Beyond Selidor

I found out today that one of my cousins was actually in the US for work, covering the election (he works in TV news). He was mainly based during this time in Pennsylvania, so very much right at the heart of things. Bizarrely, he claimed he felt safer (in terms of the pandemic) in the US than he does in his home of Melbourne, which I just boggle at, given the comparable difference in cases, even when Melbourne was at its worst. I wonder if the strict Melbourne lockdown made him feel more uneasy, compared to the (sadly) relaxed situation in the US, even though the former of course makes things way safer than the latter.

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I've finished the first draft of my Yuletide assignment. I'm going to let it sit a while before coming back to it for edits, and spend some time working on a couple of treats. Last year I managed five works in the main collection (my assignment and four treats), but I suspect I'm not quite going to manage a comparable number this year. We'll see.

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Every so often, I'm reminded sharply how glad I am to have left academia in general, and Celtic Studies specifically. The most recent thing to have brought this home to me: two senior scholars in the field, who reviewed the work of a recently-deceased academic. This posthumous publication was mainly written while the latter was dying of cancer — in other words, in extremely trying circumstances. And yet these two senior academics spent their entire review — a whole 34 pages!!! — picking this person's work apart in the most vicious of tones (right down to nitpicking about comma placement). The whole thing is extremely cruel. And yes, that's par for the course in the field, unfortunately.

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Like everyone else in my social circles, I've been completely consumed by the US election, and the stressful fallout, and it's rather affected my reading. That being said, I've tried to get things back on track, and have begun a reread of the entire Dark Is Rising sequence. These books to me are so deeply evocative of very specific physical locations, and very specific times in the year that to have begun the reread in November seems incongruous: Over Sea, Under Stone is such a story of summer, of sun-drenched seaside holidays that to read it in the dying days of autumn feels almost inapprorpriate. And of course if I go straight on to The Dark Is Rising it will be too early! I suppose nothing is stopping me from revisiting each book again at a more appropriate time of year.

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Tomorrow is Matthias's birthday, and both of us have taken the day off work, meaning we'll get a long weekend. Obviously we're in lockdown, so it's not as if we'll be going anywhere (other than perhaps a nice walk), but it will be good to have a bit of a rest, given that I fell asleep for two hours yesterday afternoon, then slept for ten hours last night, and still feel somewhat exhausted.

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I'll leave you with this highly seasonally appropriate short story by Iona Datt Sharma, 'Heard, Half-Heard, in the Stillness'.

I had my PhD viva nearly three years ago now, but it still reverberates in weird ways, even though I've long since left academia.

( Quick description of how a PhD is examined in the UK, for those who want to know )

I wake up almost every day grateful for the fact that I never have to do another viva again. Some examiners will tell you before you get started that you've passed, although they're not technically supposed to (Matthias' external examiner wanted everything done by the book, so he left the room not knowing if he'd passed or failed). Mine tried to tell me without saying so directly — they said something like, 'before we get started, we want to say that we do have some concerns, but you have nothing to worry about. Now let's talk about your PhD,' which helped a bit, but didn't do much to make the experience any more pleasant. Some friends have told me they enjoyed their vivas, but to this day (and I say this as someone who has had some pretty awful things happen to her), that viva remains the worst two hours of my entire life. A few weeks before it happened, I dreamt that the process would involve lying on a rooftop while two senior Celticist academics shot at me with sniper rifles, just to give you some indication of the state of my mind...

Anyway, you get the idea. I passed, and although I couldn't look at my PhD or my examiners' reports for at least two months after the viva was over, the corrections themselves only took about a week of my time, and I got my PhD, graduated, and got on with a life outside academia. But because I still live in Cambridge, and still have a lot of friends within medieval studies, and because my former department is extremely sociable, I tend to come back from time to time to local conferences, free annual guest lectures, alumni events and so on. And because medieval studies is such a small world (and Celtic Studies an even smaller world within it), I tend to run into my examiners when I least expect it. And, inevitably, I bumped into my internal examiner at a guest lecture late last year. We fell to talking about my viva, and he told me something I found both hilarious, and a great source of perspective.

