Blogging revisited

Courting Disaster has been off-line for nearly 18 months – and let’s face it, it was hardly updating regularly towards the end of that time.

So, here we are: rebooted and hopefully updating two or three times a week.

In brief, the last eighteen months have consisted of:

• moving house (yes, again!) in December 2006, to the most adorable part of Cambridge, Newnham;
• interviewing for three or four teaching positions and being offered a lectureship at a London university;
• submitting the PhD thesis in May 2007;
• marrying the love of my life in Canberra in June 2007;
• being examined on the PhD in August 2007;
• starting the new job in September 2007;
• crawling elated, scared and knackered by turns through a first term of teaching (while commuting from Cambridge);
• graduating from the PhD and having a second wedding ceremony (well, a blessing) for UK friends and visiting Australian family in November 2007;
• having a quiet Christmas in Dahab, Egypt;
• crawling elated, scared and knackered – but generally more confident - through a second term of teaching;
• writing questions for and administering exams (and there’s a blog in that!);
• marking, marking and bloody marking exams (only 84 undergraduate essays, three dissertations, 92 exam scripts and double marking the same again);
• proposing a couple of new courses;
• getting the PhD turned into a book proposal, peer-reviewed, committee-approved and a contract issued with a publisher; and
• oh, look it’s just about our first wedding anniversary.

Busy? Just a bit.

Not sleeping, working real hard ...

Okay, I know the blog has stalled (once again).

My excuse it that I apparently have most of a PhD. I had a terrifically encouraging meeting with my supervisor last Wednesday, in advance of which I thought, "Hang on, what have I got written?"

So I prepared a little table of potential chapter titles, research papers/drafts I'd already written that would fit, and a total word count.

It appears I have a rough draft that lacks an introduction, conclusion and has only half a final chapter. I still have 129,000 words towards a 100,000 word thesis.

"I'm glad it's only 129,000 words," my supervisor said. "You've been writing at a rate of knots and I'd expected more."

He glanced at my list of issues for a final, wrapping-up chapter and said: "I think you should focus on what's necessary to complete, not everything that will eventually go into the book."

That was the first mention of the B-Word in a supervision meeting. (Eeek.)

Anyway, the push is on to finish the stuff I'm working on, so I can then survey the sprawling meandering mass of my draft and identify what to ditch. (Hopefully, a lot of fisheries law.)

I'm on track to finish early; which is exciting enough that I want to press on.

Especially given that I'm going to Italy Thursday of next week for a thoroughly undeserved break.

On being a Phud

It's a bit like being 19 again, staying with your parents on an extended basis as a 30-year old. Having to borrow the car, explaining when you'll be away overnight and who you'll be with (just so no one worries), calling to confirm if you'll be home for dinner, and ... well, not having anything approaching an office space. Not bad, or difficult, just odd.

Anyway, a further 19-ish experience was a weekend in Sydney, getting lifts both ways with grown ups. A salient reminder that I am a grown-up myself was an evening in Leichardt with friends from uni: all law graduates. All but one had done time in corporate law firms.

One had jumped from the Tax Office to corporate law, one had started there and stayed there, one had gone from corporate law to a public broadcaster, and one was in State government. Then there were the two PhD students, me and an English PhD student now based in Melbourne (the amazing Beth).

So Beth and I managed the Phud conversation: "I can't believe that some weeks I can write a thousand words a day, and others I'm beating my skull in to finish a paragraph ... some books I tear through, others take a week to crawl through taking notes". Okay, not the exact words we used, but the gist.

The Phud conversation is valuable: while all work-talk is potentially boring to others, we're an isolated group who need the peer support to keep going. As people, we read to know that we are not alone. As humanities Phud students, neither blessed by nor shackled to a lab group or office, we have the work conversation to escape our little boxes and gain some perspective on what is "normal".

In at least one survey, half of those discontinuing graduate study rated isolation as an important factor for leaving their studies (especially, it seems women).

I guess this is one thing I get out of being in Cambridge in particular: if you want to be isolated in Cambridge, it's easy. Stick to your room and your lab or library and don't socialise. A good number do this. However, if you want a social network of other graduate students - it's there on your doorstep. My college in particular is known for being small and friendly.

Frankly, I think being surrounded by people who know psychologically and emotionally what being a Phud is like is amazingly helpful. It's not that other friends are insensitive, but the invisible support of peers - especially across subjects or disciplines - is a major part of maintaining the morale to keep going.

