A good start....

A good start - my supervisor was pleased with my draft contextual chapter. This didn't mean she didn't have questions and comments about what I'd written. It would have been worrying (if flattering) if she'd told me everything was marvellous. Now I've got to get on with the next phase - formulating my main research questions. I did this at the very beginning, when I applied to Sheffield in the first place and submitted a research proposal. But as I formulated a series of questions off the top of my head in an hour between teaching first year Approaches to Journalism and second year Online Journalism, it's fair to say the questions need work. Just maybe not today. No pressure...

Braindump

Up at the University of Sheffield, where I'm doing my PhD. It's strange being a student again after several years of teaching in a university. I have to keep reminding myself not to get stroppy if people are talking in the library. But now I've discovered where the silent areas are (needless to say on the top floors, so too far for the chatterers to come), I'm getting a lot done. It's easier to work if other people are working around you. And you don't keep getting "courtesy calls" from banks or people wanting to come in and read the meter like I do working from home.

Tomorrow is my second monthly meeting with my supervisor, in which she wants me to give her a "braindump". I'm sure she wouldn't ask for this if she knew what the interior of my brain really feels like. I may be doing a PhD but the more I read, the more I realise I don't know. Apart from the occasional moment when I read something and think: "That wasn't written by anyone who's ever worked in a newsroom."