Life in Thesis-land : blogging

8 Things Tag

Karen.Hall — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 06:12:00 GMT

I just realised to forgot to forward the meme. Anyone on myResearchSpace not already tagged, consider yourself it!

8 Things About Me (A Meme)

Karen.Hall — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:11:00 GMT

Rules:
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.

The Things:

1. My current car is the third one I have owned. My first car, a blue Corolla just younger than me, died in the summer holidays before the start of my third undergraduate year. It (and I) were in the middle of a three car pile up, when a 4WD crossed into an exit lane two cars in front of me at the last minute. The car directly in front of me breaked, I breaked, the car behind didn't - and my car ended up with one of those trailer attachment balls through its radiator. Replacing the engine was more than the car was worth. My second car, a white Corolla this time, was set on fire while I was over in New Zealand on a conference trip (the car was staying with my parents in Perth). My current car is a Ford Laser, and I still have to pause and think about what type of car it is.

2. I did half of Year 3 (primary school) by distance education (my family spent six months travelling around Australia in a caravan). I've always blamed this disruption in my education for the fact that I can't remember my times tables.

3. I name significant inanimate objects in my life. My laptop is Eurydice and the wireless keyboard is Orfeo. When I bought the laptop, I was doing a lot of reading on cultural memory, and some theorist who's name I can't remember (and can't look up because the information is on the other laptop) wrote beautifully about how mediated memories where two steps away from the event: unreachable, like Eurydice looking back at Orpheus as he turned to look at her.

4. My favourite Dockers player (yes, I do attend AFL matches) is Josh Carr. I really don't know why.

5. One of my favourite bands is a folk/rock group from Newfoundland - Great Big Sea. Again, I don't really know why, though any song about clubbing baby seals that you can cheerfully sing along to has to be good.

6. I've had measles, but I haven't had chicken pox. I was the first of my siblings to get stitches. I've had a lumbar puncture, but I wasn't conscious at the time.

7. I read Les Miserables by Victor Hugo when I was 11. I can remember sitting on the porch of our house in the Wheatbelt town of Merredin, in the very late afternoon, and crying when Gavroche died on the barricades. I still cry when reading some books - even sometimes when rereading.

8. I know how to spin (making thread from raw wool) using a hand spindle, but I can't knit.

The Wait is Over!

Karen.Hall — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 08:25:00 GMT

I blogged a while ago about things I was waiting to hear back on: the news is that my crazy week of application writing paid off! This week I've begun a six-month position as Graduate Education Officer here at UWA and I've also recieved a Whitfield Fellowship - a six-month, 0.5 role - that will begin after the GEO job finishes. In terms of the thesis, this means that I have six months to get it done and in - a slightly overwhelming prospect, but I'm trying to spin it to myself as an exciting challenge. (This is also a partial excuse for my recent blog silence).

What does this all mean for this blog space? A few different things, I think. Firstly, I'll need to articulate and post my 'ethics of blogging' because while considerations of professionalism, privacy and appropriate topics have always informed what I've chosen to put up here, this job means that I could be read as not just speaking for and about myself - even if that is all I'm planning to do. Secondly, I plan on using this blog as a reflective space to talk in particular about issues to do with thesis research and writing as part of the job. And finally, I guess it means that you'll still be hearing from me for another year, as I make the transition to early career researcher - so hopefully you the reader aren't sick of me yet!

Day in the Life 7: Boundaries of Research?

Karen.Hall — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:08:00 GMT

I've been flicking through Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos, one of the books I'm planning to discuss in the current chapter, which has led me to ask: if this day is about what research students do, then does that question depend on the definition of research? If research, for English researchers at least, is reading/watching and thinking and writing, where do those activities start and end? Does reading a book you enjoy become research if it has a 'research output' attached to it? Do talking about signification and Big Brother at home count? More to the point for myResearchSpace, how can this generic hybrid of formal/informal, public/personal, academic/colloquial sit in the kinds of work that research students do? Is this a space to develop a different kind of writing voice from that demanded by the thesis? Should there be a difference? What might that difference be?