change is inevitable

I'm trying to maintain a brave face as I tackle the working week. I have good days, when I feel like I've achieved something or I don't feel too disheartened by the mundane tasks I've done all day. The bad days, well...I have bad days.

The most striking thing about being back at work is noticing how much I've changed. It's not only that I have changed, because change is bound to happen over time. It's when I focus on the how that reveals the most significant insights. I feel as if I view my new/old surroundings from OU tinted lenses. I don't think that I'm overtly comparing practices, I'm just acutely aware of how strongly my time at the OU has come to influence and shape my sense of academia. The academic practices I now foreground have a clear OU flavour. I find myself evaluating the saying, doings, valuing around me from an OU position. I say OU but of course it has more to do with my disciplinary alignments, forged very strongly during my time at the OU and the specificities of my supervisors' ways of talking, thinking, doing and valuing. I'm shocked at how much of it I've internalised. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it just creates particular challenges as I find myself operating in a environment where my ways of being bump against the institutional and departmental ways of being. Sometimes I manage these challenges and tensions, other times they send me reeling and seriously doubting myself. I did a bit of English-style whinging yesterday  to my dear friend SB about my re-immersion into working life at a UoT and she gave me some firm advice - Suck it up, buttercup - she said. I think there is something pure and unpretentious about the advice which I can only appreciate. Things will get better and who knows I might even re-acclimatize and change my wayward tendencies.

transitioning 'Groundhog day'

No I'm not Bill Murray - but I am referencing his experiences from the movie of the same name. I can't seem to move beyond a transitioning state of being. I feel like I'm trapped in some liminal space never able to leave. Just when I feel some stability is finally approaching, I'm thrown back into an in-between space never able to build, develop or establish an identity beyond one transition to something else. So what the hell am I? What purpose do I serve? And what the hell does it mean to have a PhD in Higher Education Studies? (and I should add within a university of technology setting!). Having just submitted the thesis I feel myself holding onto the 'PhD student' experience and identity. Well it took me practically four years to cultivate. It was such a certain thing and being at the OU provided the necessary social and cultural 'props' required to take on that identity. Now back at work, I'm not sure what I am. I'm out of touch with the realities of my institution, the teaching context, the people, the politics. I appear to be floating from one area of 'work' activity to another. I say yes to almost everything people place in front of me because I don't want to appear as if I'm trying to lighten my load, I want to fit in, and I don't want to seem like I'm above 'certain' kinds of tasks.

Recently I've been asked to do two presentation based on my research - not that anyone is really interested in my research - simply because I have done 'the research'. You've done a PhD now talk about it - I feel is the main motivation behind these requests. You've done a PhD now sit on our committee dealing with postgraduates in the department. I work in an IT department - what the hell do I know about IT of any sort. I can see myself being roped in to 'supervise' students doing Btech and Mtech degrees in IT because as someone put it, when I remonstrated that I'm not sure what I can contribute 'All research is the same'. I wonder if it's worth arguing against such a statement. On the somewhat bright side of things, working means a proper salary or maybe more appropriately for me at the moment 'danger pay'.

submitted

The thesis was submitted yesterday courtesy of my good friend in England DB and the lovely CREET administrator AF. I was far removed from the whole process and denied the tactile experience of holding the finished booklet, that is my thesis, in my hands. I'm struggling to explain how it all feels. Yesterday when I got the e-mail saying the thesis was submitted, a bolt of something close to euphoria rush through me, followed very quickly by a sense of calm, relief. 'It's done, no turning back now'. Since that initial positive rush, all I've been feeling is mostly indifference. I'm pleased, happy it's all done but in a way I don't think I'm prepared for or expected the rather deflated feeling that's accompanied the submission of the thesis. For the longest time all I wanted was to be at this point. My focus was simply on submission, submission, submission. I paid no attention to what it might feel like once I submitted, I just wanted the pressure, stress and feelings of inadequacy brought on by the thesis writing process to stop. It's not all doom and gloom though, I feel a great sense of relief and can feel my self-confidence slowly seeping back. I miss the thesis in some strange, almost perverse way. In the act of submitting the thesis I'm force to let go of the best part of the last five years of my life.

ready to submit

My PhD thesis is ready for submission. All I have to do now is wait for my supervisors to sign off the thesis. Then to get the logistic just right to get the thesis printed and walked over to the Research School at the OU. In certain respects I've already withdrawn from the thesis. Most of what I've been doing for the last three weeks has been very procedural. Intellectually I stepped back at least a month ago. But until it's submitted all the nagging, 'not-yet-done' stuff sits in my head. I want to take a real 'break' from the thesis and PhD project once the thesis is submitted. Maybe a little celebration will be in order - then of course I have to start working on my viva preparation.

so what now?

I've been back at work for two weeks now. It's been a rather fragmented couple of weeks as I try and work out what I'm meant to do and try to understand the institution I left almost five years ago. Everything has changed, especially me. I walk the corridors wondering where I fit in and whether I have anything to offer. Sure I 'almost' have a PhD in Higher Education Studies - but what does that mean? Everyone is so busy with day-to-day practical issues that seem to bear no resemblance to the ideas, concepts and theories I've spent the best part of five years trying to grapple with and understand. My PhD doesn't say anything about how I'm meant to translate or mediate the abstract theorisation that is my PhD into practical applications or solutions that make sense to my colleague or help them deal with the daily realities of teaching at a university of technology. Because I've been away for such a long time, I've also lost my 'on-the-ground' knowledge and sensibilities related to Teaching and Learning in the higher education context. I feel out-of-touch and without being involved in any teaching at the moment I almost want to say I have no 'street cred'. So I wonder around the corridors unsure of what I'm meant to do and how this PhD fits in to it all. Does the PhD add any value to my job function? Will my job be able to accommodate the new me with the PhD experience? In a consolation attempt I tell myself, rather reluctantly, that maybe these aren't the kind of questions that can be answered after just two weeks on the job.

the exhaustion of formatting

Somewhere in the middle of this week I wanted to write about the shared experiences of the PhD student, after having a long, interesting chat with a colleague. We were reflecting, as I've done before with another friend, about how our Masters' degrees were such an empowering and fulfilling learning experience. We also commented on how the transition from the Masters to PhD was not as seamless as it is sometimes made out to be.

While I wanted to give more blog-space to these clearly thoughtful and interesting issues, I am now consumed with the ever-changing list of formatting challenges confronting me as I prepare my thesis for submission. This task is being complicated by the fact that I will be submitting my thesis while more than 10 000 kms away from the OU. Besides a mountain of logistical challenges associated with this task, I am now confronted by the realisation that when I convert my Word file to a PDF I'm going to compromise the quality of all the photos and graphics in my thesis. I can't stop myself from lamenting - why, oh why did I include all these graphics and photos and give myself more headaches than I already have? Nothing is simple when it comes to formatting a 'moerse' (as we say here on the Cape Flats) long document and I'm trying to get a PhD in Higher Education Studies, not freaking Word! Makes me look back nostalgically and wonder about all the scholars of old (who were probably mostly men) who got their wives or secretaries to type up their theses and never had to deal with all this crap.