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decided to apply
Dec. 23rd, 2019 11:50 pm Last last month my supervisor at Durham suggested that I consider applying for a Durham Doctoral Studentship, which, if successful, would provide me enough funding to live three years in Durham doing my second PhD in archaeology full time. I have been thinking about this ever since. Doing so would mean re-applying to Durham to start a new PhD from the beginning. Since I am already enrolled at Durham as a half-time, long-distance, unfunded PhD student the new application would need to have a project proposal that is "sufficiently different" from the one I used the first time I applied to Durham (though my supervisor says that it can have a fair bit of overlap). She feels that I have a good chance at this if I apply.
On one hand it is quite tempting, since having funding to focus on my research properly is very applying, and I have always wanted a second PhD, and thus I don't mind the thought of starting the second one over again from the beginning and having three full years to do it. On the other hand, I really, really, really love where I live and don't want to leave. This is why I have been contemplating this for some weeks now and hadn't started writing the proposal before today.
This evening my supervisor sent out an email about an early January symposium that our department is hosting, and it sounded like a good one. However, there is no way I can get to Durham already in January. However, it did prompt me to write to her and say
"It sound like a good symposium, and reminds me of the advantages I would have if I had the funding to move to Durham and focus on my degree. When last I wrote you I had asked about how different a proposal would need to be to count as "sufficiently different" to let me enrol in a new degree program. However, you were travelling just then and didn't have time to reply."
She replied promptly with some useful information and further encouragement, and I decided that I may as well start on an application, and an hour and a half later I had worked out the angle I want to take that feels "sufficiently different" from my first research proposal to Durham, and have the first ~400 words of the 750 word summary of the project that I will need for the funding application. (I will still need to write a longer version of the project proposal for the formal application to be a PhD student, but it seemed to make sense to start with the shorter version--for both of them I refer to my current research with Durham as a "pilot study").
I had had no plans for the next few days (my next time commitment is the folk dance on the 27th), so I guess I now know what I will be doing for the holidays. My supervisor returns to work on 6 January, so I need to have a good draft ready for her to read when she gets back, given that the application deadline is the 13th of January.
If the application is successful then I would need to move to Durham in October. If not, then I get to stay here in Luleå, which is also a good thing.
On one hand it is quite tempting, since having funding to focus on my research properly is very applying, and I have always wanted a second PhD, and thus I don't mind the thought of starting the second one over again from the beginning and having three full years to do it. On the other hand, I really, really, really love where I live and don't want to leave. This is why I have been contemplating this for some weeks now and hadn't started writing the proposal before today.
This evening my supervisor sent out an email about an early January symposium that our department is hosting, and it sounded like a good one. However, there is no way I can get to Durham already in January. However, it did prompt me to write to her and say
"It sound like a good symposium, and reminds me of the advantages I would have if I had the funding to move to Durham and focus on my degree. When last I wrote you I had asked about how different a proposal would need to be to count as "sufficiently different" to let me enrol in a new degree program. However, you were travelling just then and didn't have time to reply."
She replied promptly with some useful information and further encouragement, and I decided that I may as well start on an application, and an hour and a half later I had worked out the angle I want to take that feels "sufficiently different" from my first research proposal to Durham, and have the first ~400 words of the 750 word summary of the project that I will need for the funding application. (I will still need to write a longer version of the project proposal for the formal application to be a PhD student, but it seemed to make sense to start with the shorter version--for both of them I refer to my current research with Durham as a "pilot study").
I had had no plans for the next few days (my next time commitment is the folk dance on the 27th), so I guess I now know what I will be doing for the holidays. My supervisor returns to work on 6 January, so I need to have a good draft ready for her to read when she gets back, given that the application deadline is the 13th of January.
If the application is successful then I would need to move to Durham in October. If not, then I get to stay here in Luleå, which is also a good thing.