The entire time that I had been in a state of extreme anxiety and panic, feeling besieged and terrified, he had been in such awe of my external examiner (who, for some reason, he had never met in person before) that he had reacted by being extremely formal, and more critical than he perhaps intended, because he wanted to make a good impression on his fellow examiner. It's odd, but it's nice to know I wasn't the only one in that room feeling scared and overwhelmed!

Anyway, academia. It's a weird little universe.

I was given these six questions by christinafairy as part of a meme. Answers are behind the cut.

( Questions and answers )

Please comment if you would like six questions of your own.

This time five years ago, I was getting ready to go to my department's annual garden party, over the moon because I had submitted my MPhil and was confident of passing, and of being accepted for a PhD place at Cambridge. Today, I'm getting ready for the garden party, happy in the knowledge that my PhD corrections have been approved and that (after I've paid an extortionate amount for binding and submitted a hardbound copy to the Board of Graduate Studies) I will be graduating in July as Dr Dolorosa!

These past five years have been a mixed bag. Some parts of being a PhD student were filled with joy, while others threw me into despair, self-doubt and fury. I am glad to have written it, and to have learnt what I learnt - about medieval Irish literature, and about myself. I am so grateful that it allowed me to meet a truly wonderful bunch of people, and to become part of several amazing international groups of friends. I met my partner because of my PhD. As a result of my PhD, I had the good fortune to meet several awe-inspiring older women who have acted as mentors for me in all sorts of ways. I can speak and read a good many more languages than I could five years ago!

My PhD gave so much. It took a lot from me, though. I don't talk a lot about that very often, because ultimately I feel that I made the right decision. If nothing else, doing a PhD at Cambridge got me to where I wanted and needed to be, with the right people around me, and the opportunity to meet others who, although not much a part of my life right now, connected with me at the right time to help me become myself.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my PhD allowed me to live. And while I never want to live through those years again (some of them were just packed with so much living and so many emotions that they were exhausting), I am privileged and grateful to carry them with me.

This weekend, the weather suddenly turned summery (or at least what passes for summery in the south-east of England). I think I was more excited about the fact that I'd be able to dry laundry in the courtyard instead of in the house than the fact that I would be able to ditch my winter clothes. I've since done two loads of laundry, and I find the sight of sheets waving gently in the breeze oddly comforting.

Yesterday I went with my friend and former sort-of-housemate J2* to a buffet lunch at Pembroke College. It's an annual event to which all the people who supervise (i.e. provide the one-on-one tutorials that are the main part of the teaching method at Oxbridge) students from Pembroke are invited. J2 invited me as her guest, and when we arrived we discovered that another friend of ours, M, had also been invited. The meal began with sparkling wine in what I think was the college's senior combination room, and then we were treated to a three-course buffet in the hall. We sat next to a very bitter physicist who spent the whole meal complaining about how academia has changed in the past twenty years (the short version: too much admin), and an interesting woman who taught Arabic language and Middle Eastern history. She bemoaned the fact that interest in her subject area only spikes when something terrible happens in the Arab and Islamic world.

After the lunch, the three of us went to a pub that lets people take drinks outside into the park near the mill pond, and we sat on a wall, surrounded by hundreds of other people who clearly had the same idea. All in all, it was a really fabulous day.

Today I've just been lounging around at home. Matthias is working in one of his library jobs, but will be back in about an hour, at which point we'll have a late lunch. This evening I've got yoga, but other than that, I don't plan on leaving the house. I've been - rather decadently - drinking white wine in the sun and reading novels. At some point I'll probably post some reviews of them, but for now, I plan to relax.

I'll leave you with a few links to stuff that's been making me happy today.

