on being a black woman academic in South Africa

This is a reluctant account of how I've experienced academia in South Africa as a black woman. In the last two or three years in the wake of the #Rhodesmustfall and #FEESMUSTFALL student protests and calls for the decolonisation of the curriculum, of the university, of alles, much as been said about the black experience of academia in South Africa. I've stood on the sidelines, feeling inept and ill-equipped to respond, to contribute to the debate and discussion. I worried that I lacked the necessary or appropriate theoretical or conceptual languages of description most of the other commentators were using and that my 'story' wouldn't line up perfectly with the kind of narratives getting the most traction. The main theme of most of these narratives is that academia is a negative and toxic place for black academics and that most universities, but especially the previously liberal white institutions, make it almost impossible for black staff to reach the same levels of achievement as their white peers or that when black academics do succeed, it comes huge personal costs. While, I'm not going to dismiss the validity of this particular narrative or the experiences of individuals that might have lead to the construction of this perspective of being a black academic in SA, I think some refinement and nuance could expand the narrative and reaffirm the variation of experience. Thus while this theme might be rather prominent in our current discourse, it is but a narrative; not the only one.

What's academia like - according to Lynn

Academia is not an open, inclusive and welcoming professional environment. Rarely will you be greeted at the gates with warm, open arms by colleagues keen to offer you all the support and development opportunities you need to become the very best sociologists, physicists, historian, economists, educationalist you can be. The progression up the ladder of success is clearly demarcated and carefully policed; then further tainted with visible and invisible hierarchies of status and privileged conferred on certain institutions, departments, individual scholars. So that your hard earned PhD might not be bestowed with the same quality or legitimacy, as those of your colleagues. Then it is unlikely that your hand be held by an experienced, seasoned and gentle scholar as you attempt to 'break' into the publication world, affirming all your ideas and writing attempts and ready to offer sage advice and a shoulder to cry on when the article you pissed blood to write, is unceremoniously rejected. Also nobody will be at hand to walk you through the indecipherable and many times incomprehensible application processes for study, research or sabbatical leave or conference funding. You will find lots of networks, cliques and cabals that advance their own interests and privilege. These are defined on the basis of discipline, sub-discipline, race, gender, or any other delimiter, arbitrary or not. So just like in high school, but unlike high school, the stakes here can make or break your research career. Similarly, it is assumed that if you have a Masters or PhD, you can teach, develop a curriculum and understand and implement the necessary pedagogic strategies deemed crucial to enhance your students' learning. Again don't expect that anyone will show you the ropes.

Academia is a highly performative environment where the object of display and performance is your individual cognitive and intellectual ability - all your worth is locked down in your capacity to display and prove your knowledge and intelligence associated with your discipline. Furthermore, the manner of this display and how you represent your intellectual worth is governed by particular norms and conventions very often linked to language use specific to your discipline or sub-discipline. So it’s not enough to know, you also need to know and master how to express what you know. If you are keen to move up the ladder of success within the academy you have to show excellence in teaching and scholarship. However, in most university sectors, both locally and internationally, research trumps teaching. So in order to build your research profile and publish you will have to, especially in your early career, do most of your research and publication writing after hours, because most of your 'work hours' will be spent servicing your teaching and administrative obligations.

Unfortunately, the discrimination, prejudice, racism, sexism, ageism and meanness that pervades our society isn't blocked at the university gates. Instead it finds fertile ground and is accentuated in a professional environment built on the mostly subjective evaluation of intellectual acumen; with the one's doing the evaluation imbued with all the power. Add to the mix a healthy component of mean, egotistical people who come in all the race, gender and class shapes and sizes, and you have a setting for a perfect storm.

