The Realities of UK Academia for Teaching-Dominant Staff

There's another round of UCU industrial action taking place throughout February and March this year. 18 days of strike action in total over these two months. I'm not going on the picket lines today (virtually or in person) as I actually have today 'off' as TOIL because I took on 'extra' work on a day that I don't normally work. That was authorised ('official' so-to-speak as it was a full day's work that wasn't on my workload), but it has made me think of all the other days that I've been forced to work on that I didn't get 'back', i.e., Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. It has also led me to question my now 11 years of experience working in Higher Education as a teaching dominant staff member; particularly my working patterns. 

My verdict is that to be an academic with at least 50% of your time dedicated to teaching (and all the associated duties with that) means that, inevitably, you have to volunteer a substantive portion of your non-work time to get everything done. This is not breaking news - it has been widely discussed in the media for quite some time now. This is especially the case if you have a multifaceted role (which a lot of teaching dominant academic staff do) where you both lead and contribute to different things. Technically, I'm a 0.8 FTE academic. This means I should only work 4 days a week, 7.5 hours a day. Sometimes, this can be indeed possible. But, the norm by far is that I work over my hours - often logging on around 8am in the morning, taking a very short lunch break (99.9% of the time I eat at my desk and work while I have lunch), and logging off around 7/7.30pm, depending on if I am cooking dinner and/or if I'm travelling from the office. The majority of my teaching is online as well, which means I pre-record a lot of my lectures and I have to design tasks (which involves setting up discussion boards etc) for my students. Because the university lecture capture software seems to be both regionist and classist (I have a thick central belt of Scotland accent), I often have to 'fix' some of the subtitles/captions on my lectures (this isn't on my workload to do this - but I do have students from across the globe and some with learning adjustments that need the captions/subtitles). I don't have time to fix them all (this would take hours - my lectures are often 90-120 mins long with breaks in between), but I will spend around 20-30 mins checking the subtitles, normally at key points where I think it is most needed. All in all, recording lectures, waiting for them to upload (you can't really do much else but respond to emails while this is happening - my RAM can't cope), requesting machine generated captions/subtitles (this can take a while as well), fixing them, and then uploading everything on to the learning platform for the students (with PPT slides, discussion boards and tasks) can take a whole afternoon. And this is just for one lecture - often I deliver 2-3 lectures per week. That's 2-3 afternoons a week for just doing this (I only have 4 afternoons a week I should be working).

This isn't even counting in lecture prepping time. I normally set students four pieces of reading for each lecture at postgraduate level, and two pieces of reading for undergraduate. Good teaching practice (quite rightly) dictates that lectures should be primarily using the reading we set the students in the lectures. So, we have to read this material (and take notes) before we start constructing the PPT. This takes 2-3 hours (sometimes 3-4 if its postgraduate level and the material is quite 'tricky' or long). Then, there's constructing the PPTs which I think takes the longest. You have to structure all that material (and often have to cut a lot of material out to make the lecture a decent length, so you go through versions of lectures - often getting smaller rather than bigger with each version). Then, go through it all and make sure it is 'accessible'. This can take at least another half-day. So, for new lectures that last 90-120mins, you are looking at 12-15 hours of academic time needed to do this. We get 8 hours on our workload. On average, I'm volunteering 5.5 hours of my time for each new lecture I deliver.

And then there's delivering 'existing' lectures that either you or a colleague delivered in the past. Regardless if it was you or someone else who delivered that lecture in the past (and there's PPTs for it available), you get an hour to prep for each hour of existing lectures you deliver. So, if the lecture is 1 hour, I get 2 hours and 10 mins to prep it, record it, upload it, 'fix' it and design all the tasks associated with it. Even if it is my own previous lecture, I still update it, which involves having to re-record it and all the tasks associated with that. It's very rare that I re-use lectures (I did reuse two lectures last year as I had 3 lectures to record and/or deliver face-to-face a few weeks and I ran out of time). But, you need way more than 2 hours to refresh yourself with the set reading, look for any new material to incorporate into the lecture, actually update the lecture, and to go through the lecture notes you made to remind yourself of your key arguments. You end up volunteering another 1-2 hours for each lecture. And then there's the lectures that a colleagues delivered and you've picked up. You still only get 1 hour to prep this, but this can take hours to prep because you have to read all the set reading (some of it you are reading for the first time) and you often don't have the lecture notes that accompany the PPT. If it's a pre-recorded lecture, you can watch your colleague deliver the lecture and take these notes, which often takes at least 2 hours. If it's not a pre-recorded lecture, you need to do the notes yourself from the reading on the slides and, often, this is much more work that just designing this lecture yourself as you have to chase up each citation on the PPT, find the key points, and then make notes for the lecture. It's honestly like delivering a new lecture from scratch. It takes at least 5 hours to do all this prep work, and then you have the recording or delivery of the lecture. So, you are volunteering another 4 hours of your time for each of these lectures.

60% of my contract is teaching or teaching-related activities. This includes all of what I've just discussed, plus marking (I'll come to that), course organiser duties (designing learning platforms, course handbooks, exam board preparation, responding to student queries on the course), dissertation supervision and personal tutoring (I'll come to these as well). So, technically, that's 16.8 hours a week, roughly, I have to do all this. You can see that even if I have one new lecture that week, I'm already reaching this quota. But, that doesn't even count course organiser duties (on my workload it works out about 25 hours for each course - so that's designing the learning platform, doing assessment tutorials, exam board preparation, responding to student queries, having tutorials with students with learning adjustments, organising the marking and moderation, and arranging the moderation for the external examiner all in 25 hours. On average, I end up volunteering at least 10-15 hours more for each course I organise, and a lot of this usually involves working with students with learning adjustments, late approvals or special circumstances that isn't priorly factored in. Last semester I was course organiser for two courses, and this semester I'm course organiser for one course. That's 75 hours of my workload for course organisation, with an additional 40-55 hours volunteering each year to do this role.

The marking is another nightmare; arguably as much of a burden as lecture prepping and what I give most of my voluntary hours to each year.  For a 1500 assignment, I get 15 mins to mark this, give feedback and upload the feedback. There is no additional time if a student gets in touch for clarification of their mark and/or comments. For a 3000 word assignment, 30 mins to mark. 4000 words, 45 mins. If there is academic misconduct, there is no extra time to deal with this. This academic year I have marked 1500, 3000 and 4000 word assignments. It takes me at last 1.5-2 times the allocated time to mark each assignment, especially if the student gets a mark lower than 60% as you spend a lot of time explaining (and referring to the script) how the student could improve the grade for the next assignment. I've had 3000 word assignments where I've written 1000 words of feedback to the student because it was particularly problematic and I wanted to help them as much as possible improve for the next assignment. This ended up taking me three times the amount of time I was allocated in my workload to mark this. Each year, I can volunteer at least 40 hours a year marking course assessments at undergraduate and postgraduate level. This is not counting Master's dissertations which are another beast.

The dissertation supervision and personal tutoring are difficult to quantify because it really depends on demand. I am a personal tutor for 20 plus part-time Master's students and I get 1 hour for each student, which means 20 mins a semester. This includes email traffic to and from the student. It also involves meeting with students to discuss personal issues, special circumstances applications, interruptions of study, return to study and planning course choices. Some students, it's very light touch and may be as little as 10-20 mins a year through emails. Other students, it can be very intensive and with some students I have spent at least double this time. With Master's dissertation supervision, we get 15 hours a year for each student and in my experience so far, it is in reality more like 20-25 hours per year, especially when you are going through their final draft at the end and making some 'light' suggestions. It can take longer than 3 hours to read the full draft itself and make notes. 

The reality is that teaching dominant academic staff are volunteering a lot more hours to do what is actually on their workload. And the rest of the workload is the same. It takes more hours in reality to do the programme director, research lead and scholarship work. And then there's the meetings and training that goes into the 'citizenship' black hole and half of them don't even end up on your workload in the first place. All in all, I work way over my 28 hours a week and I have been doing this role for over 11 years. I've gotten 'better', i.e., faster, at things, but I can never match the tariffs. The only real defence we have is to push-back on meetings (both with staff and students) but this inevitably ends up in complaints. And when you explain that you literally do not have any time in your diary for the next three weeks to fit anything in because you've micro-managed everything to get the basics done, you are told to 'manage your time better' as it is in your workload (and often it isn't) so you should have time to do it.

