Draft workplan

I thought this would be a helpful activity. In retrospect looking at the timeline and the activities etc...has made me feel rather sick in my tummy. Enough said!

just a thought about voice

Context 1
My conversations, arguments, expressive content make sense to me and those listening. I sound like I have something meaningful to say and my conversational respondents (I think I should say interlocutor(s) if I want some sort of linguistic credibility) seem to engage with me in a manner that suggests to me that I come across as reasonably articulate and intelligent. These conversations and dialogues are easy for me, I express what I'm thinking almost without censure. Most times I come away from these interactions thinking to myself - wow, I actually make sense, I have something to say, people understand what I'm saying. Ah I have a voice.

Context 2
My conversations and expressions mostly feel contrived. I'm thinking about what I'm thinking before I feel comfortable to open my mouth and say what I'm thinking. These conversations always feel to me, anyway, as if there is something missing, a gap, a disconnect. I come away wondering if I was understood, at best, or if I came across as a total idiot, as the worst case scenario. I struggle with my word choices, my expressions, with how I phrase my sentences, highly conscious of how I sound, my limited vocabulary, my grammatical ineptitude. I usually come away from these interactions wondering where the hell my voice went.

Why is this so? Shall I just lay the blame on context? But isn't that just a cop-out? Maybe it's me and how I'm selecting to see and present these interactions in these two contexts - creating so sort of positive/negative context binary. Maybe I'm just over exaggerating the distinctions between the situations to make a point. Maybe my evaluation of these contextual interactions lacks critical perspective? Maybe it does reflect on my personal abilities/inabilities and lack of adjustment or inability to adjust to the context.

I'm reminded of Blommaert who says - where there are problems of voice -even perceived problems of voice (my own inclusion) - there are inequalities present in that situation.

not wanting

I'm not writing - I don't want to write anymore about 'this' journey. I don't want to write about 'this' journey at this specific point. I think about writing, but I don't really feel I can write. Things are just awkward, so for me it's best that I don't try to make sense of if through my writing - through my reflection on what's making things awkward. It just is.

Giving myself permission

I love the fact that I have friends and mentors who can gently and encouragingly tell me that I’m doing the right things and doing it well enough. Trusting their opinions and insights means I can give myself permission to relax and just be, confident in the realisation that by relaxing it doesn't mean I’m looking for a way out of doing the work – it just means that I have done all I need to do. I had such a conversation today. It allowed me to look at my own fieldwork activities in a positive, progressive and complete way, rather than in my defaulting deficit viewpoint. Everyone needs moments where the people who ‘see’ us, tell us what they really see. We shouldn't have to only rely on what we see of ourselves.

manic-all-over-the-place-kind-of-day

Shall I blame it on all the holidays we've recently had, that have so disrupted my sense of what a normal working week feels like? Or shall I say there is just way too much going on in the research field for me to possibly keep a handle on all the data I've collected, while planning how to collect loads more of additional data I need? Maybe it's my attempts to maintain all my social and interpersonal relations here in Cape Town. Or more bluntly - maybe I'm just freaking disorganised and lazy? Whatever the reason, today was a manic-all-over-the-place-kind-of-day where I just couldn't keep my eye on the prize for long enough to get anything of academic/research importance and value done within a reasonable time frame.

I'm not going to spend time debating the if's, uhm's, could-have's, should-have's, I'm just going to give a big 'ol sigh and hope I do a better job of tomorrow(today).

I don't have the RITE literacy practices

I’ve been trying to upload the final version of my HERD article for the past 3 hours. I know, that sounds absolutely ridiculous. Why would it possibly take so long?

My simple answer – I just don’t have the necessary literacy practices needed to engage successfully with the database-driven online submission platform that regulates the manuscript and article submission process. Additionally, my unfamiliarity with the interface prompts and drop down menus further signal my novice status in the publication game. Asking for HELP (from who?) is therefore not an option, especially if I don’t want self-identify with this novice and therefore, I believe, subordinate status. I’ve had to use this interface thrice over a six month period and each time I visit the online submission platform it feels like my first visit. I feel completely stupid and start the whole downward spiral of self-doubt. Surely if you can’t figure out how to upload your article, the most mundane aspect of getting published, you can’t be that intelligent? I’m sure this must’ve been the thoughts of the platform developers, because the explanations and instructions provided when things go wrong are riddle with so many assumptions about the user’s prerequisite knowledge about the publication process – a key assumption being that you are an expert – well, because publication isn’t a place for novices anyway!

I don’t think the interface is particular problematic from a usability perspective; I don’t even think it has to do with the technology, because, again, I’d like to think I’m fairly technologically adept. I just don’t understand how it’s suppose to be done, I don’t understand the nuances of what a ‘not for review’ vs ‘main document’ label means, how they fit together to enable the creation of a ‘preview’ version of the article, how to navigate the contextualise meaning of a ‘Title page’, and how to interpret the obvious contradictions between the instructions provided by the editor in his e-mail and the processes and procedures regulated by the online submission platform.

The article has just been accepted – I breathe a sigh of relief, while reflecting on how this apparent innocuous process signals so much about my position and status in the academic publication game.