So, I've been settling in, I suppose!
Durham's a really, really lovely town. I will at some point actually remember to bring my camera out with me so you can see how pretty it is. My excitement at being able to just hang out in a cathedral for funsies is sort of bordering on the ridiculous. I may have to audition for the choir there next year, because how cool would that be, honestly?
Anyway, so I've basically been getting used to finding where things are, and being somewhat social. I went out to a concert in Newcastle with my flatmate and his friend, as well as a few pubs on various nights, so it's been nice to meet people and try to dredge up my social skills. I've gotten less awkward over the years, which is frankly a relief. Yay for being able to make friends!
I also went to a lecture being held by Durham's English department on the Faustian cultural myth, which was really fascinating, and gave me an interesting perspective on my own work that I'm interested in exploring further. I had posited that industrial novels were moving away from the Faustian myth, whereas the PhD student giving the lecture offered the idea that the myth was still there, just translated onto a wider social scale by way of the economy. It was interesting stuff, and definitely enjoyable.
Additionally, this weekend I went back down to Leeds for the 'Reimagining the Victorians' conference. It was really interesting, despite it not actually centering on my field; instead, it was focused on the emerging field of Neo-Victorianism, which concentrates on modern and postmodern literature that appropriates the Victorian era and its literature. Despite not being familiar with a lot of the literature involved, it was still quite interesting, and I only wish I had gotten more sleep the night before, because I was exhausted by the end of it due to having gotten up at 5am just to get down there.
I also inadvertently ended up participating in discussion (at the end of the day, so my coherence was probably questionable) by defending/explaining steampunk culture, which I totally had not counted on. It did get me thinking, however, that there may be a paper in it for me somewhere. I have been saying for ages now that steampunk is a huge body of evidence ready for analysis for why Neo-Victorianism has emerged, and how.
It's also apparently a really good thing that I have paper ideas as well, because simultaneously the most helpful and most terrifying part of the conference was a training session, wherein one professor outlined, without frills, the necessary number of and quality of papers one needed to get published per assessment cycle (roughly four years, I believe) in order to get a permanent job in the UK. It basically scared the bejesus out of me, since the two most acceptable quality grades of papers that received funding were 'internationally regarded' and 'internationally exceptional'.
So there's that. No pressure. Also, I should start writing papers and submitting them now so that by the time my PhD is finished I have things under my belt.
...I'm going to go research things now.
This of course led me to have a stunningly realistic anxiety dream a couple nights later in which I received a truly abysmal score on my dissertation and was thereby rejected from life. Ugh. My brain sucks sometimes. So I'm going to go email my department about giving me my actual grade and certificate of completion so that I can give it to Durham now.
Oh right, and I also introduced myself to one of my advisors, since he was one of the keynote speakers at the conference. He seems very nice, so I'm looking forward to working with him, assuming my anxiety dreams don't actually become reality. Yes.
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