Only two months old

Looking back over the entries in my blog, it seems rather strange that I have only been a PhD student for 2 months because there are so many layers of complexity captured in these few reflections. I'm almost scared what two years at this game might produce. The past week has once again forced me to reflect on my positioning and identity. At one point this week I just said to myself – "Why the hell do you have to think in the way you do and ask questions? Why don't you just sit quietly in the corner and not draw attention to yourself". By speaking, asking questions, expressing your view point – you position yourself either in opposition or in solidarity to someone else's position. Of course this can be to your benefit or detriment. In many ways the PhD process is in part about learning, understanding, articulating and defending your particular position on a topic, so why was I so ruffled by this process this week. Guess it depends on how many people in the audience identifies and supports your position or whether you are simply just creating a disconnection. Sorry, I'm not being very clear. I went to a series of seminars this week – dealing with ethics, analysis methods and academic literacies. At each of these sessions I was vocal and just couldn't stop articulating my opinion. Great you say, yes finally I'm finding my voice. But what does this voice say about me? How do I see myself and how do others see me through the questions I ask and the comments I make. In the academic literacies reading group – I certainly positioned myself as a South African curriculum development practitioner; in the ethics seminar – as an ethnographer who will make certain decisions that will seek to protect my research participants and if necessary not disclose unsavoury activities if it negatively affects the reputation of the participants/institution but doesn't really affect the quality of the data I am able to obtain; in the analysis seminar - I was someone who wants to understand the epistemological basis of a particular methodology before buying into its approach. BUT this is my reading of my positioning and I know I might not have been seen in this light by colleagues listening to me. Importantly, do I want to stick out as different – do I want to accentuate my difference? Because I do feel very different in this context. In all these sessions I felt different; my difference was highlighted – through my accent, in my choice of words and use of phrases, in the stance I took on the topic, even through my use of Bernstein in academic literacies research.
But I see my difference not only in the view I take on a particular topic, I also see this whole PhD process differently. For me it's a collaborative process – I engage with my supervisors, mentors, other academics, research participants, colleagues and friends and so carefully weave a highly collaborative even communal construction of my understanding(s) over time. I don't do this alone – it's not an individual project or process. So I need people all the time, to hear me speak, to listen to, to ask questions, to engage with (even if they are dead or only speak to me through their words in articles and books), to explore and to be. And I seek people out – I want to see my supervisors as many times a month as I can – I want their opinions on the work I am doing, on my thinking and the ideas buzzing around in my head. I want to hear what other colleagues are doing and how they are managing this process – not for any malicious reasons, but simply as a way of sharing and learning from them. My position is that of – "I am, because of everyone else" – that sense of ubuntu. It's how I am in my personal life and certainly how I am academically. And this might be mistaken in rather disingenuous ways by some who are more inclined to an individualistic positionality. As was the case this week in what seemed a rather innocuous conversation about progress and supervision processes, where I inadvertently took some flak from a colleague who may have interpreted my engagement attempts as in some way negatively reflecting on the different way she was handling the whole PhD process.

As I said earlier this whole thing is about staking a claim on a particular aspect of a specific topic, developing an in depth, critical understanding and then defending that understanding. I also increasingly think that for me, it is about identifying how I want to position myself in relation to the underlying PhD process I want to follow, while becoming confident in the value of that process for me. Bring on the next two years…yeah right!