I want to go home

Seriously, I want to go home to Cape Town. I've been in the UK too long. My visit has been unproductive. I had one supervision meeting, I pottered around here and there with my thesis but essentially I've done nothing substantial since just before I left Cape Town. I feel deflated and defeated by this stasis. If there is any significance attached to this visit it hasn't struck me yet, except for the large hole in my bank account.


Today I attended my second writing circle session. This has been an interesting experience and even though I didn’t have any specific expectations about the sessions, I have come away 'wanting'. Granted I joined the group after their initial establishment phase and I always knew I it would always be a temporary stay: this might explain my failure to really bond or find a real space for myself in the group. What I have come to realise, is that my status as a fourth year PhD student is reflected in my writing. I see the disciplinary footprint displayed in my writing style. I see how certain characteristic features of my field are clearly engrained in how I write and this further shapes what I like in other people's writing. I'm a bit disappointed that I don't have a more reflective meta-language to describe my writing journey. I feel I talk in broad brush strokes, rather than in specific detail and can't always explain why I like a piece of work or why certain paragraphs in my writing work or don't work. Looking at other students' work, especially those who have just started their PhD's, I can see how they are grappling with their theoretical concepts, their expression, their ideas, their role and position in their own writing and in a somewhat condescending way I say silently to myself 'Oh how I've moved on from that'. I wish we would talk more about what we are trying to do with our writing, what the barriers are, why we think we do the things we do when we structure or organise our writing in particular ways, how we are trying to mimic, ape, replicate the conventions and styles we think have special privileges in our field or in our supervisors academic world view. I think we spend too much time talking about grammatical rules and getting bogged down by where the reference should go and whether or not the reference needs a page number. Necessary issues to confront I guess, but not what I need right now. I'm experiencing first hand the tug of war between a skills and academic literacies model of writing. Maybe I'm experiencing the required compromise, I don't know.

Red wine and chocolate is, however, definitely on the agenda for the weekend.

painless?

I had supervision yesterday. By all accounts it was a painless affair. I've been in the UK for just over a week. Everything is strange but familiar. I'm in a conflicted space where I want the more familiar context of South Africa but am in a familiar context anyway. I got some really detailed and informative written feedback from one of my supervisors last week. I spent most of my time since then working through the comments, reading over the chapters commented on and making notes about my response to these comments. So going to supervision felt almost redundant? Maybe I held back a little trying to ease myself into the now unfamiliar face-to-face setting. I was clear I wanted to come out of this engagement 'alive' (that is a rather dramatic interpretation) and in many ways I achieved my goal. However, at the end of it all I couldn't help thinking - 'ok!, so I traveled more than 10 000km for this?'

We did however, talk about submission dates and the game is on. Two months to the final draft - well it's the first full draft my supervisors will see, but the plan is that this will be their final comments before submission. I don't think this date and the finality of it all has finally sunk in just yet. We also talking about my expectations about the outcome of this exercise - I won't be disappointed with a 'pass with substantial amendments' result. We joked about the pun/irony around me saying 'I'm only interested in submission' and how my supervision experiences have more than doubly prepared me for any examiner's feedback. Things have shifted, in a good way. I'm pleased. They won't feed me to the lions intentionally and as I have always known - they have my back. I'm pleased and reassured. Now to finish the darn thing!

a research methodology queen...even for a day

I got some preliminary feedback from one of my supervisors ahead of our supervision meeting at the start of next week. Apparently my Research Methodology chapter is 'excellent'. So it appears I've nailed this aspect of my thesis. And I'm feeling arrogant enough to suggest that my PhD thesis can't be failed if my methodology is solid! Of course I don't completely believe this, but it's a nice little bargaining chip that I'm using to boost my deflated confidence.

Basking in this glory I've been really lazy since arriving on the small island. I miss my place of calm and all the young, vibrant people around me there. Despite the very warm welcome I've received and the generosity shown to by my friends and special niece, I am really a creature of habit. I love structure and familiarity and it takes me a while to settle. It's probably ok and I'm trying not to worry too much about ALL the stuff I 'still need to do' to get the thesis to a submit’able level. After all, a queen is allowed to put her feet up from time to time.