But, the real pushback is academics refusing to volunteer and only give the amount of time they are allocated for tasks. This will involve lectures being half-finished, assessments not fully marked, leaving meetings actually on time (I was recently in a meeting than ran over by over an hour), and stopping supervision and personal tutoring as soon as the allocated time runs out. So, it is the student who will suffer. And that's why academics volunteer their time, because they want to give students a good education and they are making up for a system that doesn't appear to value that - it just wants as much work out of academics for as little as possible. I think this needs to be stressed in the current UCU dispute - if academics didn't volunteer things would only get half done and we would have to stop providing provision as soon as a student came to the end of their tariff. 

It's the workload that is the killer for me. The pay, pensions, precarity and inequality is for another post. But the workload really is not fit for purpose and inevitably results in academics volunteering their time to 'humanise' a system where students are numbers and expected to conform to a 'ideal student' model. It puts staff in increasingly punishing situations where we are front-line and students want / need more than what is allocated but we can't give anymore because we're already going way over and above to deliver the basics. I'm tired. I'm fed-up and I don't think I can sustain this any longer without major overhauls. I don't think they are coming any time soon, unfortunately. But, we are fighting. And putting ourselves into debt in the process while, still, volunteering our hours to either do what we can for students in the minute spaces we have left and stand in picket lines protesting. 

These are not good times.

Some book reviews: The Shadow King and A Woman in Amber (plus The House of Leaves so far)

It's been quite a while since I last posted here. I had begun getting myself into a habit of posting here a couple of times a month, which is good for me. But, May and June have turned out to be extraordinarily busy months, and my attention has been diverted elsewhere. Well, into more than one 'elsewhere' to be exact.

First up though, I want to share that I did actually manage to set foot on a plane and spent a week in a country that's not one of the UK four nations. At the end of April, we flew to Fuerteventura and had an amazing holiday. It was the right mix of everything - going on day long trips, long walks, playing sports and then lazing by the spa pool reading. It was exactly what I needed, but it was a nightmare carving out the time for it. University just isn't what it used to be (hence why people are striking). Things don't start to calm down until the end of June now, with assessments, personal tutor meetings (choosing options courses for the next year) and exam boards. So, of course, I ended up doing double the work before I left and when I got back because it just doesn't stop because you do. But, the holiday was exactly what I needed.

I managed to finish two books when I was on holiday: Maaza Mengiste's 'The Shadow King' and Agate Nesaule's 'A Woman in Amber'. I hadn't planned that these two books would cover such similar content in such contrasting ways, but there you go. I had bought Mengiste's book pretty much as soon as it came out in early 2020, being sent back to the UK from Ethiopia due to fears over the pandemic. I had read Mengiste's previous novel 'Beneath the Lion's Gaze' while I was in Ethiopia and loved it. I thought she was a great writer and had a unique feminist-esque lens that she expertly utilised to analyse quite emotive Ethiopian history. But, I never got round to reading 'The Shadow King', having given it to two other people to read while I was finishing off other books. The book gained some traction by being Shortlisted for the 2020 Brooker Prize, which Douglas Stuart's 'Shuggie Bain' eventually won; another book I have in my bookshelf that I haven't gotten around to reading. Maybe I need to go on holiday again?

'A Woman in Amber' was recommended to me by one of my students, and it proved to be very difficult to get a hold of. I eventually got it second-hand, having been out of print for many years. So, in Fuerteventura I managed to make my way through both of these novels. First up are the similarities. They are both about war and invasion, and its aftermaths, from a woman's perspective. Both women are from nation states that imperialist European nations are trying to invade and colonise, i.e. the Italians in Ethiopia, and the Russians and Germans in Latvia. Mengiste's novel stays rooted in Ethiopia however, while Nesaule's spans Latvia, Germany and eventual emigration to the US. Both novels are also rooted in lived history - Mengiste's in the Ethiopian rebellion against the 1935 Italian invasion (although there are some chapters in the future, but these are inter-sped throughout), and Nesaule's of the Soviet and German armies fighting for European territory during WW2. Mengiste's story is based on her own family history and a lot of research she undertook thus based across the spectrum of tightly and loosely on actual people who lived through those times. Nesaule's book is autobiographical, and is split into two halves: the first living as a refugee in Europe, the second as an immigrant to the US.

Overall, I preferred Nesaule's book by a country mile, which I was not expecting. Mengiste is a great writer. She definitely has a flair for words and for conjuring emotive imagery and dialogue. Her book was also an illuminating piece into the senselessness and barbarity of European 'foreign policy', and the pride that Ethiopians have of their country (having taken part in one of the yearly Battle of Adwa celebrations in 2020, I can well imagine this). Overall though, it was just too long. It took about half of the book to start building up to what 'The Shadow King' actually was / was going to be. This time was spent instead on characterisation. But, even at the end, I felt some of the characters needed a bit more development; particularly some male characters. Still, Hirut is a great character, and both Aster and The Cook are engaging paradoxes. 

It took equally as long for Nesaule to make the connection between the title and the main characters, but a bit more care was taken to make sure you could put the pieces together when the right moments came. Also, I felt the characters were much more richly written. Perhaps this is the true difference between fiction and non-fiction characters, and it is a chasm that is very difficult to bridge. Also, due to Nesaule's longer time span, the development of the main characters (particularly the author herself) was much more on point for me. I could foresee the heartbreak and misfortune that was coming to the main character, foreboded from her own early experiences and family trauma. I actually cried at the end of the book, seeing for once a true glimmer of a different coloured lining that could let the author break the spell of her past. Mengiste's ending packs a punch, but there are a lot of strands to tie together and I'm not convinced she fully manages it. It also lacked the emotion of Nesaule's, which made me think how performativity and authenticity can differently manifest in writing. Maybe Mengiste was reaching too big with her wallop of an ending (bringing back in Haile Selassie to boot) thus it fell a bit flat with me. I found Nesaule's smaller scale and unique personalism (including the deep reflection of how much trauma had imprinted on her life) much more haunting. Nesaule wrote a second autobiographical book, set after the events of this book and I've already downloaded it for my Kindle. Again, one needs another holiday to keep on reading...

Although, that isn't technically true. Over the last 2-3 months (minus being on holiday and working very hard) I have been working my way through the genre defying 'The House of Leaves' by Mark Z. Danielewski. This was another book recommended to me, this time by a creative writing lecturer. I'm a huge horror fan. I blame my diet of horror movies when I was a kid and reading the entire Point Horror book series in my tweens. By the time I became a teenager, I was reading Stephen King, Clive Barker, Patricia Cornwell, Thomas Harris and Anne Rice religiously. Horror finally started to subside into a preference for academic (Sociology and Politics mostly) and self-help autobiographical / spiritual books in my late teens; but I do pull back very strongly to the genre of horror and feel myself being like a teenager all over again when I get my hands on a very good horror novel.

'The House of Leaves' (HOL) really is something else. I've still about 1/3rd to read, and it really is a challenge. In a good way. There are three core narrators in it (although there are chapters from other character's POV as well) and you are not quite sure which of them are actually telling the truth. Because of this, it slightly reminded me of Bret Easton Ellis' 'The Rules of Attraction' - but these novels are very different beasts. All narrators in HOL may be writing about something that doesn't even exist in the first place (which plays throughout with your mind). HOL also doesn't fit neatly into the category of 'horror' although I can't really think of any other genre it more belongs to. The 'horror' part is exceedingly well written, using experimental font, text and spacing to atmospheric effects. But, it's also laugh-out-loud funny. The author has an exceptional 'go' at academics throughout and some of the footnotes had me howling with laughter. Academia can indeed get like this. Sometimes, it does get quite cluttered though, and there are two stories vying for centre stage and they can interrupt each other to the extent that I lost momentum to keep reading. Still, I keep coming back to it. And this afternoon will be no different. I really would recommend it, and I'll write a full review when I do finish it.

