Bootylicious…pun intended.

After my experiences last year, I expected the occasional delay during my PhD journey and perhaps this was the catalyst behind having a research proposal, a thesis committee meeting and receiving ethics approval just four months into my PhD.  However, even I didn’t anticipate my current road block to PhD progress, being in a moon boot for a stress fracture for the next six weeks!!

My current, ‘bootylicious’ state, puts me in a bit of a predicament because my campus is hilly. To borrow a phrase from my family, it’s “nanny-goat country,” not the most ideal place to be nursing a stress fracture or wearing a moon boot.  Consequently, I’ve put data collection on hold for a few weeks, at least until I get my sea legs. If you’ve ever worn a moon boot you’ll know what I mean. You have to use a sort of rolling motion to walk and getting from A to B takes more effort than usual. In the meantime I have a week’s holiday and I’m hatching a plan to make data collection as easy as possible.

It’s weird to be on holidays but it hasn’t taken too long to get used to the idea. Yesterday I went shopping for a friend’s birthday present and today I went to the movies to see Snow White and the Huntsman. These were my first real forays out and about since I was ‘booted’ and they definitely taught me a few things, aside from the fact that Snow White and the Huntsman is actually a really good movie. First, you cannot go anywhere fast or far in a moon boot; second, stairs are a nightmare and third, people tend to stare or commiserate with you. Yes, it’s all a bit of a nuisance but it’s worth it because it’s helping my foot. As to the people who stare, I didn’t even notice until someone pointed this out to me, I was too engrossed in navigating my way around!

It might sound a bit cliché but I think research is like a butterfly in flight, you’re not always sure where it’s headed and it takes some interesting detours along the way but it usually arrives where it was supposed to in the end. So, I’m not too stressed about this delay with data collection. Hopefully with the progress I’ve made so far this will be just one of those interesting detours.

Fragments

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These past few weeks have been anything but  typical. I’ve given a campus tour to prospective students which took me to the robotics program of the university, some of my classes went on temporary hiatus and life has thrown me a few curve balls, the least of which being  the news that the soreness in my foot is not due to a sprain but a stress fracture.  Things have been a bit fragmented lately in more ways than one.

Given all the events of the last few weeks it  seems likely that my thesis would have stalled a bit. Much to my chagrin however, quite the opposite seems to have happened. I’ve been granted conditional ethics approval for my first study and I’ve written most of my research proposal. I’m still trying to work out how that happened. One minute my proposal was 1000 words long and seemingly in the next minute it had expanded to 4000 words! Of course it’s Murphy’s Law that something will go wrong with my thesis at some point, but that’s okay. Being a bit ahead now will help.

Moving from anticipation of setbacks to past challenges I seem to have made some progress with my writing. When I was working on my last draft I really focused on trying to move from the general to the particular and making sure my point was clear  and it seems to have paid off.  That’s not to say that there isn’t still plenty of room for improvement with my writing or that I didn’t dive straight into the details, because I did, but I can see progress. The coursework side of things also seems to be going well. I passed my latest counselling assignment and got some positive feedback. It’s already funny looking back at how alien counselling techniques and psychological test administration, scoring and interpretation seemed at first. I’m by no means an expert in these areas yet, that will take years of practice, but I am certainly learning a lot and becoming more confident.

Until next time, good luck for your endeavours and I hope your last few weeks have not been as fragmented as mine!