Beat up and battered around
(I've) been beat up and battered aroundbut like a tall ball hitting the wall I bounce back. It's been a hard week as I try (before Uni even officially begins) to figure out just how it is that I'm going to mix work and study. At the moment I'm doing 5 shifts a week - so pretty much full time. The problem is that a typical shift runs from 4pm to 11pm. So when you factor in things like exercise, procrastination time, a generally slow note taking ability; well the words don't write themselves and I do like the time to drink a cup of coffee or two. Anyway, I called in sick on Wednesday and this week they gave me only 3 shifts.
Getting less shifts is actually a blessing in disguise because I feel that it frees me up to now make myself less available and hopefully this will save me from getting more and more depressed and less and less happy as 5 days is just too much with a full time study load. But life and all that coffee costs money. Hopefully this change will be just enough to free me from looking into the 'mental mirror' and seeing myself as grumpy, complaining bitter guy. It's not a pretty site.
It's funny how the human condition works; it seems to be in turns that you're happy then you're sad, then you're miserable, then you're depressed, then the light shines through and you're happy and joyful again and then something else rears up. Either money is OK or you've spent too much. Damn all this 'binarity'! I want to deny that things are as simple and predictable as all that. I want to deny that we are acted upon. I want to refute externalism. I want to be miserable because it's who I am.
At the moment I'm doing a fair amount of thinking about realism and relativisim. I think that there's a lot to be said about the idea that discourse shapes our realities. But I maintain (at this point) that saying that discourse "is the world" is a bit like taking a tail, a furry tail, and inferring that there's a dog connected to it. Sure a dog is consistent with the 'existence' of a furry tail but I think that discourses merely serve to give shape and colour and definition to that tail. The tail neither exists or not exists because of language. It is perhaps more of a found thing that 'floats' in a sea of language. Now all I have to do is prove it.
January 28, 2005
January 27, 2005
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
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
January 26, 2005
Meeting with another supervisor
Far out, I've just come out of a (just short on) 3 hour meeting with the man who is now my second supervisor, he's a lecturer in my Universities Philosophy department and he's going to help me with some of the philosophical implications of a realist engagement with social constructionism in the classroom.
I feel absolutely stuffed - and a little apprehensive and a little buzzed and a jazzed all over. It's like there's this needle and it's starting to thread more and more strings of 'interconnectedness' into me. Strings that bind me to other people, strings that bind me to a world of new ideas - ideas that are almost forced onto you. Strings that thread new directions into one's life. Threads that bind me to people that have 'real' work commitments and meetings with agendas and diaries and expectations. All at once it's like there's this 'thing' building up around me. Both fully formed and yet without shape. It's very confusing and I'm not sure if I'm even going to be up to the task. And so it is that people - real people - are getting involved ....
Far Out!
Not only are real people getting involved but they are bringing with them questions to be problematised - and readings to be looked into. Paper, paper shining white where will your words take me tonight. So I'm starting to feel a little FfffK! I've just had a little bolt of empathy for all those people that get involved in 'undertakings'.
Far out, I've just come out of a (just short on) 3 hour meeting with the man who is now my second supervisor, he's a lecturer in my Universities Philosophy department and he's going to help me with some of the philosophical implications of a realist engagement with social constructionism in the classroom.
I feel absolutely stuffed - and a little apprehensive and a little buzzed and a jazzed all over. It's like there's this needle and it's starting to thread more and more strings of 'interconnectedness' into me. Strings that bind me to other people, strings that bind me to a world of new ideas - ideas that are almost forced onto you. Strings that thread new directions into one's life. Threads that bind me to people that have 'real' work commitments and meetings with agendas and diaries and expectations. All at once it's like there's this 'thing' building up around me. Both fully formed and yet without shape. It's very confusing and I'm not sure if I'm even going to be up to the task. And so it is that people - real people - are getting involved ....
Far Out!
Not only are real people getting involved but they are bringing with them questions to be problematised - and readings to be looked into. Paper, paper shining white where will your words take me tonight. So I'm starting to feel a little FfffK! I've just had a little bolt of empathy for all those people that get involved in 'undertakings'.