I regularly post about Adelaide, as I am proud South Australia, so please indulge me with a few photos of our fantastic new Adelaide Oval.
If the ground draws me to watch the Crows arch rival Port Adelaide it must be special!
Wikipedia provides a useful history of this famous oval
Link to Adelaide Oval website
I was wondering what to write about and was taken by this challenge –last five songs on your Spotify playlist.
This week it’s been Spotify Radio Playlists. It’s an easy way to listen to music in a theme. I have always loved the Corrs, great harmonies. Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights from her debut album, The Kick Inside, one of the great albums of all time.
This wasn’t an impulse, but after a week if feels like about the craziest thing I’ve ever done.
Enrolling at Uni whilst still working fulltime seemed straight forward. I’ll use a days annual leave this semester and then revise my working arrangements for next semester. I can fit the other seminars in around lunch and that should work just fine. So I thought!
Week One and I’ve had a full day at Uni, finding my way around only after my daughter, a third year student, came to show me around. The Workshop was daunting, I couldn’t turn my computer on or save a file without help; that was before I even considered the Workshop content! Then the three hour Seminar – I was exhausted only to be go confronted with a large reading list. That was just Monday!
Then it’s been late home from work every night, followed by a work event every night bar Friday where I thought it would be good to spend time with my wife and daughter. After we’d had dinner it was just relax in front of the TV and a movie, Cast Away which I hadn’t seen for years.
At least now I’ve got a long weekend to do my Uni reading, write my monthly article for The Adelaide Review and catch up on some work.
It all seemed easy last year when I experimented putting Herminia Ibarra’s fabulous book, Working Identity into practice with a couple of undergrad subjects at Uni. The reality of commencing Honours with an eye to a PHD is quite different – this is serious in fact crazy.
A couple of weeks ago I posted about my new adventure. Today I sat through the Orientation Lecture for Honours.
Here are my thoughts …
I am notorious for taking on challenges. I’m never happy unless I’m busy.
Following a weekend in late 2012, organised by firm on life after professional services I read a book called Working Identity by Herminia Ibarra at the recommendation of one of the facilitators. Thanks for recommending it Tim!
The central plank of the book is to experiment before committing. As I put that thought into practice last year I took a couple of undergraduate subjects in Media. It involved sitting in lectures, attending tutorials and writing essays. I did really well – hopefully not a false positive!
As I continued to experiment I also struck up a dialogue with the Commerce School of a local university about how I might go about undertaking some research.
I also started to write articles for The Adelaide Review, all the time continuing with my full time work.
I took plenty on and certainly wasn’t bored!
As the year went on, I found I was really enjoying my study and was looking to further it. Why not do some Postgraduate study in my field I thought. So I started a conversation with the Commerce School and they were enthusiastic. I was too – hopefully not another false positive
Next step, how to go about it. A Masters by Research and then PHD maybe? Seemed pretty good until we talked more and I realised I had no research skills of an academic nature. I had considerable research and writing experience but business is different to academia. This was likely to be a limiting factor. Then came the suggestion of undertaking Honours which could lead into a PHD.
I applied had an interview and was accepted into Honours – another positive step. I thought that was job done and it would have been if my potential Supervisor hadn’t taken early retirement! This was a potential issue as having a supervisor is essential.
The challenge now was to find a Supervisor.
Over Christmas I wrote a submission. This is when I learned something which I now understand is a key issue, that being, how important having a Supervisor interested in the topic is.
Over the next couple of weeks I had a series of meetings with potential Supervisors, eventually finding one who was interested in a topic which I had initially discussed with the Commerce School in October.
So I now have a supervisor and idea for a research question . With that the journey begins!
The question is have I bitten off more than I can chew?
Photo: An Australian university campus’ Image: An Australian university campus (AimanB; Flickr.com/ Creative Commons)