writing again

I'm trying to pull together a rough draft of a chapter I'm co-authoring with one of my supervisors. Once again I'm thrust into that strange happy-depressed placed. I'm excited about the opportunity to talk about my research, put forward my ideas and find ways of telling my story. But in equal measures the anxiety and frustration of not getting the 'right' words on paper and realising that I don't really have such a significant story to tell anyway sends me straight to the depths of despair. Sitting in my calm space this afternoon, having craved aside two hours to work on my writing away from my day-job I constantly had to tell myself, not to pour meticulously over each word, to focus on getting the argument down and leave the specifics associated with writing style until the next draft. Paying attention to this self-talk was exhausting, leaving little time to focus on the actual nuts-and-bolts of the paper I was trying to construct.

Earlier in the week I came across this http://thesiswhisperer.com/2013/09/25/how-to-write-faster/. In my mind this is just the thing to send  an eager would-be academic writer in search of the comfort of  a bottle or two of good South African red wine. Isn't it great to have a few little 'verbs' or topic sentence structures to set you on your merry way to write 'publishable' paragraph after 'publishable' paragraph. The energy I now need to counter this, well intentioned, but misdirected and dispiriting advice makes me want to just forget any delusional ambitions I might have had about publishing and find those bottles of red wine. A more  productive and, dare I say, empowering course of action is that I simply take the crib notes on offer and see the blog post for what it is - a narrow, one dimensional and decontextualised account of the very high stakes activity of academic writing, that instead of problematising the reasons for the difficulties writers' encounter, helps to perpetuate a deficit view of certain writers, who even after taking the advice on offer still struggle and even fail to produce those reams of 'publishable' words and sentences.

its been a year

Yesterday marked a full year since I arrived back in Cape Town. On the one hand I can't believe the time has passed so quickly, yet on the other hand there were distinct periods that passed by excruciatingly slow. Last year this time all I wanted to was to be further along with my work. When I reached December  and hadn't made much progress I remember my extreme frustration. Then came the month of writing the Introduction and another month spent re-working the data chapters. So yes, the time did disappear before my eyes but at certain times I felt each moment tick over.

I had an e-mail from my colleague in the UK - she submitted her thesis a few days ago, just making the fourth year cut off point. The 2008 cohort appear to be finally closing the circle. Then I get e-mails from the OU advertising activities for the new PhD recruits. This makes me think back, almost nostalgically, to my first few days at the OU, which now seem such a long, long time ago. But, I'm pleased that I'm on 'this' side of that journey. I realise I haven't said much about how I feel about being back home for a year. That's a story for another day, nicely lubricated by some lovely South African red wine.

write even when you don't want to

I was thinking about my last post a few days after I'd written it, reflecting on the fact that while I'd been conscientious in maintaining this blog I had completely stopped my journal writing. I've been journalling in one or other form since my early 20s. But I stopped about three years ago. The personal is too personal to write about. In my head the blog is for my PhD experiences, the ones I am able to share with the invisible but every present audience. My paper-based journals meant to occupy a more personal space reserved only for me and whoever gets to read it one day when I'm too old to care or dead. I know the reason why its been harder to write in my journals - because what I have to express is too immediate, personal, too painful - the kind of stuff I don't want to reflect on because by reflecting, it all becomes too real and I'd rather it be tucked away in the recesses of my mind. But for that very same reason I also know how important it is to write about those very things I want to forget or turn away from. You need to write even when you don't want to. Here my personal writing and my academic share a common connection. A few weeks back I spoke about being inspired to write. I haven't done anything yet, but the urge and push is becoming stronger. I want to write, even though I don't really want to and I feel this urge is driving me forward. The urge is so tangible that even though I know whatever I'm going to write will be crap, in the first instance, I don't care. The desire is there to do it anyway. I'm on a short break from work for the next week and hope I will concede to the need, desire to write, to create time to spend in my calm, familiar writing and research place. Push myself to do what certain parts of me don't really want to do. In this way the academic writing always has some leverage over the personal. If only it were so simple to rouse my personal writing genie.

what I remember

I'm participating in a pilot research study on the PhD writing experience. I was interviewed today and as a result of this process I was forced to think back on my PhD. Funny how having just submitted already it feels like it was all such a long, long time ago. Another interesting coincidence - September marks a year since my return from the UK, so lots of significance to having been asked to talk about, reflect on my PhD experience at this point.

