Dissertation Period

On the calendar it looks like a lovely blank block that one can fill with all one's heart desires. In actuality it consists of meetings and stomach acid. Lots of stomach acid.

Even though nothing else is due until the beginning of September, we are supposed to be drafting our dissertations. And to make sure that we actually are drafting our dissertations, we have dissertation supervision meetings until everyone breaks up for the summer. After the second week of June or so we're on our own, presumably to finish that dissertation while not abusing our livers too much. I don't know how everyone else's meetings have gone, but mine usually follow a cycle similar to that of the workshop: A few days of buoyancy and drafting, the handing in followed by a few days of utter lazyness because there's no point in doing new work if you're going to change it all in light of anticipated feedback, the meeting in which your spirits sink lower and lower as your supervisor points out everything that's wrong with your piece, a day or two of despondency as you wonder if you're really cut out for this, then the intrepid return to the blue-soaked page to see if there's anything salvageable. In my case, the greatest relief is that the finished piece is only allowed to be 15k words, and is not expected to have a completed narrative arc but rather be the three chapter pitch for a novel; I keep thinking about it in relation to my 90k word undergrad dissertation and then try not to laugh when we're given generalized advice about pacing ourselves and not getting overwhelmed by the word-count.

There are also weekly seminars on research methodologies, which we are regularly reminded are mandatory but for which no one ever takes attendance, which have consisted so far of powerpoints with blocks of text and no pictures, professors reading aloud from their own blogs, and random anecdotes, so as the weeks have progressed it's become much easier to find a seat.

After the research seminars we are allowed to catch up with each other for an hour before getting to meet assorted agents and publishers out of their native habitats, where they answer questions and give general advice. Then we get to chat with them while consuming free wine, hopefully getting loose enough in the process to pitch our half-finished books. We all seem to agree that the agent bit is the best bit so far, as they are generally helpful and friendly, and when they aren't we have free wine and each other.

Also, it looks like I'll still be around next year: I've been offered a place on the PhD, and since I don't have a share in all that student debt that everyone else in my generation is suffering under, I've taken them up on it. It feels less like having been accepted and more like being engulfed, as if I were a food source for amoebae, but I'll take my research opportunities no matter how they are offered. Though the next STEM student who says that of course I've been given funding because everyone gets funding no matter how insignificant their possible conclusions will be throttled.