thesisthoughts

OK, I’ve been in Australia for a week and a half already, and I feel that if I don’t start recording a bit of what I am going through, it will be lost.

I left Israel the day school finished for the year. Exhausted and stressed, I parted from my colleagues and from everything that the school year demands of me and got on the plane with my two younger children. Thank goodness they were cooperative and we all slept most of the way to Australia. The family welcome we received was as always, wonderful… our visit had begun.

Mylife is always intense, rushed and pressured, and so was the beginning of my month out here. The next morning, at 9 am, I was supposed to be at Monash University for the MERC (Monash Education Research Conference). I was panicking about finally turning up at the uni in person, after 3 years of online study. I was shy and unsure of how the day would go.

The day was interesting and varied. I payed particular attention to the kinds of work the research students were presenting and how they presented themselves as students and researchers.

The highlight of my day was finally meeting GP my supervisor and we had a nice lunch together. It seems to me that meeting someone face-to-face after years of online conversation is as unnerving as a real first time meeting.

The next article I attempt to write may very well be about distance education and the experiences I have had with it.  

After a weekend off (crammed full of family commitments), I was back at Monash on Monday and Tuesday. The Winter School for postgraduate students was a terrific way to get the feel of the campus, of the research assistance available and to start to chat to other new (and not so new) PhD students. The workshops were interesting and relevant and gave me a sense that I’m really getting started and that this PhD idea is viable.

I especially enjoyed the workshop by Dr  Judy Williams and Ros Winters on Self Study. The session on Autoethnography by Dr Peter De Vries and the sessions on writing by Rosemary Viete and Anne Prince were also very worthwhile.

One of the highlights of those days was going into the Matheson Library for the first time. The library staff have given me so much assistance over the past three years and really have catered for all my research needs, despite me being on the other side of the world. When I got to the Education section and started seeing the books I had used for my thesis (scanned as PDF files or read as ebooks) I almost couldn’t breathe. The excitement was immense. I had butterflies in my stomache and was simply overcome by the experience. I was shocked at my own reaction.

I took five books from the library that day. As I approached the loans desk, like a normal student doing an everyday act, only I was aware that I was a student in my fourth year at Monash, touching “real” library books for the first time.

My next post will tell about my experiences at the AATE coference in Hobart.