So, some reflections on books I have read this year. I have read well into double digits of books this year already, encompassing fiction, non-fiction (often autobiographical, self-help literature) and academic writing. After the review of HOL, I'll do some academic reviews next. I'm in the middle of reading Thea Riofrancis' 'Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post Extractivism in Ecuador'; an edited volume titled 'On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis', and about to start two books on the relationship between capitalism and psychoanalysis. When I finally do die, I wonder how much of my time alive will have actually been spent reading. I also wonder if I will regret any of it (I suspect not) ;)

Youth, Music and Political Commentary

I've had an unbelievable amount going on in my life, including a major life transition. So, the pace of life right now is quite frenetic and I have been spinning quite a few plates in the air. In the middle of all this I experienced two events which have set other, related events in motion. The first event involved an old work colleague getting in touch to say he had found my 'Touching From a Distance' book that I loaned him over 15 years ago. 'Touching From a Distance' is the biography of Ian Curtis from Joy Division and the last section of the book contains all the lyrics he wrote for the band before his death. It arrived at my workplace and I have been marvelling, once again, at just how good a lyricist Curtis actually was. The second event was going to a Killing Joke gig at the Glasgow Barrowlands (still one of the best music venues ever). Throughout that gig I had nothing but respect for Killing Joke who began their existence as a band a few years before I was born. I didn't find that gig a nostalgia trip but instead an in-your-face political commentary of the times we are living in.

For a bit of context, both Joy Division and Killing Joke formed in the late 1970s and were predominantly inspired by punk music, but also grounded in other music genres. They felt they had something to say in the dark times they perceived they were living in (the Winter of Discontent was building up and they were on the precipice of a huge political and economic change which was Thatcherism and neoliberalism). They even toured together and are still regarded as two of the first post punk bands in Britain, getting their ideas from art, politics, cinema and literature. Both bands loved the energy from punk music, but found it was too manufactured and was failing to live up to its aims of subverting expectations, challenging listeners and, crucially, being authentic. 

Both bands shaped my teens. I never got into Britpop, although I admit now with hindsight it produced a few classic albums. I grew up political, born into a traditional working class family (both sides of my family were all miners, lorry drivers, steel workers and manual labourers; not to mention the women being domestic labourers and low-level labourers such as cleaners) with a twist (my parents separated when I was very young, and I was one of the first children in my town to grow up in a single-parent household headed by a woman). My family were die-hard Labour supporters and as anti-Thatcher as you could get. Britpop never encompassed for me what it was like to grow up feeling like you are on the absolute fringes of society, receiving horizontal violence on a daily basis because of the double-whammy that you were poor and from a broken home. I wasn't an angry, young white man so even punk, although I loved its energy, never fully connected with me. It was bands like The Cure, Joy Division, Killing Joke and Siouxsie and the Banshees that drew me in and were able to encapsulate a darkness and emptiness that I felt inside, whilst still connecting to a larger narrative of being a puppet of cruel, political regimes. These bands were also teachers and mentors, connecting me to literature, film and philosophy that would exponentially shape my education choices and (zig-zagging) career path.

The dominant demographic at the Killing Joke gig this month was definitely older than me (or at least looked a lot older than me), but there were also smatterings of young people; some of whom seemed to know / recall the lyrics better than I can. What struck me throughout that gig was just how political it all was. Killing Joke are one of those bands that go on a hiatus when there is not much controversy happening in Politics, and then come back with a vengeance when things get really murky. Their leader and lyricist, Jaz Coleman, may have ingested one too many conspiracy theories along the way, but right now he sounds more contemporary than many artists out there. His scathing political commentaries are on point and he expectorates an unfliching counter-narrative that has remained remarkably consistent throughout the (many) years. This makes him a surprising anchor in a world that has been increasingly devoid of a coherent left critique of the state of Politics and the economy.

For my birthday last year, my partner bought me both the tickets to the Killing Joke gig and Chris Bryans' 'A Prophecy Fulfilled' which is a compendium of the impact Killing Joke have had on music, art and culture from the perspective of the band, those who know them well and have been influenced by them, and their fans. After the gig (he is now a fan), we have also watched documentaries and interviews with Killing Joke, including gaining news that I'd missed that members of Killing Joke and Joy Division had collaborated in the early 90s and had recently released this collaboration (K÷93). What I found interesting is their insistence that we are on the precipice of another zeitgeist, which is in tune with my previous post about a paradigm shift, interregnum and/or a populist moment being our current reality. They are adamant that this current state of affairs cannot continue and it's up to the arts to bring about a political, economic, philosophical and cultural shift to lead us to a better tomorrow as the world presently implodes within itself.

This got me thinking about music and youth, and what is emerging from this scene. It made me wonder if we are about to witness another, early, Manic Street Preachers that will come along and pave the way of counter-culture but spit it out in their own, unique and insightful way. This ruminating led me to watch an ok 'No Manifesto: A Film About Manic Street Preachers' which was released in 2015 but I'd somehow missed it until now. A truly political band that were once on the pulse of the impact of politics, economics and culture on the psyche of the young (re-visit 'The Holy Bible' - by God they don't make them like that anymore). Like Killing Joke and Joy Division, they saw music as an avenue to expose this impact and as a way to unite against it. 

I do hope another Manics are finding their sound right now. We need them. I don't pretend to know how young people are feeling right now more than the young people themselves. I see the world filtered through the lenses that have shaped me throughout the years, and these are not necessarily the same lenses (nor experiences) that young people are using right now. I look forward to hearing what is going to emerge and I will be looking out for it (interestingly, I just discovered a band called Enter Shikari but I think they, as polemic as they are, might be a generation away from contemporary youth in their own lenses and experiences). It really is time and the conditions are made for it.

Interregnum, populist moment, or paradigm shift?

This year I have had the absolute pleasure to be heavily involved in the running of a 'new' course for the MSc Social Justice and Community Action, of which I am the programme director. The course has been on-the-books since the inception of the programme, but, so I'm told, it has never run for a variety of reasons. The course is called Learning for Democracy and it has been an absolute joy to run, even in the middle of intense industrial action. In fact, being locked into a period of upheaval like this has, arguably, augmented the content of the course and made it even more relevant.

At its heart, the course is about the paradoxes inherent within liberal democracy and how different models of democracy all - implicitly or explicitly - attempt to reconcile such paradoxes to make democracy more relevant to the demos. It also examines the recent crises in neoliberalism and capitalism, and challenges its students to ask the question: are we currently going through a crisis of democracy. And, if so, what can / should be done about it? The students have a plethora of models and tools at their disposal, and they need to consider, as informal or formal educators, what are the 'best' ways to respond to such crises with different learning groups?

Co-organising this course in the middle of intense industrial action has been a very educational process for me. The typical recording of asynchronous lecture format had to be radically re-thought as industrial action has left us very little time between lectures to actually do the preparation for the next one - all of this course is new content and material and any academic will tell you this can be extraordinarily time consuming. So, about three weeks in we realised we had to do something different or we wouldn't be able to deliver a substantive amount of this course. We started lectures as dialogues, between two of the teaching team each week. I've been involved in every dialogue since they began and not only have I found it a great way to teach, but the 'bouncing' ideas off each other during recording has really provoked some stimulating discussions about very important issues we are all going through, whether we recognise these or not.

What has been equally exciting is the students working together to produce learning for democracy projects, each to tackle issues that are important to the groups they work with IRL or prospective groups they want to work with. This has led to some very rich discussions about issues that groups are facing all over the globe and the barriers that our students face implementing projects such as these. What has been discussed at length is a growing preference across some parts of the globe of 'removing' politics from education and the powers-that-be creating increasing sanctions for teachers / facilitators who don't. This has provoked some interesting discussions about if this is contributing to what Chantal Mouffe calls 'a populist moment' and, even more worryingly, leaving citizens unprepared for the lure of populism and/or authoritarianism?

All involved in the course have been struggling for years to find the 'right' way forward for politics. Charges of corruption are espoused in most parts of the world and there is a admission that democracy has suffered from the expansion of capitalism, neoliberalism and globalisation which leaves politics increasingly vulnerable to market interference and, potentially, domination. Within such processes, it becomes more difficult to separate political ideologies or even recognise when political parties and/or political leaders are espousing contradictory or pick-n-mix ones that can - and do - have disastrous consequences for citizens across the globe. Within such an 'interregnum' or populist moment it surely makes more sense for educational processes to engage more with political education rather than less.

But, less overt engagement means that politics is still being transmitted, but in taken-for-granted ways which are treated as 'normal' and part of the 'natural order'. This is torturous, where people 'know' that the systems they are embedded within are unfair but they lack necessary toolkits to be able to evaluate and analyse these systems in a systematic way. It's not easy to do this and there are debates galore about what is the appropriate role of the educator, how much knowledge they should 'transmit' and how much to enable students to develop their own toolkits, even though they may be problematic. There are other debates as well, around partisanship and around what models you can use in educational spaces to enable debate and difference, and whether it is the best outcome to come to a consensus or not. Nevertheless, it really is encouraging to be able to have these conversations and hear about the great work that is being done around the world, despite shrinking spaces for this type of work to flourish.