Insert Lynn - a black woman academic

• I've worked in higher education for more than twenty years, doing many different things. I started to lecture just over 15 years ago, but I only started to self-identify as an academic about 10 years ago when I started to engage and participate in the scholarly debates and dissemination of knowledge associated with my disciplinary field.
• I've only ever worked at a historically black institution (although now it’s part of a merged institution).
• The only position I was even held back from was for a more senior coordinating role. Even though I was more qualified (I was the only lecturer with a Masters degree) and had more experience than my colleagues, my black male boss at the time didnt think I was suitable. I was the only female working on the programme and the position was awarded to my male colleague.
• A request for conference funding was once turned down by my black male boss. I decided to pay for the conference myself.
• I was removed from my teaching allocation on a course by my black male boss, because I was deemed to be too critical of the curriculum content and pedagogic approaches used. He also refused to appoint me as course leader even though I was the only female PhD lecturer in the department, and the course I was teaching on was in my specialist area. I had to 'report' to a junior female member of staff who had a contract position.
• Male colleagues of all hues and persuasions have thought it ok to comment randomly on my appearance, clothes, weight, marital status, or disregard my title in communiques while paying careful attention to correctly apply the all important, prefix signifiers of rank, when referring to all the other male recipients.
• I have been referred to as a 'token black' by black female colleagues, who seemingly feel I'm not suitably qualified to work in my current domain, even though they don’t have any experience in the said domain.
• I have encountered black male colleagues who fail to acknowledge both my qualifications and reporting role, and constantly defer to my white male boss, even when I'm at the same meeting.
• I've seen how white research networks operate and how access to these networks are carefully controlled. Membership is bestowed to only the most suitable black academics. When you say no, you worry for your reputation and career progression.
• Friendships, authentic collegial and intellectual engagements are possible across race, class, gender and age divides. It’s hard to find, but I've flourished as an academic from the many genuine and supportive relationships I've managed to develop at my own university and with colleagues in my region and internationally. These relationships jump happily cross whatever  race, gender, class, age, cultural 'barrier' put in its way.

MPhil, UCT 2007

So what is it like to be a black woman in academia in South Africa? It depends really - on where you work, who you work with and who you work for. All these variables along with who you are as a person will coalesce and determine what it means for you. It’s a tough space, generally, and there are personal and structural factors that either compound and exacerbate that toughness or smooth it over. 

For me being an academic is almost a constant struggle against all that I am, because who I am is in so many ways at odd with the norms, conventions and predispositions of academia. The academy and its many people, unfortunately, have a low tolerance for difference – so if you don’t look, sound, behave, think or share the same values as those who have the power to define the norms and conventions – then you are more likely to have a difficult time. And often time the structures inherent in the institutional fabric will allow those in power to exercise their power in harmful ways. I’ve been on the receiving end of this kind of power (and meanness) held by both white and black men and women. In spite of this I've been moderately successful, I believe because I have, in part, being able to harness social capital gained from going to a white university and then completing my PhD in the UK. But I also have a particular personality - 'I don't take kak from kabouters' - and if I want something I find a way, legally and ethically, to get it. And I 'graf''. I do the work. Some of the challenges I face are linked to my race, ethnicity and gender, others reference the cultural capital I either possess or don’t (manifested in how I sound when I talk or my writing style). Luckily for me, these challenges, have been only that - challenges, that I constantly have to work at and navigate around. And I’ve found support in the most unlikely places and so have avoided those perfect storm conditions, that can make your life as an academic truly toxic and negative. 

This is a reluctant and incomplete account of being a black woman academic in South Africa - heavily inflected by time and place. I've tried to make sense of my own experiences and how it 'fits' into other narratives and discourses circulating at the moment. Hopefully, my story doesn't deny the other stories being told, but builds out just how discrimination and power manifests within the university. 

academic writing: a view from the sidelines

I'm on the sidelines as I watch other people write. Before I had only ever observed and reflected on my own experiences of trying to be an academic writer, as much of this blog bears testament to. I thought, naively, that my own struggles with academic writing would prepare me and allow me to be the supportive, encouraging and understanding 'coach', very optimistic and enthusiastically cheering from the sidelines. I thought I would understand and would comprehend.

This is what I brought along to my sidelined observations: Academic writing is difficult, in the beginning, especially, you think you can write but the reviewers often say you can't. Understanding and applying the 'conventions' and stylistic norms that will allow your writing to be recognised as legitimate is not as easy as 'copying' the forms and styles used by your favourite author. Sometimes doing this, simply signals now 'wrong' you got it. Writers, and especially novice writers, struggle with the huge psychological burden of knowing they don't 'come' with what they think are the necessary or expected linguistic repertoires or fluent and extensive vocabularies. And many times these very resources, especially when they are not recognised or (mis)recognised, mark these writers as 'outsiders' and becomes the source of a vicious and crippling circle of shame and fear associated with academic writing. Reviewer feedback is overwhelming, especially when its not filled with overt praise and affirmation. Its very hard to unbundle your personal and emotional investment in an argument, a sentence, a paragraph, an idea from commentary that suggests, someone else doesn't actually understand or get what you are saying.

