When I had to abandon my original plans to start a doctorate last September, I must admit I was a bit despondent and irritated I couldn’t continue to the next level straight away. On reflection, this has probably been the best thing that could of happened and I thought it would be useful to blog about why I feel this way.
One of my major worries was that I would lose the impetus of study and the time and space for it within my busy work and home life. This hasn’t happened, in fact I’m probably spending as much time reading and writing as I ever did during my masters! The difference is, i’m finally spending the time exploring texts and ideas that I want to. What has really helped is attending a few conferences and workshops over the period since I ended my study and following up interesting ideas.
Having come into Sociology and Education through a quite eclectic route of study, this time and space has also allowed me to read some of those classic text I missed out on. Recently these have included Willis’ Learning to Labour, Lukes’ Power: a radical view as well as a number of more specific texts to the area I now plan to do my doctorate around.
This time and space to broaden my reading I feel is something that I would have missed out on if I embarked immediately onto a doctoral programme and now has me much more excited and focused on the next stage feeling more prepared than I ever could have done if I had started back in September. As I reflected on previously, it has also allowed me to explore exactly what I wanted from a doctorate and which one is right for me.
Hopefully the next few months will give me the space to continue this reading and to develop my writing through this blog, contributing to some other blogs and a few other projects to help hone some of these skills before I return to the formal journey towards a doctorate.
