Introductory Seminar and academic supervisors

This is a big week for me at university.

On Friday I'm delivering my Introductory Seminar to a group of academics in my faculty. What? I hear you say, scratching your heads. Well, it's like this ... when you do a doctorate at my university, you not only have to complete coursework, undertake a research project, and draft a thesis about your research project, but you also have to deliver three seminars. The Introductory Seminar is all about introducing yourself and your research topic to the faculty, the Conformation Seminar is all about demonstrating to the academic community that you are now ready and able to start your research in earnest, and the Final Seminar is about presenting the results of your research back to the academics.

So? I hear you say, surely the Introductory Seminar will be a walk in the park? Weeeelllllll.....the thing of it is that you present on your thesis topic and the academics ask you why you have chosen such and such a method, have you thought of such and such an approach. I also understand that they question your understanding of the dreaded ontology and epistemology.

But I do believe that I have a surprise for the academics. You see I want to ask them two questions. The first will be about whether I should interview men as well as women (thereby heading a likely question off at the pass), and the second is about whether my research project sounds more like a PhD than a doctorate (my academic supervisors believe that I'm doing a PhD not a doctorate, but I'd like to get the opinion of others before I make this change).  

Speaking of academic supervisors, I now have two supervisors with interest in my topic. The primary supervisor I will call "A" and a secondary supervisor who I will call "B". I also have a meeting tomorrow with both supervisors, and I'm kind of steeling myself for this because I've been a wee bit rebellious.

We meet once a month, and my task after our last meeting was to revise my literary review, specifically to add more about public administration and emotional labour. Only, when I went away from the meeting I realised that I needed more context around women's employment experience in the APS, so I decided that I would write a chapter on this topic. I had three weeks to do this, and I didn't quite finish the exercise (I have to send my written work to my supervisors one week before I am due to meet with them). During this time I also participated in a seminar by a most wonderful academic who broadened my thinking about HOW I write my thesis, so I decided to write the history chapter as a NARRATIVE (GULP). I wonder what their reaction will be????