Inserting myself where I “shouldn’t” be: My four weeks as a Cambridge University student
What it's like to study analysis of power somewhere that has a lot more power than you do
I’m back! after an extended period off from posting here because of quite a lot of life 🫠 and also not feeling able to talk about my data collection and its analysis as it goes along. I think I’ve come up with an acceptable compromise, though, with things I can write around my topic rather than about, so here goes with a story about some training I did back in February, the really quite persistent impostor syndrome I noticed that came with it and how getting comfortable with the uncomfortable might actually serve this research quite well…
When I was looking for places to train as a music therapist, the glittering prize seemed to be the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. I didn’t realistically think I would pass the audition. I had no idea what my ability was in relation to music therapy, but I was definitely not a good enough player for conservatoire level. (It’s always been a regret of mine that I didn’t take my singing training seriously enough early enough because I probably was good enough a jazz singer, but I wasn’t ready at the time. I wonder why I want to include this detail. Where’s a therapy session when I need one…)
In the end, my piano improv chops were good enough that I passed the audition, despite stopping my prepared flute piece halfway through, essentially out of blind panic. It was between the Guildhall and another institution famous in the music therapy world as to where I would train. I had discounted “normal” universities as I’d already had that experience at undergrad, and why wouldn’t I want to go to somewhere specialist? In the end, my mum asked me a pertinent question, which helped me decide between the two institutions I had chosen: “Do you want to go to the place that tells you they will teach you about running a business as well as the thing you want to train in, or do you want to go to the conservatoire that doesn’t have to bother with anything other than music making?”
It has definitely helped me over time not just to say that I am a qualified music therapist but that I am Guildhall trained. It’s a marker of quality that I recognise and am proud of, and was a conscious factor in my decision making. I come from a state school background; I am married to someone fairly anti-private education and the two-tier system it creates. Yet I trained at the Guildhall, am proud to lecture there and study there again.
This same conscious decision making led me to recently take a short training course in Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) not in any old place, but at the University of Cambridge. Vital for working within my chosen methodology, and also they got back to me pretty quickly and said I could come, but really I could have chosen from a few places. Here again is another institution where, at the time, I didn’t feel like I would belong. At my secondary school there was a programme for sixth-form students who it was felt could reasonably attempt an Oxbridge application; it was offered to me but I immediately rejected the idea. I didn’t think it would suit me and, at the time, I was probably right. I would have taken the compressed study schedule enormously too seriously, not had any fun and probably burned out. I had quite a sheltered childhood and not loads of social skills as a teenager as a result; my undergrad degree was rubbish, but it’s probably served me better in the long run going to Leeds and getting knocked around a bit.
I was surprised to find, then, wandering around Cambridge’s imposing and very very old streets, that I breathed out. Finally, the sense that I’d had to abandon for a while, that while education is a right (and of course nothing has done more to advance the lives of women than education), studying can also be a luxury and that one of the reasons for doing my PhD is that I enjoy studying. A colleague at the Guildhall told me they had used their study time so far as an excuse to go on writing retreats in hot European countries and to explore as many beautiful libraries as possible. What an excellent idea. I can’t ship my family off to “working” holidays abroad very easily, but I can carve out time for myself in a beautiful city.
State School Mrs over here spent too much time beforehand feeling self-conscious and nervous (what was I thinking in even applying for a tiny course etc) but, just like my conservatoire experience, I found myself in a situation where I had been let in and it didn’t appear to be a mistake. What is social mobility and smashing invisible glass ceilings (even ones in our own minds) if not inserting oneself into places we feel we don’t belong and showing up anyway. At first it felt a bit like going to the zoo, until I realised I had become one of the animals being observed. At the same time, I had granted myself four weeks to learn something I needed to learn, in an environment set up for that learning, before immediately going back home each week to be a mum. I had a brilliant time.
Perhaps all this unnecessary cap doffing contributed to an idea that four weeks at Cambridge would result in a level of knowledge being imparted that I would be spat out the other side not only knowing what I’m doing with CDA but essentially feeling an expert in it. Two problems with that: 1) That’s not how CDA works, and 2) That’s not how Cambridge works. Cambridge do not appear to mess around with this modern sensibility of spoonfeeding; I turned up hoping they’d tell me which core texts I ought to concentrate on, only to realise halfway through the first lecture that they presumed I’d read them all already, plus a couple of extra authors that up until that point I hadn’t heard of. The resulting catch-up reading certainly kept me busy between lectures…
Once I’d understood how it was going to work, I respected it. I am in a stage of life where I need to predict many eventualities for a tiny human who is only just understanding the meaning of DON’T TOUCH THAT IT’S HOT, yet here was a lecturer who presumed I don’t need to be shown a set of instructions and can, in fact, think for myself.
It also meant that there was immediate room for holding different ideas on CDA at the same time. Different authors prioritise different things: you can analyse a text using more linguistic or more sociological ideas, or more literary ones, or you can spend time placing your text within its historic context. How you choose to go about your analysis depends on what your research questions are. You need to be able to show that how you do your analysis is planned out and is rigorous in its approach, but what you prioritise and why will differ depending on what you’re looking for.
That fits with how I’ve been thinking about my clinical work at least, even if I’m only just coming round to this idea with my research. On balance, I am more of the school of music therapy being an art rather than a science; I understand the need for regulation and even “proving” its efficacy if it’s to be recommended in healthcare settings, but when you’re also talking about a unique professional relationship between two people that cannot be replicated, it’s also responsible to be aware about how you prefer to safely, ethically, inclusively practice and how different that needs to be depending on who you’re working with. No two people will practice in the same safe, ethical, hopefully inclusive way (more on this anon, once my survey analysis is ready…!). Cambridge did not pretend there is one way to analyse a text, and that it would not be inextricably linked to the person doing the analysing. It has taken me ages to get on board with the idea of subjectivity not being a weakness in this sort of research, but Fairclough (2003, pp. 14-15) outlines it pretty clearly:
There is no such thing as an ‘objective’ analysis of a text, if by that we mean an analysis which simply describes what is ‘there’ in the text without being ‘biased’ by the ‘subjectivity’ of the analyst. […] [O]ur ability to know what is there is inevitably limited and partial. And the questions we ask necessarily arise from particular motivations which go beyond what is ‘there’.
The way I’ve been thinking about my time at Cambridge - indeed, how I’ve been thinking about my entire research process so far - is inevitably coloured by my background, interests, biases, world views and the discourses around me that I’ve absorbed and have imbued with importance. If I can own this and tell you about it, then you can see the lens through which I’m looking. This can’t be avoided - everyone does it, all the time. How you read my words in turn will be affected by your own personal lens. If we talk about it, rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, then hopefully writing becomes more honest and more trustworthy. Being trustworthy seems to be the goal.
At the moment I’m in the thick of survey analysis and write up. It’s going to take me AGES. In the meantime, my plan for here is to do little practice Discourse Analyses, much like this Masterchef article I wrote a while ago (but future plan is to choose subjects more likely to age better…). An aim of mine is to hone my academic voice when writing things that might eventually find their way into my thesis, so using my Substack to think about Discourse Analysis but not have to worry about formal tone of voice I’m hoping will allow me a space to do this sort of writing that I enjoy too.
What’s next for these posts? Well, I’m taking requests for Discourse Analysis topics! Tell me your favourite band, TV series or pop culture topic and I’ll try my best to work out what’s going on through its sayings, tropes and emphases and write an article about it…