End of term paper fever

One of my audiences favourite stories from me is the time my totally gay (boy) friend had me over to dinner in Montreal in the month of January. I started to feel sort of hot and bothered, a bit sweaty and out of sorts, and my heart was palpitating. My condition made me start wondering if I had a crush on him, which was sort of odd because of his gayness, and also since I wasn’t exactly feeling too sold on guys at the time either. So I panicked and hit the road. When I woke up the next day with a fever and the inability to leave my bed, I realized it had just been the beginning stages of illness, not a life-changing crush. The major lesson I learned from that is if you’re feeling funny, you might be in love, but you also might just be sick.

I don’t know what that has to do with anything, but I wasn’t feeling well yesterday in that same way—sort of outside myself, headachey, and buzzy. But since I was just writing all day, there was nowhere to confuse/displace my feelings. Maybe I’m confused over my love of my papers. And I’m still not entirely sold on either direction for my research, so I am sort of going along, “seeing” the applied development paper, and also “seeing” the theory side, where I am trying out a relationship in my human geography term paper, and for my “fake”, or preliminary, comprehensives exam assignment.

My “fake” comprehensives paper is going well because it seems to be coming along naturally. I now have a professor, who is not *my* professor, sending me all sorts of material and helping me out, which got me over the hump of figuring out how all of these bodies of literature connect (lesson, go with the young professors, since they reviewed the material much more recently, and they tell you the stuff to avoid). After I got this help, I’m pretty happy with what I have come up with. This one is becoming a fairly easy going relationship, as materials that I can use just keep streaming in (see photo–piles and piles of books). I’m thinking I’m going to have to navigate a whole new territory to make a research design, since I’m not sure how typical my idea is, but my paper and I feel like we will cross that bridge when we come to it. Together.

On the other hand, my relationship with my development studies paper on the place-based nature of electricity and development is a seriously difficult, iterative process. I think I will be pleased with the results, but it’s feeling *hard*, and complicated. The problem with the world is that environmental “small is beautiful” ideas have been subsumed and possibly corrupted by neoliberalism, encouraged by the forces of “inclusive” capitalism. It’s all so hard to keep track of, but basically, according to my sources, Greenpeace etc. have not done the most bang-up jobs for energy and poverty alleviation. But where did it all go wrong? I can’t answer that one, so I just gliiiiide past it. And what’s the best administrative model to work from? I seriously don’t have time to answer this in the paper since I’m already 2000 words over. I need to do some neoliberal chopping of paragraphs myself, which may compromise my paper’s ability to deliver benefits to the world. Gah. You can see how this is becoming a relationship with too much processing going on. Zap Mama is my coach in this one–her music is helping me hold it together.

If I push this relationship further, the only reasonable research I can come up with so far is to put radical environmentalists of the Global North in an African hut with solar photovoltaic (electricity) technology, with one storage battery, one television, one cell phone, one light, and two dollars a day (hey, that’s generous). They will have an assignment to learn something new (such as a language), and will write journal entries recording daily activities and usage of electricity, which will serve as my research evidence. We can see if they too watch television and use their cell phone before powering their lights by how well they get their assignments done. I will compile this evidence to evaluate whether environmentalists really think that developing countries should “leapfrog” technologies, and really survive off that solar photovoltaic technology, and whether it really is a poverty alleviation tool.

I think I will put that in the presentation to class tomorrow.

Inter Pares

Inter Pares is a great organization working with southern partners. I have followed their work for about five years or so, a good friend is on staff, and a professor I admire greatly is on the board of directors. You can learn more why I admire their work so much from their mission and mandate. I appreciate that they are tackling some really important issues in the places that matter–for instance (I’ve mentioned this before) they have been working across Canada on a biofuels campaign, linking biofuel policies to food security and environmental impacts. If you want to donate to a development organization, but are not sure which one, Inter Pares is a worthy recipient.

Here’s their video for their “Give Big” campaign.