At the close of the interview I commented how I felt I hadn't really 'covered everything', hinting at a sense noted in the literature on interviews as data collection method that participants find it hard not to want to please their interviewers and provide good, relevant data. I was given a suggestion to use the prompt 'I remember' to drive my subsequent thinking about the PhD for possible future interaction with the researcher. So here is a short list of things I remember at this moment - I'm aware of course that at another moment this list might take a very different shape.

I remember
- the walks from my house in Bardsey Court to the OU especially in Autumn and the warm colours of the leaves
- my office in Jeffrey Cowther Building where my desk sat in front of the window and I could look out across the green lawn and watch people enter and leave The Hub
- going to a conference in Lille in the Autumn of 2010 with my colleagues and one of my supervisors - I did a really good presentation of my MRes research and bonded with my colleagues at a very personal level for the first time. I see this time together as forming the basis of our now enduring friendship
- the tea and biscuit conversation breaks in the Jenny Lee Building with SB all through 3rd year
- the data workshops run by JM and DA where I was really forced to think really critically about data analysis in their various forms - because of these workshops I developed a great respect for linguistically focuses analysis tools and methodologies
- listening to Martyn Hammersley talk methodology and the time I kept bumping into him at the book check-out terminal at the OU library (something like three times in a row over a three to six month period)
- missing Cape Town
- the Academic Literacies Forum when it was an informal discussion group that took place during a lunchtime over your sandwiches and tea but where the essence of debates in the field were discussed and reflected on by expert and novice alike - where 'silly' questions were tolerated and celebrated
- walking home after supervision and crying, unable to fathom why things had seemingly gone so horribly wrong

faint inspiration to write

Work continues to tick over, its only predictability is that some days I feel that I can hang on and cope with the disconnection I feel, while other days I am less optimistic.

Today though, I have this faint desire to write  - to direct my activities and attentions to write academically (possibly inspired by two friends who have been wonderfully productive with their writing). To turn back towards my thesis and craft something different for new audiences. My SRHE abstracts have both been accepted so I have the necessary catalyst to start the creative process. I hope this inspiration, however faint is of the slow release kind that will linger long enough to produce a tangible result.

change is inevitable

I'm trying to maintain a brave face as I tackle the working week. I have good days, when I feel like I've achieved something or I don't feel too disheartened by the mundane tasks I've done all day. The bad days, well...I have bad days.

The most striking thing about being back at work is noticing how much I've changed. It's not only that I have changed, because change is bound to happen over time. It's when I focus on the how that reveals the most significant insights. I feel as if I view my new/old surroundings from OU tinted lenses. I don't think that I'm overtly comparing practices, I'm just acutely aware of how strongly my time at the OU has come to influence and shape my sense of academia. The academic practices I now foreground have a clear OU flavour. I find myself evaluating the saying, doings, valuing around me from an OU position. I say OU but of course it has more to do with my disciplinary alignments, forged very strongly during my time at the OU and the specificities of my supervisors' ways of talking, thinking, doing and valuing. I'm shocked at how much of it I've internalised. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it just creates particular challenges as I find myself operating in a environment where my ways of being bump against the institutional and departmental ways of being. Sometimes I manage these challenges and tensions, other times they send me reeling and seriously doubting myself. I did a bit of English-style whinging yesterday  to my dear friend SB about my re-immersion into working life at a UoT and she gave me some firm advice - Suck it up, buttercup - she said. I think there is something pure and unpretentious about the advice which I can only appreciate. Things will get better and who knows I might even re-acclimatize and change my wayward tendencies.

transitioning 'Groundhog day'

No I'm not Bill Murray - but I am referencing his experiences from the movie of the same name. I can't seem to move beyond a transitioning state of being. I feel like I'm trapped in some liminal space never able to leave. Just when I feel some stability is finally approaching, I'm thrown back into an in-between space never able to build, develop or establish an identity beyond one transition to something else. So what the hell am I? What purpose do I serve? And what the hell does it mean to have a PhD in Higher Education Studies? (and I should add within a university of technology setting!). Having just submitted the thesis I feel myself holding onto the 'PhD student' experience and identity. Well it took me practically four years to cultivate. It was such a certain thing and being at the OU provided the necessary social and cultural 'props' required to take on that identity. Now back at work, I'm not sure what I am. I'm out of touch with the realities of my institution, the teaching context, the people, the politics. I appear to be floating from one area of 'work' activity to another. I say yes to almost everything people place in front of me because I don't want to appear as if I'm trying to lighten my load, I want to fit in, and I don't want to seem like I'm above 'certain' kinds of tasks.

