house of cards

My conceptual framework - well part of it anyway - is like a house of cards, caving in!

I haven't written for almost three weeks, a month? Its avoidance and denial all rolled into one. I knew that by writing I would expose the cracks and flaws in my research study and then I would have to deal with it - an activity I was not in the mood for, hence the avoidance behaviour. So avoidance and denial became best friends over the past few weeks. Honestly, I would rather just get into bed and go to sleep for a week maybe (see how hard it is to get rid of these pests once they have a hold on you?). Excuses, excuses! Yeah I'm full of excuses lately.

Things started to go 'off' when I started to prepare for the interview part of my study. Drawing up questions for both student and staff participants made me realise that I wasn't that clear on the analytical tools that would guide the data collection. Well I had a sort of rough idea that things weren't as water tight as they needed to be, but being buoyed by the epistemological logic of ethnographic research that no data can be bad data, a gentle nod from a supervisor who looked over my interview approach and question themes, I bravely went about my business of interviewing students and two staff members. But the staff interviews really brought the nagging, but subterranean worries to the surface. After chatting to a kind mentor about the Bernsteinian aspect of my study and in particular my data collection process, I knew I had missed the point - but at the same time the magic charms of avoidance and denial seemed too powerful to resist.

Having just reviewed my notes from this meeting (which took place more than 2 weeks ago) the house of cards has literally fallen down. It would seem I have misunderstood a fundamental concept of Bernsteinian theory, around which I built my entire study; secondly the inclusion of the Bernsteinian concept(s) which I included as part of the methodological and analytical framework of my study are in reality outside the scope of a reasonably sized PhD study. Thus my theoretisation around how I would use the Bernsteinian concepts in my research design were just way off target – and I mean this in the most gentle way.

It’s strange because I’m sitting here considering all the ‘options’ in an almost calm and unaffected way – yet my brain is racing. I have options, which is always a positive thing, I just need time to consider them all individually and make an informed and intelligent choice about how to deal with this problem. But I guess time might be the bugger – how do I fit in this conceptualisation time while I’m trying to make sense of a new research site (starting tomorrow), and still  resolve administrative and other left over issues from my previous site?

I went walking this morning and as my mind wondered freely to many different topics and I engaged in many conversations with my self – two particularly important thoughts came to me

a) I need to accept what my role and identity as a PhD student has to offer. In order for acceptance to happen, I need to relinquish my internal resistance to the current but equally transient nature of the identity shift being a PhD student has evoked. I need to just accept all that goes along with it – even if the acceptance is muted in just the right proportions to allow me to get on with doing the PhD

b) I still believe in ‘the process’ i.e. the PhD process is greater than me and it will lead me to the other side, it pushes you forward and you can come kicking or screaming or you can go gently. The process, like life, is further filled with positive and negative, happy times and sad ones but eventually balance between these extremes does come in varying waves over the period of the PhD. So I will get to some point of balance during this ‘difficult’ period and I WILL eventually get to the other side.

It seems like good sense at this point of ‘the story’ that I take comfort in these thoughts.