Getting back on track
March 8, 2009, 2:42 pm: Arthur Bloch
Oh thesis… what a love-hate relationship I have with you! 
I had such grand hopes for my thesis this semester and things just haven’t gone to plan. Sometimes you have to get things wrong before you can see yourself clearly towards “the right way” of doing things. I so well recall my thoughts towards the end of last year… to my supervisor - just let me do it my way, trust me, I know what I’m doing, where I’m headed… I need to do it my way. *grin* So, what am I doing now - nearly three months later? Taking his advice and ploughing on to the finish.
I have spent the last few months revising my early chapters, reviewing, rewriting, rethinking the thesis. It hasn’t been a complete waste of my time and I’ve learned a lot and things are much clearer in many ways but, oh, I have so lost the flow of the narrative… to the extent that I’ve felt very much like I’m losing the plot entirely over the last few days! So, no more revising, rewriting… just write on, face forwards, get it all down - then come back and revise, rejig, connect, cohere, etc. So what if I end up with a string of unlinked chapters… so long as the common thread is there, I can return and pick them up as part of a greater whole - when the whole is there, rather than trying to constantly aniticpate/envisage the whole. My brain is aching trying to hold everything in place!
I need some space to keep me disciplined also. So, I think I’d better start trying to keep up-to-date with my blogging again. Facebook is fun for catching up with friends but it’s a distraction and not conducive to reflection/direction or driving you on.
So, I might as well start as I mean to go on… I’ve spent most of the morning trying to grapple with the problem of the culture text and I’m getting nowhere fast, so… I’m going to skip it and come back to it. Plan for the rest of today - see if I can get a decent first draft of the semiosphere lit review knocked out. Also, generate a plan for pushing things forward… remembering I have a conference to fit in at the end of the month as well. It would be good to have some ideas to share with my supervisors when I meet with them tomorrow, anyway. 
Target 1 - 5-6000 word chapter on semiosphere (today!)… rough draft at least.
Tags: Research, PhD, Supervisor, Literature Review, Semiosphere, Culture Text, Struggling
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Lit Reviews
February 4, 2009, 12:14 pm: Martin H. Fischer
I’m working on a lit review for a research project I’m engaged in (not my PhD work) today and I’m actually really enjoying it. The scope of the review was quite daunting to begin with, I must admit, but once you get into the reading, a pattern begins to develop. I find it interesting how different this approach to literature is or seems to my experiences with my own lit review work.
I’ve found that it’s impossible to keep all the themes in your head in the early stages, so you just need to plunge in, use the themes as a rough guideline of what to look for in general terms… then start reading to familiarise yourself with the ’state of the art’ with which, thankfully, I was at least semi-familiar already, albeit not necessarily from this perspective. I’ve found some fascinating and useful papers already… both for this work and for my own work. I’m finding that the areas where I’m most week are the policy literature and in discipline specific views of sociological relations, socioeconomic demographics, social exclusion, etc. but I’m learning a lot about these things as well (and rapidly so).
One of the really interesting things has been the overall coherence of narrative I’m feeling as I read… as though, the things I was previously missing are somehow helping me, now, to get a better perspective not only on my own interests but also in relation to the ‘field’ at large… and from multiple perspectives. I certainly understand where Fred’s coming from a lot better now…
And, in terms of conducting an informative lit review, I’m beginning to see a pattern emerge…
- identify themes
- gather reading
- familiarise self with content and bibliographies
- summarise and categorise
- synthesise
- review and link back to themes
- re-synthesise
- review and discuss
- identify key issues, insights, problematise
- conclude and recommend ways forward
Ah, learning is good!
Tags: Literature Review, Learning, Research Community
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PhD Reflections
January 31, 2009, 10:09 pm: Neil Armstrong
I’ve had a very good day working on my thesis today and got a lot done. It was hard work, ultimately rewarding, but a struggle just the same. It seems to me that by the time you reach this stage of your PhD (literature reviewed, data collected and for the most part analysed)… when it seems that all is done bar the writing… things actually get harder. Your thesis starts to have much more to do with construction than content… you know what you have to say but you have to think deeply about how you say it, how you link things together, how you bring out the knowledge that has emerged over the preceding period.
It seems to me that a lot of my engagement with the thesis recently has been about making judgements, being critical, justifying, assessing and reassessing my thinking… I can only think that the ‘litte red thread’ of cohesion must be made of pure silk because it takes an age and a lot of care to produce! I guess, too, this is the reality of the craft of research… the ability to make sense of the things you find out coupled with the ability to communicate that sense-making to others.