The optimist in me hopes we are moving towards a paradigm shift, a shift where a new or existing model of democracy - or something very much like democracy - materialises to get us out of this interregnum or populist moment. Like Zizek, I don't think populism is the answer. It requires the political - and politics - to be excessively simplified to build questionable alliances that benefit some groups more than others. We need more political education, not less, and in a critical way. There are no easy answers but, in many ways, this is exciting. A new horizon is waiting to be seen and embraced, somewhere just out of sight. I need to keep focused on that and keep questioning or I would become increasingly pessimistic as authoritarianism incessantly creeps. I'm in the right place to do that though, surrounded by great people. There is a lot, for which, to be thankful.

Rolling With The Punches

I watched a video on Youtube recently about the Monkey forecast for the Year of the Water Tiger 2022. For those not au fait with Chinese Astrology, we are currently going through a Water Tiger year, and I am a Metal Monkey. The Monkey and the Tiger are enemies, nemeses so the speak. They are also opposites which means that they actually overlap in lots of characteristics. My mother is a Tiger so I know all about this. I love my mother very deeply, but we fight and disagree about almost everything. It's a difficult relationship to sustain with the clashes, but the other person's viewpoint is crucial when big crises arise. They see what you don't and vice versa. They are indispensable.

Your nemesis year happens when you are (or about to turn) 6, 18, 30, 42, 54, 66, 80, 92 years old. So far, they have been growth years but the pace can be exhausting, leading to the following year (of the Rabbit / Cat) being a recovery year. Indeed, at the tail-end of my last Tiger year (2010) I contracted glandular fever and the following year was spent recovering from it. The Tiger year before (1998) I was watching a primary caregiver succumb to cancer and she finally left us at the end of that Tiger year, and I spent the following year on mood stabilisers and in psychotherapy. The Tiger year before that my parents had just separated and we had to live with elderly extended family until my mum was able to get her own house. What I do remember was lots of instability and anxiety.

Unsurprisingly, I have been quite anxious about how this year is going to go. It has already thrown me a couple of curve balls (striking at work, pension cuts, etc). I usually consult astrology on a fairly regular basis to see what's coming up and what I need to work on. I have been apprehensive about doing that this year, because the forecast is usually along the lines of 'batten down the hatches, a storm is coming and it will wipe you out!'. I was actually surprised to hear that although this will be the case in a lot of respects this year, actually this is a very good year for Monkeys. We have a lot of stars working in our favour, more than any other sign. It will be a tough year as unexpected barriers will keep popping up to challenge us. But, we will have enough resources and support to not only get through it but to thrive.

There was an expression that the astrologer used that I thought was brilliant. She said, 'Monkeys, this is the year you learn to roll with the punches'. I thought about what that really meant, and I found it very insightful. The majority of the time, we see barriers as blocks; as objects stopping us from going in the direction we want to pursue. But, what if the barriers are telling you that you need to go off piste for a little while and develop in other directions? What if you actually commit to learning about how the barriers can actually develop you? Instead of putting all your energy to hit an immovable object and keep bashing your head against it, you learn all about that object and the skills that are needed to overcome it; and learning about yourself all in that process? There's a very different conception of agency there. It's like being tied to a huge weight in the sea leaving you to be bashed about by the waves. But, you are unlikely to drown. Someone will eventually find you and the weight will be removed. So, take that rare opportunity to meditate on life and yourself, and keep the faith. It could end horribly, but the chances are it won't. Roll with the punches, they are trying to teach you something you haven't yet learned to the necessary degree.

That's my motto for this year. Things are going to come at me, but it's how I respond that is crucial and, particularly (I have learned from previous Tiger years), how I expend my energy. My aim is to be empowered, not disempowered, from everything that comes at me. To not see myself as a victim of some sort of cruel fate, but as water adjusting itself to get through the cracks to get to the other side. The only way out is through. Monkeys cannot beat Tigers. They can tease them mercilessly and get a few one-ups on them, but they can't beat them. They are too fierce and will go in for the kill if provoked. The truth is, Tigers go for larger prey anyway. So, fight alongside the Tiger. Learn its lessons and ally yourself with its mission for the year. Tigers draw their strength from adversity, and take their time to regain ground on battlefields and territories they have lost. They wait and pounce at the right opportunity. They also play the long game. They are mavericks, and use innovation to move forward bit by bit. Be more like the Tiger. It's going to be punch after punch after punch. But, roll with the punches and learn the lessons. If you do, you'll come out of this year in a better frame of mind, body and spirit than how you entered it.

Social Media, Activism, Politics, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Reading and Writing

The last few weeks have been tough in many ways. I expected them to be more grounding in some respects - time removed from day-to-day working to engage in activism work. That part, overall, has been extremely rewarding. Over the last few weeks I have been picketing and Striking on behalf of UCU (University and College Union) UK for five fights: pay, casualisation of workers, equality and diversity, workloads and pension cuts. What has been wonderful about all that activity is the camaraderie I have directly experienced with other staff at the University of Edinburgh. We've had the time and space to talk about our jobs, our lives, our values, our needs and our wants. Some of that has been framed by university expectations. But, most of that has been negotiated by us - re-assessing ourselves in this highly charged moment in time and having the space to think about alternative futures.

In the last few weeks I've also spent more time on social media than I have in a long time. Striking UCU members have been very active on social media, getting a particular (and more accurate) narrative out into the media about the calamitous and quite frankly, ruinous situation in which academics are increasing finding themselves. There have been some great posts that I've shared on Twitter about the realities of the work we do, and about how much of that is unrecognised. But, also expected. Academia is not immune from a prevalent instant gratification culture where we feel pressure to do everything now rather than stick to realistic goals that allow us to have a decent work-life balance in order to be mentally strong. We are constantly spinning a multitude of plates in the air and trying to carve spaces to work on important pieces while balancing a formal workload that is crushing in itself. The onus is left on us to put down boundaries that always leave people dissatisfied. In that process we also have to constantly remind ourselves that we are not failing but coping as best as we can. It can be demoralising.

Then there is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I have also been following this on Twitter and LBC (Leading Britain's Conversation) and doing pieces of work in the background to help where I can. At the beginning of this week it all became too much. I found myself scrolling through Twitter with a buzzing going on in my head and feeling very lightheaded. Once I came off Twitter, I found it very difficult to concentrate on anything for even short periods of time - I was constantly checking my phone to see if there had been any updates. Not only that, but Twitter's algorithm had chosen both UCU and Russia / Ukraine posts as issues that I 'wanted' to focus on, so my home page was over-saturated with new takes, news and opinions. So the cycle would begin once again and I would be locked in the virtual world for even more time, coming out feeling even more lightheaded and struggling to concentrate.

It's really a no-brainer that my conclusions from this 'experiment' is that social media isn't very good for my mental health. Of course, social media is the vehicle and is not (fully) responsible for this tumultuous time in which we find ourselves. But, I do appreciate more now why there are informal guidelines about using social media in ways that are not detrimental to mental health. So, I've been taking a bit of a step back the last few days - from both social media and the picket line - to try and ground myself when I actually have the opportunity to do that because of strike action. It is equally the time to consolidate as it is to act. The former includes giving yourself enough space to think through the realisations that have been coming at you, not solely stoking them and reifying them until they become mental prisons.

What I have found more useful is taking the time to listen to podcasts, watch debates and read key texts that are all directly related to the moment in which we find ourselves. Where the underlying issues and structural mechanisms are exposed and there is a narrative of change. Where we can connect these particular issues to more broader issues that have been permeating for some time and there is debate how we can get out of this. I've found the work of Yanis Varoufakis and Rebecca Solnit quite illuminating. Whilst I have read some of their work before, it was just the space to listen to debates they've been having recently which gave me some hope, albeit a bit morose hope. The issues that we are all facing today are not new. But, in between the punishing analysis in these debates, both also speak of how they cope with having all these thoughts and realisations, and how they keep going. Self care, unsurprisingly. Putting down boundaries when they need to. Rebecca Solnit was especially good on this, talking about how there are many emails that she doesn't even respond to. She can't. Though many people want her time and expertise, she can't give it out to everyone. She has to be selective, to give herself the scope to keep writing which seems to be as important to her as breathing. I'm sure parts of Rebecca Solnit would cease to exist if she couldn't find the time write regularly.

