Count-down
Less than 24 hours to go. After some days of slight panic, I'm feeling relatively at ease today. The presentation is as good as done and I have decided that if I try to do my best when I go "on stage" tomorrow, I do not need to expect more of myself than standing by the work I have done and presenting it in the way I see most fit.

I don't know how other people who have been in the same situation as me feels it/felt it - perhaps it is just me, or a particularly female characteristics - but at heart most of the unease and nervousness affiliated with the defense has to do with the same old fear I have been harbouring for years: that some day someone will discover that I'm really just faking to be an academic and really I don't know a lot (etc etc ad infinitum). Well, trying to face this fear for the last few days have made me realise that I am actually ok with what I do as an academic. I will never write a Cybertext II or the ulmitative narrative theory, because it is not here my strength lies as an academic. Rather it lies in the ability to make intelligent analysis of phenomena, to put them into context and to make connections (some better than others) between them. And doing that I sometimes come up with some original thoughts and ideas.

There are people out there who would always make me come out as the looser if it came to a battle of having read all the important philosophers, or french poststructuralists, or critical thinkers or game theorists etc and quoting them in your work, but at least I am not afraid to sit down and write about thoughts and experiences that are mostly my own and not someone elses. I'm OK with that. And if I'm OK with that, I should be ok with tomorrow, too.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 16:34