Wrote this morning, got up and sat at the keyboard with bleary eyes searching for quotes and ideas in the texts I’ve read for my Language and Identity class. It feels good to write in this way, taking on small chunks at a time, not pressured, not worrying about perfection but simply putting placeholders with the ideas to come back to.
This is a beginning, writing consistently for classes. In many ways the assignment for the Language and Identity class is ideal, as it’s about creating responses to the readings that could be useful to us later (including summaries, quotes, connections, critiques). Tonight, I will write again in this way, drawing on the concrete task of a class assignment, working on it well in advance as a way of learning more and overcoming the writing blocks that happen as the deadline nears.
The next step will be to begin writing for my own work, my own self. What is my voice in this academic work? What contributions will my work make? Who do I seek to serve with the academic work I do?
Wrote yesterday for 15 minutes before leaving for a birthday dinner. Wrote today for a half hour. Both times working on a reaction journal that I have to write for my language and identity class. Was thinking on my run today (4 miles through the Noe Valley hills in glorious spring weather) about how writing is so much easier when I do it in small chunks with no pressure. I think it is also more fruitful, since the kind of writing I’m doing requires thought about what I’m reading. When I write about readings in small bits, I think about it more in between, mull over ideas. And I also find it so much easier to write.
Yes, I work with goals, and after the week I’ve had, need some very manageable ones. So for the next week, starting today, I’m going to write for at least 15 minutes a day, on topics related to upcoming assignments. Maybe one day I summarize an article, the next day I link it to another one. Maybe I critique the work. Whatever it is, it needs to be connected in a loose way with something I’d USE later, and needs to happen every day. And oh yeah, I’m going to post about my progress here, maybe even post some of the writing. Maybe this will help me stop feeling like such an ape about all this.
Yes, a clump of onions are a good metaphor for where my inspiration and ideas for Ph.D. study are right now.
When I was a Master’s student I had a golden moment during the final presentation of my project on language policy in Spain, where I knew I had attained a level of understanding of the literatures I was drawing on, and the problems of my topic, that were on par with scholarly levels of work. The associate dean of the School of Ed at Stanford asked me a question which was beyond the scope of my topic, but I remember I gave a thoughtful answer based on what I knew from my study, and he joked that I would be able to explore his question in my Ph.D. studies. At that point I was completely committed, after having spent a year LOVING graduate school and scholarship, to return to school to work on a Ph.D. I knew what I wanted to study, too.
Now, in my second year at Berkeley, I am revisiting my reasons for taking on a Ph.D. What was I hoping to get out of it back then? What drove me to work so hard and be so motivated to come back to school? In many ways, the most difficult part is I now see the limitations of the perspective that I once wished to belong to, yet at the same time have not found an intellectual home for where I am now. It’s a matter of finding people who care about the questions and issues I care about. I’ve found some, but not enough. Where are the rest? Who should I turn to for professional advice? Who shares my interests topically? Who has the methods I know I want to learn? What makes sense at this point?
Discussion about David Olson, great divide theory of literacy.
No class excites me intellectually quite as much as this class. How meaning is made. How we draw meaning from text. What it means to know, to communicate what we know.
What implications do the things I’m learning have for my larger school trajectory? What are the implications for policy of what I am learning in this class? For immigrants and language policy? I feel like answering this question will get me over a hump in terms of my commitment to and excitement about my own learning and knowledge-building.
Maybe I should do what Liz is doing and share programs–go half and half with policy and literacy.
Found on a scrap of notebook paper from last semester (dated 10/30):
“Conceptions/notions of literacy matter because of decisions about how we education, social kids, how we conceive of who and where they are as non-literates and where that takes them once they get to school”.
Classes start this week and I’m still debating about what to take. I had planned to take a class on Globalization and International Education, but it conflicts with another class so I’m debating between the two. The professor sent out this article ahead of the first day, and just reading it makes me ashamed of myself and how little I do for global, as well as local, development (I contribute some money but not as much as I could afford, and currently don’t volunteer at all). It also makes me think hard about how I focus my studies. I want to take a more global bend in my studies at Berkeley, of this I am sure. This semester will be dedicated to exploring this. And a class that focuses on the global landscape of education, that thinks in terms of development work, is a great place to begin. These are all strong arguments for taking this class.
What more appropriate day than MLK day to be thinking about this? He was such an incredible, inspiring speaker! How lucky to have heard him speak live. Here are links to a few of his speeches on YouTube:
From a friend’s blog recently. Hopeful, inspiring, refreshing.
I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of failing or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
I have a habit of writing in notebooks, something I in part picked up from my dear childhood friend who now lives in Vermont. They sit on my desk upstairs, the place I so often resist spending time working. Today I picked one up and read what I wrote from 2 years ago, when I was just gearing up to apply to Berkeley for graduate school.
It’s incredible how much I convince myself things have changed on a daily basis, yet when I get down to the core of it, little has changed. The same things satisfied me about my job. The same things left me dissatisfied.
Perhaps this is because my attention has not been on the core of myself, my dreams, my ambitions. What is that core? What’s driven me to where I am now? Where do I want to go from here? Only by identifying this can I work towards my dreams every day. Otherwise, what am I working towards anyhow?
Yes, it’s November, it’s fall, it’s the second year of my Ph.D. program, and it’s time to take stock.
It’s a good question. When we overcommit ourselves, and things turn into “just getting through it”, what do we really get out of things? If we don’t have time to go deeply and satisfactorily into anything, what can we take away from it. A sobering question, which becomes another one: What to give up, or let go of?
What more appropriate day than MLK day to be thinking about this? He was such an incredible, inspiring speaker! How lucky to have heard him speak live. Here are links to a few of his speeches on YouTube:
I have a habit of writing in notebooks, something I in part picked up from my dear childhood friend who now lives in Vermont. They sit on my desk upstairs, the place I so often resist spending time working. Today I picked one up and read what I wrote from 2 years ago, when I was just gearing up to apply to Berkeley for graduate school.