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Although I work in an office on a computer all day, I do not have Internet access. One thing is it preventing me from blogging in a spare moment, but it also keeps me from checking my email and my other regular reads. I do understand that employees are supposed to work at work, but I actually feel rather handicapped or wing clipped. I am so used to having the possibility of being online when ever I want, that not having this possibility is to lack something.
I am visiting my parents and relaxing with old magazines in the sun. One of my mother's regular reads is a magazine for the 40+ lady. It has a regular column where a famous woman in the 40+ age group tell what she did when she was 25. They tell of uncertainty and sometimes frustration, and few of them had started anything like a career.
This is a great comfort for people like me; under 30. Hope is definitely not over yet. Why does not magazines for the 20-something woman tell of this wisdom? Instead they focus on the bright young things, surfing life on a different league from the rest of us.
Anthony Beevor visited Oslo today and I managed to get a seat at his talk this evening. It was probably the talk he gives anywhere he goes to promote his new book on the Spanish civil war. As this is not my field of knowledge I cannot really say whether it was a good talk or not, but I made a few notes on something else:
Many British historians have an intellectual arrogance that very few display in Norway. One feature of this arrogance is always to talk in metaphors. Thoughts seems a lot deeper this way. And even better, add a few quotes from the diaries of famous men - preferably some that can make the audience laugh. Then make general categorisations of historical events and categorise peoples' attributes. This makes you sound like the king of the world.
Sometimes this works wonderful, as it is done with a touch of irony and a big dash of humour. However, it might fail terribly and you become only tremendously arrogant. I am not quite sure what happened today.
As I worked during the weekend and quite long day so far this week, I got a positive answer when I asked if I could take the day off. Wonderful, as is the final lecture on Text and Communication.
For the Text and Communication course we are reading a Labov and Waletzky article from the time when an article was published in typewriter pages. It is called "Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience". I did not manage to tread the article when the lecture on it was held in February, but I remembered the discussion whilst I now read the article.
The article is strongly structuralist and the authors try to make a structural pattern of narratives. They have written down transcripts of 26 narratives all told by uneducated, urban Americans. In their opinion, it is only in those condition you will find pure narratives. The lecturer was strongly against this thesis. In her opinion, narratives is something of the human nature and we all tell narratives of the structure Labov and Waletzky investigates. Her comment started a discussion in class on whether education influences storytelling and narratives.
In my opinion, I am not a terribly good storyteller. And long before taking this course I had come to the conclusion that I thought to much about what to say, so that the narrative never came as a steady flow. In the discussion my mind became a bit clearer and I came to see my problem as me being to analytic. When I start telling a story, I start with good intentions, but as I go along I start to question my mission. Is this a proper story to emphasis what we are no discussing? Am I biased in what I am telling? Do this story give away my political view or does it show prejudice? Should I round of this story with a better ending? All this questions makes it necessary to make diversions in the story and the story becomes a mess and quite often I will manage to make it into a complete story. I would therefore be a hopeless case for Labov and Waletzky.
Many other in my class had similar experiences as me and were thus of the opinion that higher education might ruin the ability to be a good storyteller. At least, it would be necessary to learn again how to tell as story and start training to be a good storyteller. The lecturer started to wonder if she was wrong.
Then we started to find some modifications to our theory. We found that our experience of storytelling, and probably the experience of most other well educated people, was in a discursive context, whether it be the classroom, the lunch break or the pub. In such a context one usually tell a story to make a point and one then has to be sure the story fills a lot of other criteria in addition to being a good story. It has to be relevant and it has to be quite concise.
Labov and Waletzky, on the other hand, ask their cases: "Were you ever in a situation were you were in serious danger of being killed?". If one retell a story of great importance to ones life, it is probable that one focus more on the events than all other analytical aspects. And this might be true for both uneducated and well educated people. If I had almost drowned whilst swimming this morning, I might still be quite shaky when arriving at work, and I would probably not think about structure, political correctness and point of view when telling my colleagues.
