So far, my posts have favoured astrology. I have devoted much time and interest into the study of astrology over the years. You could regard it as core to my private side; along with my interest in a range of esoteric, and often times hermetic, subjects. I have more 'public sides' too. These public sides are what you will likely read about if you google my name. Twitter... LinkedIn... the University of Edinburgh... You will read about a social scientist, an academic and a practitioner in several fields.
The public - private divide is a dichotomy I struggle with. There can be elements of performativity in what is public, and thus what is private I often regard as more 'authentic'. I have often felt this way. I never really get that 'work-life' balance right. Too many opportunities for work to become ever-dominant and enroach on my private life. Very rarely is it the other way around. Maybe I am conditioned to believe that it is my individual failings that caues these two weights to never be fully in balance? It is also more socially acceptable to 'winge' that my work is taking over my personal life, then it is to say that your private life is enroaching on to your professional life. But, I always feel my private side is more important and I don't like myself very much when I'm 'forced' to become a working machine where my more private interests and sides suffer.
But, this public-private dicthotomy is ever-more blurring with the increasing entrenchment of Covid-19 restrictions into our lives, i.e. caring duties are fighting back and demanding more stage presence. This is definitely a strand of a debate that I should resurrect in more detail at a later date...
This context (Covid) has drawn to my attention even more sharply how difficult I find it to reconcile the more 'public' and 'private' aspects of myself. And made me realise that, historically, I have needed to keep these aspects separate. Overall, I think this blog is an attempt to deconstruct this binary; to see both sides as equally important and that it is 'ok' to bestow one with more value sometimes throughout my life. And to give myself a break from feeling inner conflict when these weights are out of balance.
So, I've talked about astrology. A fundamental part of my more 'hidden' side. So, what about my 'public' side (my 10th and 11th house perhaps, with the Moon and Chiron... sorry, couldn't help it 😉). Well, what I get paid to 'be' is a youth, community and international development academic, practitioner and consultant. I'm also a qualified and experienced ESOL teacher. Before, and during, academia I had done various forms of youth and community work (for about 10 years in total). The impetus for taking such a path was undertaking an internship in the US after I finished my finals for my MA in Sociology (major) and Anthropology (minor). In the modules / courses I was studying I had increasingly focused more on issues that affected adolescents and young people. This ignited a want and need to work with young people. So, I ended up working for just over three months with marginalised young people from the inner city areas of Chicago. It was a life changing decision for two reasons: (i) it cemented that I wanted to work with young people on the issues that affected them, and (ii) that living and working in other countries gave me unprecedented joy. I have since devoted my entire career to doing both these things.
I have gone through some profound career changes in the last year-and-a-half. 18 months ago I was employed by a university in the north east of England as a full-time lecturer, having worked there for 8 years whilst undertaking a PhD. I had a toilsome relationship with this institution, which impacted not only on my understandings of academia, but in my own belief of being a 'good enough' academic. When I joined this institution the Vice Chancellor made clear his serious ambitions to change the culture of the university and make it just 'as good' its Russell Group neighbours. Over the entirety of time I was there I witnessed some dramatic changes; mostly involving vague and conflicting discourses over what it meant to be an 'academic'; and changing relationships between staff, and staff and students. Sometimes, it didn't deel like a nice place to work at all. I definitely felt it lacked a real mentoring culture as staff were mostly left to their own devices to find, or even form, their own supportive structures. Navigating myself through all that whilst doing a PhD really took its toll on me. But, I 'succeeded'. I learned the ropes (mostly by zig-zagging), got my PhD, won accolades for my teaching and achieved REFable publications.
But, I needed a break from it all. In all fairness, I knew I needed a break several years before I took one. So, I decided to go back into the 'field' for a year as a youth, community and international development worker. Where I might still have been, in all honesty, if Covid hadn't struck. But, I came back to the UK, gave academia another 'chance' and managed to get a job with a more prestigious university in a field where I actually have the right professional qualification. So, it is a new start of sorts; one where the 'imposter syndrome' that is omnipresent in academia may have less of a grip on me. So, over the last week or so I have been starting to seriously ask myself: what does it mean to be an academic and can I reconcile this with what I need it to be? Especially to stop this polarising where I can almost resent my 'academic' public self from encroaching on to my more esoteric, 'private' self?