It comes as little surprise to me, now, that we call this process ’signposting’ - it does feel very much like that… as though taking someone on a journey with you and describing it as you go along… pointing things out, highlighting the interesting bits, bypassing the dark alleyways of ‘lost weekends’… *grin* I’m finding, also, it does help to have an invisible audience in mind (friends, supervisors, examiners, research community)… as this helps you to find an adequate voice… one that operates at a level above jargon but keeps it within the levels of formality required for a doctorate.
I find this stage of the PhD hard also in terms of motivation and engagement… you want to keep going, to complete the work, to get the story ‘out there’ but it’s harder to stay engaged… to maintain a high level of interest in the work. I’m still passionate about the work but you reach a certain level of familiarity with it so that it feels less interesting… if you like, you find yourself more in a ‘nuts and bolts’ period than the period of initial discoveries… and you become more of a mechanic than an explorer. Sure, you are still finding things out and making new connections but it’s a different sort of process and in a way, it requires a different mind set…
Funnily enough, I was reminded just then of the shift in thinking I needed to make between the lit review and the pilot study - the shift from theoretical musing to empirical application and, in a way, this stage of the PhD is a little like that… the shift from question to answer, from exemplification and contextualisation to clarification and justification… and a framing of your contribution to existing knowledge.
At the same time, I’m beginning to realise that a little a lot is the way to go… touching base with the thesis on a daily basis … even if it’s just for an hour or two - helps maintain the connectivity and flow towards a coherent structure… rather than picking up a whole day every now and then as in the case of the latter, I’m finding that you drop the threads of your arguments and it takes longer to pick them up again. So, I think it’s time to use the blog as a thinking space once more, an accountability space… a tracking of progress, a personal calling to account.
So, today… spent some 7 hours or so revising chapter 2 - my lit review on Lotman. Reframing the intro section, adding key definitions and refocusing the connections between social and cultural semiotics - picking up more on similarities as well as discinctions. Located an early key paper which helped a lot in terms of thinking around Lotman’s ideas on culture and cultural typologies that I had somehow missed in my initial review of the literature - “On the semiotic mechanism of culture”. *chuckle* Had I found it earlier, I might have been dissuaded from going down the erroneous road of trying to separate the social from the cultural! I still need to reframe the conclusions and made adequate links to chapter 3 but, all in all, it’s been a fruitful day.
Tags: Research, PhD, Lotman, Tired, Thesis
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Estonia: a fun and useful trip
January 21, 2009, 12:52 pm: James Lane Allen
I can hardly believe I haven’t written in my blog for so long… I’ve been having a good, useful, interesting trip and I’m kind of wishing now that I’d kept up with things a bit better, but no matter. I’m also quite tired now and looking forward to going home tomorrow.
I had some good meetings in Tallinn with Marge Kusmin at Tallinn Technological University and Mart Laanpere at Tallinn University. I enjoyed hearing about the different technology projects they are working on and was especially taken with Mart’s group’s work on soft ontologies. I also had a great meeting with Kai Pata in Tartu and especially enjoyed hearing about her work on activity patterns and ecological narratives.
Tags: Travel, Research Community
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Going for it
January 13, 2009, 7:44 pm: Brian Ferneyhough
I started tackling my lit review chapters once more today. It was kind of a scary proposition - how much do you change and how much stays the same? Doing a technology-based PhD makes such dilemmas kind of real as 3-4 years is a long history of trends and developments in a digital world. Then there’s the theoretical work… and the realisation that you’ve learned so much more over the 1.5 years that have elapsed since you first wrote that chapter… and how do you rework things? How do you know which bits to revise, and yet strive to keep a coherent narrative, knowing that much of what you learned has emerged through the empirical testing of the theory but, at the same time, realising that at least some of your earlier understandings were just plain wrong. Do you correct your errors, knowing that the work will then precede your empirical data and discussions or do you point to the lack of clarity in your early work? Do you make it a phased study? So many choices.
So, I decided, well - mostly you have to do what’s right for the thesis. You change what needs to be changed where it fits best and rework the rest as you go along, dealing with your early erroneous assumptions, acknowledging them and revising them as necessary. *sigh* Seems like an enormous undertaking but, oh well, I’ve decided just to go for it!
[Later…]
I started trying to revise the theoretical chapter but found myself struggling and so switched to the technology chapter and got on a lot better with that… and it was quite interesting to see where that took me and to begin to grasp the many ways in which my thinking/focus has adjusted over time.
