Several entries ago, I reported the discovery of Jill Walker's site documenting the explorations of her PhD program. I've now found several more and have realized that they, along with mine, describe the narrative arc of our PhD programs, or at least portions of our programs. My blog attempts to tell the unfolding story of my encounters with story.
Danah Boyd, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, explores "how people negotiate their presentation of self in mediated social contexts to an unknown audience."
Christy Dena's sites cover a number of fields, including Writer Response Theory, New Media Arts, and the ones of greatest interest to me, Polymorphic Narrative, and CrossMediaStorytelling. Dena is a PhD candidate at New Media and Creative Writing, School of Creative Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia.
I also keep another blog, password protected and mostly for my own benefit and that of my doctoral committee, that traces the narrative arc of the process of my program, where this one is about content.
I find fascinating the idea of being able to follow the stories of intellectual discovery of globally far-flung scholars.
Hello Katharine,
Thankyou for dropping by my blog and posting about it. I must confess, I do not consider my blog an accurate or at least open window to the development of my PhD. I find I censor my ideas at times, taking pains not to divulge all my ‘valuable’ ideas. I’m not comfortable with this approach because I have a competing philosophy: I’m aware that my theories change and that I have many more that others do not know about. At times I urge myself to put my thoughts out there, because it may be years before they are publically known…but then at other times I think I should hold them back to be revealed at length. I also fall victim to the fear that my ideas will loose their innovation if known and utilised before I ‘claim’ them. I’m aware that this is a defeatist attitude too — my ideas are linked to others…I do not think in isolation and so cannot completely ‘claim’ anything.
How are you/do you intend to manage your ideas on your blog?
Christy: Your points are well taken. I have lately considered blogging about my research question for my dissertation but have had the same reservations about someone else claiming the ideas.
You’ve given me something to think about in terms of how to manage my ideas in this public space. Of course, I haven’t been too worried thus far because I’ve had the impression no one is reading this blog!
I also really admire how you have set up the page describing your polymorphic narrative project and am considering doing something similar for my dissertation.