making meaning of 'sabbatical'

I've been in Sweden for a month and I'm starting to wonder more seriously about what it means to be on sabbatical. As part of my leave application I had to list all the expected outcomes for this period. They were all written artefacts - publications in accredited journals, editorial activities for the edited collection I'm working on. All writing tasks. So it would seem my sabbatical is all about writing. But what about just reading (anything), just thinking, just walking, just doing 'stuff' I wouldnt normally do back at my desk, in Cape Town? How do these activities fit into my sabbatical plan?

I've been writing, making slow, but I would also say, stead progress on that highly prized 'journal publication'. Most mornings I get up around 7 and I'm at my desk at Blåsenhus or the sunny dinning-room table at the flat by around 9:30am. I have that same anxiety and then guilt that I had for much of my PhD about not writing enough, not writing fast enough, not doing more. On Thursday a colleague back home said to me jokingly, when I mentioned I had a hard, long day, 'Are you working? Aren't you on sabbatical?' Made me think! In no time I will have been here for two, three months and all I will have to show are those written (incomplete?) artefacts. My neck and shoulders will still be rock-hard and sore, my body will continue to be stiff and inflexible, the sadness, worry and displacement I've been feeling for months before arriving in Uppsala will still be warmly nestled in my being.  I will also berate myself for my inability to calmly respond to the workplace stress that will surely greet me on my return.

So what is this sabbatical about then? Yes it's about writing - it's about finding the joy, and not only fixating on the terror, and weight of writing. But it's mostly about me, Lynn, the academic writer, the academic and teacher. It's about valuing and accepting how I am as an academic writer, how I write academically, what kind of academic writing I do and why I write the 'stuff' I do. It's also about me, Lynn. Just me, Lynn.

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!

Cycling in Uppsala

I fell off my bike yesterday, not five-minutes after reflecting on my 'cycling capital' and recounting friends I know who also fell off their bikes and as a result needed plastic surgery. Luckily for me, I don't need plastic surgery - I came away with some bruises, scraps and a sore shoulder.

 Blåsenhus Building. 

the cocoa cha chi replacement

I'm not very good on a bike. I'm stiff and rigid. I can't handle going down hills and nervously approach traffic lights where I have to stop. Also I'm slow. So very slow. All manner of other cyclist whiz past me, the very young and the very old. They all seem so much more confident and adept at what they are doing, while my legs feel like I'm asking them to climb Mount Everest. But I'm in Uppsala and people (everyone!) cycles here. I want to fit in, so I cycle. To work, at the Blåsenhus, or to the city and my new favourite coffee shop.
But I cycle on the wrong side of the cycling lane, I'm nervous about the cycling traffic, I jump traffic lights and I'm not very gracious when I get off the bike. Cycling is not as good for me as walking, because when I walk, I think; I process my thoughts, I talk to myself, I look around and take in the sights and I make sense of my thinking. When I cycle I'm just concentrating on how not to fall off the bike. But this is what I'm going to do for the next three months. I'm going to cycle - maybe I'll continue to be slow, so what. But I'm going to start wearing a helmet. Need to protect my head.

the good ole days of being a new PhD student

Yesterday I attended a session in the Academic teaching training course run by the Unit for teaching and learning here at Uppsala University. It was the English course so filled with participants from across the globe who are spending an extended time at the university and have some teaching responsibility. All lecturers/academics at the institution are mandated to attend at least 10 weeks of training in university teaching and learning. And PhD students with teaching responsibility have to complete at least five weeks of training. So it happened that the majority of those in the course yesterday were PhD students.
I was immediately reminded of those early days at the OU and the PhD skills training we were required to attend. The people I met; the diverse, strange, opinionated and interesting characters who were for the most part hugely enthusiastic about their research and firmly believed they were the best and brightest and that their research were going to change the world. Looking back on that heady period in late 2008 and my fellow PhD students (I have a photo of the group somewhere), I realise what a wonderful, open time it was - almost filled with a optimistic sense of the intellectual and interpersonal possibilities that can exist when you bring together some twenty odd, relatively smart but very different people and ask then to engage and learn together.

