An Informal Report of my Academic Journey over the Last Year
(Mental picture from John May's The Generalist)
Below is an informal report I wrote for a postgraduate workshop at my Alma Mater, which I was not able to heed. Another attendee read it, and apparently it was well received. Some professors even asked that it be forwarded to them, to my surprise. I guess there is something about such candidness about ones frustrations that's quality sharing . . .
Dear fellow scholars,
As you might know, I’ve accepted a position at an English Department halfway around the the world at large, in the obscurities of the Orient; therefore, my attendance at the postgraduate workshop on the 5th of June is impossible. Nonetheless, I would like to give an informal performance of my scholarly progress (or lack thereof) in the pages that follow. To take inventory in this way of the past year will most likely be of critical benefit. I hope that such a written account may also somehow be of value to some of you.
Last year, I registered for a PhD in “Algemene literatuur- en taalwetenskap”, with the objective to focus on Creative Writing. (My Master’s degree research also concerned Creative Writing.) My personal proviso for starting with a PhD was that I must be qualified to do something with it afterwards. The PhD should work for me; and not merely be three, four, five years of philosophising, culminating in a thesis gathering dust in the university library. Not that contributing to one’s realm is not a worthy pursuit in itself. However, with no guarantee of future employment at an academic institution in South Africa, a formal academic pursuit must have other efficient applications.
I started to read up on characteristics that...