Obviously excited for that reason and dressed smartly in my suit and tie. But because it was the European Council the day before, and all the dignitaries were in town, I was walking down Rue de la Loi along a red carpet! That felt good!

While at the Portuguese Permanent Representation I enjoyed a proper Portuguese coffee in the waiting room before I got to talk to two officials who deal with co-ordination, and they will be able to put me contact with other useful people for my research. I still have enough time to get a few more interviews done there before I have to leave.

On Saturday I met up with a Portuguese general who is here in Brussels working at NATO. We went for a coffee and discussed his work and his views on Portuguese foreign policy. This was most illuminating – he is not of the ‘mainstream’ by any means. He gave me lots to think about!!! Although afterwards I was left shaking and not sure of my own name, as he was such a whirlwind! But useful, very useful!

Another aspect of my Brussels stay I am particularly happy with is the place where I am living during my time here. The Centre is very nice and has got a nice friendly atmosphere about it. To mark my leaving (as well as the other residents due to leave at the end of this month) I was presented with a ‘Superior Resident Certificate’ at my first and last residents’ meeting. Apparently these are presented, without exception, to everyone to reward them for not having lost their keys more than five times, amongst other things. Although it was a bit of fun, it was still a touching moment that a brief stay such as mine will be remembered. And I believe, the usual form is that should you return you specifically ask for your old room back! So maybe I shall be sitting in this very room again at some point in the future upon my return to Brussels, albeit on a brief research trip and, as I have eluded to, not as a fully-fledged Brussels resident.

But I’ve enjoyed my short time here and sure I will miss the place. I need to maximise my time here now and also make sure I get to Ghent for a day trip to look around there. Now I need to get these postcards written and sent, otherwise I’ll be writing them on the London Underground!

Well here I am, in Brussels! This time things seem to have fallen into place quite well and I should be here until the end of September. If all goes well I should then be able to return to Newcastle for the start of term having gathered lots of field research data!

I arrived in Brussels last Wednesday, the 1st and got settled into the centre where I will be staying. It’s a residence for people who are staying in Brussels to do internships (‘stages’), so there is a very international crowd of young people here and lots of different nationalities to meet over dinner. The facilities of the place are decent, and at least I have access to wireless Internet – so neglecting my blog will not happen for that reason!

I had a couple of days at the end of last week to have a look around Brussels and get a feel for the place and where I am staying. The location is pretty good as central Brussels, the station, Grand Place, the Royal Palace and the Belgian Parliament are all in easy walking distance. As are the EU institutions, so I had a good look around those and worked out were the Commission, the Council, the Parliament and the Portuguese Permanent Representation are located. I also have an institutional affiliation with the Egmont Institute, the Chatham House of the country in which I am staying, and that too is in walking distance and will give me office space and a library which I can make the most of. So I’m pretty well sorted!

But after my initial settling-in period I had to leave Brussels and head to Bruges for the 40th Annual UACES Conference. I have to say, I was very impressed by Bruges! It really is a stunning, picturesque, place with lots of old buildings. The conference was hosted by the College of Europe but the lunches were in the old halls near the market place and bell tower and the conference dinner on Tuesday night was in a very nice building.

Bruges is an hour on the train from Brussels so I got to experience the Belgian rail network and also see a bit of the country through the window, including passing through Ghent. As it turned out my supervisor was on the same train, she got on at Ghent, and we met in the crowd of people heading for the exit at Bruges station. She recommended Ghent to me, so I shall definitely take her advice and pay it a visit soon. Then we got settled into the College halls of residence and then met up for dinner. It was a very nice day, still nice enough to have dinner outside – a Trappist beer and a plate of Flemish beef stew! Nice. Then we met up with some of the other UACES people in a bar and had a few beers there. Amazingly, since arriving on Wednesday, Sunday was the first time a Belgian beer touched my lips this visit, so it was nice to have a couple that night.

The conference began on Monday morning, after meeting a few people over the breakfast table (including a lady from Cumbria – it’s a small world really!), with research sessions in the morning before lunch and a formal welcoming address in the afternoon when we were graced with one of the Commission vice-presidents as speaker. Events in the evening started with a wine reception and an opportunity to network. I’m not the best at networking, but drinking free wine I seem to have less problems with and once you’ve got a couple or three or four glasses down you talking to strangers is a lot easier. As it turned out me and two other PhD students were last to leave the reception and we rounded up an Italian academic who was outside smoking and we moved onto a bar for food, more drink, good conversation and, as it turned out, a few games of pool and meeting random people: one from Halifax, the other a Belgian guy who did magic tricks for us!

