Finally there

It is now as official as it gets: my defense will finally take place next week, with all the pomp and circumstance these things require in Finland, and particularly at the University of Helsinki. I have heard that elsewhere defenses may be pretty informal occasions, with no one else there but the prospective PhD and the examiners. I, on the other hand, will have an audience of a couple of dozen people at least, and the whole day is choreographed according to ancient customs from the beginning of the defense through the ceremonial dinner I will host in honour of my opponent in the evening. Everyone present will be dressed in white tie, or the feminine counterpart of that.

Maybe sometime later I will write a little post about tips how you can (mis-)use your position as a scholarly authority to obstruct the career path of dangerous younger generation researchers but now I am going to tune into a festive mood. Afterwards, there will be a party for various friends and colleagues, and I can finally let my hair down. Anyway, life is too short for academic rancour and personal vendettas.

The quest for becoming a better teacher

What I should be doing is the final assignment for the course in the basics of university pedagogy. What I am doing is this. I hope writing this blog will clarify my thoughts enough to be able to finish the actual assignment.

I have been teaching undergraduates now and then for more than ten years. Mostly I have had one or two course in an academic year, often a parallel course to a university one in the open university. I think my first courses were pretty straightforward - I did it as I had seen it being done, and did not come to think that there might be something more to teaching. However, then I had the luck of having some really good teachers in Leicester, and ever since I have been attempting to get better at what I am doing. So I was delighted when I, after two previous attempts, finally got accepted to a five-credit course in university pedagogy.

It turned out that the course would require quite a lot of work, and since my autumn was going to be busy, I wondered if I should drop the whole thing. However, expecting to be parted with my beloved Alma Mater next year, I decided to tackle it. Should have known better. Between my "part-time" research job, teaching and other things I had to take up to manage to keep my nose above the surface financially (not to mention family responsibilities), I really did not have the time I should have devoted to the course to do it well. 

Neither was the course quite what I expected. It turned out that rather than giving us skills in teaching it was aimed as an introduction to the field of research called university pedagogy. From the viewpoint of academic achievement the course has not been a huge success for me. Most of the time I have felt a little lost with the assignments, which is probably reflected in the quality of my output. From the viewpoint of personal development I think I am doing a little better. I might not be able to write a theoretical treatise on  teaching in higher education, but that was not my goal, anyway. I did not want to become a researcher in university pedagogy, I just wanted to become a better teacher, and towards that end I think I have gained some useful tools, which I intend to apply as soon as I start teaching again - in a couple of weeks. It is a course I have always thought I would love to teach, so it will be interesting to see if I can impart some of my enthusiasm to the students.

I (almost) did it

Ending a long silence here.

I finally handed in my dissertation in the end of March. According to the Finnish system, it was then sent for so-called pre-examination for two external examiners. They will read my dissertation and comment it. After that I am to do corrections and additions according to the wishes of the examiners. Only after that I can apply for a permission to defend from the faculty. Since I have not got the comments yet, and I have loads of work for this autumn, my defense may not take place until early 2012. Such a long, slow process, and I have not even got the external examiners' comments yet.

No news is good news?

But now I have some. First, I'm in Jordan. Not for fieldwork this time - truth to be told I am not yet in any shape for that - but for delving in institute libraries and getting a good kick-start for finishing my dissertation. It seems to be working, too: I have only been here in ACOR for a day, and I've got more work done than I have for several months (not withstanding a congress presentation and an article on which I worked for most of August). 

Second, I have an update on the dissertation: Five chapters are in various stages of "nearly finished". Two chapters need a little more work than that but are basically there. One is missing a half but the structure is clear and it just needs to be written. I still have no clue of what the final chapter will handle, but otherwise things look bright.

Remind me of this optimism in December when my three-month finishing-off-the-dissertation grant is running out and I am fighting every night with the illustrations, missing references and miscellaneous corrections. 

