"Those triumphalist celebrations of fluidity always overlook the fact that being unfixed, mobile, in-between, can distress as much as it liberates. So one's sense of class identity is uncertain, torn and oscillating- caught on a cultural cusp" (Medhurst, in Munt, 2000: 20).One of the greatest moments of my life to date was the day I found out that I'd received funding for my PhD. The opportunity to work on a project of my choosing, pursue personal and professional development, enjoy three years of financial security; no words can describe the high I felt in that moment of reading the acceptance letter from my funder.
What I didn't bank on however, was how 'doing' a PhD would impact upon my sense of self-hood a year down the line. In that moment, of course, the last thing I was thinking about was what exactly I was leaving behind.
Before I came to university I was a chef. I went to college at 18, gained the vocational qualifications I needed and grafted kitchens for 5 years full time before realising that I probably couldn't have picked a worse industry, as a woman, to attempt to progress in.
It took me a while, but eventually I made into university and completed my undergraduate and Masters degrees.
Like a lot of 'non-traditional' or working class students, I never really felt like university was for 'people like me', but that I had thought those thoughts in the first place annoyed me significantly enough to gain the grit required to bash through, if only just spite myself and "see what might happen".
Last September, I walked out the kitchen for the last time. I was a part-time baker/cake maker for the duration of my BA and MA studies,and news of my funding meant that finally, I could leave behind the industry that I had found no longer sustained my appetite for self development.
I don't regret leaving, and I definitely don't miss sweating for a wage barely shy of minimum wage, but in my leaving, in closing that chapter of my life to make room for my new academic pursuits, I was also to find that I had left, or lost perhaps, a secure sense purpose and of who I was.
The transition into higher education is often painful for students, and especially for non-traditional students(Burns and Sinfield, 2004). The feelings of shame, fear and inadequacy provoked by this movement through a system of higher education that is argued by some to ignore cultural inequalities and exacerbate myths of meritocracy and classlessness, are well documented (Tett, 2000, Leathwood, 2003, Sinfield, 2003).
But what about the shift up from structured postgraduate programmes to PhD study? Is it to be presumed that such feelings abate the longer we are in this system? Are we expected simply to 'get over it' by the time we reach this level?
A pivotal aspect of my identity, that which had in fact driven me to endure my anxieties about being at university and complete my degrees, rested on my perceptions of my ability to 'graft'. I was a 'grafter'; a 'hard' worker; a 'good' worker; a 'real' worker. I knew what it was like 'out there', beyond the ivory tower. My participation on a taught postgraduate MA never threatened this identity, partly because I still had a job in the outside world, and otherwise because the structure of the programme suited my work style. With short bursts of work across the course of the year, it was much like shift work, when the tasks were over, they were over. You could close the door on them and leave them behind.
Doing a PhD is like nothing I have ever experienced, I say this all the time! I am well and truly out of my comfort zone. My 'authenticity'- my sense of self feels threatened, as I 'oscillate', to use Medhurst's words, between who or what I thought I was and what I now must try to become. I mourn the loss of an identity or way of being that I had mastered. I fear that I may fail to successfully 'become' 'a PhD student'- in all their seamless, articulate, organised, quietly genius glory. I will be uncovered as an imposter, a fraud, a mistake.
I am no longer there nor have I yet found myself here. I have not let go but must reach ahead in order to become something new. I am in-between, ambiguous. I am abject.
"Abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a hold, it does not cut off the subject from what threatens it- on the contrary, abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger"(Kristeva,1982: 9-10).
NB. Am I saying academics aren't grafters? Am I saying they aren't 'real' people? Am I saying they don't have to try or struggle? Of course not. My feelings of inadequacy, of fear and of uncertainty rest precisely on the ways in which I have quite irrationally interpreted the talents of 'others' as 'innate'!
I should know better, but to attempt a sociological analysis of your self-hood...I should think I might be more objective, if I wasn't so attached to myself.
Am I middle class yet? ;)
Kath
x
