Dare I say PhD student? Of course PhD student. I spent the day - filing - yes, filing. My old system just isn't working for me anymore - I need to be able to find a specific author's paper when I need it and also establish which papers I have, and which I don't. And hopefully save me from recalling books from another poor diligent student, because my copied version has suddenly disappeared in a myriad of papers neatly stacked on my bookshelf.
Simply filing according to topics just isn't good enough for a PhD student...no it just doesn't cut it anymore. I spent the rest of the day cooking. I had some colleagues over for dinner and we discussed our supervisors, note taking and our lives as foreigner in this country. The kinds of things us serious PhD students talk about!
I've been reflecting more on what I wrote in my post yesterday, which also generated an interesting array of comments. I also did a very cursory reading of a rather well known author (Roz Ivanic) who also works within the academic literacies frame, but focuses specifically on writing and identity. She was trying to make the point that the often proclaimed notion in academic writing not to use the personal 'I' in ones writing acts to deny the writer of all that they are. While I agree with her, as a novice writer or someone new to the world of academia doing that, takes a serious amount of confidence; to challenge let alone defy such an entrenched academic convention, especially if you are unsure how such defiance might be received by the very people you are desperate to please - your lecturer or supervisor. Again I was wondering; so do my current problems and apprehensions around writing revolve around my lack of confidence within the specifics of the current context? I'm being careful here not to default to assigning the problem to a personal characteristic that I either have to don't have - an all too common approach used in pedagogic interactions. I suspect that the 'problems' are a combination of subtle and complex interplays between a number of factors, especially that of context, audience and the identity I want to project to my supervisors. And as a good, conscientious, PhD student I will turn to the literature and theory to get all my answers...I'm trying to be sarcastically cynical.
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