I'm officially a PhD student or candidate now. The process being long and convoluted, after having officially achieved a passing grade on my Master's Dissertation/ Pilot Study, I am now studying for my terminal degree, a PhD in Shakespeare Studies. There are no more grades, only supervisions.
I had to write all of this down to document how I have felt over the last few days, so that I might remember it exactly. I have worked my entire life towards a status in my own community of intellectuals, scholars, artists, and teachers that deserves a modicum of respect, enough so that others sit up and listen to you speak before they start arguing with you. They read what you write, and form cogent thoughts, write down notes, and want to have a healthy debate with you and the ideals you have presented, while also keeping an open mind in the process.
This was what my first PhD supervision with Dr. Abigail Rokison was like.
She had read my ideas, and was sufficiently offended by the ideas presented within my Pilot Study to begin a debate with me. I think we were both smiling the whole time... and if I lapsed at all in my facial expression it was not due to a lack of joy I was feeling. I didn't want to leave the office. For the first time in a long time, I felt as if I had spent enough time in that office debating with an incredibly smart PhD who is also a professional actress/ artist, that we might have actually solved the world's artistic problems.
Of course I could be overstating.
I think I have conveyed my joy in conversation over the topic of thesis successfully. That being said however, I know that I have a lot more work ahead of me. Abigail has suggested a series of case studies for my thesis, one or two for each chapter. In the next month I am to come up with as many formats as are possible for my thesis, and I've got more of those swimming around in my head than I do useable brain cells at the moment. Professor John Jowett will be the co-supervisor on my thesis, and he will be helping me find an academic voice in my writing that I am not so great at yet, and one at which he excels.
The debate from yesterday was incredible, and I want more of that. I want to offend, to enlighten, to provoke, to chip away at, to hack into pieces, to rebuild, to mould, to transform, and to respectfully trash my own and other theatrical practitioners beliefs... I don't want to rehash, or restate. I'm feeling excited by the prospect of having three years wherein intelligent people will want to listen to what I have to say, with the proviso that goes without saying by them... that I do what I have always done, which is listen to them as well. Though I have not, and will not, discuss my thesis here until it is completely done and published, I can say that it involves creating a methodology by which people can better understand one another: a noble effort if ever there was one. This back and forth, you know this listening and then responding thing, might have some juice in it. I think I will try to continue that kind of conversation making for as long as I can and see where it gets me.
Again, of course, I could be overstating here.
Oh, and the United States Congress decided to shut down the government yesterday (to give anyone a sense later on of what was going on in the news right now.)
''He draweth out the thread of his verbosity
Finer than the staple of his argument.'' -- Love's Labours Lost (V.i)
Year 2, Day 23 - Words Written: 0
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