The distance between disciplines
I'm a trans-disciplinary kinda person. I approve of anything that transgresses the rigid demarcations between the disciplines, so I took the opportunity to go on a field trip organised by the 'other half' of the School of which I am a member.
I had become truly aware of the existence of this part of the school only last year, while going through the taught MA programme. I began to realise that there was another group also undertaking a taught MA course, none of whom I ever met. Our courses were entirely separate, even if identical modules were taught by members of staff who crossed the Great Divide. I found it weird but by the end of the year I had still not met even one of these students.
We had a pleasant if frustratingly slow-moving day. We had to cut some things out of the programme because of the amount of time demanded by eating and lavatory breaks. I kept thinking of our Venice trip and how we were frog-marched around, which, in retrospect, must have been the only way to move a group through a number of sites every day.
In the evening we repaired to a hostelry and had a substantial meal, during the course of which I eavesdropped on a conversation about an employment experience suffered by an American girl. She had been recruited, by way of a minimal interview, from New York, to be some kind of manager of an Irish dance company. She duly arrived and set to work but soon found insuperable communication problems between the Director and herself, which made her job impossible and she had been eventually sidelined by more-or-less mutual agreement.
While accepting some of the blame for this denoument on herself and her blithe ignorance in accepting a job whose requirements she had not explored sufficiently, she revealed cheerfully, without accepting it as any part of the problem, that she had not the slightest interest or knowledge of dance theatre or in performance.
Aha, thought I, maybe there is a reason for the gulf between the two parts of the School.
I had become truly aware of the existence of this part of the school only last year, while going through the taught MA programme. I began to realise that there was another group also undertaking a taught MA course, none of whom I ever met. Our courses were entirely separate, even if identical modules were taught by members of staff who crossed the Great Divide. I found it weird but by the end of the year I had still not met even one of these students.
We had a pleasant if frustratingly slow-moving day. We had to cut some things out of the programme because of the amount of time demanded by eating and lavatory breaks. I kept thinking of our Venice trip and how we were frog-marched around, which, in retrospect, must have been the only way to move a group through a number of sites every day.
In the evening we repaired to a hostelry and had a substantial meal, during the course of which I eavesdropped on a conversation about an employment experience suffered by an American girl. She had been recruited, by way of a minimal interview, from New York, to be some kind of manager of an Irish dance company. She duly arrived and set to work but soon found insuperable communication problems between the Director and herself, which made her job impossible and she had been eventually sidelined by more-or-less mutual agreement.
While accepting some of the blame for this denoument on herself and her blithe ignorance in accepting a job whose requirements she had not explored sufficiently, she revealed cheerfully, without accepting it as any part of the problem, that she had not the slightest interest or knowledge of dance theatre or in performance.
Aha, thought I, maybe there is a reason for the gulf between the two parts of the School.
posted by ruth @ 4:10 PM
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