My theoretical model for starting a PhD was as follows: having written a proposal and secured an offer and funding, I would wrap up my MA dissertation by April 2020, spend several pleasant months wandering around the planet, and begin in a refreshed and excited state in October. In practice, I probably bit off more than I could chew with the MA dissertation, but as we’re in the middle of a pandemic and I’m not going anywhere anyway (much), it worked out. I’m now at that delightful stage of inserting references, properly drafting the bits I previously ignored because I had no clue what I was talking about, and removing all the articles and prepositions in order to make word count.
In any case, our deadline got pushed out because of the pandemic, and the dissertation is now due the day before the PhD kicks off. I don’t think anybody quite knows what kicking off a PhD is going to look like under current pandemic conditions. To tell you the truth, I honestly don’t know if it will be kicking off for me at all, because there was a bit of an administrative occurrence. The gist of it is that my offer is conditional upon me delivering an MA certificate by the 31st of August, which is three days from now, 30 days before the due date, and some 4 months before I’m likely to get a certificate. Since it was never going to happen, pandemic or no, I don’t know how it got into the offer, it’s not like I’m changing institutions, even. Normally, I would go and find someone and talk to them about it, but what with the pandemic, there is nobody to talk to, just long, uncertain cycles of email communications that seem to be lead somewhere (promise of new, different, offer) only to peter out into nothingness.
It’s all pretty stressful, especially because of the funding, which I very much need to have, due to various pandemic- and non-pandemic-related circumstances. I decided to start a PhD blog now because the suspense, coupled with the excitement of working on those final drafting tasks, was starting to overwhelm me. I needed something to calm me down. For the next month or so, that’s mostly going to be orchids, usually West Indian ones. I will probably also explain what my PhD is about, just as soon as I have time to pull out my research proposal and see what I put in it. Spoiler: it’s not about orchids, as such, at least not specifically. Also, I have promised myself that I won’t say anything about ‘transcogniting’ until the MA dissertation is finished.