Stereotyping me / her

Am I really so young at heart? I have now been carded twice at the Uptown Waterloo liquor store, even though not only am I not even close to the age of drinking (19) but I am also not even close to the upper limit age the LCBO sets in terms of who they card (25ish). What I don’t understand is that I got carded by two different women, both of whom were middle aged, and I always assume middle age women know *everything*, including how to perceive your age accurately. This is the one demographic I would never assume I could pull anything past. For instance, in Cuba, the security personnel in museums are…middle aged women. Are you really planning to mess with someone who looks like mom or grandma? I am pretty sure that that was Castro’s angle on staffing decisions.

I asked the second one if this was some elaborate joke on me, and she said no, and still insisted on seeing my ID which showed that I am more than a decade older than someone who is not allowed to drink. She was very surprised and told me that I look 21. And then she said maybe it’s because I’m all bundled up in my winter clothes. Hard to say.

I’ve been wondering if it’s the hoop earrings which have made a come back in my accessories, since I was recently referred to as “cheap labour” when introduced as a student at a conference even though I had just stated that I’d been working as a professional for several years. And then at a book launch I got asked if I was a student, and then how to get cheap labour from students, so I at least referred him to my professor this time so he can hire other students. But I feel like the cheapness was again implied towards me. So, maybe those people think I’m much younger than my age too, but unfortunately 21 is not even a compliment younger–I think it just makes me seem immature.

When I told codejill about the second carding incident, she texted back that “Kool kidz underdress 4 wintaz”. I think that means that they mis-stereotyped me since I was wearing clothes, not taking them off. Sure sign of oldness. And I mis-stereotyped them. I guess not all middle aged women are as perceptive as my mom. Or maybe it simply operates along the lines of genetics.

Anyways, this carding is becoming a nuisance and a serious time waster. Especially since it’s cutting into my time to smoke and drink beer with the other kool kidz at the cemetery by my house before curfew.

Better is the enemy of Good

Once I finally felt settled in to Kitchener, and got over the hump of the first hard paper, things have been running smoothly. I have my routines, I have my stores, I found my bar, I have friends who show up at my parties, and invite me places, and even pick me up and drop me off from events in cartown.

At some point, it started to feel like it’s going too smoothly. I think it was when I got really good feedback on my reflection on social science’s use of complexity theory, and I let out a huge sigh of relief, which made me realize how intellectually intimidated I am by this professor. But I also realized that it means that I’m not necessarily feeling challenged enough, or intellectually intimidated by others. I worried that if I feel this way now, I might not feel challenged enough later. My term papers seem to be going smoothly. I have no fear of making up my comprehensive exam reading list—it seems like it will just happen, rather than feel like a challenge. And I got worried that I would not be challenged enough while preparing for my comprehensive exam, hence prepared to do well. Part of this is that I haven’t found another student whom I really “click” with on topic/strategy, which was the case of my master’s, and it felt really lonely at that point in time, especially when no one could give me substantial feedback on my work besides my supervisor. And he was so hard on me that I had a love hate relationship with our meetings. I worry that my advisors might not give me that slight gut wrenching feeling I need in order to excel.

I started to second guess my decision of where I am, which I think is pretty normal. I remember when I made my decision of which school to go to, I knowingly turned down someone who seemed to be a big scholar (actually, a couple I guess). It seemed justifiable at the time for so many reasons. But in my research for my comprehensives exam reading list, I keep coming across those names, and references to their work and pedigree keep surfacing. So I got really entangled in the thought that I’m doing good, but maybe I could be doing better. And maybe I thought that better was to bring in someone else from somewhere else (i.e. an external), which I can do for my comprehensive examination, but I can’t do it for my committee leading to my final defense, as the external is chosen without my knowledge, and everyone else is internal to the university. Or maybe better was somewhere else, because maybe I’m just not going to get the challenge I’m seeking here. I wasn’t really sure where to set the bar of achievement, or how high, and it felt like such a lack of a clear path with no rubric to follow, and very few people to talk about this to.

I spoke to a few friends about this, which I sort of labeled as a lame, elitist panic, but still my panic, and very real to me. Maybe a panic because I didn’t quite feel like I was fitting into the working world in the positions I held, and now I have a bit of fear that I can’t carve out my own niche in academia. I know I define a large part of my identity through what I do because I like that sense of accomplishment when I can get it. Or because I had given up a secure salary (even if not a secure job…), so I felt like I gave up a lot to be here, and as Rule 5 states, I should *be* here. Everyone I spoke with did a good job of listening and at least acknowledging what a concern this was to me, which made me start to feel better.