From my own writing experiences and trying to mediate all the factors listed above as they play out in my own journey as a somewhat reluctant and self-conscious academic writer, I know that it always takes way longer to write a sentence, a paragraph, an article than you anticipate. You have to work through the reviewer comments carefully and try to see beyond your attachments. You have to seek out feedback and opportunities to talk and talk and talk some more about your work, your writing. And you have to continue to write - you have to put an immense amount of effort, energy, commitment into that act and work through all the freaking demons, weighing you down and distorting your own sense of yourself as a writer.

I'm reminded of the old adage about being a good, effective teacher: You have to grasp the limitations of your own experiences of being taught. As a teacher merely repeating what you saw your old teachers do can frequently leave you on the back foot. Even if you experienced really good teaching - simply emulating your past teachers, without trying to critically interrogate the usefulness or suitability of their practices - can severely limit your own teaching practices and your growth as a teacher. This lesson, is ringing true for me now. I'm finding that my own ongoing journey (very ongoing) as an academic writer has not equipped me as well as I would have hoped, to really understand, let alone support, others on this very same journey.

relationships in academia

Relationships of any kind can be tricky and complex at the best of times. In the university and academia more generally, the structural and organisational systems, that give life to ego-saturated status and rank  differentials, over and above the complexities of interpersonal interactions, make for a difficult terrain to navigate. I've learnt a number of hard lessons, bruising lessons about how this can play out over the last six months or so. And while living through this period, I suspect my immersion in the day-to-day specifics of 'who said what', and 'who did what to whom', and 'what does this mean' and 'how shall I respond', left me a bit blindsided and unable to appreciate a more helicopter-inspired perspective on - relationships in academia. Yesterday in some sort of strange way (no such thing as coincidence) I 'suddenly' caught a glimpse of this enriched vantage.

Two things happened - interlinked, implicated - at the level of both the concrete, the visceral. A reflective piece I co-wrote with LT was published and we decided to share it. So I was copied into an email that saw this piece travel across distant lands. I also heard of the death of a well respected, admired and beloved academic. We interacted with each other on many occasions in very collegial ways, and I am very familiar with, and have at times, extensively use her scholarship, but ours was never more than a professional relationship. I am however, privy, through my connections with colleagues who were very close to her, to their hugely meaningful and deep interpersonal relationships. And, yesterday to some of their heartfelt sadness and devastation because of their loss. Both these examples made me think anew about the relationships within the academy that I have been able to forge or those that have floundered or more dramatically, exploded. I wondered about the degree to which the academic setting acted against or contrived to scupper the chances of meaningful personal connection as we race to 'put ourselves out there' and gain academic recognition through primarily, the high stakes activities of publication and research outputs.

The reflective piece, which in many ways details an evolving friendship birthed in and through the university, and my second-hand insights into the multiple ways in which BL transcended the academic setting to nurture deeply meaningful and authentic interpersonal connections with many of her colleagues, draws attention to how relationships can be different in academia. Maybe I haven't realised it before, but these are the only kinds of relationships within academia I am keen to foster and give attention. It means that I have to personally act against the structural mechanism that pull me into viewing colleagues as adversaries or using my rank and status to undermine opportunities for meaningful connection with others. It also means I have to avoid situations and people who cant appreciate this way of doing relationships in the academy. Where I cant carefully avoid this (at least 60-70% of the time), I have to see it for what it is, disconnect and tell myself, 'this isn't for you Lynn, just try to be respectful and keep it strictly professional'. To Brenda, Hamba Kakuhle!

Visiting academic: Uppsala University, Sweden

It's 8:30am, it's 3 degrees and I'm on a bike cycling. First day in my Visiting Academic position at the division for Teaching and Learning at Uppsala University.

