All Over Bar the Shopping

Nearly there.......the Bright Eyed Boy dons his shiny new uniform tomorrow and heads off to the start of his last year of primary education. Daughter #3 is making the most of the last few weekday morning sessions of rowing training before her return to school next Monday. The weather is distinctly on the turn now, the sun at a lower angle in the sky, the nights that bit longer, dawn that bit later.... I can get quite melancholic with the shortening of the days: I need a goodly amount of warm sunshine to keep me chipper. This year however I'm not going to get much time to brood as I start my full-time doctoral studies in less than a month's time! To tell the truth, I haven't given it a great deal of thought just recently - there was a flurry of admin to complete just before we went away (only a fortnight ago in reality), and since we arrived back I have been absorbed by general mucking-out, uniform buying, hospital duty (visiting Pa-in-law after his DIY tumble) and wedding hysteria. Daughter #2 is drumming her fingers waiting for her 'big day' to dawn. I haven't actually bought anything to wear to it yet, so that delight is for next week when I have a bit of peace and quiet - although it won't be either peaceful or quiet as the wedding excitement will have reached fever-pitch by then, and no doubt there'll be unforseen crises to attend to along the way. So you can see that anything academic has been severely backstaged. Looking at the blogs that I read on a fairly regular basis, I have to chuckle at the beard-stroking earnestness that allows some chaps (chapesses are conspicuous by their absence in certain circles: I guess they're 'surrendered' or what have you) to spend their summers reading tomes of epic proportions then critiquing them online. I wonder if anyone really cares.....
Although to a certain extent I am envious of those scholars who can devote swathes of time to their subjects, I am so glad that I have a life external to my studies. Real life - family life - tends to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Incrementality and Jesus Saves

School holidays are actually progressing much more smoothly than last year. Looking back, I think I was feeling pretty tense about the whole PhD thing and the funding thereof. That all came to a nasty head during our week away when daughter #2 decided to let me know (by text) that I'd had a letter from the AHRC. Of course, then I had to know what it said, got her to read it and text me any news "I'm SO sorry...." she started. Great. I was massively disappointed, but couldn't let the others know how I felt, which was really difficult when we were confined in such close quarters. So I pretended I didn't really care, dismissing the whole issue as a mere inconvenience. When we returned home I found out that the scholarships had already been awarded in early June, so no luck there either. All this tension pretty much overshadowed the whole Summer from start to finish. I had the OU course to do, but all the time I was thinking beyond that to possible doctoral study, but couldn't feasibly do anything constructive towards it. I was very ill at ease and this manifested itself in many ways.

This year however I think that I am much more chilled. The children are that little bit older, a little less demanding and tempestuous and I have my 'bolt-hole' where I can go and write for a couple of hours. Plus I have a plan, which always makes me feel positive and cheerful. Everyday I commit to writing for at least a couple of hours - it doesn't matter what I write: even blogging is a useful authorial experience, and hones the compositional skills. Refinement can come later. In the evenings, I spend half an hour brushing up my basic German.

One of the things that I have learnt over the years is the value of small increments. Whatever needs to be done can be done in small chunks that barely impact at all. 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' and all that. Just keep those steps coming and you'll get there remarkably quickly and with minimal effort. This is one of the really useful things that motherhood taught me: it's no good bewailing the lack of time you have when you have small children. Divide your day into 15 minute slots and allot an achievable task to one of those slots. I carried this philosophy through to later my university years: 15 minutes is quite long enough to memorise some vocab, or photostat an article, or source a book, or grab a coffee. Just don't approach life as a monolithic entity: break it down so you can see its constituent tasks, then tackle them one at a time. Don't get overwhelmed: be a serial do-er.

Our 20 pence Jesus bears testimony to the benefits of this approach. He is a garish 9" high pink flock covered plastic statuette, with a slot in his back for coins, bought (with an ironic wink) by daughter #2*. Every time I find a 20 pence piece in my purse I pop it in the slot: I have been doing so since last summer. Just before our trip away, I'm going to empty him out and cash the savings in for Euros. I anticipate there'll be about £40 sterling, enough to buy us a cheap lunch out on holiday. A salutary lesson in the incremental approach.

* she understands my deep fondness of Catholic imagery, even if she doesn't share it!

Back into the fold...or not, as the case may be

Ah well! Over too quickly but fantastic while it lasted....farewell sun and the relaxing Mediterranean lifestyle, hello grey skies, overgrown lawn and unanswered mail.
I felt the usual post-holiday fatigue, which is a combination of travel exhaustion (how can just sitting in airports and planes be so tiring?), withdrawal from alcohol, lack of sunlight, good food and the general sense of anticlimax, plus the knowledge that it'll take another year of solid saving to repeat the experience. A brisk trip to the gym and a swim drove out some of the lethargy and accumulated CO in the system and today I feel considerably brighter.
Sadly the major source of funding for my doctoral studies has not deemed me worthy of an award (again) so I am desperately hoping that I get an in-house scholarship from my chosen university. Otherwise, it's back to the drawing board for a serious reassessment of my life plans.
I knew my chances of scoring with the AHRC were slim (does anyone know anyone who has got funding from these people?), but I hadn't anticipated being as disappointed as I actually was. Mentally my compass over the past year or so has been fixed on starting doctoral work this autumn and now it is looking less and less likely, I find myself panicking rather, and wondering what on earth I will do if it all comes to nothing. I need some serious thinking time to map out a new route, but that'll have to wait until I have some quiet family-free time - another couple of weeks at least. Meanwhile, I feel somewhat downcast and rather tense. A scholarship would be a tremendous boost to my confidence, a real lifeline to the scholarship that I deeply and passionately love. I daren't believe I won't get one: I promise that I would be an exemplary student and treat the three years as professionally as I would treat a job. I have so much to offer, and so much I want to say. Please keep your fingers crossed for me.

Three Thoughts on Similar Lines

An elderly gentleman of my acquaintance:

"We've got a lovely garden, but I don't enjoy it. If the weather is sunny I am obliged to undertake all sorts of gardening tasks: mowing the lawn, cutting the hedges, weeding, thinning out shrubs, mulching, sometimes moving plants that I'm told 'don't look right where they are' or 'would do better over there'. It can go on all weekend with no let-up. It's a tyranny. Our neighbour just has a rectangular lawn and a few roses. When it's sunny, he just gets out his deckchair and sits and reads in the sun. I would settle for something far less pretty than ours, if only I could get to enjoy it!"

Similarly an academic friend of mine:

" I used to love reading, but since I started on this course, I've grown to dislike it intensely. I've got so many set texts that I have to devote a good portion of my day to just keeping up with them. Then there's the secondary scholarship: vast, in my field. A lot of it is really old and dry as dust and largely discredited, but I need to understand the evolution of the arguments. Sometimes I find that I have been just scanning the words and turning the pages - and I realise I haven't taken any of it in. It's just words, words, words.... Now I get really agitated when I sit down with a book and look forward to making a coffee or whatever - even before I get started. It's horrible: I don't get any pleasure out of reading now. It's just a chore. When I see people with the latest best-seller or a magazine I get really envious."

Today's Gospel reading (Matthew 13:44) concerns the man who discovers a treasure of great value buried in a field. He covers it back over, goes and sells all he has and buys the field.
My question is this:
What if he later realises that the treasure he uncovered is not worth the price he paid for it?

Just wondering....