Some thoughts on the last 6 months of doing a PhD (part-time)

I’ve just read the last substantial post I made from about three or four years ago and thought, now that the PhD is completed, that it would be nice to reflect. A lot has happened since the last post and in a sense it’s hard to compare what it was like then to how I am now. The last post was written almost as an on-going narrative and, although the end of one story usually signals the start of another, submission and passing the doctorate certainly acts as a logical “end-of-chapter”. “Rite of passage” comes to mind. So here are some thoughts on my work from about the middle of last year up to the viva and beyond.

One thing I have realised from speaking with Richard the other day is just now much I did in a short space of time! In about eight months I managed to select which data I would use, how it would be analysed, analyse it, write it, and savagely edit it down. There were many late nights and a long stretch of getting 4-6 hours sleep; something I’ve done before but a regime you can’t keep up for too long. Time was measured not so much by the clock but by the seasonal progress of the now sadly-lamented silver birch tree in our garden, which I could see from my workstation. I knew that, once the leaves started falling, time really would be running out.

Why such a late start to the important bits of the thesis? It comes down mostly to the notion of being true to what you think are the proper ways to go about analysing data, in my case, sociologically. (It also requires you to entertain yourself and keep the interest in what you are doing.) For too long I entertained the possibility of doing things that compromised myself and meant I was trying to please too many constituencies; to be “all things to all men”. Once the boundaries had been drawn, I had a clearer understanding of my relationships not only to the people I was working with but also with the people who I read, who inspired me and also those with whom I disagreed.

An important realisation was that the more the analysis could be tied to prevailing social science debates and concerns, the more purchase it would have. Any analysis that does this therefore fulfills a plurality of functions. In fact, it could be seen as one of the marks of the “plausibility” of published academic work – in writing about the plausibility of student work as the object of study, it would have been a grave problem for me if I had not been able to claim a similar plausibility for my own doctoral work. How often do you read a paper that not only gives a treatment of data but also points out the implications of these findings for debates in that field or discipline? Quite often? Certainly more often that these findings can really have some substantial effect on prevailing thought; but necessary nonetheless for academic work to be believable. Think about it: we’re not only being asked to do research, but to analyse and communicate it as well! How can one person do all that? Somehow, we do.

Another notable insight from the choice of material to analyse was that this was not only an epistemic one, but also, to a point, an emotional and intuitive one. Thanks to Wittgenstein and ethnomethodology, we can properly study the small details and the specific case. The case study material I used, then, originated from mere fragments which I then investigated further, reconstructing and adding more as I went on, as far as possible. But the decision to include the voices of all the student participants in the study was not an analytical one, but one made out of loyalty to their good will and assistance. Thankfully, the huge range of analytical methods and methodologies we have nowadays fairly easily allows for this kind of decision to be made good and justified in more objective-sounding terms. But I didn’t want to make any secret as to the origins of this decision. As researchers we are still people.

I can’t go without saying something brief about the editing process. It is only natural to be surprised at how little you can reflect of a study even when you have written nearly double the word limit. To then have to bring it down to (within sight of) 80k words is a real discipline. I found myself one day upbraiding undergraduate students for not adhering to a 1500 word limit, and then later on the same day myself having to chop out several UG essays’ worth of material. Surely the two things aren’t exactly alike? I mean, this is cutting-edge research! But I can’t begin to say how much better things read when they are chopped down to their essentials. The old dictum of write it how you would say it becomes useful here.

And so on to the viva. I was in the somewhat unusual position of being an existing non-academic member of staff; as such, I required two external examiners. It was also established that there would be an internal chair. (I won’t mention names but the chair was selected partly to help neutralise all the testoterone that we presumed would be in the room – there was – she did an excellent job.) One external came with strong recommendations from many sources. One was described as “an absolute b******d” but was someone I had already come across in giving a paper at another university.

Personally I think it worked well with more people present rather than less. There is some debate about the viva as a way of examining PhDs (e.g. http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/are-phd-vivas-still-fit-for-purpose/2/2003341.article) but the way I see it the more people are present the less chance there is of someone going on a power trip without being brought up short by someone else. I liked this arrangement and I would recommend it.

I wasn’t particularly nervous of freezing or not being able to fight my corner. If anything, I would be more likely to have the opposite worry; I love a good argument and following in the ethnomethodological tradition of “grumpy old men” I suppose I can come across as a bit confrontational. Another worry was being quizzed on some of the details or real minutiae of the thesis. Thankfully this didn’t really happen and a lot of the questions, I thought, were quite broad-brush, allowing a lot of fairly problem-free answers. And as good examiners tend to do (I am told), there was a lot of interest in the data. There’s nothing better than hearing “I liked your data”: it means that the conceptual things can be argued over separately.

The whole thing took less than an hour, which is rather less than the two hours plus that we are told to expect by all the books. Having spoken to a few other recent PhDs, this seems to be something of a trend, at least in the social sciences. I am not sure why this is the case, but with the benefit of hindsight, I don’t see why it should take more time than it necessary. It was certainly an intense hour or so. At the time I felt as if I would have liked it to go on for longer – in the same way as footballers winning a cup final 5-0 welcome lots of injury time – but you have to be grateful for what you get. It is an examination, not an ego massage; although it is the culmination of years of cloistered work and even suffering, it requires ruling on. The outcome is all.

Having left the examination room, we pondered upon what the rapid viva could signify. I think we all thought the same thing: it had either gone very well or very poorly. Thankfully, it turned out to be the former. Congratulations are offered and the dust is left to settle.

There were some well-earned celebrations but no cutting loose. Somehow, it didn’t seem suitable to act in too undignified a manner. One thing the books get right is that this is only the start: you now need to think jobs, publications, funding. Another thing: even the closest people don’t really get what you have gone through, unless they’ve done it themselves. In a sense you are left celebrating by yourself. Not that I am complaining.

The period immediately afterwards was very odd. I found it hard to even look at the thesis for a good while and I certainly wasn’t motivated to do the corrections. It took a real wrench to get started, but once I did, I found that there was the same curiosity as before. There was so much more that I could have done with the thesis – but that’s the whole point. There always is. You have to stop at a point where the work is strong enough to be examinable and to pass. Even my best material, with my best analysis, has been added to since and more insights have come out of it. Lesson: there is no point looking for perfect. Every point aiming for “defendable”. Remember that you have to “defend” your thesis.

Have I done what I set out to do? Yes – but something I realised today is just how pervasive it is to think in certain ways about educational phenomena. Jeff Coulter says something like: even after Wittgenstein, we are all still Cartesians. It is easy to regress into a Cartesian way of considering something such as the problem that initially roused me to further study: what is it that students do and learn in coming to terms with academic writing? This, for me, was the wrong question to ask. The better question is something like: how is their writing socially ratified? Lynch & Bogen point out that after Derrida, polysemy and “unlimited semiosis” (Eco) would seem to make it impossible to decide on (intended) meaning. But: “people manifestly do understand what others say and write, with particular misunderstandings being set off against a backdrop of relatively unproblematic agreement”. Every time I remember this I again find the energy to think about the same problem afresh. It is bringing the problem this far, and keeping it fresh, that has allowed me to finish.

That, and the very social aspects of my own writing!