I've also given myself some 'me' time and been listening more podcast discussions, this time about creativity and writing. I've also followed up some of these podcast discussions with reading some books on the importance of writing for mental health, and about how to write. I have been concluding for a while that most academics do in fact enjoy writing, but it is the gun to your head to do it in very particular ways that has taken the joy out of it for some of us. It has become one other thing, on top of everything else, to 'achieve' and through which we are judged. Everything that I have been listening to and reading has underscored the necessity to not write for these reasons. Writing is an expression of you and sometimes it reflects back to you thoughts or ideas you didn't know you had. Start from there, and if it becomes something more than that, then that is just a bonus. Easier said than done with current pressures, but crucial to stress. In both meanings of the word.

Reflections on Academia and Taking Action

It is widely known that academics up and down the UK have been striking for the last 6 days, and we will continue to strike for 4 more in a more staggered way. There are five fights currently in academia: pay, workload, equality, casualisation of labour and pension cuts. In summary, academic work has become more precarious, is less financially rewarded (our pay has actually gone down in real terms for over a deacade), we are doing more and more voluntary labour (as a result of crushing workloads and pressures), women and minority groups are still coming into academia lower on the pay scales than their white, middle-class male peers (even if they have the same qualifications and experience) and are likely to be overlooked in promotions, and now our pensions are going to be cut by 35%.

I've been working in academia since 2010. My journey started in Nicaragua and I was paid as casual staff. I then returned to the UK and had two short-term contracts: two years and then three years. I was finally offered a permanent post in 2017, satisfactory to a one-year probation. I passed that and then was submitted for the REF (Research Excellence Framework) in 2020. The future looked bright. But, I have to be honest in that I've always smelled something rotten at the core of academia.

I've had an ambivalent relationship with academia from the start because of this. There are many paradoxes inherent within it. Senior management teams tend to be white, middle-to-upper class, middle-aged men who are either promoted through the ranks or bought-in. But, the stories are very often the same - ex-colleagues will discuss how they put themselves forward for every opening when it became available and, often, were not very good at the roles they obtained; leaving the crap for others to mop up. Often women, minority groups and younger, more precarious, staff would be left to do this mopping. On top of everything else they had to do. In addition, the 'vision' that these teams would have for academia, academics and students, as a whole were often out-of-alignment with what those on the ground really needed and wanted. More and more business talk entered the equation, and staff were pressured (some would say bullied) to fill very particular roles of 'academic' to fit this vision. Which, surprise surprise, were very often out-of-alignment with the values and principles that the staff had entered into academia with. 

There was an often talked about 'split' - where academics performed what was expected of them, but they used whatever time was left to pursue the things that mattered to them. This could be small scale research, scholarship, student support and guidance, building relations with outside professionals, and being active in their communities. Soon, that was also incorporated into the role of an academic. But, not just one part. ALL of it. To the point that you were forced to work crazy hours to get it all done. No surprise, the joy was gradually being eroded. It's like doing your favourite thing but constantly having a gun to your head while you are doing it. You will begin to associate what you love with what you fear. Which can become traumatic and eat away at who you understand yourself to be.

Fear is all around us. We are currently living through a peak in populist politics which has fear at its very core. Media is all around us and elevates fear even more. Then there is precarity. Few of us know how we are going to support ourselves in retirement, if we ever get there. I am directly experiencing a parent who does not have enough money to make ends meet and watched the indignity of that. She can't understand my own fears because, to her, I have it made. I have a PhD. I speak three languages. I have been a go-getter since day one and lived in seven different countries. I have a Masters in Social Research am also a qualified ESOL teacher and youth and community worker. It is incomprehensible to my mother (who never finished high school) that I could end my life in a similar way to her. That's not the narrative we were all fed.

On the picket lines there have been many discussions about leaving academia and entering into industry. Most of us could earn higher salaries out of academia. What is heartening is that the majority of academics on those picket lines did not enter into academia for the salary. But, most balanced this with aspirations of stability and a good pension. They have gone through grueling PhDs, precarious contract after precarious contract, worked 50 hours a week often for years to get to a position that feels stable and at least offers a fairly comfortable pension. That is gone now. And academics are, quite rightly, angry.

So, the question is: do we stay or do we go? If we choose the former, we can't do it without fighting. Most of us want a prosperous future not only for ourselves but for our students. We can't leave things as they are, with those at the top creaming off even more of the cheese while those at the bottom scramble for the leftovers. In addition, this will happen outside of academia as well. Pay and conditions will continue to be eroded for those on the lower to middle rungs under failing neoliberalism and hyper capitalism.

The only thing left to do is fight. It's not just a fight for academia. It's a fight for all to have a decent standard of living and some security in our later years. It shouldn't be a fight. But, that is where we are at. 

 STORY JUMPERS PART 4: MENSAMQUE

Part One can be found here

Part Two can be found here

Part Three can be found here

Seated at a row of makeshift tables huddled together, eight beings were all staring at Finn in anticipation. All of them were majestic in their own way and undeniably otherworldly. There was magick here and Finn could feel the warm energy of the bonsai tree pulsing and radiating towards this group as Finn walked towards them.

 

With each step Finn’s feet and legs became cumulatively lighter which resulted in Finn almost gliding to the far left-hand side of the tables. A breath-taking sight sat before Finn. Finn’s gaze then involuntarily dropped to the little sign in front of them that said ‘FIDEM’ and ‘MD’ in gold letters. ‘FIDEM’ Finn whispered to themselves; ‘FIDEM’. This word, and its sound was now reverberating throughout Finn’s body. Flashes of images permeated Finn, from archives unknown. From these images Finn witnessed many people utter this word with authority; people from the Age of Religion where there were countless, bloody and, frankly, pointless wars throughout our terrestrial land over how to best teach the origins of, and the path to, The Source. Still, even in their starkest differences they had all shared FIDEM… FAITH… which had become almost impossible to reconcile. Finn was thankful they no longer lived in such times.

 

Finn’s eyes then shifted to the ‘MD’ and immediately visualised a large, grandfather clock made of solid, deep red wood which contained a circle of symbols that were in the same font as ‘MD’ on the sign. The clock was chiming in a low, abrasive and sustained chord; with both hands striking ‘XII’. Finn recalled these were Roman Numerals and lifted the device from their other hand to investigate of this was indeed the case.

 

‘No need’, a resplendent voice boomed from directly in front of Finn. ‘We are old; very old; and, still, we come together as one.’ 

 

The face was indeed old but it was luminous. There was no way to discern any exact features on this face as they were ephemeral. FIDEM’s eyes were neither blue, green or brown and yet they flashed all three as they observed Finn closely. FIDEM’s skin was neither light, dark nor all the shades in-between, but it was also all of them. On FIDEM’s head there was a headpiece that similarly morphed into a small cap, a skullcap, a turban, a veil, a scarf, a headdress and then nothing. Their robes were also magnificent in texture and in colour, but these too transmuted to the point that Finn forced themselves to conclude that FIDEM was actually wearing all of them at once.

 

‘We are old too,’ said a voice that was not FIDEM’s. “But, we are young. And we also come together as one.’

 

Sitting to the right of FIDEM was what could be best described as an amalgamation and personification of a number of local animals that had co-habited here for many years. At first sight Finn saw a human-sized otter and its back eyes staring amusedly at them. Its face was small; with a large, rounded black nose and long, ash-white whiskers. Then suddenly it metamorphosised into a gigantic white swan with an enormous, and elongated, orange beak encircled in black which also circled its dark eyes. The being morphed again, into a huge brown and white hedgehog who was clearly uncomfortable sitting in that seat; its pink feet dangling in the air, searching for any earth into which it could sink. Its sign said ‘MAGUS’ in gold letters, with another set of Roman Numerals following it.

 

‘We control the elements still not fully known to humans,’ MAGUS explained and that was when Finn realised that there was no sound coming out of any of the animal mouths. They were communicating telepathically to Finn. Finn wondered if they could hear Finn’s thoughts.

 

‘Of course we can, FOLLIS,’ they said, referring to Finn. ‘And we would like that you choose us. We understand trees very well. We can show you their origins, history and how they have adapted to different lands. We can also communicate with them.’

 

‘FOLLIS?’ Finn asked themselves. ‘Who are FOLLIS?”

