Beyond Selidor

I had my PhD viva nearly three years ago now, but it still reverberates in weird ways, even though I've long since left academia.

( Quick description of how a PhD is examined in the UK, for those who want to know )

I wake up almost every day grateful for the fact that I never have to do another viva again. Some examiners will tell you before you get started that you've passed, although they're not technically supposed to (Matthias' external examiner wanted everything done by the book, so he left the room not knowing if he'd passed or failed). Mine tried to tell me without saying so directly — they said something like, 'before we get started, we want to say that we do have some concerns, but you have nothing to worry about. Now let's talk about your PhD,' which helped a bit, but didn't do much to make the experience any more pleasant. Some friends have told me they enjoyed their vivas, but to this day (and I say this as someone who has had some pretty awful things happen to her), that viva remains the worst two hours of my entire life. A few weeks before it happened, I dreamt that the process would involve lying on a rooftop while two senior Celticist academics shot at me with sniper rifles, just to give you some indication of the state of my mind...

Anyway, you get the idea. I passed, and although I couldn't look at my PhD or my examiners' reports for at least two months after the viva was over, the corrections themselves only took about a week of my time, and I got my PhD, graduated, and got on with a life outside academia. But because I still live in Cambridge, and still have a lot of friends within medieval studies, and because my former department is extremely sociable, I tend to come back from time to time to local conferences, free annual guest lectures, alumni events and so on. And because medieval studies is such a small world (and Celtic Studies an even smaller world within it), I tend to run into my examiners when I least expect it. And, inevitably, I bumped into my internal examiner at a guest lecture late last year. We fell to talking about my viva, and he told me something I found both hilarious, and a great source of perspective.

The entire time that I had been in a state of extreme anxiety and panic, feeling besieged and terrified, he had been in such awe of my external examiner (who, for some reason, he had never met in person before) that he had reacted by being extremely formal, and more critical than he perhaps intended, because he wanted to make a good impression on his fellow examiner. It's odd, but it's nice to know I wasn't the only one in that room feeling scared and overwhelmed!

Anyway, academia. It's a weird little universe.

Birth: Stop wrapping your arm around your neck. You're hurting your mother.

0: Yes, your parents are at present a rock music journalist and a foreign correspondent flitting all over North and South America. Don't worry. They won't expect you to ever be that cool.

1: Don't worry. The vacuum cleaner can't hurt you. Neither can the blender. Neither can the food processor.

2: Don't worry. The cracks in the ceiling and in the tiles of the bath aren't ants. Neither are the black lines painted on the floor of the swimming pool. They can't hurt you. The cicadas make a really loud noise, but they're tiny little insects, not one giant animal 'as big as a bear'. It's not your fault your mother didn't explain that in a way you understood. The cicadas can't hurt you.

Your aunts are going to allow you to walk around them in circles, talking at them. They will draw pictures of the stories you tell them. They will transform the couches on your front patio into two horses that take you on adventures. Your grandfather will build you a bedhead and swim with you in the ocean, and your grandmother will tell you stories. Your other grandfather will build you a bookcase, and your other grandmother will sew clothes for your dolls. You will be surrounded by cousins. This will be more precious to you than gold.

3: Stop being jealous of your newborn sister. She is amazing, and you will love her very much.

4: Don't worry that you hate preschool. There is a boy there who hates it even more, so much that he will spend every lunchtime attempting to climb over the fence and escape. One day he will succeed. Your mothers will bond over their children's reluctance to be at preschool. Years later, his mother will be your mentor in your first 'grown-up' job.

5: Don't worry. You will learn to read. It will happen suddenly, and it will feel like a thunderbolt resounding in your head, and you will be astonished, and it will lead you into a thousand other worlds.

6: 'Just ignore them and they'll stop doing it' is the worst piece of advice you will ever be given.

7: The way they treat you is not okay.

8: The way they treat you is not okay.

9: The way they treat you is not okay.

10: This new friendship group is great, but it will not survive one of its members returning to East Timor. Sorry about that.

11: The way they treat you is not okay.

12: You've cut your hair and pierced your ears and changed your name. That's a good start. These new friends you've made in high school seem pretty great. You might want to hang onto them.

It's okay that you love Hanson. You don't need to be embarrassed.

13: The way she treats you is not okay.

14: The way they treat you is not okay.

15: He's not a mind-reader. Tell him how you feel about him.

16: He's not a mind-reader. Tell (this different) him how you feel about him.

17: You're right. You have found your tribe. Hold on to this feeling. You will feel it again, but not for a very long time.

