It’s official… I’m a masochist…

I have just begun another 1-2 year launch into academia, in the form of a professional MA in Voice Studies at the Voice Study Centre.

Why would I subject myself to this sort of intense intellectual wankery?

Haven’t I spent enough of my life being pissed off by the hugely introspective thinking in academic circles?

Wasn’t my PhD in Robotics enough!!??

The only feasible answer is that I just love punishment. I have spent 9 years unlearning the bad “overintellectualization” habits I picked up during my PhD. Clearly, I feel the need to test myself to the extreme by submerging myself in this environment again.

I’m being flippant.

Obviously, I’m quite excited about this MA in Voice.

They have asked me to start a “learning journal” for the program. So this blog is going to be it…

… yep, I just started my first learning journal entry by including the term “intellectual wankery”… this is how I’m planning to keep myself from losing my “true voice” again.

So… here is my journal entry…

The first assignment (the “formative assignment”) requires us to write a 2,500 word essay on some aspect of voice.

How am I doing? Well, I’ve got shit loads of ideas! Waaay too many ideas and they’re all way too complicated for a first assignment.

Topics I’ve considered include vocal health for comedians when using character voices, the impact of strong necks on vocal health, authenticity in neurodivergent voices, clavicular top ups as a way to deal with running out of breath… and many more.

This is always the problem I have with ideas.

My head is filled with them and each one could be an entire Masters thesis, probably.

So I have to take it easy.

Scale it back.

As I’ve been working with clowns and comedians most recently, it looks like a good idea to follow a topic that will help those people… so I’m thinking of the topic of helping them to create healthy character voices.

There are so many avenues of research within this though.

So many ideas.

So little time.

I’m noting that I’m afraid of getting started on it because I’m afraid of running out of steam and getting bored too early… because of the old ADHD thing” (oh! news! I have my first real appointment about this, finally, in the NHS at the end of this month).

I need to find myself some more voice students, I think.

I have some dates booked to run a 2-day workshop in July (6th and 7th)… so I think that will need to be the outcome of this assigment: a 2-day workshop on character voices.

There you go!

That’s how shit gets done.

Now… I just have to actually do it.