Friday, May 05, 2006

ah the 'gong...


just spent two days in the gong, wollongong that is, where i am enrolled in my phd and moved from only recently. it is lovely to be beside the seaside, and hang with my postgrad buddies and catch up on the goss. spent time with the lovely deborah, renee and erin, picture above (minus renee). i am the one in black, and one day soon i too will be wearing the floppy hat! renee will beat us to it, but deb and i are trying to graduate together in dec 07...we'll see...

of course, there was serious business, a meeting with ben the supervisor which actually went really well....things have not always been rosy there but we're on the home stretch now and i feel like i am in control of the project regardless of what he thinks. he had some good advice and we set a deadline for the first third completed by the end of june if i am going to take a lecturers appt in second session while he is long service leave. so i will take a leave of absence from the phd and come back to it early next year. long meeting with richard re the intro to the book we are editting, trying to get my head around complicated gramscian political theory. i think i understand...i think...richard is great to work with, so generous with his time and energy with me for no real payout. we are going to america in october to give a couple of papers at the rethinking marxism conference there, so that will be fun.

so am all inspired about the thesis again, lots of work to do but it feels doable...i wish there was some thing i could just plug into my head and download the words instead of trying to struggle with the inadequacy of the english language, but anyway, it will happen...hop to it....k

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