First, sophiamcdougall's newest book, a children's science-fiction work called Mars Evacuees, is about to be published. She's got a couple of excerpts here and here. The second link includes a bunch of other stuff, all of which is worth reading, especially her article in the New Statesman about the gender disparity in book shop displays.

This review of the recent TV series of Dracula, posted in ladybusiness, is making me rethink my decision to avoid the show. I find Jonathan Rhys Meyers almost unbearable to watch, and that is why I originally chose to give the show a miss, but if anyone who has watched it has an opinion, feel free to weigh in and convince me one way or the other.

Fantasy author Saladin Ahmed has started a really cool side project, tweeting the Husain Haddawy translation of the Arabian Nights.

I'll leave you with some music. Yesterday, in honour of International Women's Day, I posted a bunch of feminist music on Tumblr. Assume a broad definition of the word 'feminism' here that has room for Christine Anu singind about migration and identity, Lucinda Williams singing about loss and grief, and Ciscandra Nostalghia demanding listeners worship her.

I'm really into the music of The Daysleepers at the moment. This album and this album are simply fabulous. They sound like summer in Sydney - all diving under waves and bobbing out beyond the breakers, the glare of the asphalt hurting your eyes, jacaranda trees, standing on a roof and watching the fireworks on New Year's Eve, mangoes, cherries and grilled fish and sparkling wine - in a way that I cannot properly articulate. Just gorgeous.

Finally, Matthias and I watched the last stage of Melodifestivalen for the first time this year. We both would've been much happier if Alcazar had won.



Seriously, is that not the most Eurovision song ever?

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*By which I mean that she lived in a sharehouse with my partner Matthias during the year I lived in Germany, so she was my housemate whenever I visited him.

I've been really busy lately, which is why I haven't posted for ages and ages. I have two very good excuses, however:

1. My PhD viva is in just a week. I'm actually feeling quite calm about it, which surprises me, but I seem to have given myself the attitude that there is nothing I can do now to change how the viva goes - as the examiners already have my thesis and I can't alter it - so I might as well not worry. I imagine I'll be a nervous wreck next Monday, though.

2. I have a new job! It's only temporary and part-time, but it is in another academic library in Cambridge, it's a step up from my current library job* (I'm learning how to catalogue, and my job title is library assistant rather than library invigilator) and it's come along at a really good time, as I don't get money from my PhD scholarship funding body any more and was really worried about what I was going to do for money. So far I'm really liking it, although it's very different to my other library job, and I've had to cut back my hours there, which is sad as I really love working there.

I have a bunch of links, although I must admit that some of them are very old and you're likely to have encountered them already. These are more for personal reference so that I can find them again, and close some tabs on my laptop and iPad. The first, however, is a link to my latest post on my review blog. It's mainly a review of Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone, but also talks more broadly about the (published and unpublished) wish-fulfillment fantasies of teenage girls and whether such things are valuable or dangerous (or both, or neither).

As someone who wrote a story about her book boyfriend being in love with her idealised character, I have a lot of sympathy for teenage (and not-so-teenage) wish-fulfillment fantasies depicting their protagonists being pursued by a multitude of love interests. It’s a powerful trope for girls who may be feeling unlovable or simply baffled at how to have romantic relationships. However, this desire to be desired should not be portrayed at the expense of functional friendships among teenage girls. Portraying all female relationships as inherently competitive and antagonistic creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in the real world whereby girls and women view all other girls and women with suspicion, undermining one another instead of supporting each other.

The Dreamwidth community ladybusiness is not new, but it is new to me, and I point it out here to those of you who are interested in reading (or participating in) thoughtful discussion about female characters in a variety of media. There are podcasts, linkspams and lengthy meta posts. At some point when I have more time, I'm going to read through all the archives. I recommend it highly.

Speaking of podcasts, this speech by Maciej Cegłowsk, the creator of Pinboard, about fandom is thoughtful and well worth a listen. It's an old link, and I can't remember where I saw it first, but if you haven't heard it yet I would encourage you to do so.