18: You're right. Leaving Canberra does feel like cutting your heart out. You are going to take six years to get over this, but I promise you that eventually you will feel that same sense of place in Sydney.

19: Your mother is amazing, but you don't need to take all her advice.

20: How you're feeling is not your friends' fault.

21: You are making really good academic choices.

How you're feeling is not your friends' fault.

22: I wish I could say 'don't move back to Canberra', but if you didn't, you'd never meet the sraffies, and you'd never go to Cambridge, so you're going to have to grin and bear it.

23: You have made the best and bravest decision of your life.

Remember what I said about finding your tribe? Yeah, you've found them.

24: What he did to you was not okay.

25: You will never feel such extremes of emotion again.

He saved you, but don't make it mean more than it should.

One day, you will be grateful to him for walking away when you couldn't.

(Late 25 and) 26: Hold onto this one. He is what home feels like.

27: Don't move to Heidelberg.

28: Applying for JRFs is a waste of your time and limited emotional energy.

29: See! You were capable of getting a PhD.

30: I'll get back to you in December.

It's not every day you get a PhD. It's not every day you get a new sister. I was lucky and got both on the one day. 19th July is certainly going to be this year's most memorable day!

My dad had been making vague noises all year about coming to Cambridge for my graduation, but I knew that his and my stepmother's new baby was due on 29th July and it was probably not a good idea for him to be on the other side of the world. In any case, I was proved right - I was woken up by a text from my dad at about 1am on Saturday, informing me that the baby had been born early. Her name is Maud, and she is the youngest of five sisters, joining me, Miriam (who has the same mother and father as me), Kitty and Nell (who have a different mother to me and Miriam). People were joking on Facebook that my father is like a modern-day Mr Bennet (from Pride and Prejudice) or Tevye. I'm just glad his economic future doesn't depend on marrying us all off! There is a range of twenty-nine years in our ages, and we're all at such different stages of life: I've just finished a PhD, Miriam finished an MA last year and is working for the public service, Kitty is going into high school next year, Nell is in the early stages of primary school and Maud is a newborn baby.

Anyway, I managed to get back to sleep after being woken by Dad's text, I woke up and it was my graduation day. My mother and Miriam had come to the UK specially to be here for this, and they and Matthias were my guests. Graduation in Cambridge is a rather strange affair: students all have to wear black and white clothing (suits, black skirts and white blouses, or black dresses)* and a combination of hood and gown which varies depending on the degree they are to receive, any Cambridge degrees they already hold, and their age. As I already held a Cambridge MPhil, I had to wear an MPhil gown and hood. Graduating students have to process from their colleges to the Senate House through the centre of town. I'm lucky - my college is a two-minute walk from the Senate House - but it was a swelteringly hot day, and also kept threatening to rain. The woman next to me in the procession was someone I knew vaguely - she was also an Australian, and we'd both been wheeled out at the same event a while back to talk to a bunch of Indigenous people who were interested in coming to Cambridge (neither of us are Indigenous, but they just wanted Australians to give their impressions).

The ceremony itself is always very brief. Students are led forward four at a time by their college's Praelector, presented to the Vice Chancellor in Latin, and kneel down one by one before him (when I received my MPhil, the Vice Chancellor was a woman, but she has since retired). He mumbles a bit more Latin over the student, and that's it. I was concentrating so much on not tripping over my gown when I stood up that the whole thing was a bit of a blur, but Matthias said he felt a bit weepy.

Then we milled around outside the Senate House for ages, and took photos. I only have one so far, but once my mum's emailed me hers, I will upload them too.



Graduation was followed by a buffet lunch in my college's formal hall. We were lucky to be seated next to a really nice Irish family, who became extremely chatty when they discovered what I had studied. I've never met an unfriendly Irish person, nor one who was uncomfortable talking to complete strangers. I'm sure they exist, but I've never met them.

After lunch, we met up with some friends for drinks in a nearby pub. People came and went, but the group included Former Housemate H, Former Sort-of Housemate J2, V, P, R, Matthias, Miriam, Mum and me.

So all in all, a wonderful day, filled with celebrations. I'm very relieved to be closing a door on the PhD side of my life. The PhD years were good years, growing years, learning years, changing years, but also very challenging years. I'm grateful to have been able to learn what I learnt about medieval Irish literature. The stories I studied were beautiful and will stay with me forever. And there really are no people like a really enthusiastic bunch of medievalists to have as friends. But once was enough! And a PhD is as far as I'd like to go in terms of academia (although I'm not ruling out some kind of taught MA at some point in the future).

