Why... ummm.... what now?

By Shire Agnew

I am told we need to start to make posts. Who would have imagined, a need to actually write stuff for a blog? I’m not sure I agreed to this when I signed up. This actually means I have to do some serious thinking. Which leaves me with a blank page and the dreaded question, what should I write?

The husband of one of the contributors asked us “so what are you going to write on this anyway?” The answer of ‘umm, academic stuff’ was not exactly articulate, informative or indeed academically inclined. So what do we as postgraduate students want to write about, what do we want to share with our fellow students, or even put into words and out into the world?

I spent the last few days considering this. Did I have things worth saying? Did I have things worth sharing? Why did I ever agree to this? One of the things I know about myself is I am a nerd. I have accepted and embraced it and now celebrate it. It exhibits itself in many arenas, but for the point of this, my “nerdiness” means I love research, I love the learning, the articles, the theories, the writing that is part of my degree process. I love the struggle as much as the achievement. As I said I am a nerd.

This enjoyment leads me to want to share with others. I like sharing ideas, talking to others about some idea, some theory, some practical discovery. Perhaps because I am the only academic in my family or circle of friends I look to other students. I want to hear their ideas, be introduced to new concepts and tools, I want to argue and debate, even if I may never change my stance.

We have a postgraduate student community that could give us that, and yet we sit in our offices and get buried in our own work. It is understandable considering the workloads, the deadlines and sense of the overwhelming expectations. But I don’t think I am alone in the desire to talk with others in a similar situation, to get ideas and reassurances, to talk through the concepts we struggle with. Indeed we go to a variety of other blogs that deal with the academic process and journeys of postgraduate students, we buy books on writing and researching.

So I still have not decided what we need to write here. It may simply be that it isn’t up to me to decide that. I do think this blog could meet a purpose. It could be a place to share and communicate, to provide us with a postgraduate student community. That will, of course, require a bit of work. But the good thing about a blog is the work can be fit in, in those moments of procrastination, when you feel if you have to read one more article on the ethics of interviewing your head might explode, when you wake up at 3am panicking about an impending deadline.

I would like us to have a community, so I’m willing to write 500 words to say, ‘umm I don’t know.”