TheLionRampant.net

I had my first year PhD review today; surprisingly it was very helpful rather than intimidating. Here are some of the comments from my review summary: “Ashley has done some impressive work this year. Her thesis deals with some sophisticated concepts and her topic has excellent possibilities for original archival research, and comparative literary criticism. [...] Her submission has too many big ideas, with not enough focus’. And ‘The thesis demonstrates some impressive ambition, achivement and a great deal of potential. But in order for this potential to be realised, Ashley will have to work hard on structuring the themes of the thesis and clarifying its overall aims’.

Stuff I knew and have been agonising over: too broad. too big. too much. Questions of how to structure this massive thing called a PhD continue to plague me (why can’t inspiration drop down from the sky?) but I’m glad to have been confirmed that once I ‘work hard’ and figure this structuring thing out — i.e. what I’m actually talking about here — things should be interesting and hopefully helpful to a wider audience and should result in my getting a cool gown and a nifty cap in a few years’ time.

This entry was posted by Ashley on Wednesday, April 27th, 2005 at 10:00 pm. This entry was tagged with Literature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.