on isolation

It's just past 9am and I'm listening to Joni Mitchell. I should be doing other things like preparing to go to England for a month. I'm not sure I want to go. I know I need to go, I have to go. I know once I get there it will all be fine and in a month's time I will tell the tale of how I was conflicted and anxious before I left and how everything worked out well in the end. Isn't that just how it is - the positive narrative we sell to ourselves to reassure ourselves that our anxiety is not really justified or that it is only short-lived. Alles sal reg kom.

One of the common narratives about the PhD (and other postgraduate study, especially the research bits) is that it's a solitary journey. It's your special research study, you become the expert in that particular topic and because of this individual quest, you are on your own 80-90% of the time - with your thoughts and your writing. Most people accept this, I don't think it's a very contested conceptualisation of the PhD. This week this isolation came into sharp focus for me. I was reminded yet again how isolated I really am. Sure I go sit in the library and have all these vibrant life forms around me but it's still me, alone with my thoughts and writing, in between people talking to each other in a mixed-up, social learning context. But every time I have a conversation with someone about the concepts and processes of my PhD my sense of being alone in my head, in this journey, rubs up like sandpaper on my skin. I want to talk, talk, talk - and listen and ask questions and say 'What do you think about this?', 'Explain that to me?', 'Tell me if you think this makes sense?', 'How would you do it?'. But I want to say it with innocence and anticipation, without worry of judgement or concerns about evaluation, without the need to perform intellectual adeptness.

I had this brilliant and engaging conversation with a colleague on Monday in this hot office, over his make-shift lunch, which he shared with me. We spoke curriculum, Bernstein and Barnett's (2006) notion of the double recontextualisation process in vocational higher education. A process I don't quite understand and one that he does - along with another colleague they had deconstructed the process so they understand and grasp it. I thought to myself - you're not meant to do this by yourself Lynn - you need others to mediate and help you over such rough spots - others who know. Then yesterday in the tree-filtered sun at UCT I spoke about my interpretation chapter to my friend and mentor. I was articulating my sense of the relationship between Academic literacies research and Bernstein's curriculum concepts and tools. Reflecting on the unrehearsed and anxiety-free conversational-space, I realised I was just practicing my argument for one of the key contributions my PhD research will make. I reminded LT how this very issues I was talking about was the 'problem' that propelled me into the PhD in the first place all those freaking years ago.
This is how I learn, I can't learn without access to these conversational moments. I have to accept the isolation, I'm forced to accept it, but I don't like it. My PhD is worse off because of it.