Win.

Okay, so everything's worked out, so far as I know. I have my ID card, I'm officially in the system, now it's just a matter of timing my visa application when the time comes around so I'm not without my passport while I have to travel or something. But as far as the university is concerned, I'm registered.

Whew.

This means that I took out lots of books from the library today with my newly activated card! From all sorts of different subjects too--I'm reading up on the English working class and the evolution of the Gothic and Victorian urbanism to start looking for some avenues of approach for research. From there I'll do my literature survey this weekend. It is going to be busy times, but will totally happen.

Anyway, I'm glad my run-in with bureaucracy has ended for the time being. Now I can do actual work instead of paperwork.

ARGH.

So that whole thing about being registered by today? FAIL.

Apparently (and I'm not the only one with this problem, so...) departments are giving people matriculation concessions like the one I have when that actually doesn't help with getting me registered on time, because my visa isn't under the right institution. I have to be able to get a proper visa from Durham to actually get my ID and such. So the immigration advisors have to call the English department and be all, "WTF?" and then the English department, I guess, has to take a leap of faith and give me an unconditional offer if I'm going to enroll for this term. In conclusion, ARGH.

Like the dude at immigration said, I'm glad I'm not the only one in this situation, but seriously, dammit.

This is what happens when academic departments don't communicate with administration.

So with any luck the English department likes me enough to trust in my ability to not fail my MA and properly deserve my admission to their PhD program. Because if they don't...well, I'm sort of screwed. And/or I'm back to starting in January, or having to leave, or begging Leeds to just get my effing paperwork done faster before I'm, I don't know, rejected from life.

I'm not actually freaking out as much as this post portrays, though perhaps I should be. But dammit, I'm proud of my dissertation even as I begin to find more and more flaws in it, so Leeds should give me my degree, and Durham should man up and give me a proper offer. Or something.

In any case, this leaves me without an ID card, which leaves me unable to access the library. So I'll be mooching off of my flatmates until further notice. Because I really do need to read, like, twenty books this weekend. Yes.

No Longer in Stasis

Fairly self-explanatory. Things have mostly started up. I had various induction-type things on Monday and Tuesday, which were frankly exhausting and not particularly illuminating--the usual jargon of "This is a great school!", "You're the cream of the crop!", then followed, of course, by "But get ready to work your ass off!"

It was a little better than that, and there was some useful information sprinkled in, but that was the general feeling. I had a bet going with an archaeology student as to how many times the international community was going to be referred to as "vibrant". Ah, corporate-speak.

Anyway.

I am almost registered. I should hopefully be completely there by tomorrow. Durham is rather old school with its insistence on lots of real paperwork in addition to online paperwork, so it's a bit more annoying than Leeds' process, but the end is in sight, which means that soon I will actually be able to take books out of the library.

It's a good thing too, because I am plunging straight into research. I had my first meeting with my supervisor, which went really well. He seems both reasonable and personable, and we were able to hash out some of the beginnings of what I'm doing with little fuss. He's apparently quite interested in intellectual history and cultural context, which suits me just fine, considering my topic.

My topic, as it happens, is morphing in new and interesting ways. I think I'm going to start by making a case for studying nonfiction within the framework of the Gothic, which I started doing a bit with my MA dissertation, but didn't really get to address fully. It's an unusual approach, perhaps a new one, but I think it could be really useful, not just for me but for other people looking at political readings of Gothic literature--what are the consequences of reversing the feed, as it were? Is it even possible? I suspect that it is, and I hope I can prove it. The topic can perhaps become the one which I'll address in my first official writing sample, which is due in May. From there I can start examining nonfiction on the Industrial Revolution from a Gothic perspective, and see where it takes me.

So yeah, that's about it. I'm meeting some cool people from all over the place, and getting to know the area a bit more. And writing 3000 words or so in the next week. Hey!

In which my emailing skills are employed with haste.

I have been proactive, and as a result have basically hounded the entire admissions and English departments of Durham to make sure that I can actually enroll properly.

