-900 words and a shadow of what it was

I was asked last week to cut my HERD article down by 1000 words. Because my article included four diagrams and images and was thus going to exceed the prescribed page length for an article, the editor-in-chief started to make some noises about the suitability of its inclusion. This 'request' came a few days after I was told that my implementation of APA was scrappy and incomplete. And it was scrappy and incomplete, so I sat and manually corrected my references - every pain staking comma and full stop. This week I cut about 900 words out of my original article and I'm sitting here wondering - was it really worth it, just so I can get published? I re-read the article and all the interesting bits, the students voices, the complexity that is the context is gone. Of course I can argue that I need to write more precisely and learn to cut out the unnecessary comments, the repetition and focus on making the argument come through clearly - but then the writing, the story, the narrative, the voices (mine and those of the context) is somehow lost. One of my supervisors always says that writing for journals is a soulless exercise because you have to strip your research down to the bone and you can never really  tell the story, the complete story that is your research. Another of her little bugbears is the fact that visual texts are inadequately accommodated by journal editors - my experience is obviously a case in point. She is going to love it when I tell her my story next week.

So I stripped the article to the bone and it will be published, under a slightly altered title too...yes another recommendation, which I did however contest somewhat. So that's Editors 2 : Lynn 1 - I guess its the best outcome I could hope for as a novice research and writer "she says in a cynical and unimpressed tone"

so what I've been up to

I've gone slightly AWOL for the past week and a bit. I say slightly because I'm still working but I'm just not working at the OU or in the UK or at a normal work pace. It's been a good break and something I needed to help take my mind off the fact that I'm having serious withdrawal symptoms from being in Cape Town. But that is an on-going saga that needs a whole entry devoted to it.

The island of Fejan in the Stockholm archipelago

According to my more detailed week-by-week workplan, I was meant to be tackling transcription over these last two week in July. I'm feeling the pressure of my Plan A workplan that only gives me 1 month to organise and prepare my data for analysis. I have about 70 interviews and interactional recordings, and even with some strategic selection of specific recordings and events, there is no way, unless of course all I do over this two week period is sit in front of my PC and transcribe, can I possibly complete all this work. Then as I started to work on my fieldnotes I realise a major gap in the entries for my first research site. In retrospect I can kick myself that I didn't pick this up while in the field and sort it out then. But to be kind to myself these gaps are more a reflection on how my fieldnote collection changed over the fieldwork period, than an indication that I was lazy or inattentive during fieldwork. When I started my fieldwork I had a particular approach to collecting/recording fieldnotes. I recorded hand written descriptive notes in a fieldwork journal and electronic analytical memo on my laptop. For the first week or so all I used was the journal, and I never copied these notes electronically. So as I worked at authenticating my fieldnotes using both the electronic and journal notes I started to see major gaps in the descriptive quality of the notes. Also by the time I went to the second research site I decided to combine the process of description and analytical insights into one fieldnote for each day in the field. I thus needed to ensure come continuity in the fieldnotes over the entire fieldwork period.

Confused? Complicated? Yes of course, I certainly was for most of last week as I worked to align my journal entries with the electronic ones, a process that took me the better part of last week and which I only completed yesterday. I remember while in the field how demanding it was to write the fieldnotes in first place, then doubting my ability to accurately and insightfully capture events, people and practices. I really needed so much energy and time to write my notes and as fieldwork progressed I worked out various strategies that either didn't work (as the method used above illustrates) or only worked for a short while. It was only in the final 6 weeks of fieldwork that I eventful developed a suitable method that suited my work patterns and energy levels. I would hand write in my journal, fairly detailed descriptions of what was happening in the field on a particular day. Then either later that day or evening, if I managed to put aside some time, or more commonly when I took a half-day or day off , I would sit and electronically capture both descriptive and analytical insights of my participant observation activities. Usually I would write up to three or four fieldwork days in one sitting. I think practice resulted in a good mixture of descriptive, analytical and reflective elements in my fieldnotes. However, my attempts to fill the gaps created by my developing fieldnote writing approach means I'm about a week behind with my transcription. I'll have to see how helpful my brand new foot pedal, courtesy of CREET at the OU, is in reducing the transcription time. Somehow I think I need more than a swanky foot pedal to help me play catch-up.

organisational chaos and downsizing

Flipping hell! I thought I had a grip on my file organisation as I was creating them during my fieldwork in SA, but hell it's all a mess. Not a good idea to be using three different data saving locations and now that I'm at the OU + 1. Yes I backed-up my work, but not in a very sophisticated manner - so I had endless versions and duplicates on 3 different machines - resulting in masses of chaos and confusion. I wanted to use dropbox as the main receptical but of course in SA with bandwidth issues this wasnt always possible - also my files are just way to large anyway...massive sigh! Yesterday I spend a good part of the day securing one master copy, deleting everything else I had and then coping the master to the respective machines.

Need to get my brain to think, think, think of a solution to my current organisational misery. I need to get my 'raw' data organised though before I can start creating the thesis files. For the thesis I will use dropbox exclusively, but until then I have my hands full.

