BIOGRAPHIES

Today, in our fourth lesson together, I asked my Year 7s to write a short piece describing their musical experiences and interests. The assignment title was ‘My musical autobiography.’ This 15-minute activity provided me with considerable insight into their individual musical lives, which will certainly inform my lesson planning over the coming weeks and months. It also prompted valuable discussion amongst the class about their different experiences of primary school music, their musical likes and dislikes, and their expectations about music at secondary school. 

I am greatly enjoying my return to teaching. I managed to submit my thesis before starting this job, but I am yet to defend it and I also have several other academic writing commitments still bubbling away. Unsurprisingly, my attention to these projects has been limited during the last month! Alongside my work at school, I’m dedicating my time to visiting loved ones in the UK, developing my long-term career plans, and to recovering mentally and physically from the pressure of finishing my thesis. But those academic obligations have been nagging away at me and I know, deep down, that fulfilling them is a necessary part to concluding that phases of my life. Tonight, I finally managed to sit down and open one such document. 

It seemed almost spooky that this document required an author biography. Unlike Year 7 written tasks, however, academic biographies are not spaces where the writer shares their opinions about drill and grime, explains how their parents have influenced their musical tastes, or describes their memories of whole-class recorder lessons. Rather, they are written in the third person and the present tense, and focus on affiliations and achievements. Which is presumably a straightforward task for individuals who either hold permanent posts at a university or expect to remain in their current role for the near future. What to write when you are awaiting a PhD examination, though? Especially when the biography publication date is after said exam, and it may be tempting fate to say you’ve passed? And in 75-100 words? I’m pretty sure I could describe my academic career more easily in ten words or a thousand words, rather than a middle-ground that simultaneously requires detail and prohibits explanation. In this period of reconnecting with home, loved ones and core values, and feeling so much more certain about myself and my role in my community, it was disconcerting to feel so undefinable. 

I am left wondering what assumptions I make about defining the children I teach and whether I make further assumptions based on the institutions with which they are affiliated. I am also wondering how much space the PhD would take up in my autobiography were I to write it tomorrow, or in ten or twenty years’ time. And how that would vary were my biography to be written by a family member or friend, a teaching or academic colleague, or even a pupil. It is reassuring to know that, in my current state of academic limbo, I have other achievements and affiliations.

BEGINNING A PHD (A VIEW FROM NEAR THE END)

I write this as I wait for an emergency dentist appointment. This sentence could have applied at multiple times during the last 18 months and it therefore seems (painfully) appropriate to use it as a starting point for reflecting on the PhD process. I submitted my thesis at the end of August and will return to Canada to defend it during half term. It should therefore be completely done and dusted by mid-November! In the future I may post about my study, the process of researching and writing, and the mental and emotional impact of undertaking the PhD. For this return to blogging, however, it seems easier to write about more practical concerns. At the top of the list is physical and mental health. If you’re about to start a PhD, please please please prioritize these above background reading, buying stationery or any other thing you reckon is ‘essential’. Develop good sleep, eating and exercise habits. ‘PhD weight’ is real, particularly if you’ve previously had a more active job. Committing to a regular fitness or sports activity during term time is therefore advised, especially if it helps you maintain relationships beyond your immediate colleagues. Seek treatment for any underlying conditions or concerns. Make time to work through any emotional baggage that’s prompted you to pursue a PhD (let’s be honest, there probably is some). And get your teeth checked! 

Once you’ve begun your course, ensure that you know what healthcare your university and local practitioners provide, including what can be funded through your tuition payments. If you’ve moved abroad, find out how payment for health care works and set some money aside for cash payments if they are required as part of the local system. Make regular use of university resources such as counselling, wellness activities and social groups, and maintain a support network outside your university (this is arguably even more important if if you’ve moved in order to study). And keep reminding yourself about sleep, eating and exercise. Prioritizing these can help you to avoid, or at least reduce the negative impact of, so many other physical and mental health problems. If your department has a work-til-you-drop mentality, consciously avoid the people who perpetuate it. Your PhD is not your life, and you should not risk your life for it. It may feel like you’re damaging your career prospects by refusing to attend an evening event, or missing a meeting to go to the dentist (see above, below, and scattered across my diary!), but what really matters about a PhD is your research, and that will suffer if you end up with a long-term illness. If you are able to stand up for your self and your health, please do: it will benefit you, but also those who may feel unable to take such a stand. Also, find a dentist. Based on an entirely unscientific poll of my PhD colleagues, you’re going to need one. 

