cold discipline for solo travellers
From the category archives:
It goes something like this:
I was in the house when the house burned down;
I met the man with the thorny crown;
I helped him carry his cross through town;
I was in the house when the house burned down.
Or maybe like this:
Send lawyers, guns and money;
Dad, get me out of this!
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Regular readers may remember that I started my employment in the wonderful world of bridging education (or, as it is known more kindly and more gently in Australia, enabling education) teaching a compulsory paper called New Zealand Studies, designed for international students. Alas, this carefully-crafted paper was largely reviled by those who took it, its spectres perhaps too much like the less savoury aspects of their socio-cultural education back home. These reservations were shared not only by some of my colleagues but also by powers that be, and eventually the paper, like the way of all flesh, was restructured out of existence.
I don’t miss the daily grind of trying to facilitate the western-style critical thinking of students whose learning priorities were largely elsewhere, but I do miss the field trips. The visit to a mid-Canterbury dairy farm in which half my class and I had suddenly to leap out of the way of flying excrement (flying at speed, too, as the cows stepped on to the rotary milking machine) remains in memory, as does another day on which we alighted, two busloads of us, at Nga Hau e Wha marae only to discover we were a day early for our booking. That short trip ended with me running up to the entry to the marae, crying cease-and-desist to students who were running ahead of me taking photographs of the pou and wharenui, sans powhiri, and thus formed part of my history of absurdist problem-solving, if not pedagogy’s finest hour.
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The enrolment requirements for doctoral students have tightened all over the country since I was such a one. My more-than-four years spent spelunking in various imaginative destinations productive and less so was made possible by generous funding, an indulgent supervisor and a postgraduate office that would not, in my experience, scrutinise what students were doing too closely unless their supervisor(s) abandoned their support. (The vulnerabilities of students working within a system are not the subject of this post). This left me free, in the time-honoured fashion of the humanities, to follow research hunches until such a time as I had an argument that hung together. Not everyone I worked alongside was so fortunate; some did the former without achieving the latter.
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Over at The Hand Mirror, Julie raises the question of what a citizen’s to do when encountering personal questions about one’s fertility, pregnancy, and family plans more generally, and the general social judginess and boundary-crossing such queries often evoke.
At five months pregnant, I am somewhat in the thick of such experiences myself; hence using my own webpages rather than posting a comment on-site to consider the matter. My impression has been that conversations around fertility and natality fall into two broad general groups.
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Despite being New Zealand-born and having lived in this house for nearly eight years, I have done little in the way of renovation and redecoration. There has been some moving of beds, some purchasing of couches, and some routine maintenance, but not a lot else. I tend to caution, renovations-wise, I think, since in the back of my mind there’s always a worry that I’ll run out of money, time or taste. I haven’t minded living in a house that’s in effect a period-piece, since most fixtures have stayed in reasonable order, save some harrying by the dogs.
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This spring-and-summer pregnancy is already twice the length of its winter predecessor, and as different, thereby, as two things of the same kind can be. Not least among these differences was the way in which we passed the first eleven weeks in a kind hopeful lockdown, wary to put too much pressure on the future to carry hope that might yet be redundant again.
The brain, the spine, the beating heart that was our gift before Christmas opened the door to a different kind of experience, territory as unknown as the very notion of being pregnant was the first time around. The tremendous good fortune whereby my morning sickness (a most inadequate moniker) receded by New Year has given me back my old ability to think about anything other than how terrible I feel (and the accompanying certainty that nobody understands or cares sufficiently) and something of a hopeful forward-gaze.
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By curious coincidence, Miss Megan Wegan and I share not only the same name but also the same birthday, which a quick perusal of the archives here will reveal is soon. Readers of the other Megan will be aware that she has not been having the best time of late, but also that her zest for life incorporates a keen sense of fashion.
As one who has previously been dressed by proxy at Megan’s blog, I thought it timely that I attempt to return the favour.
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Keep your comments in your pockets
12 August, 2010
in O internet, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, the social round
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