Chattering of the first week of winter

Well by Monday evening there was a definite change in the weather, so much so that the heating was not warming the committee room through until the second half of writers group. I checked the temperature in the room and it was set fine and the heating was clearly on so I just presume it was time to warm up. There were more there this week than last although not a full house yet. We will be very squashed in that room if we ever do get a full house as we are carrying a member over our quota, she is unlikely to actually come again this term as she has had major brain surgery.

Work wise a lot of what I have been dealing with has been at the design stage, although I must admit that some of it is due to argument about an analysis and wanted to claim I had done the wrong power calculation so I went back and did it for the way the person wanted to analyse it and got the same result. I suspected that it would, I wish some statisticians knew better how data behaves and understood that if an approximation gave one result it was quite likely that a more formal analysis would concur. I also heard this week that one of the outline research bids that I am involved in has had the go ahead to submit a detailed proposal.

Tuesday I went home for lunch realised I had a headache so took a pain killer and then went quickly to shop at Tescos for essentials before going back in. Hoping that it was just a headache. Needless to say the person I saw that afternoon had to put up with me in the throws of a migraine. It was not the pain that annoyed me, the painkiller took care of that, it was that my brain would slam on the emergency breaks half way through going down a particular line of enquiry. Anyway I did the meeting then headed home. I also sent apologies for the next day, knowing me I could possible have made the meeting in Preston but I would have been functioning as if I had a semi-migraine and then would have had to have had a proper one the next day when I had a training and another meeting.

The training was actually pretty useful and it was not the style of training I tend to prefer. What I like to have is a training which gives me something to think over and apply, while this one was very much a how to sort of training. It was called Networking for Women and the trainer was prepared to do the basics, such as give you ways to open conversations, telling you how to rephrase what you do and reminding us that networking is about finding out information, not really about giving it and certainly not about doing deals. Deals are done later on follow up of over coffee. It was good because it was so practical.

On the evening I went down to Waitrose to do a small shop although most of the shop for the weeken was being delivered by Tescos the next day. On going through the subway Neil  the guy who is often there begging was there again. For those who are not familiar with Neil’s story he is ex-army and homeless, he mainly begs for the money to pay for his accommodation for the night as far as I can tell. He has been in hospital twice this year and I suspect with illnesses related to being homeless. He smokes but he is not a drinker (I am pretty sure of this now) and has taken ownership of an abused dog. This time he had a friend with him called Chris. Chris is fairly new to being on the streets of Sheffield, he is probably an alcoholic and certainly has mental health problems. According to Neil (Chris was that scared of me he could not talk to me) Chris was staying with the Occupy Sheffield Protest and sleeping in some of their accommodation. Neil was basically directing him towards Archer project and someone from the protest was trying to organise him into seeing a doctor.  The fact was Neil who has next to nothing was helping someone who had even less. The good news was that Neil looked as if he might have an offer accepted on a council flat.

This weekend has been spent mainly on thesis. I have proof read my paper, it still needs some smoothing but I think it is in a state to send to my supervisor. I heard during the week that it had been accepted. I know I was expecting that as it was in line with the conference theme, a lot of PhD students in my opinion have a single talk which is basically “this is my thesis” which they wheel out on numerous occasions. That is not my approach and never has been. That meant that the paper I submitted was likely to be more on topic than quite a few papers. It also meant that I find it easier to stay to the time limit. My thesis is too big and unwieldy to be presented in twenty minutes. I also have decided not to do a Powerpoint and concentrate on familarising myself with the text. I can do this there are enough changes in tone and pace in the twenty minutes for it not to be difficult to keep interest. A review of how the writing up process is going is on this post in my thesis blog

Last night there when I went to bed there was lots of flashing lights from Ambulances and police cars on Hanover Way with the whole of anti-clockwise lane of traffic sealed off. The news this morning said that there had been a person killed on the pedestrian crossing. It is not the first time this has happened, I can recall at least two other occasions of people being hit by vehicles there, and one of the times was a youth worker at Hanover Methodist. I am not sure how it is going to play locally.


Today i may have made a bit of breakthrough with the editing and going from initial writing to first draft (I know normally first draft is normally the initial but for me the initial writing is done using a series of short periods (half hours) where I just try and write as much as possible. It is a good way to get ideas out of my head and onto the page. First draft is what I do at the weekend with those pages, where I read, type in and do a lot of the pulling in of references and rephrasing.  This is an adaptation of the method proposed by Robert Boice in his book “Professors as Writers” he calls the intense fast getting ideas down generative writing. However I was finding then that the getting from that to a basic text was taking forever as I would keep getting distracted. So I decided to take a look at Pomodoro Technique as suggested by the Thesis Whisperer . It got me through the last half of editing a second draft of part of my thesis quickly. I really must try and see if it will mean I spend less time getting a second draft next weekend and therefore more time with the books that feed the writing process. or doing the administrative side such as sending out recordings of interviews.