a year in review

It's 2013 baby! I feel like my feet are stuck in cement - grounded in one place. The positive aspect is that I'm grounded.

This is what people tend to do at this point in the year - reflect on the past year and look forward to the new one with high expectations. I've been thinking about 2012 for the past few days and had this real sinking feeling. It hasn't been great for my PhD. For one thing, I didn't finish the PhD as I had hoped in 2012 - I didn't even get close to finishing the PhD in 2012 which was the plan B. In fact when I left the UK in September I had five written chapters, at the end of 2012 I have five written chapters. It doesn't really matter that I have five marginally better written chapters than I had in September, I still only have five after three months in Cape Town. While returning to Cape Town has been in many ways a frustrating experience in relation to the PhD - as I struggled to make the transition back to my life here and then encountered one problem, challenge, set-back, distraction after the other which rendered me almost paralysed - I started to 'get' the PhD, I discovered some joy and positivity in the whole experience, I like what I'm doing and even with all the dark clouds looming, as I hint at above, I know what the PhD is actually about and I know it will make a plausible contribution to the field. I freaking have a contribution to make and it isn't 'mickey mouse' either.

But the year has left me shell-shocked, my confidence is at its lowest, I don't know where I belong and who or what I am - a lecturer? but in what?, a curriculum specialist who hasn't been working at a SA institution in four years?, an academic development practitioner out-of-touch with the realities of academic life and students learning within the SA higher education context?, a colleague but with what affiliation? and with what authority do I make all these claims and professional identity statements? The only thing I know and what feels most real is that I'm now a fourth year, unfunded PhD student at the Open University - but that is so disconnected from my current context and reality and buys me so little except maybe sympathy or disdain (depending on whose looking in)

I have to start chopping away at the cement that covers my feet and restricts my movement. I have no resolutions for the new year, except a deep desire to finish my PhD before I go into the second half of the year. I have no choice, I can only hope that all the bits that make up who I am can come together and pull in unison to help make this desire a reality. At the moment I feel like I have no choice but also no control and I need to wrestle back control in order to stand any chance of making 2013 a lot brighter than 2012.