E: Academic competence

Yesterday at 4 pm 14 pages of double-spaced writing on what effects the civil war had on development in Afghanistan dropped into an essay-box a few blocks south of the main campus of Melbourne Uni. That marked the end of my 121-545 Understanding Development subject. Never have I spent so much time and frustration on 3000 words. But I’m happy to be home, and even if the content could be better, the structure fortunately made sense in the end.

The semester has reminded me of what study competence or capability really means. Diligence, discipline, research methods and ability to express oneself are helpful attributes. But competence has little to do with how information you could potentially cough up at any one point. It is mainly about knowing what is relevant or not. It has to do with a sense of perimeters of whatever topic of field you explore.

This is to me the main reason why I have been struggling so much this semesters. The work load and amount of reading and writing have been significant, but having to produce 16,000 words worth of essays in my second language in a few months is in itself not the major issue. Taking fifth year subjects as a fourth year student, has forced me to fill a knowledge gap before actually being able to synthesize in the subjects. And with development I started at scratch, joining a class where some have five years of development studies behind them.

To study is a socialization process from which you progressively gain understanding and insight. To skip a step or rush the process is paid for with reading and thinking in excess, having to familiarize yourself with the unknown outskirts (or should I say outback), before feeling confident in raising your centre piece. This excessive study work is what have taken so much of my awaken time these last months. The reward for aiming high is a greater percentage of wisdom and competence gain – which study wise is more important than a possible lower grade.

And the harder the work, the better it will be to get on a break. Monday at 5 pm is the final deadline for my last essay, which officially terminates the academic part of my exchange.