Early February Thoughts

The beginning of the new term has been very stressful for me. I have found that the difficulty of my inquiry is going to haunt me until everything is done - if everything gets done. The MAPP has been a very large learning curve for me to handle due to my teaching 8-10 hours daily from Monday to Saturday and having three children that need constant attention because they are children. I am glad however though that the beginning of this module began with some very good feedback from Adesola, about my module 2 inquiry which included some very good insight into the importance of how I need to state more clearly my methodology and theoretical framework. Along with more insight into possible ethical concerns and the fact that I should have included a literature review in my inquiry but didn’t fully understand what I was doing. Mistakes like these led me to reflect more upon a particular skype session for the MAPP at the end of last year about communication. I think that probably the largest aspects of the MAPP have been about learning how to communicate, overcoming fear, and discovering oneself as a professional. I began in module one, experiencing great difficulty in explaining myself, my ideas, and lines of thought. I still have a fear of explaining myself because I don’t feel as though I will ever do it properly due to my own personal conditions (this is something I will have to deal with somehow). When I started in module 1, one of the first skype meetings ended up being focused around fear, and what fear means to us. I have had a long time (a year almost now) to think about fear and reflect upon that idea of what it means to me. I have experienced now, that fear will adapt due to learning more and understanding more. I have read now several journal articles focusing on the change of fear(I could read more articles, because most of these focused on rats, and exterminating fear as derived from memory). Regardless, I have learned through my own experiences that one of the more important factors in overcoming certain fears are learning more about yourself, through the acts of learning other subjects, and the various approaches to learning them. By doing these things one will end up discovering more about oneself through the process of learning due to the interaction of various artifacts and literature required to learn the required subject, leading to the acquisition of enough premises to understand that ‘you do have a voice of your own, and you are allowed to use it.’ I have found that during the MAPP, the most difficult element is finding my own voice, and learning how, and if I am ‘allowed’(of whos permission to use it, I am uncertain still) to use it. As a classical dancer, you are specifically taught to not use your own voice and only taught to do what you are told. This teaching, I find leads to a very lowered level of self-confidence in myself, and also as I observe the students I teach, which means that there is almost a certainty that I am also guilty of the same cycle-forming system of training. Which leads to me look for a way to change.