A Letter To (My Secret) Santa

Dear Secret Santa 2014,

Thank you for visiting my blog.

I hope this post will help you to figure out what you would like to give.  If not, I hope that it will at least provide you some idea about what I am like as a person.  Maybe if we ever meet face-to-face, you could tell me that you were my Santa.  Then again, after reading my blog, you might decide that you do not want to meet me.  Ever!  Either way, I am grateful that I am currently in your thoughts.

To begin, I thought we could start by looking at our commonality: Twitter.  You might have seen that my Tweets follow a specific format: quote, summary, URL, source(s).  Most of my Tweets are replies; I very rarely Retweet.  I don’t Follow (or Tweet about) international celebrities.  (This reduces the proportion of bots in my Followers list.)  Further, my Tweets tend to fall into four categories:

• Higher education;
• Politics/government;
• Identity issues (particularly ethnicity, gender, and sexuality); and
• Etymology.

While some subjects, like the environment, focus on one category (politics/government), others cross multiple categories.  For instance, when discussing sexual assaults on campus, the categories of higher education, politics/government, and identity issues are recalled.  When discussing racism, politics/government and identity issues are similarly recollected.  

Beyond this, I’m aware that some information is very clearly missing from my Twitter page.  Outside photographs and #nzmusicmonth, my feed is a personal desert.  It would be near impossible to glean from Twitter my marital status (widow) or whether I have children (yes).  You might note that I am aiming for the PhD, but you couldn’t tell that I enjoy cooking, Game of Thrones, and dancing.  Plugging the 2014 feed through a micro-filter might have got you my performing arts, our US-Caribbean trip next week (I'm typing surrounded by clothes, my feet on a suitcase), and the IronMāori registration.  Most likely not.  I really dislike talking about myself on Twitter.

This is because I don’t know how to present the personal there without feeling a little fake.  Offline, I’m someone who either says nothing or overshares.  This means chitchat with people aged over 10 and under 70 is very difficult.  I like that people are different to me, but my boundaries are significantly different to others.  There are things I say that others find confronting, and there are things others say that I just don't understand.  To manage on Twitter, I’ve favoured collation, Tweeting things I’d like to remember viewing.  I can understand why some would find my feed very boring.  But the alternate is to tell people exactly what I think.  And I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

140 characters are fairly limiting, so hopefully you’ve gotten to know me a little more through this post.  Please feel free to read other parts of the blog and Google me.  Although not yet an open book, I'm becoming more so each day.  And for a Santa like you, that can only be a good thing.

I hope your Christmas is full of love and light.  Thank you in advance for my pressie.  And safe travels!

Yours faithfully,

Me

On New Directions

New Directions: The Blog

A while back, I posted about my first academic review (which, it turns out, was not the first - more later).  The post is indicative of the new direction this blog will take over the next few years.  Instead of focusing exclusively on formal education and my current employment, the Teaching Consultant will shift towards personal reflections on the educational journey.  I considered beginning a new blog, but like the idea of being able to review my work in one place.  Criticality will continue to be a mainstay.  Accordingly, I continue:

an effort to work within educational institutions and other media to raise questions about inequalities of power, about the false myths of opportunity and merit for many students, and about the way belief systems become internalized to the point where individuals and groups abandon the very aspiration to question or change their lot in life. (Burbles & Berk, 1999, ¶ 16)

My other social media profiles have been less focused on the formal.  They have also been more successful at supporting my efforts to unravel the hegemonic discourses I note in my head.  I hope to find similar success in this, a new direction for the blog.

Fighting Fear

A few days after the last post, I realised that I had eschewed a slightly earlier review.  I tweeted a link about Cavino (2013) on 31 May, and then totally forgot about it.  I am still a little unsure about why I forgot, although reflection notes an element of embarrassment.  Cavino's commentary about my work is significantly more substantial than Belgrave's.  Further, Cavino's article is published in a top 15 international journal.  The impact of my academic work is improved by Cavino's publication.  Yet, despite the bravado suggested by my last post, I am actually a little scared of being visible.

 

My fear of visibility has made this post appear, only to have it returned to draft.  Followers of my Twitter posts will know that, subsequent to my husband's death, I have avoided interaction.  Even Tweets from users I know personally rarely receive response.  

 

I was raised to believe in collectivity and the value of quiet background work.  Interaction in social media is a pathway to individual influence.  I find emphasis on the individual difficult, an inclination reinforced by bereavement and a tendency towards introversion.  However, I am aware that this position offers justice to neither the work I tend nor its audience.  It excludes where my role is to welcome.

This post, therefore, marks not just a new direction for the blog, but for me more generally.  I can guarantee that I will not be responding to every Tweet sent my way.  But it is time for a change.  Let's see where this leads...

CITATION
Cavino, H. M. (2013). Across the colonial divide. American Journal of Evaluation, 34(3), 339-355.

 

The First Review of My Work

Someone has finally reviewed something I wrote.  Although there have been general reviews of Always Speaking (e.g. the post by Dr Matthew Palmer in the Maori Law Review), this is the first time someone has actually engaged with my writing specifically.  In academia, reviews of your work are an indicator of its influence.  Like politicians and celebrities, if nobody's talking about you, you're not really working.

The reviewer, Prof Michael Belgrave, is an historian here at Massey.  I learnt he was doing a review of some Huia books, including Always Speaking, last year during a video conference.  His face appeared to squish uncomfortably when he realised I was in the audience.  I was a little worried that the result would be bad (like REALLY bad), but the result wasn't too terrible. 

Here's the one sentence:

"In one of the few debates between authors in these collections, and almost at a footnote level, Gray-Sharp in Always Speaking, explores different interpretations of sovereignty and rangatiratanga and distinguishes herself from Mutu in seeing self-determination and rangatiratanga as claims for shared sovereignty with the Crown or self-determination against the Crown."

I do not actually distinguish myself at all, because I take no specific conception of tino rangatiratanga as primary.  But Prof Belgrave flatters me no end by putting me in the same sentence as Prof Margaret Mutu.  And finally somebody is talking!

CITATION
Belgrave, M. P.  (2013). Review article. Journal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies, 1(2), 203-211.