Not literally pen to paper clearly because who uses pens for anything other than signing things and as a left-hander the side of my hand dabs onto the still wet ink and turns into a big fleshy rubber stamp – but it is time to start putting down some words.
I can’t remember where I saw it – probably Twitter – but someone was talking about the need to write the SFD, the shitty first draft. It will be awful but it’s only by forcing ourselves to commit to some words that we start to make decisions about what we want to discuss. (That said, I did map out a loose structure for feedback because I do like to have a sense of where a thing is going and how it all links up)
Also, it’s ‘just’ the thesis proposal – the 10k-ish document that kind of determines whether or not I get to continue with this research project. Looking at some of the longer of these blog posts, I’ve knocked out 3000 words just banging on about one particular paper, so I’m not worried about writing enough words. Just writing enough good ones.
I can’t really see much on my Pat Thomson PhD topic list – pretty sure that “I can best organise my time by…” won’t be coming up too soon, nor “The PhD goals I’ve already reached are…” – unless one of my goals is boring everyone I know to death because this is what I think about night and day kind of now. Probably not a goal.
Digging in to the methodology needs to be a priority. I have a reasonable understanding of what I want to look into – the perceptions held by edvisors, the institution and academics of edvisors and how this is manifested in their actual practices (e.g. job ads, position descriptions, academic papers, edvisor team structures and place within the uni) as I think it’ll be interesting to be able to compare what people say/think they believe and what their actions indicate. The analysis of this I think I can nut out, being surrounded by smart people doesn’t hurt but it is pretty vague right now.
I surprised myself the other day when I was putting the outline of the proposal together and I got to the theory section by realising that there is actually probably some legitimate space to include the ideas of French sociologist thinker Pierre Bourdieu. His work has come up in my reading but, to be honest, drawing on a French intellectual felt a little pretentious. The fact is though, that his main thing is cultural capital, the markers that indicate belonging or prestige (I’m paraphrasing this terribly) in particular cultures/social groups. I’m not sure where I want to go with this yet but given that edvisors struggle to achieve status in HE yet possess significant knowledge of education, it seems like possessing an education or knowledge may not always carry the cultural capital that Bourdieu believes. Or, I assume and hope, he’s dealt with this question and has a handy solution. Either way, it offers a lens to discuss culture in HE, which more and more seems to be a major factor in the questions that I’m asking. I almost feel like I’ve earned my first leather elbow patch. (No jacket yet, I’m not getting that far ahead of myself)