======= Date Modified 10 Dec 2009 13:16:43 =======
Hello everbody,

Thank you so much for your kind words yesterday, and to Cobweb for the beautiful illustration, which I appreciate must have taken a very long time.

Yes, I'm in a much better frame of mind today, I've just marked 7 of the 140ish essays I have to get through by mid Jan - I'm averaging 15 minutes each, but they seem ok; I quite enjoyed it! I think I'm one of the few people who actually enjoys marking, I find it quite meditative and restful.

I've decided it was a mistake to meet with my supervisor immediately after a job interview, especially as I got a call with the negative result just before going in to see him, I think that coloured my impression of things. I won't do that again.

I'm even less worried about Christmas, if I want to I'll go end spend it with my old mate whose family I know really well, and who has invited me, I will, but I am also stll looking for voluntary work, it's really hard to find anything.

I prefer children to animals, but thank you for all your suggestions. Here, presents all round:
(gift)(gift)(gift)(gift)(gift)(gift):-)

KB, I'm so sorry to hear that you have been through this! I hope the other passengers are ok too. If I were laid up at home for 3 months I would write and read. And in all honesty I would pobably watch quite a lot of TV for hte first week, then get bored of that and start listening to radio 2, thengo a bit mental and insist people take me out in their cars to places at least once a day. Get well soon, and good luck at your next supervisory meeting.

Here's a mince pie: (mince)

Hi Teek, Yes, I can be hard on myself - well observed - it's quite hard for me to remember not to be! I thought I might enjoy Christmas on my own, I also don't feel ready to send Christmas with someone else's family, I'm still quite raw abut what's been happening in mine so I'd like to just not think aboout family dynamics and all that. I haven't told my family how I'm spending Chrstmas, I spent it with a friend last year (she has no family in the UK) so they probably think I'm doing that again. I'v been trying to get a place helping out at a homeless shelter.

Hi Cobweb, Hilarious, you just made me laugh my ass off again. I've thought about having get togethers, but I valued being annonymous on here so much. I do love you all tho, it's a toughy isn't it?

Sneaks, thank you for your kind invitation, but Christmas just wouldn;t be Christmas without someone trying to kill me, or at least hospitalize me! Seriously, I think I need to spend it in my own company this year. I have lot of other things planned, so the season will still be fun for me, and I have a top New Year do lined up. It's the start my new ultra seprateness from my super nightmarish family.

Hi Wally, thank you for your words of encouragement; it was my supervisor who was impressed with my writing and content recently, so, yeah, he most probably doesn't think I'm crap, just not yet eady for the upgrade process at my uni. I'm actually ok about that now, I think getting published is probably more important. Realistically, I doubt he'd have taken me on as a student if he didn't think i could do it.

I think I just felt super sensititve because immediately before the meeting I got the call to say I didn't get the job I'd just interviewed for, that morning. He was just telling me to re-draft a key art of my thesis introduction, one of my concepts, which is extremely controversial to many people in a particular discipline, so I need to be very careful with it. He didn't really say anything negative - just that this piece needed re-drafting, and it was only a second draft tht I sent him. I do need to get this concept/concepts sorted for anything else to follow, including the book chapter if it somes off, and my upgrade material. I am working towards that, everything he's given me to work on feeds into that.

The family thing is more general than the sid snot niece, it's about my parents too. I won't be able to spend Christmas with my family this year for various political and much deeper reasons and I think I'm a bit nervous about Christmas on my own. I have had lots of invitations from frends who know some of my family situation although not all of them all of it!), but I have decided that I need to spend one Christmas on my own, just to make sure I can do it and enjoy it, so that in future I'm not spending it with friends out of some sort of fear. I am feeling bullied out of my family at the moment, for reasons I don't feel entirely able too discuss here. Although partly because the niece, who live with the parents has been violent towards me in the past, to the extend whereby I have needed hospital treatment.

I am feeling better about my work than this morning; I'll probably get back to it tomorrow.

Here's a snowman to say thank you, you're another one I can't star any more.


(snowman)

P.s. Thanks for the cabbage Teek; I gave you a star as a reward for your lovely advice. I tried to do the same for Maria and Sneaks, but I've already starred them ages ago. Hopefully they haven't been too tainted by our greedy, ruthless pursuits of them and it still has meaning for you.

I think the 6 year thing has to do with fees, so itworks out the same price to do it full or part - time. I could go FT for the last year or two I suppose. OOOps, I'm in danger of cheering up and being posititve here, that shouldn't happen until this afternoon.

Does anyone remember Marvin, the depressed robot from Hitch Hicker's Guide to the Galaxy? Well that's me this morning - I have 25 minutes left. (turkey) yes, it's all a turkey today...

Hi Maria, thank youfor that. Yeah, my supervisor did say early on that the tends to give feedback assuming that most of the positive things go without saying - he sort of warned me about it, and I'm usually ok with that because I know he's trying to squeeze the most out of me in the time we have. He's really pleased with my book chapter proposal, so he can't think I'm that crap. I just seem to be having a funny time at mo, probably the family stuff has much to do with it too. I'd swear a member of the faculty was hinting at an extra - marital liaison with me yesterday (his marital) in way that made me think he does it a lot, and that made me feel a bit crappy and uncomfortable too, bllleeeeeeuuuuurrrrggghhh.

Thank you Sneaks, that could be very accurate. And, yes, I am sitting on the sofa in my fleecey, patterned pyjamas; however, I am not yet pissed or singing 'all by myself' - maybe later.

