kate’s adventure

the mulberries are growing and the student associations are blooming. life is good.

i dropped in at macquarie uni the other day. there are people running around in red, screen printed tshirts for their first student-council-equivalent. and not just a few, there were tshirts everywhere! over the years since i was around, the student council and other organisations got eroded, corrupted and eventually abolished. good people have been working hard for the last several years to create a new, better organisation within the generic association they were bequeathed to replace the whole lot. i’m sure there’s plenty more to do, but on a nice sunny day with people out and talking to eachother, it looks like they’ve gotten somewhere. there’s an energy i haven’t seen there for a long time, perhaps ever. it helps that the wonderful old space that the women’s room never should’ve given up has now become the queerspace, and that people are meeting about a food co-op. people were dancing outside the atrium and i didn’t even feel bad that the old rabbit warren that used to house the student council and the art space has been gutted for the new generic association offices – they’re shiny and glassy and full of people, with a functional reception with a reasonable list of clubs evident at the pigeonholes. the two organisations that the space was taken from were long dead, but indications are that, when their replacements get big enough to be able to use office space, they will have competent enough people to win that fight.

yesterday i was at ultimo tafe and stopped by their student association to catch up. i came away with a similar feeling of hope; there’s been shakeup in the staffing situation, with someone getting a promotion and others shuffling up, and it all seems to be to the better. not only have memberships have gone up to about a third of the population (take a look at that, unis!) but the new board is active, both helping out with the general activities of the association and having ideas. gosh, ideas! all four of them are being put through the frontline management course, which both displays a certain level of commitment and means that there will be four serious student-run projects happening this year. collaboration with departments is going well, including a shiny makeover for the student newspaper that i started, which indicates that it will continue. sports have started up again after a few years of not being able to fill teams, with a soccer competition against eora – one of many collaborations with them which are fruit of the seeds i kept planting back when. all this is in the environment of the tafe pushing a serious commitment to greenskilling, actually surveying people about the footwear courses and trying to work something out, and security keeping up the good work we’ve seen the entire time i’ve been involved. seven of their 21 staff are permanent, and it seems enough to keep up good continuity and make them the best and most understanding service in the area.

i’m no longer enrolled in either of these organisations, but i can delight in seeing results of my previous hard work amongst the bubbling up of good things, even if i’m not there to enjoy them directly. now i’m at yet another educational institution. i’ve gone and nominated for uts’ academic board already, and their student elections are coming up too. i’ll have to investigate…

one of the things i got to do overseas that i haven’t for ages, was performance. in berlin i joined in a drag king performance at the very last minute, apparently there was footage filmed but i haven’t seen it. i also read out a poem. it was translated from slovenian and it took a lot of editing before it was readable, i only got the printout a day before, and i spent all that time walking around berlin, overshooting my destinations as i read bits out loud, gesturing the emphases with a red pen in hand. noone thought to mention that i’d be juggling a microphone too. five minutes before the show i find out that the translation was done by one of my new friends, and she didn’t like my editing, but she ended up agreeing that i had as much right as her to interpret a translation. and besides, it was about to start. here is the version i read, more or less.

As if we were free
Urška Strle

Somewhere in the centre of the small neglected town, which is, at the same time the capital of some small but relaxed East European state, in a newly cobble embellished street in the inner city centre where they just closed two pubs and a bookstore, I have met a man who ordered himself Culture as if he were ordering coffee with milk.

I have to confess, the cobbles are perfectly laid down, all the gaps are carefully clogged with quartz sand, and at the edge it is possible to recognise a slightly rounded pattern. In short, the street of some small neglected town, which is at the same time the capital of some small, cramped, and relaxed South European state, looks like the idyllic image on an old postcard.

Old bakeries arise in all parts of the town like mushrooms after the rain, as if they had decided one day and achingly wrested themselves out from old corner houses where they had modestly waited for decades unnoticed for their grand arrival, and which, on their frontage proudly show the inscription “Old Bakery”, which even more contributes to this idyllic look. I guess I’ve hurried past them for years and years without even noticing. I’ve walked past exactly this old bakery on the corner of this small idyllic street with carefully laid cobbles in the centre of some small neglected town and so on and so forth.

Suddenly an unbearable paranoia came over me, I got the feeling that somewhere out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of crinoline, and suspiciously I glanced towards the boys in white shirts with black bowties who were picking up the garbage. It appeared to me that time is curving itself as to the pattern of the new cobbles and that we will all find ourselves on that everlasting postcard from the end of the 19th century. Hastily I dashed towards the closest boy, that is, to the left edge, I ripped myself through the yellowish cardboard, and with a crash I landed in front of the doors to the pub which had, in the meantime, already disappeared in another reality.

To eat in this slovenly pub, which displayed insignia as a rallying point for all the enthusiasts of the sautéed potato, was akin to some special kind of masochism. Gnocchi Bolognese turned into spaghetti with tomato sauce, omelette with ham and cheese always remained without the latter two. The bills would be circulating around, they would be counted and discounted and finally there would come the conclusion that there are either too many or too few bills, the cash register is too far away and the next group of naïve tourists are just enough confused, hungry and tired and above all helpless in front of the board, on which specials of the day were written in complicated script.

But the slovenly pub that served for some special kind of masochism disappeared in that other reality, which was, to top it all off, mine. And there is no worse misery than when a person loses her own reality and therefore clings desperately to the handhold of some slovenly pub which went bankrupt, together with her lifestyle.

In the reflection of the filthy abandoned windows of my ailing lifestyle, I saw a mayor. All round and contented he was wiping sweat from his working face on the golden chain on which the city keys were jingling. He was shepherding a small squad of captured guest artists, some stoic, homeless ‘erased ones’, and from his pockets electric cables were forcing their way out, cables which NGO workers for the purpose of some obscure literary event negligently left in the middle of the street in the inner centre of the small neglected town, which is at the same time the capital of some small but relaxed Central European state. He ordered Culture as coffee with milk, and then stirred with a teaspoon an empty cup and grumbled about the bad taste.

