oh for an error free day

Just read through my previous blog posted about 1-2 hours ago and found a typo...of course I screamed inside. I never seem to spot them all, no matter how diligently I trawl through the posts I write - its such a freaking annoying thing about me. It makes writing, anything, take 1 hour instead of 20 minutes, as I check, double check and then still get it wrong. I need an in-built but independent editor living in another side of my brain, who is kind and gentle and picks up all the grammatical and writing mistakes I make. More cloud cuckoo land thinking from me today - I blame it on the cold weather!

Monday's down - Thursday on its way

My presentation went well, even by my own standards - and I think I'm my own worse critic. It was an odd forum - people presenting on really different topics all seemingly pulled together by the term 'multimodal'  represented somewhere in their title or abstract. My presentation was probably mostly aligned to Stephen's as we were both grappling with analytical frameworks and how to accommodate for the visual and multimodal in our data. But whereas his was more focused on the actually data, mine was a conceptual exploration of how important the epistemological stance underpinning your theoretical, methodological and analytical frameworks is. An important point I raised was how difficult it actually is put into practice what you say conceptually - so while I say I'm doing ethnographic research, am I really taking on board what that means in relation to my data?

As I said it was an odd forum - usually its a space for students to present their work-in-progress but this time around an academic was asked to present. Most academics who come to these presentation are the supervisors of the students presenting, so it mostly feels like a safe, try-out space to present your work. With the academic presenter presence, it changed the dynamic as more academics were present who don't really have a direct connection to your work, so the stakes are increased. I was left wondering, especially after my supervision last week - 'Where is the safe space to express your understanding, your thinking, where you are allowed to not get it right without fear of being overtly judged, but rather guided gently down a more appropriate path?' Or I'm I just living in cloud cuckoo land, expecting too much and not accepting my responsibility as a PhD student?

I'm still battling the 'practice' of academic presentations, but realised more than ever yesterday that to be an academic today means communicating your work, in a particular way, in both the written and the spoken - and with predominance of new digital technologies - all of this needs to be executed with the savy use of the right technological resources.

Thursday brings new challenges in the form of the Ac lits forum where I am leading the discussion on the use of Bernstein in my research and in academic literacies research in general. The setting is more intimate, and maybe its less performance based and so in 'theory' we can ask stupid questions - well that's the theory anyway. But I guess I will get more challenging questions and really have to know my curriculum from my codes in Bernstein speak!. So I'm putting my head down over the next couple of days, which isn't too bad a prospect taking into the account that the ground outside is covered in fluffy white stuff and I seem to be developing a bit of a chesty 'something'.

fieldwork is coming

I cant seem to get over this unsettled feeling following my supervision on Monday. Its just something about the process that disrupts me. But I'm also worried, as I am sure countless PhD students are, about how I don't seem to be able to connect all the dots from one moment to the next. I don't have this continuous, coherent narrative in my head about my research, about this field of study I'm suppose to becoming an expert in. It worries me that I can't come up with good, solid arguments supported by my understanding. Maybe I'm not moving forward with this PhD - I recall a time when I could articulate significant insights about what I knew - maybe this was around 2006. Seems I've been going backwards since then.

On a more positive and encouraging note - fieldwork is coming - yes, just like Christmas, and I've plotted out my schedule and spoke to my contact at the research site, and they are eagerly awaiting my arrival. I'm pinning all my hopes on this fieldwork - it's my salvation from the boredom and abstract, theoretical abyss I currently find myself in. Lets hope it can live up to all these lofty expectations.