Now to actually doing work. Firstly, consider really seriously whether you can be paper-free. It’ll save money, trees and possibly your back. Clearing out my office last month, I spent far too long dumping whole folders worth of photocopied articles and essay drafts into the recycling bin. Having carefully printed and stored these documents in multiple ring binders during first and second year, I made absolutely no reference to them afterwards. Articles saved on my laptop, however, were a godsend when I was stuck for ideas or information! If you’re worried about how well you can read/make notes without paper, spend some time experimenting with annotation in Adobe/Preview etc and using note-taking apps. Once I got the hang of highlighting passages electronically and using search tools effectively, being paper-free was a no-brainer. And however you store information, back up automatically to a cloud. You may have a system where you ‘email myself all my work’ or ‘back up to a USB drive each week’ or ‘save all my assignments on the VLE’, but this will never be completely foolproof. At some point you WILL want to refer to a draft you wrote and then never sent to anyone else. Setting all of your devices to back up automatically to a cloud will reduce the panic in such a moment, and also any stress (apart from financial) when your computer dies the week before a major deadline.

Finally, two thoughts about reading. If you need to buy books, seek electronic copies. The search facilities on Kindle and other ebook providers are MUCH quicker to navigate than a paper index, and having such books additionally available on a phone app means you can dip into them at unexpected moments. Passionately convinced that you ‘like to hold a book when I’m reading it’? You might feel differently after dragging six such books around campus for a ten-hour day. Yet again, my theme is that doing a PhD WILL have an impact on your physical health, so don’t make things any harder than they need to be! And start a spreadsheet or word document listing every single thing you read. Books, articles, abstracts, websites, blogs, radio interviews, podcasts, conference presentations: title, author name, date and a few key words. This will save you starting conversations with ‘I read a really useful thing written by a person, in a book with a yellow cover’, and will also be a massive time-saver as you refine your thinking and writing. Even if you can remember everything you read last week (and that’s a big if, should you be like me!), you will definitely not remember everything you read over three or four years. Help yourself. Sleep, eat, exercise. And find a good dentist.

CHALLENGE EXTENDED

I’ve got several blog posts brewing at the moment, and a recurring theme is cultural understanding. Living abroad and interacting with people from different countries and cultural backgrounds has really increased my awareness of how diverse our experiences can be. Yet the English language has proved a bit of a trap, disguising differences and often prompting protracted and uncomfortable misunderstandings. There are many versions of English and only now, nearly three years after I first came to Canada, am I fully realizing the challenges involved in communicating with those who speak a ‘different’ English language. Two instances of this occurred within an hour today: one, a discussion about whether we were swimming ‘lengths’ or ‘laps’ – and whether a ‘lap’ was in fact two lengths! – was quite harmless. In the second, I said something rather vague without explaining that I was thinking about social class, but my companion interpreted my thoughts as being about race and understandably felt that my (white European) meanderings were insensitive. It was only when we took the time to unpick the conversation that we realized our mutual confusion at one another’s responses. Indeed, it’s a bizarre irony that sometimes I seem to be communicating better with people for whom English is not a first language. We are more aware of our cultural differences, and take the time to explain the contexts that influence what we are discussing, and our understandings of the vocabulary we are using. 

Of course these cultural clashes and confusions happen within our own countries and communities too. But I’ve written before about how much easier it is to ‘read’ a situation in one’s own country: accent, dialect, sentence structure, clothing, possessions and many other factors all combine to help me navigate interactions with other Brits so much more confidently. Where there are clashes, I’m much more likely to know that there’s a clash – rather than getting tangled up in a protracted dialogue of missed misunderstanding. 

