Friday’s thoughts: On Daisy Lowe and the notion of studying later in life, when you have babies....

I posted some days ago about going to London. On the way back home, I was browsing the newspaper London´s  Evening Standard and I came across this interview with a young model, DaisyLowe, where she states that she´ll go back to education when she has kids.

You know that I am a recent mum... I am also a post-grad student... This means that I have to balance motherhood with my research and studies. Which is quite hard both emotionally and physically. And I am not even mentioning the current landscape were motherhood is discouraged in the work space (I wrote a bit about it here)....  And Daisy Lowe seems to think that will be easy to balance both, studying and having kids. I don´t know whether to think that she is a super woman or simply away from reality - I am afraid that it may be the latter. 
 
It’s not easy, far from it really; at least for me (again I will only mention my personal difficulties).  Moreover if you want to do both properly. 

In one hand, I do prefer to think that Daisy Lowe is contemplating this because she is empowered enough to think that is possible to balance both, and that being a mother does not mean that both professionally and academically your life is over. This is great really! To feel that you will be provided enough support, institutionally or more, so that both motherhood and your academically pursuits can co-exist. And again, I learned quite recently that mothers are more productive at work than their childless peers (read about it here). So this is not far from reality. 
But this is not the whole picture. 

She is also sending a message that it is alright not to study now. That you can do it once you have kids! It’s a message that states, well, once you have a baby, on your spare time you can study. But let’s face it, there’s no time to spare when you have a baby at home. There’s always something that you have to do, either get him to sleep, cleaning some spat, changing a diaper, feeding, and so on. And when there are no baby related chores left to do, there are the regular house chores that increase exponentially when your baby is in the equation! And that is without considering the exhaustion you feel afterwards. And then there’s your work, your studies to do. 

So, if you are given a choice you should study when you are young, and when you are kids free, more available. That’s when you can concentrate, dedicate yourself and focus properly on your studies. If you decide not to study and follow a modelling career that’s great to, it’s your choice, and your life. I certainly was not a modelling material, so that definitely was not a choice for me! But don´t go spreading the idea that you can study easily later in life, in your “kids free spare time”. Don’t misunderstand me; I am not claiming that it’s impossible to do so, as I am doing it! And so are hundreds of other mothers too, that not only are studying but also working. So of course it’s manageable. 

But far from easy, and most certainly really draining, both physically and emotionally.  Emotionally because I am constantly either missing my baby when away or plunged by guilt feelings. I feel that I am not being a proper mum, away from my little one! I am always thinking that I am missing important milestones, when at work. And this time that I am missing I will never get it back. Physically, because it is exhausting, there’s almost no time to rest, your free time is virtually non-existent. 

To be a mother and to keep on study is not a decision to be taken lightly. It requires strength, commitment and a lot of support (thank you so much, my other half!).  And unfortunately the institutional support is still far from perfect. There is much to be done in order to help mothers to continue their academic endeavours. I will write about my experience and thoughts on this some other time... 

But back to Daisy Lowe, as I said I would prefer to think that she was feeling empowered enough to consider this, or that it was even a career choice, going on modelling.  But no, and this was quite disappointing... What really made her decide not to pursue her studies now was....

.... to sleep in during the mornings... 

Oh Daisy, well, you certainly won’t have this once you have a family (more about this here)...! 

I am linking up with this amazing blogger:

WickED Art Festival and SPACE Open Studios

 

London, more precisely Hackney is the place to be, on the weekend of 2-3 August if you like to see artists working on the spot and learn crafts directly from the source…! SPACE artists studios will be open to the public for the Hackney WickED Art Festival. The entry is free and you will be able to chat along with the artists, get to know them better and buy unique art.

SPACE is an organisation that has several artists’ studios spread through London and it aims to provide creative workspace, advocacy and support and foster innovation. The studios that will be open this weekend are The white Building, Britannia Works and the Bridget Riley. 

I certainly will be there, not only due to my research but also it will be an opportunity to enjoy the WickED Art Festival as well. The Festival will have several exhibitions, music, workshops, tours and more. It is an excellent occasion to explore one´s creativity and learn more about artistic crafts. Learn more about the Festival here.

 

New Forest

Last weekend I visited new Forest for the first time. For the ones who don´t know, New Forest is a national park located in southern England.... and is simply beautiful. This park is filled with commoners'  horses and cattle, that simply graze away freely in the park. So, now and then, you usually have an extra party companion following you!

 I wasn't there simply for sightseeing, I was helping out a friend with her PhD fieldwork, so besides enjoying the amazing landscape.... we worked...! I was completely beaten by the end of the day, we walked a lot, and I was able to visit areas that would not be usually visited. We were a bit unlucky though, for the weather wasn't the nicest one (surprisingly, right?), but it was completely worth it!I will be definitely returning and hopefully with a sunny weather....

For now I will just leave you with a few images of the park!

