Thursday, 29 June 2023
So, I’m officially back at uni now as I’ve had my first supervision meeting in months. It went well. A little bit awkward at first, but we soon settled back into things and there is a lot for me to do.
The first part of my PhD I have to do is a literature review. I’ve always struggled with literature reviews. I feel an overwhelming sense of fear as soon as I hear the words ‘literature review’ and feelings of dread and foreboding envelope me, terrifying me and making me fearful of even reading a page of an article. Where do I start? What shall I read? What do I keep a note of and how? My mind is awhirl with all these thoughts and many more, awhirl so much that I invariable get a headache and I have to go and lie down which then makes things worse because of all the time I am aware that I am losing.
The enforced break from my studies has been good for me though. Yes I did nothing, nothing at all, while I waited for my complaint to be resolved, and this has proved to be a good option for me. I have listened to people who think I should stop my studies and, in their words, ‘get a job’, and I have listened to people who have told me to keep studying and see where it leads me. Being the balanced person I am, I can see both sides of the argument, but when I think about it, it’s the people who tell me to stop studying and get a job that worry me most.
They, evidently, feel that a PhD is just a longer degree, when it is in fact much, much more. These criticisms come from people who have no knowledge or experience of university at an undergrad level, never mind a postgrad level, and believe that older people, such as myself, that are doing postgrad studies are merely wasting their own time and resources as well as the time and resources that society provides, so that we can achieve our dreams. Another aspect that affect’s their view of me doing a PhD is that I am somehow ‘faking’ my autism and dyspraxia and using them as an excuse to ‘avoid’ what they perceive as ‘real’ work, and spend my days lounging around, doing the odd bit of studying here and there. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I have dismissed these people as uninformed, narrowminded, judgemental, morons, who do not, and never will, understand the value of a PhD, or any form of further education.
The other people who support me, are the ones who ask questions about what I’m studying and why? What I’m going to do with my PhD when I’ve finished (no idea at the moment), and believe I’m doing something worthwhile and of value, which will benefit society at some level, and may even change one person’s life. These are the people I want in my life; these are the people I want to be around, and thankfully these are the people who are a part of the wider fell running community, which I consider myself a part of, and which forms a large part of my studies.
Having the chance to step back and take a different view of the people around me and my studies has been of immense benefit to me and has allowed me to re-evaluate my studies and myself in a different perspective and decide what and who is and isn’t important to me.
With the cerebral, abstract, minutiae, out of the way, it’s time to get down to the hard work of doing my literature review. Firstly, I’m reminding myself of what a literature review is and the value it has to the wider PhD. Secondly, I’m going through all my notes from before and trying to get them into some sort of order, which is a more difficult than it should be as I haven’t really used a ‘system’ to note everything down, and all my notes are anywhere and everywhere in a very haphazard fashion. I have a lot more information and resources than I thought I had, it’s just not organised, well at all to be honest, so I need to get everything organised, and then I can see what I’ve got and where I am. I’m sure that when I’ve done all this I’ll find that I’m actually in a better position than I thought I was and that with a bit of structuring and organising, I can get on with the nitty gritty of my literature review, the writing up bit.
The Autistic FellRunner 