Adam discusses the difficult path from third-class degree to being accepted to read for a PhD.

Can you tell me when you completed your PhD, how many years it took and how old you were when you started?

Yes. I was into my thirties when I began and I think that was January 2002. The work was finished by the end of '05. I was viva'd in February '06 and then graduated ceremonially in July '06.

And did you do the bulk of it full-time or part-time?

It was full-time although unusually I was also working as well, a part time position for much of it and then I landed a job in London which was full time but it wasn't so bad because the thesis was drawing to its conclusion by that time.

So you were working and being paid throughout the PhD? Were you working at the beginning as well?

Yes, yes throughout the MA and PhD.

Did you receive any funding?

No. I did apply but frankly I think my subject which was John Betjeman, a very popular poet laureate, not very popular academically and a lot of, this was also reflected in the number of applications I made to universities for the PhD. Some quite explicitly said we can't really see this going anywhere and I think that was also true of the funding scenario so I simply scrimped and saved and worked and funded myself.

And did you work beforehand?

Yes I had a full-time position after my undergraduate study. It didn't meet what I wanted out of life. I was living at home at the time and I think that's a key point because if I wasn't, if I hadn't been living at home,  I couldn't really have done this. I walked out of my job effectively.

What were you doing?

I was a trainee manager in inverted commas at a local print company and it involved doing a bit of everything in the building, which was good because you get to meet everybody and get on with everybody and understand what they're doing but it wasn't really how I wanted my working life to pan out. I wanted something else. So a friend gave me a prospectus for a distance learning establishment and I found a Masters course that appealed to me which focused more on Victorian verse and I thought, I probably won't be able to do that and a full time job because printing is very deadline led, it can be quite pressured every day really. When you get home you don't essentially feel like thinking much so I thought I'd leave. Got the luxury of being able to leave and I'll get a part time position. Three days a week I was aiming at and I managed to find one eventually.

I had a small hiccup and spent seven weeks believe or not as a hairdresser's assistant which was about five minutes walk away and then luckily found an accountant's position which would take me for three days a week and that allowed me four days working on the MA study and that's where I stayed throughout most of the PhD as well because the idea for the PhD came from the MA. I didn't go into the MA thinking that I'll go on as far as I can go. It was simply an idea that came. So that's how that panned out.

Can you just talk me through your educational background a bit?  How the undergraduate degree led to the Masters which led to the PhD.

Sure. I went away to university as most people did at about 20, originally to study mathematics with statistics because I'd done that at A level and I thought it would give me a better range of careers from which to choose. I suppose I went into that with good sense, again in inverted commas but I found that it really wasn't engaging me enough. Some parts of the course were just too difficult for me to do so I switched to English Literature after about a month, became very interested in it. But also at the same time very interested in music and I played in a band for a while and I probably didn't devote as much time as I should have done to those studies and also I found Anglo Saxon incredibly difficult and I failed that paper alas.

That really wasn't my downfall but I was never going to get a 2.1 although I tried my damndest as the third year went by. I did end up getting a third which left me feeling a bit disillusioned. It was the only third in my year. It made me feel stupid actually in comparison to everyone else. Although at the time just having a degree was something of an achievement, that you'd followed a course etc. But nevertheless I felt stupid so I shunned academia and just thought 'Oh well I'll go back to my home town of Swindon and get a job'. And I did effectively turn my back on it.

The job wasn't as I've described, wasn't as I'd hoped and was fairly depressing frankly because I think sometimes in one's first job you end up thinking 'Goodness is this it, is this life for the next 60 years or whatever, 50 years?'  Two things happened really which I view as being purely chance. The first was that they started showing Inspector Morse on ITV repeats and I happened to watch one which featured a lot of Rochester's poetry and I'd liked Rochester during my first degree and I was surprised that with my third class brain how much of these slightly lewd poems I could remember. 

That led me to join my local library because I'd eschewed it so much, I'd not even bothered to join a local library when I came back to Swindon. I decided having enjoyed that film, I should try reading one of the books. So I got out one of the books which were all, the paragraphs were quite often headed with a quotation and again I found it was enjoyable to play spot the quotation and that started me reading again and at the same time a friend gave me a prospectus for a distance learning establishment and I just became ignited, reignited with the subject. I did want to rub out the third if I possibly could so there were simultaneous thoughts going on. Rub out the third and also this is really interesting. I'm five years older now; maybe I'm ready for this. I don't want to do the drinking every night, playing in the band sort of stuff any longer, why don't I apply and see what happens. And I did and found it enormously rewarding. I quite enjoyed working alone on it but knowing that there was support at the end of the telephone. Not e-mail in those days particularly and also group sessions every fourth weekend, a small group met which was also very useful and it was through doing Victorian literature, that's really where the PhD idea came from. 

I'd always liked John Betjeman, not for any academic reason but just the pleasure of watching his programmes, and his verse did come up at A level and he stood for me anyway and I noticed that a lot of Hardy, Tennyson, a bit of Browning rang little bells in my head back to Betjeman's work and I chatted to my tutor of the period about that and he didn't laugh. He encouraged me to have a try at applying and writing a synopsis of what a thesis might look like and we went on from there. I applied and failed so thought best of three then best of five, best of ten and eventually I think it was shot No. 20 hit the target because I happened to find somebody who was a Betjeman fan like me who could see that it had legs to use his own words. So it feels like a concatenation of chance but one led in; I think if I'd got something better than a third as an undergraduate student I probably would have been satisfied with that and stayed in a job and that would have been an end to it; so that really led me to want to do better. And then it became study for study's sake in a way. I became absorbed by the subject itself.