Finished! And thank you!

I’ve found it quite funny that the last thing I found time to post was a short article about how dificult it was keeping up with all the media coverage. Needless to say, shortly after that it become almost impossible to keep up with anything at all. I had thought that when writing up it might be useful to share my experiences online. In fact the last thing I wanted to do after writing all day was write anything more. When the deadline drew near I found that what worked best for me was just to put my head down, cut myself off and get on with it.

But yesterday I took all 357 pages, or 96,400 words (not including the bibliography and appendices to the binders). I’ll be handing in on Friday. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet; I can’t quite believe that I don’t have to check another reference, or rewrite that passage just one more time. At the binders they have some samples to show you what a bound thesis looks like with titles such as ‘Three years to do it and I still left it to the last minute’ by I.M. Tired. Obviously, it’s a pretty lame joke, but it still made me smile in a tired, wan sort of way. There was something absurd about correcting cross-references til 2 in the morning and rewriting the conclusion the day before handing in when I’d had such a long time to get it all done. But I honestly don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard for anything, not even the madness of my undergraduate finals (which involved sitting 95% of my degree in about 4 weeks). We celebrated with a bottle of champagne that Eiffelover had been saving for just such a special occasion, from the year I first started university no less (which, to my horror, is now sufficiently long ago for it to qualify as ‘vintage’!).

The final stages were made much easier by Patrick Dunleavy’s Authoring a PhD (2003) stumbled across by chance on a library shelf and by far the best guide of its sort I’ve ever come across. I think what’s so good about it is that it’s pitched at the right level and sticks to the point. It’s also clearly geared towards the humanities/social sciences, unlike a lot of the texts out there. The page and a half on how to write an abstract is exemplary; it tells you exactly what you need to say and how many sentences to give each thing. Thoroughly recommended, even to I-don’t-need-any-help-leave-me-alone-i-just-need-to-get-on-with-it-alright sceptics like myself.

I won’t be circulating the text until after the viva in January, although I will post some extracts to my ucl webpages shortly, including the revised abstract, the table of contents and possibly some of the conclusion. To anyone reading this in France I will be submitting a version to the CNHI mediatheque after the viva (soutenance). It will be in English but I intend to provide a summary in French.

I haven’t yet decided what to do with this blog. I’ll certainly keep it going for the next couple of months. You can expect a conference report or two and plenty of exhibition reviews as I intend to make use of my new-found leisure time by visiting lots of museums. I imagine that this might also be a useful place to try out ideas that arise in preparing for my viva.

But last of all a big

THANK YOU!

to everyone who’s taken the time to read my musings over the last 18 months or so, and especially to those of you who took the time to comment. It really made a huge difference, in terms of keeping me motivated and reminding me that there were other people out there who thought was I was doing was interesting and worthwhile.

This is a short extract from my acknowledgements:

I suggest in this thesis that as a researcher ‘being there’ online often helped to mitigate the difficulties associated with ‘being there’ in a big city. The many readers of my blog encouraged me to keep going and reassured me of the interest and value of my research. A special mention to Amy Barnes (of the University of Leicester’s ‘The Attic’ blog), Aurélie Samson, Daniel Letouzey and Franziska Heimburger, all of whom in different ways helped me make connections, both real and virtual.

Merci. Vraiment.

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