talking about South African higher education in Sweden

On Monday I did a little informal presentation on the South African higher education landscape and my work in academic development, with colleagues in the Division of the Development of Teaching and Learning, here at Uppsala University. Although the timing of the presentation was a bit 'off' - it could have come earlier in my stay at the unit - I was finally given a chance to reflect on the sector I work in. Also opportunistic was the fact that I'm currently preparing to scope out the chapter of the collections book I'm editing, and this requires a good placement of the ECP within the contextual realities of the South African landscape. All very simple, right?

Many of the Swedish colleagues had been to South Africa, some even to educational conferences in South Africa, so they all had a view, however that may be framed, of the country. Mostly a combination of the shiny, positive stuff and some recognition of the more challenging bridges yet to be crossed (especially from those who went to conference in SA). Two questions I got asked made me think about the angle I had taken for my presentation. I was asked "How would one know you were White in SA under apartheid?" and "What about gender and disability, how are these reflected in student/staff profiles?" Are we as South African's obsessed with race? Is it the only lens we use to see ourselves and what and how we encounter the world around us? Did my presentation really harp on race as the all important factor shaping and driving the sector and the work many of us pride ourselves on doing?

It didnt help that the night before I was particularly aggravated by the inane but unashamedly racist mutterings of my CT neighbours in the 'whatsapp security group'. I lashed out, calling out 'their' inherent racialised beliefs that always linked 'blacks' to crime and their totally self-imposed removal from the realities of South Africa. Rather I should say - their efforts to recreate in a by-gone era where their neighbourhoods really were lily-white - without the slightest recognition that to achieve that status quo meant the denigration by force and law, of anyone who didnt look like them. So I was angry!

My race politics and the shape it takes, has little place in Sweden, and it had little place in the UK, while I lived there. It is uniquely South African. I know I also get irritated by 'the angry black 'x' or 'y' types' I encounter at work or via social media. I know I don't only see race and I know both black and white people can be 'despots' or 'humanitarians'. But I also feel the anger, the collective anger of being on the receiving end of racism in all its shapes and forms. Maybe our society in SA and world at large needs to change before I can take race completely out of the picture.

Cycling in Uppsala

I fell off my bike yesterday, not five-minutes after reflecting on my 'cycling capital' and recounting friends I know who also fell off their bikes and as a result needed plastic surgery. Luckily for me, I don't need plastic surgery - I came away with some bruises, scraps and a sore shoulder.

 Blåsenhus Building. 

the cocoa cha chi replacement

I'm not very good on a bike. I'm stiff and rigid. I can't handle going down hills and nervously approach traffic lights where I have to stop. Also I'm slow. So very slow. All manner of other cyclist whiz past me, the very young and the very old. They all seem so much more confident and adept at what they are doing, while my legs feel like I'm asking them to climb Mount Everest. But I'm in Uppsala and people (everyone!) cycles here. I want to fit in, so I cycle. To work, at the Blåsenhus, or to the city and my new favourite coffee shop.
But I cycle on the wrong side of the cycling lane, I'm nervous about the cycling traffic, I jump traffic lights and I'm not very gracious when I get off the bike. Cycling is not as good for me as walking, because when I walk, I think; I process my thoughts, I talk to myself, I look around and take in the sights and I make sense of my thinking. When I cycle I'm just concentrating on how not to fall off the bike. But this is what I'm going to do for the next three months. I'm going to cycle - maybe I'll continue to be slow, so what. But I'm going to start wearing a helmet. Need to protect my head.

Visiting academic: Uppsala University, Sweden

It's 8:30am, it's 3 degrees and I'm on a bike cycling. First day in my Visiting Academic position at the division for Teaching and Learning at Uppsala University.

The view from my desk for the next two months might look a bit bleak at the moment, with leafless trees, but I have a desk, and internet access and a door pass, and free tea and fruit and a lovely open staff lounge area. I've met several of my 'new' Uppsala University colleagues, who joined in on a short informal chat in the lounge area. Very welcoming. Hopefully I will attend their current 'Academic Teacher Training' course which they run about six/seven times a term and I've been asked to do a short little input at their informal seminar sessions. Overwise I will be allowed to get on and write at my neat little desk, with just a glimpse of Uppsala castle in the distance through the window.

