I am back.

Welcome to another essay post-op, in which I talk about all manner of thing in an attempt to ‘write off some steam’ after having spent the last nine hours (the past week and a half, really) finishing up some assignment required of me by my excellent course here at Bradford. In this case, that assignment being my dissertation proposal. It is 2:30 a.m., so certainly not as bad as it could have been. I say that, but I don’t want you to get the impression that I’m alright with this sort of behavior. Having to finish an essay in the wee hours of the deadline day constitutes a failure of sorts for me, or at least it is an indication that something has gone wrong. That said, from about noon yesterday there was really no doubt in my mind that I’d get it done in fairly good time (again, the meaning of ‘good time’ having been revised relative to the time remaining), the only question was one of quality. On that count, I’m not sure. I’ve never submitted a dissertation proposal before. I don’t think it was very good, but I also don’t think it was very, very bad. Ultimately it’s rather inconsequential as it only counts for 15% of the overall dissertation mark, so all I need is a decent mark, and more importantly I allegedly still have a lot of leeway to change my question and even my topic should I so desire. Which I will, I’m sure of it. In the end, I was forced to write this proposal more to what I’d read (which was far-reaching at the expense of depth) rather than to what I precisely wanted. Which would have been difficult in any case because I could not for the life of my figure out what I wanted to write about!

(I should warn you, since I haven’t done these in a while, that they tend to be fairly messy, even messier than my other posts on this site; partially because of the hour, more because I’m letting out an excess. But I write them because I like reading them later, and again much later.)

This assignment was a real challenge because it was a collision of often conflicting desires. It is the first step of the long-revered dissertation; it is a big deal. I want to do something sensational, though the rational voice in my head, and most lecturers advise against such fantasies. I at least want to do something interesting to read by someone who knows a lot and reads a lot and generally doesn’t expect much from undergraduate dissertations. So that puts pressure on myself, as I generally do, only this time it’s more.

It’s also hard because Bradford, or the Peace Studies Department rather, is quite alternative. Alternative, and broad. We have studied so much; I have studied so much in my first two years. To try to do something encapsulating all of that would be impossible; to do something representing a lot of that would also be impossible; I must resign myself to not covering some, even many, things that I am very interested in and somewhat knowledgeable about. 

Probably due to the alternative nature of the course, towards the end of my second year I was leaning towards doing a dissertation on peacebuilding and reconstruction. But then I went away to France and got a decent, if decidedly more mainstream, year of education. Which put me more onto politics and mainstream international relations, and getting into American talk shows certainly didn’t hurt that (probably because it was an election year). So I came back from France in a more mainstream frame of mind, and now I find myself doing a dissertation proposal about US diplomacy and recent wars in the Middle East.

But I hate feeling like I’m being mainstream, or safe, or boring. So I’m trying to wrench a mainstream topic in an unconventional direction, which is a bad thing to do on the night before the proposal is due. To be honest I wouldn’t be able to say exactly where the proposal I handed in, or will hand in in some hours would fall on the spectrum, nor can I say where my final dissertation will fall. We’ll see.

So there were a lot of warring desires that went into my preparation for this dissertation proposal, and it didn’t help that everything I read became my new big interest – there came a point where I just had to force myself to stop reading and start writing, which doesn’t mean my knowledge was good enough to start writing, only that time constraints demanded it.

Never mind. I did alright, I think, and it’ll be interesting to see what I get for it. Take tomorrow- er, today, off, then refocus and do more reading while I don’t have to be writing much.

Take today off, that is, until 3 pm. I’ll hand in the two copies well before then, prepare myself for my radio show, go on at 3, rock out (jazz out) till 5, then send an email to my Security module group about meeting the following day, then make my presentation about my year abroad, also for the following day. Easy stuff, though. And then when I give my presentation I receive my awards for submissions in the study abroad competitions, so I can finally buy some proper football kit and maybe some more thin ties.

It’s funny, I don’t get to dress up very much and yet when I have some money to spend on clothing, what I want to spend it on most is formal wear. So I have to compromise and find something that can double as casual wear without looking too pretentious. I do need some new shoes as well. I sound awfully first world right now.

Yes, I have a radio show! You can listen to it, wherever you are in the world, if you have an internet connection, which, if you’re reading this, I assume you do. Gotcha! Just go to ramair.co.uk and click listen at whatever the equivalent of 3-5 pm GMT on Tuesdays is for you. I do jazz. All manner of jazz. It is seriously a great way to chill out from studying, an activity tomorrow’s show will embody perfectly. Since I didn’t have time this week to prepare a representative selection from a certain era, as I’ve been promising I’ll do, that plan will be delayed at least one week, but I think you’ll enjoy my fusion. I love me some jazz fusion.

There’s plenty else I could say, about how I haven’t made a YouTube video in ages and really need to get back on that but this year is busier than I expected, or about another deadline I have next week that won’t be easy either, or about how much I enjoyed watching Ender’s Game and kind of cried through the end of it, and how I want to explain its brilliance to all who don’t understand, and then use it as part of my series on why I am probably a dictator at heart (it’s not a light piece), but I will leave all that for another day. Against my better judgment, I am going to break into my celebratory caramel dip (and delicious quadruple chocolate cookies, a birthday present from a friend) tonight, not tomorrow, while watching an episode of Suits. Tempted to watch a full-blown movie, but that’d be a bit much. I do, after all, need to wake up to turn in my assignment. Not quite off the hook yet.

I hope you all have had as wonderful a night as I, though hopefully a more restful one, and that you are always diligent in what you know you should do, and that you keep thinking critically about things, and that you write me every once in a while.

Good night. Sorry if there are any typos in this.