and fieldwork starts

I had my first official meeting with my fieldwork participants yesterday. I wore my ethnographer hat – which was particularly useful as I could shamelessly say – well I don’t really know what I will do first and I’m hoping that these 'things' will emerge as I stay longer in the field and I hope we can talk about this again and maybe make a decision about it together. I didn't feel like I needed to know everything or that I had everything meticulously planned. I did however resist having the role of all knowing theoretical academic assigned to me. I’m not comfortable about being seen in such a light – like some sort of expert, simply because I am a PhD student. If truth be told I know a very little about a very specific area of theoretical and empirical engagement.

I got myself a little desk in the open plan office area – and just like at the OU – the people at my research site bemoan the open-planness of their office arrangements. I simply smiled. I will have access to a phone, the computer network (although nothing to smile about because the internet speed is more like dial-up than the super-duper-speed communication and information highway it is meant to be) and a printer. I cant believe I’m so happy about the prospect of having access to a printer and landline. It almost feels like I’m ‘working’ again – oh how I love the structure, organisation and routine of it all.

I also sorted out my access to UCT today – well just the access card – access to all the privileges of a quality research institution will hopefully follow once all the protocols have been followed. People are very stingy when it comes to handing out access to their super-duper-speed communication and information infrastructure – access to information is not a right but a privilege you know ; and often one procured by digging very deep into your pocket. So I’m very happy to be a free loader – well I could argue I spent my undergraduate years here paying for the freaking air that I breathed, so it could be seen as pay back time.

So a promising start all round, excited but equally scared shitless about all the possibility help captive by the fieldwork process.