Ambition and The Passive Aggressive Academic.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt quotes (American 26th US President (1901-09), 1858-1919) “Ambition is the last refuge of failure.”  Oscar Wilde quotes (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900) “Basically you have to suppress your own ambitions in order to be who you need to be.”  Bob Dylan quotes (American folksinger, b.1941)

Many outsiders may look in on academia and think, "what a lovely cosy world it must be, full of quiet thoughtfulness, intellectual stimulation and supportive encouragement". As a postgraduate you expect people to be mature, adult even in their approach to life and their work. Perhaps you even expect them to have learned a thing or two along the way and to realise that sometimes the greater good is far better than pursuing personal advantage.

Apparently not.

Recent events have conspired against me and I have been unable to get into my office today to attend a rather unimportant meeting. I contacted one of the committee to extend my apologies and at her suggestion, she kindly offered to postpone the meeting for a week and emailed the others accordingly. I quietly waited to see what the response would be, confident that I could almost smell one person seizing the advantage to hold the meeting without me and thereby push forward her own agenda with little resistance or opposition.

I was right in my assumptions. An email came winging out pushing for the meeting to be held today without me. It was transparent in its blatant desire to take advantage of the situation. Even when another member expressed her willingness to postpone (making that 3 -1) she was adamant, replying as quickly as I have ever seen, 'Right, let's make it today then!'

I smiled to myself.

The next email brought the news that a second member is now resigning, because of the increasing time commitment. Up until recently the time commitment has been minimal as we have acted like responsible adults and been able to conduct ourselves with reasonable aplomb and success, ( by actually increasing the turnover of attendees and presenters at our monthly meetings). However now one person is pushing for 'constitutional reform' and 'carefully constructed missives' and wants to see the demise of the Facebook group which was set up prior to her joining the committee and for the convenience of members of the PG community; her reasons? because she feels FB to be a 'social networking site of an extremely informal tenor' - pomposity thy name is C******e!

If I felt this desire for change was for the good of the community I would be keen to support it. But it seems pretty obvious that it is about getting herself 'known'. A recent idea by myself was seized upon by said person, because she immediately saw an opportunity to impress the faculty with her stunning inventiveness. She failed to even acknowledge that it was my idea and merely began trying to wrest control of it from me. Her condescension is all the more insulting as she assumes me to be oblivious to it.

Whatever the outcome of the meeting I shall simply smile and carry on doing my own thing my own way, because stepping on people is not the only way to get ahead, and one day this person will maybe realise that naked ambition is a pretty ugly sight.

Planning, Planning with a side order of Planning please!

What a horrendously busy few weeks I have ahead of me!!! My stomach is churning at the thought of it!

The feed back is in - all 6 pages of it. Now that may sound horrendous but it is in a pretty big font and well spaced so it isn't as bad as it sounds. The good thing is the negative stuff I had already predicted and now I have something concrete to go on I can go about redressing the errors. A lot of positive feedback as well, a good dose of each I would say which gives me something to cling onto - I am not filled with the normal post-feed back desolation!

The two abstracts I submitted have been accepted so I shall be presenting at conferences 10 days apart with two different papers. I am on the ITR panel for the ART HISTORY department and I have a session planned with an Art Historian to discuss how I can better write about Vorticism! Forum is in need of serious sorting! So to summarise:
1. I have to rewrite the introduction and conclusion to be less generalised and more 'scholarly'. By March 5th (ish)
2. I have to select which of the 17000 words of this chapter are going to be turned into paper  for the University of Cambridge.
3. I have to condense my article of "Les Petite Journals Des Refusee" into a 20 minute presentation with slides and artwork by Aubrey Beardsley for the presentation at UCL.
4. Meetings are scheduled for Monday, Wednesday and next Monday for Forum, ITR, and Vorticism respectively.
5. I need to plan out my next chapter so that my trips to conferences can encompass resourceful research and not just a jolly along!
6. A colleague has asked me to edit for her piece due in March.
7. Reading the AHD Teaching Policy and attending relevant dinner and review days.
8. Run my household and family without them all thinking life has gone mad.

All this whilst worrying what on earth will pay the bills in 18 months time when my Son turns 18, my funding ceases and my other half retires onto half pay!! EEK! I really do seem to have every ball imaginable in the air just now.... let's hope I can carry on catching them! Like the cartoon I found on the web - they are little bombs, each one just waiting to explode in my face.

Never before has a cartoon been so relevant to my life as the one next to my profile ... It WAS a good idea to carry on and do a Ph.D ... right?