Coming back to a part-time PhD project after taking time away from it is not easy. The whole project cools down and you just can't remember what the thread was, where you left off, what you have said, and whether or not the whole thing has any merit. In fact, you can easily convince yourself that it doesn't.
The trick must be breaking the seal on your own inertia and just pile into to it, by writing. At least, I hope so because that's going to be my therapy.
1. Any idea we have that time "exists" as a separate and knowable entity is mistaken. Time exists only to the extent that it is experienced. The present is a "between-place", the middle that separates the beginning that is recollected and the end that is expected.
2. Time does not create Narrative, it is the other way round. We conjure time through the process (emplotment) of the arrangement of facts and events into sequence. The past and the future are brought into being by the ever-moving "knife's edge" of the present.
3. Characters do not create a plot, it is the other way round. First, there is the plot, through which characters (and character) emerge. The process of emplotment seems to be at the heart of our sense of time and of personality.
I know this is probably grossly simplified, but it is helpful in framing the idea of reaching into personal development via narratives.
1. A single event, even if temporally experienced, is not a narrative. A narrative must consist of a set or series of events, which brings in Bateson's idea of logical typing.
2. A narrative, moreover, requires as a concept a narrator and an audience. It is not just a series of events that just happen or are temporally experienced. Narrative is brought into being only in certain circumstances where there is the self and there is another.
3. A beginning, middle and end, is a form of narrative. So, intrinsically and not post-hoc, are "departure and arrival, departure and return, means and end, suspension and resolution, problem and solution" (Carr, 1986) (p 49).
Hi Chris, How are things going with the PhD. It's something I was thinking about a while back after I finished the Henley MBA but all the PhDs seemed to be away from my own interests. You seem to have found one that resonates with me. Are you enjoying it? It the experience massively different to that of the MBA?
Hi, thanks, PhD moving quite nicely in my mind. Only needs writing!!!
I am enjoying the PhD topic immensely, and I have found that the subject has benefited my teaching and thinking no end. Whether others feel the benefit of this knowledge is another matter, of course. While there are some similarities (e.g. "you're on your own"), it is actually very different from an MBA. I do recall undertaking my MBA Dissertation (in 1998) and feeling decidedly "lost" in the process whilst writing it, even though I very much enjoyed the topic and gathering the data. It wasn't easy for me to identify what the project is "about". I think for some people this is very clear from day one, but I was over-ambitious in terms of wanting to be very philosophical. Mind you, I probably still am. It's the thought-experiment part of my research that I like most.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's something I am very interested in. Let me ask your advice on something so. I finished my MBA in 2008 and it still feels very recent, not least the memories of spending a lot of family time in the evenings and weekends studying and writing. Should I leave more of a gap before returning to study? Do you think it helped your motivation for the PhD?
I don't think there is a rule-book about these things. Most people who do a doctorate after an MBA either do it quickly because they have a great thread that runs from one to the other, or they have no connection at all between the two things, and the gap doesn't matter how long it is. My motivation was not related at all to the MBA, more connected with my context here on the staff at Henley and immanent merger with a university.