 

‘Why, you are,’ explained that identical voice inside Finn’s heads. ‘You are at a crossroads where you can embark on eight different journeys. You may or may not choose wisely.’ 

 

‘We also understand trees, both the living and the dead. The dead belong to us,” disclosed a different, funereal voice to FOLLIS’ right. FOLLIS turned towards this voice and saw what could be best described as ‘the dead’ sitting further along the table to the right. Like the others, their form was transparent yet repeatedly shapeshifting. The bonsai tree in FOLLIS’ hand was pulsating once again and engorging towards these beings now and FOLLIS began to unconsciously float over to where they were sitting.

 

‘We are MORTUUS: FLUMEN,’ they explained when FOLLIS finally arrived in front of them. ‘We have all been consumed by the river and own its power now, along with the power of death. We would like to show you that power.’ FOLLIS could see that this being before them had, indeed, been consumed: all of their eyes were pale, sunken, irritated and lifeless; their skins were all light hues of grey, purple and blue, and their clothes were tattered, faded and terribly creased. FOLLIS knew that all this being’s forms had drowned in that river FOLLIS saw earlier today.

 

FOLLIS was confused, light-headed and felt like they were going to faint. FOLLIS became consumed by the need to sit down before they fell down. But, then, another voice boomed to FOLLIS' right...

Another Year, Another Birthday...

This year my birthday falls on 'Black-Eye Friday', aka the day/night where most work colleagues will go out and celebrate Christmas together and try to shake off the year in preparation for Christmas. I'm unlikely to see most of this type of behaviour this year, with increasing Covid restrictions. But, I thought it was an interesting premise for a post.

So, yes, I turn 41 tomorrow. This time last year I was in the middle of changing jobs and I had just unpacked from a weekend in Newcastle knowing full well lockdown was about to hit again. This time 2 years ago I was packing my bags to leave Ecuador and return to Scotland when we didn't even know Covid-19 existed. Today, I have repeated some of the pattern. I have just spent over a week having a 'staycation' with my boyfriend, after we re-booked our week-long holiday in Fuerteventura due to the rising Covid cases. I have returned to my flat in Leith and unpacked. A life still in movement but also in stasis. 

I want to come away with something crass like 'I don't feel 41' but then again, what does 41 feel like? All I really know is that I am here and I'm about to go through another milestone. This is where you feel the liminality, even if it is artificially constructed. You look back to look forward, standing at a vantage point that allows you to see both in particular ways. I feel both content and a sense of foreboding. The contentness comes from the cumulation of life choices I have made sequentially throughout the years, not knowing for sure if I was moving in the right direction but buffered by a core belief that it was. I do think I was. Each year I remark at how much I have grown and how much I have learned, about myself, others and life. This has been a real growth year in terms of my career, self-knowledge and interpersonally. I'm a more rounded version of who I was even a year ago.

Still, there is trepidation. With Covid I have had to 'ground'. I have had to accept additional responsibilities and live in, and appreciate, the moment, rather than shoot arrows off in multiple directions. It has been a revelation in many ways but also disconcerting. In sitting down with the 'howl' and in partial 'shackles', I have learned a lot about who I really am through slowing it all down. I have often been advised to live in the moment and to appreciate what is around me. I think I'm finally learning this lesson. It's been a struggle and it has taken it's own time, but I'm finally learning.

Plans give us motivation and goals, but sticking to them and achieving them is not the benchmark I once thought it was. The pandemic, amongst other things, have taught me that. It is important to love what you have now and that includes who you are. Because, that's all most of us have had in the last two years, and it looks like this will be the foreseeable future also. I do love what I have now. I love where I live and I love the relationships I am embedded in. I also love almost-41 year old me and I'm proud of her. That is a good place to start. 

Here's to another year of growth in whichever way it goes :)

Othering, Splitting or Projective Identification?

Officially, I am a Sociologist. 'Officially' here represents formal studying which resulted in gaining formal qualifications, i.e. an MA (Hons) in Sociology. But, I also did a BA in Applied Social Sciences before I gained my MA (Hons). In that BA I studied both Psychology and Sociology for three years, along with a year of Politics, Philosophy, English Literature and Anthropology - the latter I picked up again in my MA studies.

I have always wrestled with the nature - nurture debate. When I was studying Psychology many moons ago the arbitrary percentage / ratio was 66:33 nature - nurture. This means that your genetics / genetic predispositions are more likely to be dominant in your life, and will have more influence in your actions and the life choices you make. That didn't work for me; it jarred with my own (growing) experiences and with what I was learning in Sociology. I quickly ended up paying more credence to Sociology although I did use my studies in Psychology to pursue the avenues I was most passionate about, i.e. Social Psychology, Abnormal Psychology, Personality and Language. I have remained interested in these avenues although I stopped officially pursuing them, and I'm thankful for the training I received all those years ago.

My poststgraduate studies have been more rooted in Sociology, but Psychology has always reared its head at key points. Crossroads in a way. I've tended to follow my own 'expertise' and the expertise around me and chose the more Sociological roads when this has occured. But, I've always taken these turns and recognised that I'm not seeing the 'full' picture; that at some point I will need to bring Psychology back into my work (just as I have done with Politics, Philosophy and Anthropology). The most memorable of these crossroads was during my doctorate studies where I had to make the choice between adopting Laclau & Mouffe's political subject or Lacan's split subject in poststructuralist discourse theory. It was never quite as binarised as that, as Laclau wrote the Lacanian split subject into his conceptualisation of the political subject / agent. But, when it came to the seventh tenet of Laclau & Mouffe's (1985/2001) poststructuralist discourse theory, I explored the threatening 'Other' (see International Relations) rather than the radical 'Other', thus I never got to the psychoanalytic roots of how a radical 'Other' is needed to 'complete' the Self, and how the Self turns constructions of difference into Otherness to hold its fractured Self in place. I committed to 'Othering' using Politics and Sociology as toolkits; traversing how gender, 'race', social class and other socio-cultural characteristics were central to 'Othering' practices.

I don't regret this decision per se. I got a doctorate out of it and, with hindsight, if I had gone the other route it would have taken me much longer to complete said doctorate (and, quite frankly, it took long enough). But, deep down, I know I only gave 'half' of the story. Since completing my doctorate, I have continued to read psychoanalytic theory and popular Psychology and I think it's time to explore the other side. 

Although, in fairness, I should also point out that during my doctoral studies and afterwards I also gained some uncomfortable life experiences in this other side. Which, now, I recognise may have been a more unconscious - and frankly devestating - way of exploring the Lacanian split subject. I experienced and witnessed 'splitting' which, on the surface, could be explained by Sociology and Politics; intersectionality especially. Although it would be called 'othering' rather than splitting from these perspectives. But, it had psychological roots, particularly as some of these individuals I was involved with had recent diagnoses of either Narcissistic or Borderline Personality Disorder. 

There is a whole other conversation here about the rise in pyschiatric diagnoses of personality disorders in societies that are embedded in hyper-capitalism, patriarchy, racism and neoliberalism. But, I'm going to focus more on Psychology here as I have let the Sociologist in me run rampant enough. Through these individuals, I saw something else occur that wasn't just 'othering'. I saw and experienced 'splitting' - an inability in some individuals to process both good and bad aspects in a person and be able to reconcile them. Thus, when someone did something 'bad' all the good aspects of the person were forgotten and they were judged as being 'all bad' and the 'good' had just been an act and/or were no longer present in the individual - the 'bad' was dominant if not all pervasive. A line had been drawn and, using poststructuralist discourse theory, you could argue that the recipient was now being identified using the logic of difference rather than the logic of equivalence. But, those logics, for me, only identify what happens, they don't identify what goes on in the individual to make this happen.  

Being on the receiving end of 'splitting' is frightful. One minute you are the greatest thing since sliced bread, the next you are not even worth talking to and/or, in worst cases scenarios, you end up on the shit end of a smear campaign. If you are a fairly empathetic person, you naturally turn inwards and question if you truly are a 'bad' person; beating yourself up in the process. This can be devestating. But, eventually, you start to realise that this is a pattern. Others come out of the woodwork and, usually shamefully, discuss how they had experienced something very similar from that same individual. Social class, gender and the intersectionality of socio-cultural factors just don't cut it to explain how this has happened. This is where I think an understanding of Psychology is paramount, and fills in the gaps of what actually happens when people are 'othered'.