The view from my desk for the next two months might look a bit bleak at the moment, with leafless trees, but I have a desk, and internet access and a door pass, and free tea and fruit and a lovely open staff lounge area. I've met several of my 'new' Uppsala University colleagues, who joined in on a short informal chat in the lounge area. Very welcoming. Hopefully I will attend their current 'Academic Teacher Training' course which they run about six/seven times a term and I've been asked to do a short little input at their informal seminar sessions. Overwise I will be allowed to get on and write at my neat little desk, with just a glimpse of Uppsala castle in the distance through the window.

Uppsala Castle - the pinkish circular building behind the leafless tree

is this it?

I've been contemplating writing this mail for the past two months. I haven't been able to bring myself to sit down and type my thoughts into the white block the blogger interface assigns to the task of writing/typing  blog posts. In order to blog regularly you need to constantly bring to the surface your reflective thoughts and ideas. You need to want to make these thoughts 'public' or at least visible to an audience - however small you might imagine that audience to be.

Most of my contemplations have been about whether I want to continue to make these thoughts I have, which have recently been about my now post-PhD life at a university in CT, visible, public. I just have too many doubts about the utility of it all. Of using this space to do what I've been doing since 2009? I think it served a purpose while I was in the UK, while I was doing the PhD - when I used the platform as a reflective space, a way to step back from the isolation and introversion that characterises the PhD. During that time it's so helpful to find some way of trying to make sense of the complex, contradictory, conflicting, shifting feelings that accompany and infect that special journey. But what happens when that journey ends? What happens when you move on, but continue to carry all that contradictory, critical and increasingly cynical feelings about academia (and your place in it), thrown about and exposed by the PhD experience? Can you continue to pour out, albeit carefully typed-out black text on this white-blocked background, stories of confusion, negativity, uncertainly, rejection and critique? Does it make sense to be that awkward bugger who just won't / can't fit in? I'm not sure. So it feels better to just stop. Maybe for a little while, maybe forever. Maybe the blog will be resurrected during a more grounded, happier time in my professional and personal live(s) or when I need this space again so I can make visible the unsaid observations, thoughts, impressions, contemplations, insights, views and opinions without fear that these reflections only reinforce a negative narrative.

learning spaces

I've always imaged studying at university was about learning new things, being challenged to consider differently, to shift and change how you think and act. This drive to learn more, understand better, became the impetus, driving my pursuit of learning until I got to the PhD - the pinnacle of academic learning. A year after been deemed successful at achieving this learning 'outcome' I wonder where the true learning spaces are in academia. Are they created in the conferences, symposia, colloquiums and seminars we are encouraged to attend and participate in? Are they found in the classrooms we facilitate and manage? Or maybe they are lurking in the corridors, staff common rooms, colleagues' offices or noisy coffee shops - the informal spaces were fellow academics, researchers or teachers combine personal catch-up stories with reflections and ideas about theories new and old. Increasingly I'm finding the formal university space rather barren and void of learning. While the informal, entanglements of the unlikely, often peripheral spaces where those imagined notions of learning, that brought me to where I now find myself, are becoming the real, the authentic sites.

lots to say, not so much energy to say it

I haven't blogged in a while. I have lots to say, something practically everyday, but little energy to say it. In the mornings I rehearse what I want to say, write about, imagining that when I get home that evening I will sit quietly and write down these thoughts, ideas, reflections. But always by 9pm I'm spent. My brain can't function and all the wonderful, insightful thoughts floating around with such clarity in the morning have disappeared. I imagine making time during my working day - carving out a little reflective space - but, certainly over the last two weeks, my days have been consumed by rushing around trying to complete various administrative and organisational tasks. But I also attended a very interesting conference last week which really provoked some compelling and challenging questions about the types of conferences I go to, the egocentric nature of academia (and its personalities) and what value I gain from going to these events. Nevermind, maybe it will come back to me. I'll reclaim a Saturday morning at my happy place or a Sunday afternoon at my special cafe and capture those thought-provoking, insightful observations and perceptions worth sharing.