Assessment of the situation

I feel like I should wrap up this blog since I never seem to have anything worth writing about. This spring has been mostly about being seriously ill and trying to get some work done despite that. And having scary thoughts about whether I'll be fit enough to do fieldwork ever again. For me archaeology is really about doing fieldwork. I did not choose this subject to end up shuffling papers somewhere. If I can't go to field, I don't want to be an archaeologist anymore.

Last week I was in the congress in Paris. It was a very invigorating trip both academically and otherwise. I met many Names, and they were actually nice people. My paper was very well received, although, being me, I can't help but wonder whether it was really good stuff or everyone was just being nice to the poor sick girl.

I dare dream that it might be possible for me to go to Jordan next autumn with the rest of the team, if not for the whole three-week period, then at least part of it. There are some things to be done still in the field, and I could spend some time in the ACOR and British Institute libraries. But that remains to be seen, really. Although the treatments are now over, there is still a lot of being ill to do.

Feeling optimistic

Things are looking up. If all goes well I will have only one treatment left. And my doctor gave me permission to travel in June! So I registered for the conference in Paris. I have even been slowly working towards producing a paper and have something more than a foggy idea of what to say. Now I am just restlessly waiting whether the university gives me a travel grant or not. Then there is also the matter of a cloud of volcanic ash over Europe, but maybe that will disperse by June?

I handed in one more chapter and according to my supervisor there is not very much work left with it. So now I have three almost-finished chapters for my dissertation. I realized that I might still be able to finish the whole thing by the end of this year! 

Idleness is good for your brain

I woke up last night with the first half of a forthcoming article formed in my brain. I had to get up and write the major points down, otherwise it would have been gone in the morning. The funny thing is, I have not actively thought about it much since last November, except for printing out an old, very confused draft a week ago and giving it a cursory glance. For the last week I have been doing absolutely nothing academic. In fact I was even hospitalized for two days due to neutropenia (abnormally low number of white blood cells which fight infections in the body).

I realized to something of my surprise that I have now, on top of the almost-finished dissertation, altogether three articles in various stages. The first one only needs some polishing, and now I have a draft and a good idea of the structure of the second. The third one is the paper for the conference in Paris, later to be edited to an article. I hope it will turn up as easily as this one!

Speaking of the conference, my recent experience with neutropenia confirmed that as long as my current treatments continue, I will not travel abroad. No travel insurance would cover the costs if I knowingly took the risk and the same happened somewhere else.

Hindsight into the future

I just finished making a summary of the student feedback from the general archaeology course last autumn. Finally that course is wrapped up. I bet the average student never realizes how much behind-the-scenes work is involved in teaching. The feedback was nice to read, though, we - meaning the other lecturer and myself - got good marks from the students.

I got this link from a friend. Hope you will find these as amusing as I did.

Comment moderation

I have introduced comment moderation because it seems that someone spammed this blog in Chinese(?). So if your comments don't appear immediately, don't worry.

I got positive feedback about the two chapters I handed in before The Diagnosis. Not very much needs to be done about them. It made me determined to continue working, even if I will proceed slowly.

I have also resolved to register to the congress in Paris. If I cannot travel, my supervisor has promised to read my paper.

Now I should just find the time for academic work between various tests and treatments and battling the bureaucracy caused by my getting ill.

Bittersweet acceptance

I received a letter of acceptance to a conference in Paris. I am at the same time flattered and a bit bitter. Maybe rejectance would have been easier this time. The conference takes place in June, and it would have been such an excellent opportunity to meet other people working in Jordan. It might be possible to have my paper read in absentia, if I manage to produce one. It is not quite the same, though. Not nearly the same. I thought I had already become calmly accepting but now I can't help feeling that this bloody illness is ruining what might have become my career.

Postponing again

Most of you who read my blog know me IRL and know what I'm currently facing. But I'd swear my dissertation has got a curse on it. At first I picked a subject that just didn't work out, then suffered of loss of motivation and uncertainty about what to do with my thesis, and now when I was motivated and it seemed possible to finish it, I was diagnosed with something that is going to ruin my timetable once again. The doctor emphatically said the treatments are going to leave me exhausted and I should not try too much. Of course he is right and the top priority is now to get me back to shape, but although not normally tending towards fatalism, I cannot help thinking that I am not destined to get that PhD.

