triskellian

This evening, I've been to the first event of my life as a doctoral student: the school of Arts and Humanities' first session of "research training". It was kind of strange and unstructured, consisting mostly of the professor who was leading it giving us random pieces of advice as they struck her. There was wine, and nibbles, but no chance to mingle or chat with the seven other students, although each of us got to talk to one other, in a "give the five-minute version of your research" exercise. The one I got allocated seems nice, but I've no idea if any of these people might end up being my friends. And I've been thinking wistfully of first meeting my Women's Studies cohort, a year ago, and of the friends they have become since. I know that, being doctoral students in varying different fields (no others in mine, publishing), our cohort experience will be different, and this makes me a bit sad. I miss my classmates from my masters, all but one of whom have now departed to search for jobs and homes and lives elsewhere, although today I've been talking to the one who remains, and am seeing hir later in the week.

Incidentally, I still don't officially have an offer of a place, although I've been assured today that the relevant letter is just awaiting signature before they send it to me. But at some point in the next week or two, I'll have to work out how I'm going to start doing this.

( What I'll actually be doing (skippable!) )

*Five years because I'm doing it part time, sticking with the day job two days a week. This will be the first time in my life as a mature student that both the things I'm doing are part time, and I'm very excited about it. In theory, this means I will be able to maintain an actual life as well as the job and the research. Yes, I know this is ridiculously optimistic, but please don't disillusion me yet.

This news is slightly belated, in that most people I've seen recently already know, but it's now official, so I can say in public without fear of jinxing myself: the rather marvellous institution I work for has agreed that I can spend the duration of my masters working one day a week, and, crucially, go back to full time afterwards :-) (This is, it only now occurs to me, almost an exact reversal of the last few years of my life when I was working four days a week in term time and spending the other day being a student.) I was prepared to quit entirely, or apply for a full-fledged career break if I had to, but I'm very relieved that it hasn't come to that. It does make it all scarily real, though, even while giving me more of a safety net than I had any right to expect.

A year ago, I:

• had just had an academic achievement
• had just finished knitting a pair of socks from my handspun yarn
• ... and was about to go away for a week's roleplaying.

Now, I:

• have just had an academic achievement
• have just finished knitting a pair of socks from my handspun yarn
• ... and am about to go away for a week's roleplaying.

Since some time yesterday afternoon, I have been writing actual words for the body of my dissertation. Real, analytical words that are part of the main point of the essay.

This isn't to imply that I've just been twiddling my thumbs otherwise; the prep work and literature review and stuff that I've done is important, but this is the actual meat of the thing, and I've had a terrible mental barrier about starting to do it. Breaking the barrier is a great relief :-)

Can anyone remember the name of (or point me at a website about) Stephen King's experiment in writing chapters on a submission basis? I've been trying to find it, but have yet to come up with the search terms that will provide me with this information. LJ in "bettter than Google" shock, I hope.

(If anyone knows of similar tech-enabling-publishing type experiments, I'd be glad to hear of those, too, although that probably counts as getting you guys to do my homework for me ;-)

Edit: Aha! It's called The Plant. Thanks, undyingking!

This semester, the early indications are that there are no bad courses. Hooray!

( Module one: Print and society )

( Module two: Forensic linguistics )

I've been thinking for a while about trying an experiment in the way I use language, and something that came up in my reading today made me decide to go ahead and do it.

( The experiment is this... )

( And the reading that prompted this? )

A couple of people have asked if I'm going to post my mark for the metatext assignment, and I've muttered something non-committal in response. I was wary, because I had no idea how well I'd done; if I'd done badly, I'd probably have quietly failed to mention it and forgotten about the whole thing. As it happens, the marks came out today, and I got an A :-)
[A = 1st class, B+ = 2:1; B = 2:2; C = 3rd]

Many thanks to everyone who helped, whether criticising the poll questions, ticking boxes, commenting on metatext, or whatever. Give yourselves a pat on the back. I haven't forgotten that I offered icons as bribery - I'll get to that soon.

Most of you have already done this, but just in case you haven't, or you've only filled in some of the bits of poll, please go and answer my poll on the use of LJ as a social tool. The deadline for completing the poll is tomorrow at 6pm BST. More information about why is in this post in my journal.

Thanks!

(Icon in honour of the Serenity trailer I have on my pendrive to watch when I get home.)

So, I had an entry percolating in my brain about my course this term semester ('Communication and Technology'), and all of the things it's teaching me that I already know (I learnt how to make a web page a couple of weeks ago), and how much I'm looking forward to using a virtual learning environment, and the possibility of using LJ as subject matter for an essay. And then there's the CSS that is eating my life, entering my dreams, and tying my brain in knots (in an enjoyable way) (see secretrebel's recent post).

But what's currently foremost in my brain is that I was in a car accident a couple of hours ago. All damage was to cars, not people; the other person admitted it was her fault (and I hope she continues to do so when talking to her insurance company), and my car is probably still driveable. But I'm shaky and lacking concentration even more than usual, and hoping that my various weekend plans* aren't all completely wrecked by either my unwillingness to drive, or the state of the car.

(*lathany, I've emailed you.)

PS: new icon! Apparently all the cool kids have shoe icons these days. And I keep making shoe comments, and bemoaning the lack of a relevant icon, so I made this last night in between lecturing secretrebel about CSS.