Ruchira's Ramblings

Sorry, it has been a while. Things just pile up on one another, you know. But here’s the main news. The thing I’ve been waiting for since last December finally happened. Last month, on the 16 th , I got my TARDIS driving license. Which is to say, I successfully defended my PhD thesis. What? I’ve been waiting to make ‘Doctor’ themed jokes for a while now. But you know the strangest thing? Happy as I was (and still am) about the whole thing, the immediate aftermath of it felt a bit deflating. Like, what am I supposed to do with myself now? I mean, I have enough on my plate, don’t get me wrong- classes to teach, scripts to evaluate (how is about 80% of my life consumed by examinations and grading? I seem to remember these being a lot less frequent when I was a student myself!), data to collect and enter into endless excel sheets (did not sign up for this, smh) and then order and reorder, supervising student drama rehearsals, organizing intra-college poster contests and so on and so forth....

For the past several months since my thesis submission, I’ve made a few attempts to return to this blog. Here’s what those attempts look like. This is not where I am right now, although perhaps I am a little bit or it wouldn’t take so long to finish this piece and get back to these pages. But mainly, I would like this to remain as a record of a mindscape, if that makes sense. December 2020 So, *deep breath*, I just submitted my doctoral thesis on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels. When I submitted my MPhil thesis (on the politics of secondary fantasy worlds) some seven and a half years ago, the most overwhelming emotion I remember feeling was relief to have finished, seconded only by a strong desire to never, ever read my thesis again– I was that sick of it. I eventually got over that second feeling and over the last few years I have gone and re-read bits and pieces of it, but I don’t think I’ve ever done a full read. I got into the PhD programme around a year after submitting my MPhil...