constructing narratives

I'm thinking about the stories I've been telling about my PhD experience. I'm wondering how these stories came to be constructed in the way that they are and wherein lies the truth - is there a truth? When confronted by these kinds of questions I see my academic 'breeding' (for want of a better word) come through as I want to answer these questions by drawing on a theoretical framework to help me explain or answer the question.

But theoretical frameworks aside this particular puzzle has been at the heart of my reflections the past couple of days. I'm not dealing very well with the experience at the moment and I'm searching for a reason. I'm hoping a better, more 'rational' dissection of the concern will lead me to a 'solution', a way to ease my mind. Because I believe the pathway to the resolution of most (many) of our personal problems, concerns and dilemmas starts with the recognition that we can only control our view and perception of the situation. Even if the choice about how that view and perception is formulated is constrained by what is commonly thought of as 'our baggage'. I bring my baggage to any situation I have to encounter in the world and that shapes how I see it and how I choose to and am able to respond to it (I suspect LR would be example this more eloquently using Bourdieu). Be this as it may - the stories I have been telling about my experience provides a window into my view of the experience and, probably, I guess might also provide a window into how I could reconstruct my experience differently. Constructing a different story has its own possibilities and potentials especially when, as I'm starting to feel, my current narratives appear to be cloaking everything in negativity.  I don't have any answers I'm just trying to think differently...


My story I think is filled with some of the following
- bewilderment
- dislocation from the familiar
- a strong, almost stubborn resolution to hold onto my past as a representation of the good, positive that I was - so always comparing the past with present practices
- seeing myself as a 'fish out of water'
- seeing myself as not having a voice - sometimes, only sometimes I recognise that I do have a voice I just don't have one in this context
- fighting to retain my self-belief, yet being filled with self-doubt
- blaming, looking for someone, something to blame as a way of understanding, explaining
- wanting to see the silver lining in the dark cloud
- desperate to have a 'learning' experience, a positive learning experience and not wanting to give up on that possibility, ideal
- trying to accept the constraints and limitations of the situation, but failing miserably anyway
- constructing binaries, dichotomies as a defence mechanism


Stories aren't always true, they don't always reflect reality - although I'm not going to say that there are multiple realities - I don't quite believe that - reality isn't only what we see it to be, there are parts of our reality that are completely outside our control. The part of the reality that is free of these stories, that seem to have defined my experience for such a long time, is my inherent belief that I can do this thing - intellectually I can do this thing - and this is more than a self-belief  - it's a fact validated by the intellectual community that I am apart of. Unfortunately this 'fact' is blurred, fudged, distorted, twisted so that it becomes a reality that is so easy to accept and you never see it for what it is...fallacious.


I've had a rough couple of days...this is the only story I can tell about it. 

writing and writing fatigue

Before I have to do some structured writing I'm always anxious. I try and delay doing the actual writing until the very last moment, yet I know that once I start it will be ok. An important thing about writing is that in order to write you need to know what you want to say - this sounds a bit strange because I'm mixing up my literacy modes here. You can't write if you don't know what you want to write about. And when my writing is particularly poor it usually means that I didn't know what I wanted to say. Clarity in your thoughts is the sure-fire way to get clarity in your writing. It doesn't mean that you can't create that clarity over many iterations of the same piece of writing - in many respects I think that's the only way to get clarity - constantly reworking and rewriting.

I'm working on my literature review and/or conceptual framework - I sort of feel I should say literature review so most people will know what I'm talking about, even though I feel what I'm writing is an outline of the theoretical and conceptual frameworks on which my research is based. I know what general areas of discussion I want to include and I've broken down the task into sections. First I'm working on different individual sections - reading bits of literature on a particular theory/idea/concept and then writing about it - then once I have all the sections written I will weave in the connections to create the final coherent outline of my conceptual framework. This is my strategy anyway - helpful I guess when you are trying to subdivide a 10-15K piece of writing into manageable chucks. So far so good.

I decided to work on the Bernstein theory first - because I felt least comfortable with my understanding of this body of knowledge. My aim was to finish the section over the weekend and by Friday I  worked out a detailed structure of the section (fairly small +- 4000 words) with all the necessary key points I wanted to make and their corresponding references etc...Great! - until Saturday afternoon, that is, when it took me almost two hours to write a paragraph about an concept that would have a fairly subsidiary role in the overall theoretical ensemble. But I pushed on, determined not to be deterred by this minor bump in the road. Alas - Sunday and the house of cards came crashing down. Blank, I was completely blank. I knew what I wanted to write I just couldn't write it - there was a missing link that I just couldn't find and it because of the gap I couldn't move on. Again I pushed on - I went to work and sat with my outline and tried to write paragraphs, then sentences, then bullet lists to articulate my understanding of a particularly useful conceptualisation of knowledge in the curriculum. But nothing worked - I knew what I wanted to say, what I needed to say, I knew what the scholars said about it but that's where it stopped. Now in my ideal world this would be the time when I go talk to someone about my problem and why I think I'm experiencing this problem and I would probably want to talk about the body of knowledge I'm finding difficulty writing about. And then I would try again, hopefully with some new insights and ideas to guide me. 

