“So… are you still going to be able to go on fieldwork at the end of this month?” — a lot of people, everywhere
No, I will not be going anywhere anytime soon!
😉 I don’t know yet when I’ll be going on fieldwork, it is all going to depend on what the two specialists say my treatment and recovery timeline will be. Even if I was treated and done in a very short time, I would still need the time to rebuild my stamina and strength.
For the last two months, I’ve been super sedentary, unable to walk up any sort of hill at all, and not able to walk farther than a block or two on flat ground. And for the nine months or so before this, I was much more sedentary than I usually am, having to save up energy for the days when I walked to the department or the castle. So once I can breathe again, and my joints don’t hurt as much, it’s still going to take me a while to get back to normal.
It’s really not a big deal to me that this is pushing my PhD schedule. What would be scary to me would be attempting fieldwork when my body isn’t ready. I’m used to shifting things for health issues. After all, undergrad took me 5 years instead of 4– through 4 different institutions. My masters had that extra year built in. ‘Normal’ for me is planning for the unexpected, because the unexpected is, in fact, expected. I have no idea at this point how I will get my Yiddish up to snuff, as יידיש פארם Yiddish Farm may no longer be an option when I’m ready for it. I might get to Jerusalem in December, or February– or I might have to change my field site entirely, depending on the outlook from the scans. I’m living with the question mark right now, but I usually live with one question mark or another. Hopefully I’ll get a bit of an answer on Wednesday.
What a long way I’ve come. After this post in 2016, it would be another 2 years until I left for fieldwork. I never did get to Yiddish Farm, which is now offering much more limited programming. As I mentioned yesterday, I moved back to Oxford to get better medical care, and within six months of moving to Oxford in January 2018, I had already started my fieldwork with my Lupus under control. Since then, I finished fieldwork, presented 8 papers at 7 conferences around the world in 2019, got an article accepted in a peer reviewed journal, had a chapter accepted in an edited volume, and I’m working on putting together a post-doctoral project on Haredi Jewish attitudes around public health. Wow! Now just to finish the dissertation…
Wondering what’s going on with these posts? Check out my explanation HERE!
This Isolation Life 