Uppsala Castle - the pinkish circular building behind the leafless tree

thinking retreat in Uppsala

I've been in Sweden for just under a week. My visit was meant, amongst other things, to serve as a little writing retreat. I was hoping to refine the article I'm working on after getting some feedback on it last week. But things haven't really worked out as I hoped. I haven't done much writing. The process has been slow and I've been distracted with completing unrelated administrative 'stuff' linked to my day-job. But I have done a lot of thinking. I've had the time to mull over my ideas, do some supplemental reading, question the logic of my arguments. Think about how to say things differently. So I guess all is not lost. Oh, and I've made good progress in getting through series 1 & 2 of OITNB. 

sleeping on the job

I'm on a 'summer' holiday in winter. Summer because I'm currently writing this in the Northern Hemisphere, looking out at the green trees and blue skies outside. When thinking about my holiday away from the 'chilly' institutional context down South, I fantasised about writing each morning and making some headway with my plan to use writing to effectively pull me out of the soul sapping downward spiral I found myself in. As I head into the final five days of my Swedish Summer, I've have to acknowledge, yet again, how distant a fantasy is from reality. To date I've spent maybe three mornings doing anything remotely academic or writing inspired. Lots of ideas, sans action. Of course I'm disappointed. An OU friend who came to visit, reminded me of how lucky I am to have 'free' moments for writing during my normal 'working' time. I felt a tinge of guilt at not fully exploiting that time. Free time without motivation or inspiration is thus a sad thing.


I have another friend who is truly connected to what she needs at a very intuitive level, looking at my summer experience through her eyes, I've spent my summer in ways that I needed, even if my brain and rational self might have suggested I needed a whole range of 'other stuff'. So it's all good, and it will all be good. Next week at this time I will probably be sitting in a boring meeting, without a t-shirt and kikoy, but wrapped up warmly in layers upon, upon layers of clothing and insulation (and not only from the cold weather). I suspect I'll be better prepared for whatever comes my way, and that is probably be the value gained from how I've spent this summer holiday.

the future has arrived

Since I devised my last work plan about 4-5 months ago, the end of August/ beginning of September was a milestone I've been looking forward to. It marked my proposed final deadline for the last bit of serious work I would do in the UK before returning to Cape Town permanently. 24 August was the supposed submission date, initially for the first draft of my thesis, but then it was scaled back to merely be the first draft of my literature review. Well the date came and went and I rescheduled. August was a low month - my motivation and connection to my PhD reached an all time low and it seem inevitable that I would not, could not, meet my deadline. Last week I was in Sweden attending the Improving Student Learning conference and still had the unfinished literature review hanging over my head.  On Sunday night at about 11pm after a four hour trip from Heathrow to Milton Keynes I decided to send the draft piece to my supervisors. Here are the 'reading notes' I sent along with the submission...

Finally - my literature review (but also unfortunately under-baked and incomplete). Apologies for the delay - I tried to make the most of the ISL conference and didn't want to spend all my time, while there, working on the chapter. Hopefully I'll remember to give you some of my impressions of the conference too and the lessons learned.

Here are some of my 'reading notes' for the attached piece

1) I think it captures the main areas of theory that are useful for my thesis (and research in general)
2) I don't think I've done a very good job of integrating the different theoretical strands - to me each area currently seems to stand alone, independently (think it might be because I'm still in the mode where I'm writing for myself and not writing a thesis for an audience)
3) I'm most unhappy with the section on literacy practices - I don't think it's robust enough - maybe this will come once the Discussion and Interpretation chapter is written and I feel more confidence with my analysis. I'm also not happy with Section 1.4 - I think this is purely because I haven't read widely enough or haven't found a way to bring what I have read about this issue into the argument I am crafting
4) I feel there are sections that could do with more recent readings especially the 2012 Lea and Street and Robinson-Pant chapters. I've read your chapter M but haven't been able to bring it into my writing here. The section on graphic design education must still be done.
5) Given my own uncertainties about the status of this draft I think what might be productive for me at this point (and also conscious that I don't want to waste your time) is if you can highlight/identify areas of inaccuracy, areas that need more clarification and areas that are important but that I haven't signalled sufficiently or that I haven't mentioned at all. Your input in guiding me forward for the next draft would be very helpful.

