Marginaalissa? Kommentti akateemisen elämän rakentajana

We become members of the academic world through writing and reading certain texts. At some point, almost all of those texts have comments in the margins that give feedback or allow readers and writers to discuss the text at hand. In this chapter, I examine the marginal comments I have written and received in three different academic roles – the researcher, the teacher, and the thesis supervisor – to illustrate the textual and social construction of academic life. The comments written in these roles are dependent on the relationships between the author of the original text, the commenter, and the person receiving the comment. In other words, the comments we write as teachers to our students differ from those we write as researchers in a peer-review process. The function and tone of the comments vary depending on the level of familiarity and power differences between the commenter and the person receiving the comment, as well as on the purpose of the original text. The comments show that academic writing is a social and iterative practice. Even though marginal comments are usually temporary, they may leave permanent marks on academic texts. The examination is based on what is termed “small autoethnography” (Uotinen 2021), which means the analysis of cultural and social meanings attached to routine, even mundane practices through the researcher’s own social position, in this case, my position as a university lecturer at Tampere University.