That, and fear. Fear is really useful too.

Piracy on the High Teas

From a recent reminder e-mail to my "People's Direct Action Committee" revolution-themed cake-club ...

Subject: Avast ye cake-loving sea dogs!

Ar har!

This week the revolution goes piratical! Bring your salty sea-biscuits to

The MCR! (Ar!)

At 4.00 pm! (Ar!)

On Thursday! (Ar har!)

But remember, piracy isn't all funny hats and parrots, it's a serious crime
placing you outside the bounds of civilisation and the protection of the
law.

So, come be an enemy of all mankind, and eat cake.

Peg-leg Doug

... yes, my PhD is getting to me.

Bangkok Joe's, Washington DC 

The DC adventure: hitting the town

It’s always fun seeing a city through a friend’s eyes. It’s also fun travelling in a place with a weaker currency than the pound (ie everywhere). While eating out a lot was still an indulgence, it was a far more reasonably priced one.

Led by a Belgian (see yesterday’s entry) the PhD gang hit some great restaurants once the conference buffet dinners petered out. One such establishment was the lovely, and remarkably reasonable, Bangkok Joe’s (see photo). Excellent Thai. We repaired afterwards to the fabulously funky Mie N Yu. Check out the online tour (we were in the Moroccan Bazaar bar).

With my Australian host I saw the inside of several bars, one of the better was Local 16. Including having the experience of a head waitress/bar-person cross the room to give him a hug, have a chat and wave our little party past the ID check to the rooftop bar. (He’s clearly spent some time and money in a number of places.)

And I managed to buy clothes, again. An amazingly sleek grey wool overcoat with duffle-coat toggles and (wait for it) a blue cord jacket with fawn suede elbow patches. Perfect junior academic regalia. My host’s comment on the latter was: “When I heard cord with elbow patches, I feared the worst. But that actually looks like rather funky streetwear.”

A change in my routine

I am attempting to be good this week. Recovering from jet-lag, and still being inspired by the conference and my interviews about my research - it seemed a good time to try and form new habits.

Part of this process is that I’ve come up with a totally new plan of what I want to do for my first year paper, so I’m trying to pull different things together and get a lot of new research done.

So, my new daily routine. Wake up 7.00 or 7.30, 10 minutes yoga followed by a 10 minute run round the sports-ground. Shave, shower, breakfast. Coffee and the online newspapers until 9 am. 9-1 work in my room, mostly writing.

Then lunch from 1-2, and in at the law school library by 2 chasing references, looking things up, photocopying and reading. Leave around 5.30 or 5.45.

This is proving frighteningly productive, and means I am finally and definitely treating the PhD as an office job. Let’s hope it lasts.

Tomorrow: a day at the baby races.

Coming full circle in Washington DC

Ah, Washington when the cherry blossom is in bloom: when it can be a sunny balmy 21 degrees one day and belting with rain the next.

My time in DC (I got back on Wednesday) was something of a homecoming. The last time I was there, nearly a decade ago, I was a law student competing in the Jessup International Law moot. It was an astonishingly stressful week, but which culminated in my team reaching the grand final. Presenting arguments before the Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge (now my supervisor), a judge of the International Court of Justice and a prosecutor from the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal was exhilarating. We lost to the State University of Mexico, but managed to walk away with a number of prizes other than the runners-up trophy.

I had never studied international law before the gruelling four months of my life that the Jessup moot eventually consumed. Part of the thrill of even being at the international rounds was that they were held in conjunction with the American Society of International Law conference – the academic conference in the field. People you though of as names on a textbook were all there, milling about, talking.

So, returning to go to the ASIL conference as a PhD student from Cambridge was accompanied by an odd, quiet sense of having come full circle. I wasn’t at all hyped about the Jessup dimension to proceedings until a Canadian friend and fellow Cambridge-Phud type convinced me to go see the final. Not only had she done the international rounds of the Jessup the same year as me, but the problem this year overlapped with both our research interests (the law of the sea, piracy, terrorism and State responsibility).

When we arrived, we wound up watching the final in an overflow room on a giant screen: the big advantage of this being we got an extremely good view of the advocates and close-ups on the judges during questions. What really got me though, was the grand final was an Australian (UQ) against a Malaysian team. There was a strong sense of déjà vu, as I and the Canadian sat and muttered and twitched and whispered comments on points of law to each other. We left satisfied as to which team had won, and decided to look up the result on the web later.

