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Cathie - what an inspirational posting! You give me the confidence to do what I felt at first unwilling to: to offer a contrasting perspective to the few cautionary voices that have appeared in this thread and to urge another (in this case Louise) to trust to her innermost urgings and give vent to these in her choice of research methodology/story-telling. My own experience has many resonances to her own - but in my case I was 'stuck' on my doctoral write-up for three years, with all the data to hand that had been gathered in an easy, traditional, positivistic framework. These did not, however, speak to my condition and I found it easy to put off the write-up to another day. A chance meeting with Jack led to a transformation of my research. Registered as I was at a university with no strong tradition of familiarity with or encouragement of non-traditional forms of scholarship (albeit with a few happy exceptions within the dept.), I did need to put my case strongly at the time of the appointment of external examiners, that I wanted my research story to be examined (rigorously) by scholars with a back-story of openness to non-traditional forms of knowledge-generation. I'm delighted to recount that this is indeed what happened: my viva was simultaneously warm, brutal, challenging, fair, penetrating, and real. Above all, I felt that I was given an opportunity to be heard and understood - which was what I most wanted. I can genuinely say that what I got out of my research was acquired through the process of living it. The happy secondary gift was that I passed too. In completing my doctorate the way I felt I most wanted and needed to, I took comfort from the words of the cyclist Lance Armstrong, "The real reward for pain is self-knowledge. When you feel like giving up, you have to ask yourself which you would rather live with. What the Tour de France teaches you is that pain is temporary. Quitting is forwever." Warm regards, Barry Dr Barry Hymer Director, still thinking uk ltd Visiting Fellow, Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLaT), Newcastle University _www.barryhymer.co.uk_ (http://www.barryhymer.co.uk/) "The truly great advances of this generation will be made by those who can make outrageous connections, and only a mind which knows how to play can do that." (Nagle Jackson) "I'm a playing boy, not a working boy." (Tom, 5)