Another side to cultural understanding, both within our own countries and more broadly, is hearing others. And this is something where I wonder if the PhD experience, of becoming immersed in one subject area and the academic/cultural/political communities that are involved in it, does not always help to develop wider understanding. For example, I am aware that my Twitter feed is basically an echo-chamber of my own interests and beliefs, and that I do not make a big effort to interact with those who disagree with them. I’m going to come back to this business of interaction (and the dangers of trying to convert, rather than encouraging critical engagement) in a future post, when I’ve worked out how to say what I’m thinking in a way that makes sense in ‘other Englishes’. As I’ve been mulling these things over, however, I’ve also been making changes to what I listen to, and whose voices I seek out. I’ve deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone and replaced them with various news apps for sources that I wouldn’t automatically engage with: the most enlightening, so far, has been the Al Jazeera app. I’m also making more of an effort to read the bits of the paper that I normally skip, and to search online for things that contrast with the articles shared by my Facebook friends. A recent example was the Wikipedia entry for roundabouts, searched for in frustration at the ‘grid’ system here, that included history, maths, engineering and geography, and filled me with delight. 

And so to the challenge mentioned in the title. For the next week, I’m going to read or listen to something from a different source every day, on a topic I would not normally engage with. It’ll probably just be a 500-word bulletin or a 4-minute radio clip. But I hope that be listening to these other voices I will broaden my own cultural understanding – within British and Canadian contexts, as well as more globally. If you’d like to join me in this, http://www.thebigproject.co.uk/news/#.W1KKni3MzSA looks like a useful starting point for sourcing printed English-language news and https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio, so much more than a late-night driving companion, has lots of great audio. I’d love to hear what you find out. 

P.S. In this picture Emma is spending time with The Guardian Weekly. To increase her awareness, I will provide access to The Daily Mail this weekend.

THIRTY DAYS AND NIGHTS

As part of my yin yoga training, I have a homework assignment. When the teachers mentioned it, it sounded so simple: “do something every day for a month, and write about it”, they said. Seven months later I can report that it is not so simple at all. 

In November, I decided to wait til December to start. Then I waited until I left Canada for Christmas. A festive start to walking meditation lasted until I got sidetracked by brandy butter. In January, I did about eight consecutive days of pranayama (which is basically remembering to breathe). That died a death when it became clear that my living space was far too cold for sitting comfortably on the floor during such a practice. And breathing whilst curled up in an armchair can quickly turn into dozing.

One of the instructions was to “choose an auspicious start date.” Every time a significant date rolled around (and the actual auspiciousness of these became increasingly questionable as time went on), I started something new. And then stopped it a few days later. I manage to do lots of things every week, and quite a few things roughly every other day. But by early April, doing something every day for a month seemed impossible. 

The previous year I’d had some cognitive hypnotherapy, focused on improving my sleep. Apart from the actual therapy sessions, all I had to do was listen regularly to a short, personalized recording. It had an impact almost immediately, and within four sessions there was a significant change in my sleep pattern. When my sleep became a bit erratic again in February of this year, I started listening to the recording again. One listen seemed to set things right again – for a few nights.  For about six weeks, I repeated the routine of listening once, sleeping ok for a few days, then failing to sleep again. Shortly after giving up on 30-days-of-doing-eye-exercises for the yoga assignment, I decided that it was best to kill two birds with one stone. On a day auspicious only for being a Thursday, I planned to listen to my hypnotherapy recording every night before bed for 30 nights. 

Maybe I had needed to pick something clearly defined and time bound. Maybe it helped that I knew time was running out to complete a month of daily activity for the assignment. Maybe it was just the right activity at the right time. Whatever the factors, this time it actually worked. I listened to the recording every single evening, even when it meant rousing myself out of nearly-sleep to turn it on. And because I ‘had’ to do it for a month to tick the yoga assignment box, I kept doing it for long after my sleep pattern appeared to have settled down: I haven’t checked this with my hypnotherapist, but I wonder if it had additional benefits. It certainly improved my energy levels during the day, at what was a potentially stressful time. When the month came to an end, it felt like a good idea to carry on. So I did. In the last couple of weeks I’ve switched to alternate nights, and that feels right for now.

