killing trees and creating calm in the chaos

I spent most of the morning yesterday trying to create some calm in my study. I'd become increasingly irritated that there were papers everywhere, in indiscriminate piles. What did I need, and what was significant about a particular pile? So a clean up was required. Underlying this practical motivation to see some of the white space that is my desk, was a deeper need to create a sense of calm in my chaotic mind. I'm trying to hold this whole freaking thesis in my head. I think about some aspect of it almost all the time and my head feels like its filled to the brim with disconnected bits of information that are nevertheless connected.

In the process of de-cluttering my study and hopefully my mind, I found the evidence that I've already killed a few trees in the process of producing this thesis. And there is more to come. One more chapter to write and then a full draft to prepare. 25 days to go. Here we go, go, go, go!

home or away?

It's been a slow-fast week. At some points I felt I was making good progress and then at other times everything seemed to be crawling along at a snails pace. I've found that I'm completely unproductive at home. I just can't focus or sit at my desk for more than 20 minutes before needing something from the fridge or getting distracted by some mundane thought that has just come into my head or the unfolded washing cluttering my lounge. It's a really frustrating position to be in because it means I can't enjoy the comforts provided by my living space while also working on my thesis. If I want to be productive I have to leave my home and travel somewhere to work. But, I get such solid work done either in the library or my favourite cafe in Obs. I've also realised that I need to spend more time on the task - and with this realisation hitting home I have to accept that I will have to spend time away from my home and cope with the unfortunate consequences on my time and bank balance.

some good advice

I got some good advice last week. The basic gist - I need to shift from thinking and talking about myself, my work, as being in deficit; not being good enough to meet the approval of the PhD police. As I see that freaking finish line ahead, I know that what I need to enable me to cross that line, is confidence and a strong belief that my work is solid, worthy and credible. I need to believe in what I have done and in the quality of what I have done. No more hedging and grovelling - I need to take the thesis my hands and present it as a true gift that I can be proud of. I have to stop thinking about what lies in the shadows, but focus on what is illuminated. This is the essence of the advice - LT can see all of this already, all I need to do is to see it in myself.

And I'm starting to feel a sense of pride, accomplishment, confidence - a little bit here, a little bit there - as I work through the chapters already written, reworking or reordering my arguments. I have something to say and at times I say it very convincingly and articulately. I have to take my writing, my thesis in my hands and hold it gently and firmly all at the same time.

The autumn leaves

It's autumn in Cape Town. Because oak trees line the walk ways at UCT you can't avoid the beautiful colours of the changing seasons. I like the yellows, oranges, reds and browns of autumn. Unfortunately Cape Town pales in comparison to how Europe celebrates the rustic and rich colours and textures of this season.

I'm back into my routine. I'm disciplined and productive sitting in my favourite calm space in the library at UCT. But my calm space can't protect me from the anxiety I still feel about my writing. I mostly feel like a fraud, like I've con'ed my way into this PhD and now, when I have to show my worth, my writing is letting me down - instead screaming adolescent, incomprehensible communicator. The most common way I've been describing my writing is dull, flat, uninspiring and definitely not elegant. I can see what is 'wrong' with my writing (as I've just described) but hell if I know how to 'correct' it. But I continue on. I'm in the process of cutting down my data chapters. I have to lose about 5000 words from each chapter. This is a seriously tall order, but it needs to happen. In the first edit of one of my chapters I was able to shed almost 2500 words. I've been less successful with the second chapter - I shed a meager 500 words off about 20 pages. I've been told to make my data descriptions crisper and get to the point I want to make quicker. In this way I can try and hold onto the quality of my data while shedding the excess, superfluous words. I sigh, but solider on, grateful that this journey, however treacherous, is slowly, but surely reaching its end point.