I might be extremely happy about the new cobbles if I had to cross them in high heels, but, I think, the magic of the moment was ruined in the second when, under the sole of my beaten up sneakers, quartz sand creaked. Maybe my face would have lightened up if I had been on these new even cobbles with nicely clogged gaps and a slightly rounded pattern pushing a pram that would be running smoothly. But I just stood there at the beginning of that small street in the centre of the town in those damn beaten up sneakers, I was pacing around nervously, under my feet, quartz sand was nastily squeaking and I stared at the abandoned windows of the pub. All this with a newly cobble-embellished street of the inner centre of the small neglected town, which is at the same time a capital of some cramped but relaxed newly joined European state, and there was not a single space left for me to go.

my introduction to the czech republic, this time, was an empty road, fields, cows. luckily it was pleasant weather for walking, because i did quite a bit of it. eventually i got some rides, a taxi picked me up and took me quite a long way, then i got someone who spoke good second-language german and proceeded to hold a running monologue with me the whole way in to the fountain in the middle of cesky budejovice, pointing out where the first railway was, where the horses were washed, the world’s first pencil factory…
salim was expecting me at 5pm, but i had such a good trip that i was there by 9am!
i passed the day dozing by the fountain, trying to figure out public phones and the czech currency, and eventually dragging my heavy bag into an information office and finding some free internet, which i used while taking regular turns round the fountain to see if salim had arrived.
in the end, he got there an hour or two early and we went to the post office, where i got my hands on the two boxes tied with twine, which held the contents of the bag i got stolen five years ago. dresses i have missed, books with bookmarks in them at places i don’t remember, toiletries that i would no longer use. photos of copenhagen, my flamenco performance and the queeruption protest in den haag! my coat, one dress and stephen’s bow tie were missing, as i more or less expected. i think i spent a couple of hours sorting everything from both packs into a box to send home, a pile to chuck and another pile to absorb into my current pack. it was harder than packing the first time!
eventually i was done and salim, his friend and i took a tram to the university dormitories where he had booked me a night. very similar to a dorm i stayed in in budapest, it was one of many bare blocks standing in a field, but inside it had people coming and going with their possessions and a thriving noticeboard which suggested a much healthier student life than anything i’ve ever experienced. the room itself was made for two, split down the middle with beds, desks, cupboard, shelves and a sink. there were showers down the hall, facing each other with no curtains, and toilets even further down, the toilet paper bolted to the wall by the sink with an ostentatious padlock. i can’t imagine it being comfortable for long periods of time, but it seems to be accepted.

they took me around the city in search of a map, and to a local bus station dinner of gulash soup and dumplings, which was rather good though it looked anything but. it’s a pleasant city with an old town ringed by small parks and what used to be a moat, very quiet and calm at night, with live music floating from many doorways. outside the old town it seems a liveable city with decent public transport, interesting bridges and no tourists.

in the morning i dragged my tired feet to the tram and easily found a nice road, but the trip was a little more difficult than the last ones. it rained in short bouts but quite heavily. i got dropped in the middle of a highway in the middle of the rain and my boots gave out as i squelched my way to the shelter of a little overpass. interestingly, i got several rides from cars with three or four people in them already, which is very rare. just as i was preparing to shelter in my tent from another rainstorm, a car of four teenage heavy metal fans picked me up and drove me what seemed to be five hundred metres, before deciding to let me wait it out in the car. it was a fun interlude, if not very helpful as the only boy amongst them took it upon himself to help me hitch, which will scare most people off! meanwhile the girls bounced and sang and played badminton with a golf ball in the rain.
at about 8pm i found myself on yet another narrow road which boasted a nice section of layback but no cars, and decided to stop for the night. it was delightful to set up my tent in a forest while it was still light. the leaf litter was soft and the trees were green and i could select a nice flat section out of sight of any road or path, where i could hear the road through the birdsong but it just served to reassure me i would be able to get out of there in the morning. and indeed i could, i woke up nice and early and even after laying around enjoying breakfast protected from the rain, i was on the road about 8.30 and in a small truck a few minutes later.
unfortunately this ride, which was promisingly long, decided to take me sideways to an autobahn when it really wasn’t necessary, and my journey soured. i was surprised by a czech motorcycle cop turning on his siren right behind me and telling me to get off the road. he was gracious enough to give me advice as to where i could go, but it wasn’t very good advice as there was nothing at all visible out that direction. after heading out the other way where at least there was a little traffic, i saw two more hitchhikers walking outside the railing of the autobahn, and limped after them, barefoot on ground that is not meant for anyone to walk on. up hill, down valley, over bridge holding on to the outside of the railing; i couldn’t see any other direction but where they were leading. eventually i caught up to them, a whole highway section later at the next on ramp. they were two boys hitching from prague to berlin for shopping, and we shared some lunch and information on the railings of the on ramp, just past the roundabout. three people together have little hope of a ride, so eventually they walked off to investigate the road and i sat on the railing singing to the empty world. just as they were heading back in defeat i got a ride, another family of three, with watermelons wandering around the floor just to make things interesting. they had room for the other two but my german wasn’t good enough to convince them to take us all. i hope they found a ride anyway…
my ride only took me to the next truck stop, and after i had asked most of the cars and trucks, none of whom were helpful, i stood at the exit, behind the barrier and hoped cars could see me on the road. however an unmarked german police car came up and decided i was too close to the road, which was my first indication that i had made it to germany. they kindly told me how dangerous it was to be within two metres of the highway barrier, though three seemed ok, and helpfully told me to walk over a kilometre down the rough, narrow side road to the on ramp. of course cars drive faster down there than they should, considering visibility is not nearly as good as on an autobahn with a whole emergency lane down each side, but rules are rules and danger is naturally governed by them.
half way down i got a ride who took me almost as far out the other side of the on ramp; at least this road was deserted so i could walk on the smooth centre line until my friendly unmarked police came and directed me again, to the only place i could possibly have been going, and then swung around yet again to order me to walk on the left.
thankfully a little two door stopped for me quite promptly, though they were quite uncommunicative until they had already taken me into the centre of dresden. at the central train station having already spent about eight hours on the road that day, i decided it wouldn’t be the end of the world if i took a train, so i spent a couple of annoying hours on the floor of my platform, but i made it to my destination, and was in berlin for my birthday.

when i finally achieved the austrian border there were a bunch of lone young travellers milling around trying to figure out how to find the last quarter of the journey, in to innsbruck. it seems i have the best german of the five of us so i rounded them up to follow someone who knew what to do, thus i ended up on a train to innsbruck and with someone to follow home to a hostel. it was all so delightfully easy, we paid the bilingual, understanding inspectors for our not-too-steep tickets on the nice shiny train and it let us off in the centre of the city with no fuss. john was making a mess of finding a tram to the hostel and i let him, entirely unconcerned as he had an address, of sorts, and it looked like it would take five minutes to walk if he gave up and let me do it. i restricted myself to translating bus drivers for him, ridiculously delighted to be able to do so.