I'm lucky in the sense that I've been involved with individuals guilty of this who have received diagnoses, and that I was re-idealised in time to be privy to this. I just want to say, before I continue, that I am not condemning people who have been diagnosed as having personality disorders. I have a very good friend who has been living with this for a long time and has been working, with others, to overcome some of the more debilitating aspects of this. One such apsect is splitting and it is something they wrestle with on an everyday basis. Fortunately, we have a strong enough friendship were I can call them out on it if I end up on the receiving end and we work, with respect, to reconcile it. The discussions we have had over recent years have helped me to understand how pervasive splitting is and where the roots of it can come from. We've openly weighed up the pros and cons of object relations theory and discussed the lived experience of 'lacking' object permanence. It has been a revelation, and healing, for both of us although I did get to the point where I thought I was guilty of this as well. Thankfully, I don't meet the criteria. But, it has shaped my academic and personal interest in understanding how psychological processes can also shape 'othering'; and kept me mindful of the importance of recognising and accepting both the 'good' and 'bad' in others to form deeper, and more intimate, relationships.

There are other psychological theories to which I am attracted. For those who have read some of my earlier posts, you will know that I am quite passionate about astrology. There was a famous psychoanalytic theorist who was also equally passionate about astrology and I have been reading his work, on and off, since I was a teenager. His work around the shadow and projective identification has always fascinated me and, throughout my life, I have done quite a bit of shadow work with the aim to understand where I feel shame, guilt and self-loathing so that I can integrate that within myself rather than project it on to others. I haven't fully integrated my shadow, but at least I recognise it is a life's work and I am at least partially aware of where my own feelings of shame come from and I try to unbind its ties with self-loathing. With some conviction, I do believe that Jungian concepts of the shadow and projective identification can help us to understand why we 'Other' and, crucially, assist in overcoming it.

At its most basic, the shadow is parts of ourself we have either disowned and/or that we were not permitted to explore. For Jung and Jungian psychologists, failure to integrate our shadow is often at the root of our interpersonal problems, and can fuel, if not outrightly be responsible for, prejudice and discrimination at the societal level. It is also strongly linked to Klein's projective identification which, in psychoanalytic theory, is a defence mechanism where individuals project qualities that they cannot accept within themselves on to other people so that it keeps their fractured sense of 'Self', as 'good' and righteous, in place. With more awreness of our shadow and in gradually integrating it into our 'Self' we become less susceptible to 'othering' and more conscious of why we, and others, do it. 

As a Sociologist, I am very reluctant to individualise societal issues. I recognise that we live in a divisive world where various social groups are oppressed and are systematically excluded from full participation and recognition. But, I do think Psychology, in tandem with other social sciences, has a role in combating this. This is what I am now committed to exploring.

Creative Writing, Writing Characters and the Journey of the Self

I've more than likely discussed some of this in an earlier post, but just over two years ago I started writing a fiction novel fairly seriously. Things got in the way of it (mostly work, travelling / moving and relationships), but I managed to write 1/3 of the novel with sketches of how I wanted the rest of it to pan out. Thus, I knew how it was going to end but I was novelly excited by the writing process and just seeing if it went there naturally or went somewhere else. About a year ago, I stopped writing it seriously. 

There are a number of reasons for this. First, my worldview was starting to significantly shift. I had just lived in two countries very different from my own, had become an unpaid carer for a parent due to a pandemic, and was now living in the small town I grew up in. I also made a culmulative but massive change in my career due to, unsurprisingly, not 'fitting in' when I returned after my travels. Buried underneath all this, what really happened was that I had matured. At the ripe old of age 39 (soon to be 40), I was starting to see a spectrum of colours (or monochrome depending on your viewpoint) in the things that I had previously taken for granted. Thus, the foundations I was building this novel on were no longer as stable as I had previously surmised. My novel was in danger of becoming a caricature, with characters who all served a purpose in getting the story to where it should end; but weren't decent representations of the complexity of human nature and how we all struggle in our daily lives. I had a tendency to 'write off' people and see them as cogs in the machine of their own lives. I was underestimating the malaise in all of us that pokes and prods until we become cognizant of the structures in our lives that aren't working and take action to change them.

By changing up my surroundings, I saw 'people' in a very different way. I started to truly understand that, deep down, most people do their best in the situations they find themselves in. There are some people out there who are very damaged due a variety of different factors, including unhealthy societal structures that put excessive pressure on everyone to be in particular ways. But, I do think that most people do their best, however misguided some of their actions and conclusions are about particular situations. As a writer, this is a major pain in the ass, because you have to go back and re-sketch your characters and, in doing so, your plot changes. Then you realise that this may be the shape of things to come - how you feel about particular events in the world and your place in them may be very different in two years time. So, do you change the novel again, or do you just put it out there recognising it is flawed but still relevant to a previous version of you that once existed?

There is an acceptance there that how you think once may not be how you think in the future, but there is also a fear in putting your creativity out there in a way that you yourself may ridicule in years to come. It has eventually dawned on me that this is part of what it means to be human. To be flawed and to make conclusions that best serve you in the cirumstances you are in, but that these may change through time. The key is in accepting that and not become paralysed with it. Which is what happened to me. Yet, I also recognise that, perhaps subconsciously, I have always recognised this which has contributed to my fear of publishing. Of putting my nascent ideas into print. The fear of not only being ridiculed by others, but being ridiculed by my future self. Or I could just not ridicule and accept that this is part of the journey of the self, and commit to that. Openly and without fear.

Creative Writing, Writing and Balancing Life In a Crazy World

I've just submitted a poem to a creative writing course I started in October this year. Since I wrote my  'public intellectual' post I have managed to get that elusive professional-private life balance and, shock shock horror horror, my professional life hasn't suffered in the process. In fact, it's gotten better. 

So, yes, the creative writing. One of the key things I have found in life is that wherever there is black and white thinking in your psyche, it's an area that needs to be deconstructed - with care - because it represents an area of 'immature' thinking and development. Writing is writing. The more you do it, the better you get at it. The more you do it because you enjoy it, the more you want to / crave to. I saw academic and creative writing in a dichotomy, but the truth is I couldn't reconcile my own blocks around writing. I also had a pretty negative experience regarding writing when doing my PhD. Academic writing is its own beast and it takes you a while to find a voice that you are comfortable with in doing that. Again, time... and practice. Shock shock, horror horror... similar to creative writing.

For me, writing really is entangled with voice. It is about how you sound to both yourself and others. It's about accepting the voice that comes from you and not being too critical of it. That's what I struggled with in academic writing. It's almost as if you have to develop a tough inner critic to survive. Someone who will punish you first before someone else will. Ted Hughes called it the 'inner policeman'. It really is a defence mechanism, something that someone would have 'naturally' developed in an abusive environment to survive. I never really experienced it until academic writing. There's the polarisation. I'm sure if I had gone down a more committed creative writing route throughout the years, I would have adopted the 'inner policeman'. The truth is I didn't. I recongised and supported the creative process within me, despite how nascent it was in reality. I was still proud of it and saw it as life force. But, it wasn't my professional life. Writing became my professional life when I became an academic and I didn't like it one bit. There is a box, there are boundaries, there are expectations. It has taken me some time to realise that, really, few of them are real. It's still your own voice that matters. There will always be noise around that. But, if you are passionate about who you are and what you do, you learn to screen it.

I WILL be writing more. I have been writing more. In notebooks, journals, half-written journal articles and in poetry. But, that's been just for me. I started this journal to blend that. I've returned back to do exactly that...

Democracy, Populism and Autocratic Rule in Nicaragua

Today marks two memorable occasions for me in reference to Nicaragua. First, 12 years ago today. I contracted Dengue Fever which is one of the worst experiences I have had in my life. 12 years ago there was also no cure for Dengue, which meant that people literally just had to 'sweat it out'. For those that don't know what Dengue Fever is, it's a viral infection much like malaria (which is a disease, but hey ho) in that it is caused through mosquito bites and drinking / washing in contaminated water (where mosquito eggs are laid). The mosquitos that carry Dengue though are active during the day, so even mosquito nets cannot save you. It's just horrible. I lost 7lbs in a week (that is 1lb a day) because I literally could not eat. And everything was coming out of me in any way it could. At one point someone took blood from me and put a saline drip on me (I still can't fully discern if that was a dream or reality - I'm told the latter but it felt like the former). A few days later when I could actually concentrate I was told I had Dengue Fever and that I would carry the virus for the rest of my life. It would lay dormant but may become active again with another bite (and potentially fatally depending on what strain I'm bitten with the second time). 

