[Randall Moffett]

Well I know you are all expecting some cool armour or weapons but sadly I have tricked you.

I just wanted to let everyone know all the hurdles to my PhD in medieval Hist/arch. came to an end this week. I know several of you have had a hand in this so thank you all for your help and friendship. It was a very amazing process to be involved in and I had much joy in it but now on to something new... hopefully employment.

Something that may be of interest to some of you here is that I will have my PhD Thesis; 'The Military Organisation of Southampton in the Late Medieval Period, 1300-1500', online as soon as the University has it uploaded in our electronic repository.

Take care and thanks again!

Randall Moffett

[Jonathan Hopkins]

Randall,
Congratulations on your tremendous accomplishment! I wish you luck as you seek employment. Please post a link when your paper goes online.

Jonathan

[A. Spanjer]

Congratulations!

That's a major accomplishment.

[Roger Hooper]

Congratulations on your doctorate.

As you live in Southampton, you must have had access to unique local records, boring to trudge through, but rich in content, that gave you a deep insight into what was happening there 600 years ago.

[Scott Hrouda]

Congratulations on achieving your PhD! I can't imagine the amount of hard work and dedication that was involved.

As Mr. Hopkins stated, please let the forum know when your paper is posted. The title of your doctoral thesis has me drooling, I can't wait to read it!

Maybe the administrators of myArmoury can give you the special title "Dr. Moffett".

[Artis Aboltins]

Congratulations on getting to the end of the long road! The title of the thesis sounds intriguing to say the least.

[Jean Thibodeau]

Congratulations and it sort of gives us bragging right that some of us here actually know what they are talking about i.e. Have doctorates in history and are not all a bunch of pimply adolescents on the internet.


But seriously, sincere congratulations even if I couldn't resist joking a little above.

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Glennan Carnie]

Congratulations Dr Moffett

Really, really pleased for you. Hope the family are well, too

Best regards from the entire English Warbow Society

[David Huggins]

Congratulations Randall and well done....enjoy the paaaaarty!

regards
Dave

[Josh MacNeil]

Randall - I've always said (as a student myself, and the boyfriend of an education major) that you have to be just a little bit crazy to get a PhD in anything. My hat is off to you for sticking with it and reaching this goal. So a giant and well deserved congratulations to you, Doctor Moffet!!!

Cheers,
- JM

[Kel Rekuta]

Yes well done Randall! And thank you for your exemplary contributions here (and elsewhere) over the past few years. Your generosity had helped a number of us very much!

[J.D. Crawford]

Congratulations Randall. What next? Do you plan to stay in Academia? A post-doc position?

How was the defense? I broke out in hives the day of my defense....17 long years ago. Still not sure if it was the stress or the antibiotics I was taking at the time.

[Randall Moffett]

Thank you all for the congratulations!

It was indeed a great deal of fun, especially the first few years of research, I learned more in the last few years than I could have imagined possible.

Writing about Southampton at the same time as living there was a very amazing experience. Sometimes you could almost feel the old town around you, the people, buildings and such. I was fortunate that Southampton had such great monuments, finds, tons of late medieval documents, some great teachers and a number of good friends for me.

Glennan, we sure miss the group. We were sad as we went through the reenactment stuff to put it in storage to think that we missed Herstmonceux by only a few weeks. Would have been a great way to end it there... as it were we went to Legoland and William escaped his push chair and security had to lock the park down to find him, appears he really liked the water park there.... never been so scared my entire life.

I guess I'd agree that you must be a bit crazy to finish a PhD... there were days I wondered if such a task could be completed. During my defence I guess I was less worried about what they might ask me and more what they may have found in my Thesis that I may have missed. In the end it turned out to be a very nice conversation about things I really enjoy, so it was fun.

What I'd like to do now is teach. I am hoping to continue my studies of medieval warfare, arms and armour but primarily to keep doing research on medieval towns and their military organisation. Its a big hole right now that I think deserves patching. I really enjoy seeing how the average baker, merchant, butcher, weaver, etc. rose to the occasion to defend their homes and families. Currently just looking for work. I’d prefer to teach but we’ll see. Have several maybe's at the moment but nothing solid so it is a bit worrisome.

I will have some of the contents of my paper published shortly, mostly in sections. In the end I'd like to make a large volumes about medieval or English medieval towns and their military organisation. If the University archive where my thesis is placed is private I can get all my thesis online elsewhere for you all to read.

Thanks again,

Randall


I am not one of those people that is into titles so the Dr. if of course optional to my friends

[M. Eversberg II]

Congrats! I wouldn't even know where to begin with a doctoral thesis...all my long years of education have been spent hammering out what's already known from a variety of secondary (and rarely, primary) sources. I admit it sounds intimidating.

Perhaps if it's legal, you could post up some excerpts from original sources you used? Reading how they wrote it out in period would be rather interesting.

M.

[Dan Howard]

Dr Moffett!
Very much looking forward to reading your Thesis.

[Paul Hansen]

Congratulations on finishing your PhD! Your thesis sounds very interesting, I'm looking forward to reading.

[Boris R.]

Congratulations are in order here!

So you moved to California?

[Dan Howard]

[Randall Moffett]

Dan,

Well I have to say that there were times that is a good description of the PhD process. That said being able to do nearly full time research all the time and find some information no one had perhaps seen for 600-700 years was awesome though. In many ways I wish I only had to do the research as for me it was great fun. Sadly putting it all together is indeed painful, especially when you take things you love out. My section on maritime military activity- piracy etc. had to go due to space limitations.

Boris,

Yes I moved back to the USA as soon as my PhD was in the last few steps and the last class I was teaching ended.

I am still waiting to hear when the Thesis is placed online so watch this space.

Thanks again everyone!

RPM