It’s not easy, doing this.

I’ve never really bought into the idea – omnipresent but not so often explicitly stated – that the academy is something special, that by virtue of doing a PhD we are smart and unique. I don’t think being an academic is really much different from being an airplane mechanic, a plumber, or a soldier. We’ve all seen those group dynamics, where people working in any of those professions could identify with a broader community of similar people – a group of mechanics, plumbers, or soldiers – and we’ve seen how they can also exhibit tribalism and exclusion, acting as though people outside those groups are somehow different or even inferior.

I see similar group identification and tribalism in the university, both as academics writ large, as well as factionally between different disciplines and of course within disciplines and subdisciplines as well. So broadly speaking, we can see university people clustering together in the same way that soldiers might all share a common bond. But in the same way that military people, beyond their common bonds, differentiate themselves into Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and so on, joking about the other branches and believing in the superiority of their own group, so too do we see similar hierarchies in academic life. And then within each discipline, you’ve got different scholars staking out and defending territories, and so on.

But what is it that we actually do at work? Which brings me to the challenges of writing this dissertation. In human geography, I have the privilege and the burden of playing with ideas. A privilege because – come on – it’s a joy to be able to sit in a place that’s warm and dry, drinking coffee, and play like this. And that these ideas can have some connection to the world, that I can engage with injustices and try, in my small way, to understand and improve certain situations… well, that’s pretty beautiful, I think. It’s definitely a privilege.

At the same time, it’s not easy at all. Aside from the professional and social codes of conduct (how is work done? what constitutes good work? who gets to decide? how are those boundaries policed?), it’s just not so easy to work so abstractly. I can’t see what I’m doing, and I don’t really know if what I’m doing is good.

I worked as a dishwasher for a time. It wasn’t a bad job. Warm water was pleasant, I could listen to music, the cooks were nice people, and it was immediately clear if I did a good or bad job. There’s melted cheese on the pan? Bad job. Oh, the pan is spotless? Good job. Easy. I’m not saying it would be a fulfilling long term career, mind, but there was something very clear about it, and I enjoyed it. It was also philosophically satisfying, in that it was a job that no one else wanted. We all want clean plates but we don’t want to do the washing. There’s something to that.

I’ve also done my share of plumbing, but never professionally. But I’ve removed and replaced toilets and sinks and I’ve taken apart my share of pipes and fittings and fixed leaks and replaced joints. It’s hard work and often messy. There’s never quite enough room to maneuver. But again, it’s immensely satisfying to get it right. And it’s (usually) obvious when you’ve made a mistake. Replaced the sink? Does it leak? No? You’ve done a good job. And similar to the clean plates, I felt a sense of philosophical rightness in doing this work: we all need a toilet but we don’t want to be on our hands and knees putting it in, or cleaning it out.

The point is that this work different from my earlier jobs because it’s less tangible. I can’t see the leaks in my argument in the same way that I could see leaks in a pipe. And it drives me crazy! It requires a tremendous amount of trust in your advisor that your dissertation is going well, that you are actually making progress, because you simply can’t see yourself or judge your work so easily.

At the same time, I’d argue that this work isn’t so different from being a plumber. Or maybe a mechanic is a better metaphor this time. I’m building a dissertation – let’s say that’s my car. It doesn’t run. I’ve got to get all the parts working just right. It needs electricity – is the battery good? Is it wired up correctly? How are the spark plugs? It needs fuel – is that in order? Ignition? Starter motor? And on and on. When something doesn’t work, you pop the hood or get under the car and get yourself messy until it works work.

And it’s the same with this dissertation. Only I can’t see it! But my advisor can. I start a thread in my introduction that isn’t taken up anywhere else in the rest of my argument. In my theory chapter, I don’t spend enough time engaging with this concept or that. My empirical chapter doesn’t connect well enough to the concept that I introduced before. And a fix here requires a series of subsequent fixes elsewhere, all connected in an invisible chain. It’s bloody hard – but it’s not that different from fixing a car or a toilet, not really.

And I like it! But it’s really not very easy.