the galaxy

I'm sitting in my room listening to the radio while working on a thesis chapter. Many Sunday evenings I'm doing the same thing, sitting in my room, working and listening to the radio. It's a cheesy radio station called Heart FM (there's similar station in Cape Town, playing similar music). But on Friday and Sunday nights it has a 80's and 90's club classics segment. Tonight the music is transporting me back to my early Galaxy days - those laughter filled, hot, steamy, smoky Friday nights with Brevin, Mark, Aloma and Kurt on the dance floor. Bliss, pure bliss and contentment. Then, I would never have imagined in a million years that sometime in the distant future I would be sitting alone somewhere in the world working on a PhD thesis.

on the top of Cambridge

Summer has finally arrived in England. One day I was wearing jeans and boots, and the next t-shirts, shorts and sandals. I'm not going to complain. In fact it's been lovely to have some blue skies for a change. Work has been slow, but I'm still working and waking up every morning thinking of my PhD.

I have to write a short chapter on the SA higher education landscape and for the past two days I've been plotting my argument and making very little headway. Whatever I wrote down just didn't seem to make sense. Mindmap after mindmap just didn't seem to capture the essence of what I wanted to say, the track I wanted to take with my discussion. Maybe I was just procrastinating and looking for a way out so, not coming up with a viable strategy for the chapter was excuse enough to just give up in frustration. I also seem to have a lot of time to write the chapter (even though that isn't strictly true) - another reason why I was hmm'ing and ah'ing about what I should or shouldn't cover in the chapter. Anyway, I worked on the chapter structure today and think I might have come up with something that could work. We'll have to see how it comes together over the weekend.

I spent yesterday afternoon in Cambridge and sat having drinks on the 'top' of Cambridge...or so it felt anyway while discussing the unfolding saga of 'The Spear' in South Africa. England, the weather, the light in the evening, the river, the pub, the punts, the warm beer, the people, the colleges steeped in tradition, wealth and elitism just seemed lovely - I wish I was a tourist because if I was one, then this would be the memory I would take away with me of the town, in that moment.

The top of Cambridge

doing stuff

Trying to be productive this week as I realised I can't depend on a positive supervision to keep me afloat for more than 3 days. This is a reading week - I want to write a chapter that contextually situates my study within the South African higher education landscape but saying something specifically about the university of technology sector and the type of knowledge they foreground. So I've been reading very broadly and good to read South African work by South African scholars. I've dipped in very briefly into the Academic Development field in SA and it's so interesting to be reading about discourses, phases, 'chronotypes' I was actually involved in, and so recognise because of their practical relation to me. Stepping back from the practice you are in and then looking in at a meta-level really does offer perspective. I'm keen to see how this all comes together and if I'm able to shape it into coherent 'springboard' from which I can launch a plausible argument construction for the purpose and value of my study such as mine. We shall see.

On another note - my paper is HERD is now finally out - so if you can pay the fee, you can take a look at my intellectual work. I did the work for free but the journal is now charging (whoever is interested) to gain access to the fruits of my labour (how corrupt is that!) and before I burn my bridges... let me move on to other less interesting, mindless information.

I'm drafting a response to a chapter I need to review - boy is it difficult to appear supportive but critical while sounding suitable intelligent and knowledgeable to be participating in the process of peer review. I can't be found out to a fraud who has no credibility to offer insights into the quality of someone else's blood, sweat and tears. At least I have another two weeks before the review report is actually due - I'm sure I'll get the grammar, language and insights suitably refined by then. Why can't I help but feel that yet again, this PhD has robbed me of my once sharp intellect!

what makes a draft a draft?

I had a productive supervision meeting yesterday. Very good for the ego, my confidence and enthusiasm for the tasks ahead. I'd like to say more about this comment, but let's leave it there for now.

