Now that I have candidacy for my PhD, what am I up to? Well, it may sound like the beginning of a brand new adventure with possibilities and awesomeness abound, but the reality is a little less bright.

For starters, what does this milestone mean? I covered it a little in my am I a candidate post a few weeks ago, but pretty much it means that the university finds my research to be of great benefit socially and academically, set to a high standard, and I as a researcher am skilled enough to conduct the research, and so the university is taking on my research for the duration for the next two years. In terms of my research, it means I can start my data collection.

For my data collection, I am doing two things simultaneously. I am interviewing participants within the literary ecosystem in Aotearoa New Zealand to gather their experiences, perspectives, and impression of bookish social media and the literary sphere in our pocket of the world and I am gathering content from bookish social media accounts to analyse and compare. Both of these forms of data collection required ethics approval which is part of the reason I have been holding off until I got an official written statement proving my candidacy. When it comes to data, you really don’t want to get ahead of yourself and rush into it only to have the data questioned regarding when you collected it. This way, both me and my supervisor know that I only started collecting it after the written candidacy approval was given, and any issues can be prepared for knowing I am in the clear in terms of the PhD Student vs. PhD Candidate timeline.

The other thing is double checking my interview question script and making sure the angles I am coming from are accurately refined since we first made the questions months ago. Given the refinement my paperwork and research plan has gone through in preparation for my presentation, combing over my supporting documents and information papers to make sure they clearly state the purpose of my research, the interviews, the processes, and the participants’ rights during and after the process is very important. Again, it is an ethics thing and it isn’t something to rush through.

Another point is that I don’t feel the need to line up all my interviews and get it all into NVivo so early in the data collection window. If anything, I will be using the rest of the year to see where the interest is, who is keen to participate, what times work for them, and get connected to potential participants without the expectation they can be interviewed this year. If they can that is awesome, but it is important as a researcher to understand that you work to other people’s schedules. The end of the year is a busy time for many of us, but there may also be people who have time they can give you.

I am also working on rewriting my fantasy manuscript at the moment, and as such I have delegated a lot of time in the day for writing. I balance it out with reading for pleasure, something I find works best to maintain my sanity and engagement with my work which I mentioned last week in my balancing reading and writing post. I want to really give this rewrite the time and effort it deserves, and trying to fit in interviews will threaten that balance. Maybe in October I can fit a few in, but I don’t plan to overload my workload right off the bat.

I am eager to get into the depths of my research though. I don’t want this post to sound like I’m not excited for what will come out of the woodwork over the next year. I want things to develop organically, feel right, and proceed without me pushing any angle. Whatever comes from the data is more important than what I thought about the topics during my literature review reading and write ups. That is another part of the research that I will be continuing, so I am certainly not wanting for anything when it comes to my PhD research. Looking forward to telling you all about it more later down the track!