Voice
This first week as a PhD student has been all about finding my academic voice. This has been particularly problematic, since I’m seeing it as a binary option.
I’m concerned that, unlike the PhD candidate and SSHRC scholar Shelley Moore modelled in her video Transforming Inclusive Education, I haven’t acquired the ‘moves’ or picked up the specialized lingo & language, YET. I’ll need to work on the balance between academic language required for the PhD program and the reality of my practical life. But once I do begin to shift my thought patterns and writing style to fit the frame of a PhD program, I’m concerned that I’ll lose the humanity of my practitioners voice. I’ll have become zombified (see video below) and no one I know will understand what I’m saying. I won’t fit into my previous life, since my voice will have changed NOR will I fully fit into the PhD life since it’ll take years to learn the language. I’ll be caught in a hyphen, betwixt and between, being neither one thing or the other.
In my mind I know it’s not a binary. It’s not an either-or proposition. It’s a transitional scale that will dial up or down depending on circumstance and context. But in my heart, it’s a reluctance to change while still yearning for the change to happen quickly. At this point in time I feel the necessary push-pull and will work to keep my head and heart in synch since this is a transition of my own choosing, supported and encouraged by those in my ‘real life’. For now, I’ll keep my zombified self from their view and flip the switch between my academic and real life voice. As I continue this evolution, I’ll become better at the slip and slide between the multiplicity of voices I’ll develop in the PhD program. I’ll beware of my ‘zombification’ while in public!
Video by Helen Sword – Beware of Nomilinalizations