Not long after entering into my new post, I had a an illuminating discussion with a currrent PhD student, and part-time lecturer, who described this new era of her life (i.e. being an academic) as the era of becoming a public intellectual. I have to say, this term struck a chord with me, more than the term 'academic' has ever done. There is quite a bit of discourse around what a 'public intellectual' is. Some discourses conflate it with 'academic', whilst others don't. A public intellectual is actually defined in the OED (which us 'academics' shouldn't really use as a citation). It is: '... an intellectual who expresses views (especially on popular topics) intended to be accessible to a general audience.'
Such a definition has both strengths and weaknesses. Its strength is a clear emphasis on what a public interllectual writes (or says) should actually be 'accessible' to as general audience. A weakness is taking-for-granted that readers share a definition of what 'an intellectual' actually is. There are many definitions of an intellectual, thus discourses (like those with academic) that can often contradict and conflict with each other.
From my own experiences, discussions around 'intellectualism' can automatically assume that an intellectual is an academic, or at least has a PhD. Some dissenting noises may be made around this broad brush attempt at definition, but I would suspect there would be more nods. Yet, for some, the PhD is not enough. That's just the beginning; it being more a passport to work (sometimes precariously) in academia. Thus, intellectuals are more firmly linked with the title of Professor; someone who is often regarded as having more scope to 'freely' do research and pursue their intellectual interests.
But, not all academics (or even non-academics!) can wait around - or even 'waste' that much quality time - to become a Professor to get such 'legitimacy'. Even then, with imposter syndrome being as rife as it is in academia (see above), being given the title of Professor may not automatically confer you with the confidence needed to be a public intellectual. Thus, I have decided that the time is now and, like everything else, it will take practice and lots of learning curves to get better at it. I have a PhD, a lot of knowledge(s), and technically I'm on 'track' to being a Professor (although, in all fairness, a lot of the career decisions I had made in the last 18 months are not exactly reducing the numbers of stones on that path). So, how to I use what I have to become a 'public intellectual'?
Well, you need to communicate effectively to 'general audiences'. So far, I have had quite a few blogs / journals. I've kept journals since before I was a teenager. Most of these journals are actual physical journals that you write in using a pen. Sometimes, I can have as many as three journals on the 'go' - a general one, one for 'monitoring' whatever issue it is I am focussing on, and one for writing and/or academia. There have been other physical journals - astrology, meditation, dreams, etc. I have also dabbled quite seriously with online journalling. I kept a Livejournal for many years (introduced to me by my US friends and I initially used it to keep in touch with them, before getting involved in other groups and networks), a PhD blog and online travel blogs. But, I've never really had a 'public' blog that has focussed on presenting key aspects of my salaried work to a general audience. Even my PhD blog didn't really do this. It was more a documentation of my PhD journey; written similarly to my travel blogs,i i.e. focussing on the changes I have gone through - and personal reflections on such changes - rather than the actual work I was doing.
I think I initially started this blog - The Professional - Personal Nexus - to focus more on the work that I do, but also to blend it with those personal reflection skills I have cultivated (well) over the years. I think it's fair to say that my first posts on this blog have been much more reflective in nature. But, I can also see how I could have developed more the 'work' aspect of them; by treating the subject matter itself as knowledge that readers would have been interested in knowing more about. In all honesty, I really don't write for other people. I can be quite stubborn that way. I started writing at a very young age (around 8 if memory serves me correctly) which was surprising as I hardly read at that age (no books in the house, you see. I didn't start prolifically reading until I got pocket money; which was quite a few years later). I would become very absorbed in writing and could concentrate on it for hours on end (I'm sure I am forgetting being distracted, but I still used to write A LOT). It was where magic occured and I could create alternative realities. I wrote several books, poems and short stories from the ages of 8 until 18. I was encouraged to self-publish one such book, which I did (with financial support from a certain individual who very much believed in me). But, I've never really written anything for anyone else; with the exception of my PhD thesis (which was a chore, really). So, I'm going to have to step up my game here if I really want to commit to being a public intellectual.
So, about what does a public intellectual write? About subjects, fields of knowledge and disciplines in which the public intellectual has significant knowledge(s). To provoke action, thought and change. So, it is about what I teach on, the conversations I have with my students, friends and family where I put forward my own views that can often differ from theirs. So, it can be reviews of books, movies, public policy or articles written by experts (including those released on AstroDienst... I will commit to sharing my (substantive) knowledge on astrology more widely). So, I'm going to do that more on here. And see where that takes me.
I am actually quite excited 😃
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