Not living in this ideal world though, I wonder if this experience is simply telling me that maybe I'm just a bit tired - maybe its a sign of writing fatigue - unfortunately I don't have the luxury to entertain this idea too long but I've decided to take a little break from Bernstein anyway - give 'him' a week or two and then apply myself to it once more. 'A change is as good as a holiday' as my mother would often say.

chocolate addiction to calm the nerves

I can't seem to stop eating chocolate. I wish I could say that all I'm eating is dark chocolate - but it's not to be. Any freaking chocolate will do. I'm in a huge sugar craving cycle. This cycle seems to be coinciding with another cycle of what I can only imagine mild or mini panic attacks might feel like. I'm almost like a crazy woman - unable to control myself as my mind shifts from the articles I'm reading on Bernsteinian theorisation, to the argument my PhD thesis is trying to make, then to how Bernstein and Ac Lits link together, or whether they can indeed be put together in a research study as they are 'ontological diverse' (I don't want to say incompatible - god help me if I say that!), to how I might justify using these two 'diverse' conceptual frameworks together, and then to the logistics of my move where I am starting to imagine how all the artefacts in my room, the books on my shelf and the clothes in my cupboards will fit into boxes of certain dimensions and plan out which weekend I need to make available for packing and how this might impact on the shipping company's rules and procedures for getting my boxes on a ship destined for Cape Town, South Africa. Poor SLP has to listen to the minutiae of all my plans, counter-plans, timelines and various variables that may or may not impact on these plans.  I'm juggling all aspects of my life and eating as much chocolate as I can manage seems to be the only thing I'm just doing at the moment.

I did find some time yesterday to walk around the little village where I live. Rather pretty - I think I'll miss this even when its sans-blue skies.

being sad in my dream

I had a dream this morning that I was going back to South Africa and this made me sad. My mind has been preoccupied with this thought since I woke up. Why is it that I can only be sad about going back to SA in my dreams? In my conscious self going back to SA doesn't make me feel sad - in fact all I keep saying to everyone around me is how I can't wait to go back. But as with most things in life - this isn't simply a polarised argument of SA: good - England: Bad. I do want to go back to SA for many, many personal and emotionally laden reasons but that doesn't mean that I won't be sad about saying goodbye to this part of my life journey. Whenever something stops or comes to an end - whether one feels good or bad with the  closure - it also represents a moment, maybe a very brief moment, of mourning because one has come to the end. And I'm coming to the end of a particular part of my journey. I think to not feel some sadness about it would be to deny the friendships that I've developed, the comradery I've shared, the experiences (again good and bad) that I've had, the lessons learnt...and the TV watched (I'll definitely miss my BBC iplayer).

So taking a moment to recognise this sadness, not just in my subconscious mind, is healthy. I still want to go Home but I know going home will also unavoidably mean being sad because being here will have to come to an end. I won't be able to visit my friend Anthony in Brighton and walk on the pebbly beach for a long, long time.

Brighton beach - yesterday afternoon

another chapter drafted

I almost wrote - 'done' but of course the chapter isn't done, it's far from finished, it's merely a draft of the true self it will become in the not to distant future. I feel positive about the overall story I've told in this chapter - I feel the chapter has cohesion. The section on recontextualisation needs work but I need to fully understand the differences between a 'recontextualisation principle' and a 'recontextualisation rule' and whether I want to explain how the recontextualisation processes are showing themselves in the course context through an understanding of rule/principle or simple description. Ok this last part is a bit fuzzy, that's because it's fuzzy in my thinking too and we write what we think - so if the writing is fuzzy our thinking is fuzzy.

This version of the chapter is a like a distant cousin of the previous version. I'm almost sure that when my supervisors read it they will be pressed to find direct connections between the two versions of the chapter - there are slight traces - but nothing directly similar. I'm amazed at how far a long I've come since January/February. My lesson - analysis needs time, that's the only problem with analysis it needs time.

analysing assignment constructing in film studies

I think it's almost done, almost but not yet. It's taken me so damn long to write. My argument, for want of a better term (why does it feel wrong to call the interpretation you have developed as a result of your analysis an argument?), has been brewing in my head since I picked up the old version of this piece of analysis, completed in February, about 6 weeks ago. My main insight, about how students construct assignments in a film studies course, crystallised then - but constructing that insight into a readable, intelligent, understandable and coherent discussion has been a slow protracted exercise. I can't say how many times I've read and rewritten paragraphs of the section I worked on this week. The overall idea, insight or argument is pretty much what I expressed in a little diagram 6 weeks ago but to explain it in a coherent way...well! I don't think I could have rushed it, although I would be a lot happier tonight if the writing happened quicker. I tried to tell myself sometime today to just accept that it took as long as it did. To be content in the fact that I've been thorough and conscientious in my writing. So what if it took a bit longer, it's a better piece of writing because it took longer. I shouldn't get all evangelistic about the chapter just yet because it isn't done. Last section on the recontextualisation principles needs to be written tomorrow - and let's hope I get it written by tomorrow, because my literature review is waiting...patiently.

the start to a better week

Things are looking better today. After cleaning up my desk and room for much of Thursday it seemed that Friday held a new promise. I went to the OU in that evening and worked until 9pm and it felt productive. It's funny how with analysis work I will delay doing it for as long as I can, almost created a monster in my mind.  But when I simply sit down and work through the data as systematically as I can, then it doesn't feel as bad. It's still hard work trying to make sense of what is happening in the data, even if you have a clearly framed analysis tool (which I don't or rather which is still in development). Then working out how you want to express your interpretation, your analysis, your story of the data can be like mind gymnastics. So it can feel like it might be easier to just walk away and make the whole thing the monster lurking under the bed that you must avoid at all cost. I managed to complete the section I set out to work through over the weekend and within the time frame I allocated myself. It is starting to come together for this case and instead of a sense of wariness, there is a slight hint of excitement as I explore the data more deeply and start to carve out the story I think is interesting or useful to tell.

I still get far too distracted by all the 'things' around me and think back with nostalgia for the days when I didn't have the internet to bother me so much - but then again I would probably have found the fridge or the cleaning or the nice day outside just as wonderful a distraction. Even though I feel a lot better this week, I am now 7-10 days behind my planned schedule and I'm going to try to reduce the backlog over the next week. I need to finish the analysis of this last case by Friday because I have a literature review waiting patiently for my attention.