Curiously, I also wound up staying in much the same district, Adams Morgan near Dupont Circle, as I had last time I was in DC. Not a lot appeared to have changed, but with my “native” (Belgian and Australian) guides to the city, the night life was certainly a lot more interesting. But more of that later.

Cambridge market, King's spires, Great St Mary's 

“We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart”

American neighbour: “You, know, I’m beginning to think I’m a binge drinker.”

Doug: “Good, you’ll fit right in.”

It’s not that in Cambridge socialising is entirely impossible without alcohol … oh, wait, scratch that. Ahem. In Cambridge socialising is entirely impossible without alcohol. In fact, it’s about the only way to get anything done at all.

Let me back up.

At my induction camp with the nice people giving me money to be here, the trust Provost (with refreshing honesty) said: “The most frustrating – and wonderful – thing about Cambridge is that it’s not managed at all. I’m Provost of the Trust, Master of this College, Head of that Faculty and President of the Following Organisation – all of which means I have the power to do precisely nothing. If you want something to happen, make it happen.”

What Cambridge does well, in fact, brilliantly is to teach people to network – but nicely. You live in a sort of Venn-diagram of social relations: you have an existence within your college, your faculty, student societies and so on where no one is actually responsible for doing anything much – but you have a lot of opportunity to meet people who can make your life simpler if you treat them well.

The principle thing is to never turn down an event. I have had invaluable advice through being seated next to the college Law Fellows at dinners, and – surprise, surprise – going drinking with them afterwards. College is also where you get to eat and drink with a cross-disciplinary community, something I never really had to the same extent as an Australian undergrad.

You also need to maximise your friends in other colleges, if only to be in with the remotest hope of getting into swanky May Balls run by the mega-wealthy colleges.

All of which just tends to make the start of the year rather tiring. On my third real day of PhD research I couldn’t get past lunch because – after the excesses of Freshers week – I had the Scholar’s dinner in College last night and was being bought celebratory gin and tonics for some time afterwards by the law fellows in the college bar. End result, by two o’clock I had to stumble home for a nap.

Tonight was graduate formal hall, a lovely occasion with my kitchen (the drop-in centre in our accommodation block) hosting a dozen people for blackcurrant tea and strategising the acquisition of May Ball tickets until midnight.

Tomorrow I have drinks in my LLM supervisor’s rooms at St John’s and Monday I have the law research student’s dinner.

All of this is wonderfully valuable professional networking the only way Cambridge knows how.

But I really am beginning to wish I’d banked half my liver before admission to legal practice.

Efficiency in the UK

Am presently going through the joys of getting set up at the start of the academic year, same as every other UK uni student. Despite this having happened on Michaelmas day for about 800 years now, Britain still has some trouble coping.

My grant cheque arrived on time at the college bursary (direct electronic payment? what is this, the New World?), but will of course take a British bank up to five days to clear.

Still, no problem as I can't use my debit card. Somehow, I forgot the PIN. So, I took several forms of photo ID in, hoping to have the bank swipe the card and reset it.

"Alright sir, I'll take a note of your sort code and account number," said the woman, motioning that I could go.

"Um, what happens now?" I asked.

"Your PIN will be mailed out to you within five working days."

Mailed. Out. Within. Five. Days.

Of course, one could make manual withdrawls, if one was prepared to queue 20 minutes or more. (It's only the busiest time of year, why have more than one teller open? Or when you do have three open, why not let two puzzle together over one computer screen for 10 minute stretches? Why would you call in a manager or extra staff just because people are so bored they've started gnawing their own limbs?)

Getting a phone connected? Nothing easier. Buy a phone, plug it into the socket, dial "#" and wait for a NTL representative ... for over an hour.

My phone will now be connected within the week. Maybe by Friday, more likely this time next week.

Oh, and despite having been here last year, I need to fill out a new emergency contact form.

And - my personal favourite - despite living in College accomodation, I need to turn in a form to the college telling them where I am living. (I mean, what?)

And despite being admited to the PhD program, I still need to "register" as a PhD student at the Law School.

Still, at least running errands beats starting work. However, I did have a PhD students seminar this morning in which I discovered further evidence of the conspiracy of Australian lawyers in Cambridge.

The first new evidence predates the seminar, as not only did one of the new LLM students in college recently work at the same Sydney Mega-Firm as I once did, she worked for the same group and the same partners.