it started raining quite seriously as soon as we got in, but the hostel was full of australians who had just finished school, and other friendly types so we were all kept amused. when the weather cleared a little i dragged john away as he was the only one expressing interest in leaving the room at all. we wandered around, across the noisy river and into the old town. i have never met someone so eager to ask directions, we were lost to the extent that we should’ve walked to the nearest street sign and looked at the map, but instead got asked sharply ‘how can you possibly get lost in innsbruck?’

we saw the golden roof that is in every german textbook ever written, it’s an awning as i thought. the buildings are pretty and well maintained, many with graphics and illustrations stuck on an empty face somewhere, unrelated to the architectural details. it was wet and noone was about except other australian tourists looking for cheap food.

we finally found good kebabs on the edge of the new town, and ate them listening to some distorted concert nearby. all the supermarkets were closed, so we headed back while the weather held, seeing what we could on the way. piles of hard rubbish in the middle of the pristine city, antifa stencils, drinking fountains, people playing bowls with rectangular wooden blocks. i think.

in the morning i set off to the bus station with some recommendations from the friendly hostel owner. i checked the trains, but the price from the italian border was an anomaly and everything else in austria is expensive. i waited for a bus to the shopping centre near my road, it came and went before i could get myself and my bag on, then i realised it really wasn’t the best choice anyway and journeyed through the city to a different bus stop. the shopping centre was big enough to get lost in but i did manage to buy two buttons to replace the velcro i removed from my sleeping bag at least four years ago! eventually i found my road and from there things went so fast that before i knew it i had passed both salzburg and linz, with everyone having taken me out of their way. even my last truck, where i was squished between a fridge and another driver for part of the way, took me all the way up the highway past linz because he didn’t like the intersection where he would’ve let me off, had he continued straight to vienna. my last ride was even more hospitable, offering me a spare room, dinner, internet, phone and – gasp – a washing machine and dryer in freistadt, a beautiful little walled city where everyone living there has shares in the local beer ‘commune’. they get dividends in beer, but the community feeling seems to extend beyond that.

i walked out to the road in the morning, and the first car i stuck my thumb out for, took me all the way to the czech border. i couldn’t complain, as the czech republic was my next destination, but some day i need to get back to austria and see all the bits that i missed.

i’m sure it would be nice to hear about the good bits of my trip, the ones that came after the last traveloguebut instead, let me tell you about italy.

last time i was in italy i stood on burning hot roads and got yelled at, spat at and gestured at, at regular intervals of about three seconds. i got lost and got given bad directions, i got so fed up that i stowed away on a train, then went out of my way to swítzerland because it was a slightly closer border than the one i should’ve crossed.

this trip, i certainly had no intention of setting foot in italy. yet there i was in beautiful, helpful slovenia, on my way to ljubljiana with recommendations of places to stay, things to do and ways to get out at the end, when my truck did not let me off at my highway as he had agreed to. he took me to trieste.

i sadly abandonded my plans for ljubljana and decided that the fastest way north to austria was as good as i’d get.

of course, at the truck stop in trieste it is very difficult to find a truck going a different direction, and leaving the truck stop for the highway is a bad idea in italy, with two kinds of not very forgiving police. and it’s no fun to move at all in the heat of the day. so i let him take me to mestre, where there was a stop where there would be trucks going in different directions.

of course this was not true either. the stop was 2km past my highway, everyone was still travelling west and there were cops everywhere, i think i was told it was a bomb scare. so i got in a different truck to the next likely highway, at verona.

after an extended period of dispairing ever finding my way out of this impossible country, a car took me from truck stop to highway tollbooth. this, however, was not much of an improvement. my driver pointed to a crossroad and said i needed to go there, though the highway i was on should’ve been the right direction. eventually i hopped the small, crushed fence and walked 50m to a shopping centre, there to finally find a couple of people who speak english, staffing a booth selling credit cards or phones or something. they were very helpful, printing out a map and telling me to walk up up up here and down down down here, to find myself at the right road. on pain of prison i was not to jump the fence, that would be very dangerous.

advice safely tucked away and having restocked in the supermarket, half a bottle of cold juice went some way to reviving me. so i shouldered my bags again, and set out. up, up, up a km or two, past three roundabouts and a whole lot of shopping centre, i found the highway and turned back in on myself. down, down, down on the unpaved side of the highway, i dutifully did not stick my thumb out until i reached the end of the motorway, though the signs confirmed i was walking away from my destination.

of course, after at least 3km, can you guess? i found a tollbooth and a crushed fence to a shopping centre. i’m sure 50m of grass and a metre high wire fence is so dangerous that walking kilometres on the road is better.

the sun was going down by the time someone stopped. he was going in to verona and offered to take me to the train station, and by that time i was prepared to ditch the hitchhiking in favour of just getting out to hitch another day.

of course i wasn’t so thrilled when i found i had been taken from somewhere with a nice campable field, and dumped at a local train station, with only local trains, and no people. aimlessly leaving the station i got talking to two nigerian guys, who discussed racism in italy, religion, and how women are made to be protected. i argued well but still accepted their offer of hospitality. i found myself in a little apartment that must once have been beautiful, before everything was broken. my tour of the bathroom included the shower, which was a big bucket to fill with water and a dish to pour it with, and the light. ‘it goes off sometimes, but don’t worry, it goes back on.’

despite all, they were very hospitable. i got to eat the african food they made for themselves, semolina to roll in balls with your right hand and shape into a slight bowl, to pick up the spicy fish and chicken stew. i have much to learn in the etiquette of eating with my fingers, but nothing was said about my stew splatters everywhere or my very imperfect semolina shapes. it was delicious.

by the time it was apparrent i had half a bed, not a couch to sleep on, i was not surprised. after a bit of arguing he accepted the no touch rule, and i got a decent night’s sleep with no covers and an open window. in the morning he was not quite as cheery as he would’ve been if i had accepted being his girlfriend and agreed to come and visit italy again, but he took me to the bus to the big train station and gave me advice. ‘if you get there, ask a black man for the information office.’

the bus gave me a nice tour of the city, despite not knowing how to pay. it went on for ever and they have a lot of old buildings that look like they’ve been standing there placidly for ever, but just might melt if it rains. people live around them like they’re solid and dependable though, so maybe i’ll trust them on it.