I am Dr Dolorosa, and that's enough for now.
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*Those in the military are allowed to wear military uniform, and students are also allowed to wear 'national dress', although this is very vaguely defined. I've seen some women graduate in saris or kimono, and that's about it.

It appears that I didn't write anything on LJ/Dreamwidth for the entire month of April. I'm not sure exactly why that was, although I will say that I had Matthias' family staying for two weeks, which made it very difficult to find a spare moment. His sister and her fiancé stayed with us for one week, and his parents were here for two weeks, although they stayed in their caravan in a camping site nearby. The fiancé had never been to Cambridge before, so we did a bit of sightseeing, including going up onto the roof of my college chapel, from where you can see the whole of Cambridge. To get there you have to climb this very claustrophobic, winding spiral staircase. It's worth it when you get to the roof, though.

Anyway, after they left, Matthias went to Aberystwyth for four days. He's just started doing an MA in library and information studies there (via distance learning), and you need to attend a week-long course there every year. The rest of the coursework is done by distance. I really, really dislike being home alone. I find it almost impossible to sleep and generally feel unsafe at night. I can cope with it when I live in an apartment building, or at least on the upper floor of a house, but our house is single-storey, which is just about the worst for me. But Matthias had a good time on his course, and met all the other people in his cohort, who all seem a very interesting bunch. They're mostly in their 20s or 30s, and tend to have done at least a BA (and in some cases an MA and PhD) in some kind of humanities field and come to librarianship indirectly, like him. I'm interested to see how he goes with the course, as I'm keen to do it myself in a few years' time (once I've recovered from the exhaustion of doing a PhD!).

On Friday, I went to London to hear Samantha Shannon (author of The Bone Season, the first of a series of novels about a dystopian London where people have supernatural abilities) in conversation with Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish, whose film company has the rights to adapt the first book. I did a write-up on Tumblr. The event was mostly awesome, although there was one sour note. One of the main characters in The Bone Season is an otherworldly being called Warden. He's not described in much detail in the book, aside from mention of him having 'dark, honey-gold'-coloured skin. People in the audience were asked to suggest actors who fit their mental image of him. Those suggested were Tom Hiddleston and Cillian Murphy. I think you can figure out why those are appalling suggestions, but in any case, I was heartened to see that most of the fandom seems to support me in perceiving Warden as just about anyone other than a white actor. What was even more encouraging is that Samantha Shannon herself agreed with me and said she was committed to fighting against whitewashing in any adaptation of The Bone Season. I will be very disappointed if a white actor is cast as Warden, and will not see any film in which this is the case.

Yesterday, our department hosted the annual colloquium which we share with Oxford. It's for students of Celtic Studies at both universities to present papers on aspects of their research, and alternates between Cambridge and Oxford as a location. I found it interesting to note that when we went around introducing ourselves at the beginning, all the Oxford students said their individual college affiliations, whereas the Cambridge people all said the name of our department rather than our colleges. It's a subtle indication of how we perceive ourselves, I guess.

The conference was good fun, particularly as I didn't have to give a paper this year. I just relaxed and hung out with all my friends, most of whom I hadn't seen in over a month. My supervisor was there, and we were talking about my decision to leave academia and work in libraries. She asked me if I missed research, and I realised that I didn't miss it at all. Most people I know who work in academia have this drive, this single-minded obsession with whatever they research (in much the same way as authors have this drive to tell stories). I've never had it, and I guess that's another indication that I was never cut out to be an academic.

I finally succumbed to the lure of 8tracks. I'm ridiculous enough about music as it is, so I guess it was only a matter of time before I joined. If you're on there, you should add me. I've already made one playlist.

We Own the Sky from dolorosa_12 on 8tracks Radio.

In other musical news, the new Seven Lions EP, Worlds Apart, is simply glorious.

Troian Bellisario tweeted that they were shooting the Pretty Little Liars season finale for over thirteen hours. That's dedication! I hope it's amazing.

I had a useful and productive meeting with my supervisor yesterday. For the first time ever, I feel that the end is in sight for my PhD. It's going to be such a massive relief. My supervisor and I also had a very frank discussion about what I planned to do once the thesis was finished. I was honest with her and said that although my current feelings about the PhD (namely, frustration and anger) were probably colouring my attitudes towards academia a bit, I'd pretty much come to the conclusion that it was not for me. She had some helpful suggestions about what to do next, and some possible contacts that may be useful in the field in which I want to work, which was great.