all is not well in academic publishing

On Sunday I received an e-mail telling me, and another 15 or so authors, that a book publication we had been associated with since 2011 was no longer going to be published because the collection editors could not reach agreement over how to acknowledge their contribution. The editor from WAC Clearinghouse sent this first e-mail. This email was shortly followed by an 'explanation' email from collection editor 1, who had, in particular been in regular contact with me over the last two years. I responded offering my feelings of disappointment but also noting that given her explanation, I understood the seemingly principled position she had taken. Given my evaluation of the situation presented by these emails, everything smacked of a battle of egos at the expense of the 15 or so authors whose work would no longer see the  light of 'publication' day. Then another e-mail today from collection editor 2 - also to explain her interpretation of the fall-out that had occurred between these two academics, which resulted in the publisher pulling the volume because of the impasse. Then a response from the editor 1 - saying something like 'hope you can find another place to publish your work'. This new information has not seen me shift from my initial feelings that this whole sad, sorry affair was essentially a selfish battle of egos.

I'm completely pissed off. I feel like hitting reply all and SCREAMING at these two idiot editors and imploring them to think less about themselves, and who offended who more, and think more about everyone else so negatively affected by this really ridiculous and disastrous turn of events. This impasse occurred right at the 11th hour - with the publisher trying to negotiate an amicable solution and get the final sign-off.

Unfortunately, its not so simple to re-jig the chapter to make it more suitable for publication in a journal. This piece was written specially for this special volume coming off the back of a conference that happened in 2010. So things are dated and a lot of what I've written here was published in HERD in 2012. So although the argument is fundamentally different, I rely on the same data, and thus I run the risk of self-plagiarism - especially if I want to publish in a journal. For now I'm still blowing off steam. What I do or don't do with this written piece will have to wait until my head is clear.
It's a novice researcher and academic writer's response; to be so pissed off and irritated by such bad behaviour simply because I need the publication so badly. Otherwise I could just brush this whole unfortunate escapade aside and say knowingly 'I could have seen something like this happening. Oh well, who cares!'

sleeping on the job

I'm on a 'summer' holiday in winter. Summer because I'm currently writing this in the Northern Hemisphere, looking out at the green trees and blue skies outside. When thinking about my holiday away from the 'chilly' institutional context down South, I fantasised about writing each morning and making some headway with my plan to use writing to effectively pull me out of the soul sapping downward spiral I found myself in. As I head into the final five days of my Swedish Summer, I've have to acknowledge, yet again, how distant a fantasy is from reality. To date I've spent maybe three mornings doing anything remotely academic or writing inspired. Lots of ideas, sans action. Of course I'm disappointed. An OU friend who came to visit, reminded me of how lucky I am to have 'free' moments for writing during my normal 'working' time. I felt a tinge of guilt at not fully exploiting that time. Free time without motivation or inspiration is thus a sad thing.


I have another friend who is truly connected to what she needs at a very intuitive level, looking at my summer experience through her eyes, I've spent my summer in ways that I needed, even if my brain and rational self might have suggested I needed a whole range of 'other stuff'. So it's all good, and it will all be good. Next week at this time I will probably be sitting in a boring meeting, without a t-shirt and kikoy, but wrapped up warmly in layers upon, upon layers of clothing and insulation (and not only from the cold weather). I suspect I'll be better prepared for whatever comes my way, and that is probably be the value gained from how I've spent this summer holiday.

elephants in the room

The elephants in the room today were race and power. But aren't they always,...in the room? The workshop focus of the symposium today was really a stroke of genius and a wonderful attempt to invite conversation and dialogue. But the elephants were having none of it. None of the conversation and none of the dialogue. My head was dull from not having slept last night. I couldn't shut my brain down and I knew I would suffer in the morning and so I did. As a result I couldn't see and I couldn't really anticipate the movements of the agitated elephants in the room. I noticed them but couldn't make sense of their behaviour. 

Academic spaces, like the one I was in today, are fertile grounds for power struggles. People parade and stake out their intellectual space. I am a Bernsteinian. I'm an academic literacies person. I am female. I have a PhD. I am a practitioner. I'm interested in the student. I'm interested in the curriculum. I'm using LCT. I dislike Karl Maton. I am black (or coloured, or white, or indian). In these uber-polite environments it's the person who wields their power through the eloquence of their words and the conquering up of theory to support their position that gets to dominant. Better still if they are able to evoke ontological debate and philosophy. Those unable to engage in this manner are simply present in the room, but definitely not guest of the party. That's the power first and foremost and how it is exercised. 