Re-reading the yoga assignment instructions this week, two points stand out. Firstly, we were advised to have a ritual around the activity: a time of day, and a place. Although I had intentions for this with all my unsuccessful attempts, the activities in question could happen at any time of day – which meant that it was too easy to be flexible about their timing and thus the activity itself. In contrast because I associated the hypnotherapy recording with sleeping, it would have been weird to listen to it at any time other than bedtime, so it easily became a habit. Recently I’ve started to add some new habits to my morning routine and, whilst it’s not yet a daily practice, it has increased my awareness and attention to the moment. Secondly, the guidelines recommended that we ask others for support with our 30-day practice. If I’d done this initially, things might have been different! But I didn’t and they weren’t; and whilst I love living alone, it certainly does make one less accountable/supported with things like this. With the sleep activity, however, because my hypnotherapist had made an effort to provide the recording, I felt obligated to succeed for her (even though I don’t think I actually told her about the 30-day plan). This sense of obligation to others is a theme that is recurring in other contexts for me at the moment, so may crop up in another blog post.

The yoga homework says to ‘reflect on what has changed and how you are integrating this into your life.’ The failures in this exercise have highlighted my lack of daily routine, and I am trying to address that now (she writes, lying on the sofa in pyjamas mid-afternoon). But it seems that routine can either be isolating or overly dependent on others, and either liberating or enslaving. How to get the balance right is one to keep reviewing. 

SELF-IMPOSED LETTERS, IN SCARLET AND OTHER COLOURS

Who are you? What are you? What do you do?

If you stop to think about those three questions, chances are that they’d elicit very different answers. Which answer is the most empowering to you? Which best reflects how you see yourself? Which best reflects what those who love you see?

Recently, I’ve stumbled upon various bits of writing about labels. In Excellent Sheep: the miseducation of the American elite, William Deresiewicz observed that high-achieving young people are so focused on textbook versions of success that they want to ‘be’ something (a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer), rather than ‘do’ something (save lives, pursue justice, build bridges). It got me thinking about my friends, many of whom have job titles that I don’t really understand – but how their work is just as important to society, and just as much about ‘doing’, even if their label is not something that we initially recognize and equate with professional success. It also reminded me of how much my social interactions have changed now that I no longer automatically introduce myself as ‘a teacher’. When I taught full time, I had friends who always asked “how’s school?” – because that was how I had defined myself to them, and how I defined myself to myself. What happens when we stop defining ourselves by what we do, but by who we are?

Another non-fiction book, Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American daughters on obedience and rebellion, edited by Piyali Bhattacharya. Similar themes emerged about how we perceive success as being (a member of a profession), rather than doing . Labels were used: good/bad, brown/white, light/dark, boy/girl. And in many cases, the labels limited, festered, embittered.  The women who recognized these labels and moved beyond them were inspired, inspiring, seeking fulfilment.

My PhD work has prompted a bit of reading about labelling theory. It’s often linked with alienation, lowering expectations and other negative outcomes: interestingly, it seems that self-labelling can be just as limiting as labels that are ascribed by others. What happens if you describe yourself as single, married, divorced, a widow/er, a parent, a child? There are structures to each, but it’s not always easy to recognize whether the structure is a support or a barrier. What’s the difference between saying “I have a disability” and “I am disabled”; “I have been through a divorce” and “I am divorced”; “I play the trumpet” or “I am a trumpeter”? For some people, at some points in time, the label is empowering – but it can also be a cage.

I had a chat about this stuff with my friend Elizabeth, who I perceive as funny, caring, knowledgeable and enquiring (and whose most obvious label is PhD student). She observed that in self-labelling it’s easy to let the past and future encroach on the present. We talked about how most people currently in your life probably don’t care much about your past, and yet we often let our previous labels affect our perception of how people see us in the present.

So, lots of things above for lots of us to ponder. But also a particular message for anyone receiving A Level results this week: “What are you?” and “Who are you?” are absolutely NOT the same questions as “What grades did you get?”. How would someone who knows you, but has not been directly involved in your A Level studies and exams, describe you? Take time to think about this, and to ask people who will think about their answers. Hold on to those attributes. They are so much more important than your paper achievements.

COURSEWORK SEASON

May Day is a time for DIY, media coverage of SATs angst, finishing up the last of the Easter chocolate and, like all bank holidays, probable rain.  If you live somewhere Ambridge-like, there’s Maypole dancing.  For secondary teachers, it’s also a time for marking GCSE and A Level coursework, and sending up desperate prayers about the fate of any students whose work is still incomplete.

