An ‘up’ week
Seven years is a long time. In fact it is approximately 2556 days, 61,344 hours. Oddly, that sounds remarkably little time, however it is enough time to ride the rollercoaster hard. Last week was an up week, it followed several weeks of not ‘down’ weeks but less productive, more ‘wandering’ weeks. I don’t want to promote the up week as the one I should be chasing all the time, in fact the wandering weeks are probably as productive only I don’t realise it until the up week comes along and I perhaps have a eureka moment or I find a piece of research that reinforces what I’ve been trying to verbalise or, like last week, I manage to network and create three or four new, valuable contacts in the same week (and pass the PGCert, thought I’d slip that in too).
One area I have struggled with in these early days is that I am a ‘hybrid’ researcher. I don’t fall neatly into any category of music or education or music education as my research is not about classroom music, it is not about education in general (although policies and practices do intertwine). It is also not about a genre or composer or instrument. My research is looking into instrumental teaching which takes place both in school and outside, both with a teacher and without. I am also looking into what the hidden barriers might be so my potential participants (or at least some) will be an invisible group of young people who don’t access instrumental learning. At university, the conservatoire seems to be the side for music and all the relevant research that goes around music, whereas the education department primarily focuses on education within the classroom and the threads that make up education. I seem to straddle both areas and neither. This has proved a little odd from the start as it has been hard to find other PhD students who are working on similar areas. Whilst I appreciate this multiplicity of self is actually an assett to my research, sometimes it’s nice to know that there are others who might be able to help me make sense of my thoughts as they are in a similar place. I very much prefer to talk things out with others to help me make sense of my own thoughts.
Anyway, last week I had calls with several teachers who work as instrumentalists in schools and a conservatoire. It was refreshing and helped me hone my own thoughts a little, I mean, it also gave me more stuff to think about, but also reinforced my current questions.