Recently I've been asked to do two presentation based on my research - not that anyone is really interested in my research - simply because I have done 'the research'. You've done a PhD now talk about it - I feel is the main motivation behind these requests. You've done a PhD now sit on our committee dealing with postgraduates in the department. I work in an IT department - what the hell do I know about IT of any sort. I can see myself being roped in to 'supervise' students doing Btech and Mtech degrees in IT because as someone put it, when I remonstrated that I'm not sure what I can contribute 'All research is the same'. I wonder if it's worth arguing against such a statement. On the somewhat bright side of things, working means a proper salary or maybe more appropriately for me at the moment 'danger pay'.

submitted

The thesis was submitted yesterday courtesy of my good friend in England DB and the lovely CREET administrator AF. I was far removed from the whole process and denied the tactile experience of holding the finished booklet, that is my thesis, in my hands. I'm struggling to explain how it all feels. Yesterday when I got the e-mail saying the thesis was submitted, a bolt of something close to euphoria rush through me, followed very quickly by a sense of calm, relief. 'It's done, no turning back now'. Since that initial positive rush, all I've been feeling is mostly indifference. I'm pleased, happy it's all done but in a way I don't think I'm prepared for or expected the rather deflated feeling that's accompanied the submission of the thesis. For the longest time all I wanted was to be at this point. My focus was simply on submission, submission, submission. I paid no attention to what it might feel like once I submitted, I just wanted the pressure, stress and feelings of inadequacy brought on by the thesis writing process to stop. It's not all doom and gloom though, I feel a great sense of relief and can feel my self-confidence slowly seeping back. I miss the thesis in some strange, almost perverse way. In the act of submitting the thesis I'm force to let go of the best part of the last five years of my life.

ready to submit

My PhD thesis is ready for submission. All I have to do now is wait for my supervisors to sign off the thesis. Then to get the logistic just right to get the thesis printed and walked over to the Research School at the OU. In certain respects I've already withdrawn from the thesis. Most of what I've been doing for the last three weeks has been very procedural. Intellectually I stepped back at least a month ago. But until it's submitted all the nagging, 'not-yet-done' stuff sits in my head. I want to take a real 'break' from the thesis and PhD project once the thesis is submitted. Maybe a little celebration will be in order - then of course I have to start working on my viva preparation.

so what now?

I've been back at work for two weeks now. It's been a rather fragmented couple of weeks as I try and work out what I'm meant to do and try to understand the institution I left almost five years ago. Everything has changed, especially me. I walk the corridors wondering where I fit in and whether I have anything to offer. Sure I 'almost' have a PhD in Higher Education Studies - but what does that mean? Everyone is so busy with day-to-day practical issues that seem to bear no resemblance to the ideas, concepts and theories I've spent the best part of five years trying to grapple with and understand. My PhD doesn't say anything about how I'm meant to translate or mediate the abstract theorisation that is my PhD into practical applications or solutions that make sense to my colleague or help them deal with the daily realities of teaching at a university of technology. Because I've been away for such a long time, I've also lost my 'on-the-ground' knowledge and sensibilities related to Teaching and Learning in the higher education context. I feel out-of-touch and without being involved in any teaching at the moment I almost want to say I have no 'street cred'. So I wonder around the corridors unsure of what I'm meant to do and how this PhD fits in to it all. Does the PhD add any value to my job function? Will my job be able to accommodate the new me with the PhD experience? In a consolation attempt I tell myself, rather reluctantly, that maybe these aren't the kind of questions that can be answered after just two weeks on the job.

the exhaustion of formatting

Somewhere in the middle of this week I wanted to write about the shared experiences of the PhD student, after having a long, interesting chat with a colleague. We were reflecting, as I've done before with another friend, about how our Masters' degrees were such an empowering and fulfilling learning experience. We also commented on how the transition from the Masters to PhD was not as seamless as it is sometimes made out to be.

While I wanted to give more blog-space to these clearly thoughtful and interesting issues, I am now consumed with the ever-changing list of formatting challenges confronting me as I prepare my thesis for submission. This task is being complicated by the fact that I will be submitting my thesis while more than 10 000 kms away from the OU. Besides a mountain of logistical challenges associated with this task, I am now confronted by the realisation that when I convert my Word file to a PDF I'm going to compromise the quality of all the photos and graphics in my thesis. I can't stop myself from lamenting - why, oh why did I include all these graphics and photos and give myself more headaches than I already have? Nothing is simple when it comes to formatting a 'moerse' (as we say here on the Cape Flats) long document and I'm trying to get a PhD in Higher Education Studies, not freaking Word! Makes me look back nostalgically and wonder about all the scholars of old (who were probably mostly men) who got their wives or secretaries to type up their theses and never had to deal with all this crap.