Needless to say, I also had to cancel the congress trip to London. It was not strictly forbidden, it would just be potentially very unwise. So far I need not give up teaching though, and I'm still hopeful that I will be able to do even the fieldwork part of the course in archaeological survey in May. 

Oh, well. This is just momentary self-pity, you understand. I'll try to keep working on the dissertation as much as I can, not to lose the touch again. And it will do me good to have something else to think than sickness and treatments. I am not going to turn this blog into a medical journal though, so I won't be writing a lot about that here. Let's just say I am in good hands and hope to be almost as good as new after all this is over.

I did it!

I did it, I managed to leave the chapters in time. Go me!

Now various matters not related to the dissertation have turned up to complicate things, and it has been somehat difficult to continue with the next chapter, but I solemnly promise to finish at least one chapter by mid-February.

The date is set

And it is the 24th of May 2010. I know, that's next year. But let's not dwell upon that. I should hand in the first finished chapters after Epiphany. Now I'm trying to decide which ones would be even remotely possible - they are all in various stages of "unfinished", so preferably I should choose two which require the least amount of work to metamorphose into "finished".

Scientia victrix

I know I've been ranting about this subject before, but the recent news regarding universities, both in media and in the internal communications of my precious alma mater, give no reason to optimism.

The raising of private funds required by the new university legislation lags behind the timetable, the government is effectively cutting the income of University of Helsinki by millions of euros by revoking University Pharmacy's exemption from taxes and the financial situation at the departments is so dire that for example the Department of Classics has cancel to all the tuition given by other than permanent personnel for the spring semester.

In this situation it is tragicomic (although I confess finding it hard to see the comic side) that at the same time there is official worry about the state of research* and the duration of studies. As usual, the goverment is about to handle the last problem by applying the stick to the undergraduates, rather than trying the carrot.

Equal opportunities and investment in higher education rapidly changed Finland from an agrarian developing country into a rich, northern welfare state after the second world war. Some argue that the welfare state is already gone, and it seems to me that the importance of education and research for the nation is only a dead phrase, that nobody remembers the true meaning of.

*The Academy of Finland has in a recent survey found out that the standard of research done in Finland has dropped. As one of the major reasons for this the Academy pinpointed the lack of funding for basic research.

Progress report II

I have started a number of posts on topical issues but not found the time to finish them in time, i.e. whatever I've been intending to comment on is long past before I'd manage to finish the post.

Nothing new. It seems the more work I do with the dissertation, the more there is still to be done. Lately I've been so stressed out that I don't sleep at night because of thinking of various things I should get done, including the big D of course. A somewhat useless state of affairs, since as a result I am too tired to do any thinking during the day.

Conjunctions

or "The first Finns were Mongols, after all?"

Amazing things can surface when one is innocently googling for pictures to illustrate lectures. I came across this Neolithic comb-pattern pottery jar held in the National Museum of Korea:

Note the similarity with our own comb-ceramic pottery:

Progress report

Almost four weeks into my four-month research grant and I have finally tied most (but not all) of the loose ends of the miscellaneous archaeology work I've done for living over the last year. I have also printed out the first version (more than hundred pages) of my dissertation to evaluate what needs to be done (a lot). And over the last week or so I have actually managed to immerse myself into the subject again. What is more, I feel I begin to have a grasp of the entirety of it. I hope I can continue in this positive vein.

Critical mass

We are back in Amman. The work in the field was intensive but all went well. We even managed to squeeze in some time for seeing sights and visiting friends.

While staying here in the ACOR I have become aware of what an advantage it is for scholars to have an institute like this, especially when run by such friendly and helpful people as the ACOR currently is. The environment itself is stimulating for scholarly work. You casually meet other people in the same field over the lunch and are able to share information. There is a well-equipped library for research. Above all, there is a continuity of research and scholarly community. If you happen to need some information from someone not here, there are probably people who know them and can put you in contact with them.

