It is REALLY difficult to outline a PhD sized project in 10,000 words. It is even harder to discuss it in 20 minutes, which is what I attempted to do today in my confirmation presentation. Everyone commented that my project was valuable, well chosen and worthy of researching. That was very positive. They also said I spoke very well which is no surprise to me, I am naturally a public speaker but I know that is rare. I felt very relieved after I had done the presentation but that feeling was quickly overridden by nerves as I knew I had to answer questions.

Wendy, bless her, asked about my motivations for choosing the project and I was able to talk a bit about my background, undergraduate study and so on…

Then the panel members started asking questions. Some were really great and more things to consider rather than probing questions. Some were not! Now I know that every single PhD goes through this, but somehow that wasn’t much comfort! A lot of it was around things lacking in either the ethics discussion or the method. I think this annoyed me the most because I had spent so much time working on the literature review and not enough on other sections of the confirmation report. I was asking again and to talk more about the method and other parts of the confirmation with my supervisors and I just kept getting redirected to the literature. It was frustrating at the time. It was more frustrating today because I KNEW my project had holes in it and I WANTED to plug those holes weeks ago but could not.

Then there were some other things that I should have known but they didn’t occur to me because of how rushed and last minute some parts were – again I link this back to my time management (early on especially) but also to my supervisors directions. For example, in the ethical considerations part I did not talk about my own background and worldview and how that might influence the project. I should have known better than to leave that out. Dumb. Really dumb.

So then after the questions I waited almost 2 hours for Anna to contact me. As I thought, they are going to want revisions and I think that will be of the major variety. I guess that is good news because I will have 12 weeks to do them. I am certain it is going to be the most painful, soul destroying process if I take it to heart for even one moment. The sticking point for me was that after all the research I had done on online interviews verses email interviews they wanted me to do focus groups!! It was clear to me that I had not communicated my project very clearly if they believed that focus groups is the best choice. Either that or they know absolutely nothing about email interviews at all.

However (Knight in shining armor enters stage left) I spoke to Trixie James this afternoon and she literally gave me the attitude I know I need to adopt. Prior to that I was ready to take a 2 year break from study and go do a project proving that email interviews would be better. Sigh. Trixie highlighted that this whole thing, this ENTIRE PhD is just a stepping stone to get me to where I want to be. I need to tick their boxes, cross their T’s and dot their I’s. If this project turns out nothing like I imagined that doesn’t really matter as long as I am learning along the way and of course as long as I get the piece of paper at the end.

So far I have learnt a lot about pedagogy, emotional labor and I’ve also armed myself with knowledge that will make me a better PhD supervisor in the future. So long as I am learning, that is all that matters. I just don’t want to “make a name for myself” with this project. I mean if they are going to ask me to change my methodology then it’s not my project anymore, it’s theirs. I REALLY want to distance myself from it as much as possible. It will have my name on it, but I no longer think this will be my project. That is how I feel at the moment. I will no doubt feel differently tomorrow or the next day.

So here I am, adopting Trixie’s attitude – let’s just get this done… so what’s next? What do I do now?

Now? Now I wait a week for their full report. Sigh.