In Which We Learn That Driving a Formula One Car Is Not The Same as Writing a Thesis
Catherine Slater
Over the Christmas holidays there was a documentary on ITV4 called ‘Life behind Lewis’, a documentary following the Formula One season of Super Aguri driver Anthony Davidson, the title just a cunning ruse to make all Hamilton fans tune in. Well, it worked. Joey sat there, listening to Davidson talk about Hamilton’s first ever Formula One crash, a smash into the tyre barrier at the unforgiving Ste Devote corner in Monaco. Davidson was the first one to see Hamilton as he climbed unharmed out of the car. Joey heard Davidson describe the concentration and mental involvement of an F1 driver, and the feeling of crashing a Formula One car when the driver, until the moment of impact at one with the machine, is catapulted viciously and unceremoniously back out into the real world, where people don’t drive that fast and where the car reverts to being just a piece of machinery, no longer a part of the driver’s self. The timing of listening to Davidson’s description of the car being an intrinsic extension of the driver’s being was not lost on Joey. Only the day before she had complained to her mum that she no longer felt wholly connected to the work that she was doing and that there were always other things intruding into her thoughts when she was supposed to be working. That’s what she wanted: to feel as though the work is an essential part of you, who you are and what you are made of. She felt a bit silly making the analogy between driving a Formula One car and writing up her thesis, but the principle of giving yourself entirely over to the job at hand was the same (albeit with fewer safety concerns – writing a thesis can lead to a huge number of paper cuts).
Joey panicked: she hadn’t felt that feeling of being engrossed, whole-heartedly and whole-mindedly, in a long time. There was always something else praying on her mind, particularly this term, when buying a flat and moving in had sapped every last bit of energy. Rather a stupid plan to try and move in the final year of her PhD, but that was all very well with hindsight. It wasn’t just the time spent painting or waiting in for furniture deliveries or phoning utility companies that had distracted her, but also the feeling when she was trying to work that there would be a hundred other things to get sorted out when she got home and that the piles of stuff and still-packed boxes would drive her slowly insane. Instead of being engrossed in her work when she arrived at the office, her days were spent arguing about the non-delivery of goods and arranging viewings of her old flat. Perhaps she could have understood the feeling of never being wholly given over to her work if it had just happened during this one term. But it was ongoing.
It was her mum that had hit the nail on the head: working on a thesis for three years is not the same as working for an undergraduate degree, or even a Masters. As an undergraduate, Joey had worked hard. She was able to close the door to her room, sit at her desk and get on with her reading, writing or revising in peace. And when it was finished, it was finished – there were friends to see, evenings out, no other responsibilities to worry about. Even as a Masters student Joey planned her work in manageable chunks, focussing on one piece of work at a time, in the knowledge that when it was finished she could tick it off her list and move on to the next thing, whether that was work or play. She worked in intense bursts, feeling really captivated by what she was reading or doing, and with the joy of learning that she had grown up with. When the work was done, she left her desk with a feeling of liberation and satisfaction, knowing that her mind had been completely focussed on what needed to be achieved.
Now, though, Joey was struggling to keep her mind on one thing at a time: no longer mentally gripped by the piece of work she was doing, but always with part of her mind whirring away on some other plane, thinking about jobs that needed doing in the flat, emails that needed replies and always the lure of the internet, sitting there like one of Bad Idea Bears from Avenue Q, two innocent-looking bears who do their best to distract the main character in the musical from fulfilling his true purpose in life.
Then there was her teaching, taking time and energy to prepare the classes, as well as marking, setting exam papers and going to meetings. Joey loved her teaching but it didn’t half take up a lot of time. And more than that, it wasn’t just the time, but the constant awareness in her mind that she needed to get the marking done, that she needed to find a text for next week, that there was still more research she needed to do for a class. All these thoughts invaded her mind, all demanding attention at the same time. Joey was scared because even her usual and well-honed organisational skills weren’t helping this time. Even armed with a list and a schedule of what she was going to do during the week, somehow all the jobs that were unrelated to her thesis took priority, until she had reached the point that her thesis was something she did when she had some spare time.
All these things were conspiring against her, preventing her from that feeling of being at one with her work, to the exclusion of all other demands on her time. But then her mum – who, as we shall see, is the heroine of the story – pointed out that her life had changed, that she now had other responsibilities to family, to her home, to her students, which weren’t there before. It was inevitable that she would struggle to focus solely on one thing at a time. Instead of being immersed in a positive way – that sensation when you are so engaged in what you are doing that you don’t look at the clock ticking away, that you don’t notice people coming in and out of the room – she was now experiencing that dreadful sinking, drowning feeling which comes with fear.
Joey knew she needed to pull herself out of this feeling of drowning and to do this, she had to learn to accept the differences between what she was working on now, at the time she was at in her life, and everything that had come before. Of course there were little adjustments she could make to try and regain a semblance of that feeling of being engrossed in her work, such as turning off her email and accepting that if she didn’t reply within five minutes of receipt the world wouldn’t fall apart, and trying to stick more rigidly to her weekly work plans, so that she would not only stop worrying about finding time to get everything done, but would also have the satisfaction of ticking off work she had completed. But the main thing Joey had to learn was that the nature of the goal she was aiming for had changed: it was no longer short pieces of work completed during set periods when she was at her desk, but an ongoing, constant immersion – obsession, almost - like a flame lit under a slow-cooker, with thoughts continuously bubbling away in the background. She needed to take into account the time she spent thinking about how to structure her next chapter when she was doing the washing up. The time she spent making links between different scholars’ work when she was doing the long drive up to her sister’s in Sheffield. The time she was so busy thinking about how to open a section of her thesis that she squeezed face wash onto her toothbrush instead of her toothpaste. It was all this time that counted towards being absorbed by her work that needed to be counted, not just the time spent in the office.
Doing her thesis, Joey realised, was more like driving a normal road car than a Formula One car: slow and steady rather than all-out speed. It was a different kind of immersion, of being in control of something, that she needed firstly to learn and secondly to accept. It might not be as much fun, but it was certainly more likely to lead to the chequered flag.
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