At the same time I am also painfully reminded of the futility of trying to work on Near Eastern archaeology in Finland. There is no tradition, and no guarantee of continuity beyond the on-going project. It makes me a little depressed.

In fact the problem is related to a larger problem concerning archaeology in Finland as a whole. We lack the critical mass that would give rise to a more dynamic research community. There are altogether around a dozen archaeologists employed as teaching staff on permanent basis in the three universities in Finland offering tuition in archaeology. To have time for research they also have to secure research funding and drop teaching. Only so few can get a temporary fellowship from the Academy of Finland. The rest are left to apply from various foundations, but the sources of funding for post-doctoral research are fewer than stipends for post-graduates, and it generally helps in getting funding if you have an established position with a university. This means that although there are currently perhaps more PhD students in archaeology in Finland than ever, they - that is, we - will find it hard to continue research after we get our degrees.

I wish there were more positions for archaeologists in the universities, but I fear it is unrealistic to hope for that in the foreseeable future. That is why we need the international contacts, both near and far, to bring in fresh winds as well as to have a wider audience for our own research. That is the only way to a better Finnish archaeology. Good science is not made in lonely cells, it is made in interaction with other researchers.

In Jordan

The title says it all, really. We are doing a couple of weeks trip to Petra for additional documentation and photos in publication purposes. Ramadan ended just a couple of days ago and the eid festivities are still in full go. I am writing this in one of the ACOR guest rooms, listening to the habibi music carried in through the open window by the night wind (by the sound of it there might be a pop concert somewhere nearby). The day after tomorrow we will head for Petra.

I have had a lot in my mind recently, trying to tie loose ends so that I can start my dissertation grant in October without having them hanging around. Need I say I did not manage to tie them all? There are still a couple of research reports needing the final touch, and one abstract has to be written. Still, I did a pretty good job of it. I'm hoping this short field season in the landscapes of Petra provides the much-needed kick start for finishing the dissertation work for good.

Childhood summers

I apologize once again the long silence in my blog. I have been away from Internet for a large part of the summer. It was great having summer holidays for the first time since 2001. Besides the previously mentioned trip to Ireland, we spent a lot of time in our summer cottage. Time somehow seems to extend there. It reminds me of childhood summers, and the way they felt endless.

They don't make summers like that anymore. The passage of time seems to accelerate when you grow up. Weeks are flitting by almost too fast to notice. Month, which was an eternity when I was a child, is hardly no time at all. Even years feel shorter (I recently had my birthday, again! I definitely don't feel that old.). I am often aghast at how many years have passed from something that for me seems to have happened quite recently.

We split time down into regular, measurable units; days and hours, minutes, seconds even, but our personal, experienced time does not always move at the same speed. A week abroad feels like a longer time. Then when you return home and everyday life takes over, it quickly fades into something that happened long ago. If, however, you keep returning to the same place, like archaeologists doing fieldwork, you may get a funny feeling that hardly any time has passed since your last visit, although it may in reality be a year or two.

I think it is the way our brain works that makes the difference in the way how our personal time behaves. The human brain is an amazing thing. Even when we are just idly walking along a street, the brain keeps taking everything in, filing and classifying, making connections. For most of the time, we are not even aware of this happening. The brain filters much of the incoming perceptions as background noise that our conscious minds need not be informed about. When we go to unfamiliar circumstances, the brain keeps making remarks to our consciousness more often. This has no doubt been a survival trait for our ancestors.

For a small child every day is still full of new experiences. For most of us adults our daily lives run pretty much the same script over and over again - get up in the morning, go to work, try to get things done, pick the child from daycare, go home, cook dinner, go to sleep. We do this negotiating through our everyday lives in a sort of autopilot. When we travel and go sightseeing we are pre-disposed to pay attention to our surroundings. However, in our normal lives we have little use for the knowledge gathered abroad, so it gets filed away. If we, however, return to the same place later on, the brain picks up from where we left the last time, bringing forth the memories surprisingly fresh.