I'm also in the process of settling into my new accommodation. Most of my stored boxes have been safely returned to me, but instead of surprise and wonder at all the treasures hidden in them, I've been overwhelmed by the amount of 'stuff' I've amassed. This by itself isnt necessarily a bad thing - but if you dont have any place to put the stuff - well, therein lies the problem. I need to downsize. I'm amazed at all the stuff I bought and accumulated and now wonder how(or if) I will ever use it again. My new room is fairly spacious but I havent been able to 'fit' any of my books into the room yet. So currently the one room I have can only be my living area with no space for my academic activities. Which raises yet another question. Where will my main work activities be located? Here at the OU? In Sweden? In South Africa? In my bedroom in Simpson MK? Some yet to be found location after November when my lease runs out? Where the hell will I work? I'm such a structured person and any disruption to this need and reliance on structure simply fucks with my brain - I really do unravel. I'm trying really hard to hold it all together, but my back, neck, shoulders are all singing a different song. I know it will settle and everything will land where it needs to, but until such time...well, you're guess is probably as good as mine.

too many duplicate files

This is a very practical lament about not getting my organisation right. I have copies of files in way too places. I thought I had it under control - but alas I don't. Very frustrating...I need to be more diligent when backing up my copies from one computer to the next. As a result of my carelessness I cant work tonight - it's pointless because I cant control which version of a file I'm working on, so best to calibrate the system tomorrow from my OU computer and start afresh. Goodness me what I mission and this is only the start...sjoe!

Otherwise the weather in Milton Keynes is sucking big time!

something to say

My last post was June 12, almost a month since I was able to write about this journey called my PhD. I've never been the poster-girl for the PhD experience, in fact I've been described as the anti-PhD. I havent really taken on the identity of the PhD student, finding my other identifies far more relevant and significant. I've always wanted my PhD to be part of my life, not my life. I cant help this feeling, idea, planted inside me a long time ago by my first supervisor SW - an activist, adult educator, professor, pragmatist and motivator - I dont think she knew that what she said to me in passing would have such a profound impact on me and how I saw my career and my studies, but it has. She lamented how seriously people take the PhD, thinking that it would be the pinicle of their life's work and the most important thing that they had done - when of course it isnt really that. In those innocently spoken words the foundational philosophy of my PhD experience was born. And as I live through this experience and see how limited the impact of my work will be on real life and how fundamentally it's all about my experience, I appreciate more and more those pragmatic and realistic sentiments expressed 10 years ago.

I've had a hard time recently dealing with the prospect of coming back to the UK to complete the final leg of this journey. In fact I didnt want to come back to the UK at all. I wanted to stay in Cape Town and finish my journey there. Why the need to move from a place where I felt that my PhD was just part of the life? An important part, but simply a part. While in the UK where I dont feel I have a life - it was this all consuming monster determining my life in ways that rendered me powerless. Powerless and voiceless and fundamentally changing me in ways I wasnt happy about. Writing especially on such a public forum seemed like the wrong thing to do. But I also wasnt able to write privately either - I could only manage conversations with myself and some close confidiants as I tried to unravel what I was really feeling and how I wanted to move forward. I havent figured it out just yet and someone said to me that maybe it's not too important to try to find reasons and solutions right now - I can free myself of that responsibility for the moment.

This is my fourth day back at the OU - the first couple of days were the worst. The contrast between this environment and the fieldwork context is just so stark! All the differences which I hadnt really paid much attention to previous just came racing towards me on Monday and Tuesday. I realised a crucial negative aspect of the OU work experience - it's isolated nature where only minimal interpersonal and collegial engagements are encouraged and sustained. It's great if you are happy to sit at your computer the whole day and want to work in silence, not being bothered by those around you or the environment. But I'm a social person - I need interaction with others, I feed off the interaction of others, I trive in an environment where I can talk, listen, talk some more, where I feel like I am heard, where my doing is practical and social. While I've found some outlet for some level of this engagement here - it really has been so marginal in my experience. They always say that research is a lonely, almost solitary journey and this has been aptly personified by my OU experience.

But I have pressed on these past few days drawing on my determination to finish this PhD and cognisant of the options I have. I've also decided to focus on my strengths - what I see as my strengths anyway and not play that 'onderdanige' South African ever grateful for getting the scholarship. In Cape Town I realised that I had a voice, that those around me found what I had to say important and valuable, that I was recognised as someone who had something important to say, and it didnt really matter how I said it. While I am aware that this context is different, I have to be weary that I dont change completely to accommodate the context - what I chose to change has to be strategic. This has been something I have been aware of since I arrived - but I think it got lost along the way and I think I have succomed to the dictates of the context that have compromised me in ways that were not very beneficial to me and my feeling of self worth.

Then I had a very welcoming and positive supervision dinner last night. I came away feeling positive about myself and my engagement in the interaction. They are conscious of my apprehensions about being here and I know they are trying to make me feel comfortable and supported - I really appreciated this. But ultimately I dont have control over my supervisors I only have control over my actions, behaviours and how I chose to perceive their responses to me. It's up to me really? Which of course begs the questions: - is it the context or the individual? How much control does an individual really have over the context and can you overcome your context? Or does who you are shape how you engage or perceive your context? Because I am me, does it mean that I can only experience this context, a context, in the specific way that I can? I can only see it through my eyes in the way that I do.

I'm giving myself four months to decide how I want to spend the final year or so of my scholarship. I'm going to resist making a firm decision until then and I'm going to resist, except to those I really trust, talking about how I really feel about being here. This is all I can do for now.