when is it a good time to have a crisis of confidence?

I don't think the answer to this question is two days before you're meant to present an aspect of your research to esteemed colleagues and academics! But then again I've never been one to live an ordinary life - so of course I would have a little mini-confidence-crisis right before an important presentation. Maybe the happiness associated with being in my home town has subsided and the grim reality of not being able to live up to 'other' people's expectations has settled in. Maybe I'm just putting way too much pressure on myself - I really feel I need to perform, shine, impress but I just don't feel up to it. Today someone recalled a presentation I did just after my UCT Masters - apparently it was brilliant - I remember that presentation well, I was on fire, just so super confident about what I knew, what I wanted I say, how I wanted to say it. It seems now there just a shadow where 'that' person used to be.

Sometimes too much learning is a bad thing - I'm sure there is some mathematical calculation, equation, that bears testimony to this - once you reach a certain point you don't stand to gain or lose anything any more. I'm taking my own advice, the advice I eagerly gave countless cohorts of students - practice makes perfect - the time you put into the practice and preparation will pay off in the execution. Good advice I think.

talking about my PhD

Over the past few weeks since I've been back in Cape Town I've had the opportunity (or maybe it's also the misfortune) of talking to people about my PhD. A while ago I made a conscious decision not to be negative about my experience and instead to promote its positive aspects, even if I wasn't having a particularly positive 'moment' at that specific time. But in Cape Town talking about your PhD takes on a whole new dimension. Usually in the UK, the only time a conversation about the PhD would come up is in a conversation with another PhD student. So the frame of the conversation, to start off with, is completely different. Invariably whether you want it or not competition, envy, ego, saving face, deception, trying to impress all start to play their cunning little roles in shaping the conversation. You always need to project a particular disposition in relation to how you are handling the PhD - real or imagined - so, it's almost always a somewhat stressful encounter. Generally I try to avoid such conversations because I simply don't want to go down the 'competition, envy, ego, saving face, deception, trying to impress' path and only talk to people I want to talk to about my PhD - people I can trust, people with whom I actually want to share my experiences.

In Cape Town, most people who ask about my PhD, aren't PhD students, often have little or limited engagement with academia, or they are my previous colleagues. In these conversations I don't want to disappoint people with my less than glowing account of my PhD experiences. Most people can't imagine that it isn't a fantastic, rewarding, thrilling and challenging experience - beyond one's wildest imagining - and to be honest, I don't want to burst their bubble. These conversations are challenging, stressful too - mostly because I'm trying my hardest not to suggest in any way that I'm ungrateful for being given this opportunity. I often wish my experiences have been more like a textbook case scenario where exposure to an educational or learning experience is only ever a positive one. Trying to fulfil someone else's expectations is difficult indeed.
It's easier to talk to people about this process who just seem to understand the complexity of it all, the variability of the experience, the difficulties and challenges (on an multitude of levels)  that the process evokes...people who simply accept that change, learning, development doesn't always equate with - forward, upward, linear, straight - but can also mean so many other things.

summer in the city

It's a line from a Regina Spektor song - I just thought of it now and the tune is playing in my head. I used to listen to her all the time, when I still could, on Spotify - the song is filled with melancholy, rather ironic when singing about summer I think! But I'm in a rather ironic kind of mood.

I've taken encouragement from a fellow blogger's advice about academic writing, but of course the moment I wrote about it and posted the entry a thought struck me...hey, what she is presenting here is a formulaic, decontextualised 'script' - do these ten things and if you do you'll publish in a year, you'll get a PhD and a life and if you do these things and still don't get the the  suggested outcomes...then hell there must be something wrong with you! My Academic Literacies warning lights flashing like crazy, but I'm also feeling a bit guilty because I found the advice so good, practical, I admit I was taken in by it, I still feel taken in by it - so what does that say about my Academic Literacies credentials?

I think it's important to manage this kind of 'skills/socialisation' type message with the more fundamental and critical 'writing as social practice' message. And to see this kind of message for what it is! Writing, academic writing is freaking hard work, it's a confusing and difficult process to pin down, underscored by issues of power and inequality (all writing and all writers aren't equal) and there certain isn't one textbook method that can be applied to everyone. Having said all of this, and declaring that my critical Ac Lits antenna are clearly working - I've been making sure that I write for at least two hours each day (most days its more - come on I'm getting paid to write 6-8 hours a day at the moment) even on the weekend and not feeling so despondent and super critical about my seemingly lack of progress. So there is some method in the madness, some method that at a particular level makes sense to me. Maybe one day I'll become like the blogger in question, offering advice about writing from an Ac Lits perspective...on second thought, a quick second thought, no! I don't think so because it would just reify whatever I was saying into something that it isn't. The irony continues...

where am I, where am I going

I've been Home for a week and I can feel that I'm starting to settle into my surroundings - the people, the places, the language and accents all seem more and more familiar. Although I still can't get used to the 'invasion of my personal space' at the supermarket check-out. Why won't the till operator just wait for me to pack all my stuff and be ready to leave 'her' space before she calls the next customer...just like they do in at Tesco? You've got to love South Africa.

