Keep Calm and Carry On

Three days before I was to return to St Andrews - after a wonderful and relaxing Christmas break I spent mostly cloistered away with my family at home - my long-suffering computer died. Taking the entire contents of my hard-drive with it. Needless to say, my last three days were far from relaxing.

With Dad's help and cool head, we managed to get the ailing computer to Major Mac, who pronounced it DOA. However, after a heart transplant (or a hard drive replacement) the computer is back to working order, with a brand new hard drive twice the size of the old and with all the latest operating software. Better, stronger, faster. Indeed.

The same can not be said for the contents of my original hard drive. I thought I had backed everything up to an external drive, but alas, it was not so. I did have all of my photos before August 2009 on the external drive, and most of my music was on my iPod. With the help of my friend Adam's father (a computer professor at a major English university) I have managed to retrieve all of my photos post-August from my actual camera.

But the most important piece of information had a "do not resuscitate" order. My PhD Thesis.

When I realized it was gone, I sobbed. And I don't usually cry. Let alone sob. With heaves and gasping for breath and full red face. My mother thought someone had died. And then she realized that, in effect, someone HAD died.

I have since managed to cobble together the bulk of my two chapter drafts and outlines from emails I sent to my supervisor. But my notes... all 300 or so pages of notes... have been lost. We even sent the old hard drive to a company in California that specializes in practically-impossible data recovery. We heard the official news just this Friday. They said there was nothing they could do.

I have had a little time to get used to the idea and to put things into perspective. My supervisor was concerned that I was not panicking. I told him that had had my 15 minutes of panic and was now trying to think optimistically. Panic, at this point, is extremely counterproductive.

This crisis has given me two options. To quote an encouraging and wise email from my Dad: "we CHOOSE either to reflect on what we could have done different, why now, why me, OR we to look to see how God is going to guide us through this to a point that we can one day look back and say WOW!!!"

Even from this vantage point, I can now look back and see Him at work. I can thank God that I had such a hard start of it last year. So I only lost about half of what I could have lost. Additionally, my research method has saved me on more than one front. First of all, I work chronologically, as opposed to thematically. A number of my friends are working thematically, meaning that they must do all of their reading and research first, before they can even begin to write anything. I, on the other hand, focus on certain dates, in order. For instance, while my whole thesis will cover the years between 1517 and 1567, my first chapter deals solely with 1517-1530 (a finished draft was saved in an email to my supervisor), and my second on 1530-1542 (which was three quarters finished and also saved in an email to my supervisor).

Because of my chronological method, I have only lost notes for my current two chapters, not for any future chapters. But here is where my research method has once again saved me. After researching for a chapter, I write up an outline. I then incorporate my research notes into my outline and then bind it all together with prose into a draft. Any notes not already incorporated into my draft didn't make the cut. I had hoped to go back to those excluded notes in the future and see if they needed to be filtered in, but their loss, though felt, is not the end of the world. It is likely that I will never fully know all that was lost. But I must concentrate on that which was not lost; that which remains.

This hiccup has given me the opportunity to re-evaluate the focus of my research and to hone my writing. And it has also given me a much needed kick to the pants to really get down to business! Instead of halting my progress, I must take it as the chance to improve my work, make it stronger. Perhaps make it even better than it would have been if I had not lost my notes.

So this year, I am adopting a British World War II slogan as my own:

"Keep Calm and Carry On"

But even more importantly, I am going to try to cling to Deuteronomy 4:39:

"Acknowledge and take heart this day, for the LORD is God, in heaven above and on earth below; There is no other."

For that is the only way I know how to "keep calm and carry on".