Now it transpires that one of my PhD cohort is also an alumna of the Mega-Firm, while another PhD-mate used to sit with me in the History Honours Research Seminar at the ANU circa 1997.

Small, scary world.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go press my wing-collar shirt and see if my new fob chain for my grandfather's watch fits my waistcoat.

As a member of the grad student committee I've been invited to the metriculation dinner for the newbies this evening, so I guess I can't really complain.

(Naturally, I've had my head shaved back to a tidy no. 2 for the occasion by a physicist friend.)

It’s nice to feel wanted
 
I always feel turning down a job interview is somehow close to suicidal, yet I’ve been doing a bit of it recently.
 
As a result of a mad spate of applying for advertised jobs before news about PhD funding came through, I made interview with a federal government department and my undergraduate university (the ANU). I also had a tentative e-mail from an outfit I'd seriously like to work for in response to an unsolicited CV and cover letter.
 
And I’ve bitten the bullet, been honest, and said I’m not available.
 
My only twinge on this point is - the wheels of Cambridge bureaucracy grinding slower than the mills of god - I’ve not yet had 100% iron-clad acceptance for the PhD place. I have the money and the marks, which is all I need to be confirmed, but I don’t have a letter yet saying “Yup, you’re officially good to go.”
 
That may not arrive until September, and this is nothing unusual.
 
(Bizarrely, what is holding things up is that the Board of Graduate Studies does not, a month after graduation, have official notice of my marks in the LLM. I guess this is their busiest time of year, and I suspect the hold-up is at the law faculty’s end … )
 
I suspect the sensible thing to do would have been to do the interviews or ask to be kept in consideration, but in at least one case this would involve setting up a videoconference and preparing a seminar in the middle of my travel plans.

Also, I think, better to preserve a reputation for being scrupulously up front with people you may want to approach for work in a few years’ time. 
  
Still, being presented with other (possible) options always injects a little niggling doubt into your plans, doesn’t it?

... Nah. I'm a born academic, this is so what I'm meant to be doing.
 
Back in Cambridge at present, and also realising anew that I have a social life here. Within hours of returning from Prague I bumped into half a dozen people and pretty much had my free nights before the parents arrive booked up.

 All round, it’s nice to feel wanted.

Too many hours at the bar to be posting now

The fact that I have even found the keyboard seems an achievement. Call it a delayed reaction to the good PhD news. (Thanks all for the supportive comments and old-friend e-mails, it means a lot to me, honest.)

So yeah, today. Today was archive fun with the grad students committee VP and Mr Producer. Strange as it may sound, the Middle Combination Room (Grad Students Lounge) is an entirely separate space from the MCR Office, a small room off B staircase where few committee members dare tread. The VP as a committed medieval historian thought we should make the world a better place through effective finding.

Over the course of the day I helped dispose of decade-old lost property, managed some sage nodding, some removal of broken glass (don’t ask) and collated and printed an academic year’s worth of minutes by me and those brave enough to fill in on the weeks I couldn’t take it anymore.

Then I went and bought us sandwiches.

Then I went to have a medical for my new scholarship organisation to prove that I was physically fit to travel to, reside in, and conduct graduate study in Cambridge.

Yes, the Alanis-irony of the moment (and the 38 pound 50 fee) was not wasted on me.

Then another evening as a tele-fund raiser. Including the surreal experience of calling a head-master who was using the same firm of tele-fundraisers to provide infrastructure and training for his fund-raising campaign. A more profound moment of post-modern reflexivity I’m not sure I could have encountered outside of being an actor in “Being John Malcovich”.

Anyway, one of the experiences of the evening was drinking with Mr Producer, a second-generation Iranian immigrant from the People’s Independent Sunshine Republic of California.

It is a continual source of wonder that the most erudite, Wildean wit I have met in Cambridge is a US national (even if the world suspects his passport of being a fake because the page numbers are not in proper sequence).

When we realised a bottle of the house-white at the college bar would cost less split two ways than a pint (the first two times I typed that it came out “punt”) we basically went crazy.

Would that I had stopped there. Or that I had not had a gin and tonic within work hours with the director of development.

Um … where was this going? Oh, I forget. Merry Christmas one and all!

Hurm, had not quite counted on that ...

When beginning to lay plans to stay on the UK until Christmas to "wait and see" what might happen with the PhD application, I should perhaps have checked my return air ticket terms and conditions.

