I asked a friend to pray to you on my behalf but she reckoned that you wouldn’t listen to an alcohol-imbibing, sex craved, non-fasting Muslim like her. I asked another friend to talk to you but he didn’t think that you’d have time for a married man who’s secretly cheating on his wife with other men. Moreover, he is an atheist and he had moral objections to speaking with you.

So, I guess, you’re stuck talking to me directly though I’m not sure how much you’d care to listen to an unabashed consumerist, homosexual with 106.48 GBs of very “legitimate” music and who thinks that getting laid would be a good way to avoid thinking about my problems.

God, I need a bright idea. A really bright idea for my research. It doesn’t have to be super fantastic, it just has to be logical, interesting, novel and intellectually fascinating, enough to get the academics’ juices going. As your all-seeing-eye and all-hearing-ear would have realised by now, I’ve just flushed a great idea down the toilet. I’m effectively starting from scratch again but yet, the deadlines have not been moved. I need divine intervention. I really do. I’m desperate (in more ways than one!).

So please God, whenever you feel up to it, send a bolt of lightning and strike me down, either with a wonderful idea for my research or enough electricity to kill me - either one would “solve” my problem.

Oh… er… if you could do it before my next meeting with my very patient and very understanding supervisor, that would be great!

I thank you kindly.

AMEN
jl

p/s if you had extra time and energy, I’d be extra grateful if you’d also send down an “angel” with a great body, a wonderful personality, a loving-disposition, a healthy bank-account and great sexual prowess…

Posted on October 9th, 2005 by jl
Filed under: Crisis !!!, blah blah | 2 Comments »

I hate my life!

As you do as a Ph.D. student, I spent months exploring different ideas and areas of research that were in the end discarded for one reason or other. Then, about two months ago, I latched on to an idea that I then further developed and started to refine. Intellectually, things were finally going well. I was very busy, but it was truly productive work that traslated into substantial progress. While I was not yet close to completing the detailed research proposal that I should complete as the first stage of the Ph.D. here at the ANU, I was definitely at least halfway there.

Then I found, and read, this journal article over the weekend. I didn’t like it. Though our case studies were slightly different, we shared the same research area. More importantly, our central argument was far too similar though we appear to start from different points/premises. Then I vaguely recalled that the writer was a student in my very Department and that his thesis would be in the Departmental library. I went in search…

In short? I found “my” thesis. And two months worth of work is now down the drain.

My supervisor is not to blame for this oversight - he was absent from the Department for the few years that this thesis was written and submitted. I met with him today and he’s helpfully suggested two other areas I could work on but it does mean a whole new set of literature which effectively means going back to square one.

So, just when I thought I could seriously take a much needed day-off tomorrow, I now have major emergency work to do.

This is so hilarious, it’s not funny.

But I’m laughing anyway. In fact, I’m laughing very hard. How could you not when the weather is as brilliant as it is today - bright sunshine, blue skies streaked with light white clouds, light wind and 26C! It’s gorgeous weather today - and I had to laugh.

One good thing that came out of this is that it confirms that I was on to a good idea - yes, I had my doubts, but I think all Ph.D. students question their own abilities at one point or another, if not all the time - shame that it’s been done…

Now… back to laughing at my farcical life…

Posted on October 5th, 2005 by jl
Filed under: Crisis !!! | 8 Comments »

Have you ever encountered a problem that is so big it overwhelms you? Have you ever been confronted with a situation that seems so impossible to overcome that you reckon you’re better off just giving up and caving in? Have you ever faced a mountain so huge that any rational assessment suggests that you’d be wiser to not even bother trying to climb it at all?

Well… I’m in that situation and I am very, very, very frustrated. In fact, I’ve been in that situation for quite a long while now. Some of you might already know that I have always had a problem with funding the Ph.D. here at the ANU (see this for background). While I had hoped to raise the remainder of the necessary funding from other sources, these have all come to nought.

(1) ISIS Malaysia turned down my application to the Perdana Scholarship. In fact, they didn’t select me for the interview process and didn’t bother informing me why my application had failed.

