I spent the day grappling with terminology - all the taken for granted "stuff" littering my report; socio-cultural (or should it be sociocultural?), political, knowledge constructs, context, interpretative epistemology, qualitative epistemology, academic literacy practices, knowledge practices....shall I stop now?
So I say these words, terms, concepts and even use them in proper sentences, but what exactly do I mean? I spent a lot of time on wikipedia (how very academic of me) trying to get some common-sense definitions, thinking - "So this is what a PhD is all about, trawling through wikipedia?"
I'm feeling a bit anxious that I wont remember things, especially things I'd written in the report, or that I'll muddle my arguments or sound incoherent, unintelligent etc, etc, etc...To add to my growing nervousness I did a little 'talking head' video interview for an academic at the OU today - and in my estimation I was crap. The descriptions I was meant to give was all about why I use academic literacies as a theoretical frame and its significance to my research. God I think I sounded like a real 'twat'; (I could easily replace this with any number of the more appropriate and wonderfully descriptive Cape Flats expletives describing someone who is worse than an idiot) I just couldn't bring it all together. Sure I was feeling the pressure from being put on the spot in a rather contrived set-up. But still, I'm a first year PhD student, I should be expressing myself coherently in my sleep.
Anyway - I have to be positive and I've been doing some visualisations of a positive outcome, setting aside any last minute jitters I seem to be focusing instead on a more grounded confidence and developed sense that I know what I'm doing, I know what the shortcomings of my research are and I can handle whatever they throw at me. And if that fails, hell I've decided that the first day of my 40th year on this earth will not be tarnished by some English academics (bless their cotton socks) trying to make me squirm.
No comments:
Post a Comment