Green/underlined text - stylistic, sentence structure issues
Orange/ italic text - concern about accuracy and validity of the points/claims being made

So this is how it is, it's the best I can manage at the moment, which really should be ok. I hope I can truly accept that it is ok. Last week amidst the looming deadline and anxiety about the quality of the work I got to visit the city of Lund and made a very brief but memorable trip to Copenhagen - think I'd like to go back. But for now the future has become the present and I am going home soon.

Walking in Uppsala...the road ahead perhaps?

The cobbled streets of Lund, southern Sweden

With the little mermaid in Copenhagen

Ending the year on a positive note!

I think this is what most of use hope for...that we can end the year in a positive, forward looking frame of mind. I'm grateful this is how I'm able to end the 2011 academic year. This is especially strange because on Sunday I couldn't have predicted it would turn out like this. It just happened really as a result of some rather accidental bumping into people and informal conversations about Christmas cards, the Christmas holidays, Sweden and Christmas carols. The past 3-6 months have been a trying time for me on all fronts and I've been hammered psychologically by constant self-doubt, confusion over how to take my research forward and what felt like divergent expectations. About 8 weeks ago I decided I would impose a positive spin on all things PhD related. This helped me think differently about how I wanted to communicate my immediate feelings about completing the PhD - it did not, however, help resolve the self-doubt that was (is?) constantly floating around me and seemed to be fanned by my formal supervision experiences. Yes, supervision as a concept, process, entity governing and informing the PhD has been an almost constant source of frustration and disdain for me, and this often had very little to do with my own supervision experiences. But finally the scales have tipped and I'm starting to think differently about supervision too. Not that I have forgotten or chosen to ignore all the issues of power and inequality that sustain this primary way in which the PhD process is managed and taught in most places across the globe...I have just come to realise that it is a process I need and want. That I need and want the input my supervisors make; their direction, guidance and insights are an invaluable part of my successful progress - I couldn't do it without them, I don't want to do it without them and if I doubted it before a series of events over the past week have made it clear to me that they have as much of a vested interest in me as I have in myself. We are all batting for the same team - Team Lynn. I also know that I have to trust them as I go into my final months in the run up to submission - and this trust must be built on sincerity not on the power and status they have. At the moment I have a sincere trust in them. So the year has ended well for me...I'm tired (physically and mentally), exhausted, pressured, confused, worried, insecure, sometimes slightly panicked, but I'm looking forward positively...2012 will happen and I will get out on the other side, that I completely know!

organisational chaos and downsizing

Flipping hell! I thought I had a grip on my file organisation as I was creating them during my fieldwork in SA, but hell it's all a mess. Not a good idea to be using three different data saving locations and now that I'm at the OU + 1. Yes I backed-up my work, but not in a very sophisticated manner - so I had endless versions and duplicates on 3 different machines - resulting in masses of chaos and confusion. I wanted to use dropbox as the main receptical but of course in SA with bandwidth issues this wasnt always possible - also my files are just way to large anyway...massive sigh! Yesterday I spend a good part of the day securing one master copy, deleting everything else I had and then coping the master to the respective machines.

Need to get my brain to think, think, think of a solution to my current organisational misery. I need to get my 'raw' data organised though before I can start creating the thesis files. For the thesis I will use dropbox exclusively, but until then I have my hands full.

I'm also in the process of settling into my new accommodation. Most of my stored boxes have been safely returned to me, but instead of surprise and wonder at all the treasures hidden in them, I've been overwhelmed by the amount of 'stuff' I've amassed. This by itself isnt necessarily a bad thing - but if you dont have any place to put the stuff - well, therein lies the problem. I need to downsize. I'm amazed at all the stuff I bought and accumulated and now wonder how(or if) I will ever use it again. My new room is fairly spacious but I havent been able to 'fit' any of my books into the room yet. So currently the one room I have can only be my living area with no space for my academic activities. Which raises yet another question. Where will my main work activities be located? Here at the OU? In Sweden? In South Africa? In my bedroom in Simpson MK? Some yet to be found location after November when my lease runs out? Where the hell will I work? I'm such a structured person and any disruption to this need and reliance on structure simply fucks with my brain - I really do unravel. I'm trying really hard to hold it all together, but my back, neck, shoulders are all singing a different song. I know it will settle and everything will land where it needs to, but until such time...well, you're guess is probably as good as mine.