cape flats' mothers and new year's eve

I called a friend of mine who like me has long since escaped the physical and other confines of the Cape Flats. What was she doing on New Year's Eve? Well before anything could be done the house had to be cleaned. A lesson from her mother - you can't greet the new year with last year's dirt. We laughed to how successful our mother's indoctrination had been. This was a lesson I had also learnt from my mother. And over the years I've always adhered in varying degrees to this once strictly enforced doctrine. So as I sit down to write my final blog post for 2013, my washing is drying in the hot summer sun and the vacuum cleaner is on the ready to suck up the last of 2013's dirt.

Next to my cup of tea, my beautifully annotated examination-copy thesis sits. I was determined to finish off 2013 properly - yes I've completed all the corrections and produced a cover sheet detailing how I attended to them. This will accompany the final, revised version of the thesis when I send it along to the Research School at the very start of 2014. So it's finally over; the PhD.

This holiday period felt so light, I felt so light without the worry of the PhD (save for the corrections of course). Thinking back to last year this time, I was in such a different emotional space - I could taste the heaviness that enveloped me. I'm grateful to be able to see things differently now and tell a different story about 2013 - the year I finished my PhD. Reflection involves confronting and acknowledging the happy and sad, the good and the bad - these two elements are always present, they just take up different amounts of space at different times. So my PhD and the year I finished it, has been beautifully fashioned by both the good and bad, happy and sad. And I'm very content with that realisation, outcome, narrative.

Part of my pre-2014 cleaning will involve clearing up all the now superfluous papers and notes that represented that final push before the viva. My study must be ready to embrace all that 2014 has to throw at it and I think my mother, if she could comprehend it all, would be particularly proud of my cleaning efforts on this hot and windy new year's eve.

a PhD free Christmas?

For the first time in four years I'm going into Christmas without a PhD hanging over my head. While I'm happy about this prospect, it's also somewhat weird. My 'normal' these past four years has always included the PhD and it feels somewhat unsettling not to have it, also like a warm, snugly comfort blanket. Of course I still have to sort out the 'minor corrections' - I received the notification from the Research School last week and have until February to sort everything out. Although I want it done and dusted come the new year. It would be lovely to have the PhD completely wrapped by before I see in '2014'. So it seems my Christmas won't be completely free of the PhD.

a final goodbye

When I visited Cuba in 2000, I asked why only Che Guevara's face adorned the many t-shirts we saw there and why there were none of Fidel Castro - we were told that, in Cuba only the dead are immoralised in this way because the living can still betray the revolution.

Today I watched from a thousand miles away how Nelson Mandela's body was lowered into the ground. One minute his coffin was visible over the graveside and then, with just a blink,  it was gone. I've been filled with such sadness, and deep reflection that feels at the same time personal but inextricably part of a collective consciousness. I'm in England and all I wanted was to be home in Cape Town, in South Africa, with my family. So I could sit with them and cry, and remember, and debate, and shout at the TV in unison when No 1 offered the world insincere half truths, lied and delivered unemotional cliche sentiments - even though the act of shouting at the TV would showed up our failings, our inability to be like and act like Madiba would.

I don't have any words of wisdom about how Mandela changed my life and how I'm now going to uphold his legacy and do as he would have done. I'm not quite sure when the sadness I feel will leave me even though the acceptance of his death, and this death to come, has been living with me for a while now. What I know now is that I will be proud to wear a t-shirt with his emblazoned image safe in the knowledge that he did not betray the revolution. Hamba kahle, Nelson Mandela, hamba kahle.

crap at writing

I've been crap at writing about my post-viva misadventures. I've been caught like a rabbit in headlights as I stumble around dealing with the mundane minutiae of the administrative side of academic life. This has left me little time to ponder what it means to be Dr Coleman. In fact when people comment or use the Dr title to grab my attention I typically dismiss it and say 'It's not official yet' in the hope that this liminal space - between submitting the corrections and getting the official documentation/certificate -  can buy me some time to work out what it actually mean to be Dr Lynn Coleman. Never mind!

I did engage in some fairly enjoyable academic activity last week when I went to HELTASA - the one stop shop for all things Academic Development in South Africa. Lots of congratulatory wishes, hints at possible job offers (although I'm not convinced), some genuine networking opportunities, and general socialising of the academic and not so academic kind (aka lots of dancing to old 80s music). Unfortunately the buzz around the conference subsided rather abruptly - I find myself juggling the 'mundane minutiae' and the more serious need to complete my preparations for the SRHE conference next week. I'm not winning the battle!