Weekend Coffee Share

If we were having coffee, you’d be squeezing yourself in amongst the folk sitting round the kitchen table: my husband (DH), my step daughter and her friend, my stepson, and me. We are “studying” together. My DH is helping his daughter and her friend with some music homework (we’re musicians but I tell you what, reminding oneself of Fugue subjects and episodes is both doing our heads in). I am trying to finish off an article about the use of video data in qualitative narrative inquiry, and my step song is finishing off his RSA certificate (for alcohol serving). We’re all here with computers and textbooks and notebooks. It’s lovely. It’s the rarest thing we’ve ever done together. Just hanging, studying. My daughter brought home a stray friend (name and gender unknown), and for a few hours today the house was full of quiet busyness.

(Copyright O’Rorke Hall)

It’s a quiet, family house this weekend. Rarely, our event attendance finished yesterday (2 concerts in 2 hours. Mega), and we went to a post event where I drank stupid amounts of champagne and ate pulled pork sliders. Yummo.

This is what I heard last night from the wonderful musician Daniel de Borah:

 

Then we went to this:

 

Today and tomorrow is event free. Almost unbelievable. DH has laid plans to mow the lawn (gentle reminders from me that his in-laws are arriving this week and I’d rather not have them gasp at the new savannah appearing in our backyard). I’m doing minor housework that involves little more than looking at the floor and deciding not to sweep it. We’re sitting around chatting, doing homework and spending time in a room together.

Bliss.

What are you up to this weekend?

 

Weekend Coffee Share is brought to you by Diana, at Part-Time Monster. Join in the conversation!

 

 

Advertisement

Too tired…to…write

I would write a nice long post, but I’m too tired. Here’s what has happened this week (nothing bad, mind).

I haven’t lost any weight. But all my clothes are too big for me, so that’s ok. Even my size 8 pants from Laura Ashley are too big. I’m exercising regularly 3 times per week, aiming for 4, except I’m not really managing 4. We ARE walking the dog quite fast, though.

I’m working very hard. I have started teaching again, so my timetable is looking horrendous. No time for shopping or relaxation. I will have 37 hours teaching per week over the university semester. That’s one-to-one singing lessons and 2 tutes. Ugh. I love teaching, but even I’m feeling the pinch this week.

I’m finishing off a thesis edit and formatting the document, messy stuff. I’m writing a glossary, coordinating staff to get them to add to the glossary, and compiling the results for the Musical Theatre students. I’m TRYING to write the first chapter of our singing book so that I don’t have to worry about that again. This paragraph should be over by next week.

And I’m trying to finish off my PhD.

No way, Jose. So, there it is. And Poppy the dog is gorgeous, but very nippy for a little puppy. Annoyingly so.

And now: bed. Night night.

Back to the grind, in every sense!

DH and I arrived home from our Christmas holiday and we’ve returned to the usual grind of New Year activities. Today, I’m talking about grind. The grindstone, hard work, honing and polishing and refining of New Year’s resolutions and other travails.

I’ve identified four main areas of grind for me. The first is, of course, my health and fitness. Like so many during this holiday season, I’ve eaten and drunk way too much, and I’ve done no more exercise than an elegant stroll down the beach. Well, ok, the stroll was 8 kms long. I’ve probably put on half a kilo, but I’ve stuck pretty well to a pared down diet, with dessert being the main culprit. DH and I were married 5 years ago December 28, right in the heart of the festive season, so all our revelries occur in one week. Cunning, huh. And, of course, far too much drinking. Less than I would have this time last year, but still! So it’s back on the diet wagon (and aren’t I relieved about that!) and I have my first personal training session tomorrow afternoon. Ugh. That’s gonna hurt.

The second grind is to complete the works on the house we’ve organised. For me, that means sanding and painting during VERY hot weather. It’s going to be vicious. But it’s important to get a start on it before our carpenter comes back to build the remaining fence.

The third grind, and probably the hardest, will be to start up my reading and writing for my doctoral thesis, which is due to begin again in February. I had a lovely break from it and I feel much better now, but it’s time to get cracking again. I tried some of it today and boy, all I wanted to do was get up off the computer and clean the house or literally do anything other than study. That was hard. But it’s a resolution I’ve made to myself to complete it this year, as expected. So I’m starting with my methods chapter, because I need to do the reading for Narrative Inquiry methods again, and start to shape the chapter from its rather bloated state at present.

The fourth grind, and one much easier to sustain, will be to begin my singing teaching again. I love my teaching and while I’m enjoying the holidays, I’m looking forward to developing my practice for the year ahead. My times are quickly filling up and then when uni starts: whew! It’s gonna be a challenge to maintain the study and the teaching, as I’ll be teaching about 30 hours per week. In fact, I have to do as much study as possible before teaching begins because it’s so hard for my brain to switch from one activity to the other. I’m dying to do some professional development n singing teaching but until I finish the PhD I won’t have the time – or the money! So I’ll have to content myself with some reading instead this year.

4 grinds. A big year ahead.

 

Feeling like a fraud

Yesterday I had a very positive day of good, solid PhD transcription/analysis, and I ended up feeling a lot better. My panic usually stems from having procrastinated a little bit and then feeling like I am falling behind, and then feeling like a complete impostor because I am invariably then running on a wing and a prayer. I am beginning another transcription today and I have decided to follow the same song from its beginnings at the start of the learning process in week 4, to the end, in week 12. This will give my transcriptions some continuity, and will also show the development of one idea throughout the semester, and how a teacher and a student deals with that process. I am very excited by this decision. While it’s not really very innovative (we see it all the time in  movies about transformational learning, where student 1 has a problem with work piece 1 and then we see the transformation of the process and the end result is brilliant rendition of work piece 1 becoming a springboard for all sorts of other learning brilliance. A comical rendition of T.S. Elliot’s poem Tiger Tiger Burning Bright springs to mind here!), I think it is a rich way of transcribing the events in a way that pure dialogue cannot.

I was reminded by my good PhD friends of the “fraud” weeks, where one has the sensation that one is false, unfit, unsuited to this life of study. I am not an island here. It’s good to chat with others about one’s feelings of inadequacy, and for them to not only sympathise but also empathise with one’s feelings. It is a common syndrome for all of us in this study life.

My fraud feelings stemmed from teaching outside my field of expertise, and having to make connections with areas of research with which I am not yet fully comfortable. I am getting there, and I recently had (almost as if my boss felt my angst) a lovely comment about my teaching from one of the classes. I immediately felt SO much better!

So my days are improving again, and I have no new important family stuff to take care of for weeks and weeks – hopefully nothing until next year. From April 8 I am taking three weeks off singing teaching to focus on my writing, and I am really looking forward to this time. I have little teaching at Uni, too, so it’s all looking like a clean slate for working on my thesis. I am getting a little desperate to finish my data collection, so I am wondering if I should send out reminders to my teachers to locate some ex-students for me for interviewing. I also need to do my final interviews with my participants, and I suspect that is part of why I feel under pressure and fraudulent.