Tags: Research, PhD, Literature Review, Thesis
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Books, knowledge, experience and understanding
January 9, 2009, 4:56 pm: Anthony Powell
I’ve had an interesting day today. I decided to visit the KGB Cells Museum in Tartu. It was a very sobering experience, I must say. I’ve seen films about the KGB, learned about their activities whilst I was doing my undergraduate degree in Russian language and culture, and so on… but, until today, I’ve never really had a realistic sense of what those activities entailed. Distance makes a fairytale of pain. I felt strange in the museum… touched, sorrowful… almost scared. It was quite impossible to take a detached view of the things I was seeing there. Whole classes deported to Soviet gulags, a sense of voice from those who took a stance, a real sense of a battle for identity. Although I’d always known that the Baltic States were a late acquisition to the USSR as was… I hadn’t realised the state of the relationship between Russia and Estonia at the start of WWII. Reading and seeing the evidence of that today, I began to understand some of the things I’ve learned about Estonia since I started becoming interested in Lotman and his work. I think one of the most difficult things for me was the fact that these cells were built in what was, otherwise, an ordinary cellar, in the basement of an ordinary house, on an ordinary street… I guess one of the reasons it hit me so hard was because Tartu is such a small place and you got a sense that everyone must have known of this place, what it was for, and so on. On a somewhat lighter touch, my introductory welcome from the concierge did make me smile just a little as she pointed to a visitor book and barked: Name. Country. Needless to say, I responded in obedience and haste.
I had a rather more pleasant and slightly less thought-provoking time later that day when I visited the library of the Semiotics Department and enjoyed myself browsing through some biographical books about Lotman, his life and his work. I especially liked a recent book by Boris Egerov. I also found it interesting just to look and see what kinds of holdings the library had, to think on what interests contemporary Tartu semioticians had.
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Climbing the mountain anew
January 7, 2009, 7:39 pm: Brian Ferneyhough
I’ve had an interesting day with my thesis, reworking the literature review around Lotman, his work, and its fit with semiotics generally. I’m in that liminal space… where the force of energy is so strong, you know you are working hard to understand and cohere… but the explicit articulation isn’t as obvious. *grin* So, most of today has been spent questioning the obvious and exploring shadowy alleyways. A somewhat fun analogy came to mind… it’s like you’re an explorer and you found this fascinating mountain with all kinds of nooks, crannies, winding trails, viewing points and the occasional abyss. You take a few years to get to know your mountain, mapping the terrain assidiously… growing to love (and sometimes hate) this space you are slowly but surely making your own. And now, you stand at the foot of the mountain, at the starting point of your initial journey - but it looks different. It’s yours - you know it well, you have begun to understand it and you want to share it with others. But others don’t have years… so you need to carve a path for them, a more direct route to the summit, one that takes in all the interesting features and steers them safely away from the dead-ends, the futile forests of oblivion and the abysses of no return. You realise that you have become… a Sherpa! *laughing*
So, some success… a new structure, and definitely some new challenges, a reshaping of the argumentation. I didn’t write much today - around 1000 words only… the result of 4 hours of deep deliberation. *chuckle* But, you know, the first words are always the hardest… And there is fear, albeit just a little. A wondering - am I doing the right thing? Am I going the right way? Can I really ‘lose’ all of that? And it come back to what I said yesterday, about trusting yourself, believing in yourself and finding your own voice. It doesn’t mean disregarding the voice of others, but of understanding who you are in relation not only to those others but to your own work also. You know what - I never realised how hard it is to actually stand up and say: “I’ve got something to say.” or even to think to yourself: “I’ve got something to bring to the conversation.” But now, I’m beginning to realise that considered dialogue is what makes conversation so rich. *smile*
I’m glad I came away from the everydayness of my normal life. You need space to think sometimes, to just ‘be’ in a different way. Of course, here in Tartu I’m gradually creating a new sense of the everyday… but it’s more fun… a scheduling of lesiure, pleasure and necessities… but without the mundaneity of shopping, cleaning, tidying up. *chuckle* There are some good things I ought to take back with me, though… especially the daily walk - that’s doing me a world of good. Finding out at least one interesting thing about your surroundings is also a good thing to do. It needn’t be a big thing, could be as small a thing as visiting the local market - which I did the other day - but it’s good to do something purposeful that isn’t just work or study.
Today I visited the Tartu Toy Museum and really enjoyed myself. They have a great collection of children’s toys from the late 1800’s to the millennium as well as a subsidiary exhibition of animation puppets from Estonian television (I loved the latter especially as I’m into animation). I loved the old toys much more than their modern equivalents. Those were the days when there really was a lot of love and/or craftmanship going into toy-making. I liked the contrast between the rich child’s nursery at the turn of the century and the countryside, where children and/or their parents made their own, largely wooden, toys. I liked the dolls, the dolls houses, the wooden games and the puzzle games most. There were a lot of teddies too but I haven’t really been enamoured of those much somehow. A fun hour’s distraction and well worth the visit.