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.

me and mendeley

During my PhD, especially when I had to write the twice yearly progress reports, I would proudly boast that I had a 'good information management system for my expanding research resources and [was] maintaining my electronic bibliography via Endnote or Mendeley'.  And as I recall it took some discipline on my part to keep this 'dream alive'. I remember using my Fridays' to sit diligently and clean up my bibliography either in Endnote or in Mendeley, which I switched to in the first year of my PhD. But since submitting my thesis I haven't even clicked on the Mendeley icon on my desk top. I feel a bit guilty because this tardy behaviour highlights the lack of discipline and interest I have in doing all the good things, that good, publishable academics are meant to do. In fact the reason I'm been drawn to writing this blog, is the fact that I've resisted clicking on that icon for the past three or four days. I need to compile a reference list for something I'm writing. I know I should do it all in Mendeley. I know this is a good period to spend some quality time with the bibliography. To give it the love and attention it deserves. But. I also know it's in a mess and I will need to deal with that mess. Apparently the PhD process was meant to instill all these wonderful ways of doing things, that should set you up as a good, solid, independent researcher - the kinds of things that make for good academics in the long run. I used to take pride in, at least, partaking in these activities and rituals - signalling my immersion into this way of being. Now I just keep putting it off, discarding my old ways - almost in defiance. Knowing full well, that this superficial act of defiance, is like pissing in the wind. All the piss eventually ends up in your face.

reunions and wrong-side of the bed days

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed yesterday morning. I've learnt the hard way that there is nothing to be done on mornings, days like that. Best to just accept that the mood will not improve irrespective what comes at you during the day. Often on these kinds of days, if I can, by 12 or 1 o'clock I just get back into bed and sleep. But I didnt have this luxury yesterday. I spent the morning at UCT library, battling with paragraph and argument structures for the long-suffering paper I hoped I could have finished a long, long time ago. But never mind, I have a plan to get the paper into a presentable, proper draft 1 form by the end of the week. It's the holidays, but I'm going to alleviate my guilt doing at least an hour of writing work a day until Christmas. The plan is simple, 1 to 2 hours in the morning, rest of the afternoon on the beach or assigned to some or other Christmas chores. Perfect.

High jinx with Desiree. 

Then I found myself at my old high school in Silvertown at around 2pm. The school itself had a bit of a face lift so on the outside it didnt look anything like it did when I was a pupil there in the mid 80s. I bumped into people I knew, who went to school with me and as one would expect, the odd person who clearly knew me, but who I had absolutely NO CLUE who the hell they were - even after they gently, but enthusiastically provided some background information. I also managed to talk to two of my teachers, who at the time were very instrumental in supporting and nurturing me. We talked about the good grade I got for History (an A on the higher grade, thanks to the power of rote-learning) and that I was possibly the only person in my English  class that understood the matric Shakespeare play we were doing that year. They remembered my 17 year old-self better than I did. That fearlessness that once defined who I was. But these were two classes I really enjoyed because of the teachers who taught them. Today I'm off to another reunion of sorts, with my first cohort of technikon students. Some of them have managed to stay in touch with each other over the almost 15 years since they met, and they sort-of invite me to their get-togethers. Of course I'm deeply honoured and humbled that they still want to see me, and invite me into their lives. I'd like to think I'm that teacher that played a nurturing and supporting role at some stage of their learning lives

weary

It's that time of the year. Three more days to go before I am officially on leave. And I've taken to the departmental culture - so I've already downed-tools and been on a virtual go-slow since last week. No planning for 2015 - what needs to happen in 2015, can wait for 2015. I've tried to conjure up my energy and interest reserves, I've compiled lists of things to do, did some rudimentary weekly planning and made an attempt to clean my office, rearrange my filing and tell myself I need to write some reports, so that I can draw a neat line under 2014. But I'm not convinced that anyone will read the reports I write, so whenever the idea of writing the reports fills my consciousness, I quickly find something equally unproductive to do. All of this has significantly contributed to the weariness and general despondency filling me up. It doesn't help that my body-clock is also completely out of synch. I can't sleep at night, wake early, start to fade by lunch and can hardly keep my eyes open, let alone do anything that remotely requires some cognitive functions, then start to perk-up again by 3pm. Let the holidays come I say, because then if all of this is my daily reality (except of course the angst about writing a report), I can legitimacy say - its fine I'm on holiday, who cares.

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.

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.