of course i found that my latest friends had picked up the knack for italian directions that they themselves had complained about. the train station was supposed to be the end of the line, so i didn’t get off at the bus station. i continued on and on and on through suburbs, to another bus station. hang on, surely that’s the same church with suspicious carvings… i got off and walked back, and just when i was going to ask a black man i found an information office. he was genuinely surprised that i wanted a train, since he dealt with buses, but he waved me to the other building where i found actual, almost-accurate train information, and even acceptable directions to the ticket office. i bought my ticket to the border, which is as far as they would sell, and even managed to figure out which platform i needed, and find it!

i waited an hour or two on the platform, with four tvs cycling the same five ads at me, sound fading in and out. i got it confirmed that i was on the right platform and that the next train would be mine. i thought i was away once i got on the train, there was space and it was indeed non-smoking, but there was one final little mishap just to remind me where i still was. i proudly showed the ticket inspector the ticket i had managed to both buy and follow, but with the aid of a book of pictures he showed me that i was supposed to validate it. apparrently somewhere, on train or platform, i had missed some yellow machines where i was to stick my newly-bought international train ticket. still, he scrawled all over it, stamped it twice and left me to breathe again.

i did achieve the border, met up with another australian with a hostel address and a local who knew that the austrian trains can be paid for on board, and things ran smoothly again. i stayed a night in innsbruck and set off to enjoy the austrian roads. forget macedonia and bosnia, i can be proud i made it out of italy alive!

well here it is, submitted four hours before my plane leaves. now i’d better go and pack. it’s 4am.

Does postmodernism have anything to offer you in terms

of understanding the contemporary context in adult education?

What can you learn from the adult education literature on this topic?

Postmodernism has much to offer in terms of understanding the contemporary context in adult education, by both examining new developments in the field and offering new perspectives and tools with which to delve deeper and reinterpret previous analyses. In this paper I will survey several examples of Australian adult education in postmodernity such as university and TAFE systems, lifelong learning, public health campaigns and the queer and convergence movements. In an attempt at somewhat postmodern writing, I will use question, irony, eclecticism and analogy instead of definition and certainty to discuss how the literature of postmodern adult education can enhance understanding of these educational settings I also hope to suggest some jumping off points and create a sense of possibility that there will be somewhere for education to go, given adequate deconstruction and openness to the situation. I will also be using the personal pronoun, to not pretend that my own positionality does not inform this reading.

Whenever postmodernism is mentioned, the first objective is usually to attempt to explain what it is. However postmodernism does not adapt well to such a modernist endeavor; the consensus required to define the term does not exist. Yet rather than being a failed theory, postmodernism has been described as a constellation of views (Hill 2008), a new perspective on meaning and the world which emphasises and criticises a new selection of aspects and puts forward a selection of tools, comprising an additional lens of analysis with which to do so, to supplement and adjust the previous hundreds of years worth of modernist understandings (Kaufmann 2000).

Some sections within postmodernism are easier to pin down than the whole, and serve to mark some parameters of the field. With regard to adult education theory, several authors have offered dichotomies in order to adapt postmodernism to some practical use. Radical postmodernism, according to Kaufmann, claims that the world has fundamentally changed, that postmodernity is “an era of hyperreality in which all relations are governed by images” (Kaufmann 2000). This is a challenging claim; many criticisms of postmodernism, for such concerns as nihilism, amorality and overly dense language, often appear to be directed towards such an interpretation. Yet it does have at least some explanatory power, as evidenced by the inclusion of public health campaigns as an integral aspect of adult education. The Australian AIDS awareness (Willett 2000) and anti smoking campaigns are two striking examples of heavy use of powerful imagery to change public behaviour, and both campaigns’ successes attest to the potency of image in contemporary society, and its significance in adult education.

Strategic postmodernism, which Kaufmann draws in opposition to the radical version, is a more integrated approach, a perspective where political grounding is still possible, which uses tools to be explained below to rethink and recontextualise what we know, rather than discarding it.

Addressing the era rather than the theory, Bagnall similarly refers to a postmodernity of resistance which is “a positive, constructive, adversarial postmodernity of critical opposition to the status quo”, and opposes it to a postmodernity of resignation, a “negative, passive, compliant acceptance of the inevitability of the status quo” (Bagnall 1994a), which, though possibly demoralising, nevertheless needs attention. While we scramble to find practical applications in resistance postmodernism for a strategic postmodernity, the flip-sides can explain much of our surroundings, those aspects of the contemporary context which can otherwise be interpreted as a crisis (Usher, Bryant & Johnston 1997). Bagnall lists eleven features of a postmodernity of resignation, which are evident in our world and need to be addressed, rather than ignored as we try harder to keep sailing to our original course no matter what obstacles are in our way. The features, which challenge the epistemology behind education and all of modernity, are presentism, surfacisation, fragmentation, changeability, non-progressiveness, anti-intellectualism, crude instrumentalism, consumerism, existential insecurity, despair and practical indifference (Bagnall 1994a). Between the former and Bagnall’s list of tendencies of adult education appropriate for postmodernity, one can get a reasonable feel for the subject. The tendencies are for adult education to be reflexively contextualised, indeterminate, expressive, open, participative, heterodox, phenomenal, critical and dedifferentiated (Bagnall 1994b). As with much of postmodernism, the attributes in the latter list are not exclusively postmodern or new, but together they can amount to a postmodern approach.

Postmodernism is still a new perspective, likely to transform with time and continued social change. However, we need not wait for debates over hyperreality to be won before we can find use for insights and tools that reside in various corners of the last few decades’ scholarship, as can be seen in the increasing merging of postmodernism with several important strands of education theory, born of modernity. Postmodern feminism in particular melds a consistent focus on gender and oppression with newer, sophisticated views of diverse, complex identity; deconstructing gender and power into “multiple systems of privilege and oppression and their intersections, along with people’s capacity for agency or resistance (Merriam, Caffarella & Baumgartner 2007).

Deconstruction is the tool at the heart of postmodernism and probably the aspect which garners most agreement from otherwise conflicting strands of postmodernism. It is a means of interrogating our understanding of meaning, and by extension, the world. Some aspects of deconstruction which are particularly pertinent for Adult Education include Lyotard’s suspicion of metanarratives (Peters 2000), and an incredulity towards binaries (Newman 1999).

