After months of talking about it, telling you the stages I am at and what plans I have, you may be thinking to yourself ‘Anna, how did your presentation go? Are you now a PhD candidate?’ Well, friends, I can confidently say that yes, I am.

My presentation went surprisingly well, even though I read from my notes far more than I should of and stumbled over some words and questions at the end. I am a PhD candidate, though I am waiting for the official paperwork and admin side of things to be wrapped up before I jump into too much.

What does candidature mean? Well, when you are doing a PhD there is a provisional period in your first year, a time I have referred to before as me being a PhD Student. In this year, you gather literature in your field to frame the research you are doing, refine your research methodology and plan down to the nitty gritty numbers of participants and data analyses procedures, and ultimately prepare to tell the doctoral board what you are doing. This culminates into a presentation, for me it was around 25 minutes long with 10 minutes of questions from the board and others in the room. There are several variations of results you can get at this stage, but thankfully I received the one where I didn’t have to present again with amendments. I just received a green light to go ahead with my research and some suggestions going forward.

Now that I have passed my ‘first year’, I am a candidate and can start doing the research I have set out to accomplish. At the moment, that is double checking my question sheets, getting my supervisor to double check the question sheets, collect lists of potential participants, and go back to my literature review and rework the chunks taken out of the thesis that weren’t pertinent to the presentation. Now that I better understand the angle I am going at with this research, I need to hone in on specific points in my lit review and really making sure all the pieces mean something in the overall scope of the thesis. I can also expand on several points now while admin is getting sorted out, saving me brain power later on trying to recall little suggestions and references made over the last few weeks by various sources.

It is a very exciting time as I am now able to start my interviews and data collection, but it is nerve-wracking as well. I don’t know why, but I am wary that things might start falling apart before they can even weave together. I have a lot of people of interest for my interviews, and I want to get a decent understanding of where the research sits by February, which may only be four months’ worth worth of interviewing and inputting of the data into my software. I have faith though, in part because I know the NZ Bookstagram community is exceptionally kind and welcoming, and in part because I know of so many people already who would be amazing representatives of the little community we have done here in Aotearoa.

So, that’s where I am at. I will still be puttering around in September with my fantasy manuscript and taking a much-needed break from academia to recharge, but come October I will be ready to go!