Dear All,
A modest correction.
Robert is responding to Pradeep Yammiyavar's note, not to me. It was
written
to the list but it came to me so I passed it on.
Yours,
Ken
>>> Robert Harland <[log in to unmask]> 12/8/2009 08:22 AM >>>
This is a fascinating point for me.
If I may reflect on my own experience for one moment, nine years ago I
entered Higher Education with no experience of it since I had
graduated with an undergraduate degree in the 1980s. I had spent the
intervening period in studio practice in London.
When I came into academia, it was initially to pursue issues I had
identified in practice but couldn't find a suitable opportunity to
explore due to the cut and thrust of studio practice. It soon became
apparent to me that there was a possibility to explore these interests
through the formality of a research degree. When I began to look into
it, I could not help be curious about what all the fuss was about
regarding a PhD. This was in part because in my own subject of Graphic
Design owners of this 'esteemed' qualification appeared to be rare, if
none existent. I certainly didn't work with anyone who taught graphic
design studio practice with such a qualification.
So, for me, the experience of the past five years or so has been much
about the discipline specific issues I have been researching, but also
about the experience of studying for a doctorate (and observing and
learning about the education processes that go with it). Both
interests have combined well, and it has been inspired by wanting to
know what a PhD in my subject might be (if at all), in order to
perhaps supervise PhD students in future (subject willing).
It has been a 'humbling' experience, for all the right reasons, and I
now better understand the notion of 'the more you know the more you
realise you don't know'. But then studio practice also offered the
same experience at times.
'Rewiring', is a helpful way to describe it.
Thanks for the point.
Robert.
Robert Harland Lecturer Loughborough University School of Art
and Design +44 (0)1509 228980 [log in to unmask]
www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ac/mainpages/Research/staffpages/harland/harland.htm
On 7 Dec 2009, at 20:39, Ken Friedman wrote:
> An important component of being conferred a PhD is the consequent
> rewiring that happens in the scholar’s own mind - the sudden
> awareness
> that there is so much out there to know and how little is actually
> known
> to the self - the humbling experience – the awareness of the
> limitations
> of the entity called self-knowledge - which itself is the
beginning
> of
> end of ignorance and start of wisdom.
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