To deconstruct binaries is not as simple as it may seem, since they are densely integrated into our lives. The most obvious manifestation of this is the suspicion of binaries. Modernist thought is heavily dependent on commonplace acceptance of dualistic categories; good or bad, male or female, normal or other, and ironically, radical or strategic and resistance or resignation. These and many more structure the way we interpret the world, until it becomes acceptable to assume that everything that does not fit in one box will conform to a second one, and that anything which does not, is necessarily insignificant.

To deconstruct binaries is to examine these assumptions and construct ideas free from such conventions, while acknowledging their use and its consequences, where they are retained. Gender is a good example as it is ostensibly one of the most stable binaries at the basis of our language and culture, and also has a concrete bearing on adult education. A binary view of gender declares every human to be either male or female. Whether determined by chromosomes, anatomy, birth certificates, presentation or some other criterion, we are all expected to be untroubled when we tick the M or the F box on a form. Our biological sex, gender identity and presentation, and often even sexuality are expected to align; all in one box, none in the other and certainly no colouring outside the lines. Secure in this assumption, we have binary gender dependent educational theories, enrolment forms, some attendance lists and classes grouped by gender. Examples and illustrations in teaching materials are clearly gendered, usually with stereotyped gender role attributes furthermore, even when the extra information is entirely irrelevant to subject being explained. Feminism has long fought for recognition of the speciousness of the role stereotypes, and indeed recent textbook illustrations are likely to carefully disturb stereotypes such as portraying female engineers and male nurses, yet this flipping of codes depends on the understood binary structure and merely reinforces the acceptability of the underlying concept of binary sex. Despite all this use, when the gender binary is interrogated, it can be seen that the lines are not nearly as clear as they have been drawn.

Nature, including all attributes used to determine human sex and gender, evolves in spectrums and bell curves rather than dichotomies. Questions of identity, though suppressed by the status quo, have the potential to be even more wide ranging. Supporting this view of gender, postmodernism sees identity as a complex, multiple and mutable collection of self-selected attributes and identifications, rather than a category, determined by others, that one is born into.

This perspective change has huge consequences in education. Throughout modernism, theories have paid more and more attention to different characteristics of individuals, their experiences and the social groups they belong to, for reasons ranging from the reduction of individuals’ barriers to learning to the forming of class consciousness and revolution. Many theories of education depend on fixed identities being a determinant of needs, as have identity politics. Yet just like the queer movement which is taking over from the gay and lesbian movement, postmodern education celebrates the productiveness of difference (Edwards & Usher 2001).

Once we accept such a view of identity, there is much to do. We suddenly find our classrooms are filled with a diversity of people that we can’t categorise, tame and manage. We already knew our picture of a good student as young, straight, white, middle class and male was erroneous, but w can no longer merely replace it with a better image. What’s more, the social positions of teacher and student become merely another aspect of people’s identities, as changeable as the rest.

This all leads to celebration of difference; acceptance is not enough. In order relinquish belief in the comforts and structures we are accustomed to and make the most of these ideas, we must find them not just right, but important. From the original example, why merely add a box marked ‘other’ and leave anyone who doesn’t step into it to keep their original problematic labels, when we can appreciate the differences between being, for example, female-to-male transgender, intersex or genderqueer, and understand how the regulation of our own identity by the status quo is a contemporary, subtle form of oppression (Hill 2004).

As well as alerting us to the needs of differently gendered people in classrooms, this one deconstruction has exploded our confidence in binaries and given us a taste of a whole new ambiguous world underneath our comfortable conventions, one that requires an entire reworking of the concept of knowledge. In today’s information-saturated society, it’s getting hard to pretend the world is neater than it is, and even harder to justify the negative consequences of adhering to knowledge that just isn’t true. We find that people in a different place, time or circumstance have contradictory views and knowledges, and we are too exposed to them to be able to conscionably assert that ‘we’ are right and ‘they’ are wrong. Without postmodernism this can leave the world, and especially education, in crisis as our confident foundations now look like shifting sands. However, rather than digging for replacement foundations, postmodernism develops a whole new architecture, adapted to building on the sands of ambiguity. “Uncertainty is not a passing state of puzzlement but an acceptance of the provisional and contingent in what we believe and do” (Usher, Bryant & Johnston 1997).

Of all the ways society has changed in postmodernity, the era in which postmodernism has come about, the availability of information is but one of several which have a direct impact on adult education. As well as facilitating reinterpretation of many extant facets of education, postmodernism can take account of the impact of newer phenomena, for example the marked increase in education at a distance, another consequence of information technology. Online learning has greatly increased access to education, but only to those who can afford the technology and [find the support required, as it becomes less the responsibility of the institution]. Looking further, this promotes individualisation of learning, but also provides opportunities for distributed forms that are actually collaborative. (Edwards & Usher 2001).

This ambivalence echoes the quandaries in a wide shift in the circumstances of society surrounding education, which can be grouped under Bagnall’s classification as consumerism. While many adult educators consider consumerism irredeemably bad and would like to prevent it impacting their classrooms, adult education has become a consumable commodity, and to pretend it hasn’t won’t make it less so, or help educators respond to the change.

As the government cuts funding from the big education institutions and encourages but regulates private providers, all education that offers qualifications has to find more of its own funding. Courses are tailored to the market; subjects are only taught if enough people are expected to pay for them, be it corporations or individuals. Content is therefore forced to the lowest common denominator too. We see for example that TAFEs are teaching only three market segments; vocational, enterprise and tertiary (Towards 2012: Strategic Plan 2009), and their funding has been opened up to private colleges. They have also lost their last free offerings, as the unemployed now have to pay $50. There’s a good reason that adult educators are suspicious; access that has so long been fought for is lost as user pays is entrenched. From this largely modernist perspective, the problems are too big to assail and the future is dismal.

However postmodernism, while not necessarily rejecting such concerns, asks different questions and suggests new directions. Why privilege these major institutions? They’re big, they have cultural cache, but they do not need to dominate adult education. Education is a foundation of modernism and the modernist project is what has made educational institutions so important. Formal education tends to rely on there being a truth, an ultimate knowledge, usually in the possession of the teacher, to be either poured into, or drawn out of the student. Many theories throughout modernism have debated the nature of this process or where knowledge resides, but they do not question the existence of knowledge and truth. A core of postmodernism, however, is that knowledge is diverse, local and contingent. Maybe it is the institutions that we need to deconstruct.

Adult education, however, can exist outside of institutions. In fact, the rise of lifelong learning which has been seen in the last decade, is very much in line with postmodernism, to the extent that it has been viewed as a postmodern condition of education due to the multiplicity of practices employed (Edwards & Usher 2001).

