October 27th

Alright, so I’m a slacker when it comes to this blog then but when nothing majorly exciting happens its hard to find things to write about and I felt it (the blog) was getting a little boring. Not that anything exciting has happened but I have received complaints about my lack of blogging.

I went to a research seminar last week that was amazing. David Martin-Jones talked about film making in Scotland – not only Scottish films but foreign countries shooting in Scotland. This of course included Bollywood I was surprised to find that a film I own had a song set in Scotland and I never realized it. I guess I just thought it was Switzerland, again. The presentation was a big improvement of talks from the one on Ozu I went to and I’ll be reading his book as soon as its returned to the library.

I’ve been stewarding for the Warwick Student Cinema so I can get films for free. So far I’ve seen Jurassic park(which was amazing on the big screen), Remember Me(which I personally loved), Whip it and Date Night. I can’t wait for Iron Man 2 this Friday. I’ve also applied for a marketing coordinator position with the society but who knows if I’ll get that.

This current week I’ve been very stressed out about the topic of dissertations. I went to a graduate skills programme on Monday about PhD proposal and funding and it freaked me out. I did find out that I can apply for a scholarship that would cover my living fees and tuition fees for the home rate leaving a slight gap for the difference between home fees and overseas fees but still that would be awesome. The catch though is that I’ve got to get a move on it and talked to a prof by the end of this term, Dec 11 so I can make sure that Warwick can supervise me so I can then apply by January 31st!!!! In order to apply of course I’ve got to come up with a PhD proposal that is several things most importantly something that I won’t get tired of writing about for at least the 3 years of the program and up to 10 years after that. In essence my dissertation will stay with me for my academic career. Just slightly daunting. Of course the idea I have has to be original and add something new the the discussion and field I’m interested in. Luckily we were given sites to look up recent and past dissertations to make sure we’re not duplicating anything.

The proposal consists of 4 elements:

1. main research questions and what I hope to prove and add to the knowledge of the subject
2. the outline of the scope of my research i.e. the focus: 100 years? 5 years? certain directors? ect
3. what methodologies I’ll use to pursue my goals i.e. archive research, detailed textual analysis, case studies and theoretical frameworks.
4. a discussion on how my research will differ from research already published and conducted. where my project will stand within its field.

And I need someone in the department that is able to supervise my project to give advice and help me along the way. Needless to say I was a little intimidated by the whole talk and having to come up with a PhD dissertation topic in 7 weeks when I haven’t really nailed down my MA dissertation topic and having only completed 3 weeks of the MA program itself. I’ve been busy reading different books and doing research on books that have already been written and watching as much as I can to get ideas. The thing that has really helped bring my ideas together is putting all my ideas into a PowerPoint presentation. It’s saved my life, and  thankfully I have a better grasp on how to go about channeling my ideas. I still need to go see my personal tutor for questions but I feel 100% calmer than I did after the meeting on Monday. In fact, even writing this all out has helped – funny how that works!