This link is more for my own future reference, and I haven't actually read through all its content yet. It's a series of posts on Making Light about dysfunctional families, and looks as if it will be really interesting. I'm saving it for after the viva.

On a related note, this post about so-called 'Ask Culture and Guess Culture' had me nodding my head a lot. I don't know if there's any data to back up its assertions, but I can certainly recognise elements of this phenomenon in my own life.

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.

All kinds of problems spring up around the edges. If you’re a Guess Culture person — and you obviously are — then unwelcome requests from Ask Culture people seem presumptuous and out of line, and you’re likely to feel angry, uncomfortable, and manipulated.

If you’re an Ask Culture person, Guess Culture behavior can seem incomprehensible, inconsistent, and rife with passive aggression.

Obviously she’s an Ask and you’re a Guess. (I’m a Guess too. Let me tell you, it’s great for, say, reading nuanced and subtle novels; not so great for, say, dating and getting raises.)

Thing is, Guess behaviors only work among a subset of other Guess people — ones who share a fairly specific set of expectations and signalling techniques. The farther you get from your own family and friends and subculture, the more you’ll have to embrace Ask behavior. Otherwise you’ll spend your life in a cloud of mild outrage at (pace Moomin fans) the Cluelessness of Everyone.

I am definitely from a Guess Culture family (you were never supposed to ask for things unless they were the right things, the things that people would say yes to, and there were so many subtle ways to hint at what you wanted to ask, figure out whether the answer would be yes or not, or, from the other side, hint at whether or not you were going to say yes; it was considered indescribably selfish and rude to state preferences for e.g. food or drink options at other people's houses (the only acceptable answers were 'whatever everyone else is having' or 'whatever is already open'); and so on). My partner is very much of the Ask Culture school. It's easier now that we've been together for years, but at the beginning of our relationship (and indeed, in many other of my romantic and friendship relationships) I used to work myself up into a hysterical level of anxiety whenever I was required to ask for anything directly or given options to state a preference (because the asker wasn't hinting properly about what answer they wanted from me!). I'm told that this has the potential to come across as being very passive-aggressive, and if it's true that it is some sort of culture clash, a lot of things about my interactions with other people make a whole lot more sense!

Tumblr user thefrenemy posted this great defence of the selfie.

I hate with a boiling passion 99% of all of these photos, all of these memories of my life documented on film. Every time I get a notification on my Facebook saying that somebody added a picture of me, I get an actual nervous feeling in my stomach. Like, oh great, let me take some time out of my day to analyze my body and feel like shit about myself! I check the picture. I get taken out of the wonderful moment it was taken in to nitpick my flaws. Ew, I hate my face. Ew, I hate my tummy. Ew, my arms. Ew, ew, ew.

[...]

I think I look like a goddess in my selfies. I think I look like Dolly Parton, a witch, and pretty much every street blogger rolled into one. They make me feel absolutely fabulous and alive and gorgeous. I rarely feel this way and when I do, it’s because it’s exactly how I want to look for me. It’s exactly the way I’ve always wanted to look and felt I could look without all that loud noise about how I should look better. It is the evidence, the proof positive, that there are moments we can feel and look fan-fucking-tastic in our own eyes. That alone is worth its weight in gold.

I have nothing to add.

As a final link, have John Scalzi's predictions for the Oscars. He's not always right, but his reasoning is always pretty solid and I appreciate that he predicts what he thinks what will win as well as stating what he thinks should win.

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*Although it actually pays less, which is a pain.

Yesterday, Matthias and I made a flying visit to London. We'd originally planned to go there for the whole day, but that was when we thought I'd be finished my PhD by now. As it turns out, I'm not finished (though I'm so close I can see the end of the tunnel), and thought it better to spend the morning working. We caught the train after lunch and were there by 3pm. One thing I love about living in Cambridge is how close it is to London!

