The last day of the conference was possibly the best for me. I didn't expect it, it just happened. I was late - very late and rushed to the final session of the day before the keynote. A session on post-graduate writing. LT spoke about trying to understand and make sense of student writing through the concept of risk. A little pedagogic intervention of a writer's circle that was not an overtly framed pedagogic intervention. The stories of the students - not the simplified, washed out and heard-it all before writing journey - but a deeply situated, personal-contextual insight. Nothing you could possible get from a 'how-to' book. And I sat there and thought - this is why I can't give up 'the student'. In fact this final session probably came to symbolise, and dramatically so, much of my conference experience where I had subconsciously sought out presentations that addressed the theme of the student. Why, because I know that my PhD does not, wasn't able to attend to the student voice in the way that I probably would have liked. It's always been a tension in my work, acknowledged by myself but always under the surface. What this final presentation brought home was the fact that I want to address this tension in my thesis. I decided right there that it will have to be an issue that I give prominence to. The student has to be central to what I do - and my professional life after my PhD will have to be framed with this position in mind.
I thought of the very first HELTASA conference I attended at the end of 2003 I think - it had been a tough year for me professionally and personally and I stood in the midst of all the conference goers and thought to myself - This is where I belong. Walking out of the presentation I felt a similar buzz, a similar sense of excitement, a feeling of being in the right place, being pointed in the right direction and of coming home.
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