Yes it is actually and while in some sense it has really rushed pass, in others senses I have left each and every minute of it. The whole week I've been thinking about this anniversary and reflecting on how I could never have imagined, even more than anything else that has happened in my life, that things would turn out as they have for me over these past three years.
In the past year I've began to see what a great fracture the move to the UK has been for my life. It's been dislocating, disruptive, fragmenting. And it's not something that I have come to terms with yet. Its almost like each time I consider it I see new angles and examples of this fragmentation. I'm settled here, but in so many other ways I'm just not. Academically ,especially in the first year, I felt stable but the longer I stay in the course the more unstable I feel. It's as if the longer I stay here the more I feel marked out as not belonging, not fitting in, always trying to say it or do it like they do it here, but always feeling like I just cant get 'that' right.
I'm not saying this whole experience has been negative, I'm just reflecting on what it has been and how much it has forced me to change, adjust and stay the same. The future is a blur for me, I can't plot out what I want to do next year or the next or in six years time. Somehow that isn't important - well of course it's important, but not important enough. It's like I know it will work out anyway. Maybe it's just my lack of ambition - simply happy to teach and never one to tie education to work opportunities. I just believe in education for education sake, a deeply personal thing (of course you can use it for social change etc...) something about the individual wanting to understand something to make their life better at a very intellectual level. If it helps or feeds into other aspects of your life or has a social outcome, then that it the bonus.
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