Alat

Six weeks have come and gone and I have not produced anything. I wonder at my reticence. Did the initial push burn me out so quickly? Or maybe I have turned so cowardly? Must find fortitude. Be brave Sparky. Break new ground. Touch your fucking data. Do something with it for god's sake.

Scars

I haven't done any significant amount of work on my dissertation since I went home for a brief respite last month. Eight weeks have come and gone and my prospectus is where it was after my pathetic attempt at a defence. I look at it now and the reason why I have not touched it again is fear. I asked my supervisor, last I saw her, if I needed to read some other things to try and solve some problems. She said I should stop reading. I will not find the answer elsewhere. I will have to produce the answer myself.

It is so much easier being a natural scientist. You can easily confirm any claims of knowledge you make. If the formula works - then you know you're right. But as a social scientist? Your claim is only 'right' for as long as it is defensible. You are indoctrinated to believe that critique is part of your job. I suspect this plays a part in the deep insecurity of so many of these academics I have met. Its the realisation that really - what do I know?

Note to Self

Academic life changes you. The first year and a half have been social. I had classes, I met and spoke with people. But the last few months have been time spent mostly by myself. 'Work' is time spent writing, thinking and working out problems in your head. Apart from teaching, an important part of work is producing knowledge - doing research and publishing. It will be a lifetime of this, of spending the whole day by myself, having 'conversations' with people who are not actually with me either because I have never met them in person or because they are long dead.

As such, it is probably perfectly normal to be self-involved. Nearly every academic I have met is like this - with a few exceptions. One literally loses one's social skills. One forgets 'pakikipagkapwa.' One becomes overly embroiled with one's own thoughts. And because most social interactions involve students, then this is the default mode of conversation. Monologue takes the place of dialogue. Listening skills get really rusty. If evolutionary mutations could happen faster, I imagine academics will lose their ears altogether!

So, here is a mental note to myself. Keep engaging the world. And by 'world' I mean other people. I am constituted by them as much as I constitute them  through my writing.

Fear of Writing

I developed something which one might well call fear of writing. Wait. Let me google if there's a word for it...Ha. Graphophobia. How elegant-sounding.

Let me be informal here. Let me just let the words flow out from my fingers. If I make grammatical mistakes, I apologise to my future self if I happen to read it some time in the future. I think it is a case of having too many other voices in my head. This is why dissertating does to you. It means letting all these other scholars get into your head and having them speak to each other. It is the immense reading requirement I have been subjected to this past year and half. Letting others in, figuring out what they say, letting them speak to one another. Hardly any space for me and my voice. Is it any wonder I haven't been able to write?

Second is I have lost confidence that I have anything real to say, any real original thought to contribute. Another thing about dissertating is this - swimming into the sea of what all other people have written in the past, and figuring out where you fit, where you can fill a void. So you think you've stumbled on to something super original and that you have these hallucinations of being the first to figure something out. Well, you do the lit review and you see that others have written in, on and around your topic. Your 'original' thought could not have been completely original...these other people were reading the same stuff you were reading. Its not impossible others will be similarly inclined to write about what you want to write about.

So yes, I am suffering from graphophobia. I must get out of this funk. I think the first thing to do is to start listening to my own voice again. When I let the others come in, I probably shouldn't let them do all the talking. I have to join in.