and now on a more positive note

I haven't been a very active blogger these past few weeks. I'm conscious that a common thread in my narratives has been that of negativity – a discourse of ‘dooms and gloom’. There is some saying that goes something like 'if you don't have something good to say then don't speak'. This felt applicable to me. So I haven't used the blog.

 
But on Sunday I had occasion to feel positive and affirmed about myself as academic, researcher and person. I went out to lunch with both my Masters and PhD supervisors. Two wonderful, thoughtful and supportive women academics and researchers, who have both played, in different ways, such influential roles in my academic becoming. What felt so affirming about sitting alongside both women, while we drank beautifully, blushed wine, and watched the waves in Kalk Bay crash violently and determinedly against the restaurant windows, causing us to respond instinctively as each wave thundered against the window panes - was that I could sit so, 'fretlessly' and talk about everyday things. Our relationships had shifted. A shift that had more significance for me with respect to one of my supervisors. A testament, I thought, to possibly, my capacity to survive and be deeply reflective about what had gone before, rightfully carrying new insights and reframed perspectives. I felt a sense of not being burdened by the past, even though it’s scars act as palpable reminders.

now you feel it, now you don't

It's amazing how quickly you readjust to 'normal' after being away from it for a while. It's like muscle memory or ingrained mental maps that allow you to go into almost automatic mode. Not thinking, not feeling. I've come to realise, this year, that any break from my normal work does wonders for my soul. But I'm just as susceptible to ingrained mental maps/muscle memory/intuitive responses irrespective of the positives associated with these breaks. So it's taken me almost a week to prioritise my writing. The plan is that it will stay my priority until the end of the academic year in early December.

Yesterday I stumbled back into the writing and was left feeling immensely frustrated and irritated at myself. It felt like I could not put two sentences together, let alone articulate my view on deficit discourse. After an hour or so of, what felt like, hammering my head against the wall I put the writing aside, deciding to come back to it later in the day and then to jot down in bullet point the salient points I wanted to make. Returning to my notes and bullet list today, it all came together. A totally different experience. Ok so I can write a few paragraphs about what deficit discourses are and how they manifest in the South African context. Not too bad actually. And so I move onto the next section...

thinking retreat in Uppsala

I've been in Sweden for just under a week. My visit was meant, amongst other things, to serve as a little writing retreat. I was hoping to refine the article I'm working on after getting some feedback on it last week. But things haven't really worked out as I hoped. I haven't done much writing. The process has been slow and I've been distracted with completing unrelated administrative 'stuff' linked to my day-job. But I have done a lot of thinking. I've had the time to mull over my ideas, do some supplemental reading, question the logic of my arguments. Think about how to say things differently. So I guess all is not lost. Oh, and I've made good progress in getting through series 1 & 2 of OITNB. 

wasted

Its getting close to that time of the year when things start to slow down - students are finishing off their final lectures and the department shifts into final exam mode. The final push to mark and submit marks and then, the academics in my department relax and wait for the year to pass. For me, this period is increasingly representing a time when I write in the open. When no one is watching me. When no one in very interested in doing anything much and I sneak-in my writing. Make it mainstream, instead of that thing I try to do on a Thursday away from the office or on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoons. But, unsettlingly, in plotting forward towards this period, I've had to take stock of the past year. It's depressing as I feel I've done so little intellectually engaging work. I have so little to show for the year past. My first post-PhD year. On my desk sits some of the books I bought over the past 10 or so months. Many haven't been touched, thumbed through. Some I've only managed to read a few pages, maybe a chapter. Reading is meant to be the lifeblood of what I do as an academic, what defines me, what I actually enjoy. And yet I feel as if I haven't even succeeded at it. It's easier to justify not having any writing outcomes, but no reading? Well that's another matter.

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!'

time to write

Finding the time to write or working out how to be most productive at my writing tasks has always been a tricky aspect for me. My general sense, gathered from the fellow players I've encountered in the academic writing game, is that the more time and effort devoted to the task the better the result. Specifically the more time devoted to the task in a single day / sitting the better. So you can't have a productive writing day without being dent over your desk or your laptop from 6am to 6pm. It's almost the equivalent of the 'no pain, no gain' mantra used by gym fanatics and the like. That approach never really worked for me and I remember that at the height of my PhD writing only being able to manage, at best, maybe 4-5 hours of sustained and hard intellectual graft on any give day. And now given all the other things competing for my time and draining my energy (especially intellectually) the idea of sitting down for a full five hours on any given day simply to write feels both a luxury and an impossibility. So I'm rather excited and encouraged by the advice offered by Tanya Golash-Boza. Maybe her approach just fits into my yoga-induced philosophy of ahimsa which I've tried to apply to all aspects of my life, with varying degrees of success (as much of my blog writing suggests). But I also appreciate the importance of building in and acknowledging the thinking time so vital to writing. For some all of this mumbo-jumbo might just be a cop-out for laziness or signal a poor work ethic. And this kind of moralistically-infused argument always leads to second-guessing and worse still, self-doubt. But, if I've learnt anything from my four decades on this planet, it's to carve out your own path, to be confident in the choice you've made and also the manner in which you choose to navigate that path.

balance?