So what about race? Did my silence today have anything to do with my race? Or did it have more to day with my inability to communicate (or let me be frank, my intellectual incapacity to take up the debates)? To say that my perceived inability to engage in the conversation in the ways necessary to be recognised as a 'guest', is because I was denied the privileged of good schooling and opportunities because I'm black and grew up in apartheid South Africa, is condescending and deeply offensive and suggests a clear lack of understanding of the multiple factors that act to silence or amplify peoples' voices in any given situation. Such a view while tinged with the realities of being black, is limited and simply airbrushes, me Lynn, and all my agency (and that of my family) out of the picture. Yes I always mentally count how many black academics are in the room and my observations suggest that both in SA and aboard, typically, we are in the minority. But I'm not convinced that how we behave in these sittings are only determined by the colour of our skin. But I can understand and recognise that power evoked around race is still contentious and needs to be brought to the surface. I don't have the answers and feel that I might be 'outting' a somewhat assimilationist or dare I say 'colonised' view on race in SA through my articulations here. What I do wonder is how the symposium space could have been reconstructed in such a way to ensure that everyone felt more equal (on whatever grounds) and more comfortable to speak and voice their ideas. But maybe seeking equality in academia is an elusive notion and that's why the elephants in the room will always be allowed to go 'bos'.

structure and agency

I have just a few common-sense observations and reflections to make about this oft discussed and theorised concern  - structure and agency.

In the literature it's always wonderful to see the little person (aka - the agent) overcome or subvert the negative and even tyrannical  impact of the society or the institution (aka - the structure). Of course all of this plays itself out in complex and diverse ways and as Margaret Archer and other theorists (like Bourdieu, who a good friend reminded me about recently) have shown us, the relationship between the structure and the agent is also interceded by culture. And I won't even try to pretend that I know anything about more psychologically informed understandings of these interactions. BUT theory-schemory when it comes to trying to understand your own place in an organisation and why it is you behave and react to events,  incidents and people in the way you do. It's safe to say that I have enough of a common-sense understanding (and experience to back this up) to know that the environment that I live and work in will affect me as a person and in someways impact on, and direct how I response to what I encounter. I'm fast realising however, that irrespective how agentive you are as a person, you are still operating within a broader system that WILL either constrain or accentuate your level of agency. Also the conditions in environment can distort your ability to realise your agentive potential. It can also act to reframe and reconstruct your inability to use this agentive quality as a personal failing and in so doing turn the spotlight off the features inherent in the structure that directly act against this agentive potential. As I write this I imagine that somewhere in the literature, someone has already described this process in more elaborate and eloquent ways, and with just the right sprinkling of theoretical concepts and constructions to give it the necessary air of credibility and validity. I wonder though if anyone has ever written about how being caught in this process actually makes you feel, and how understanding these processes, no matter how rudimentary that understanding, offers no buffer against the person impact on its detrimental effects.

taking the weekend off

The PhD experience instills a strange discipline or guilt  - depending on how you want to view it. Your work is a constant feature of your life, and if you are doing a full-time PhD the days of the week are practically indistinguishable from each other. Basically, weekends don't exist. I had a rule of working a six-day week. Since I was relieved of my teaching responsibilities my weekends have pretty much become weekends. Unless I've been working on some or other writing project, my weekends have become a time when I do the things normal people do on a weekend. I was surprised to acknowledge last week, that I did not check my e-mail for practically most of the weekend. More surprising is that it didnt really bother me. Of course there is that niggly bit of something I feel, a slight discomfort at doing 'nothing' or having 'nothing' of value to do (reframed this means that only real academic work - aka, writing or research - is of value). Last time I wrote about how writing and identity are two sides of the same coin, a similar claim could be made that academic work and identity are two sides of the same coin. So is it any wonder that my work, or guilt, or discipline associated with my work follows me into the weekend?

so you want to be an academic?

