I'm back!

I figured it was about time I updated my blog. I've been back in the country for just over two weeks; back at uni for one week; and back at my thesis for one day. Perhaps I'll get around to finishing my travel blog some day (I had a great time in Oxford, Lancaster, Walsall and Edinburgh!) but at the moment I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the PhD.

Today I've been looking over my first three chapters and various notes I've made to try to figure out how to improve them. I just came across this little note that I wrote on 24-5-07. I was working on my conference papers, and thinking through my "model" of natural theology. I wrote:

I really need to read all natural theological works again to see if this all fits! Aack! Exhaustion!!

Ecclesiastes 12:12 is the favourite Bible verse of students everywhere, but I think it is even more appropriate for PhD students:

Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Not only are there more books made by the time you finish your PhD so that the literature review that you wrote at the beginning is now out of date, but your ideas change, so you need to go back and look again at all the stuff you've read over the first few years because you'll now see it in a different light... I get exhausted just thinking about it!