Postmodernism has more to offer than elevating lifelong learning to be the new hegemonic paradigm, vanquishing the educational institutions in either importance or idealism. It recognizes education as happening in many other places such as communities and subcultures. The convergence movement, for example, is heavily invested in forms of adult education which fill out the picture and stand in direct opposition to the fears of societal degeneration and lack of purpose sparked by the decline of the most hegemonic forms of adult education. It is heavily collective and committed to awareness and activism, yet distinctly postmodern as a culture of visibility through difference (Hill 2008), with a selection of goal that, while so broad as to be fractured, manage to be cooperative and strong.

Attention to these diverse sites may seem to have shifted the borders of adult education, but according to postmodernism, more than that has happened. Another postmodern term, dedifferentiation, describes the borders of things becoming less defined. In this case, adult education is bleeding into the culture, leisure and entertainment industries. Usher, Bryant and Johnston (1997) speak of confessional, vocational, lifestyle and critical practices, four different aspects of adult learning which, whether or not they are comprehensive, point to an expansion of education in several directions even as the traditional educational institutions contract their purposes.

Confessional practices, such as self-help courses popular in community colleges and the similar topics flourishing in publishing, display education as an unending process, where there is always more work one can do on oneself, as opposed to the modernist concept of mastery where competencies and levels are achieved (Edwards & Usher 2001). Similarly lifestyle practices involve consuming not only the learning but the style, image and mark of difference involved in the content, another process which continues as long as that aesthetic is valued.

Within a modernist context, Houle lists many purposes of learning; “a way of examining one’s life, a tool taken up to learn something specific, an accomplishment, a way of preserving the state, a pleasurable activity, part of a personal rule of discipline, a mandate, a way of avoiding responsibility, an emblem of elitism, a rung on the ladder of success, a personal discipline or rule of life” (Sheridan 2007)  it’s an interesting list, but where Houle saw ‘self directed study as the peak of a continuum, Postmodern consumerism and the search for identity, aesthetics, meaning and spectacle continues further. Usher, Bryant & Johnston consider “A strong case could be made, therefore, that consumption in postmodernity is an active, generative process. It is embedded in a variety of social practices that involve adult learning, thus it cannot be argued that all that is going on is simply a matter of passive an d alienating consumption of goods, services and images” (1997). In our post-full employment society, the source of meaning and identity is shifting away from the workplace, to be found in leisure, desires and the consumption of images. This is an opening which is encouraging education to change, to attend not only to people’s needs, but their wants (Usher, Bryant & Johnston 1997). Needs and wants has been a powerful dichotomy and wants has always been seen as less important, even dangerous. Just maybe, it’s time to deconstruct the binary and learn the value of desires.

At the end of the journey, postmodernism has had plenty to offer; a small amount on how we see students in the classroom, up to a whole body of analysis on epistemology and the reorganisation of the entire field of adult education. With time the theories will no doubt be honed, and unless they are severely challenged they will likely gain more and more acceptance. However even now, when the concepts are more widely feared than understood, they can at the very least encourage us to look upon the world with fresh eyes.

Reference List

Bagnall, R.G. 1994a, ‘Educational Research in a Postmodernity of Resignation: A Cautionary Corrective to Utopian Resistance’, paper presented to the Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education.

Bagnall, R.G. 1994b, ‘Postmodernity and its Implications for Adult Education Practice’, Studies in Continuing Education, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 1 – 18.

Edwards, R. & Usher, R. 2001, ‘Lifelong Learning: A Postmodern Condition of Education?’ Adult Education Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 273 – 285.

Hill, R.J. 2004, ‘Activism as Practice: Some Queer Considerations’, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, vol. 102, no. Summer, pp. 85 – 94.

Hill, R.J. 2008, ‘Troubling Adult Learning in the Present Time’, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, vol. 119, no. Fall, pp. 83 – 91.

Kaufmann, J. 2000, ‘Reading counter-hegemonic practices through a postmodern lens’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 430 – 447.

Kilgore, D.W. 2004, ‘Toward a Postmodern Pedagogy’, New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, vol. 102, no. Summer, pp. 45 – 52.

Merriam, S., Caffarella, R. & Baumgartner, L. 2007, ‘Critical Theory, Postmodern and Feminist Perspectives’, in S. Merriam, R. Caffarella & L. Baumgartner (eds), Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide, 3rd edn, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, pp. 241-270.

Newman, M. 1999, ‘Looking for Postmodern Adult Educators’, in, Maeler’s Regard, Steward Victor Publishing, Sydney, pp. 194-202.

Peters, M. 2000, ‘Redefining Adult Education: Research, Self and Learning in Postmodernity’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 335-343.

Sheridan, J. 2007, ‘Lifelong Learning in a Postmodern Age: Looking Back to the Future through the Lens of Adult Education’, The LLI Review, no. Fall 2007, pp. pp 4-13.

Towards 2012: Strategic Plan 2009, TAFE NSW – Sydney Institute.

Usher, R., Bryant, I. & Johnston, R. 1997, Adult Education and the Postmodern Challenge: Learning beyond the Limits, Routledge, London.

Willett, G. 2000, Living Out Loud: A History of Gay and Lesbian Activism in Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

i can’t help myself. i’m studying again. i have studied constantly since i was four years old, except for the time between february 2006 and february 2007… and half a semester at the end of the welding course last year while i was finishing off the mechanical engineering. come to think of it, in 2006 i still did the screen printing course. and the upholstery course. hmmm.

anyway, i’m now half way through my first subject in a masters of adult education; understanding adult education and training. it’s been interesting, and though i died over my first essay, i must’ve done a reasonable job, as i got a distinction for it! here it is.

Identifying Your Philosophical Orientation

This commentary is a personal response to taking an inventory on my philosophical orientation regarding adult education. Despite limitations in the instrument, I found the process and my results offered insights into both my philosophy and my practice in adult education. I found the framework to be useful, especially in conjunction with another on a separate axis, but could not locate myself firmly within any particular tradition, whichever way I tried. I was drawn to consider the breadth of purposes inherent in any instance of education, which, I believe, substantiates the broad range of theories and practices in which I find value. Ultimately, the frameworks are only guides to navigate the field in search of all the various theories which one can adapt, use, integrate and enjoy.

Zinn’s (1990) Philosophy of Adult Education Inventory (PAEI) is an interesting instrument. Consisting of a mere fifteen questions, it gives a quick analysis of a person’s philosophy of adult education, according to a framework by Elias and Merriam (Zinn 1990).

