PhD Life

Well, 1 month gone - just another 35 left then. its gone really fast, and cant believe how much ive 'intellectually grown' in this time. It feels like someones in my head, dusting down my brain, and finding some spare neurons for me to use, like finding spare coins inside the sofa on its annual clean. i even found myself giggling at an epsitemological joke from a book about epistemologies ('The foundations of social research' - heartily recommended if you want to sort out your hermeneutics from your phenomenologies)on the train home last night. doesnt sound like me at all.
Re-reading my intial proposal now just sounds sooooo naive - i was so certain of objective science, but no longer! have currently pitched myself as a 'Critical hermeneutic-phenomenologist', although this changes weekly. i might sign that as my occupation on my next passport.

Initial meeting with supervisors (all 4 of them) went very well. It was basically an administrative process - have i been properly inducted/induced? (apparently not: do not yet have a Handbook, Heath & Safety guide, contract, payroll number.....i could go on). We also discussed how the supervision meetings should be organised. It looked suspiciously like this had all been worked out before i got there (its unlikely that all 4 academics would be early for a meeting, ready in their places when i arrived - early myself!): so much for my ideas of how i would supervise my team (i didnt really have any anyway).
So, the plan is that we will meet up once a week for the first 3 months, and then review. Seems a lot - much more than I understand is regular in other institutions. Either they're incredibly interested in my project, and just want to damn well timetable-in those ferocious intellectual debates they think Im capable of, or they think Im shit and need lots of supervision.
We agreed that for next meeting (in a week) i would re-draft my initial proposal. I actually wrote my proposal 6 months ago, and upon re-reading, realise that my epistemological and ontological assumptions are deeply flawed. So have already re-written it, car-crashing from extreme positivism to extreme anti-positivism. I hope such a shift doesnt make me look deeply unstable.

Have now been a PhD student for 2 weeks, although not officially as, of course, documentation takes a lot longer, so cannot tell Council Tax to no longer charge me, cannot tell TopShop to give me 10% off (I have no NUS card as I have no status), cannot get reduction at gym, have no payroll number (and no pay!) and am being asked to bring in my undergraduate degree certificate for THE THIRD TIME.
Everything seems to be working in treacle, everything takes ages to get and, as they’ve shunted me out of the department into Midwifery (no spare office space for what is the lowest of the low i.e. postgraduates), it is physically an effort to go find anything out (no phone and 2 weeks before I got a functioning PC).
Despite this, I love it here and absolutely do not wish to be anywhere else (this is a first for a melancholy soul like me). The day is my own, I can come in when I want (if at all) and do what I want when I get here. For the first week and a half I wandered in (approx. 10.30), met some tutor or other for coffee, and pretty much went home/shopping (approx. 2.30). Then it dawned on me that maybe I should just start…maybe the idea was that I should no longer need someone to tell me what to do, which is what I was pretty much waiting for. So I have spent the last 3 days in the library, photocopying articles, taking out books etc. nothing hard core – I'm basically just mooching around my vague area of research (keywords: ‘young people’, ‘offending’, ‘young people offending’).
I have my first supervision meeting at the end of the week with my 4 (!!!) supervisors, so I at least want to name-drop a couple of new researchers by then (so probably just a matter of scanning abstracts: I know the drill!). I also need to discuss how I want to ‘mange my team’. I am thinking that 4 supervisors (for me to supervise, it would seem)is perhaps a tad excessive.