Viva Reax

Rant Warning

God, what a day! I feel physically and mentally exhausted. Today was supposed to be the sweet culmination of two-and-a-half months of slogging. It didn’t quite work out that way. I had high hopes of my PhD progression viva. I didn’t expect the examiners to lavish praises on my progression report (although that would have been welcome) but I did expect some thought-provoking constructive feedback. Instead, they dismissed my ideas and tried to convince me to radically change my approach. If I were to follow their suggestions I would be doing a different PhD. They didn’t really engage with or critique my work, but dismissed it outright. I suppose either my PhD will have to change or my examiners will have to change and at this stage I can’t figure out which one it will be.

In hindsight, the signs were there all along. Their praise for my presentation yesterday seemed half-hearted. 

I am going way off the beaten path in my PhD, so there is always the fear that what I am doing is total nonsense. So, outright dismissals of my work always hurts, especially from heterodox economists who one expects to be sympathetic. Of course, I don’t expect them to pull their punches for the sake of my ego. But, in the social sciences, epistemology (ways of knowing) and ontology (nature of reality) matters so much. A brilliant piece of work can seem like nonsense if you don’t accept its ontological and epistemological premise. The question of rigorous critique doesn’t arise.

I think I have a keener appreciation of these issues after doing the Ways of Knowing course. It helps partly explain the strong resistance once feels towards certain ideas and theories. Of course, ontology and epistemology don’t extend to emotions.

I still think it is worthwhile to engage in discussions with people who come from different ontological and epistemological positions. But, giving them power over your work is probably not a great idea. Today, I didn’t get any questions on my key concepts. I spent most of my time arguing why I didn’t want to do what they were suggesting. I admit I didn’t cover myself in glory, but I am at the early stages of my PhD. And, in any case, they didn’t seem very receptive to my ideas.

Maybe I am being oversensitive and need to handle criticism better. People are not always going to ask questions I like or would prefer to answer. Maybe it is a bit of both. I need to take criticism better and choose different examiners.

I am very passionate about what I do, which is probably why this is affecting me so much. Ah well, I guess there are much worse problems to have.