Responsible adult supervision

It’s been three weeks since the start of the PhD, and things are starting to come together. The disparate mental maps I have of different parts of town are starting to coalesce together into a coherent whole; I’ve found a pleasant spot in which to work (surely the subject of a future post!); and, perhaps most importantly of all, I’ve figured out how the inter-library loans system works. That said, after the first week of inductions and meetings, my second week as a postgraduate research student was something of a shock to the system: suddenly finding myself alone without any meetings in the next few days to give me concrete writing goals, I spent a couple of days in the library in something of a minor panic, unable to write more than a few words at a time without flicking over to Facebook or Twitter and frequently deleting more words than I actually put down on the page.

Three things shook me out of my slumber, beginning with the discovery of the wonders of PGR study desks. While I had already booked one of these, a combination of all the necessary books being in the library and uncertainty surrounding where ‘Research Commons’ actually was had seen me confined to the central (and to my sensitive brain, very loud) Forum Library. One fortuitous morning, though, I took the plunge and was rewarded with a desk that, while not strictly mine, did come with a locker and the right to boot anyone else off it if I needed to use it. The silence in the Reading Room was precisely what I needed, and over the next few days the first piece of writing started to take shape.

Closely linked to the discovery of Quiet Desks™ was the realisation that I needed to do something other than work and rowing. While I haven’t really spoken about rowing very much on this blog – I’m a cox, which for the uninitiated means that I’m the short one who tells rowers what to do – I will admit that, while fun, it can be a draining task, and hence not always suitable for relaxing. With that in mind, I signed up at the Fresher’s Fair to two of the most unashamedly geeky societies that Exeter had to offer: the chess society and the Doctor Who society (with their incredible slogan of ‘Exeterminate!’). Having gone to both of these during my third week, they’ve proved to be excellent ways to properly wind down, and at some point during the screening of The Tenth Planet (a First Doctor classic, and one that marked the first appearance of some very ropey-looking Cybermen) I started to realise that I was relaxing, and allowing myself to benefit from the opportunities that Exeter has to offer. The chess society has been slightly more of a challenge, as I’m currently being destroyed in every game I play, but I’m confident that I’ll get there in time.

Yesterday, meanwhile, was the day of my first joint supervision, which served as the final clattering bell in my research-awakening alarm clock. After producing 1,800 words that served as a general introduction to some of the key issues that I’ve spoken about elsewhere on this blog – what is ‘Anglo-Norman didactic literature’, and why should we care? – I went into the 2pm Friday meeting eager for feedback, and looking forward to discussing some further thoughts on the topic with my supervisors. Indeed, it did all seem to go rather well: I left the meeting with some really useful advice, and there was general agreement that my work seemed to be on the ‘right track’. The challenge now, we agreed, is to ‘beef it up’, engaging more with some of the questions that I only referenced briefly ahead of our next meeting in four weeks’ time. It felt bizarre to be the one who was setting the agenda for the meeting, especially when the two people in the room with me were far more knowledgeable than I was, but I left feeling reassured that the short- and medium-term targets that we had agreed on were achievable and measurable.

It’s been a busy week, but as I come towards the end of it I’m feeling, for the first time, like I might just be able to set some proper, concrete ‘goals’ for the next week come Sunday night. The next seven days will be, in many ways, more of the same, with MA courses I’m sitting in on jostling for space with revisions of the first piece of writing (and, potentially, putting together a proposal for an undergraduate reading group – watch this space!). In any case, I suspect I’ll spend quite a lot of time like this.

Cover image: Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS G.g.1.1, fol. 390v (detail), one of the texts I’ve been looking at over the past week …