This year my coursework deadlines have been for my own work.  Rather than spending the Easter holiday marking GCSE performances or A Level compositions, I was trying to make sense of Nietzsche.  Unlike most UK PhD students, I’ve spent the first five terms of my degree doing coursework.  And yes, there are similarities to doing GCSEs.  Some courses have very specific requirements about how work is presented – not dissimilar to DT coursework back in 1999, where everything had to be done on A3 paper: the school only had one A3 printer and colour printing was expensive, so woe betide anyone who asked to re-print a page.  There are the “big” assignments, often worth 40% of a final grade, that take months and often have a fair degree of freedom over topic and approach.  And there are the “busy work” assignments, as my friend Amy refers to them, which are reminiscent of experiments for Double Award Science both in weighting and intellectual freedom.

For me, there have been huge advantages to this system.  I’ve read diversely and become aware of relevant theory, learnt from several professors (yes, in Canada we make university sound like Hogwarts), had regular writing deadlines, explored other disciplines, and had weekly opportunities for face-to-face interaction with other doctoral students.  Crucially, I didn’t need to have a research proposal before starting the PhD, which is often the case in the UK.  Instead, the coursework process has allowed me to really explore the field of music education and dip into other areas that interest me, and I hope that the research and dissertation-writing process (not called a thesis, as in the UK) will be easier as a result.

Of course there are drawbacks too.  The whole PhD process is longer, there will bits of courses that are unpleasant, and my perception is that coursework creates a bigger hierarchical divide amongst PhD students than that of the upgrade system in the UK.  Plus it’s a bit demoralizing when I have to explain to UK colleagues that not only am I not nearly finished, I haven’t even started data collection.

Some ‘concluding thoughts’, if I’m being scholarly, and ‘takeaways’ if I’m being teacher-y.  Coursework is tough going at any age: I didn’t blog at all in March or April, and I know that most GCSE and A Level students probably faced even more pressure with deadlines.  PhD structures vary considerably (some doctoral degrees at Western have actual written exams post-coursework, which sounds horribly like doing A Levels again), and we should try not to make assumptions about what others are experiencing.  Finally, finding opportunities for choice and individuality has made my own work more valuable to me: from the infamous bacon and coconut bread of DT coursework, to analysis of music education provision for children with SEN in mainstream schools.  And since I’ve been too busy unravelling Nietzsche to find a course-work related photo, here’s something generically moody and intense.

CANADIANING, PART TWO

Following on from my last post, it’s wonderful to celebrate the great things about spending time here in Canada.  Much of my time here centres around my PhD work and the friends I’ve made through it, but here are a few other things to smile about:

There’s lots of sunshine.  London Ontario is quite a bit further south than England, so winter daylight hours are longer.  Summers are actually summers too, not British “summers”.

There’s lots of snow too, in winter.  And transport keeps working and shops stay open and you can justify going to work in thermals and big wooly jumpers. The best bit is when it’s sunny after a snow fall and there’s fabulous bright light reflecting everywhere.

Cheap Tuesdays.  10% off at the supermarkets and $5 cinema tickets really help to improve the quality of student life.  And I particularly love that the downtown cinema now has reclining seats!

Timbits.  They just make so much sense.  If you aren’t familiar with timbits, they’re doughnut holes from Tim Hortons coffee chain.  Visit me here and we’ll share a box.  You won’t regret it.

Yoga.  Helps to counteract the timbits and with pretty much every other aspect of life.  I love living in a city where there is such a vibrant yoga community, and hope that wherever I end up after my PhD, I can sustain such a frequent yoga practice.

Taking food home from restaurants.  The willingness to provide take-out boxes is a great feature of restaurants here.  It’s particularly useful when you fail to realize that dim sum orders come in portions of three, rather than portions of one.  Sushi also deserves a mention, since it is much more affordable and exciting than in the UK.

And finally Canada itself.  It’s so fabulous to explore a new country and have time to return to places at different times of the day or year.  I’ve been to Niagara Falls three times now, and am amazed at how it’s varied on each occasion.  Nature and the weather seem to be bigger here.  Just like the restaurant portions.

 

CANADIANING, PART ONE

On my walk to work, I go past an advert for upper-years halls of residence, which uses the word “adulting”.  This makes me smile, since I often think of my time here in Canada as a break from adulting.  Am I studenting?  Or Canadianing?  Or academicking – which presumably involves learning to avoid such inelegant uses of vocabulary?!