The first draft of the thesis was discussed - I've been thinking about this for a while. Well I think about this all the time actually, and have various 'what if scenarios' that I play around with in my head. Usually about when this magical first draft will be ready and why it needs to be ready at this point rather than that. Before I went into supervision I had sort of agreed to myself that I wouldn't talk about the draft because it feels too premature to talk about it now when I don't have enough draft chapters under my belt. All a bit unpredictable, risky, uncertain. But there is a whole logistics process underpinning the reading and providing feedback on a first draft and these things have to be planned. So the topic came up and some dates where suggested. Oh and the other factor that also comes into the mix is the fact that I leave for Cape Town on 23 September.

So I asked the question that's been mulling over in the head for a while too - what makes a draft a draft? (an issue I've pondered over before) What are the expectations for what the first draft of a PhD thesis should look like? Did my understanding of what this entity is match up with what my supervisors had in mind? And all importantly - did I have enough time, a realistic amount of time to ensure that whatever I submitted matched the expectations of all parties concerned? The first draft is a big thing - this is what I believe and it certain seems to the case for most people I've talked to. It takes a lot of energy to read it and provide solid feedback on the contents. That feedback is vital in determining whether the thesis is going to be 'ok' or simply 'not ok'. Basically you can't fuck with it. I don't want to waste anyone's time handing in a sloppy effort just to tick off the box that I've done it. I'll piss my supervisors off because I've wasted their time and in the end I'll short change myself because they can only comment on what I give them and if it really isn't 'complete' (as complete as it can be at that stage) I can only get partial feedback. What I realised is that the kind of first draft I want to submit and the type of first draft my supervisors would expect is something more than 8 individual chapters that have somehow been glued together into a whole thesis document courtesy of some formatting in MSWord. It has to have a story (even if the story isn't watertight just yet), it has to have cohesion and connections between the different parts and each chapter needs to have incorporated all the suggested changes made when it was first read as an individual component of the thesis.

So what does this all mean for me and my deadlines. Well at the moment all I'm doing is trying to get the initial chapters written and this pretty much takes me to August on a very, very tight deadline. I now have 6 chapters to write in 4 months. My workplan doesn't make provision for any individual chapter corrections or time needed to craft 'that story' or build cohesion. This is my reality. Interestingly, my supervisors are very happy with my progress and feel that if I can have a first draft by the end of my 3rd year this would be simply marvellous (my words not theirs!). This doesn't fit so comfortably with my expectations - carefully primed by the fact that PhD students only get 3years funding and so the expectation being communicated to everyone is that it should be done and dusted within that period. Common sense practice however suggests otherwise with most people, at the OU certainly, needing at the very least 3 more months. Completing the whole process in 3 years is the exception rather than the rule. And this leaves me where?...well with a more realistic expectation of what I need to do, with the understanding that my supervisors are happy with my progress at this and confident that I can't make this 'thing' a reality even if the deadlines don't match those set externally. All I have to do is to keep working, working and working - do as much as I can by August.

a quick digression from analysis writing

Indeed! I'm back for a little bit with my analysis - while I await feedback on my research methodology chapter I submitted last week and before I start writing a chapter on the contextual location on my study. I was apprehensive about coming back to the analysis - because I needed to redo a segment of analysis that I had gotten 'almost' horribly wrong the last time I worked on it. My apprehensions were well founded and I delayed and procrastinated for most of the weekend. Then when I finally sat down with it on Monday I realised exactly why I didn't want to deal with it in the first place. But deal with it I must. So for the last two days I've been trying to describe the course and subject structure and arrangements. Easy! Simple! I participated in this department for three months - surely it will be a simple task to write about, no describe their course and subject structures. Of course I understood how it worked when I was there - which subject goes where and how it is linked to the other subjects and why students do this module here and the other module there...no problem. Now when I try to write about it - flip, nothing makes sense. The subjects, their names, their relations have all morphed into something else and my tacit knowledge about how it all fits together is not helping me create a concrete and understandable description.

So here is my little digression from analysis writing - I quick moan and groan about analysis writing.

the art and science of ethnography

I think science is probably the wrong word - but I don't have anything more apt at this point to give expression to my current sense of awe and respect for the field and practice of ethnography. This statement I also have to qualify with 'particular branches of the field of ethnography'. Last night I was reading around the topic of fieldwork, fieldnotes and critical ethnography and was once again struck by the detailed and meticulous manner in which ethnographer collect, reflect and consider their research practices.