One friend in particular though, really gave me some excellent advice and has shown me how to turn it around for myself. He started by pointing out that “better” is the enemy of “good”. Because I’ve got it really good right now, I do. I have a really supportive set of classmates and some good exchanges. I’ve chosen courses based on whether it will train me as a researcher, and how to work within geographic epistomologies. I have an excellent apartment, with a great space to work and relax, with great landlords who are also friends. And I’m not afraid of politics biting me in the ass at this school, which is key. He pointed out that to a certain extent, this is what all PhD’s suffer through: by the time we’ve hit that point, we’ve figured out the mechanism to churn out papers at a the required level of thought, and we’ve learned the tricks of framing issues within our own disciplinary understanding. And the loneliness is really common, but really, it’s just a signal that I need to push forward to another level by creating new mechanisms to guide my work. He reminded me that it’s really up to me to create my own challenges. So, maybe I shouldn’t see my paper as what my professor will think, but start to think if it as a possible publication or conference presentation, and challenge myself through those venues. And that’s where I’m going to have to start making my own community for feedback and challenge. Which all seems like common sense, and I was sort of leaning that way already, but I really wasn’t connecting it all together that way and seeing the steps towards my ultimate goal. Instead, I was sitting around with “Now what? Is this it?” in my head. He also pointed out that regardless of where I was, I would probably hit this feeling at some point, so it’s better to stay where I know I’m supported.

What’s funny about self-diagnosis is that it’s impossible to do sometimes. A few of my dear friends are academics moving through PhDs, and I have seen this in them before. The questioning the institution, questioning their committee, or the intellectual isolation/loneliness. I’m not sure I’ve had such good insight into what it all means before, though. Leave it to the business strategy friend, who pointed out that the big thinkers, or innovators, at some point separate themselves from the goings-on around them, and figure out different way to push through, produce, and relate. As much as I hate to admit it, I did learn a lot from the 7 habits of highly effective people (although, why do they always have to use multinational corporate types who “strike big deals” as their examples, rather than cool artists, intellectuals, and entrepreneurs who manage to keep afloat despite societies which don’t support them enough?), so I suppose that I should be picking up some more biographies/strategy readings on these types of thinkers to guide me through sometimes. Suggestions welcome.

What to do with a good name?

I came up with this idea as a child, probably my first of many acts of questioning social norms, but also common sense since my last name is so damn cool. Glad to see that other people are finally displaying common sense.

Embarrassing academic

I am starting to learn the lifestyle of the smart and confused, i.e. academics. I had a totally, totally, totally embarrassing week, and I totally, totally, totally blame academia. So for those of you reading this as you are debating the PhD experience, heed this warning. I have learned that there are checks and balances, where you can look smart on paper, but not necessarily in real life.

I was working *so hard* last week and this week writing abstracts, reviewing and presenting articles on empirical research, and the 40% seminar and paper on the unmentionable book. I really wanted to finally have a party (clothing swap with the girls, followed by potluck) at my house so I could get to know my school friends better with the obvious intention of making a good impression. I had mentioned it to about seven people, so it seemed only fair to just send out an Evite invitation on a break from intense thinking on Monday for a party on Friday. I promptly forgot about it and kept writing everything that was due by Thursday.

On Wednesday, I realized that my blinds to the huge window on my bedroom look pretty see-through with the lights on. Oops. Not that that has to do with academia, but it heightened the feelings of embarrassment of the week. Or maybe it does have to do with academia, because I’ve simply been too preoccupied in my ivory tower for two months to even bother to wonder how much of me my neighbours can see.

The trend continued on Thursday, when I went to school still feeling but pretending that my discovery on Wednesday didn’t happen. For some reason, in class, and then at trivia night, my cohorts teased me about how they read my Evite as a clothing optional party. As I edited my paper in class and during my break, I dismissed their jokes since I figured they made something up to tease me about, and pointed out that not everyone had to participate in the clothing swap and reassured them they should come. When I got home, my landlord handed me something that I can’t even mention that I had left in the dryer. My cheeks continued to burn, since I *always* triple check the washer and dryer precisely so that this type of thing does *not* happen! Once again, thoughts of my stupid paper keeping me in the ivory tower, rather than using my street smarts surfaced.

