Emery Marc Petchauer

Emery Marc Petchauer

I’m 2.5 weeks in working on an essay about theories of change in activist education research. I’m shooing for my First Shitty Draft by the end of June, and I’m at the point now where I’m not quite sure if I have something novel to say anymore, because the piece so far might simply be me narrating to myself why I’m convinced by all of the Indigenous and decolonizing work I have been reading but had hoped to be in conversation with. It’s an interesting swing of the writing process: going from ideas, to conversation and interaction with others’ ideas, and back to your own ideas but wondering if the whole process was to convince yourself that, “Yeah, what they said is basically what I think now. So we’re done here.“ I’m pretty sure I’ll write my way out of it — because I’ve felt this swing before — but either way, I’m learning a lot. And that’s good.