A multimodal masterpiece: with the power of  lines, stars, arrows and highlighters

on supervision

Had me supervision today
Don't know why it did my head in
Can't understand why I can't settle into it
Why I always leave with such a bitter...sweet? taste
Why it always makes me wonder,
what I'm doing
why I'm doing it
what I'm meant to learn

Distractions abound

I'm in the middle of writing up a review of possible analytical approaches specifically aimed at the texts I will collect in my research (just writing this make me realise how redundant this whole exercise is - by searching of a suitable analytical frame for texts - I am contradiction the whole epistemological position my research is taking).
Unfortunately I am just so distracted. As a result I cant seem to think clearly or string sentences together in any coherent manner, well so that it would be recognised as academically appropriate anyway. My mind is just too full. I have 4 weeks left before I move out of my house, so that is effectively 4 weeks to get all of my life in order before my 6 month stint in Cape Town. So I need to consider all the logistics for the move, where my car will live, what forwarding address I might use, how I will get to the airport, what I will pack first, what furniture will be sold, where to sell it, how to manage relations with the research site before I arrive in Cape Town, when I will contact who at CPUT, which department I will work in first, where I might live, who I might ask about possible places to live, what about a car and the various options for securing one, xmas presents, going to London, preparing for supervision, thinking about my analytical framework, organising my electronic resources, how much stuff I can take with me to Cape Town and how much that might cost, doing two presentations four days apart from each other, arranging a farewell lunch for my friends and another one for colleagues in the Ac Lits forum...and of course there are a million other less significant things I haven't  put on the list but still swirling around in my head. I just cant focus and get things done quickly. I have three days to edit my review before sending it off to my supervision team on Thursday morning. I'm hoping all this time will help the panel-beating exercise needed to forge a coherent academic position.

Data workshop

'Images are everywhere' (Sarah Pink, 2007)

This was the title of a presentation I did today. Well it wasn't really a presentation as such - rather an opportunity to share and explore analytical frames for data. So I took along some 'imagined' visual and multimodal data for comment and exploration. I think I'm the only person really working with such visual data in the group, so people didn't really have much to say about the images and artefacts I presented. There comments were around issues I wasn't that worried about anyway - like pointing out how I could pick up literacy practice constructs in assessment briefs or suggesting how I might want to order the different types of data I collected into some sort of hierarchical structure (typical of Linguists and Linguistic Ethnographers) - interactional data takes precedence and then other data like fieldnotes, curriculum documents , photographs have a secondary role in helping to provide background or contextual information about the spoken data. Hmm, No I say - I'm interested in practices, texts produced as part of practice cannot be seen as separate or subordinated to practice - I don't see a distinction between the two. Well why not try 'talk-around-text' they said - but that's still suggesting that texts are foregrounded above the context within which it was created and that the practice to produce it is separate from the textual product. Nobody said much about the actually images, I would have liked to hear them comment about that. 

I've been coming to these workshops for the past year and its meant to be a space where you can bring data in any stage of analytical processing and hear what other people have to say about it. I prepared some slides and didn't really put much effort into it because I thought - hell I really just want to hear what other people to have say about this data. However when I stepped into the room and realised that it was filled with roughly more academics than students - I was a bit thrown. The feedback was 'Great! that was really interesting' but that's what everybody says about presentation here anyway so how the hell do you know whether they actually think its a good one or not. Listening to myself speak or rather mumble/fumble my way through the slides and then deal with the questions thrown at me - I wasn't really impressed. Not very polished to say the least. I wish I could be more articulate, use the right words and in the right order and sound as intelligent as I know I am.

Reflecting on these past two days - the seminar yesterday and the workshop today - there is a clear way of doing academic presentations and engaging in academic conversations here. Its a certain kind of literacy practice, that relies very heavily on vocabulary, logic in the construction of your argument, succinct analytical descriptions, all mixed in a with particular kind of English humour that borders on self deprecation. I struggle with the vocabulary and the succinct analytical description - the two feed off each other anyway - and lack cultural familiarity to pull it off anyway. This of course is my interpretation of my academic presence, which might not be how others view me - but how they view me isn't half as important as how I view myself. I don't know whether this 'microscopic' inspection of myself is helpful, it more likely has had the opposite effect - making me more self conscious and more reliant on various crutches, like full presentation scripts, rather than intuitively expressing myself as best I can. I did a little recording of the presentation so when I have a listen to it again, I'll have to consider whether any perspective on my own performance can be gained or not.