To put this in context, apparently Leeds is going to take until December to finish processing my MA degree, which means that I can't provide proper documentation to Durham until then to get an unconditional placement with them, which means that I can't enroll. So I've spent most of the last couple of days emailing everyone from the administrator at Leeds' English department to the Durham admissions secretary to the senior tutor at my college to work it out.

To their credit, everyone's been really helpful, so it was mostly just me mildly freaking out while everyone else was competently answering my questions around me. Anyway, the last word is that I'm getting conditional enrollment status until I pass my MA, at which point I'll be bumped up to permanent status, unless I fail, and then I have to leave. So yes, now I'm good. It all seems rather obvious in retrospect, but I suppose I just had inflated expectations of grade-processing time.

To conclude, I am slowly getting better at this whole communication thing. Having email helps a lot, considering I will never get over how much I hate talking to strangers on the phone.

In other news, I have a new flatmate! And clearly the world is very small, because she's from Goshen, NY and went to Fordham for undergrad. So yeah, we bonded over the city. So now Tom's going to move out and Doris, from Germany, is going to move in, and then the house will be settled for the year. I think it'll work out well.

Life Adventures, plus conference

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.

Exploration!

So, after sleeping a lot this weekend, I ventured into the city proper today to start getting my bearings. Durham is indeed quite small, and therefore difficult to get lost in, but also very hilly and winding, so it takes a little while to get to places. I'm about a twenty-five minute walk to the university and to the city center, which is bustling and full of shops but also rather cute and cobblestoned. I stumbled into a cinema and a tourist information center as well, so even if I somehow get lost, I have a map of the area to guide me now.

The weather has been gorgeous lately, and I hope it lingers. Low teens (in Celsius) and sunny. And no rain! Jeez, England, way to be deceptive about your weather. Wandering around today was a pleasure.


Anyway, this is me on top of Durham Cathedral, which is massive, and clearly I need to go back to the gym to be able to climb this tower without feeling like I'm dying. I did make it, though, so I'm not totally useless yet. Unfortunately, the view of the city itself is a bit obscured by the parapet here, but it's very pretty, to be sure.

It's also extremely windy. This is the one picture where my hair isn't all up in my face.

In other news, Durham University has accepted my deferral request, so I'm now officially starting in October! I'm going to have to make a nuisance of myself at Leeds to make sure that they grade my dissertation and send word that my degree is finished before then, but now I don't have to worry about paying council tax and other annoyances that come from not being a student. Also, I shall be delving into the university's employment databases. Bwaha. So I now have just one month of a breather, and then I'll officially be a PhD student. I'm looking forward to it!

Now, what was my research proposal again?

Whew.

I have successfully relocated to Durham!

It took two trips and a lot of getting on and off of trains with very heavy luggage. Not really an experience I'd particularly like to repeat, but it can be done successfully. So I guess that's good to know.

The flat is as pleasant as I remember it, and indeed quite convenient. Sainsbury's is only a five minute walk away, and though I haven't ventured into town yet, I hear it's only about a 10-15 minute jaunt. My room is a glorified closet, but the bed is far more comfortable than what you find in student housing, so I'm sold on it. Plus, it's just nice to be living in a normal house, and not a dorm. I think I'm officially done with dorms now.

Anyway, I only have two flatmates so far but a couple more will be joining us in October. They're both very nice and fun to talk to--one is studying the philosophical history of quantum physics, and the other is studying Arabic, so there are definitely diverse interests in the house. We watched a movie last night that I had to excuse myself from halfway through because I was exhausted, but all in all it seems like we'll get along fine.

So that's that for now. I have a couple weeks to recover, and then I'm going back down to Leeds for a conference on 'Reimagining the Victorians', which should be quite interesting. Some familiar faces will be there for sure, including my Brontës seminar professor, and a friend from that same class. Also, one of my PhD advisors from Durham is to be a keynote speaker, so I'll be introducing myself to him. Fun times! I'm quite looking forward to it.