Postgraduate Diary: After a While Away

It's been over a month since my last post. As I write this, the words of Rochester, opening the second chapter of Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, echo in my head: "So it was all over, the advance and retreat, the doubts and hesitations. Everything finished, for better or for worse." Like Rochester, I am just about to move in to a new house (in fact, I will have done by the time you read this, as I have no means of uploading to the site until then). Like Rochester, I now find myself married - in my case to another three years of study - a marriage which, due to financial reasons, I was never sure I would be able to make.

Without giving away too much detail - and hence losing the anonymity which, to some degree, protects me from accusations of arrogance in publishing my weak works here - I will be effectively paid to explore and write on a literary field of my interest. This is an exciting time. It is also intensely frightening and bewildering: in what other trade is the deadline for completion of a project 3 or 4 years ahead, with little contact time with other experienced colleagues or superiors during that period? Among its other topics of interest, this blog will now become a record of my postgraduate experiences, and my attempts to come to terms with these trepidations; I hope you will join me, and perhaps help me, along the way.

Labels: Postgraduate Diary