I've been wondering if I'm really 'cut-out' to be a proper academic. I spent the past Easter weekend vacillating between being repulsed by my clunky, unsophisticated and inelegant writing and getting excited about all the other article possibilities I could pursue. I couldn't help thinking, is this really what I want to do? The struggles I have with my writing really touch a raw nerve and expose the contradictory feelings inside me about being in academia. I accept that writing and publishing is central to what I have to do in this field, and I want to do it. I have things to say that I think are important and significant, and that I feel other people would be interested to hear/read about my thoughts and ideas. But another part of me just wants to be a teacher, a practitioner, a facilitator - focused only on giving students a better, more meaningful learning experience. But I think there is another issue central to the act of writing that overshadows these feelings about whether or not I want to be in academia. When the writing scholars, like Ivanic and co, talk about writing being intimately linked to identity and the self, they are absolutely correct. Nothing exposes my insecurities, self-doubts and uncertainties more than my writing - which is then amplified when my writing is viewed, judged and evaluated by others. Given that this judgment and evaluation is part and parcel of what defines academia, it appears, that if I don't accept the order of things, I will forever be in a state of internal conflict. So do I REALLY want to be an academic?
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