Tags: PhD, Learning, Research Community, Thesis
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Learning to trust myself
January 6, 2009, 8:15 pm: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It’s been a great day. I love Tartu. It’s quiet and I’m feeling quite relaxed and happy. My hotel is ideal for work and writing as it is so so quiet… no traffic, no music, not a peep from a single soul. Wonderful. I have my thesis head back on and I’m feeling more connected to it… just me and the research, no distractions, no external opinions… it feels good. I spent some time today just reading through the work, thinking around things, seeing the way the work has developed and progressed over the last few years and thinking ahead to what it will/should look like as a more complete product. And it’s talking back at me… hurrah! At long last, I’m being critical, not only of the research I’m researching but also of my own interpretations of it. At long last, I’m thinking about the research questions and how they fit with the thesis and the data and the findings. I think, today, I might just be playing with that ‘little red thread’ that tells the reader… hey, this is how it went, and this is how it goes… come on, let’s share the journey. *grin* You know what, I think these moments only really come when you stop, take pause and just spend time with your work… and stop searching for ‘the answer’… *laughing* I’m learning to be brave, too, to start letting go of the things that don’t fit, however much I may love them, or however hard I may have fought to ‘obtain’ them in the first place. Now, it’s about letting the thesis be what it wants to be… and not what I think it should be.
I had a lovely walk to the semiotics department today. It isn’t far - about 20 minutes - a brisk wintry walk. I do like the sharp nippiness in the air, though. It feels good, clean, fresh and it’s okay, so long as you’re warmly wrapped up. I spent an hour or so just chatting away to KV. She was lovely and I enjoyed hearing about her PhD research - on theatre, voice, etc. It sounded really interesting.
I also took some time to wander round town today, just looking at things, enjoying ‘being’ for a change, rather than ‘doing’. I had a lovely walk on Toome Hill and enjoyed looking at the statues there, each with their own little story. Most of the statues in and around Tartu are of academic, intellectual types. It made me smile a little as I wondered what the people depicted would have thought of their public faces. I liked the poet Kristjan Jaak Peterson myself… very cute and died young (seems to be the lot of many poets). Born in the opening throes of the 19th century, his work wasn’t published until it was discovered in the 20th century buried in the Estonian archives. The walking stick he carries represents his long walk from Tartu to Riga (his birth town).
I also saw statues to some rather more elderly statesmen… the somewhat illustrious Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876) and a theologically inclined precursor to later philologists like Lotman - Villem Reiman (1861-1917) a clergyman interested in problems of culture, history, ethics, literature and language.
I took a lovely walk along the river, circling round via Tartu Market which had a bronze pig statue outside that made me laugh - because the pig looked so happy - and yet on the side facing the market hall, all the bits of the pig that could be chopped up were numbered and labelled. Oh dear!
I found a nice blog written by an (American) English teacher teaching in Tartu today. It’s kind of fun reading it whilst I’m here, even if he does take more interesting (or should that be ‘normal’) photos than me. The blog is called “Tartu: City of Good Thoughts” - I so agree with him - that sums Tartu up rather nicely, actually. I laughed at this bit from one of his posts: “I had on my hat and coat but without gloves my frozen, numb hands were still in my pockets to keep them from falling off. “ It so echoed my own thoughts of yesterday… so much so, I had to rush out and buy some gloves pronto!
Decided to have a large lunch (and small dinner) today… and took myself off to “La Dolce Vita“ for a diavola pizza. The wood-fired pizza was delicious, one of the most authentic I’ve had outside of Italy, actually. The house cake with ice cream was huge and I couldn’t eat it all and it was very sweet and the ice cream was perfumed, so all in all the dessert didn’t go down too well. The place was busy and the service was good, at least initially… after dessert and waiting 20 mins for a coffee… I kind of changed my mind and gave up. The pizza was lovely, though, so I won’t hold it against them. *grin*
Popped into Werner’s later for coffee… delicious. A great little cafe. I think I will be going back there a lot during this trip. I also realised today that the word ‘kohvik’ means cafe and is derived from the word for coffee ‘kohv’… go figure that the first real Estonian words I’d learn would be coffee and cafe! *chuckle*
Tags: Blogspace, Research, PhD, Travel
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In Tartu
January 5, 2009, 9:00 pm: Henry Miller
I’ve had a really fun day today. I enjoyed the journey from Tallinn to Tartu very much and was so impressed to discover that the bus I was travelling on had free wifi. Not that I squandered the journey, you understand… I enjoy looking out of the window and sitting back and absorbing the scenery way too much for that. Still, it was nice to be able to quickly check my email and post a ‘twitter’ or two to Facebook. Strangely, also, in sharing the journey, I’m beginning to like Facebook a little better. I’ve also grown to understand how it works better over the last few days, the more I’ve been using it. It seems, then, that if you have a purpose, the learning develops its own paths. I think what I’ve enjoyed is a sense of being ‘in touch’ with friends who are distant… even if it’s just the sharing of a momentary thought. Starting to save photos that are more meaningful (at least to me) has also made Facebook more interesting to me… and more of a blog-like space, yet different - in fact, it’s a little bit like a combination of Flickr, Twitter, Email and del.ici.o.us. So, apart from the somewhat inane applications, I guess you could say I’m slowly becoming a bit of a fan of the dreaded social network lifestyle. Yikes!
