TP 17

I was sorting out my notes this morning when I came across some markings from the church a while ago. A friend of mine was teaching on a proverbial saying in Galatians 6:7,

"Whatever one sows, that will he also reap."

I suddenly saw his teaching in a totally new context - in a PhD context! He had three things to say about the passage, and here is his wisdom applied to a new circumstance.

1. We reap what we plant
What he wanted to say is that we will reap similar things than what we planted. As the seed will determine which kind of a plant will sprout, so will our outcome be in relation to what we have sowed. If you sow youtube videos and comics, you will not probably reap the most deep dissertation.  On the other hand, if you are sow lot's of academic books, give it some time to sink in, water and nourish it with good chocolate and coffee, you might end up with a solid dissertation in your hands.

2. We reap in a different season
This must be the most painful aspect of the PhD 6:7 truth - it will not be finished overnight. The last two weeks are not for the writing of the dissertation, they are for the final revision of the dissertation. You are not probably interested but I'll give it to you anyway. There is a kind of seed that is put into ground in the Fall, and it needs to be under the ground over the winter. It will survive against all the odds and give its harvest the next year. I can imagine the PhD harvest is a similar one - its quality will be determined by what you do now, two years in advance, three years in advance. Even if you are not producing that many final lines right now, man, are you sowing or what!

3. We reap more than we planted
I must admit that this third point seems to be off but I trust my friend. But what we can do now, is to believe in the magic what happens when the man put the seed in the ground and it grew in secret, and the man did not know how. There is a relationship between our toil and the outcome, but some parts of it are beyond our control. Even though we might have some idea about our life after the dissertation the truth is that we cannot possibly know what effect our dissertation will have on our lives and careers (ugly side of the truth is that if we have planted those youtube seeds we will be reaping more of those than we imagined too).

That said, read a lot, give it some time to grow, trust in the magic of growth, and there you have it! Isn't it easy? Thanks Bob!

TP 16

How to fool oneself? Joan Bolker in her Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day (Amazon UK, US) has some crafty insights into behaviorism, and how to use these tricks - well, not really against oneself, but against one's tendencies to do anything else but stay focused with the PhD dissertation writing.

One of such useful tips is, "Set up deadlines so they involve rewards, not punishments." Deadline is a nasty sounding word, isn't it? But if you can fool yourself to wait for the deadlines, you can conquer mountains and fall in love with deadlines. How??

Firstly, you have to think what either motivates you, or what you find difficult to resist while writing/doing research. Secondly, you have to set (moderate) goals. Some will need several goals per day and big goals every weekend. Some find it easier to set goals relating to how many pages they have written, or when they have finished a sub-chapter or chapter. Thirdly, you have to decide how much each goal is worth, and how you are going to reward yourself.

Again, Bolker says, "Be a blatant behaviorist and bribe yourself shamelessly..."

I use this trick every day: I allow myself to go to Facebook after I have translated a whole chapter from Greek/Hebrew Bible or read a chapter of a book (sometimes I am too excited that I skip the "reward". Facebook equals with news and email, too. Except that I try not to open my email more than few times a day; it is easy to skim through few entries in Facebook, but usually emails require some action from you. I haven't come up with good rewards concerning bigger goals, partly because this system still works for me, and partly because I couldn't afford bribe myself with rewards that would be really worth pursuing for. I am sure that day comes when I will desperately need big carrots hanging over my keyboard, but until now, Facebook and its other silly friends will have to do. It is fun to fool oneself!

TP 15

Something happened in the bus today that was both fantastic and terrible (not at the same time). Before you can understand what I am going to say, and in order to relate to it, there needs to be a short(ish) introduction to the matter at hand.

I meet with my supervisor and one other PhD student to read Greek New Testament and to talk about some pieces of literature we have been reading biweekly. They both have so beautiful Greek NTs with wide margins, nice fonts, and most importantly - they look like they have been used. Maybe it is just me, but when I see people carrying their Hebrew Bibles or Greek New Testaments, I subconsciously have to inspect how worn they (the Bibles, not the scholars) are.

I am very proud of my Finnish Bible that has been falling apart the last decade or so (mostly on the NT side), but obviously I cannot use it here in the UK. I left my old trusty NA27 back home and brought only the 2-in-1 Biblia Sacra with me. I thought it would be handy having both the Hebrew OT and Greek NT in one, and there was only so much I could take into plane or ship here. The problem? It is so new (I just got it this spring) that it lacks all academic credibility (besides being really big).

Well, today in the bus on my way home I was reading Mark 8, and I noticed a cross-reference to 1 Chronicles. When I flipped there two pages came off. My first reaction was, "Wow, finally I am becoming a true scholar!" Sadly, almost instantly the joy turned into sorrow over my pricey Bible, especially because I knew deep down there that it was falling apart either because of me misusing it, or simply because it was not bound properly.

The saddest thing is that I know it matters very little how used my Bible looks like...

TP 14

I had a nice chat with a research fellow few days ago at a birthday party. He said that doing a PhD involves three phases (actually four, but we'll get to that later). The three phases - freely paraphrased - are...

1. You know everything. Everyone else is either stupid or wrong. You think you are the first one to see your research topic (thesis) clearly. Nobody has actually bothered to research that before, and you wonder why.
2. There seems to be nothing original that could be said about the topic. Those scholars were geniuses - how could they have said it so clearly? How could I have been so stupid? How am I going to get out of this mess?
3. You realize you can leave your small thumb print in the research area after all. You recognize it does not have to be anything spectacular (like new theory of relativity). You have a voice and you have been given a chance to use it. 

He also said that these phases follow the years spent for the study. Thank you for the tips my friend from the birthday party!

And the fourth phase? It is the major academic hangover after the dissertation is finished (and possibly published), and it might take years to recover from that. I'll have to start piling up so ibuprofen for the future...