Buzzed to the Core

I'm still feeling 'buzzed to my core' by the things that are happening. It's funny but I know that I'm some kind of 'structural realist' (bare with me I still learning about all this stuff), because I keep using words and articles that imply absolute things: things like 'I', 'core', 'choice', 'meaning' and so on. I believe that I've got some kind of 'identity' separate from the limits and context of language and that's what I'm following (in part) in this thesis process.

Just the other day a friend told me that this thesis choice was a profound one - because there are going to be repercussions. At the time she phrased this in the context of the film "Sliding Doors"; I thought 'hey, that's a really nice thing to say' - at the time I thought that anyway! And it was a nice thing to say. But it's only now that the real 'meaning' of what she said is starting to sink in.

You see, I was going to be doing the 'teaching thing' as a first year teacher. And that implies all sorts of ideas about me being 'sure and certain' about what good teaching might look like, it would also seem to imply me thinking about classroom issues like behavior management, about kids refusing to 'comply' with instructions / activities / tasks, about unhappy (and happy) parents. It would also seem to imply a whole range of discourses that I already have some idea about - discourses that I kind of think I fit into. These discourses include 'me being' a white, male, middle class educator. Job, house into mortgage, professional development, rosters, reproduction.

So starting to write an honours thesis is a different thing with an element of the unknown in it for me. I don't know where it will take me in any positive sense but I'm pretty sure that it's moving me away from the 'mainstream'. Certainly becoming 'more academic' doesn't seem to be perceived as a good thing when your out on the ground teaching and doing the 'real' (non-theory) thing.

Anyway to bring this to an end I shall quote from my friend's e-mail:

"It's exciting ... I get buzzed by 'tings' that remind me I am a part of the critical mass - the realisation that, by engaging in research, I'm actually engaging at the most profound level of ideas ... I was both daunted and stunted at first by the indoctrinated, 'socially constructed' nomothetic belief that, either I had to be 'right', or [relativism] I was destined to wallow in the syrupy world of ... if everything’s valid, then what’s the point … of existing? Until I shifted my focus and thought more broadly about the possible ‘aims’ of research. The following quote also helped:

‘to admit the perspectival character of knowledge should be to sharpen rather than blunt your critical stance’ (Dean ?)

Anyway ... I’m in the study zone and called to ask you to look up a term in the glossary of Burns, if he has one … but you were obviously out either playing or getting buzzed by conversation. Anyway, doesn’t matter because I changed the context and worked around my ignorance ...
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH DEADLINES