(On a related note, I really admire my supervisor a lot. She's been married to another academic for ages, and they only managed to live in the same country for the first time about four years ago. They have two kids who are trilingual. She's well-respected in her field without having been drawn into any of the stupid disputes and bitchiness which sadly plague it. Most importantly, she is a really good communicator, which is actually not all that common among academics. She supervised me for my MPhil as well as my PhD, so I've been working with her for five years, and she has always really impressed me with her ability to deliver constructive criticism that leaves you feeling inspired rather than crushed. She's kind of my model for How To Adult.)

Last night, Matthias and I went to a Halloween party at our friend C's house. Australians don't really do Halloween, and I was surprised to discover that it was a thing in Britain, but in any case, C is from the US and hosts a party like this every year. This year, the idea was to spend as little money on costumes as possible, for which I am grateful. I had been really stumped for ideas, but in chat my sraffie friend Michael mentioned that the thing he always notices about me is my bright, colourful clothing, which led romen_dreamer to suggest going as a rainbow. So then Matthias went as a pot of gold, which involved carrying a bowl of chocolate coins around all the time. In the end we spent about five pounds on some ribbon and the chocolate coins, which was great.

C's husband works for the US military, which means they are able to buy food at a nearby US military base. This is greatly appreciated by our other friends from the US, as it means they get access to food from home that isn't otherwise available in the UK. I myself particularly enjoyed the blue corn chips C had bought!

The party was pretty low-key. We just hung around and chatted, while cheesy horror films played in the background. Towards the end of the evening, people got out the Wii and started dancing, but I missed most of that as we decided to leave around 11 since Matthias had to work the next day. Incidentally, today is his last time working at his old job: he started it as a temporary thing to earn some money while he was doing his PhD corrections, and somehow ended up staying for three years. But he recently got a new job working in an academic library and was finally able to quit. There was nothing particularly wrong with the old job, just that it was kind of unchallenging and unlikely to go anywhere, career-wise, so we're both very happy that he's able to move on. His old work gave him an Amazon gift voucher and a half bottle of champagne as a going-away present, and we're definitely going to crack open the champagne when he gets back from his other job tonight. (He currently has three different part-time jobs.)

That's basically it from me. I'm spending the day at home, alternating between editing my own work and proofreading an article for someone else.

One reason I've thoroughly enjoyed my postgrad years while finding undergrad a bit of an unmitigated disaster is that I have the good fortune here in Cambridge to be a member of a really wonderful department that seems to know exactly what to do to make socialising easy for people who might otherwise find it a bit difficult. I was always really jealous of my sciencey friends at Sydney Uni because their faculty seemed to be much better at organising stuff for its students to do, whereas Arts students were left to fend for themselves. (Most people I knew in Arts who had close friends in that faculty tended to have met them through other things, such as student politics, student journalism, improv theatre or religious groups.) I did make Arts friends eventually, but it took me about two years.* I was so awkward about talking to people when there wasn't some kind of structured purpose to our conversation that social events were a nightmare. But it struck me, as I sat in today's medieval Irish reading group, that our department is absolutely packed with structured, purposeful fun for all its students, and this really helps ease everyone in to friendship. (Our department is also odd for Cambridge in that students tend to socialise with one another, rather than with people who study different things but live in the same college.) This is what we have:

For postgrads
1. Weekly reading groups for all the languages we study (medieval Irish, medieval Welsh, Old English and Old Norse), where we get together and translate a text set by someone in the group;

2. Weekly conversation group for Modern Irish, where students meet up in a pub and talk Irish for a while. The Irish teacher also organises regular film nights with Irish-language films;

3. Grad pub night every Monday after the weekly seminar;

4. Palaeography reading group, organised informally by one of my friends who specialises in that subject;

5. Informal German conversation group (I'm not entirely sure, but I think people who are interested in other modern languages have organised similar things);

6. Greek reading group, although I think that may have stopped now;

7. Annual cocktail party held in our departmental common room at the end of the academic year.

For everyone, but mainly attended by undergrads
1. Weekly lunch held in the departmental common room;

2. Weekly pub night.

There also used to be people who organised semi-regular screenings of medieval-type films, but that seems to have stopped happening recently. Once a year we have a black tie dinner held at one of the colleges (which is a little expensive, but still well attended), and a garden party (which is free). And of course everyone organises informal, one-off events on top of all this. But my point is that there is plenty for everyone, mostly it's free (or extremely cheap - the departmental lunch costs about £2, if I remember correctly), and although people in my field tend on the whole to be fond of a drink, there are things to do that don't involve alcohol.