last day at the OU again

I'm sitting at my desk at the Open University for the last time. Well technical it's not the last time I will be sitting at a desk at the OU, but it's the last time I sit at my desk. Changes are underway in IET and for the the 'old' batch of research students, this means that we are being relocated. When I come back to the OU in September/October I won't come back to my old desk. I've taken down all my postcards and the hand-made drawings of my nephew and niece. I've cleared away all my personal artefacts, my cup is safely packed away in a bag. Now my desk looks almost identitical to those on either side of me. Slowly, it would seem, the world I knew as the OU is disappearing. Many of my cohort colleagues and friends are no longer students or are in other countries. So unlike when I left in September, this time it feels like it's for real. When I next return nothing will be as it was when I left - of course 'nothing' can be the same - but all resemblances of what it was like to be here will be gone - shattered and fragmented - only available to me through my memories and possibly the odd photo. I feel like I will have to hold the past four years in my memory because there will be nothing tangible or physical left to give it some meaning. It will all be sitting in my head, almost like a construction - real but imaginery too.

I'm glad I'm going home...Only two more sleeps I tell myself. I've started to work actually, in the last dying days of my stay. Working through my data chapters - the ones I need to cull. I'm reworking, reordering, rewriting sections of texts or simply marking up text that needs to be cut or rewritten. The beginning of the very end. It feels good, but also sad. I've been a PhD student for such a long time now, what will I do when I'm no longer that? What new identity will I have to get used to then?

I want to go home

Seriously, I want to go home to Cape Town. I've been in the UK too long. My visit has been unproductive. I had one supervision meeting, I pottered around here and there with my thesis but essentially I've done nothing substantial since just before I left Cape Town. I feel deflated and defeated by this stasis. If there is any significance attached to this visit it hasn't struck me yet, except for the large hole in my bank account.


Today I attended my second writing circle session. This has been an interesting experience and even though I didn’t have any specific expectations about the sessions, I have come away 'wanting'. Granted I joined the group after their initial establishment phase and I always knew I it would always be a temporary stay: this might explain my failure to really bond or find a real space for myself in the group. What I have come to realise, is that my status as a fourth year PhD student is reflected in my writing. I see the disciplinary footprint displayed in my writing style. I see how certain characteristic features of my field are clearly engrained in how I write and this further shapes what I like in other people's writing. I'm a bit disappointed that I don't have a more reflective meta-language to describe my writing journey. I feel I talk in broad brush strokes, rather than in specific detail and can't always explain why I like a piece of work or why certain paragraphs in my writing work or don't work. Looking at other students' work, especially those who have just started their PhD's, I can see how they are grappling with their theoretical concepts, their expression, their ideas, their role and position in their own writing and in a somewhat condescending way I say silently to myself 'Oh how I've moved on from that'. I wish we would talk more about what we are trying to do with our writing, what the barriers are, why we think we do the things we do when we structure or organise our writing in particular ways, how we are trying to mimic, ape, replicate the conventions and styles we think have special privileges in our field or in our supervisors academic world view. I think we spend too much time talking about grammatical rules and getting bogged down by where the reference should go and whether or not the reference needs a page number. Necessary issues to confront I guess, but not what I need right now. I'm experiencing first hand the tug of war between a skills and academic literacies model of writing. Maybe I'm experiencing the required compromise, I don't know.

Red wine and chocolate is, however, definitely on the agenda for the weekend.

painless?

I had supervision yesterday. By all accounts it was a painless affair. I've been in the UK for just over a week. Everything is strange but familiar. I'm in a conflicted space where I want the more familiar context of South Africa but am in a familiar context anyway. I got some really detailed and informative written feedback from one of my supervisors last week. I spent most of my time since then working through the comments, reading over the chapters commented on and making notes about my response to these comments. So going to supervision felt almost redundant? Maybe I held back a little trying to ease myself into the now unfamiliar face-to-face setting. I was clear I wanted to come out of this engagement 'alive' (that is a rather dramatic interpretation) and in many ways I achieved my goal. However, at the end of it all I couldn't help thinking - 'ok!, so I traveled more than 10 000km for this?'

