So at her invitation I saw my Director of Studies on Tuesday, just I think, for a morale boosting chat. Needless to say ID card and letter confirming my official registration have not yet arrived but I think that even I, pessimist that I am, am now convinced that this Ph D thing is real and is finally going to happen.
DoS is going to organise a video conference asap for me and the supervisory team followed by a face to face meeting in Glasgow later in the spring, so we are making progress and meanwhile the advice is to 'keep reading Anne' which is what I'm doing.
In fact when I left college I nipped to the library and found that they had had a bit of a shuffle around and had lots of new books over from the library in Stromness. Lots of stuff in the literature section that I hadn't come across before, so I came home on the bus hauling two huge books; a biography of Edwin Morgan and the Collected Poems of Norman MacCaig. Only slightly more than peripherally relevant, but it's all grist to the mill.*
While I chatted with the DoS I was once again amazed by the number of the luminaries of the Scottish Literary world whom she knows, and more than a little excited [star struck?] by the thought that I would be meeting quite a few of them myself in the foreseeable future. She summed it up for me really when she said 'The next five years for you Anne is just a series of joyous opportunities' and the phrase really struck.
So when I get discouraged, upset, frustrated, lose confidence, hit the wall, feel stupid or ignorant, all the things that I know will happen during the next few years, I'm going to come back to this post and remind myself that however difficult the moment might be, the process is life enhancing.
*I also borrowed a crime novel set in Norfolk recommended to me by a friend. Guess which of the three I read on the bus?
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