I’m not doing very well at Canadianing today. The weather certainly doesn’t help: we had sunshine for a couple of hours yesterday, which was fabulous after over a fortnight of fog and drizzle, but today has been dark so far, and it has sapped my energy and mental clarity.  Little things have mounted up to make me feel a bit overwhelmed by being away from familiar places and processes:

Watching the morning news at the gym (I think it was a Michigan-based programme on a U.S. channel, but I’m not sure), and not having background knowledge about any of the places or people being discussed.

At the supermarket, why is there popcorn in four different places, but nothing in the bag size/flavour combination that I want? (I’m craving the yellow bags of Proper Corn, so wanted a Canadian equivalent).  And why on earth are the rice cakes not in the same aisle as the crackers?  This bothers me every time I go food shopping, so I need to get it off my chest!

Parking outside the hairdressers ‘on a meter’.  But the meter doesn’t seem to be working, and I don’t KNOW that it’s definitely NOT working, so I put money into it then worry that I’ll still get a parking ticket.

Not being given a gown to wear whilst my hair is being washed and cut, but a complicated arrangement of small towels.  Then paying, and not really knowing how much to tip.

By the time I got back to my car (luckily, there was no parking ticket), it was homesickness-overload.  I’d been thinking of going out for a coffee, but knew that if I was asked “2% or skim?”, I’d dissolve in a heap.  So for now, I’m cozied up at home next to the SAD lamp, eating the last piece of my mum’s Christmas cake and planning an essay.

Now here’s the tricky bit.  My friends here in Canada are fabulous, and I’m sure some of them will read this and think “but they sell Proper Corn in Walmart/meters are totally obvious/always tip 18%.”   And they’ll tell me, and that’ll make it easier in the future, but it doesn’t make me feel any better right now.  In fact, the unintended implications of “this is really easy” will probably just make me feel even less competent at Canadian-ing.

And I’m not saying that I don’t want to be here, or that I want things to be different here, so I don’t want to risk them thinking that either.  It’s just that sometimes I miss being at home.

To be continued, when I promise to focus on the positives (and there are many of them!) of Canadianing.

HAVE CAR, WON’T BLOG

An apology, again, for being pants at blogging this term.  Now that I have a car here in Canada, I’ve become swept up in actually living rather than writing (which is a slight concern, given that a large part of PhD-ing is about writing).  I’ve got a handful of half-written blogs and notes about blogs, but things keep getting in the way of actually publishing them.  So, a public commitment for this week: I have four blogs in mind after this one, and they will ALL be written and published no later than Friday.  Then I can leave for Christmas knowing that I’m “up to date” with blogging, if not with PhD-ing!

Driving locally has really improved my quality of life here in London ON, so I get out and about more frequently.  It’s much easier to go to yoga, to the farmers market and to see friends, especially in the evenings when the buses are very limited.  Errands like supermarket shopping and chiropractic appointments are less time-consuming now that I don’t have to wait for the bus or walk considerable distances.  Am I “missing” the bus?  Well, I used to have nice chats with one bus driver who I saw regularly and it was an insight into the wider community, but a considerable limitation.  Being able to arrive and leave precisely as I choose is liberating.

I’ve also enjoyed using the car to go further afield, especially now that friends and family from home are visiting me here.  Driving in glorious sunshine, crossing over Lake Huron to enter America, was a particularly wonderful moment!  Navigating needs a bit more practice, though: signs on the highways are far less clear (to me, at least) than those on British motorways and ‘A’ roads, which was one reason why a recent trip to Niagara took just over nine hours, instead of just under three.

And radio!  This has been my first real introduction to Canadian radio, since I’m still fully committed to Radio 4 when listening in my flat.  CBC is kinda similar, but it has little snippets of elevator music and seems to be an odd mix of touchy-feely and ice hockey discussion, at least at the times of day when I’m in the car.  For a while I listened to Fresh – but the actual freshness of the station is questionable, since their ‘A’ play list is apparently Alanis Morissette alternating with I’m Sexy And I Know It.  The only other pre-programmed option is the local classic rock station.  Maybe the moral of this blog is less moshing, more thinking about writing.  Maybe.