Day 2 of the conference started rather slowly. The effects of several glasses of wine and a few 9% Belgian beers meant that I wasn’t exactly up bright and early. I did, however, manage to struggle down for some breakfast. But this meant I was going to miss the first research panel of the day so I took my time and had a nice shower and made it in for 11am and the second session. The rest of the day was quite enjoyable and although some of the others were fine (note to self: don’t try and out drink Eastern Europeans again!), some were in later than I was and stuck to the orange juice at the evening reception that night. The conference dinner was very nice, and I sat next to my supervisor on one side and on the other side a guy from the University of Kent who was presenting on the same panel as me the following morning. Was a nice dinner and it was a bit like the BAFTAs with the awards presentation as well. Was a good night and although I did have a couple of glasses of red, I wasn’t too bad and in good shape the next morning.

The final day of the conference started early for me as I was presenting on the 9am panel. So up bright and early and with enough time to go through my paper one last time. The panel was quite diverse. I suspect it was the first time a paper on the foreign policy actorness of the Faroe Islands was followed by one on the Europeanisation of Portuguese foreign policy. But random papers are good and there are still connections between those and the other paper that the discussant was able to highlight. The questions and discussant feedback gave me plenty to think about and my supervisor who was in the audience made notes for me but didn’t ask any awkward questions. She said that my presentation was fine and I did stick nicely to the time limit. With that out of the way it was nice to relax and enjoy the final session before heading back to Brussels – just in time for dinner.

Now I’m back in Brussels and I have caught up with the emails in my inbox. I have heard back from a Portuguese general who is on the NATO staff here in Brussels so I shall interview him next week hopefully. I’m still waiting to hear back from some people but I’m sure I shall do. Looking forward to getting some serious fieldwork done as well as seeing more of the delights of Brussels while I’m here. I shall of course report to my blog with updates again soon!

It is now approaching eight years since I received my A-level results and I enrolled as an undergraduate student at Newcastle University. Now, with the passing of another birthday this week, I am feeling rather old! It is amazing that people have a go at me for still being a student. Despite my efforts, they don’t seem to understand that being a PhD research student is very different from being an undergrad ‘dosser’. I mean, we do teach the current crop of politics undergrads! But I guess, as I eluded to in my previous post, I am happy with where I am right now, and while I am looking forward to entering the scary big bad grown up world of a ‘proper’ job, I am not too keen to join the millions of unemployed yet!

I spent my birthday sipping on some excellent Belgian beers while sitting in the garden. Today and yesterday have been very very wet, so I am glad that the weather on Wednesday was nice enough for me to chill in the garden and enjoy the beer and sunshine combination.

Now it is nearly half-way in to August, there is not long until my trip to Belgium to do fieldwork and present at the Bruges conference. I have my accommodation booked and have sorted out my Eurostar, so all is falling into place for that. I will be a visiting researcher at the Egmont Institute while I am in Brussels and am looking forward to meeting some interesting academics in Bruges for the conference also. Before I can leave for Brussels, I need to make a visit to Newcastle to see my supervisors and get some feedback on my conference paper. I also need to discuss the arrangements for my teaching this coming academic year. The Politics Postgraduate Society events are starting to get organised and I shall also meet up with my fellow students to discuss these and do some planning and organisation ahead of my return to the Toon in October.

I haven’t got too much to update you in terms of the work I have done since my last post. I have been busy doing what I can to my chapter draft and getting my Bruges paper ready. I have now washed my hands of both of these and they are now with my supervisor and I am awaiting some feedback. Next week, I will have to start getting my actual presentation sorted for Bruges and will have lots of little things to take care of while I am in Newcastle. Not least, moving quite a bit of stuff up there and sorting out my books in my bedroom and my office and getting ready for the new term there. After such a long while away from Newcastle, it will be nice to get up there for a week, although I know I shall be busy!

If all goes well I shall write my next blog post from Brussels in early September, before I go to Bruges for the conference on the 5th… a bientot!

While the World Cup was generally an enjoyable festival of football it was, of course, tarnished by England’s rather woeful performance. I would like to outline here briefly why I personally will not (or should not) be too despondent about life at the moment.

