6. Footnote

I missed the last footnote, which should have been for the fortnight ending 30 August. Partly that was because I was away that weekend – I met my parents in Narrandera – but more broadly it was a pretty poor period for me. I attend the 3 Minute Thesis finals, and it was interesting to hear about what others are doing, but I achieved very little progress on my own thesis.

That was true again this past fortnight. I think that I had some decent success early when I was just reading in a pretty unstructured way, but now that I’ve got research questions that I’m pursuing, a need to to synthesise the literature, and apply it to my own work, the going is quite slow.

In particular, I’m past the point where I need to be looking at how my project will be embedded in theory. I have no particular knowledge of any communications theory, and it’s difficult to get my head around it when the time I can spend on reading and thinking is so fragmented.

I’m also finding the part time study to be really difficult. It might be different when I’m past confirmation and have a stronger idea of what I’m doing and how to do it, but at the moment when I’m still trying to get my head around how academic knowledge creation happens and how to structure a research project and how media systems theory might be a useful framework for my work, it’s just not enough time. The mental transition out of work work and into research work is really difficult.

I was initially working weekends as well, which was good for my productivity in the short term, but hasn’t been sustainable. I had hoped that in moving to Canberra, where I have no friends and no particular obligations, I might be able to establish a stronger work routine, but it turns out that not having a social life isn’t actually conducive to being a shut-in workaholic. It might actually be worse – I’m finding myself taking a lot of walks just for an excuse to be out of the house and around other people.

My best friend here is probably the guy who owns a doughnut shop and who remembers that I like the maple walnut, but I’m beginning to suspect our relationship is pretty transactional.

My biggest concern is that I am nine months in and I feel like I’ve made no progress. I’ve still got five months until my introductory seminar milestone and more than a year until confirmation, so I don’t think I’m falling behind exactly, but there’s a mental burden of feeling like I’ve already spent a while thinking about this and have gotten nowhere.

Pretty hard, this whole PhD thing.