I've been wondering if I'm really 'cut-out' to be a proper academic. I spent the past Easter weekend vacillating between being repulsed by my clunky, unsophisticated and inelegant writing and getting excited about all the other article possibilities I could pursue. I couldn't help thinking, is this really what I want to do? The struggles I have with my writing really touch a raw nerve and expose the contradictory feelings inside me about being in academia. I accept that writing and publishing is central to what I have to do in this field, and I want to do it. I have things to say that I think are important and significant, and that I feel other people would be interested to hear/read about my thoughts and ideas. But another part of me just wants to be a teacher, a practitioner, a facilitator - focused only on giving students a better, more meaningful learning experience. But I think there is another issue central to the act of writing that overshadows these feelings about whether or not I want to be in academia. When the writing scholars, like Ivanic and co, talk about writing being intimately linked to identity and the self, they are absolutely correct. Nothing exposes my insecurities, self-doubts and uncertainties more than my writing - which is then amplified when my writing is viewed, judged and evaluated by others. Given that this judgment and evaluation is part and parcel of what defines academia, it appears, that if I don't accept the order of things, I will forever be in a state of internal conflict. So do I REALLY want to be an academic?

doing it all wrong

It's Friday evening, it's late. I'm sitting in bed with a fairly large'ish glass of red wine. It's been a both long and short week. This conflictory statement maybe, bests sums up the week's events. But, this isn't what's foremost on my mind or what this post is about. Amidst the crisis that unfolded on Monday was a little e-mail about the outcome of the peer review process linked to a little paper I submitted for a conference proceedings publication. In South Africa an academic can attract a smallish research subsidy for papers included in particular types of conference proceedings. Motivated by the possibility of attracting this subsidy and thereby accumulating some publication credits, I decided, in a carefree, happy moment, at the start of the year, to submit a paper. This was to lay the foundation for how I completely did it all the wrong way. On reading the peer-review reports, there was absolutely no way I could hide away from the fact that I had messed up the whole freaking process. Firstly, the paper was rushed. I'd be the first to admit that it was a difficult paper to write and a difficult one for the general audience of this conference to 'get' (even if I was able to write it exceptionally well). The amount of time I was able to spend on the paper was not commensurate with its level of difficulty. I remember I submitted the paper with probably one hour to spare before the final deadline. I just didn't give it enough time - I didn't allow the argument to brew (not the intellectual argument per se, but the written construction of that argument) and I didn't accommodate for more 'critical feedback' moments with a wider range of 'critical friends'. Secondly, I was messing with the stock-formula of paper submissions - I went for a conceptual rather than empirical argument. How arrogant and over-confident of me! Only the top scholars can and do take that this approach and even they encounter serious hurdles in getting this kind of paper published. Then finally, and this is probably the most crucial part, this submission attempt failed to take into account my own writing process - what I need to do get to a fairly polished piece of writing.

The feedback itself was brutal leaving me feeling ashamed that I submitted such a clearly unfinished, unrefined piece of writing. But, on Friday night with my glass of wine besides me, I feel sufficiently motivated, calm and accepting of this aspect being an academic, and I will give the paper another go. 'Good' writing comes with practice, I need the practice and the intellectual stimulation. Sometimes you have to get things wrong; if you don't how will you ever get them right?

the life blood that sustains me

I have to talk. Talking defines who I am. I think if I was denied the opportunity of expressing my thoughts, feelings, ideas, emotions through talk I could easily shrivel-up and die. The importance of this aspect what makes me, me has been brought into sharp focus over the past two days. On both days I had a chance to talk to colleagues/friends. On both occasions the topic was an aspect of academic life and on both occasions I was given the chance to talk, but more importantly I had to flex my intellect, think deeply and take in the wonderful stimulation offered by this 'simple' interpersonal interaction.

How wonderful it is to share in this most basic human interaction. I've raised the wonder of this taken-for-granted activity because it is what is so obviously missing from my current professional life. Last night I imagined what I might become if I was constantly immersed in an environment where I was challenged and stimulated intellectually. I remember why I loved my adult education diploma and all the taught masters' courses I even took. Because of the wonderful opportunities it granted me to read something and then discuss it with peers. I have to grapple with the theories or arguments presented on paper, express my opinions about it, listen to what someone else thought, then respond or counter their position. At the same time work through my own understanding of these very theories and arguments - and learn, learn, learn. For me talking and learning go together - whether its learning of the academic or personal kind. Now, sitting alongside my glass of red wine, writing this, I feel content.

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.