Any opinions?
During my studies I usually worked Saturdays, and I read most days. Usually I did not have many lectures a week, so the day off could as likely be a Tuesday as a Sunday. And Parties could be any day a week.
Being a teacher I had work to do seven days a week, so the weekend was sort off gone.
Now I have tried "normal work" for a short while and I see that everyone around me are very anxious to have loads of plans for their weekend. And I now start to feel an obligation to start earlier in the week to make plans for the weekend. Earlier I have usually waited until Friday to check what is going on, now I feel I need to make sure it is going to be something great.
Then what happens is that I have to work though the weekend to make a Monday deadline... and things are back to my normal.
I love the view from my office window. I sit at the forth floor and I look down on a river, a waterfall and some old mills. It is a beautiful view, but it is also a nice remembrance of the past.
The first industrial revolution did not reach Norway. The country was still rural at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and Oslo - or Christiania as it was called then - was just a small city. However, as the century matured the Christiania bourgeoisie started to look to Britain and the blooming textile industry. If it is one thing Norway had, it was water power (This made the second industrial revolution with power demanding chemical industries as larger sucess in Norway). They got the idea to use Akerselva - the river that divides Oslo in East and West - and its waterfalls to create a textile industry in Oslo.
As Norway was rather underdeveloped, they decided to import everything from England. Not only the ideas and the machines, but also architectural drawings of factories and spinners and weavers to train the new factory girls. The buildings outside my window is very much in the English 19th century style and tells a story between the modern office buildings. As bricks are not common building material in Norway they stand out in their colour as well.
This afternoon, glancing out of my office window I could see a woman sunbathing on the lawn. It must be a sign that summer has arrived.
Another sign of late spring is approaching exams... I have just now handed in my reading list.
As I have neglected to blog, I have also neglected to tell my readers off my great fortune. In February I spotted an ad for a job at the Palace here in Oslo. And I though, would it not be lovely to work in such a place? I applied, and I got an interview (only staff,no royals...). And about a month a go I got the job. I was extremely delighted.
The position is in the museum department and as the Palace is open to visitors only in the summer, the job is only for two months. A large part of the work will be guiding and many have told me they would love to come and visit me at work and attend my tour. If you will not be in Oslo this summer, you can take the virtual tour at the Palace homepage.
They were looking for historians and art historians for this job. I have been asked to read to rather large books and I will be given even more on Monday when I am going there for a meeting. As I have not opened books for a while, I have quite a lot of reading to do in a few days. But at least the books have got many pictures in them...
I have thought a bit on the topic of the historiography of books on the Palace. So far I have one book from 1973 and one from 1998. They look quite different. As I have not read them yet, only browsed through the picture pages I can only write about my first impression. The 1998 book is rather glossy and divided into chapters on changes done under each monarch. I am afraid it might be rather shallow in its approach, but at least that means a quick read. The 1973 one is a massive book, as in coffee-table-book -size, and looks as heavy in contents as it is in weight. It has a lot of architectural maps and seems to be primarily on the building, but I believe it also includes information on art works. The 1998 book seems to have been written for the general public, but I am not sure about the 1973 one. At first glance it looks academic, but reflecting on the price, the marked can only be libraries and people who are very, very interested. I will write more on this when I have read the books.
Well, I have had a blogging break. Mainly because I have not had much to write. I have not opened any book for a while and that is the sort of thing that inspire me to write.
It is Wednesday, but not a proper research Wednesday. I no longer have the Wednesdays off, as I am not at the school any more. Instead, I am temping as secretary... and I am delighted. Although it is much fun working at a school it is also completely exhausting. I all ready feel the want to read more.
As work was rather quiet today, I was allowed to leave early and I am now at the university library. I have to sort out my reading list by the end of this week to be able to do the Text and Communication exam. I am not quite sure if I am able to attend the exam because of work, but I am going to try. The exam is in a month's time, but I have not read a thing for a month. It is hard to get into the topic again and I am allured procrastinating.