We did however, talk about submission dates and the game is on. Two months to the final draft - well it's the first full draft my supervisors will see, but the plan is that this will be their final comments before submission. I don't think this date and the finality of it all has finally sunk in just yet. We also talking about my expectations about the outcome of this exercise - I won't be disappointed with a 'pass with substantial amendments' result. We joked about the pun/irony around me saying 'I'm only interested in submission' and how my supervision experiences have more than doubly prepared me for any examiner's feedback. Things have shifted, in a good way. I'm pleased. They won't feed me to the lions intentionally and as I have always known - they have my back. I'm pleased and reassured. Now to finish the darn thing!

a research methodology queen...even for a day

I got some preliminary feedback from one of my supervisors ahead of our supervision meeting at the start of next week. Apparently my Research Methodology chapter is 'excellent'. So it appears I've nailed this aspect of my thesis. And I'm feeling arrogant enough to suggest that my PhD thesis can't be failed if my methodology is solid! Of course I don't completely believe this, but it's a nice little bargaining chip that I'm using to boost my deflated confidence.

Basking in this glory I've been really lazy since arriving on the small island. I miss my place of calm and all the young, vibrant people around me there. Despite the very warm welcome I've received and the generosity shown to by my friends and special niece, I am really a creature of habit. I love structure and familiarity and it takes me a while to settle. It's probably ok and I'm trying not to worry too much about ALL the stuff I 'still need to do' to get the thesis to a submit’able level. After all, a queen is allowed to put her feet up from time to time.

the familiar and the strange

I arrived in the UK on Sunday. It started to snow lightly on the drive up to Milton Keynes. My ambivalence about coming here for a month started to firm up into tangible resentment in the same way you know you have to take a small taste of slightly dodgy milk to confirm that it actually has gone off. Everything is so familar though. It's like I never left almost 6 months ago. I went to see my friend SB, who is trekking across the globe to make a new life for herself and her family today, and even though her daughter is 6 months older and more mobile and attentive than she was when I left - it felt like I had last seen them only a few weeks ago. I just slipped comfortably back into how things were before I left. Same thing happened yesterday when I went back to the flat where I spent my last 15 months in England and popped into the OU. It's all so familiar but strange at the same time. I've spoken about this before, even about coming back to Cape Town - it's an uncomfortable, comfort (that's the best I can do at this point). Although my strong South African accent and my need to infect my speech with little Afrikaans sayings here and there tend to clearly signal that I'm fresh off the plane. But things are different...most of my colleagues aren't at the OU  anymore and I'm probably not never going to have tea with SB in the JLB nexus or coffee with SP in the soft, comfortable chairs in the Hub again. But then I knew that when I left the OU in September, but I guess I expect these familiar OU-type things to happen just because I'm in the OU environment. But things change.

Just like at the moment I feel strange to be a South African in England - I feel like all the bad press about the country lately, has stuck to me in the same way the smell cooked fish pemeanates your home no matter how many windows and doors you open. How do I manage it though - do I tell people what I really feel and appear unpatrotic or do I just dismiss all the very obvious rumblings and unsettling realities of South African society and present a optimistic version of life at the tip of Africa? The society I live in is complex, fluid and dynamic and it is difficult to offer a quick little sound bite that adequately and accurately captures all that is South Africa. I feel I'm going to have to settle into my discomfort at the moment - it will pass, or some of the discomfort will pass. It will be all be fine and I have BBC TV to soothe my conflicted soul. What more can I ask for?

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.

submission

I submitted my reworked Interpretation chapter today and yesterday I submitted Chapters 1-4. What can I say about it...nothing much really. I'm a bit nervous about how it will be received - especially the Interpretation chapter. I'm conflicted actually. I'm happy about where my argument is going but the presentation of the argument is patchy and I'm nervous about what that communicates to my supervisors. But what is the point of making this version of the argument watertight if the argument itself is not accepted? This is my logic for justifying the patchiness of this version...I wonder how plausible this line of argument is - will it hold in my next supervision meeting? Fuck it...it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So what do you do after you make a submission? Take the day off and go in search of the sun of course - especially if in about five days time you're going to a place where the sun never shines. Oh joy!