October 14, 2008
· Filed under Uni stuff
It’s now officially 7 big sleeps until I hand in my thesis. It’s so far 76 pages long and according to my ‘to-do’ list, I’m about 3 days ahead of schedule!!
Yesterday was a massive productive day which was fantastic, although it also included losing some work because I’m so pararnoid about saving the same document in multiple places that somehow I lost the jolly thing. Fortunately I’d saved the individual elements of the document as well and just had to put them back together *phew!*. As well as that there seems to be some sort of virus on my little flash drive stick and I can’t transfer anything off it. So! I’m trying my best not to panic…but I’m hoping and praying that it either miraculously starts working again or I can somehow hook this laptop up to a printer when it comes time to print everything.
I’m feeling a little bit strange. This entire year of uni has been dedicated to next Wednesday and all of a sudden it’s very close. While I’m very happy about the fact that I’m ahead of schedule- I most certainly need to be if my supervisor decides next Tues to re-structure my thesis as happened when the mid-year lit review was due. Looking back it was the best thing she could’ve done…but my nerves have a memory and DO NOT want to go through that again! haha.
So not only am I mentally preparing myself to finish this year’s work in a matter of days, I now also have the prospect of full-time employment very soon after! For months I’ve been contemplating/stressing about having 4 months of ‘holidays’ while still surviving on very little paid work. However last week I was offered a research assistant position at uni starting a week and a half after I hand my thesis in. Of course I took it straight away as it’s my foot in the door to future work as a lecturer/policy advisor or wherever I’m led. BUT!!! 5 days a week?? It’ll be 4 days at uni and I’ve been able to keep my one shift at my existing work which is nice as a backup. But I’ve never worked 5 days a week in my life!! It’s a rather daunting prospect 
. I realise many people may scoff about now and make some comment like ‘eesh have you never lived in the real world?’ and I would quite honestly reply…’no actually- I’ve been safely cocooned in the comfort that is the education lifestyle that has defined my existence every year since I was 5′.
So yes…life is changing rather drastically. And recently I’ve felt just so looked after. While I’ve been quite sick for a while and had mini-disasters plague this entire year, I’ve also had prayers- small and big- answered left right and centre. It’s good.
October 7, 2008
· Filed under Faith, I'm avoiding study..., Not happy Jan (it deserves its own category), Over-analysis, Random, Uni stuff
It is now day 4 in a row of unproductive days. Not completely unproductive…but I don’t feel as though I have enough to show for what I’ve been doing. I have to present my findings in 3 days. THREE DAYS. Oh it’s painful. Painfully painful! All I want to do is dance (oh…that reminds me I’ll have to post on my nomination for the ‘logies’ of dancing soon- what a joke)…but yes because of course that’s going to lead to the career of my dreams! It’s typical though…at this time it’s usual for the most abstract of things to start taking over my brain and convincing me that they’re the most important things I should be thinking of right at this minute…as compared to writing a thesis.
I lay awake in bed last night for 3 whole hours- THREE long, agonising hours- before I got to sleep and in the end only managed about 4 hours shuteye, and the night before that I slept for 13 hours straight without waking once- much to my disgust. This is unusual!! Not only are sleeping patterns up the creek…but I no longer like food. Vegemite toast and extra salted peanuts can at times be forced down, but otherwise it doesn’t take much more than a spoonful of breakfast cereal to remind me that the digestive system has a wonderful feature called regurgitation. Lovely.
I feel like I’m being tempted in the desert. No I’m not likening myself to Jesus…I just empathise with him right now. He had a big job to do and all these enticing things were there for the picking, but he abstained. Well I wish I could say I was as noble, holy and able to ignore the lure of the grass on the other side. My defenses are weak at the moment- I can tell. The idea of things that usually seem absurd are all of a sudden ‘not so bad- surely?’. *sigh*
Oh great! Chainsaws have started singing their sweet tune next door. Perfect study noise.
September 22, 2008
· Filed under I'm avoiding study..., Not happy Jan (it deserves its own category), Uni stuff
I haven’t been able to blog for a while now and it will be a longer while yet before I’ll be back in the land of normal unfortunately. My thesis is due in just over 4 weeks and the pressure is increasing daily (much to the disappointment of the little person inside of me that keeps saying- ‘it’s Springtime! Let’s go out and play!’).
I went away for the weekend to a little country town out past Ballarat which was nice. I took my laptop and actually got a lot of work done without all the distractions of home. Now that I’m back my motivation has dropped considerably though *sigh*. I’ve reached a bit of a brick wall in my analysis and I’m likening it to when you make a cake and put all the ingredients in and then cook it- you can’t then un-make it and get the ingredients back into their original form. Well…I feel as though I’m ‘making my analysis cake’ but now when I try to go back and re-evaluate it it’s a pile of mush.