The kinda sorta plan was that I'd start a job in London in August and then fly home at Christmas regardless of whether I was going to be working in London or studying Cambridge as of October this year.

Except my return journey expires in September.

Yes, yes, dear reader. I knew this when I left: return tickets are only good for a year. I just mislaid that fact along the way.

So, unless I find something really worth staying for, looks like I'm home in September.

Home and unemployed.

Of course, if I get into the PhD and get funding, I'll have to be back here by October.

Confused yet? I am. And I'd better start applying seriously for jobs in Australia, too, by the look of things ...

My rapidly diminishing stockpile of rationality

It is now fairly obviously May.

Which deprives me of the slender shield to my sanity of being able to claim my exams start next month. They now start this month. A much scarier prospect.

Indeed, after three years away from full-time study I’d kind of forgotten how one enters the twilight of one’s sanity in an exam period.

The colleges are hushed and closed to visitors. The libraries are full of pale, serious people and piles of undergraduates’ folders and notes. (My favourite so far, three cheerfully gift-wrapping covered binders marked “Culture Wars”). Punting is done elsewhere, in a sun that shines not on us, by tourists.

My moods are up and down, my body clock – with the slightest application of exam pressure – has magically shed its Cambridge conditioning (waking as late as 10.30) to return to my office slave settings (awake by 7.30, but possibly as early as 5.45).

People are going out less, but partying harder it seems when they do.

I am trying with various degrees of willpower and success to prune my social life, fun levels and intake from within the Beer vitamin group.

I oscillate between a confident sense that I am in a good position, and a certain dread that I’ve not really been working hard enough to get the results I need if I want to carry on into the PhD program.

I over-react to some things (finding utterly hysterical the “Sex and Cycling” article in the free local magazine “Cambridge Agenda”), and disregard others with cavalier bravado (the requirement that my committee minutes be a rational and unbiased record of proceedings).

I have sudden surges of energy and productivity, or lethargy and napping.

I am thus the model of a perfectly normal student whose exams start within three weeks and finish within four.

On the upside, today is a good mood day and while I appear to have lost the power of rational conversation with flatmates, I am churning out model essays on the theory of customary international law and global society.

I am also realising that perhaps one of the greatest privileges of my education has been taking Professor Phillip Allott’s history and theory course, which I think has changed me as a lawyer.

I also had a friendly neighbourhood physicist ask if I’d like to share a house with him and some other grads next year, if should I get to stay on.

And as far as non-Cambridge options go, a recruitment agency finally called me back last week, so the plan B of working in London after graduating and some travel may yet come to pass.

Anyway, over soon one way or another, if I can just keep the pace and my sanity.

Strike that. If I can just keep the pace.

Ph.D. angst

I’m not a fan of palpitations. My neat, tidy organised life is structured to avoid self-inflicted nasty surprises.

It should really not come as a surprise when you have friends round for dinner and someone, gently, reminds you that you need two referees to support your Ph.D. application.

Ideally, you should know this, and have started chasing referees weeks before. You should not wake screaming at 4 am when it finally sinks in that between the impending DOOM of Christmas and your departure for Singapore, you have under 10 days to write a research proposal and get your references together.

Indeed, it should not surprise you to do the maths and realise that only a saint (fully equipped with miracles) could get references to you from Australia in time to meet Cambridge deadlines and requirements.

(“No, fax copy will not do, sir. Three originals, with a completed cover form signed by applicant and referee in a sealed envelope. Remember the referee must sign the envelope over the seal, and cover their signature with clear tape. Red tape, sir? Ha ha. No, since the Act of Supremacy, papal blessing of the documents is no longer a formal requirement. Remember: only return the sealed references with your original application. Do not have the referee post them in directly. That will simply result in wailing and gnashing of teeth. On your part.”)

Anyway, one wonderful referee now teaches in Nottingham – and I caught him virtually on his way out of the office on holiday and he has still prepared a reference; and my lovely LL.M. supervisor (who knows me so slightly I’m happy that she can distinguish me from surrounding inanimate objects and remember my research idea) has also stepped up to the plate.

Now to pound out a 2,000 word research proposal. After referees, though, that should be a piece of cake (in an eerie moment, I first typed “panic attack” instead of “piece of cake” … ).

PS Oh, the photo - things are no longer this green, but ain't it pretty? (Thanks for hosting it Beth.) I'm working in the library just out of sight to the left. Squint, I'm waving.