I like studying. There, I said it—you can
have me committed to the Nerd Central Asylum whenever you’re ready.
When I headed off from home at eighteen to start my undergraduate degree, I had no idea it
was the beginning of such a long-term thing. It was 1991, the state of Victoria
was in the throws of Premier Kennett’s school closures and I had decided on
studying for a Bachelor of Education and becoming a teacher. Four years later I
donned the cape and trencher to receive my degree from Deakin University which
was unlikely to lead to employment given the condition of state education at
the time. For the next whole school year I put in countless applications for
teaching positions to no avail.
Degree number one was a bust. So, the
following year I decided that if I was going to be effectively unemployed
anyway, I might as well continue to study. I went back to Deakin and I enrolled
in a Masters of Education by coursework.
I didn’t get very far with the Masters,
because in my attempt to get myself out of the unemployment queue, I took a job
as a governess in Outback Queensland. When I had the opportunity to resume the
study, I looked at the course material and decided that although I really
wanted to be a teacher, further study in Education was not what I was
passionate about.
There was another false start when I
decided to study for a Graduate Diploma in Women’s Studies via correspondence
through La Trobe University. I did the reading and found the content all very
interesting but I struggled with the lack of contact with other students. This
was in the days before online study—when correspondence meant materials and
assignment posted back and forth and really no contact with others in the
course. I withdrew before I got very far into that one.
While teaching at Lilydale High School, I
met a colleague who had completed a few levels of Auslan at VicDeaf in
Melbourne. This re-inspired my interest in sign language. I did the available short
courses at VicDeaf then went looking for further means to extend my skills. My
hunt took me back to La Trobe and I began a Graduate Diploma of Deaf Studies. I
actually finished this one and it qualified me as an Auslan language teacher.
Not long after that I was down at my local
Swinburne University campus for something entirely unrelated and I picked up a
brochure on their short courses—both online and face-to-face. I was teaching
fulltime at that point but had managed to fit in the face-to-face study for the
Auslan course and the associated travel one night a week. I noticed one of the
online courses was “Pleasures of Poetry”. Being online meant I would be able to
log on when it suited me, do the reading, do the tasks and post them to a
message board—much easier to manage than driving to night classes. I had been
writing poetry since I was a teenager, I decided it was about time to learn how
to do it properly.
“Pleasures of Poetry” was my first online
study experience. I found that it was able to create the perfect balance
between contact with other students and the flexibility to fit the study around
my other commitments.
From there I went back to the Auslan and
began to work on a Masters of Education by thesis looking at Bilingual Deaf
Education. I decided to do the distance education thing again and enrolled via
an interstate university. I figured that the distance wouldn’t matter with this
one as what I would ultimately end up doing was a much more independent project
and writing up a thesis on my findings. All I needed was good contact with my
supervisor.
I had a number of problems maintaining that
vital contact. He rarely answered my emails and when he did, he would only
respond to one or maybe two of the three or four (or five or six) questions I
had asked. I felt like I was floundering, I didn’t know what I had to do and
nobody would give me the answers I needed. This was all during the preparation
stages of the actual project, so I bailed on that one too. (Are you keeping
count? What’s my completed to uncompleted ratio at this point?)
It took me a while to realise that I missed
learning stuff but then in a fit of disillusionment with teaching I started
thinking about one of the other careers I had considered at the end of high
school—journalism. So, back to Deakin University where they offered a Journalism
course that could be completed off-campus via their online learning portal.
Perfect. I enrolled.
Because I was still teaching, I decided I
would do this study part-part-time. Normal part-time was two subjects a semester;
I elected to do only one. A couple of years and about 5 units into the course I
realised I wasn’t particularly interested in the journalism subjects and, in
fact, the ones that caught my eye were the electives from the more general
Graduate Diploma of Professional Writing. So, for once, instead of just
withdrawing from a course, I switched to a different one that suited me better.
During my studies in Professional Writing,
I found out about a Summer School in Creative Writing held each year to
correspond with the Edinburgh Book Festival, so I went to Edinburgh. I could
have had these units count towards my Graduate Diploma but I chose not to
because there were other subjects I wanted to do through Deakin—I wasn’t ready
to stop studying.
Of course, doing the Professional Writing
course one unit at a time meant that it took me a really, really long time to
finish it. Plus I intermitted in the middle of it so I could go and volunteer
overseas for a year and a half. So, when I got to the end of the Graduate
Diploma most people didn’t know that I was finished. I started looking at doing
an honours year and I didn’t really tell anybody. In general, people assumed I
was just “still studying” to finish the Graduate Diploma. When I say I didn’t
tell anybody, I mean, my sisters knew but my mum and dad didn’t.
I’m not really sure why I felt the need to
be secretive about taking on the Bachelor of Arts honours. Initially, I told
myself that it was because I was doing it ‘for me’ and it had nothing to do
with anybody else. But ultimately, I think my failure at trying to do the
independent study of the Masters by thesis was in the back of my mind and was
worried I wasn’t up to completing an independent project. I wouldn’t have to
admit that I had tried and failed if nobody knew I was trying in the first
place.
I didn't fail, as evidenced by the silly hat, gown & hood with stripes!
As my honours project, I undertook a study
of country towns and post-colonialism through the production of a number of
short stories. At the end of a very intensive year of study, I had completed a
suite of short stories and an exegesis totaling about 20,000 words and achieved
first class honours. My results permitted me entry into Deakin’s Higher Degrees
by Research program—to do a PhD.
My PhD project is going to involve writing
more short stories (lots more) but this time I’ll be researching the concept of
women as keepers of culture through cooking, recipes and stories. Not only did
I not tell people I was doing honours, I also haven’t been telling them that
I’m going to do a PhD. I’ve started to, but some of the people closest to me
still don’t know. I’ve told work colleagues because I had to explain why I was
resigning. I’ve told my sisters because they’ve known all along. I’ve finally
told my parents, although not having had much contact with academia, I’m not
sure they realised the significance of studying for a PhD.
And now I’m telling you. There, I said it.
You can call Nerd Central Asylum whenever you’re ready.
