What's the likelihood?

Jeeez Louise.

I just had an email from my Sup saying that the Vice Chancellor at my Uni is interested in being my internal examiner! :0) He is a lecturer from my Uni where I did my MA so I actually had him for a module then - he is *lovely*! Really friendly, super intelligent and not at all competitive/showy-offy as so many academics are. Very inspiring guy. How lucky am I?

So I could have the VC as an internal, and a *hugely* influential, rather famous chappie as my external. I am supervised by an emeritus professor who edits an internationally renowned journal and is friends with the who's who of international politics (hence my possible examiners). I have won funding go to one of the top ten Unis in the country for my field and am completing what so far has been seen to be a solid piece of research. My CV is *hot*!!

BUT BUT BUUUUUUTTTTTTTT I really don't want to be an academic! :0( I really don't. I think it looks awful. I do want to write this up as a book that no one will want to publish and maybe a different work avenue will come from publishing in journals. I have looked and looked at being an academic, willing myself to want to do it but I just think it is soooo dry. I would have to go to conferences and present often, all over the world. Hell. It is majorly majorly competitive - I would really have to want it. I would have to be willing to work anywhere in the world (it is international politics after all ;0)). I would have to write and write and write forever. I would have to do more research (I don't really like the research bit, just the thinking). I would like to teach and mentor peeps tho.

ARG what an arse I am! What a CV! What a lack of desire! I just hope hope hope that I do get a job that justifies all the opportunities that have been afforded to me during this PhD. I p*ss myself off, I really do. Why do I want to make my life hard?! Why can't I just be an academic? I wonder why I am doing this PhD, and very selfishly it is just simply because I enjoy it. Would I still be doing it if I wasn't funded? No - but that would be a financial decision rather than whether I enjoy it or not. I love it! I can sit all day and think about my research and pootle along writing it up and find it really, really interesting. And I am not beholden to anyone to do it.

I wonder if this is one of those things that is probably best left to fate... I'll probably have a great job in a couple of years that ticks all the boxes and uses my CV brilliantly, where i write, and help people as best I can and think I should just not have worried so much - and not felt so guilty...

x J