Our original purpose in visiting was to see Matthias' old PhD supervisor give a paper at the British Academy. The paper itself was excellent. Richard (Matthias' old supervisor) is a very good speaker, and was able to pitch the content at exactly the right level so that the very senior experts in Old English, Middle English and other fields of medieval studies, and the enthusiastic members of the public would all be able to get something out of it. A lot of old friends of mine who have since graduated and gone on to work outside academia in London also showed up, and it was great to catch up with them over a glass of wine afterwards.

Prior to the paper, we had a coffee in my favourite London cafe, and then wandered around Soho for a bit trying to figure out where we would eat dinner.

I insisted on stopping off in Seven Dials and having my photo taken. It's getting to the point where the entire city of London is crisscrossed with a network of Significant Sites That Feature in Ronni's Favourite Works of Literature. (Almost the first thing I did when I moved to the UK was visit the ruins of St Dunstan in the East, a place which features prominently in Sara Douglass' Troy Game series.) Seven Dials is where the criminal gang of clandestine clairvoyants are based in Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season, which as you'll recall is my latest literary obsession. So I made poor Matthias take my photo in Seven Dials. The Christmas lights were on, and it was almost dark, so it looked very pretty.

( A couple of photos behind the cut )

So, anyway, after that, we made it to the talk, which as I've noted was in the British Academy. I'd never been before, and I was very impressed by the setting. If you can make it in academia in this country, you get to go to some pretty cool places.

After the talk, we went out for dinner at this Vietnamese restaurant in Soho. I love Vietnamese food, and can't get it in Cambridge, so I was very keen to see what Banana Tree was like. The food was excellent, and extremely cheap, especially by London standards. When I'm in London, I normally go to the same places over and over again, so it was good to try something new.

After dinner it was back to Cambridge and reality.

So far, it's been an absolutely wonderful weekend. On Friday evening, Former Housemate D came up to Cambridge to give a seminar paper. She completed her PhD on skaldic poetry in my department in 2012, and from February-April was working on a cultural engagement project that combined her postgraduate research interests with her other main interest, modern poetry. The project had two parts - the first was to provide a group of poets with translations and commentaries of medieval skaldic verse which they then used as a starting point for their own poems, the second involved creating packages of material that could be used to teach poets and other writers (and school students and interested members of the public) how to use kennings and other elements of skaldic verse in their own writing. It produced some very interesting results, including a fabulous series of poetry readings in April. So D's seminar paper was basically summing up the results of the project.

I really miss her. We lived together from June 2010-August 2011, which was her third year of her PhD and my second year, and probably the happiest period of my life. We both worked from home most of the time, and our productivity was severely hampered by the fact that we frequently stopped for tea breaks that would go on for hours. Matthias and I currently have a spare room free in our house, but have decided to forgo finding a housemate since there are very few people with whom we could bear to live. If D decided to return to Cambridge, however, we'd offer her the room in a heartbeat, because she's just that awesome. She's now moved back to London, and I doubt she will move back here. I can't really blame her. If I had the option to live in London, I would do it without a second thought. It's a fantastic city.

D's seminar was followed by dinner in a nearby pub. I hadn't really socialised with any of my friends for ages because I'd been in thesis-writing hermit mode, so it was a fun night. I'm out of the habit of hanging out with large groups, though, and found the whole thing rather draining. In my first and second years, and during my MPhil, I went out at least once a week, and I look back and wonder how I managed it. It's not the alcohol (which in any case I've cut back on severely) so much as the need to be constantly switched on and jumping between several parallel conversations in a loud environment that makes the whole thing so exhausting.

Yesterday I mostly spent at home, as Matthias was working a shift in the library, and today will be similarly spent. We had planned to go to this event at the Botanical Gardens, but the weather is so unpleasant that we decided to give it a miss. However, this afternoon we will both be working in the library, so will have to brave the wind and rain. I'm hoping the weather will keep most of the students away, as we have a huge backlog of books to cover and prepare for circulation, which is difficult to do when the library is at full capacity.

