Boronia clad slope, Flint and Steel track, photo Ruth P.
I got the email the other day: my thesis has been accepted without emendation. So all I have to do is get it bound and a few other administrative details.
Kerrie has a student working on what it takes to complete a Ph.D. Strange and funny undertaking. But given all the self doubts, I reckon two or three things were critical. I told everyone what I was doing and having made the step, I couldn't withdraw without enormous loss of face. I had been given a scholarship and that was such a statement of faith in me, and also something that I had to honour by completing. And, finally, and perhaps most importantly, the assumption on the part of my supervisor that I could and would.
You go to work each day and work in your little cubicle, reading the "literature" and writing. You feel like a monk, shut away, studying, or like a Chinese, locked in a room doing his imperial examination to become a Mandarin.
And finally you come away knowing some things you didn't know before, (in my case, learning how to use the library...), but probably not the things you thought you might, when you started.
