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Published: March 22nd 2011
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blooty on knowledge?
(this is actually shisha in istanbul) I've been waiting for a big reason to get involve din this blog again and it's turned up. I'm preparing to take another year out of work for travelling: but not the backpacking type. I've quit my job to become a student. I'm applying to study for a Master's degree in Latin American Studies at the University of London, starting September 2011.
Note there that I've quit my job but I am still applying for the course. Which means I have no place yet and I'm taking a bit of a leap of faith. I don't finish work until end of May so I've got two more pay packets to enjoy before I become unemployed. I'll then have three months of said unemployment to play with before I start studenthood - that's if I get in. I'm in no way presuming I will. I've spent yesterday and today at home focused on a single task - getting my essay done. As I've no academic record (I decided to skip Uni the first time round and come to London to get into journalism) aside from a GNVQ which is roundly mocked by the average ten year old, let alone an employer or a university, I've to write a 3000 word essay on a topic of my choice but something that relates to the field of study I want to engage in.
Everyone who knows me knows I'm a total Boliviophile so it's to do with Bolivia, but I've decided to really go for the topic within Bolivia that originally got me obsessed - second hand clothing. If you work back through these Travelblog posts you'll come to those pertaining to my time as a reporter on Los Tiempos, a daily broadsheet newspaper in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It was pure luck that my boss asked me to write an analysis piece for the weekend edition on the incoming supreme decree that would make the sale of used clothing illegal. I had no prior knowledge of that market or the laws around it but I sauntered off to see the local manufacturing trade association people and some use clothing traders in La Cancha, gathering information about it for the piece. I was pretty pleased with what I wrote (not least as it was actually published an in the form I wrote it) but during the process of research, I realised what a juicy topic second hand clothing was as an economic indicator and sociological barometer.
Funny that I've had a love affair with used clothing myself since I was old enough to earn a crust working in Tesco and the local cinema: my very first clothing purchases around age 14-15 were from local charity shops and later, from a long-gone but in its time famous vintage clothing store in Reading called Rock-A-Round. I still have one of those pieces, a black polyester 1950's short sleeved top with a pattern of racehorses on it in red. I still wear it. But it had not occurred to me to think about where it had come from. It doesn't have a label inside it so one can't tell. But I presume it's from North America. How did it get to be in what was Reading's only vintage store in 1995? WHere did the owners buy it, and for how much? How owned it before and in what era? And what did my purchase of this item say about me, about my 'class', about Reading, about England, about 1995? And was there a matching pair of trousers for this top that were being worn by someone else, somewhere else?
In terms of Bolivia I realised that outlawing the sale of second hand clothing said something about the socio-economic times in the country, but it wasn't really until I decided to apply for this course and discussed what to write my essay on with the tutors there that I started looking for academic work on it. And I found almost nothing: nothing on the trade in Bolivia, next to nothing on the trade in Latin America. I did find a slew of stuff to do with African countries which proven useful for context. I went back to the university and explained how little I found: they recommended me to ask other tutors of Latin American studies at other universities. I duly did, but not a single one, and this is universities in the UK and in the States, could point me to any single piece of research or book I could read on the topic of secondhand clothing in Latin America. Then they started hinting that I may have hit on an original idea: exciting stuff if true.
In any case, I found a whole boatload of stuff on related topics and on the trade elsewhere which I've used to write my essay, and I've even translated a major study by the Bolivian government on the trade from Spanish so I had some hard and fast stats. I think I have enough for the essay. But every step, from looking into the course, the tutors, the school, the students, the modules, the reading lists, the application process, contacting other tutors for essay help, searching online sources for research, reading six or more books, highlighting the right passages and compiling them into note documents, then boiling down the notes into my ideas before putting pen to paper about four months later... each bit has been an experience of something entirely new and different to my life in work and as a journalist, each step has been about learning what I have to do and how to do it as I go. In and of itself the process of just applying for the course is a good taster for what academic life might be like.
I think I'll enjoy it, if I get in. I'm actually desperate to get in, to do this (and not just because I've quit a well paid job in the prime of my career). The only thing that I feel odd about is the thought of letters after my name. I've made a successful career in journalism from not being educated and its become part of my personality, a USP, not to be university educated. If this all goes to plan, I'll be Melanie Stern MA. I'll have to fashion a new sense of who I am and a new story to tell. I'll be leaving one club for another. But let's cross the getting in bridge first.
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