PhD blog: 26

The story so far… Graham is in the second year of his part-time PhD in which he is investigating American literature post 9/11.

In the hermitage

I haven’t left the house much recently - only doing so to navigate the plastic aisles of the local supermarket with a glazed, slightly fearful, look in my eyes. I have grown a beard, ignored my need for a haircut, and remained in unlaundered clothes because really what’s the point if the only company I have is the unending glow of my computer’s monitor. You see, work has been flowing at a startling rate and, keen to exploit this fertile period, I have borne the burden of the workaholic yet again. The result is a completed first draft of my prospective first chapter, entitled (somewhat lazily), ‘What is Generation X?’ Hopefully my answer to that question is a resounding, and well argued, ‘This is Generation X’, but time will tell.

The sense of achievement is one that shouldn’t be ignored. This is my first attempt at writing a ‘chapter’ and, ignoring the fact that it’s merely the first draft of many, it is my first completed piece of writing that will go some way towards the final thesis (everything up to this stage so far has been notes, whether sketched and shorthand or a more sustained, full-sentences-and-paragraphs type of note taking). This latest piece of work feels solid, it feels as if I have moved on from the foundation and begun to build the actual walls of the thing (if indeed that is what is next in the S.O.P. of building a house. I wouldn’t know, being the sort of person whose soft and uncallused hands inspire the ‘he hasn’t done a day’s work in his life’ response from most hardened, ruddy-skinned workmen).

It is a huge leap to move on from merely writing notes and doing research. Research is the warm blanket of a PhD, the comfortable, methodical and quantifiable aspect of the study. That’s not to say it’s always easy (far from it), but you do always know where you are with research. You read appropriate texts, make the appropriate notes and gather the appropriate page numbers etc, with little need to worry where it will all lead. Let me clarify. Of course you need to worry where it will all lead, but when the writing is undertaken the idea of structure is introduced. The question that begins to scream within your brain is the ever repeated ‘What is the argument here? What is the argument? What is the argument?’ ad infinitum. On a related note, the question that your DoS and supervisors are continually asking you is ‘What is the argument here?’ And quite right too. You are nothing without an argument.

So research, essentially, is feeding all the relevant (and some not so relevant) information into your brain, until your brain is absolutely jammed with the stuff. It then begins to pour out and you feel the need to begin writing up, but as you are writing you have to repeatedly stem the flow and make sure you are forming a coherent and structured argument. It’s like filling up the fuel tank - the tricky part is that cross-country drive on the winding roads. At least, that’s how I work. And it’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the writing up. I do, perhaps more than the research because it’s exhilarating. I enjoy how hard it is and I enjoy how long it takes. I enjoy finding that perfect reference in my notes, the quote that proves my theory (or even the reference that complicates the theory and requires more structuring, more research and more bum-on-seat time). I prefer this because I am a writer (not that you’d be able to tell from this rambling record! I have just written an 8,000-word chapter, so bear with me). I get my kicks from discovering how to say things in both original and valid ways. There are PhD students that I know that hate writing up, they are at home in the books and writing up is a huge obstacle to navigate. Now I am back researching, and I miss the structure of forming an argument, of filling the blank page. But I shouldn’t dwell on it. It won’t be long until I’m back behind the keyboard…