Wow, 2 months since my last post. How can it be that long? Probably because it has been a challenging last few months for me.

The start of the year is always the busiest time for me work-wise and I have had a number of revelations the last few months about the whole PhD process….

1.     When you are at school there is a huge gap between going from Year 10 to Year 11. It is the only year where there is such a massive jump in expectations and in ability needed. I think this particular transition is a bigger jump even than going from Year 12 to uni. Well I have found  a new gap that makes this old one look laughable… the gap from a Masters to a PhD. I have a new sense of respect for anyone who has a doctorate – in fact I can’t believe really how many people have made it to the end of the process. In some ways it would be much much easier if you did it straight after your degree without entering the real world first. If I had done this when I was in my early 20s, I think it would not have been as challenging as I am finding it now. After 5 degrees I did not expect it to be that much different or much more challenging than anything I had done before – just longer. I was wrong though, it is so different from anything I have done before and the expectations are beyond what I had anticipated. In my 20s I would have expected it to be hard, I would have expected to know nothing at the beginning and I think that would have been an easier attitude to have entered with.  I attended a really interesting seminar with a student who was a few years down the track who outlined that she had the same experience – she’d come into the PhD with first class honours and could not understand how she was suddenly stuck in a ‘swamp’.

I loved this quote they showed at the seminar, which leads into my next point:

The ordeal of candidature is a mad process in its assignment of a structural role to insecurity. It challenges the candidate’s sense of worth, provoking a trauma of loss as one of its central knowledge-producing mechanisms, one which is often cruelly prolonged or repeated.
Frow, J. (1988) Discipline and Discipleship. Textual Practice. 2 (3) :pp. 307-323.

The seminar also made these points:

Challenges the candidate’s sense of self worth – provokes a trauma of loss as one of its central knowledge-producing mechanisms. It is a breaking down of the former sense of self. One begins as a sole writer with a fixed sense of self, and then moves towards becoming part of a discursive community where you learn to speak the same language with a common vocab.

2.     There are a lot of articles about reconstructing your sense of identity when doing a PhD and I can see now where this comes from. At first you begin with a really clear idea and sense of confidence about what you want to research. Then as you start to explore the topic and find out how very little you know, the confidence erodes and doubt seeps in. Again, in your 20s you are much less aware of what you don’t know and I feel this ignorance in some ways would be bliss. Anyway, so after your sense of self has been eroded as you become aware of how little you know and how far you have to go, you then start to recreate your image of yourself as a researcher piece by small piece. Everything else you have done prior to this is absolutely meaningless. It has all been swept away and you are in kindergarten again. You now have to start taking baby steps again as you firm up your research question and start to think about how you will approach the research you do. I get comments from Year 7 students about how now they have come to high school they are the little kids whereas they used to be the big kids. I know what they mean, I don’t like being the little kid again either.

3.     And talking of firming up the research question… it seems so clear until your supervisor starts discussing it with you and then you realise that getting the general idea of what you want is not enough, you need to ensure every word is selected to represent exactly what you want it to represent. So first the topic is too broad, then too narrow, then you read someone else’s and think oh that is so much clearer or gee that is a good idea next thing you know you are being pulled in every which way and have totally lost clarity about what you want to know. I said to my supervisor that I thought that this whole stage really sucked and he said he recalled saying something similar to his supervisor. Meanwhile others are talking about enjoying every moment, enjoying the process and I must admit that I am not. I don’t like the uncertainity, I like clarity – and I don’t like having to spend too long in the fog before it clears.

4.     Of course the lack of control is another big issue for me. Ideally I like things to be very systematic. But the literature review is anything but. I would really like to sit down, go through all relevant journals, locate a list of all 300+ relevant articles I should read, then start systematically working my way through them. But it doesn’t work that way. You find one source, then this leads to something else, and then you change direction and then there is something else to explore and it is all tangents and sidelines and very messy. But this is the way it has to be approached. It is also frustrating as there is so much reading you would like to do and I have the feeling that no matter how much I do there are always going to be more articles that people say have you read such and such?

So it has been a challenging few months as I come to grips with all of this and try to find enough time to do all the reading – and thinking – I need to do. I am definitely cutting down on my commitments next year though to make more time for my uni work.

