Thoughts of an older researcher…

Hello again and welcome to this blog as you’ll notice (with the last one and this one) that I’ve stepped away from the aimed for academic prose, with these ones adapting a ‘chattier’ style for a few to see how this works within the brand.

This blogs topic has been sitting at the back of my thoughts like an ephemerality presence for a while now, its nature changing and evolving, in short, it’s my current identity of becoming an older researcher.

With this blog I hope to explore my ideas of what becoming an older researcher consists of, I couple this with the realisation that I’m arriving to the field of research relatively late on in life and with that, a worry that I may not possess all the attributes to make this as much of a success as it should be.

There I’ve said it. I’m not sure I should have said it, but I have said it. I say that because you always have concerns about any subject matter of blog writing, as it can be viewed in so many different ways. There is always a concern that stating these thoughts “out loud” so to speak, runs the risk of qualifying them as facts, and with that it plants in someone’s else’s mind, therefore it grows outside of your control with no chance of adding further clarification.  

This definitely fits into the possibly controversial category, as the idea of an older researcher is a complex one.

On the one hand I believe that age has given me a “maturity” that I can bring to the study with the established thought patterns and skills over time and age, which has given me more adaptability to encompass other ones even if they seem to be distractingly discursive.

On the other hand, I have noticed that the skills of close reading take a little more work than in previous times and that I have established thought patterns and skills over time and age, which has given me more adaptability to encompass other ones even if they seem to be ridiculous.

At this point I feel I should add into this the observation of how the imposter syndrome can be incredibly well cultivated in this baren landscape between studies and directional quantifiers, at a time when certain skills are most needed, they seem to be found wanting.

I do realise that this procedure of creating the foundations of parameters and thought processes, coupled with the manifesting of notions into theories is the well-trodden path of establishing oneself as an independent study practitioner. I know that this has been proven to gain the best results in a PhD setting.

I guess I must acknowledge the wins more clearly when they happen.

One factor I must continue to remember is the fact that Urgent Temporality is a relatively new practice, only emerging in February 2020, making it only 2 years old this year. At the outset I did harbor ideas of setting it up as a research agency, looking into certain practices with the main purpose of that, to add a capitalist legitimacy to proceedings, which will add a cast iron idea of earnings to the brand, but it seems like I may fall short in that outcome.

Think with any of these subjects you do have to question their importance, if it’s purely personal or is it part of the bigger picture. Some of the ideas talked about here are very personal ones, as I am approaching my 48th year on this planet so the realisation of time is a very apt one.

With that in mind I’ll share my hopes of what will happen in ‘22, which will hopefully see the start of my PhD, so the studies will finally manifest themselves into actual reviewed research, although I realise that will be further to the end of the year.

My planning of the PhD I’ve had to factor a number of things but the conclusion of this is that I hope to do the study full time which will make me 50/51 when completed, leaving me 15 (?) years in which to use the skills learnt and with progression factors.

That’s quite a scary prospect.

This whole subject touches on the edges of the debates around age, although they seem to have gone quiet over the last few months but can be identified as both political and moral dilemmas. I think as well, like most people in my age group, the personal factor of how to look after your parents as they age, and as their needs become more complex and demanding then you can’t help but reflect on your own mortality in regard to usage and quality.

So, what role can the older researcher play? And slightly more obtusely I ask the question of if older people are hoping to work at this level, are they marginalized in any form? Does age and experience translate into better research or do the advantages that youth hold make for better research?

I don’t have the answers to all those questions but a personal reflection that I’ll leave here, center around the absorption of information from written texts and the timing of reading texts, all of which currently need planning as the retainment of information is differently structured within certain concepts of place and time.

I guess that one of the plus sides in the age debate is that I do now approach things differently, I’m a little more discerning than I once was, there are things that I now realise I can’t/won’t/shouldn’t do, as opposed to when I was younger, I believed I could do a lot of the ‘things’

This neatly leads into the next question of how does any of this transfer into my new research direction?

Well in answer to that, and in conclusion, I believe that these thoughts and ideas will need time to be processed and the observation of results will be important to see if they need to be incorporated into my current practices.

Thanks for reading and please let me know any thoughts, ideas or comments through the usual channels.

A crisp dawn falls upon a Swedish crossroads in January 2020 creating long shadows and the combination of warmth and coolness can be felt.

Now the blog format needs a picture to illustrate and create engagement, for this I’ve chosen this image of when I was establishing the UT presence it was taken at a hotel in Sweden. A break which helped me clarify the starting points of which directions I wanted to go in, as I look back on this image it brings back waves of recognition of the thought process and excitement of that time, not sure that this is completely recognisable in the image, but the symbolism of the subject has the starting points of the meaning here.

Thank you