I had a bit of an incident on Friday morning that freaked me out big time. I forgot to send a revised version of a presentation abstract for distribution. Just by chance I had woken up early and was sitting at my computer before 9am and so picked up the e-mail and was able to pull the situation together. But it made me panic. I can't ever remember being so 'los kop' before. I was worried my being in Cape Town had allowed me to take my eye off the prize. If I hadn't gotten up so early on Friday because I wanted to do some writing before my day of visiting with my previous research participants started, I would have been in deep trouble. I was really bothered by this incident and later that day sat down a wrote up a detailed list of all the things I needed to do over the next 2 weeks - the list is now stuck up on the wall - I worried things are falling apart around me. Not least the slow pace of my analysis writing; my sub-conscious Catholic guilt has been working overtime about how I haven't been devoting enough time to this activity since arriving in Cape Town.

So it's been rather remarkable that earlier this week I stumbled upon a very interesting and seriously motivating blog on writing in academia (see Get a Life, PhD)...something is conspiring to guide my path to PhD success I tell you, what a pity I don't believe in God...
TG-B is a successful academic who suggests that the best way to be productive in your writing is to write everyday for two hours, yes only two hours! My approach to getting the PhD had always been informed by working consistently even if it meant working only 2 hours a day - this 'approach' of mine was informed by a former colleague telling me about a similar method of getting a PhD based on working 2 hours per day 24/7. So if I'm to believe TG-B, then maybe I was onto something all along. I certainly agree with her observation that you can't sustain writing 6-8 hours a day for long periods of time - this has certain been what I've experienced, especially the feelings of frustration, burnout and despondency and the major distractions (aka random surfing the internet especially clicking on FB pages etc) when nothing seems to come out of my head and pour onto the blank page or screen in front of me. I'm going to try her advice over the next week and see how it works. I need something urgently, to shake things up inside my head, to restore my confidence and drive and get me going in the write direction.

a gypsy frame-of-mind

I'm in Cape Town - Gardens, Cape Town to be exact. In the past 10 days I've travelled between three countries and two continents - went from -8 degrees, to 11 degrees and then +30 degree temperatures. I've trekked my body, my books, my notepads, my computers, my clothes and other paraphernalia through four different households and still they seem to be moving. Yes the earth rotates around it's own axis but you aren't meant to feel this movement. Even though my possessions have temporarily found a place to rest, my head is still moving, spinning. The heat my body is experiencing tells me I'm in Cape Town in January but my brain is still in the places I associate with my academic work and my love.

I need to work, my analysis is begging me to give it my full attention - deadlines are looming and the pressure of all of this is weighing heavily on my shoulders both literally and figuratively. Should I have come to Cape Town now of all times? Can being here sooth my anxieties, pressures, disconnections or will it merely create some new ones of its own? Who is to know...Transition is a 'mother'! And I'll get through it...I've been through more harrowing transitions in the past three years so I will get through this one. Conversations, eager and interested listeners, being heard and being sought out to provide a listening ear will go along way to ease my transition blues. No romantic notions of the free-spirited-always-in-and-happy-in-motion gypsy being experienced here!

Table Mountain from the bathroom window

The back of Devil's Peak just visible

Sea Point Pavilion Pool - the venue of my early morning swim(s) - hopefully 

Writing here instead

I'm suck with my analysis so thought I might write a bit about it here in the hope that somehow, miraculously (no probably not) all the insight and words needed to complete the analysis draft I'm working on will come to me. Of course this is a very lame idea and one I don't even for a minute believe will happen but I feel I need to write to make my day seem productive anyway. I've been stuck, unstuck, stuck again with the same piece of analysis for 4 weeks now. Goodness I don't have 4 weeks to be stuck with just one piece of analysis - I won't finish this damn PhD thesis if I carry on at this rate. But I'm stuck - I think I know where I want to go, but crafting that route is another thing. I'm constantly confused, side tracked, bogged under by the sheer nonsense I'm writing. At night when I lay awake thinking about my thesis, my analysis I imagine this well crafted interpretation that starts off simply talking about literacy practices used to complete one or other assignment and then slowly reveals the layers and layers of complexity that provides insight into the whole course curriculum and its links to industry. Only in your dreams..., yes it would seem that rather sarcastic little phrase does indeed apply to me right now. Never fear I'm soldiering on, have to offer my current somewhat (very much) incomplete analysis attempt as a gift to my supervisors. Maybe I need a fresh batch of eyes looking at my mumblings and helping me crave out that currently illusive path.