The third and (maybe) final year

On the first day of my last academic year of secondary school I nervously told my friends – yes, I had friends – that it was the last first day we would have. The very next day, I told them all that it was the last second day we would have. And on it went until the end of the year with me driving everyone around me, and myself, crackers waiting anxiously to see what came next.

And back to now: Annual review passed – without issue, and certainly not worth the panic it induced. Now it’s time to focus, for once, as I’m now in what should be my final year of the PhD, and once again I’m wondering just what will come next.

The PhD is a strange project that requires absolute self-belief that you have got an idea that actually amounts to something, despite the fact that research (in this country, anyway) is often mocked as people like Gove declare “who needs experts?” as funding is pipe-dream and as the entire academic system crumbles around me. Yet, I cling to this idea that mutants, of all things, will get me a career even in spite of the system. And yet where will that career take me? I dream of publishing presses, conferences around the world and the chance to meet new academics, but it’s only a dream so long as I know I get to call the North East home. But soon it might not be. The life of the PhD, of that single-minded academic obsessive is dictated by the job market which there is a certain irony to when we are compared to nomads; expected to leave wherever we are each semester in search of a new (short term, insecure) contract. (Maybe I could do my job while living in a motorhome and touring the UK? I wonder) But this familiar creepy anxiety I must turn away from. I’ve only got a year to finish off the first job. Time to focus.

My to-do list for this year is fairly simple:

1/ Get the actual work done

2/ Don’t invent new work

The second part of that may prove harder than point one. I’ve already had two new book ideas, an idea for a journal and yes, okay, it was me who wrote the call for papers for a Pokémon conference. Yesterday I did return to my original thesis for the first time in a couple of weeks, and there was a familiar sense of pride at churning out another 1,000 words. My own work has become my greatest source of comfort as everything else in life is terrifyingly up in the air and ready to crash at any moments. It may be the first day of my last year, but mutants were at the start of the journey and I know they will see me to the end (whenever that might be – hopefully October, though).