the familiar and the strange

I arrived in the UK on Sunday. It started to snow lightly on the drive up to Milton Keynes. My ambivalence about coming here for a month started to firm up into tangible resentment in the same way you know you have to take a small taste of slightly dodgy milk to confirm that it actually has gone off. Everything is so familar though. It's like I never left almost 6 months ago. I went to see my friend SB, who is trekking across the globe to make a new life for herself and her family today, and even though her daughter is 6 months older and more mobile and attentive than she was when I left - it felt like I had last seen them only a few weeks ago. I just slipped comfortably back into how things were before I left. Same thing happened yesterday when I went back to the flat where I spent my last 15 months in England and popped into the OU. It's all so familiar but strange at the same time. I've spoken about this before, even about coming back to Cape Town - it's an uncomfortable, comfort (that's the best I can do at this point). Although my strong South African accent and my need to infect my speech with little Afrikaans sayings here and there tend to clearly signal that I'm fresh off the plane. But things are different...most of my colleagues aren't at the OU  anymore and I'm probably not never going to have tea with SB in the JLB nexus or coffee with SP in the soft, comfortable chairs in the Hub again. But then I knew that when I left the OU in September, but I guess I expect these familiar OU-type things to happen just because I'm in the OU environment. But things change.

Just like at the moment I feel strange to be a South African in England - I feel like all the bad press about the country lately, has stuck to me in the same way the smell cooked fish pemeanates your home no matter how many windows and doors you open. How do I manage it though - do I tell people what I really feel and appear unpatrotic or do I just dismiss all the very obvious rumblings and unsettling realities of South African society and present a optimistic version of life at the tip of Africa? The society I live in is complex, fluid and dynamic and it is difficult to offer a quick little sound bite that adequately and accurately captures all that is South Africa. I feel I'm going to have to settle into my discomfort at the moment - it will pass, or some of the discomfort will pass. It will be all be fine and I have BBC TV to soothe my conflicted soul. What more can I ask for?

on isolation

It's just past 9am and I'm listening to Joni Mitchell. I should be doing other things like preparing to go to England for a month. I'm not sure I want to go. I know I need to go, I have to go. I know once I get there it will all be fine and in a month's time I will tell the tale of how I was conflicted and anxious before I left and how everything worked out well in the end. Isn't that just how it is - the positive narrative we sell to ourselves to reassure ourselves that our anxiety is not really justified or that it is only short-lived. Alles sal reg kom.

One of the common narratives about the PhD (and other postgraduate study, especially the research bits) is that it's a solitary journey. It's your special research study, you become the expert in that particular topic and because of this individual quest, you are on your own 80-90% of the time - with your thoughts and your writing. Most people accept this, I don't think it's a very contested conceptualisation of the PhD. This week this isolation came into sharp focus for me. I was reminded yet again how isolated I really am. Sure I go sit in the library and have all these vibrant life forms around me but it's still me, alone with my thoughts and writing, in between people talking to each other in a mixed-up, social learning context. But every time I have a conversation with someone about the concepts and processes of my PhD my sense of being alone in my head, in this journey, rubs up like sandpaper on my skin. I want to talk, talk, talk - and listen and ask questions and say 'What do you think about this?', 'Explain that to me?', 'Tell me if you think this makes sense?', 'How would you do it?'. But I want to say it with innocence and anticipation, without worry of judgement or concerns about evaluation, without the need to perform intellectual adeptness.

I had this brilliant and engaging conversation with a colleague on Monday in this hot office, over his make-shift lunch, which he shared with me. We spoke curriculum, Bernstein and Barnett's (2006) notion of the double recontextualisation process in vocational higher education. A process I don't quite understand and one that he does - along with another colleague they had deconstructed the process so they understand and grasp it. I thought to myself - you're not meant to do this by yourself Lynn - you need others to mediate and help you over such rough spots - others who know. Then yesterday in the tree-filtered sun at UCT I spoke about my interpretation chapter to my friend and mentor. I was articulating my sense of the relationship between Academic literacies research and Bernstein's curriculum concepts and tools. Reflecting on the unrehearsed and anxiety-free conversational-space, I realised I was just practicing my argument for one of the key contributions my PhD research will make. I reminded LT how this very issues I was talking about was the 'problem' that propelled me into the PhD in the first place all those freaking years ago.
This is how I learn, I can't learn without access to these conversational moments. I have to accept the isolation, I'm forced to accept it, but I don't like it. My PhD is worse off because of it.

submission

I submitted my reworked Interpretation chapter today and yesterday I submitted Chapters 1-4. What can I say about it...nothing much really. I'm a bit nervous about how it will be received - especially the Interpretation chapter. I'm conflicted actually. I'm happy about where my argument is going but the presentation of the argument is patchy and I'm nervous about what that communicates to my supervisors. But what is the point of making this version of the argument watertight if the argument itself is not accepted? This is my logic for justifying the patchiness of this version...I wonder how plausible this line of argument is - will it hold in my next supervision meeting? Fuck it...it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So what do you do after you make a submission? Take the day off and go in search of the sun of course - especially if in about five days time you're going to a place where the sun never shines. Oh joy!