I've got a few ideas for potential posts, but for now I'll just leave you with a link to this wonderful interview with author Kelly Link:

I'm no longer watching television in which middle-aged men figure out how to be men. I'd rather watch shows about teenaged girls figuring out what it means to be a monster. I like coming-of-age stories, ghost stories, horror stories. I love stories about doppelgangers. I didn't realize how much I craved a show that was gothic, over the top, Gormenghast on the CW.

So, I stayed away longer than I intended, but I have now submitted what I hope to be the penultimate draft of the first two chapters of my thesis to my supervisor! That's 40,000 words. I am very, very relieved. So I celebrated today by doing nothing but exercising. I went to a yoga class in the morning (which was filled with little old ladies who were much more flexible than I am), and then a long run in the sunshine. I really cannot express how good all this exercise is for my mental health. I'm not saying that you can cure depression and anxiety with a daily run, but it does help to keep the awfulness still and quiet for a little while.

We have our annual student conference in our department. I helped organise it in my MPhil year, and I presented at it in the first year of my PhD, but ever since I've just gone along for the fun of it. We've got our friends J, L and C staying with us for the weekend. J is going to be presenting there. We're going to spend tonight eating take-away and watching cheesy medieval films, and then head off to the conference in the morning. Our new house is very conveniently located - only fifteen minutes' walk to the department, and very close to the college where the dinner will be. And then on Sunday Matthias and I are going to see Paloma Faith.

One of my friends (one of my group of friends from uni, who mainly studied maths or other sciences) posted a link to an article about a study which found that the number of girls studying maths in the HSC (the equivalent of the A Levels for students in NSW; Australia doesn't have a national education system) has increased dramatically in the past decade. While I think there is a problem in encouraging girls and women to pursue study or careers in mathematical or scientific fields, and that mathematical literacy is pretty poor in the Australian adult population (I used to work as a newspaper subeditor, so I have some first-hand experience of this), I'm not sure exactly what the right way to go about fixing this is. Some of my friends were suggesting that maths be made compulsory up to Year 12 (the final year of high school - right now it's only compulsory up to Year 10, and the only compulsory subject is English), but I'm a little dubious about whether forcing people to study something would increase their enjoyment of it (or encourage them to pursue it after secondary school).*

I am going to tell you my own story, because this is the only way that I manage to work out what I think about such issues.

I did (mostly) okay in maths and science classes in secondary school up until the end of Year 10. I was in the top class for both (out of four levels in Maths and three in Science), and managed solid Bs, with the occasional A. As long as I did my homework and studied a little bit before tests, I could keep up. But when I started Year 11, and maths became much more abstract, I really, really struggled. I had to stay in the top class because I was doing the International Baccalaureate, and only the top class covered all the IB material.

I spent every evening doing maths homework. I failed every single test. The highest grade I got on a test was probably around 35% (because of the way my state's education system worked, that scaled up to about 75%, which meant it didn't affect my overall grade). Can you imagine what it feels like to spend all of your studying time working on one subject, and get results like that? It was the first (and only) time where there was no correlation between my effort and the outcome.

In contrast, in my literature class, everything just clicked. I'd always found it very easy to spot themes, stylistic devices and all that stuff in works of literature - I'd been doing it since I was a child, every time I opened a book, for fun. After a long struggle during the earlier years of high school, where my grades steadily improved from solid Bs to lower As,** I could write reasonably good essays. I found literature study easy. My grades reflected my effort: as long as I listened and participated in class, as long as I put in time with my essays and presentations, I would get very good grades. In fact, I was consistently in the top three students in the grade.

It was pretty clear, by the time I was in the final years of secondary school, that I was going to study something related to words and writing, and that I would ultimately work in a field related to that. And yet, because all of my friends were excellent at maths, I felt that I was incredibly stupid. About 60 per cent of what I angsted about during those two years was whether I would pass my IB maths exam. (The other 40 per cent was why the guy I liked didn't want me back.)