In taking the test according to its guidelines, I came out as 97% Humanist, 90% Radical, 88% Progressive, 70% Liberal and 66% Behaviourist. These results are notable for all being quite high and relatively close together as I had difficulty grading the answers. I found merit in almost all of them, and scored everything in the top half of the scale, between ‘neutral’ and ‘strongly agree’. Zinn suggests that this may indicate contradictory philosophies, however I saw answers as appropriate to different situations, rather than challenging each other’s validity.

I had difficulty filling out the inventory with regard to my general philosophy, as without differentiation, half the questions refer to specific practice, such as planning activities, while the rest demand a static philosophy. While both theory and practice are vital and I agree with Grace (2006) one cannot have one without the other, they do not necessarily stay still for examination. My practice varies widely depending on subject and context. Redoing the inventory for five different fields in which I have taught, the variety was more marked that I expected. In fact each one came out with a different primary philosophy, though the range within each was no less bunched than the original.

Burnout Workshops
The radical perspective came up second in general, and top for my Burnout workshops (All scores are tabulated in the appendix below). These workshops, dealing with prevention and management of stress and burnout, are conducted within community groups where the issue is acknowledged as important and very real, both to the individuals and to the group. They are used both to equip individuals for life and participation in the world, and to strengthen community. This is one of the few opportunities I get to confront social action directly, so I’m not surprised it came up the most radical. The humanist element is also strong with facilitation and focus on expanding potential, and working with emotions. Exercises such as role playing ‘saying no’ are effective uses of experiential learning, another focus of Humanism.

Mathematics tutoring
When I teach numeracy and mathematics, it is generally because my students perceive a general need or inadequacy. In trying to overcome their fears of the topic, I use plenty of problem solving and discovery methods to show them what they can do. Needs assessment is also very important, as I cannot rely on these students to be self-directed. These all draw on the progressive category, which scored highest on this take. I have the students’ immediate needs in mind, but I also choose my materials to connect to something wider, real issues in the students’ lives, for better learning by connecting to what students find important, for building confidence in the subject and in life, for community and world involvement and for making the world a little less scared of the subject.

Rubber workshops
Fun with Rubber and Latex scored closest to my overall outcome, in that the highest score for both was humanism. These workshops are run within the queer women’s communities of Newtown and are a forum to get a specific subculture interacting in an alcohol-free environment, to normalise open dialogue about sex of the varieties relevant to that community and to give people experience in the practical aspect of do-it-yourself philosophy. These are all dire needs in the community at the moment and I would have expected a high score in the radical column, but when I thought about it, I don’t use many radical techniques in planning or teaching, likely because there are relatively few to be found (Newman 1999). The workshops are advertised much more individualistically as an opportunity to have fun, learn skills and take home new toys that one cannot afford to buy commercially. Planning is restricted to materials and sequences of skills and learning is experiential after a short presentation, which may explain the high score for humanism.

Tatting classes
Tatting is a form of lace making that is associated with people’s grandmothers. I often run tatting classes in women’s spaces and, as with most of my teaching, they are a chance for people to connect to a community without putting themselves on display, as there is an ostensible purpose, and something to do with their hands. Tatting is a skill that people learn for learning’s sake, or to connect to women’s history, both which have a place in the liberal tradition (Zinn 1990), which came up as the primary perspective here. Mastering the skill is very important as it looks so simple that anyone who gives up goes away feeling defeated, so I put effort into finding different ways of teaching and promoting learning of the basic concepts, which come naturally to very few. I guess this is where the behaviourism comes in.

Tap dancing classes
Tap dancing came up as behaviourist, the very lowest score on my overall results. One reason I can see is that, where I generally don’t believe in practice and repetition as an important part of learning, that is what dancing is all about. There can be no rhythm in one isolated step. This class, like any of mine, has other objectives such as promoting body confidence, but the teaching is heavily systematic, building from simple step to complex sequence, with constant feedback.

These five case studies shed some light on my original score, which was supposed to position my overall philosophy and deep beliefs about adult education. They suggest to me that Zinn’s idea of purpose is simplistic as she seems to assume that there is one or two purposes behind an educational interaction, where as I can list a dozen at a time, primary and secondary, overt and incidental, cognitive or affective, individual or community, all in play at once.

Yet wherever they are placed, with recurrent themes of facilitation, interactive and experiential learning, personal growth and emphasis on affective content, it is no longer surprising that I came out as 97% humanist. I don’t always practice heavy consultation as I tend to have skills to transmit and the student has already chosen with their feet, but when I am in a classroom I do concentrate on empowering each individual student to be able to learn and connect the information, skills and attitudes to the rest of life. Theory-wise, the only aspect of humanism that came up in the PAEI as problematic is the idea that students are always capable of self direction.

My next score was radical, and I am certainly not surprised I scored high there as many theories which excite me fit into that category. I read plenty of libertarian education, critical pedagogy, postmodernist, feminist, indigenous and queer pedagogy. Yet as much of this field focuses on the organisation of education, over which I have less control than I do over my teaching, these theories have not translated as well as I would like to my practice. I have, however, opened a community space which provides resources, support and a location to all sorts of experimental educational projects. This has directly drawn on Illich’s (1971) Learning Webs.

Progressive theory has also had a significant impact on my thought. I have moved from pedagogy to adult education through the thought of such educators as A S Neill (1926), and pin hopes for schools on reducing the pressure they are under, by expanding, improving and respecting adult education. I work with students’ interests and needs and try to link content to their lives and real world problems, and make use of democracy rather than hierarchy, to model social change further than any content can go.

The liberal tradition is no longer the cutting edge of education, but I cannot ignore its achievements. I do not like to lecture and the list of topics a renaissance mind should know is centuries outdated, but I stand by the concept of a broad base of knowledge and understanding being important for interacting with the world.

Behaviourism, too, makes points one cannot afford to ignore, as it addresses a wealth of issues of how the mind works. At the very base, all the theories in the world won’t help if the student is in no position to learn, either from being subjected to a style of input that their brain cannot process, or merely not having had breakfast.

So, Zinn’s inventory has been useful in clarifying differences in my practice. However, her framework is not the only one by far. The number of similar frameworks with slightly revised categories, differences and overlaps, suggest to me that none of them are quite as comprehensive as they’d like to be, and remind me that they are all merely approximate divisions according to one set of criteria, which would easily be shifted according to another. For example, though the topics are surely related, Zinn’s philosophies of adult education and Merriam’s (Merriam, Caffarella & Baumgartner 2007) Five Orientations to Learning each have five categories, some of which overlap while the others don’t. Though each has some interesting questions on the other axis, I find nothing to recommend one over another, apart from attachment to an inventory.

