My search for questions...

Why devote oneself to hidden answers, when there are a million questions begging to be heard.

How hard can a PhD really be…?

20 years after finishing my A-Levels with a resounding “thud”, I find myself sat in a busy wine bar not far from St Paul’s Cathedral. I’m reading a pop-science book of cognitive psychology and fancying myself a late-blooming wit who perhaps never really gave academia a chance.

Now it’s 3 months later and in a pique of curiosity I’ve found myself down a pit of intellectual… erm… curiosity, without so much as a despondent sociology teacher by my side to guide me.

In that time I’ve learnt a few surprising facts, in no particular order:

1. There are a fuck load of academic papers out there (seriously I’ve not even managed to read half of them yet)

2. When you’re actually interested in learning you somehow find yourself more distracted by the questions in your own brain than by biological curiosities such as tiredness

3. Chat GPT is surprisingly good company when in the middle of the night you get the nagging feeling that Kant was an “incel loser who needed to get beaten up” and your wife doesn’t feel like discussing it

4. It might actually be quite hard to do a PhD - or at least settle on doing just one

And that’s just the point. As much as I’d love to set sail on a course to that little archipelago of letters, just how can anyone devote years of their lives looking for a single answer when there are so many unknown questions out there?

And now I’m here. Chat GPT is finally sick of me and has suggested I take my idle thoughts and piss into the howling winds of the blogosphere.

So here’s the deal. This is what we know.

• Despite my failure to fully achieve academic mediocrity, I have been lucky enough to spend 15 years working with a friend and business partner to build a moderately successful business

• I’m about to embark on a 2.5 year Post Graduate Diploma in Leadership and Management with a view to converting that to an MBA afterwards. This is a sincere undertaking that I’m looking forward to very much

• I am limited - aren’t we all - but curious to see where those limitations take me when I throw off my own veil of ignorance (yes, I know I used that wrong) and engage with the subjects of my own curiosity

• Over the next few years I will need to write some proper essays and stuff. Knowing me, half of them will tail away into abstract and unfocussed thought. So why not post them here and call it humour.

I don’t hope to achieve too much from this undertaking (other than the obvious fame and fortune), but at least it’s cheaper than therapy.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

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