You can't please all of the people...

so, rather stupidly, I asked two different professors for advice on my prototype PhD proposal. Unfortunately their comments are diametrically opposed ("concentrate on central texts" "choose something obscure rather than a central text which has been overdone" etc etc). Now I'm just confused, wondering perhaps whether my idea was any good in the first place. At least I now know that there is no point writing a proposal to aim to please a panel of people: there will never be unanimity.

Happy New Year!

2006 has arrived. It came in quietly for me, at home revising some writing that I've been doing. With it has come the pressure of a couple of deadlines: the first (on 16th Jan) is for my PhD proposal; the second (the following day) is for my first coursework essay for the MPhil.

The essay seems to be going OK, but with the week I'll be spending in Michigan, I don't have much time to work on it before it is due in. So tomorrow I'll be in the UL checking a few words in the obscure dictionaries in the Reading Room. Top of the list are 'testamentum' and 'bereth' from the Medieval Latin and Hebrew dictionaries, which are apparently all on one wall to the left of the room, so I'll have to retreat there for most of the morning....

The proposal needs a different kind of work. I've got something written, which two of my supervisors have looked at, and criticised, and now... I need to reconcile what they have said with my ideas, and try to figure out what my ideas actually are. Ugh.

So it'll be a busy few days before I set off for Heathrow to visit Katie in Michigan.