My productive procrastination paper is finally complete… But not what I had in mind

My chapter on struggle songs is finally done! I am surprised at the direction it took because it is not at all what I had in mind when I started. Initially I set out to do a study based on interviews. But as happens with research that involves human participants, my schedule was thrown off when I couldn’t pin down a day and time with one of my key informants. I also feel like I need to hear from more people than I initially had in mind, so I must still find them.

The approach of interview-based research is new for me because as a rhetoric scholar, my practice has been to focus on texts. I’m very comfortable doing this, but am mindful that for some topics, it is best to hear from people themselves, rather than put words in their mouths. That is certainly the case with struggle music. There is a lot of research on it, but most of the studies are by scholars like me, who come to the topic with a particular perspective. There is not much work that brings out the perspectives of people who actually sang struggle songs. That is what I had wanted to do in my study. It is something I still intend to do, and that is why my data collection is continuing, even though this first paper is done.

I like to think of the research process as one where the question you really need to ask unfolds as you do the study. Often I go into a project with an idea of what to focus on, and some idea of what I want to find out. But as I read, new elements emerge and they take me in a different direction to the one I’d initially set out on. It reminds me of my father, who was a novelist, who always used to say the characters in his stories tell him what story he needs to write, rather than him writing a story he has in mind. That is why at the end of most of my studies, I read my full paper and am amazed and pleased at how it has taken shape because the end product is not one I could have mapped out going into the journey. I feel like as I read it and write it, I too am leaning something new, and this encourages me that perhaps the readers too, will find it worthwhile.

(c) 2021 Sisanda Nkoala

“Standing on the shoulders of giants,” but which giants?

in academia we place so much on the published and documented, to the detriment of knowledge that exists in other forms. We talk about literature reviews as a means of ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ but which giants?

Yesterday I had the awesome privilege of interviewing the first key informant of my study. He is a man very knowledgeable on struggle songs and more than that, he is tells riviting stories and has a very unique way of communicating ideas. As I was talking to him I was struck by his generosity and how he kept saying that he sees the knowledge and experience he has gained as something to be shared so that future generations can get a different version of South African history to the ones they have been taught since 1652.

This struck me because in academia we place so much on the published and documented, to the detriment of knowledge that exists in other forms. We talk about literature reviews as a means of ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ but which giants?

I have been busy with the literature review of my study and I’m quite relieved to see that since I first wrote on struggle songs in 2012, when there was very little from South Africa, the scholarship has grown. This is in part due to the 2015/2016 university student protests where struggle songs became expressions of interest because of the ways the students employed them as a political tool. But even with these studies, for a country where this type of music is so prevalent, the research is extremely limited. This limitation in research though, doesn’t mean that the knowledge on struggle songs is limited. As the conversation with my interviewee showed me, there is a wealth of knowledge and even if it is not published in journals, it is being shared.

It is time for academia to rethink who the so-called giants in respective fields are. This call is not new, but given the slow pace of change, is one worth amplifying again.

(c) 2021 Sisanda Nkoala

Writing a research paper while doing a PhD: Why I believe in productive procrastination projects

Hey! I am back to blogging, and in this series I’ll be sharing my journey on writing a research paper while doing my PhD. The paper is completely unrelated to my study, and I like to call these ‘side projects’ my productive procrastination projects: they are what I turn to when I don’t want to do the PhD work I’m supposed to be doing. But because they are research projects, they make me feel like I’m being productive. I doubt my supervisor would agree 🙂

Firstly, let me start by explaining why I am prone to engage in these productive procrastination projects. The PhD journey is LONG. Three years of thinking about the same issue. Three years of reading the same kinds of papers. Three years of talking about the same thing with your supervisor. These side projects are a nice break from that because they make me think about something else while engaging in meaningful research. They have also actually expanded my thinking on my PhD because they expose me to different kinds of literature. Last year I did a productive procrastination project on satire and rhetoric, and out of that project came an idea of how to improve an aspect of the analysis for my PhD study. I am a firm believer that when doing a PhD, the PhD is not the only thing you should do. This is primarily for the sake of your sanity, but also for the sake of your scholarly engagement.

Secondly, let me explain how I choose these productive procratination projects. Since I started my PhD in 2019 I have published 4 journal articles, I have 5 book chapters in press and have presented at at least six conferences. I chose each of these based on whether they align to my overall research area which is the rhetoric and langauge of South African journalism and journalism education. While I am looking for something different from my study, I don’t want something so different that doing it doesn’t eventually help move me forward in the direction of what I am most interested in. The productive procrastination project needs to align with you PhD project in some way.

Finally, let me tell you a bit about the current project because I’m really excited about it. It is on rhetoric and struggle songs, and is a follow up to the very first journal article I wrote in 2012 while I was an honours student. The paper was discovered by the person leading this project and they tracked me down to invite me to take part. This is not unusual in academia and we are usually warned that if we get such invitations, especially as emerging scholars, we should run away as fast as possible because the people involved are usually predatory publishers. A colleagues helped me sass out the situation and it turns out the scholars are highly acclaimed and credible, and the project has the potential to make a meaningful impact in this field. After hearing this, I didn’t think twice, and despite needing to hand in four chapters of my PhD at the end of March, I said yes to this productive procrastination project which is also due at the end of this month.

My experience with these productive procrastination projects is that having them does indeed make me more productive when it comes to my PhD because knowing I have these two deadlines looming, I manage to avoid wasting time online (writing blogs 🙂 ) and instead buckle down and become quite productive. Procrastination is not bad IF it is productive, right?

(c) 2021 Sisanda Nkoala