You can see what I have done so far by clicking on the links n the left hand side of the page at: http://www.pruesalter.wikispaces.com/

So on another note, the Taronga Zoo course is going very well. The task for this week was to write a speech on a topic we had been given, we have to present it next week. Below is my speech. Oh it was so nice to have something simple and contained that I could complete in a short space of time.  Not getting that sense of completion or satisfaction with anything I am doing for uni at the moment as no matter how much I get done my list of what I’d like to do / need to do never seems to get smaller.

……………………………………………………

 

Interpretative Theme

Tasmanian devils are tragically at risk from a contagious and deadly form of cancer that threatens to lead to extinction within 10-15 years. While the search for a cure continues, there are ways that people can contribute to the cause of saving the Tasmanian devil.

Location: Tasmanian Devil Enclosure

Key Messages

–       There is a cancer threatening the devils.

–       They pass it through a natural behavior of biting.

–       Just in case we can’t cure it, we are breeding an insurance population in zoos etc across Oz.

–       We need financial support to do this, so visit the website and donate.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

SPEECH:

Hook

I’d like everyone here to look very carefully at our Tasmanian Devils for a moment, and try and memorise exactly what they look like. Now close your eyes and picture what you’ve just seen. Can you see them in your mind? Open your eyes. Well in maybe 10-15 years, a memory, or perhaps a photo, might be all that is left of the devils.

Introduction

Welcome to Taronga Zoo where we are working to save the Tassie Devil. My name is Prue and today you are going to hear about the struggle this native Australian animal is facing.

Transition: You might already have heard about it in the news. Does anyone know what is threatening the devils?

• Devil Facial Tumour Disease
• rare form of cancer
• will kill the devil within 6 months of the cancer appearing on their face
• very contagious

Transition: You see, it’s almost as easy for the devils to catch this cancer, as it is for you to catch a cold. Have you ever been around a friend who sneezed near you and later you got sick? Well, imagine a cold where you had to bite your friend to catch it! .

• That’s how the devils pass the cancer to each other.
• You might think “that seems ok, as long as the devils don’t bite each other they won’t catch the cancer”.
• But the problem is, biting is a natural part of their behavior during feeding and mating.
• And so, the cancer continues to spread in the wild.

Transition: So, what can we do to save the Tassie Devil? We can’t stop them doing their natural behaviours!

• Scientists are racing against the clock to find a cure for this cancer.
• But there is concern they will not find one in time.
• So here is what Taronga Conservation Society is doing.
• We are working with other zoos across Australia on an ‘insurance breeding program ‘to create a cancer free population of devils
• This way, if the worst happens, and the disease wipes them out in the wild, zoos can one day repopulate the wild.

Conclusion

So although this cancer is a serious threat to the devils, there are real steps being taken to save the Tassie Devil. In fact, the good news is that since 2008 when they were listed as endangered, the breeding program has produced 34 joeys already. (Pass out pics) They are actually quite cute aren’t they! If you’d like to show your support of the devil, then visit our interactive tassie devil appeal website, listed on the sheet there (www.tassiedevilappeal.org). It is great fun, and you can even breed your own virtual devil or create your own devil family! The donations through the site help to support our work to breed a cancer free Tassie devil population, just like the ones you see here today!

……………………………………………………………….

Actually it was quite interesting reading about this topic. Here are some more facts I couldn’t fit into the 3 minute speech. Tassie devils used to be all over Australia up until about 4000 years ago when dingos were introduced and survived in Tasmania due to no dingos there. There were called devils by European settlers due to their demonic grunts and high pitched squeals and red ears.  They have really powerful jaws so crunch up and eat all parts of their prey. They live around 5 years in the wild, usually have young once a year and as they are a marsupial the young spend 5 months in their pouch.  This cancer appeared around 1996 and it is mostly spread due to the devils biting each other during the feeding frenzy. They prefer to be solitary animals but cooperate when feeding. The facial cancers are horrific looking, looks like their face is being eaten away and many of them die from starvation due to the facial cancers as they are unable to eat. The problem is that as about 90% of them have been wiped out, the gene pool has been depleted and so when they bite each other as the genetic material is similar the immune system does not recognize the cancerous cells as foreign matter and so the tumor forms. There has been some progress in the search for a cure for the cancer but it seems like it will not be found in time. So the zoos want to try and build up a quarantined disease free population of 1500, they have about 115 now. So a long way to go.