Almost unbelievably in this strange year, I set off on Saturday to go somewhere other my house, namely the Lake District for a week’s family holiday. I took my laptop with me, in case I was suddenly possessed of an overwhelming desire to organise my list of primary sources, or something like that. That part of the plan went well. Family holidays turn out to be a good format for getting short, fiddly little jobs done. I had imagined that they might also be a good time for general reflection. That bit didn’t go so well, principally because I hiked myself into a stupor and spent the rest of the time sleeping or organising food (as one does).
Also, shortly after my arrival, I discovered that my supervisor won’t even be making it to the starting post of this PhD. Or the end post of the MA dissertation he also supervised. In fact, he’s leaving our mutual institution, effective pretty much immediately from me finding out about it, due to circumstances almost entirely outside his control.
I’m obviously very disappointed to lose him. I wouldn’t be where I am without him. Specifically, I’d be orchestrating mine and my family’s return to the European Union. Eventually I might have started looking for an institution that’s a really good fit for my project (instead of one whose main criterion was having an excellent, experienced and enthusiastic professor who seemed to want to supervise me). And maybe I’d have got a PhD by the time I was 80, at that rate…
According to my ex-supervisor, the institution still intends to enrol me, so perhaps they will have informed me about this by the end of next week. He has also suggested someone to supervise me in his place, a professor I know by sight, and who I’ve heard nothing but good things about. It’s just a bit disconcerting that the reason I only know him by sight, after two years in the same institution, is that there doesn’t seem to be much overlap between our academic areas of interest. I am also concerned about his newly acquired workload, and the impact that will have on his ability to supervise yet another student. On the other hand, given the extremely multi-disciplinary nature of what I want to do, I knew I was going to be making my own arrangements for a lot of things. I was already planning to put out feelers towards other people and institutions with expertise in the various components of the project.
So, while this change has inevitably led to me considering my position, it may not make very much difference in the end. And even it it does, it’s too short notice for me to do anything about it right now. At the moment, in fact, I’ve only been given notice on an informal basis anyway. And we are in the middle of a pandemic- and politics- driven social and economic crisis. Basically, we’ve been hanging onto a thread for the last four months, in anticipation of the promised studentship income materialising. We’ve also turned down at least one potentially quite interesting job offer so that I could do this thing. So that’s that. Now I just wait to see if I am indeed enrolled by the end of next week.