Eventually equilibrium comes. At the start of the last week I decided I would write. I resolved to set aside whatever was happening at work and focus on my writing. And just after lunchtime on Monday, I was in my happy place at UCT and I think that set the tone for how I approached the rest of the week. I soon forgot the intensity of the feelings resulting from the events that caused my wobble. The issues -  gender discrimination, feeling undermined, disregarded in my professional space - have not gone away, and neither has my anger about how it insidiously creeps in and infects the 'ways things are done' in my department and institution. If anything I have resolved to consciously keep it on my agenda, to be vigilant and to be challenging. Sometimes people need to know that they have to display an appropriate degree of sensitivity to issues of diversity and discrimination and that not everyone buys in to a Victorian value system. And so it continues and in the continuing, often with the mundane and the everyday, that the humanity returns and in this I found that my validation (the validation and affirmation I seek) can come from many places. Often times there is enough elsewhere (like with  my friends, mentors, at conferences, seminars or research presentations) to go around to support and sustain me as I engage with those less engaging and enabling environments and/ or personalities.

and I knew I wasnt alone

Thanks to LR, who shared the following with me, http://www.thedailyvox.co.za/sexistsa-academic-spaces-are-far-from-safe/, my suspicion, that what I experienced last week is probably just the milder tip of a massive, menacing iceberg, was confirmed. Unfortunately, the student story captured above, makes my 'little rant' seem like a pleasant stroll on a Sunday afternoon. So proud to see that these women students are actively challenging the patriarchy and sexism they encounter within the SA university context, even though taking such an confrontational and oppositional stance, will probably  place them firmly in the firing line. Aluta continua!

wobble

At the beginning of the semester I was determined that my new positive attitude would rise above all the crappy institutional, departmental, personality-defined politics and culture I encountered. This past week threatened to seriously derail my plans. While I'm not 100% sure why this week, in particular, so threatened my new-found positive attitude, as the week unfolded, a series of events all conspired and quietly coalesced to once again force me to question why I work where I do, whether I want to continue to be there and why, in certain instances, I react so poorly at what I get confronted with.

Fortunately, I can answer the first two questions without flinching, but unfortunately, the answers will reveal a less than honourable or principled side to me. In many ways it was a slow build-up - little bits of things, possibly over many months, that unfortunately, depleted my tolerance levels. To my credit and maybe a testament to how my new positive attitude has actually changed how I deal with things, instead of highlighting my inadequacies or suggesting that somehow I'm at fault - the past week saw me confront, and challenge face on (sometimes), the insidious, patriarchal, sexist underbelly of the department and institution. Some examples from the past week to illustrate exactly how this plays itself out in my work space: Seeing myself and other female colleagues being relegated to the ones who arrange the catering and venues; Being summoned into a management meeting to 'recount' the logistical arrangements for a curriculum development workshop - even though the programme leader, for whom the workshop was devised and who was present in the meeting, was fully briefed on the what's and how's of the workshop; Witnessing how a senior female colleague was jokingly, invited to 'strut her stuff' on a imagined runway in a formal workshop venue; Then the final straw - when a member of the institutional executive management, with all seriousness, challenged an all women audience, at a women leadership in higher education meeting to interrogate 'What was wrong with women?' Would anyone challenge black academics to question 'What is wrong with black academics?' I wonder? I'm depleted, really. The fact that I was able to challenge and raised my voice to counter some of these viewpoints, almost feels insignificant.  I think the extent of discrimination, of all kinds, but especially towards women (both students and staff) within my working space and so reflecting the higher education sector in Cape Town (dare I say South Africa) and the arrogance of those who perpetuate it cannot be underestimated. But, I won't take it laying down and I won't be polite and intellectual about it either. So as we say here on the Cape Flats their 'ma se p$%*!

discernment

Earlier this week I was once again surprised by my poor level of discernment. I had signed-up for a ‘writing for publication’ training workshop run by our Research ‘promotion’ Department. Knowing who was running this course should already have kick-in my internal early warning system. But I wanted to challenge my own prejudices and remain open to the idea that I could learn from such an engagement even if the underpinning philosophy or pedagogy, guiding these types of skills & support courses, did not sit comfortably with my own views. Second warning bell sounded very loudly when I entered the workshop venue and found that the physical arrangements of the furniture and the state of the furniture itself was so poorly suited to ensuring that the budding academic writers would be able to sit comfortably and write for more than 10 minutes at a time. The final straw come after I had subjected myself to the first hours of the work and the facilitator started to ask different participants to read her slides aloud as a way of bringing some variation to the presentation.

To be fair – this kind of thing, where you get a generic, one-size fits all, laundry list of rules/conventions associated with being successful with your academic writing endeavours or journal writing, can be (is) beneficial to certain people. But, I need something more. My understanding of writing (all writing) as a deeply embedded social practice, means that I want an opportunity to discussion and share how issues of context, power, status, ideology, identity become infused, influence and shape the activities of trying to write an article for a journal. Instead of rules and regulations, there are principles and practices that have worked well for those more experiences. Sharing these, alongside the difficulties, challenges and pitfall can be a valuable way of building the confidence of the novice writer. Then, just creating a really comfortable, conducive space to simply write is equally beneficial. So this little event didn’t work for me, but I really should have shown better judgement in deciding to attend the event in the first place and trusted myself more. Yes discernment – I really should exercise some more of discernment, especially in the work context where it would definitely go along way in saving me some unnecessary irritation and precious time.