Aha experience

Day job: Writing, writing and writing – only 5 pages left to go of my theory chapter and it’s a good one this time. It really makes sense. It’s easy to read, interesting and, wait for it… punchy. I write all day, walk in the late afternoon and read at night. It’s working well for me.

Light-bulb ‘aha’ experience: For every word or sentence I write, I have to leave out as much as they contain. I can’t say everything I want in my chapters. A friend told me I can always write articles for journals later and say what I left out. Knowing that makes writing easier for me.

Extra-curricula activities: I’ve been attending some free lectures at the local university, where I am not enrolled, on Migration and Identity. My supervisor said not to bother with that and just write. I suppose she’s worried I’ll get side-tracked and write another 80 pages of irrelevant stuff. Write-write-write is all she wants me to do right now.

What I don’t feel like: I don’t feel like a fraud anymore. I don’t feel as if my dissertation is a family-writing-hobby gone wrong. I believe again that my dissertation is important, that my data is unique.

Concerns: My family has lost faith in me. They think I’m going nowhere, and have been for the last 9 years. I’m sad that they can’t see how I lost my way and then found it again. They see the ironing piling up, the floors dirty, the evening meals getting sparser and me glued to the computer under piles of papers. I suppose the proof is in the pudding. I can’t wait to serve up the pudding of my completed bound work. I’ve given up on striving for a PhD conversion but I don’t feel sad about that anymore. I’m happy, really happy with the idea of completing my masters dissertation.

My distant supervisor: Being an external student, I never see her face-to-face. I just get her cryptic/borderline-abusive emails, her slashes-of-handwriting across my notes via snail mail and a kind-laughing-voice on the phone. Is she really my supervisor or is she my mother? She’s always there in the background, entrenched in my past, connected to my life whether-I-see-her-or-not. She's always ready to praise, support or criticise. When my mother died, did my supervisor take over? Am I her pseudo-student-daughter? When I told her my mother died she told me her mother had just died and she missed her more than life. When she saw my children, I told her how hard it is to be a mother and a post grad student at the same time. She said she loved them and envied my motherhood, that I had it all. Once on a residential visit to the uni she came up behind me while I was at the computer and kissed my head.

Next task: Write about multiple identities, orbiting in and out of different cultures and languages, playing the balancing act of culture-switching and code-switching. I can do that with comfort and ease.