Lethargy sets in

The part time job I've had since April finishes next week. My post-grad registration finishes next month. I've nothing to do and nothing to say, and I'm nearing the end of a dismal day and there seems to be nothing beyond. I wish something would fall into the pond.

See http://www.poetry-online.org/noyes_daddy_fell_into_the_pond.htm

Winding up

There are several finishing points for a PhD:

• submission - the biggest and most exciting hurdle
• viva - the scariest hurdle
• sending your corrections to the examiner(s)
• receiving the examiner's feedback - have you met the academic requirements?
  
• taking the bound copies to the Research School
• having the degree conferred
• attending the degree ceremony - the nicest and most fun with champagne to drink with friends, relatives and supporters

Tomorrow I take the copies to the Research School, and I'll contact some of the gatekeepers to my case studies to offer them copies too. On Tuesday, I'm told that the university has congregation at which they agree the award of degrees, and thus the degree of PhD will be awarded to me in absentia. Then the Research School will invite me to attend one of the degree ceremonies, which being the OU could be in the UK (Portsmouth, Milton Keynes, London Barbican for example) or in Dublin or Versailles. How nice.

But the winding up is a long process. It's taken six months since submission, six months of juggling other things in my life, including new paths - winding up one and looking for a new path.

A new path might be a post in the OU - I'd like that - perhaps I'll find an opportunity to develop research from my PhD, something to do with government IT perhaps stemming from last week's Parliamentary committee report. Now that would be exciting - a new start after a long finish.

Final thoughts

I want to write the final section that addresses the closing thoughts of my research. I can't! I'm just waffling, and I'm not allowed to write:

I've done enough. It's good enough. Just give me the doctorate!

Writing has been a struggle for me all the way through this process.

Research aims were achieved in that the researcher has developed and empirically validated a model that shows how participants engage on IT projects. The research aims have been achieved in that this researcher has written a heck of a lot of words.

By presenting empirical research with case studies of five IT projects, this thesis has detailed perceptions of how engaged IT project participants build relationships and get work done. By collecting and analysing my case studies (and thanks ever so much to my participants) I've got this model of engagement. It's quite neat really.

This thesis set out the findings that addressed the research question by developing a framework for engagement. Yes - that's what I meant to say above.

Engagement was seen to involve conditions and behaviours in a self-replicating system. That's the model I mean.

Suggestions have been made in this chapter as to how client management can manage the engagement process with their external consultants. But will practitioners believe me?

The results of this research fill a gap in the literature on understanding engagement. Like who cares anyhow?

By focusing on the process of building relationships rather than the outcomes and products of engagement, it identifies how engaged behaviours can produce value through exchanging and building new intellectual capital. I reckon that bit's new and clever and I'd just like to write it right.

This thesis has shown that the essential behaviours that emerge are sharing, sense making and adapting which interact and self-reinforce. Actually, I'd like to write about it being an autopoietic system, but I don't use that word much so bringing it in now in the last section is a bit of a shock.

and then bla, bla boring bla

This thesis provides useful insight that enhances understanding of engagement. It does.

I want to write this now. I've got other stuff to get on with, like life.

Full draft done

I have sent my supervisors all the chapters, with humble apologies for lack of articulateness on the conclusions, but reporting that I'd got someone else to read at least some of it to check for the cryptic clippedness that supervisor#1 dislikes in my style. My style has so changed, and I didn't realise until one reader said he'd had problems where I'd used 'combinations' as a noun. I had to go back to the theory I was using to check those authors also used the word as a noun, not as combining or combined. It is now so clear to me, but I've read that particular paper many times.

Supervisor #1 has come back all cheerful and praising that I've got it done to the time we'd agreed (took me three 60 hour weeks) and says not to worry about the conclusion as it usually takes a few iterations. Now I have to wait three weeks for their feedback.

Am I on the last 385 yards of this marathon?

Same place

Nearly two weeks ago I blogged that I had only this and that to complete. But I've still got only this and that to complete.

I've been working on this darned methodology chapter all week, yet I don't think I've produced anything worth showing anybody yet because it's still so higgledy-piggledy. I still have the conclusion to write, having concluded that I was nowhere near writing it, despite my hopes two weeks ago.

I seem to be in the same place. Why?

Fellow Post-Grad student has the same question. Six months ago FPG had the whole thesis planned and was going to finish in September. I wouldn't say that I'm competitive but I see no reasons why I should be lagging behind her, and so if she could expect to finish in September, then so could I. Neither of us are lazybones - we put the hours in. But FPGS hasn't submitted yet, and doesn't understand any more than I do why six months ago it wasn't obvious that we weren't going to submit yet.

At the last supervision, a supervisor commented that progress seemed slow. Yes - it seems slow to me too, but I don't need to be criticised for slow progress. Hey! It is progress. So with that slow progress in mind, this week another FPGS grilled a long memoried academic here on when a post grad last completed within the three funded years. The answer after much thought and wriggling was never in memory. So to be where we are, FPG and I are making progress, and it might not be that slow. It's just not as fast as we expected or planned.

So perhaps I'm not quite in the same place as two weeks ago, but just a fraction further.

End of three years

At the end of September my three-year scholarship ends. The end of my scholarship means the end of my funding, so no more conferences, outside workshops, transcription, or travel will be paid. I need to finish unpaid, unwaged, unfunded.

Fellow students are fretting, excitedly and worriedly arranging to submit.

• My fellow third year has registered her intention to submit in the next three months.
  
• A fourth year student has submitted and awaits her viva next week.
  
• Another fourth year student has just taken her thesis to the printers.
• Another fourth year has gone part-time.
  

At the end of four years you get deregistered and if you haven't submitted or gone part time, that's it. Done. Cut off. NO degree. Nothing. And a waste of four years with nothing to show for it, but if you go part time before the cut off date, then you have several more years as a registered part-time student. That costs over a sixteen hundred pounds, so not the route you want to take if you think you'll submit in only a few more weeks.

At this end stage, when things are getting desperate, you have to manage your supervisors' expectations. If they think you're going independent and you will submit anyhow, then they support you - that's my observation of my senior students' experience. But if you bow to their experience and wisdom and hesitation, then you're going to take longer. Supervisors who've given you other tasks that delay you, land you with problems so make sure the supervisors know the regulations too.

I finish unfunded, but I shall finish well before 30 September 2011.

Findings

I've written something about findings - I'm a tad excited about this (in a British sense - like I'm really excited but understating it). Findings has to be the last chapter, so now I can write all the proceeding chapters because now I know what I'm aiming at concluding with.

And it's not exciting. It's not at all exciting, because what I find is like everyone else has been saying for years, and all I've done is collect the information in this particular format and use this particular model that's my own, to model the same as everyone else.

And I bet when my supervisors read it, I'll be deflated again.

Finishing PhD - about to submit

Delighted to watch my senior, a fourth year post grad about to submit her dissertation. She's given notice of submission, she's worked out how to use Word for big documents, formatted it according to the rules and says she's going to submit next week. Hurrah!

Presentation of the thesis

Your thesis should be typed or produced on a word processor and printed on a printer which produces letter quality print. Dot matrix printing is not acceptable. The text must be double spaced. Your thesis should be presented on good quality A4 paper. You may use both sides of the paper. The pages should be numbered consecutively.

The margins must be wide enough to allow for subsequent binding. The minimum requirement is:

· inside margin 40mm

· top and outside margins 15mm

· bottom margin 20mm.

There should be a contents page and, where appropriate, a table of illustrations and/or a list of any items not bound with the thesis (e.g. maps, plans, etc).

We'll miss her. She has quiet and sensible advice, as well as being a role model.