Other than that, I decided that, although ostensibly I’m really here to work, I want to have some fun too and it was nice, actually, to arrive in Tartu today and not feel that all of my time here would be involved in a conference. So, this visit has a different feel to it - more laid back, more of a visiting friends, finding some ‘me’ time, and … finding some Tartu time. I want to learn more about this lovely little town. I like it a lot. It’s small enough to walk round in an hour, yet interesting enough to find something new every day. I like that it’s old, that it has a long history. I looked through my guidebook today and decided it would be fun to try out lots of different restaurants and cafes - from the cheap to the not so cheap but not quite too expensive. I also made a list of some places I’d like to visit, apart from the university - although, even that has its own sights to see. *smile* I’m only sorry I’ve come at the wrong time of year to allow a visit to a 19th century Tartu home which, unfortunately, is only open October through March. Ah well, guess I’ll just have to settle for the others - and they make quite an eclectic mix, I must say, from KGB Cells to Toys.
So, my first outing today was to the Ülikooli Kohvik (the University Cafe). I really enjoyed my meal there. I tried the downstairs buffet today… basic, cheap and fun. I liked the stripped back brickwork and the service was really pleasant. They also have an ‘a la carte’ menu upstairs in a fancier Art Nouveau surroundings - so I’ll try that one later on in the trip, perhaps on a Thursday when they also have jazz music - that would be good.
My hotel is lovely and usefully central; my room is fantastically spacious and will be quite delightful to work in; the wifi is also great… I’m just a tad perturbed by the lack of a kettle. *sigh* There goes my coffee addiction!
And so… what? Well, it’s more than a holiday and a visit - and there’s a serious side to all of this, so I guess I’m going to use my blog as an accountability thread and I need to focus on getting the chapters of my thesis written as it’s highly unlikely I’ll have this much free time again anytime soon. *smile* So, my task for this evening is to get to grips with what’s been done so far and to draw up a plan of action for the rest of the week. I think that’s just about manageable.
Other than that, I got some new lit review work today… something I’m interested in doing, so that’s good news. Also, I got kick-started on my QDA work… meeting some of the students online and chatting things through with the course leader. Feels like things are ‘good to go’.
So, all in all - a very pleasant day indeed.
Tags: Blogspace, Teaching, Research, PhD, Travel, Jobs, Thesis
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Seeing the light (or maybe not)
December 28, 2008, 11:57 am: George Harrison
Sometimes I get to thinking I really don’t know anything. *wry grin* There is so much ‘out there’ to know… maybe knowing that you don’t know is the true beginning. Who knows? *chuckle*
For example, I thought the lyrics were written by George Harrison - only to find they are part of the Tao Teh Ching.
I was thinking about worldviews this morning… mind wandering back to Lotman as ever and I decided to surf the web… and stopped by Wikipedia (oh yes, fount of all knowledge… ha! ha!)… I found the reference to Apostel’s 7 elements for constructing a worldview inherently interesting somehow:
According to Apostel, a worldview should comprise seven elements:
I like the idea of an etiology. Then, as you do, I found myself scanning the reference list and my eyes paused on: “Worldview: The History of a Concept” by David Naugel and it intrigued me, so I looked it up on Google books and the list of philosophers, whose names I now at least recognise, was both long and fascinating… like a history of ideas, of thought, of meaning making. There was a useful chapter on culture and semiotics as worldview also which I enjoyed reading.
How did I get there in the first place? Musing on Bayesian Nets, actually… having glanced through “The Mind’s Arrow” by Clark Glymour.
Ah, it’s a funny old world… and the mind’s a funny old thing. *laughing*
Tags: Blogspace, Books, Culture, Learning
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