Yesterday was my fifth supervisory board. I’ve become a lot more relaxed about them since the fourth one went so well, but nonetheless, this board totally exceeded my expectations. A load of other good things happened yesterday too.
Last Saturday, I was up ridiculously early to present and listen at the abovementioned symposium. It was a really interesting day and I learned a lot about a huge range of different subjects!
Well, I didn’t expect returning to my literature review to make changes, additions and corrections to be quite this hard. I actually think totally re-writing my section/chapter/whatever it’s going to be on perceptions of only children will actually be easier as I’m starting again with a blank page, as opposed to trying to edit something that now feels as old as that book I posted last week.
Following on from the picture I posted last week from a book I wrote at the age of six titled ‘900 years ago’ (which would now be ‘920 years ago…), I thought I’d post the whole thing. Why? Because I enjoy reading other people’s more personal history-related blogs. Because I find it amusing that I seemed to like history at an early age (it was kind of a love-hate relationship actually). Because it’s my blog and I can’t think of anything else to talk about this week.
This week, I attended a lunchtime ‘Gender and Space’ roundtable held by my department. It was well-attended and there were lots of questions and discussion, which was great - we didn’t actually think it would fill the two-hour slot the room was booked for, but it did! There were three main speakers, including a visitor to the department I hadn’t met before, and myself and my fellow PhD student Nicolle Watkins (who chaired) also said a few words.
On Wednesday, I went on a course about psychoanalytic methodologies at my university, broadly aimed at people in the humanities and social sciences who might want to use such methodologies, but don’t know a huge amount about them. I decided to go in case I could pick up anything that would add ‘sparkle’ to my thesis - obviously as I’m in third year, it’s a bit late to give them a huge place in it. Plus, if I stay in academia (and that’s currently a very big IF), I might be able to use them in future projects.
Firstly, the hopeful news (I hesistate to say ‘good’ when I’ve still got so far to go): with the exception of the conclusion, which I plan to write right at the very end, all the chapters of my thesis (and a couple more besides) are drafted! I’ve written everything I want to say - now I need to slim it down, totally rewrite some chapters and edit/rearrange som others. I just did my first ever word count of the whole lot, and I have 110,446 words - so that’s a whopping 30,446 to lose. So, what’s my plan from here on in?
Last weekend, a friend and I visited the abovementioned exhibition, which showcases for the first time a curated collection of items from the Metropolitan Police Museum, also known as the Black Museum. Until now, these have only been available to view to a limited number of people, and the popularity of the exhibition demonstrates how many people have been intrigued and fascinated by this hidden collection.
Seeing as it’s my birthday, I thought I’d do a blog post with the theme of only children’s birthday parties. What I’m hoping to show is that only children did have friends, and that there was a big variation in how they celebrated their birthdays, and the reasons for this variation were not that they were only children.
