In the first writing class I took as an undergraduate my professor warned us all to never, ever, under any circumstance begin a paper with the statement ‘in the beginning’… the beginning of what, exactly? Time? Your morning commute?

Noted.

So now that I’m off to the wrong start, I think it is time to follow his actual advice and frame this ‘beginning’. Five months into my PhD program hardly seems like a beginning, it’s more like, the mid-beginning. But it is the beginning of autumn term, when most students are back in college, ready to be scholarly and start learning new and empowering information that will enable them to change the world. I can’t wait.

A PhD in the UK is a very interesting thing to discuss with people who were educated anywhere else. Unless you yourself are scholarly it isn’t easy to wrap your head around what PhD students are doing. No classes, two assessments (overall for the whole degree), a lot of free time (or so it seems). There are a few classes that you should take, which have to do with research methodology (I’ve been told that throwing that world around instantly makes you seem like a PhD student by the way), and literature review, using the library and the WWW to get the right information, designing research, figuring out what your conceptual framework will be, and so on. So that’s what you may do in class. It is not subject based, it is skills based. And there are no assessments for the classes.

It is super independent, and I believe British scholars believe it should be this way. Mainly because it is an independent journey full of ups, downs, round and rounds. For me, I process information wherever I am. I could be watching Chuggington with my two year old and have an AHA moment that has to do with the intersection of Bordeaux’s cultural capital theory with Andy Green’s idea of the role of the state in developing educational institutions in South Korea that suddenly explains why we don’t have enough Saudi plumbers. Assessing that would be pretty tough, so they leave it to you to read, get confused, confuse others, bore people to death, and eventually synthesize it all into an eloquent and succinct dissertation within four years. It’s pretty simple really.

You meet people who are enrolled in the same program as you are but whose research could not be further from what you are researching. Topics that are fascinating that have to do with learning through music and museums, connecting education to neuroscience, the identities of schoolchildren in the early 19th century. Yeah. We are colleagues, peers, but we could not have more differing interests.

Occasionally I meet a fellow national who is interested in education in Saudi as well. We think oh, wow! Finally someone who will get it. But again, our focuses (foci?) are worlds apart. Special education, technology, science. Yes, we are at the Institute of Education so yes, it is related. Could we help one another with our topics? Yes, probably, again we are all scholarly. But when it comes down to things, not really. And that is why I’ve been told, time and time again how lonely this process is going to be. The first person I met here told me that there would be some dark days…the warnings kept coming. You will be so lonely. You will have no friends. You will feel isolated. You will be very lost at times. Might as well have said I was setting myself up for hermitude (I know that’s not a word, I’m going to be a doctor aren’t I?) and would die a long dark isolated death. So far I am not too lonely. I must be doing something wrong, but it feels right so I think I will just go with it.

I think the fact of the matter is that my topic is my topic. And it has to be, for it to be original, so nobody else can work on it with me. I’m all in my head most of the time so this is great for me. I am contributing to the existing body of knowledge that is out there and that doesn’t isolate me, it liberates me. I come from a culture where it is not always the case that you are taken seriously if you are female, but slap that Dr. in front of my name and I could say anything, and it would be legit. She’s a doctor, after all. Even MDs will take me seriously, and people may even think I am one, cause we love titles, but are we so sure what they mean?

Oh, so did I mention that that is at the crux of the issue at hand? KSA Work-in-progress. Yes, as a country, we are a work in progress, but so is the world, right? But it is more than that–what I’m interested in is why we need to re-develop, rejuvenate, revamp and rework our ‘world of work’! We give weight to some degrees and we disregard other qualifications, but so many of us are unemployed and so many more are working in fields that are very far from what they want to do, should do, or are qualified to do. We have an obsession with certificates, with awards, titles. 7a’6rat Alsayed Alustaz Aldoctor Almuhandis basha.. collecting anything we can get our hands on, but doing little to employ these to work and innovate. And why? I mean, I could tell you the million reasons everyone out there has to offer: we are lazy, it’s cultural, it’s economic, it has to do with status, it has to do with gender, opportunity, parents… The fact of the matter is I’m pretty sure we don’t really know, and yes, that’s why I’m here.