The next day I went into the Evite website to send it to someone I had missed, and I saw that I had labeled the title of the party (hence, the title of the email) “Potluck and optional clothing swap”. I blinked and re-read it. Yes, I actually wrote “optional clothing” as the title to the party, and it sat in my friends’ inboxes, including people who stay nearly *completely* covered for religious reasons, for days. I noticed that several people (who didn’t know me very well) had viewed the Evite, but had not responded. I believe I even invited people to bring their kids. To. A. Naked. Party.

To try to undo the embarrassment damage, I sent another reminder to the party, writing that no, I’m not that exciting, and I did not mean an optional clothing party. And I edited the title, and sent the reminder….and the title DIDN’T CHANGE. I sent a reminder with the *same* title. Argh!

Prior to this experience, I was already the co-butt of many jokes in the cohort. While some people think it was endearing and just injected some necessary hilarity into the week, I know that *other* people may bring this up in the final debate of the semester to try to get my off my game. I realize the only thing to do is to tell the joke first, so I look like I’m totally cool with my blunder.

Slides and Stereoscopes

I was asked to post my post-structuralist disaster slides just to see what they look like. I am not so sure they are going to make sense (you can click on them to see them more clearly), but I did make a few adjustments and colour coded one. The first is relatively straightforward, if you like words like nexus and compression. The second slide reveals the paradigm the best, but it was originally intended to be animated as I spoke to the points. So, you might want to view the different mobility systems as surfaces, the arrows as directions to look through those surfaces, or from one surface (mobility) to another, and finally, the two way arrows and the bracket type things simply denote different interactions, and the words the contexts or effects they produce. Just don’t think too hard!

Simple grid

Paradigm

Since those slides are confusing and not the best, I thought I would redeem this post and display  *these* slides of my Ismael book presentation, so far my best ones of the semester, and the imagery was aided by my PhD cohort. I believe my speaking points were “look at the dude: he is wearing sunglasses and a housecoat, drinking milk from the carton in the supermarket. Imagine how disconnected from the world he is.” I think the students really got it. And the gorilla? It took me a while of searching to find such a wise looking gorilla (although no idea as the the accuracy of whether it is the correct type of gorilla).

Beyond post-structuralism, geography is making me broaden my horizons even more. I have to learn how to use a stereoscope for tomorrow in order to examine aerial photographs with the students. The photos are sort of like those pictures that you had to stare at with your finger between your eyes so it would go blurry, and then you see in 3D, only the stereoscope is thick lenses, like coke bottle glasses. It sort ofmakes me nauseous to stare through it, but according to the professor, this is like a rite of passage for geographers. And now I might actually have something to say when I tell people I study geography, and they immediately start talking to me about maps.

Contributions

In what must have been an attempt to eliminate the theoretical and conceptual overload I’ve been feeling, and maybe revealing how ridiculous I think all of this analysis can get, I came up with my own silly titles as if I had achieved eminent thinker status (since they can clearly do whatever they want). The following is the life of TheChrysalids as submitted to Transactions or Progress in Human Geography, or, my next conference presentation titles.

• Fruit fly migration. Compression of fruit fly space and expansion of human place: introduction of the green bin programme to Waterloo Region.
• Transnational doll migration from the global to the local: towards a synthesis of family, place and space.
• The Million Mile Muffin*:  mouth-watering miracle or culinary catastrophe? An investigation of materials and the role of space in baking global warming.
• Energy prophet, not for profit: an inspirational framework of virtuousness for global climate change action.
• Is it complicated or is it complexity? The misunderstanding of complexity theory as metaphor in the social sciences: emergence and paradigm in motility and mobilities.

*Please note the Million Mile Muffin is attributable to codejill and LL.

Traction

On Wednesday it snowed. During my jog I encountered an icy hill, but I just sucked it up and kept going despite less traction. This is pretty much what PhD land has been like this week. I turned the ringer off on my phone, and just pushed through my seminar presentation on Mobilities, which became all encompassing and somewhat problematic.

