Blogging the PhD—first supervisory meeting

According to the student handbook, my supervisor and I are to meet for an hour every two weeks to talk over the thesis project, solve any problems, and exchange school requirements and ideas. With distance students like me, this means not walking into his office, but having a phone call or Skype. Bless the inventors of Skype—and of Facebook for having a video function when things go wrong!

The hour zoomed past. It was three in the afternoon in Lancaster, and seven in the morning here on the west coast (and pre-coffee to boot) but it was fun. I love a good brainstorming session, so after we got the plan for the term decided on, we launched into “Well, what’s this book going to be about?”

You know, other than this.

The discussion ranged from ancient Israel and Hagar being booted out of camp, to the local university archives, to girls’ names from the 1920s, to fast cars and faster women. As for story structure, my brain is stuck on ring composition (have you seen the masterful exegesis of the Star Wars movies as rings??) so I’d like to try building the story that way. Thanks to Melanie Bates for turning me on to this—I’d never heard of ring composition until she taught a module on it at Seton Hill.

After the meeting, I wrote up a summary of what we’d talked about, divided into two parts: “Scheduling” and “Thesis Novel.” You know me. I like a plan. So does the school, apparently. We’re going to get along just fine.