Academic Time Travelling

I'm going back in time, to the 70's in England to be precise. Several things have converged to make this happen. Firstly not only am I 50 this year but loads of friends are too of course. I'm very proud of the fact that I still have friends from school and that we still get together from time to time. Now Belinda has sent out invitations for a 70s-themed party - 'pop on your platforms and boogie on down'. So I'm off shopping in cyberspace for a suitable outfit. I knew I should never have got rid of my yellow and purple smock dress and matching platforms. Secondly, at our last supervision meeting, Pat (Professor Sikes - the most amazing person and a wonderful teacher. I totally love her, have total respect and am totally in awe) suggested trying to call up the 70s zeitgeist (coz I'm talking about women who went to uni then and was looking for a way to 'contextualise' the stories they told). So I'll be talking to my friends, surfing the net (get me!), getting out the old photos, watching 70s films (like I ever stopped watching Saturday Night Fever) listening to 70s music (again - like I ever stopped). I already have a pretty good idea what the 70's zeitgeist was for me and putting that across is going to be difficult. I have no idea how to do it. Not least because it wasn't any one thing - it shifted and changed. But, thinking about it, what links the strikes and blackouts to punk, flares to feminism is that it was a time (perhaps - I'm thinking aloud here) when there was a thirst and a hunger for change without any clear idea of how to satisfy them. There was a restlessness about the 70s, a boredom too, and the co-existence of tired old ways with a kind of mad trying on of anything that seemed to break with those. There wasn't much focus to the 70's I don't think, but it was the decade I grew up in and it's going to be hard for me to stick with the zeitgeist and not slide down into nostalgia and sentiment.

Riding the Rollercoaster

In an earlier post I likened doing my PhD to riding on swings and roundabouts. This still holds and in fact, staying with the fairground theme, I would now like to add the rollercoaster to the mix. I have just finished the second of the two papers I committed to, on topics I knew very little about. When I agreed to do them I was obviously riding high. Doing them was that dizzy drop to the depths which is where I find myself now, although my previous two posts are clear expressions of the giddy exhilaration I felt after completing the first paper. Now I just feel a bit deflated, a bit flat. I have been told I don't sound myself.

I think the problem is that I have had to take myself away from my passions - my PhD research and my thesis. I've had three weeks in which I've had my mind on other things (although both papers have been useful to my project - they are not entirely unrelated). How will feel once I have to stop doing it altogether?

I am also concious of the clock ticking. My institution has introduced new rules and if you don't get your thesis in after 3 years there is a cost implication. I am trying to be calm and measured and to stop dwelling on the worst. Nor do I want to climb to the top of the rollercoaster - just want to find my feet on solid ground again.

Drain clearing

I had a really productive weekend, helped by the fact that I managed to sort out a lot of paperwork that had piled up. Even more signifcantly, I looked my financial situation in the eye, something I had been dreading. But having faced it square on, I realised things were not quite as bad as I thought, at least not in the long term. I had been telling myself that I didn't have time to sort these things out because I had too much work to do, but in fact I was bogged down with work because I had these worries on my mind and this was draining my energy. Now my drains are clear, all is flowing nicely again and all is well in my world. Lovely.

Life's rich tapestry

I've had a hard week. I've been writing a paper I wasn't ready to write. I've had to truncate what is usually a leisurely process. It was a chore not a pleasure. I've still not finished it but somewhere along the way I finally 'got' what it was I was trying to say. But this should have been worked out in other ways - here or in my journal or in a conversation of some sort. Not while I was writing the paper.

OK whinge over. It's Saturday morning. I've retired to my bed with a cup of peppermint tea and my laptop and... yes... THE SUN HAS GOT HIS HAT ON. I am, to use the vernacular of the day, living it large.

Doing alright for northern trash

Jonah played me this the other day and I thought it was fab. Roger Davies sings about the area I am from and I know he articulates the feelings of many of us in his songs. I was born in Huddersfield, moved away when I was 18, came back ten years later and have been here ever since. Recently I've been thinking about moving away again - something to do with turning 50, getting restless and bored and making fresh starts etc. That may still happen - much will depend on what turns up after I finish my PhD (something I've started to think about recently). But now if I leave, it will be with a heart full of gratitude not because of ennui and I also know if ever I hear this song it will awaken strong emotions. I'm becoming more and more interested in using different media to represent my research and hearing this is helping me to understand why. The title of this post is also that of another RD song and says so, so much about class identity, the 'classing gaze' and recognition.

On a different tack - M. I wanted to respond to your comment but my emails come bouncing back.

Displacement Activities

Well I've been up since 5.30 this morning (third day in a row - trying to catch up after spending two days in emotional turmoil at the beginning of the week - don't ask) and am still un-showered and in my dressing gown. It's come to a sorry pass when I regard getting dressed (or keeping clean) as displacement activity. Just before I started my PhD my supervisor warned me not to let it become 'an obsession'. She also reminded me yesterday that there is more to life than study. I hear her ... now all I have to do is listen.

I'm just a girl who can't say no

Almost a month since my last post. Where does the time go? At the moment I feel like taking time out to do this is both an indulgence and a necessity. It's an indulgence because I have two papers to write for various meetings and conferences in June, both on topics I know very little about. However, one of them (on Sen's Capabilities Approach) will prove useful for thinking round my thesis and the other (on the ethics of video-narratives, following on from the workshop I did) is something I'm very interested in. And also I am becoming ever more aware of the need to get some things published coz next year at this time I'm going to have to be thinking about jobs. Hence the title of this post. I did actually say no to some teaching last week - now that really was going to be too much. Ordinarily it might have been OK but the offer co-incided with a very challenging time for me in my other life as a mum, wife and ex-wife. I do tend to get teeth-gnashingly frustrated when I can't devote my whole self to my work and then I remind myself that one of the reasons I don't have much time for anything else is the the way academic life impinges on everything else. It is very hard not to conceive of work as making first claims on my time. When I worked in financial services I was able to take 'time out' because, for one thing, the office was shut and we could only take files off site in exceptional circumstances. This was a huge blessing and I miss being able to do that. So doing this blog is necessary because it sends a signal that there is more to life than theses, papers and conferences.