Well for anyone who read this blog when it was updated on a more than once a year basis, you'll recall I am a part-time PhD student as well as a full-time senior lecturer. My study is looking at entrepreneurship within the careers of creative industries graduates. To say this has been a long process is an understatement but finally I think I am beginning to see the 'light at the end of the tunnel'.
It has been a tricky balancing act. Like many in my profession I am also 'research active' so at the same time as doing my PhD and carrying out my teaching commitments I've also been working on other research projects and publishing papers within a linked field - Enterprise Education.
A list of papers recently published, related to that can be found at my Birmingham City Business School staff publication page (BTW I know that photo is awful).
I'll maybe write a more detailed post on these papers sometime in the future.
So the PhD. Well. I'm basically ‘writing up’. I think. What I mean is the literature review, methodology, data collection and analysis are complete (all but tidying up/final sweep of the lit etc.) and I am writing up my ‘findings and discussion’ chapters. This is a nuts job and I have to kind of get into a particular head space and really concentrate. I think, due to having supervised and now having been supervised so long, that I am beginning to be able to self-supervise if that’s possible. So I can see where my work is flawed or there are gaps but it all makes my head hurt (in a good way).
I am working with a relatively small and specific sample group who I interviewed, at some length, the interviews were long and intense and are around 20,000 -25,000 words long. It’s a lot to analyse and make sense of. But I’m enjoying the process. Even if it has resulted in increased insomnia. I feel really strange if I manage to get a couple of consecutive days to work on it. Like I have to re-join the world afterwards, but I also resent being taken away from it because I find it so hard to get back into that zone, that level of concentration.
I would say though that once I got into doing my interviews (which were full of issues at the time - again that’s another story), which I really enjoyed, the whole PhD experience has been far more rewarding than those early days where I felt I (it wasn't just a feeling I literally did) spent years doing my literature review and getting very little in return.
I just hope now that I can keep up the momentum for this final push!
I’ll keep you posted…
2 comments:
If you’ve started with a great way, then it is certainly great thesis ideas to keep it and maintain the momentum. I think having the right attitude can make a difference when writing it. Thesis writing can be tedious, so having a positive attitude can keep you going.
This was written on 2012 and i there's so much relevant information here for a newbie like me who's just about to start a phd. I truly can imagine how gruelling the process has been. Totally relatable, Dr Charlotte. This piece is one i can put a human face to because most of the write ups i've read about the process of starting and finishing a PhD are often not very relatable as it's all made out to seem like an impossible task. While i understand how tough it is, you put it simply like you're having a one on one conversation with a friend. You express the pressures with some humour and especially, hope. I'm currently at application stages and it's been a roller coaster of sleepless nights and intensive reading, researching, extracting of information relevant to the topic and most days are tough, especially when you're not at all impressed or satisfied with what you've put together. I'll be happy to send you an email, dr. for some guidance because I can truly gain a lot from your experiences so that I can get it right, if you don't mind, ma'am.
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