Aims and objectives!

For the past few weeks I have been wondering what to do about this blog. I like the idea of having a blog. I like to write down my thoughts and reflections and stories from my life, and I like sharing them with others. But for some reason I just haven’t been very active here on my blog even though I would want to. I think that may be because of lack of structure. What is this blog about? What is its purpose? So I have come up with some answers to those questions that will hopefully make it easier for me to put up blog posts more regularly. In fact, I have decided to do weekly blogs. At least! I plan on using Fridays for my blogging days. Well, not the whole Friday, but you know. I might blog more often, but for now I am giving myself a task, organising my schedule and an hour or two on Fridays will be dedicated to my blog.

The big question is, what is this blog going to be about. I suppose I will mostly be posting the same things I have been posting, just more regularly. I call myself the RunningResearcher. That kind of says it all. I am struggling a little bit with my running motivation these days but I feel that I am getting it back little by little. I think that might be because it is starting to get cooler here, autumn is just around the corner, and there is nothing better than going for a run in the cool air. My body is also starting to get fat adapted, so I am able to run and exercise more every day. I will, therefore, very likely talk about my running ‘journey’ on this blog, and I might talk a little about my overall ‘health journey’, like my new way of eating, the fact that I am trying to get into yoga again, and strength training that works for runners. So the Running part of my dual identity will certainly be visible on here. The Researcher part of me will probably be dominant, though.

I am now in my fifth month of my PhD. Here in New Zealand, when you start your PhD, you start with a sort of ‘conditional enrolment’, and in the first 6 months you work on your research proposal, get ethical approval and then present your proposal to a panel of experts. They will then decide if you can go on to ‘confirmed enrolment’, which means that you can continue with your research, start gathering data and things like that. They can also tell you that you need to work on the proposal some more, giving you feedback and time to fix what needs to be fixed. Or they can just tell you to go home! Obviously, I am working towards the first option! You can extend those 6 months if you need to, and I will probably extend a couple of months. That is because my initial idea was to conduct my research here in Hamilton, in the NZ context. But, after considering a lot of different things, I decided to change my context to Iceland. So I will be gathering my data in Iceland. Cannot wait to go back there, but that means that I needed to do some changes to my proposal, and it always takes time to get things in place. Anyway, the proposal is split into different sections. You need to state the aim and objectives of the research, why this is a significant topic worth researching, you need to present a literature review of previous research on your topic and where your research sits within the field and what it might add to the knowledge base. You need to address all ethical issues, present your methodology and have a clear timeframe of how your research will progress. So those are a lot of things you need to do in 6 months! At this moment, I am “finished” with the first parts of my proposal and am now starting to work on my methodology and ethical approval application. I think everything is going well and I am making good progress. You often get discouraged when you are working on something, and all of a sudden it doesn’t seem to make any sense. The other day I was almost in tears because I just couldn’t see what I needed to see in my literature, how I could connect this to that. But then the next day, I was in cloud nine because everything was making such great sense. This PhD is definitely a rollercoaster ride! But I love it, the good and the bad.

See you next week :)

Kia ora

So, I’m in New Zealand. I almost have to pinch myself when I wake up to believe that this is real. The haze of confusion is slowly lifting and I’m starting to understand how things work here. Still don’t have internet at home, which is causing me too feel quite disconnected from the world. Even if I do have mobile internet in my phone, it is just not the same. Anyway, I hope my building supervisor will fix it soon so I can start Skyping and calling people.

My first impressions of New Zealand is that it is very beautiful here. On my way from the airport in Auckland, all I saw were beautiful green rolling hills, and I was seriously half expecting Hobbits to appear (or Teletubbies!). The nature here is lovely. Hamilton is also very green and beautiful, but very different from Oslo. It reminds me both of the suburb where I lived in Augusta, Georgia, and Iceland. Things are flat here (that part does not look like Iceland at all!) and everything is spread out. It is not very pedestrian friendly, you almost need to have a car. There are buses but, I don’t know, the public transport system doesn’t seem to have the same convenience as it does in Oslo. I walked to the supermarket yesterday, about a 40minute walk/3km (similar from Eyrin to Bónus, for my Isafjordur dwelling readers). It is doable, at least if I take the bus back home like I did. I’ll just have to put my grocery shopping on my work out plan.

Saying that New Zealanders are friendly, is like the understatement of the century. Very friendly people, indeed. Everybody is so helpful and nice and willing to help with everything. And it doesn’t seem fake, people seem to be genuinely interested in helping. It definitely helps with settling in. I have just finished all the enrollment paperwork and just got my student ID card, tomorrow I will get my office space and Wednesday I’ll have my first meeting with my supervisors to finish all the details with the supervision agreement and then ... fulltime PhD student I’ll be! They seem to take very good care of their postgraduate students here. There are writing retreats and workshops and other events to both bring people together but also to assist you with issues you might be having. I’m so looking forward to the next 3 years.

I will try to keep this blog active and interesting for you, I haven’t quite decided what kind of a blog it will be, academic, personal, marathon training, or a combination of all three. We will see. I hope you are all well.