There are so many ways to write a fieldnote and I don't a mean personalised, anything-goes suite of techniques, these are documented, carefully theorised and empirically verified approaches that then provide the ethnographer with particular kinds of records of their fieldwork experiences. Ethnography is often dismissed as a 'soft science' - a easy option for qualitative researcher to take who don't want to attend to methodological rigour, and just hang about in a particular setting for a long, long time to soak up the atmosphere - but people who make these kinds of assumptions don't have a clue what they are taking about. The good ethnographers are so closely aware of what they are doing and pay such careful attention to the impact of their research, their presence, their interpretations, their positionality, their ontologies and epistemologies on who and what they are researching. I don't think other kinds of researcher get to, or are encouraged to pay this amount of attention to these aspects when conducting research. Qualitative researchers are sometimes encouraged to pay attention to reflexivity and reactively - but usually this is done mostly to ensure that we adhere to validity concerns - but we don't necessarily take it on board in the same way. To be clear I'm not suggesting a hierarchy of research approaches, with ethnography at the top. I'm not that naive to make such a statement, I'm just trying to articulate my deep respect for the kind of work ethnographers do.

I also don't for one moment want to suggest that I'm the kind of quasi-ethnographer or researcher that has taken on the all the principles of ethnography that I'm talking about above - I know I haven't. But I think the point I'm trying to make is that I am really drawn to this kind of research and being critical about my practices - as researcher or teacher. As a result of my time in the UK I've been introduced to and have in many ways taken on board the philosophy of conducting research for the sole purpose of the pursuit of knowledge, influenced rather strongly by the teachings of MH. But through the writings of critical ethnographers I see another agenda that is equally compelling - research that clearly has a political or policy agenda, because it has to. The kind of partisan approach my adult education and feminist professor friend talked about almost two years ago. I can only hope that in the future my path and these more critical methodologies will cross.

fickle relationships

At the beginning of the week my niece in Cape Town asked me how my work was doing. I replied that I wasn't friends with my PhD any more. How ironic that I'm reverting to the key interpersonal relationship descriptor that 4-6 year old's use to describe my relationship with my PhD (albeit a process or eventually inanimate object, which of course is another problem). Well as a 5 year you fall out with your friends for the most trivial of things – they don't want to share their toys, they don't agree with what you are saying or what you want to do, you don't like that they are playing with someone else. And then you just call the whole friendship off - just like that! You're not my friend anymore! A day later, no a couple of hours later and hey, you're bestie's again. And so it goes on.

We at the moment, this seems the perfect way of describing my relationship with this process and inanimate, but larger than life friend, 'the PhD'. One minute I love (him or her? - it's definitely gendered just not sure which one yet!) and the next moment I'd rather (he/she) wasn't my friend at all. C'est la vie! I think this sensitivity about the friendship I have with my PhD is spilling over into my interpersonal relationships too. I'm on a very short lead at the moment, very sensitive and unable to tolerate much - it's almost like I just want to be on my own, working silently, in a room hidden from view, all by myself. The less I have to talk at random about my PhD and how it is going and what I have done and comment on what another student has or hasn’t done; all the better. Very fickle and tenuous it all seems at the moment. 

I submitted my research methodology chapter yesterday after some drama (naturally) as I'd been slightly ill with mild food poisoning. In retrospect being sick was ok, I had to slow down, nothing I could but wait for my body to recover and step back from working while this was all going on. So on Wednesday, which was the original deadline, I sat down and tried to do the best I could to iron out the some of the wrinkles on a very 'wrinkly' piece of work. On Saturday I knew, way before I got sick, that there were certain sections I just couldn't adequately deal with before the deadline. I accepted this fact in principle but in practice I was so panicked so much so that it was hard for me to work on the sections I could actually 'complete' – my brain and headspace completely fragmented and lacking focus. Ironic contradictions – a draft is never a draft worth submitting!