Friday, April 27, 2007

Castles Made of Sand


After my seminar presentation on Wednesday I have returned to the draft chapter I presented. Although I am making progress with the thesis it is so so difficult. I got lots of constructive feedback in the session and it is now a matter of rewriting the entire chapter, starting from scratch. The writing and rewriting of a thesis reminds me of when I was a kid on the beach in Australia. I would spend hours making a world in sand and then the tide would come in and wash it away. There was nothing I, my sister or brother could do but start again further up the beach. This new structure would be washed away also after a while or blown by the wind if the sand was too dry (because we moved too far from the dangers of the tide water). We always kept building but.

I am now going to see Phil drive a nail through his finished thesis in a traditional 'spiking' ceremony that preceeds the defence of a PhD here in Sweden. It comes down from the nailing of the 95 theses to the Castle Church in Wittenberg by Luther in 1517. We nail our texts to a tree stump in the main undergrad library. Congratulations Phil, I know it is a hard road to a finished thesis.

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