 

Blogging, copyright and privacy policies

Again I face myself with some doubts about this new hobby of mine, how to do it properly and respecting the sources of  "my projects" and works.
When reviewing my blog, and looking for some lapses, in my introductory I wrote a text to try to protect the posts I make, where I referenced copyrights issues. And then I remembered some pictures I already used, and that they were not originally mine (found those on Pinterest and websites), so was I allowed to use them? And  what about the tutorials I found? I also linked every blog/site I used to do it, but what about legal issues? Was I allowed to link it? I did it to cite my sources, and attempt to attribute the due author the deserved credit. Do you all face these questions when blogging? It seemed so easy in the beggining...

And so, I did a quick search in the web to find some answers. Surprisingly (or not), the legal issues of blogging and copyrights were already being discussed in the academical field. Before tackling any heavier reading, I started with The complete idiot´s guide, that  posted an article about blogging and etiquete (you can find it here). I already have a few basic notions about Royalty free images, but in the blogging field, every policy and licensing seems to be really greyish. When I began to search by the very first source of "my" images, I found that those were already re-published, re-pinned thousands of times, and it was very difficult to track down the author of those images, and even then, I am still not sure that I am indeed allowed to publish them (even if they were already re-pinned, re-published)! When reading more about image use in blogging ( I used About.com, you can find the article here) , I found that we should ask for permissions to use photos and images, unless a the permission was already given (as the case of royalty-free images). Again, pretty challenging when you can´t trace the author, and one of the tricky things about blogging seems to be finding royalty-free images. Well, at least most of the pictures I used were mine, at the exception of the ones I used as introduction to the pages "Fashion and Style" and "Ramblings". Yes, true, those Louboutin were not mine, neither was the cute Kitten.... And the sources were cited (even doubting Pinterest can be recognized as a source - this is the case where I found difficulties in tracking down the author). Update, I was reading the licensing for my sleeping kitten, and the website does not authorize their consent for "projects", its only for "personal use", I was not sure were a blog stands though, particularly mine... Its personal, but its out there, its public, well but its definitely not for commercial use though...! what about transforming the pictures? That is other issue I am not sure how to deal with. Re-updating, Susan Gunelius is quite adamant in one aspect, "you can't use an image on your blog unless you created it, have permission to use it from the creator", (you can read it here) so there goes, Louboutin and my cute kitten have to go...and be replaced by other photos!

However, there are a few websites that store royalty free images, as Wikemedia commons, and seems that Google image search also has a Creative Commons tool too, you have to add manually though, find how here.

I also panicked a little when I read that I could be sued by using pictures without a clear consent, a blogger found all about  the consequences for uncredited sources the hard way (read all here) ...

But I will not plagiarize, I am careful regarding that aspect, since citing and quoting is a daily routine in Academia. Well, at least in terms of linking, I believe I am doing it right, since a link back to the original source is the common procedure,when citing the sources... I was not aware though that was could use a trackback too (read more here)! Will definitely use it in the near future.

Continuing the discussion about licencing, I already had stumble on Creative Commons, and so  I have to think about licensing my blog.
An update, while continuing researching on licenses (this matter is quite complex....), it began clear that if the work does not have any license, is copyrighted by default (read more here ). So my Creative Commons license does make sense, so that whoever stumbles on my blog knows where my work stands on terms of use. This post will be a on-going project.....

Another issue I haven´t considered is my blog´s privacy Policy, which I will disclosure (following Susan Gunelius guide, I should had start by reading her guidelines first, you can find it here).

I will start looking for Royalty-free Images now, since I have to replace my current ones!

Growing

The very first post of my blog consists on a picture of my favourite tree, magnoliaxsoulangeana. My blog was named after this specie, which I find magnificent, because it is able to integrate beautifulness with sturdier characteristics as resilience and robustness. I intend my blog to follow similar characteristic, it is not planned to be beautiful, but interesting, and I hope to be able to continue to write it for some time, therefore following a resilience type. Let’s consider this another New Year resolution.

But writing a blog is not easier, we have to know what to write about, and if it is to be read by others, its contents have to be appealing. That’s the tricky thing I believe. We are able to find thousands and millions of blogs in the internet, and the subjects are diverse from personal to academia contents and now a day’s even authors develop a career just by blogging. Of course, I think that most of the blogs are... well let’s face it, we do find lots of trashy things on the Internet...

My blog will be a miscellanea of all the previous, and if I work it enough might be better than some. Some authors advocate the use of blogging for both professional and academic reasons, which is a fine valid reason, but only writing for scientific reasons would take the fun out of the blog. And I have to admit, I don´t find many blogs with masterful scientific contents. Don´t get me wrong, we do find really interesting things, but not to reference on your academic works, for that we should just keep using scientific journals and peer-reviewed (and even on some of the articles we have to keep our critical spirit well alive) and the typical scientific books. However, there are important benefits to consider, as auto-promotion, always be in touch with news, networking... which considerably helps you in your career.

 And just for personal contents? I don´t think anyone is here just for reading my melancholic and depressive writings. So let’s keep it diverse, miscellaneous, and we might get somewhere.  Similar to urban planning, mixed uses, the definitive way to be... That way it will also reflect my personality, that I consider to be ecletic, and in the end a blog is personal and mostly should reflect yourself and your thoughts.  This could get interesting, and who knows, I might have a future just by blogging?