Medievalists are a nerdy, socially awkward bunch on the whole, but the way things have been set up in my department, this never feels like a hindrance. I went around during undergrad thinking there was something profoundly wrong with me because I rarely felt comfortable at any social event. Here, I not only feel comfortable, I feel wanted, and have done since the beginning. I am so grateful to have met them.

_________________
* To be fair, that was partly because I had depression, and it's really hard to be friends with someone who has depression.

This week has been hard. It's been filled with fun stuff, including one of our department's annual lectures, which was followed up with a long night in the pub. Surprisingly, I did not wake up the next morning with a hangover, having been very restrained. On Friday afternoon, we hiked out to Grantchester, which was lovely in the crisp, cold weather. Matthias stayed at the pub there with our friends, but I had to go straight back in to the faculty in order to do a shift at the library, but when I got home, I was informed they were waiting for me in another pub, and our friend L had already bought me a glass of wine. So that was a nice surprise.

On Saturday, we had our friends P and V around for dinner. They had invited us over when they moved into their own new place earlier in the year, so it was high time we returned the favour. I'm loving living in our own place because it means you can do stuff like this without having to worry if the kitchen will be free or if housemates are going to want to watch DVDs in the living room.

TV-wise, I'm getting very into The Killing. I missed the previous two seasons because they aired when I happened to be out of the UK, but luckily each season is self-contained. It's so tense and twisty and just when I think I've got things figured out, some new complication appears.

I've also been very well-served with books this week. I finished The Lions of Al-Rassan on Wednesday. The ending made me cry, but I also felt a deep sense of satisfaction because it was such a perfect story. I'll probably write about it at length on my Wordpress blog in a few days, if I have time. Today at work I picked up two collections of essays by Marina Warner, and that's looking very good too. I love her writing - it's always so good, and it's always about subjects that interest me.

The theme of this week has been 'weight'.* Not physical weight, but the things that hold me under and weigh me down. The weight around my neck that is my PhD and the other things I need to do and finish. The weight of expectations - those of other people and those of myself. The weight of all the things that keep me from dancing.

With that in mind, the song for this week can be nothing but 'Shake It Out' by Florence + The Machine.



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* I'm borrowing something from my old yoga teacher, who always started each class with a theme such as 'beauty', 'kindness', 'power' or whatever.

I have had an absolutely epic (and fantastic) weekend. It began with a bang, with the ASNaC Society black tie dinner, which involved three courses of Scandinavian food, one mead-filled drinking horn, one drunken dance uploaded to Facebook and several bizarre d and m conversations with people with whom I wouldn't normally discuss my personal life. I followed this with a sprint through snow-filled streets to deliver some of losseniaiel's belongings which she'd left in my room, before beginning my first shift at the English faculty library (with complementary blinding hangover).

Then I got on a train and went to Southampton.

( I met some sraffies )

It was a wonderful, excellent weekend!

Well, that viva was fun, if by 'fun' you mean 'travelling around with St Brendan, existing on a diet of lentils, while Dr Thunderous Laughter quizzes you about Middle Irish linguistic features'. In other words, I have no idea how I went. The questions seemed difficult, the examiners seemed determined to play devil's advocate, and I left feeling demoralised, but that may have more to do with my natural inclination towards pessimism than any actual problems with my viva. All the PhD students claimed that their vivas were easy (L. even claimed he was hungover while he did his). That didn't feel easy to me!

Then losseniaiel and I went out and drank cheap Australian wine and commiserated.

I feel like I should be more upset than I actually am, but I can't make myself feel worried. If this is all there is, if MPhil is as far as I get academically, it won't be the end of the world. I don't feel like I'm owed anything by Cambridge, and if all I get out of this year is a fantastic group of friends and a sense of belonging somewhere, in some time and some place, it really, really will be enough. I can't emphasise this enough. My MPhil year was the making of me, and if I now lapse back into mediocrity, I know that for 2008-09 I became better, tried harder, thought more, and was who I was supposed to be at that time. And that is enough.

I wrote this in my 'paper' diary this morning, but looking at it, I think I'd like to put it out in the semi-public domain of this blog. I was thinking about yesterday's meme, with the question 'what's the best way of telling someone that s/he means something to you?' and for me, this is a way I can let certain people know how much they mean to me. It's slightly edited.

( This is going to get very, very wordy )

I suspect this will be very tl;dr to most of you, but I want the ASNaCs and other Cambridge friends of mine who read this blog to know that they mean so much to me. It's very hard for me to say these things directly to you, but that doesn't mean I don't feel these things.