Anyway…due dates don’t care for how I feel. They’re cold-hearted, nightmare dwelling creatures that kick you when you’re down!
Enough grumbles…back to work.
September 4, 2008
· Filed under Social Health stuff, Uni stuff
I’m currently doing some data analysis of the interviews I conducted for my honours project. For a good few weeks I’d read through transcripts again and again thinking ‘this has nothing!’. I was so busy trying to look for abstract ideas and concepts that I could relate to my data that I skipped the vital step of simply grouping the main themes together. Obvious? Apparently not.
But anyway…I’ve hopped to and for the last few days I’ve been busy busy at my desk filling word documents with quotes relating to particular themes and ideas that I find interesting. And perhaps finally something has gone ‘a ha!’ in my head. Of course you have initial ‘a ha’s and then these get a bit clearer and might turn into a bit of a ‘yippeeee I’ve got it!!!!’…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet :p
The thing that disturbs me most is that while I sit here comfortably (well…relatively. Hours at a desk is not my idea of comfort) I’m putting under the microscope the vulnerabilities and deep feelings of these women who so desperately need to be given a break. For those of you who don’t know, I’m studying the influence of the Welfare to Work policy on low-income single mother’s food provision. And yeah…my little ‘a ha’ moment has developed as I repeatedly see the word ‘choice’ in the interviews. I brushed past it perhaps because it seemed mundane or ‘normal’. We all make choices everyday. Big deal. But the thing (and although it may seem simple and well ‘der’) that gets me is that low income single mothers are most certainly not spoilt for choice.
One woman said
‘Yeah, so like even though, say if I was partnered then maybe you may have to sacrifice money or something choosing not to work and not to send your child there (referring to after school care) but I feel like at least you have a choice. Rather than your basic income being cut off’.
The same woman said something that made my heart sink;
‘I do feel like I can’t parent the way I want to and I can’t parent my child the way she needs to be parented and the reason I can’t is because I’ve ended up a single parent really through no choice of my own like I didn’t say ‘right I want to be a single parent’!’
We trivialize choice everyday. Consumerist hype throws so many options in our face urging us to take all we can get while we can because you never know- tomorrow it might come in pink instead of just purple- and we just get used to it. It was difficult to take a step back and realise how much choice means to some of these women. For many of them this policy has forced them to give up hope of working at all for a good few years because they’ve felt like their only choice was to home school their child so that they could parent them in the way they wanted to without having all welfare just cut off.
*sigh*…there’s a lot more I could say on this issue. But my heart’s pumping a little faster from frustration and if I get further into this issue I might keep typing for a good few hours. I sure hope writing a thesis will be this easy to write!
September 2, 2008
· Filed under Social Health stuff, Uni stuff
I’m disappointed. Not sure if I’m more disappointed at my own naivety or just the state of affairs. One day I see myself working in academia. I realise many would roll their eyes, snigger or make some comment about ‘not living in reality’. Well I take all of those comments on board…but in my mind it’s still an important job- and ’somebody has to do it’. And if I happen to enjoy research then why not let it be me?! And it’s not that I feel super talented at researching in any respects…however throughout my uni life so far it seems to be one thing that gets me going and that I feel good enough at to possibly turn into a career one day.
So back to my disappointment. I spent 3 years in the Health faculty as an undergraduate and every time I took the lift up to the top level of the Health building where all the important people live I would feel this buzz and excitement and think ‘wow- maybe that’ll be me one day!’. But I’m afraid to say that now spending more time up on the top level doing my honours stuff I’ve found that scratching below the surface even just a millimetre reveals a whole lot of ugly :s. There is SO much politics between the academics, lecturers and researchers. It’s really disheartening to find that all these people devoting their working hours to improving the mental, physical and social health of our society just don’t seem to be able to get along because one person’s office is a square centimetre bigger than the person’s next door.
I would expect stereotypically that there would be back stabbing and mud slinging in professions like economics and business…as these just seem to be a little more cut-throat and competitive to me. But sadly I must’ve worn rose coloured glasses for a little too long. I’m a self-confessed idealist. And I honestly hope to remain that way. It was through sticking my neck out and suggesting ‘why don’t we go further up the food chain?’ in a community health centre and being laughed at and called an ‘idealistic student’ that I decided academia was my next option. I sure hope that one day if I do find myself a career in academia that I don’t get weighed down in silly politics…but I guess sometimes they’re unavoidable. *sigh*
I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. My ‘hero’ in the health world- who happened to help me land my first job and get through uni alive- still lives on that top floor and I admire her for her integrity and transparency that I’ve witnessed so far (she’s also a pastor’s wife and has a life in her community ‘outside’ of academia- that’s gotta be admired!!). I hope that I can one day be even just a little like her.