1. When England eventually do win the World Cup again, and assuming I won’t be too old and decrepit by that time, it will be something truly fantastic to celebrate. Celebrate the achievement itself but if we do win it we will have won it in some style as well (i.e. by not being as unlucky and generally rubbish as usual)! This will be a reason to celebrate and so is something to look forward to. It will happen, it has to happen! But at least in two or four years time we won’t play that badly again! Surely not?!? And also cheerful because we did a lot better than France and Italy!

2. It is summer and summer is something to be enjoyed. Laptop in the garden, day out at the cricket or just having a nice beer in the sunshine. All of these things will be enjoyed over the summer so long as I have done sufficient work to deserve them. I must make the most of the summer to enjoy these opportunities and having all these things to be happy about actually helps me to be more motivated when it comes to doing PhD work.

3. I have also found a new network of people interested in Portuguese stuff which should give me cause to be cheerful. Although I have known about the Anglo-Portuguese Society for some years now I had never actually attended one of their events. Largely because they all take place in London! But when I did go down to London this week for a talk held at the Society by the British Ambassador to Portugal I was impressed. The talk itself was useful and worthwhile but the experience of meeting Society members and committee members was also positive and it is a potential outlet for my own research as it would be good to give a lecture their on my own work. It’s good to meet people with a passion for Portugal and a love of the country but I also met an academic who has, like me, been asked many times “Why Portugal?”. We both agreed that “Why Not?!” was by far the best answer we could give!

4. Actually doing some thesis work! This is a very good reason to be cheerful. For the moment, at least, writing about my research is not in the future tense! I have written, and redrafted, so many proposals over the years and set out what research I am going to undertake, but now I have research to write up and while drafting substantive chapters takes time it is enjoyable because it means that I have research findings already which I need to disseminate, data to analyse and theoretical frameworks to tweak.

5. More fieldwork to look forward to. Hopefully I will get back to Brussels in September and do some more fieldwork. I enjoyed my time in Lisbon and that seems like such a long time ago already. I need to get to know Brussels and exorcise the demons of my previous visit which didn’t go to plan. Before that I will need to finalise my travel and accommodation arrangements but I have my eye on somewhere to stay which looks feasible. Hopefully I will meet lots of interesting people who give me lots to think about!

6. Opportunities to present my research. I already have a major conference to look forward to where I will be presenting my research. Of course, one of my tasks over the summer is to prepare for this before I go to Bruges and give my paper. But I am looking forward to this and it seems that my supervisors and progress panel are pleased that I am making the effort to get out there and present. I have also agreed to present my research to the School of Modern Languages research seminars at Newcastle and will do this in February 2011. I have also submitted a proposal to present a paper at a workshop at the University of Maastricht in November. I don’t yet know how I have got on but if I can go it seems that the European Commission will be able to cover the cost of my travel and accommodation expenses. Nice!

7. Getting back in the teaching groove. While I have enjoyed not having the responsibility of teaching since Christmas I cannot deny that I am looking forward to getting back to Newcastle and doing seminar teaching again. At least it will be easier having done it before. Hopefully I will also have the opportunity to supervise one or two final year dissertations as well. And I have been asked if I would like to contribute to the lectures as well as the seminars and prepare and deliver a couple of lectures on the topics of EU foreign policy and Europeanisation. This will be excellent experience and I’m looking forward to it!

8. A new year of Politics Postgraduate Society events and challenges ahead. Again, as I have been away from day-to-day life in Politics at Newcastle I have not only missed teaching but have missed the general sense of community in our Politics Postgraduate Society. While organising events takes time, it is rewarding and helps bring us all together, so it will be good to get back in the groove there as well.

9. With age comes wisdom. In my next blog post next month I will reflect more upon this as I celebrate another birthday. For the moment at least I am telling myself that this is a good thing! Although with fewer and fewer birthdays in my twenties it is a little scary!

10. Most importantly I should be cheerful because I am doing something I enjoy and I have an income. I do not (yet) have to contemplate dole queues and for the moment, although searching and getting a job post-PhD will be a struggle, I should take comfort in the fact that my present and immediate future are relatively stable and, so long as the effects of the budget aren’t too destructive, I should be able to get on with my PhD and get it finished soon.

Reasons indeed to be cheerful!