Connections through Whinging
Like all aspiring Postgraduate arts students, deeply contemplating their future impacts upon humanity, I took a Buzzfeed Career quiz the other day. Based on my birth month and date, I have discovered that the job I should really pursue is: “Professional Whinger”. Well, for once I didn’t screenshot my result, like I usually do, out of some weird humor or vanity. **Embarrassing confession: I have a folder dedicated to odd screenshots of quiz results. After all, I would never want to forget that that my classic library matches Mary Wollstonecraft’s, my spirit animal is a falcon, and my combo of T-Swift Albums is Fearless and Taylor Swift Deluxe! But who wants to be a Professional Whinger? Why couldn’t I have gotten “Artisan Cheese Sniffer” or “Part-time Czar”, since I do these on my free time anyways? Since Buzzfeed did not give me an exciting future career based on my precise zodiacal information, I obviously couldn’t add such a misinformed snapshot of my identity to the secret X-files under the folder “PICS”. But maybe I should have, since this might be one of my tendencies after all, at least when it comes to postgrad work. For the past several months, my colleagues and I have been organizing a conference. The 7th Annual Glasgow University Postgraduates of Arts Conference, to be exact, but “Connections” is an easier handle. To be frank, I signed up to work the conference because it was a CV booster. I’m trying to hack my way into this academic game after being a teacher for five years, so my CV could honestly use a little boosting. But I had no idea what I was getting into. I’ll spare you the details about the organisation preparations—choosing abstracts, selecting keynotes, figuring out catering budgets. Just know that you’ll learn a lot from the experience. What I was mostly unprepared for was how the speakers, panelists, and attendees would affect me. After all, my colleagues and I were LEADING a conference about ‘Connections’; didn’t that mean that we were somehow already in the know, already connected ourselves? Well, no. Time and again I’ve bemoaned to the two other English PGRs in the committee that I felt so isolated, that I envied the other majors who supposedly had grand societies and clubs and inner rings, full of opportunity to debate and discuss and hang out until dawn. I mourned the lack of funding for the Arts and Humanities that left us stranded in academic limbo, struggling to latch on to any solid base of community and genuine friendship because we had no physical office or social spaces—unless you win the lottery, and I don’t mean metaphorically! However, I also lamented the thought of constantly juggling academia with the search for careers, a cutthroat world where any friend I could make would be competing with me for that prized lectureship position. Despite the fact that I essentially wanted to relive my undergraduate glory days on the UCLA quad discussing Shakespeare, I was too busy, too tired, and too unmotivated to make connections. What was the point? In other words, I had become a whinger. But as I furiously scribbled on my lamentably flimsy conference notepad (honestly, can we go back to plain, utilitarian spirals as conference souvenirs? I desire to NOT lose my notes, thankyouverymuch!) I found myself lifted out of my carping by the old siren call of knowledge. I learned of Dr. Michelle Keown’s work with Marshallese artists and poets in challenging nuclear imperialism and cried at Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s “Anointed” (did you know that the U.S. has tested 966 underground nuclear weapons and 260 overground ones? North Korea, in comparison, has tested 1 underground one). I listened to compositions influenced by the Japanese sho and was stunned by performance art of birthing. I gained tiny, incredible glimpses into prison architecture, Spanish Civil War memorials and graffiti, and Maori-Scottish place names. There is so much beauty in remembering how little I actually know and soaking in others’ ideas. Yet besides the connections of new—or at least new-to-me knowledge—this conference made some other unexpected connections. Friendship. That sounds so silly and so obvious, but for someone who mainly works on her “office” mattress, it meant a lot. I became friends with my amazing team, and have planted small but determined roots within the wider PGR community as well. One of the most meaningful moments from the conference was in Dr. David Forrest’s writing workshop. I had terribly bungled the directions to Kelvin Hall, which led to David sprinting around the MANY Kelvin locations in Glasgow: Kelvingrove Museum, Kelvingrove Park, Kelvin Gallery, a DIFFERENT Kelvin Hall, Kelvin Building. Despite this harrowing adventure, he gave us two incredible Spoken Word performances of his poetry, demonstrated some amazing opportunities for art within Glasgow Paisley’s community, and then spurred us on to discussion about our own outworking of art. During our discussion, David said something that took me completely by surprise, though it shouldn’t have, rather like the tap of a reflex hammer to the knee: we often create and sustain our own disconnections. I’ve been mewling for so long that I’ve felt disconnected within my PhD, but how much of that was my fault? I had been starving for discussion and deep thinking since my students graduated and I moved to Scotland, not because Scotland is at ALL absent of this, but because I had submerged myself in a hole of spreadsheets and Pages documents and negative thinking. David said that we might walk down the street and pass 100 people, but see maybe two, if that. But just how many students, staff, and visitors do I pass at uni, only to not see any of them? I’m not saying that the institution could help out more in funding more physical spaces in which to meet. Yet certainly I could do more on my own to bridging connections with those around me, rather than contributing to the problem with passive moaning. So Buzzfeed, thanks for the wake up. I will stop denying my true calling, since it turns out I’m pretty good at whinging after all, even whinging about whinging. But thanks to the 7th Annual Glasgow University Postgraduates of Arts Conference, or more exactly, thanks to all the brilliant, thoughtful people I’ve met, perhaps I can turn complaints into connections. BUZZFEED AND BABEL We whinge of disconnection, isolation, institution Bureaucratic barriers that we just can’t change. but I built this wall myself I thought you were too bored, too confused, too ill-literate Or maybe I just didn’t believe in it myself. We covered our eyes so we would not see our mouths so we would not speak our ears so we would not hear If God hadn’t torn the tower millennials would have five inch hedges of protection stronghold glasses of deflection screened by academic babble since it’s more human to scatter (Please, please here I go again, please tear down my ivory self-construction and find me in my ash and rabble Or are my tongues too opaque, too daft, too dumb?) but maybe words aren’t stones but grass, too quickly fading, yet marvelous for hiding, so we can grasp at hollow straws epigraphs in the making In fragments and the fracture talk not at and by each other can't we braid the frail and feeble threads weave the withered leaves together--
-[JuEunhae] Knox