I've always compared this to my feelings and love for Nicaragua. It's in my blood and comes out any time I re-visit that beautiful land. But, that brings me to the second memorable occassion on this day... which is today. And that is the re-'election' of Daniel Ortega as the President of Nicaragua. With, apparently, almost 75% of the electoral vote.

To set the scene - I lived in Nicaragua for almost 3 years (2008-2011) and I returned to visit in 2018, and left days before the student protests. During my return in 2018, it was clear there had been a dramatic shift in perception about Daniel Ortega and his 'history' as a Sandinista revolutionary. In those days before the protests, people who had previously supported him candidly discussed his 'descent' into authoritarianism, how his family was becoming the new oligarchy / dynasty (along with his wife becoming the Vice President), and how he was ensuring deals (such as the Pan American Canal) to secure foreign 'allies' which actually shafted his home allies, including the campesinos (peasants / farmers) who had given him the majority vote twice before.  

Then there were the demonstrations, the live footage that I was sent from friends' mobile phones, watching the 'peace talks' which ended in students having to flee Nicaragua for their lives (and I met three of them in the UK afterwards who told me their experiences first-hand). My confused friends, some of whom left Nicaragua and emigrated to Costa Rica, the US, UK and Spain, and genuinely feared for their own and their family's lives. Others stayed, and had strong reasons to stay, but all reported feeling fear at varying levels. Protestors were being re-branded as terrorists (which soon found its way into 'democratic' Nicaraguan law) and were afraid to speak out or potentially lose their jobs (which some of them lost anyway). The land - and the people - that I had loved so feverishly was crumpling before my very eyes and the narratives were becoming so skewed. Most of the people I keep in contact with in Nicaragua are Nicaraguans, but I did become aquainted with quite a few ex-pats who had set up some kind of business/home/charity in Nicaragua in some online forums, and the debate was fierce as to whether Ortega was actually becoming an authoritarian dictator or the protests were being orchestrated by the US in yet another attempt to decredit the Ortega administration (see the Iran-Contra controversy under US President Ronald Reagan). In all honesty, all the evidence I received first-hand suggests the former. Yet, Ortega held on to his presidency, despite both his people and international bodies decrying him and/or boycotting Nicaragua and/or asking for intervention beyond diplomacy.

But, we forget. Unless you have an emotional connection to Nicaragua and are still connected to the people there, there are many other distractions (including the 'paltry' Covid-19) that have taken precedence, and Ortega has managed to jail or extradite nine of his political opponents to 'win' his fourth consecutive term as President of Nicaragua... today.

I've written about both populism and populism in Nicaragua, and the implications both have for the wider understanding of 'democracy', before. But tonight is not the night to get the books and journal articles out to back up everything I say with evidence. Tonight is a time to reflect on something that is broken, and something that has been broken for a long time, and fully lament about the implications that this has for not just the lives of Nicaraguans in Nicaragua (and the ones who have fleed and are waiting to come back home). but about the implications of this on politics and democracy as a whole. Something is rotten, and we are catching its stench - in different forms - across the globe. This isn't a problem specific to Nicaragua. It isn't even a problem specific to Latin America. It is about corruption, greed, patriarchy and entitlement. It is about the people who are elected to represent us deliberately misleading us and seeing it as a game where there are winners and losers, and that this 'justifies' the heartbreak and agony of people's worlds falling down. Thus, it is the fault of the individual for not 'understanding' unwritten rules of the game that, if they were actually written down, would implicate the 'winners' as not playing 'fair' through cheating the law and others. We KNOW this happens. We know these 'rules'. We know that they are unfair. But, yet, they persist. And people's lives are being destroyed because of it.

I am deeply saddened, but not surprised, by today's result. Still, I am horrified. Horrified how people like Daniel Ortega (and countless others) can sleep at night. The last time I deliberately lied I cried myself to sleep for two nights and then confessed my sins for absolution. The guilt and the shame got the better of me, and I'm glad it did. It reminded me who I was and what I stood for. And I haven't done anything like that again (which was 7 years ago now... how I still remember it... it involved a leather sofa and shoe polish and I will leave it at that). Some people don't have that filter / check and I really think we have the right to question if those who CAN sleep at night in such circumstances are the right people to represent others.

As I'm writing this I am being messaged by people in Nicaragua who are deeply saddened, shocked and at a loss as to what the next four years could possibly bring except more pain, lies and deceit. I just wanted to get this down and share it. Now, I'm going to speak to the people whose lives are being ripped apart as we speak...

Storyjumpers Chapter Two

… a cat standing on a paddleboard. Yes, a cat standing, as large as life, on a paddleboard. Sam wasn’t sure with what he was more taken aback: the distinctive appearance of the cat or the very colourful (and presumably expensive) paddleboard. The sun was shining directly on the cat, illuminating its remarkable coat which sparkled like gold tinsel on a Christmas tree. Sam found himself mesmerised; but was also questioning whether he had actually woken up this morning. Or that this was, in fact, a dream. As he moved closer to the small gathering, the otherworldly, and remarkably dexterous, cat stared right at him. It was a large, muscular cat with large green eyes and the markings of a leopard. A leopard? What was a leopard doing in a canal in the (almost) middle of nowhere? Anyway, before he got carried away he realised the cat was too small to be a leopard and it did not look young enough to be a cub. It was more likely one of those Bengal or Savannah cats that had become increasingly popular with the middle class(es); especially university lecturers and professors. There were rumours at Sam’s university that teaching staff were being more positively evaluated by students whose pets would ‘appear’ during online synchronous, and asynchronous, sessions recorded at home. The prettier and more exotic the pet, the better the evaluation. Of course, the last academic to win ‘Best Lecturer’ at the Student-led Teaching Awards has a bearded dragon that the students called Harry. 

 

Sam had heard tales recalling the realities living with such cats. A colleague once lived with a particularly large one that not only terrorised the neighbourhood but also his own Rottweiler, Sukhi. The cat was his girlfriend’s and she would - and could - not live without said cat. Not long after she moved in, the neighbours would start begging Sam’s colleague to not let the cat out. Apparently, it was bullying just about every other pet on the estate. But, he confessed to Sam, he couldn’t leave it in the house. It would destroy everything. He told Sam that one day he came home from work to find curtains, dish towels, toilet paper, magazines, mail, plastic bags, sanitary towels and every pen that was in the house (including a fountain pen – with his initials on it no less - that he had misplaced years previous) all ripped, skewered and left-for-dead all over the house. He had looked almost traumatised re-telling that story, with his skin tone getting paler with each second of disclosure; with cold beads of sweat incrementally oozing from his forehead simultaneously. 

 

Then, he disclosed, he kept hearing this gut-wrenching fusion of both a low howl and a whimper. Sukhi was cowered, and shaking, in the bathtub. Every bottle of shampoo, conditioner, shaving cream, bath bomb, razor and shower gel had been gratuitously swiped into the bathtub. Poor Sukhi was buried underneath it all, flummoxed as to what she had done to receive such torture and humiliation. He sat his girlfriend down that night, pleading that this could not go on; that something had to be done. But, no man can separate une femme from her feline. Both moved out two weeks later. Sukhi actually had the audacity to whine for, and mourn, that cat for months afterwards. Stockholm Syndrome had set in at a remarkable velocity.

 

Both Sam and the paddle-boarding cat reached the bank of the canal at almost the same moment, with the cat swooshing past him into the fields. The dog and two of the three people, who had been standing at the bank, immediately chased after the cat; the two people arguing all the while about to whom he ‘belonged’. Sam smirked – this was a cat that belonged to no one but itself. Then, he looked at the third person, a middle-aged man dressed in leisure sportswear, who looked resigned and almost overcome by his own thoughts. 

 

But, obviously, curiosity got the better of Sam, and he asked the man, “So… what’s the story with the cat and the paddleboard?”

 

It took some seconds, but the man finally looked at him; non-verbally communicating a range of emotions - conflicting emotions - through his eyes. Just as he was about to answer, he could hear voices – not too far away – arguing with each other; and punctuated with the sounds of at least two dogs barking. Both Sam and the middle-aged man instinctively turned around to try and discern what was happening….

What does it mean to be a public intellectual? And reflections on writing...

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 😃