With a sense of failure and a fair degree of crankiness, I announce my withdrawal from academia. I attended the Colloquium - which went quite well but for some offensive, un-called for and agressive comments from a Deakin Senior Lecturer. These were about my creative work. He had an agenda to push and he pushed beyond my limits.
I walked out with a shredded belief in the process, no happy confidence in what I was doing and growing anger that a single person had been allowed to dominate the process.
Oh well, back to my 'third world cliches' - spinning, dyeing and knitting. I think this gives you some idea of the tenor of his criticism.
No, I don't need that. Yes, I know it will be okay. When one door closes another opens. Open portal, open!
But it doesn't make me happy.
I'm in a cleaning frenzy - that doesn't make me happy either, but it does make me feel useful.
A blog where I talk about the reading, writing, post the Tuesday Poem and, sometimes, show some knitting.
2 comments:
Oh Catherine, I am apalled to read this. I'm not going to insult you further by intimating that you have been 'forced' to withdraw by a negative nasty person - presumably it's not as simple as that and you have your reasons. But I have to ask - were there any more senior people present? (A senior lecturer is actually quite junior in academia, no matter what they think.) Was the head of dept or Dean there? Was your supervisor there? Did no-one try to ameliorate his comments? You have grounds for complaint - if you can be bothered. This happened to me recently and I was livid - but my reaction (typical!) was "I'll show him, the ignorant twat!"
Hi m-h - no heads of departments or deams present, my supervisor was there. no one attempted to ameliorate comments at all. I sent around a robust email of complaint to each member of the colloquium and the Head of dept. I've actually been away for a week in Townsville, but it took my supervisor a week to get back to me after the email. She quite possibly got my dates confused. I can't actually be bothered to complain further. I'm not that anxious for academic work and there are a few good reasons for me to give it up. But I'm nursing a bruised sense of self etc. Which I will get over with time. I guess my equivalent of your reaction is to burrow deeper into the novel....
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