I’ve just discovered this initiative and I think its incredible.
Between that, the I have no tribe campaign, ushahidi, and all the other initiatives going on, why oh why can’t we, as a country, seem to get it together!
GRRRRRRR!
I’m frustrated.
The first full draft of my dissertation is due in two weeks. This is not a good time to be immersed in studying ethnic politics in Kenya.
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February 28, 2008 at 2:04 am
keguro
Good luck on the draft! Trust me, I am feeling a similar pain.
If I may do that annoying thing that academics do. I’m sure you know this passage, but it’s worth citing. Here is C.L.R. James recounting the circumstances under which he wrote Black Jacobins:
“Tranquility to-day is either innate (the philistine) or to be acquired only by a deliberate doping of the personality. It was in the stillness of a seaside suburb that could be heard most clearly and insistently the bombing of Franco’s heavy artillery, the rattle of Stalin’s firing squads and the fierce shrill turmoil of the revolutionary movement striving for clarity and influence. Such is our age and this book is of it, with something of the fever and the fret.”
Your dissertation, too, might have something of the “fever and fret” of our current moment.
February 28, 2008 at 2:50 am
Mwananchi Mkenya
hate to be ignorant but I had actually never heard of the author.
Just did some research……
yes, in a lot of ways its a difficult work to write because i’m so caught up in it. In some ways it is the history of a revolution that I am right in the vortex of. A revolution. Are we in a revolution? In some ways things will never be the same again…. Does that a revolution make? I ask as the country teeters on the precipice of a violent abyss….
And like James, if I were writing my dissertation at a different time i’m sure it would be a different work. It would only be better because I would have more time to edit and clean it up.
hmmm. as i’m typing these words all sorts of thoughts flood my mind about dissertations and what they are supposed to be.
I shall have to put together a different post…
February 28, 2008 at 6:34 am
keguro
Done.
Dissertations are supposed to be done. That’s all. Nothing else. Nothing fancy. Just done.
September 18, 2008 at 6:16 am
Kipleso
Well, I am also writing my own dissertation (they call it PhD thesis here), one chapter as a paper at a time and it sure feels good. Just got my second paper accepted for publication yesterday. It couldn’t be a better time to be in school, well if you’re now turning 30 like me you’d know what I mean – it possibly is the only time left before you’re too old to be in school anymore. I can only sympathise with my colleagues who have to do it in an atmosphere of insecurity that’s been prevailing back home.
September 18, 2008 at 8:21 am
Mwananchi Mkenya
Congrats Kipleso!!! I wish you all the best!