(2) I cannot reapply to my current sponsors, Australia’s Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), because in order to apply for the Endeavour Scholarship, I have to be resident outside of Australia and I can’t be resident outside of Australia and simultaneously be pursuing the Ph.D. now that I am here. I have also had this (negative) fact confirmed in writing.

(3) I am also no longer eligible for the major source of funding that most Ph.D. students in Australia rely on - the IPRS. The ANU has a rule that disqualifies currently registered students from being eligible.

The problem really is the huge sum of money that I need. Tuition fees is just over AUD20,000 a year. Cost of living, i.e. maintenance, would also amount to about AUD20,000 a year. Thus, at the very least, I will need to raise AUD80,000 to fund the remaining years of my Ph.D. study, and that’s assuming that my research does not run beyond three years in total. Most students end up finishing in about three and a half years, or four even! I wouldn’t agonise if it was a much smaller sum of money…

I considered funding myself, i.e. “borrowing” money and investing it into this programme. However, several things hold me back:

• it is a very huge sum of money that I need. AUD80,000 is equivalent to about MYR200,000. I don’t really know where to begin raising that amount of money all on my own.
• MYR200,000 would buy a two-storey house in a (less desirable) middle-class neighbourhood in the Klang Valley that would house a family of four.
• it would take your average Malaysian employee at least four or five years to earn MYR200,000
• even if I had MYR200,000 in cash, is a Ph.D. the best, or wisest, thing to invest the money in?

While I am happy to work part-time to fund my stay here, I can realistically only earn about AUD20,000 in the time that I have and still make progress on the primary reason for my being here. I would still need to raise about AUD60,000 from some big third-party source. So, no, working part-time as a tutor, or in a cafe, or whatever isn’t enough. Neither is getting small sums of funding in bits and pieces. I really do need one major guaranteed source of funding that will at least get me halfway there, and provide some stability and security, before this problem becomes even manageable for me to handle the rest on my own.

But as it stands, I can’t even bear thinking about this situation at the moment. It’s very debilitating. Each time it pops up in my brain, I become completely paralysed - both physically and mentally. The only part of me that reacts are my emotions. I feel very frustrated, angry and annoyed all that the same time. It affects my work and I just want to crawl into a hole and stay there. This is one of those (few) times when it’s all too clear that money solves everything.

Meanwhile, the only rational thing that I am doing is “ignoring” this issue by relegating it to the back of my brain so that I can concentrate on my work, my research, and at the very least, make progress on that if nothing else. Although we could certainly ask the question: ultimately, what’s the point in that?

So, what has AUD50,000 of Australian tax-payers’ money bought me so far?

• time out from life
• new friends in Australia
• opportunity to experience living in yet another country
• opportunity to catch up with my (long lost) cousin who lives here
• knowledge and skill of knitting

I can’t really add anything from my academic experience to this list. The skills that I might or might not have learnt so far are not unique, nor many - I could easily have picked them up on my own anywhere in the world - and really these skills and knowledge are of not much use if I do not complete the Ph.D. at all.

Frankly. I. Am. Stuck.
Everything. Seems. So. Futile.

You might ask why I want this Ph.D. The answer: I want to be an academic. I want to study policy issues in the field of international political economy. I want to educate. I want to guide future students in understanding the nature and causes of the societies in which we live. The Ph.D. not only builds the necessary skills and knowledge towards that goal, it is also a partial ticket towards the long-term career. Sadly, because of the “public good”, or “social-spillover effect”, and the generally lower salary scales, it is a career path that doesn’t lend itself well to “normal” cost-benefit analysis where financing is concerned.

I really do not know what else to do. And I honestly can’t think about it any more without it affecting what work/research I am now doing at the ANU. While life’s challenges can sometimes be a good thing, I do wish this situation was more tractable. As it stands, I think I’ve done all I can and I am not getting anywhere…

—

You have to protect the integrity of your own idea - and your own vision - and your own belief. You can share what you feel if you want to. You can invite others to contribute to your cause if you wish. You can adapt and adjust if this is part of what you feel is appropriate. But you cannot allow yourself to be cajoled, coerced, pressured, bamboozled or bothered into dropping something that you sorely want to hold on to. Resist that urge. Make a stand. Defend a principle. Protect a dream that has every chance of coming true.
- Cainer, for Aries today

Posted on July 13th, 2005 by jl
Filed under: Crisis !!! | 20 Comments »

I had a very productive and satisfying discussion with my supervisor this afternoon. It all went very well, far better than I had hoped. He is such a wonderful and understanding man (I hope he’s reading this…! *grin*).

