Today I had the first taste of fieldwork blues on this trip. That is, the sensation that you don't know what you are doing, have no research to write up, are just floundering around without direction, that no-one is willing to cooperate with your research, that when you return you will be ripped to pieces for 'not getting things done', that your carefully developed plans are being shredded, that you might as well go home and work in a bar, because that is all you are capable of.

Of course, this is linked to the secret insecurity that every PhD student has, the fear that some day they will be sitting at their desk, and the vice-chancellor, flanked by the head of deparment and supervisors, will rush in and denounce you as a useless fraud who has no right to be at the university, and has fifteen minutes to clear their desk. Every PhD student constantly has moments of self-doubt about their ability and direction of their work, but they are amplified ten times when on fieldwork, a combination of culture shock, language problems, and the shift from theoretical speculation to data collection.

Admittedly these feelings have diminished significantly as two important interview subjects have set dates to talk to me. Typical law of averages, just as soon as you are getting fed up of plodding along without getting anywhere, you find out something important.

I definately haven't reached the stage I was at during my last strech of fieldwork. Then I was pretty down about my work, and at one point resolved never to do fieldwork again. Cue sixteen months later..... The big difference is that this time I have much better ideas about what my research is about, my aims and questions are much better defined, and I am generally more prepared. Also this time I am here for much longer, so I have to accept that I am living here, and can't try to drift through it. This entails a totally different mindset to short term fieldwork, and most people tell me that paradoxically the feelings of fieldwork blues are much less acute in long periods of fieldwork, because of this different mindset.
My advice to people who want to go on field work is:

• Thoroughly prepare your ideas and research questions. Don't have the attitude that you will work it out when you get there. Of course, the better defined your questions are, the more likely it is that they will change, but at least you have something to work with. Always have a plan that can fall apart.
  
• Accept that you will be there for a long time, and bloomin' well act like you are living there
• Go somewhere nice. Caribbean comes with positive recommendations from me! If the funding councils are paying you to go somewhere, you might as well go somewhere good. My friend Charlie originally proposed to do work in the Scottish Islands, thought about it, and then moved her research to the South Pacific - smart girl!

Oh well, now that I have arranged them, I'd better prepare for these meetings.