When I originally took it on as my human geography theme, I did so because I understood it could easily relate to my work in natural resources, as it would explain much about the transportation sector which I have done some work on in the past. However, it unraveled into post-structuralist brain equivalent of a ballerina trying to make sense of belly dancing. This is borrowing a metaphor from my belly dance instructor who has been explaining that belly dance has no names for movements as well as physical stances that don’t conform to formal training, which makes it a really hard art form for formally trained dancers, who expect form and structure, to enjoy. Anyways, it was hard for my logic and rigor wired brain to get through what turned out to be a paradigm based on a book that read like stream of consciousness writing.

Urry based his mobilities theory on eight key theories related to movement (Simmel drawing from Heidegger, complexity, sedentarism, fluidity and nomadism, materials, migrations and diasporas, pleasures, motility) and five key types of mobility (corporeal, physical movement of objects, imaginative, virtual, communicative). He pulled all of these together by drawing on complexity theory as metaphor (borrowed from the famous Nigel Thrift), and then wrote a long history of all of our key types of mobility defined as series or nexus systems. All with the objective of showing the necessity of understanding space and place as relational through the complex interactions of the mentioned concepts and systems. Pretty much ignoring the key theories and hoping I would not get asked anything about them, I pulled together a presentation trying to describe how this attempted paradigm relates to key areas in human geography (remember, it’s all about place and space). I designed a slide showing a conceptual diagram as an attempt to translate Urry’s writing into a more digestible format. My diagram attempted to map out how all of the key elements relate, and showed some of Urry’s examples of relationships between mobilities systems, social, economic and political issues and, relating it all back to geography, how these effect a relational view of space and place. I commented that even when used as metaphor, complexity theory is not really properly utilized in this paradigm, and my initial reaction is that motility theory shows complexity’s key concept of emergence better than the new mobility paradigm.

None of that made *any* sense to you, did it? It still doesn’t make any sense to me, which is why it felt like it felt like a slippery slope. I have to say this was one of the few moments when I have walked into a presentation feeling *completely* unprepared, and unsure of whether I missed the mark completely or not. And yet my professor told me that my conceptual diagram actually captured the whole book (all 300+ pages) quite nicely, and pointed out that the book had no diagrams (that’s right folks, none). He asked me to come up with what a concrete example of an automobile nexus system (Urry’s prediction for automobile futures) would be. Luckily that was the *only* question I had thought of beforehand, and he was pleased with my answer of car shares. He also pointed out that Urry was probably aiming for a post-structuralist conceptual framework, which may be why he did not outline very much in terms of methodological considerations. Which makes me wonder how hardcore post-structuralism has to be—does it mean that the author cannot provide logical threads throughout their writing? I don’t think I will delve into anymore to figure that one out.

After the presentation one master’s student asked me if I can help him with complexity theory as it relates to governance, and another said I related it to the class well, and a third said I should send my conceptual diagram to Urry. So I suppose I did hit the mark somewhat, and people felt that they had learned something from what I had to say. One of my PhD cohorts asked me if I felt like I had just completely wasted my time or if I was found it useful to do something that doesn’t completely relate to my comprehensive exam preparation. I’m not sure about that one. I learned more about complexity theory, and how social science has borrowed it from the math and science domain, and how I can critique its use from that perspective. Maybe it was a useful exercise as a way for me to make sense of the science/social science divide and miscommunication between the two, since my work tends to bridge the gap.

Some thoughts I didn’t present. I was surprised Urry did not read Ivan Illich’s work on transportation. Also, too many uncritical pop culture references on complexity were referenced, which is problematic for theory by legitimizing work that is not rigorous enough for academia, and giving it weight over other sources (and this may be another entry at some point). Combined with what I considered a metaphor that was not clearly presented, at the moment I don’t see enough connection between complexity theory and the mobilities paradigm. I think they could be combined more elegantly.

Finally, in case you are curious, Urry presents two automobility and fuel dependence futures as his conclusion: either conflict and global collapse leading to tribal trading, or a digital panopticon to save the earth from global climate change, full of carbon quotas etc. Heartwarming and fuzzy feelings.