Manzanita…
My fellow companion for the last 5 years, literally my baby, it is severly sick. 🙁
It does not accept to take electricity anymore, hence, it only has 40% energy left….
However as loyal as it always has been, it allowed me to finalize my backup…
I am saving the energy it has left for a miracle….
oh man! 🙁
The first thing to do, is to stop saying to our heart and mind: it is the busiest day of my life.
Because busier days will always come, as a lot of work is needed to be done to make things happen. Work and humbleness are required for learning from the people who had walked the path earlier, and it is willing to share some of their time and experience with us to improve.
Here a small story showing how time can get busier and busier:
On July 14, 2010 @ 6 am – I got locked myself outside of my Finnish house, with no keys. In a warmer summer day I start early my days, however I was lucky enough to have my phone with me, then I could ask for help.
On July 14, 2010 @ 6 pm – I got locked myself outside of my office in Science Park, with no keys, no phone, nothing. Worse case scenario than at the morning of the same day. However thanks to Alexander Kolesnikov I was saved and finally got in.
Those were not signs of in-love process, but my mind is really elsewhere trying to finalize my PhD and doing its best.
On July 28 2010, while being at the Pielinen Museum, I got the email of a paper accepted with “significant revisions”. I am still shocked. We worked with that paper per months with Erkki, and I think I had been working with it directly more than a year. Hope it makes it through the whole process…
On July 29, 2010. I got the information of other document I worked with Jan in June, which is also “accepted conditionally”.
Honestly, I do not believe it is possible to break the rejection spell, especially after a dozen of rejections in a row. I feel like being locked out: those things can’t happen to me.
The reason of the entrance in this blog is: I do not believe it, however clear evidence exists that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Now, as you can imagine it is busier as I had planned on Tuesday, but happily I received the work to be done if the spell is broken.
light
I am thankful to have corrections, because it means someone is reading carefully my work and s/he is helping me to improve. I am blessing for that, and I hope to continue on this track. Thank you!
Please, provide to my supervisors and readers TONS (in an exponential sense) of patience and guidance.
Keep my ears and mind open; my emotions calm and cool to understand the suggestions of improvement. Offer me the wisdom on how to RE-WRITE sentences, paragraphs and chapters when I realize I am not able to transmit the message.
god of the words,
god of the clarity,
please remember to illuminate this phd student (aka me)?
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggghhhhhhhrrrrr_men!
image source: here
One of the reasons why this research group called my attention was: they are doing research in what we call developing countries. For those who knows me, it is not a surprised that I was attracted with this idea.
However as I discover more about ICT4D, I realize I am not from the same philosophy.
This is COMPLETE contradictory, I know. Specially because I want to help and actually I am contributing at some level with ICT4D. But I am interesting in the personal growth of any individual.
On Friday I was briefly in one talk regarding ICT4D. I wonder if anyone on that room read Carlos Fuentes. In one of his books, el espejo enterrado (in english: the buried mirror), Fuentes manage a very special concept: when two cultures meet each other. The encounter of cultures imply the discovering of each other step by step. Two different worlds are discovering each other, this has sever implications at different levels. I know this type of reflection is not only his, there are different writers making explicit the reflections of different meanings and interpretations.
In the 30 minutes I was in that room on Friday, my heart got sad. I just heard how the experts were concern on changing the “ignorance” of the countries they are working with. Of course that ignorance is in reference to our perspective. As we assume several of their problems and behaviors must change. In those 30 minutes, I did NOT hear what do we discover in the host cultures that can make us work together. I did NOT hear how the locals define their own problems. I did NOT hear a we (foreign and locals) at any moment. Much less I hear what the foreign has learned or admired from the “host” culture.
If I have a guest in my house and tells me how to furnish it, clean it and even live in it. I wont get happy and I doubt I will get open to those wise suggestions. Less if I haven’t even ask for those suggestions myself.
I accept I am a western. This is a fact, for “n” reasons, starting from the perspective I born in a BIG metropolis of the western hemisphere. But that does not give me any rights to say that my way of living is the correct one.
I had been a missionary for several years. I had lived in communities that from our “western” eyes are not developed. Where there is literally nothing. I had seen people die, and I had seen people sleeping on the street trying to get warm next to an animal. No shelter, no food, nothing. However, those communities and those individuals are richer in other aspects than us. What makes us think or believe we are superior? The money, yeap sure! With all the ongoing natural disasters, we will see how much the money can help us.We are just loosing the point of living.
I wish to hear one day, from any leader, how one draws the line between what is your desire of your own growth, my desire for my own growth, and our common growth. Wondering, when we will work together?
The “solution” we are approaching as “development”, in my humble opinion and in most of the cases, is not taking us anywhere. Because since the first encounter the respect is not existent, we do not consider ourselves equals. That problem is in both ends of the conversation the westerns and the no-westerns. When we accept that both parties are as important as oneself, then perhaps growth will start to flourish.
I admit there are very valuable people in the world of ICT4D. I respect them. It exists good will, and all the good stuff we can think of. But sadly from my eyes we are missing the point and following some type of e-colonialism pattern.
To the time!. Maybe I am mistaken, maybe we will change the approach….in anycase,right now I must finalize my thesis.
Recommended book to read!
1. I LOVE what I do.
Since I was a child my dream has been to create life. My childhood is full of designing, creating and learning stuff constantly. It puts me in “flow” to do those things.
2. Thinking is challenging.
As more I have to think, as more I understand why the majority of humans avoid doing it.
3. Writing is not easy.
I found writing especially painful because I do not have the proper basic skills. However, I will not quit. I know I am not going to be Shakespeare because writing is not in my system. I just want the basic skills to finish my PhD. Hence, now I am in the process of unlearning and learning. Perseverance!!! As Winston Churchill said: “Never give in. Never give in. Never, Never, Never.”
Ok, I am also asking for a miracle, otherwise I will die in the process to be honest.
3. The PhD process has helped me to discover myself.
To learn to focus is VERY HARD. I think is challenging for any PhD student. But, I think it is a relevant process that contributes to a self-discovery too.
4. I am thankful when referees of my work give constructive comments.
Constructive comments, promotes healthy growth. Thanks to one of my referees, I got to know Nigel Cross. After I read one of his books, a big smile emerged. Today I can articulate one of my strengths: I am good in design.
My supervisor, Erkki, told me about my strength earlier. But I was not able to understand him. Perhaps, I was not ready to understand. Honestly and as surprisingly as it might sound, it has taken me decades to realize that I like to design, and that I am good at it. Anyway, better later than never 😉
Now I can identify with other designers. Yes, I think on paper as they do. I specially identify with this quote:
“The way designer work may be inexplicable, no for some romantic or mystical reason, but simply because these processes lie outside the bounds of verbal discourse: they are literally indescribable in linguistic terms.”
I FULLY AGREE!!!! One sketch can say much more than a whole book. There are experiences that cannot be put in word, one must only live them.
I see solutions, and I work in a cyclic process of discovery solution-challenges. For me things are not linear, are cyclic and dimensional, and bunch of other stuff which I cannot articulate.
Actually, even philosophers such as Burke had already expressed how words put limits. This quote of him gets in my heart:
“Even if a given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function also as a deflection of reality”.
Yes, I admire anyone who has the gift of the words. But let’s be honest, different types of intelligence exist. I guess at some point science will have to contemplate other ways to show scientific contribution besides just using the words. Ok, I know it will not happen in my time, thus I have to succeed within the traditional school. But I hope time will come and things will evolve.
To finalize a video of a talented friend, Franci Cronje, which I think it matches this post. She has another perspective, but it also gives food for the though.