I'm not sure exactly where I'm going with this. I don't think I was bad at maths because I'm a woman - I think I was bad at maths because a) my brain simply doesn't work that way and b) I did better in subjects that were assessed primarily through essays or assignments rather than in exam conditions. I don't even necessarily think that I would have been better off if I'd been able to drop Maths entirely. I wonder if I would have been okay if I'd been able to go into the class one level down. But I think I disagree with making the choice of subjects of study more rigid and restricted in the final years of high school. If anything, I'd go in the other direction, and have more options - especially more vocational options and opportunities for internships or work experience. I feel the way to encourage more students to study specific subjects is to make them more geared towards those who have a deep and genuine interest, streamed into different levels if necessary. I think something needs to be done earlier on in education to make maths and science more appealing to girls, but I think by Years 11 and 12, it's too late, and making such subjects compulsory at that stage isn't going to solve the problem of the lack of women in those fields.***

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* If I had my way, English, Maths, Science, Modern History (or a combined History and Geography class) and a foreign language would be compulsory up to Year 10, but I think there should be more choice after that. I also think a course on managing money, and another on managing your mental health, should be made part of the curriculum.
** I will always be grateful to my English teacher during those years. She could see that I understood stuff, but wouldn't give me amazing grades until my written expression improved, and every essay it got a little bit better until I wrote one on Macbeth and she actually said to me, 'You finally understand how to do this'.
*** In any case, there are fewer women in fields which are supposedly more popular for girls - fewer senior female academics, even in the humanities, and fewer women in senior positions in the media, or working as journalists and reviewers in top, well-paying publications. My position on all these issues is that the later years of secondary school, and university (both undergrad and postgrad) is the wrong time to be addressing this problem. It needs to be dealt with both earlier (in primary and the earlier years of secondary school) and later (when adults enter the workforce).

It is unbelievably cold here. When I was running this morning, small flakes of snow were falling, although they melted when they hit the ground. Our house is very poorly insulated, and as a result I've had to wear a hat, gloves and scarf while inside.

( I kid you not )

It's absolutely breathtaking to run in such weather, even if I have to suffer icy-cold limbs and frequent nosebleeds as a result. On the weekend, I can sleep in slightly later and am able to run once the sun has risen, but during the week, I have to run before 8 o'clock. This means that it's dark when I set out, and by the time I'm making my return back along the river, the sky is starting to turn a delicate mauve. The trees are bare, the grass is muddy and greenish-grey, and the river is dark and swollen. It's an absolute joy to be outside in that landscape. I've never enjoyed summer, although I do love swimming in the ocean, so I'd say this is the perfect climate for me right now.

Term starts next week, and I'm going to be flat out. I've set very strict deadlines with my supervisor, as I'm determined to finish and submit my thesis within the next six months. Every week I'm either giving her a chapter to look at, or meeting her to discuss that chapter. I'm happy with how the current chapter is looking, but no doubt she'll find things to criticise. I'm also picking up three new students who need a couple of supervisions each (supervisions are the Oxbridge system of teaching, whereby the student writes one essay per week on a prearranged subject and then meets to discuss the essay one-on-one with a supervisor, who is usually a postgrad student. In our department, first- and second-year undergrads take six subjects per year, and third-years take four, so they tend to be extremely busy with supervision essays), and I also have to give two lectures. The supervisions are generally easy, but writing lectures takes quite a bit of time. I also go back to work in the library this week, although I may not have as many shifts as last term.

I've added Kundalini yoga to my exercise regime on top of the Hatha and Iyengar classes I'm already doing. It's very different, and involves chanting and meditation. I think doing as much exercise as possible - especially stuff involving meditation - is going to be very helpful in keeping my anxiety and depression levels low during a potentially stressful time.

I reviewed The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature (edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn), and you can find the review here.