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James Douglas, "'Ring Out the Old, Ring in the New': Progress Reports, White Lies and Creative Procrastination" Undertaking a PhD is a challenge indeed. Sometimes it seems as if the major challenge is staying sane. One the one hand are the institutional demands of your supervisor, school, ADR and research department, while on the other are the personal demands such as family, motivation, money, work, depression, sleep and god forbid, social activities. How is it possible to find a balance between all of these? The ultimate aim is of course to progress to completion of the degree one is enrolled in: just how is it feasible with all the personal and institutional demands impacting on your progress? Institutional demands on progress are collected biannually in our institution under the so-called Progress Report. The report is in two parts: the first is filled out by the student (supposedly in consultation with the principal supervisor) while the principal supervisor in conjunction with any secondary supervisors completes the second part. After the student completes his/her section, the report is forwarded to the ADR who signs off (or not) before passing it on to the supervisor to complete his/her part. The report is then sent to the ADR again, via the Head of School and the Faculty Research Committee, and a copy is sent to the student. Now, the purpose of this report, is, as I have stated, to check on whether or not the student is making progress. However, the process demands a positive relationship between the student and the supervisor. If this doesn't exist, then danger lies ahead. So what happens if the student is not "progressing"? How is this dealt with? Can this be covered up? And if so, for how long? Personal demands such as finding money to pay bills (which usually means trying to balance the demands of underpaid tutoring and marking with work on your project) and coping with family related issues (lunatic ex-wives and self-absorbed teenagers), make time a precious commodity, the managing of which to include one's partner is a sanity preserving necessity. This paper aims to explore and answer (in a slightly humorous though not superficial fashion) some of the above issues and questions in relation to my own project. In particular, I want to highlight how sometimes several backward steps need to be taken in order to progress both intellectually and personally. And if this means having to tell the odd white lie to hide one's creative procrastination, then so be it. Biography: James Douglas lives in the sunny climes of Rockhampton in Central Queensland. He is in the third year of his PhD which is currently called "'Even Better than the Real Thing': Disjuncture and Deterritorialisation in Music Video". His interests include listening to and playing music, writing short stories (if there's time), while trying to heed the philosophy of the school of Monty Python and always look on the bright side of life. |
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