Good morning all you beautiful people,

I'm feeling pretty low this morning and have even semi-entertained thoughts of quiting my PhD, the big obstacle in the way of my doing this is that my life would be a billion time worse without it.

I'm just feeling that I'm slogging my guts out and making financial and other sacrifices left right and centre and I'm not getting anywhere. I had a job interview at the uni at which I am doing the PhD (part-time) yesterday and didn't get the job. I also had an appointment with my supervisor at which I brought up the subject of my upgrade and he explained that because part - time PhDs at my uni have to take 6 years to complete and the upgrade happens midway, I won't officially be going forward for mine until May 2011, yes, that's right, May 2011, by which time everyone else on the planet will have published ten books and retired. Although, he did say it would be possible to bring it forward to Novemeber/December 2010, he didn't seem to think I was at that stage yet, and he said things like because you're part - time things take a long time, because you are working etc, etc. But the thing is I work only a few more hours than a full timer I know and she's looking at a three year complete, so I'm feeling really deflated, I thought my work was going well, but, maybe not. My sup also said of the upgrade 'and that's when we'll see and if there are problems we'll...' and didn't finish the sentence. Does ths mean he thinks I'm on my way out? Does he think I can't do this? I dunno, I'm just feeling like I'm strugglig 'up the hill backwards' as Mr. Bowie would say and not getting anywhere. To think I could be going through all this and then come out of it without even an upgrade...

What's really frustrating me is that I know I have it in me, I feel strongly that I am good at this, and that my work has a lot to offer, but I'm loosing confidence in what other, important people think if me, like my supervisor, for example.

The other thing is I want to move cities- either to the one I work at or the one where I study, but I'm worried that my job[s] at the former won't last past next term and I could be left in said city with no purpose for being their come this summer, so I'm a bit all over the place with that too. Plus the family hell.

I thought your feedback and support would probably help me X

Good morning all you beautiful people,

I'm feeling pretty low this morning and have even semi-entertained thoughts of quiting my PhD, the big obstacle in the way of my doing this is that my life would be a billion time worse without it.

I'm just feeling that I'm slogging my guts out and making financial and other sacrifices left right and centre and I'm not getting anywhere. I had a job interview at the uni at which I am doing the PhD (part-time) yesterday and didn't get the job. I also had an appointment with my supervisor at which I brought up the subject of my upgrade and he explained that because part - time PhDs at my uni have to take 6 years to complete and the upgrade happens midway, I won't officially be going forward for mine until May 2011, yes, that's right, May 2011, by which time everyone else on the planet will have published ten books and retired. Although, he did say it would be possible to bring it forward to Novemeber/December 2010, he didn't seem to think I was at that stage yet, and he said things like because you're part - time things take a long time, because you are working etc, etc. But the thing is I work only a few more hours than a full timer I know and she's looking at a three year complete, so I'm feeling really deflated, I thought my work was going well, but, maybe not. My sup also said of the upgrade 'and that's when we'll see and if there are problems we'll...' and didn't finish the sentence. Does ths mean he thinks I'm on my way out? Does he think I can't do this? I dunno, I'm just feeling like I'm strugglig 'up the hill backwards' as Mr. Bowie would say and not getting anywhere. To think I could be going through all this and then come out of it without even an upgrade...

What's really frustrating me is that I know I have it in me, I feel strongly that I am good at this, and that my work has a lot to offer, but I'm loosing confidence in what other, important people think if me, like my supervisor, for example.

The other thing is I want to move cities- either to the one I work at or the one where I study, but I'm worried that my job[s] at the former won't last past next term and I could be left in said city with no purpose for being their come this summer, so I'm a bit all over the place with that too. Plus the family hell.

I thought your feedback and support would probably help me X

Why do we have 2 cobwebs now?

My old, rubbish, supervisor was very pally with me at first, inviting me round for dinner with the partner, cosy chats and all sorts, and she turned out to have serious issues with boundaries which made working with her impossible. My shiney new supervisor, who is fantastic and with whom my work has come on in leaps and bounds keeps me at arms length. I really think the dynamic of the PhD - supervisor relationship cannot sustain a friendship, it's not equal: the supervisor has to be able to give intensive criticism with no danger of it seeming personal, and the PhD stude must have enough distance from the sup to be able to see it that way. Maybe a friendship could come afterwards, but not during, IMO, maybe others will tell you different.

It's the outfits! The outfits we really need. Especially now we#re in the public eye. I really don't think Danni Minogue and Cheryl Cole would put up with this; do you?

Right, here's my tupenth worth: I think art is having an identity crisis because it has become basically redundant since the rise of tv, film, video games as the prime communicators of visual culture that have any depth of meaning. I think it's trying to fit into different roles, like religion, design, marketing, but can't find a place. This whole idea of the found object as art was intended as, quite literalkly, a piss take on the part of Marcel Duchamp, who got fed up of art's fake b******* at the start of the 20th century, turned a urinal upside down, signed it and the called it art, becuase he is an artist: the whole thing was meant to be a giant PISS TAKE. But then loads of people took it seriously! And now every art school in the world teaches it as gospel.

Cinema is the great art form of our age and does the job painting used to do: it illustrates our collective concerns in a poetic and beautiful manner. IMO future art historians will look at cinema as the great art of our time and Damien Hurst et al as evidence of a crisis of identity and opportunist marketing bonanza.

There you go, my opinion; it could change very quickly though, it usually does.

Does that mean we get an hourly rate now?