Aluta continua mense!

perspective, perspective, perspective

I think I've sounding a bit pessimistic these past couple of weeks leading some (me included) to think that all I'm doing is sitting around sulking about my current life and harking back to the good ole days. I suspect its rather hard to capture fully in this communicative environment how I really feel. Maybe its hard to do that in any environment. Its so easy to be misunderstood and even if you say, write or express your thoughts and feelings in the most coherent manner there will always be miscommunication. Now I'm no linguists or communication expert so I cant really explain how the 'miscommunication' happens - I just know it does. We all bring our own ideas, thoughts, interpretations, assumptions, prejudices to any communication event, so what we take away can never be exactly as the person telling the story intended or wished for. I realised almost immediately after I wrote my last blog entry that maybe I wasn't telling the full story, thinking maybe I didn't have perspective, or rather maybe I wasn't communicating my sense of perspective about my PhD experience.

I'm really grateful I have this opportunity, in a number of ways I am happy to be in England, and I am open to many of the changes that have come my way. Most days, including weekends I will do academic work and I do consider myself productive. But my world is textured, fluid, complex - with contradictory and coherent layers of experiences, feelings and insights operating side by side. I go through happy and sad phrases, positive and negative ones, sometimes I am reluctant, other times enthusiastic, but I never stand still for too long. I accept this as part of who I am and as part of the life I am living. Perspective and acceptance, now there's a thing!

There have been better days

Its Monday, outside it's raining, grey and cold and I'm willing myself to feel enthusiastic about my work. I sit down at my desk with stacks of 'readings' to get through, I carefully work out my schedule with activities to complete and various deadline to meet, but...I feel like I'm trudging along in cement boots.

Sometimes I have these little 'glimmers of hope' like little rays of sunshine through grey clouds - where I feel like I am connecting with my work and experience a sense of interest in developing my understanding and importantly, want to write about my ideas, position and argument. I know that writing is the most valuable output/commodity in this whole exercise - if I don't write I might as well go home now! At the moment there just seem to be a series of short circuits in the process, derailing my best intentions. I'm in another tussle with this PhD and this bleak weather is not helping me at all. Although in my defence - I will plod along, cement boots and all. I have accepted my fate - I will finish this PhD.

Memories and change

This is a picture of me and Melissa taken in July 2005. It was a lovely, sunny winter's day and we went walking from Muizenberg to St James, where this photo was taken. I remember the day vividly and have a copy of this photo on the bookshelf in my room - so I look at it everyday. It was a happy day, just like the weather. My Dad was still alive, although most of us knew he was moving towards the end of his life. I was also in the middle of my MPhil at UCT getting ready to interview my student participants.

Looking at this picture yesterday I realised - that I am no longer that person in the photo any more. I have changed. I have been changed. My first thought after that realisation was that this PhD has changed me. This process has to change you - you are never the same person you were at the start of it all. One could argue that life, time changes you - sure I would agree with that, but in many ways placing yourself into a process like a PhD accentuates change, brings it up for microscopic investigation. And at that moment, conscious of the transformation(s) taking hold of me, I am aware of what went before. Of the person in this photo, of the life depicted in this photo that isn't any long in the way it was at the time and place the photo was taken - that sunny day in July 2005 on St James beach, Cape Town. I miss that alive person, with responsibilities and interest in family, friends, students. Who had at that time a fulfilling job and was hungry to learn more about how my students were learning. I'm not so sure I have retained all that enthusiasm to learning more about my students' learning (well I don't have any students to start with). The abstract, decontextualised posturing I've been engaged with for the past year...well enough said.

The old, well worn cliche that the only constant in life is change is so damningly true. And in a very strange but reassuring way I want to go back to being that woman on the beach captured perfectly in this photo - just for a moment, maybe 10 minutes, so I can feel that sun, hold my niece and feel my place in the world.