He was open to the idea of my proposed area of research. While he prodded me on a few areas to clarify how I was going to tackle the more difficult issues, he seemed happy with my present answers, at least enough to let me get on with my work. We also clarified a few matters that were not clear to me and about which I had doubts - the need for a “theoretical” component and the ambit of my research. All in all, we had a very healthy discussion and I think we’re both happy with where we stand.

We’ve now agreed on a work plan for the next couple of months. I will send him a list of material I intend to consult in the next couple of weeks and I report my progress and findings back to him on a 2/3 week interval basis.

I’m of course rather excited about the outcome of our discussion and came out of his room an a high. I’m happy that I now have a more concrete direction of where I am going and that the thesis now appears more “doable” unlike a week ago when it all seemed too fuzzy and too big a project to grapple with. I can now actually picture the final product.

—

Doing a PhD is in many ways emotional and psychological suicide (as I’m sure this woman and probably this one too will attest). You’re expected to embrace a finite project for at least a three year period - most run into four or five years - you effectively live with and do the same thing over and over again for that length of time. More importantly you’re supposed to be the chief stewart and the full work-force of how it develops. Thus, whether it fails or succeeds depends largely on you. You try not to think about it at all and break the work into small manageable chunks. However at the same time, the fear that the magnimity of it all will consume you persists. You either thrive on it and stay as far ahead as you can, or you succumb and drop out at some point.

Posted on March 14th, 2005 by jl
Filed under: Crisis !!! | 1 Comment »

Before I give everyone the impression that I’m doing nothing but having fun here, I should point out that I’m on the outset of a minor intellectual crisis!

After arriving and settling into Canberra in mid-February, it took me a while to get my brain-cells going. For a while there I thought my brain had died - I was reading no more than one journal article a day - that’s about 40 pages or so. It wasn’t until this week that I feel that I’m finally reading an acceptable volume of material on a daily basis. I’m now reading four articles/chapters a day which is acceptable.

[For the uninitiated, a degree in International Relations and Political Science largely consists of a reading, reading, reading, and more reading. Also, at the early stages of a PhD, most students do what's called a "literature review" which consists of ... yes, you got it, reading!]

That said and done, I discovered a problem, also known as the “first symptom of the PhD disease” - I think, no, I know, I need to change my research topic. Why? Because (1) I discovered a number of published articles that have effectively argued what I would have wanted to argue in my thesis. (2) Even if I did advance the same argument and turned it into thesis length, I don’t now think that the topic lends itself well to a PhD thesis length discussion.

I’m in a bit of a quandary, especially since I’m due to meet my supervisor at 14H tomorrow for a discussion. After an intense weekend of reading and much reflection [that's the other thing that students do - think, think, think and think some more], I think I know how I want to change the direction of my research. While it will remain within the same broad research area, i.e. international political economy of the Asia Pacific, it will take on a slightly different form and focus. Problem is I haven’t concretely conceptualised what it is that I want to do yet - all I have now is an intuitive feel for it (I tend to work that way…on intuition). I think I need another two weeks worth of intense reading before I can intelligently describe what it is I want to do for the next three years of my life.

Meanwhile, I’m worried I might sound like an idiot in front of the supervisor tomorrow. But that’s probably no different from how I have been feeling in the past month. I feel like an imposter half the time - a PhD makes such intellectual demands on a person and I’m constantly insecure about my abilities to meet the challenge. I think people overestimate my intelligence and abilities. God only knows how I ended up here… it certainly wasn’t in my grand plan of life! So aside from the short term worry of how I will look in front of the supervisor tomorrow, I’m also worried about my longer term intellectual project that I’m ever so afraid will bomb out.

I know I hop from one existentialist crisis to another but honestly, some are more real than others. And this one is one of the real big ones.

God help me …!

Posted on March 13th, 2005 by jl
Filed under: Crisis !!! | 4 Comments »