However there are other ways of navigating theory, some of which can even coordinate with one of the first kind. Apps’ breakup (Zinn 1990), I believe, can enhance Zinn’s or any similar framework and make it more meaningful and flexible by providing sensible places to change category. The categories of Teacher, Learner, Content, Learning and Purpose are very real and distinct, and feel closer to being finite, while being overtly an example of aspects to be covered, rather than attributes on which to choose a category.

For example, as a teacher I tend to be a facilitator, as in the humanist tradition. I tend to treat learners in a progressive manner, working towards fulfilling their interests and discovering their experience. The widest purpose, in the back of my mind, is to bring about social change through community cohesion. I believe this is radical though the change I seek is not specifically revolutionary as some theorists require. I believe learning is incredibly broad, and find it appropriate to be very flexible in my methods. Each tradition focuses on different aspects; maybe behaviourism wins this because they focus on it so much more. And for content, I largely teach what I know, and I do aspire to being a renaissance person, as I see all sorts of weird and wonderful titbits of knowledge and understanding, especially learning from the past, can work together into something richer and more complex, that would be lost if we all stuck to the same popular fields.

To examine the original categories as capable of being broken down on these lines is a step towards seeing them as all aspects of a whole, and also to being able to appreciate theories which do not pretend to be a theory of everything. Indeed, I share many sentiments with the postmodernists, though they have severe limitations, especially in practice (Newman 1999). With a healthy disrespect for categories, they seem to support my inclination to not label myself, but to rather put together an eclectic collection of ideas, past and present, leaving room for the future as well.

Frameworks can help navigate the aisles, but what I put into my basket of theories will depend on what I come to need, what I think I can use, and ultimately, what makes me happy. So much of adult education theory takes itself very seriously, which is a pity as it is stuff on which to dream. Many theorists, and especially policy makers in this country, would do well to read bel hooks and consider how “to be changed by ideas [is] pure pleasure” (hooks 1994).

Despite limitations in the instrument, the PAEI has described my diverse views and given me food for thought on what I find useful, and what I find exciting. From here, I hope to fill some holes such as translating some of my radical theories to practice, and continue add to my – now better organised – basket of theories and practices, ideas, techniques and inspirations, all while cheerfully eluding categorisation.

Appendix: PAEI scores

Liberal Behaviourist Progressive Humanist Radical
Overall        70          66                      88                    97               90
Tatting        89          86                      84                    85               76
Burnout      73          71                      89                    94               95
Rubber       73          70                      85                    97               76
Maths          84          80                      97                    90               81
Tap              79          86                      72                    83               65

Reference List

Grace, A. 2006, ‘Critical Adult Education: Engaging the Social in Theory and Practice’, in T. Fenwick, T. Nesbit & B. Spencer (eds), Contexts of Adult Education: Canadian Perspectives, Thompson Educational Publishing, Toronto.
hooks, b. 1994, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, Routledge, New York.
Illich, I. 1971, Deschooling Society, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England.
Merriam, S., Caffarella, R. & Baumgartner, L. 2007, ‘Critical Theory, Postmodern and Feminist Perspectives’, in S. Merriam, R. Caffarella & L. Baumgartner (eds), Learning in Adulthood: A Comprehensive Guide, 3rd edn, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, pp. 241-270.
Neill, A.S. 1926, Summerhill, Penguin Books Australia, Ringwood, Victoria.
Newman, M. 1999, ‘Looking for Postmodern Adult Educators’, in, Maeler’s Regard, Steward Victor Publishing, Sydney, pp. 194-202.
Zinn, L. 1990, ‘Identifying Your Philosophical Orientation’, in Golbraith (ed.), Adult Learning Methods, Kreiger, Florida, pp. 39-77.

at the bottom of a bag of miscellaneous junk i’ve been sorting, i found a bunch of pens. as one would expect.

i dutifully went through and scribbled each one on the back of an A4 envelope from the ‘chuck’ pile; addressed to me with a 45c and a 49c stamp. the top left corner is enblazoned:

Students’ Council
Macquarie University
NSW 2109
Ph: 02 0850 7629
Fax: 02 9850 7633
UNION IS STRENGTH

aaah. over the flap is a circular stamp in blue:

COMPLIMENTS OF
THE WOMEN’S DEPT
MACQUARIE UNI

the date is 06/06/01.

but i digress. even deeper into trivial nostalgia, of all the pens i tried, there were several i recognised from a home show in the late eighties or early nineties. they say

TNT Air Couriers
The System

the system? i don’t suppose i’ll ever find out why they thought that was a good byline. i assume the company has disappeared, certainly i know the twin TNT buildings with the overpass have displayed a more forgettable acronym for many years now.

but the pens still work. each and every one.

the big green felt tip called

G. of A. Permagraf

is also going strong.

i’m impressed.

i am a student again. it hits me when i realise that i have a perpetually open word document where i can type in random scribblings on their way to a more permanent home. in the last three years i have not studied essay subjects, have not bothered to open word often, and have instead written in a variety of notebooks, separated by subject. will i lose that clarity now i again have several partial blog posts, email responses and thoughts sitting in the one document below my essay notes? maybe the integration will make me more productive instead, less able to forget and put aside, for better or for worse.

i am obstinate and have just removed all the capitalisation that word insisted on giving me. it was an easy task, considering all but one instance was the letter ‘i’. the fact that most of the themes refer to myself amuses my linguistically trained mind, but of course it’s all about me, it’s a blog. the action concerns me more than the content. when does acknowledging that there is no particular justification override upholding consistency for its own sake? i struggle with that question probably more than i should. is that the definition of obsessive? am i clinging to displays of identity that nobody else will even notice? should i be doing my readings instead of worrying about it?

my car ran out of petrol again. in the blazing sun, in a bus stop in a school zone. at 3.15. there were swarms of schoolboys.

i was on my way to an interview. noone stopped for me as i walked a whole mile back to a servo, wearing a suit, carrying an empty gerry can. luckily someone there asked me if i had transport, and took me back to my car, directly out of his way. i then proceeded to spill most of the can full over my car and the bus zone, with said swarms of schoolboys watching my shaking hands, as they had watched my failed hitch hiking. fun.
but i got to the interview.