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"Can't you hear me, S.O.S.?": TLG's PhD study blog!

New blog can be found here: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7614702

26 year old ethnomusicology student (University of London) researching ABBA fandom, seeks TSR peeps to act as cheerleaders as she battles her way through PhD studies. Apply for cheerleading position(s) by following/posting on this thread :biggrin:

A bit about my PhD topic

A bit about my specific PhD project: I am doing an ethnographic study of ABBA fandom in the 21st century :awesome:

(Ethnographic means that there's a practical element to the research, like going to fan meet-ups/conventions and interviewing people, etc, rather than just theorising ABBA based on my own guesswork/conclusions.)

I chose to do this partly because I am an ABBA fan myself, but also because I think ABBA are an interesting case study, since they continue to be part of mainstream culture despite having never reformed. (They have actually turned down $1 billion USD in the past to reform :headfire:

) I figured there must be some interesting things to say about them!

I have been doing participant-observation fieldwork with the UK branch of the Official International ABBA Fan Club, and have interviewed an ABBA biographer, as well as the curator/director of the ABBA Museum in Stockholm. I've also been keeping tabs on Facebook groups revolving around ABBA. So a lot of my work involves hanging round on Facebook. Such a tough life I lead :emo:

A bit about me/some housekeeping rules

A few bits of contextual info about me/my PhD, for those who don't know me that well:

1. I suffer from schizoaffective disorder and am registered as mentally disabled. This inevitably shapes how my PhD journey goes a lot

2. Ethnomusicology is (put crudely) the social anthropological study of music. It is the study of "music IN culture" and "music AS culture" (Alan Merriam). Traditionally it referred to so-called 'world musics' but now it encompasses everything

3. My undergraduate degree is in music from Woosta College, University of Oxford. My MA degree is in music (ethnomusicology pathway) from Goldsmiths, University of London. Had a **** time at Oxford for many reasons which I will not discuss here, but which again shape the way I approach my PhD. Goldsmiths was much better. I am currently at a different college of the University of London (would prefer not to name it here).

4. If you are one of these people who like to put two and two together and find my uni website page/academia.edu - please DO NOT refer to me on here by my full first name, or my full name (first name/surname). I prefer to keep a degree of anonymity on here

If you wanna call me something, you may call me Shan or TLG.

Posted from TSR Mobile

(edited 4 months ago)

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Reply 1580

flaurie

Volunteer Team

yay for good words!
It’s very easy to be critical of your own work :sadnod:

(there was an ABBA program on channel 5 on Monday evening btw :smile:

)

Reply 1581

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post

by gjd800

haha we've all been there with drafts!

Well, i did but I'm well done with the PhD thing so my situation is a bit different these days! The bloke running the course I'm doing now keeps telling me how impressive I am and it makes me cringe, but he writes me nice references so I guess it'll work out in the end haha

Yeah I knew you'd finished a while back, which is why I thought I'd go with the word mentor instead :colondollar:

That's great you had supportive supervisors and that your current line manager-type person likes you so much :biggrin:

Totally get what you mean about praise being cringeworthy though :ninja:

Original post

by laurawatt

yay for good words!
It’s very easy to be critical of your own work :sadnod:

(there was an ABBA program on channel 5 on Monday evening btw :smile:

)

Thanks for the heads up on that, lovely! I'll see if it's one I've seen before, otherwise will have to watch it coz it's research-related, obviously :ninja:

Reply 1582

Muttley79

Original post

by The_Lonely_Goatherd

Thanks for the heads up on that, lovely! I'll see if it's one I've seen before, otherwise will have to watch it coz it's research-related, obviously :ninja:

You can watch things more than once - you always pick up different nuances - so that's sill research :biggrin:

Reply 1583

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Wishing the followers of this blog a very happy and hopefully-healthy 2021 :grouphugs:

Reply 1584

Muttley79

Happy New Yesr to you TLG - praying for a peaceful one :hugs:

Reply 1585

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Sent off an important networking email relating to my research :ahhhhh:

Original post

by Muttley79

Happy New Yesr to you TLG - praying for a peaceful one :hugs:

Thank you - wish you the same! :hugs:

Reply 1586

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Feeling so lazy this week. Not sure if it's related to the latest lockdown news or not but just can't gather enough energy/momentum to write PhD words :s-smilie:

Meeting LA supervisor tomorrow and currently got nothing to show her :sad:

Reply 1587

Interrobang

Original post

by The_Lonely_Goatherd

Feeling so lazy this week. Not sure if it's related to the latest lockdown news or not but just can't gather enough energy/momentum to write PhD words :s-smilie:

Meeting LA supervisor tomorrow and currently got nothing to show her :sad:

Your supervisor is lovely and will understand that with Christmas and the news on Monday that people will be struggling :hugs:

Reply 1588

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post

by Interrobang

Your supervisor is lovely and will understand that with Christmas and the news on Monday that people will be struggling :hugs:

Thank you

I know she'll be nothing but nice about it, but I keep worrying that I'm wasting so much of her time :nopity:

Voices are back, so that's not really helping me keep things grounded in reality :no:

Thanks for replying :hugs:

Happy New Year!

Reply 1589

Interrobang

Original post

by The_Lonely_Goatherd

Thank you

I know she'll be nothing but nice about it, but I keep worrying that I'm wasting so much of her time :nopity:

Voices are back, so that's not really helping me keep things grounded in reality :no:

Thanks for replying :hugs:

Happy New Year!

Supervision (from a psychology perspective anyway) is about supporting you to do your role - this includes help with problem solving and emotional things that impact on your ability to do the work too

Happy new year to you too :smile:

Reply 1590

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Health is getting a bit bad this end :frown:

I've put on my ABBA playlist again now that Christmas is over, but even that doesn't seem to jumpstart me into being that productive with writing :frown:

In other news, I now have both my PhD supervisors on my Facebook :headfire:

Not ideal, in all honesty, but LA supervisor suggested it so that I can see from her posts that she's alive and well (the voices often say she's dead and then I panic and go all psychotic. So having both supervisors on Facebook is to try and circumvent that) :colondollar:

Reply 1591

Muttley79

We're with you in this TLG :console:

You can do this :smile:

Reply 1592

flaurie

Volunteer Team

Hopefully it helps :hugs:

Reply 1593

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post

by Muttley79

We're with you in this TLG :console:

You can do this :smile:

Original post

by laurawatt

Hopefully it helps :hugs:

Thank you both :frown:

Reply 1594

Interrobang

That's good of them :smile:

Remember you can remove them from seeing posts if you want

Reply 1595

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post

by Interrobang

That's good of them :smile:

Remember you can remove them from seeing posts if you want

Yeah exactly :redface:

Reply 1596

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Still quite ill but feeling more myself, so have put on my ABBA playlist and trying to string quotes together. Atm it's very "he said, she said, they said" but I guess any progress is welcome atm :redface:

Reply 1597

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Finally manage to get some kinda shoddy draft for the first section of my third chapter, so I can now move on to the second section :yay:

Such a relief, although still a lot more work to do before I can put this chapter behind me and have a complete-ish first draft of it! :work:

Today I was interviewed by someone who wanted to interview ABBA fans about their favourite ABBA songs for a podcast :eek:

Weird being the interviewee rather than the interviewer (though I find both positions nervewracking tbh) :ninja:

Reply 1598

Muttley79

Great job - PRSOM - every word is progress :hugs:

Reply 1599

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post

by Muttley79

Great job - PRSOM - every word is progress :hugs:

Thank you. It's hard to find a sense of achievement in it, tbh, because I tend to measure my progress in how many words I write per day. This is a habit LA supervisor is trying to gently beat out of me :eek:

So am trying not to count words but then I think I end up minimising my progress because it looks tiny on hte page. If that makes sense :redface:

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