At 1-Year Mark of Living in New Zealand

I've passed the 1-year mark of living in New Zealand. My, how time flies.

I have my confirmation presentation this week. Technically, you are not officially confirmed in your PhD studies until you have passed this oral and written report stage. Since I seem to be the first person in my department to go through the new process, they don't really know what's supposed to happen, so I don't know what to prepare and am not really worried about it. When it comes to New Zealand and international students, it needs us more than we need it!

The Arts Tutor Training class had been interesting the past couple weeks. We learned about issues around assessment and how often it doesn't match learning outcomes. Our teacher recommended "backward engineering" a course, where you look at what you want the students to get out of it by the end and put in content and assessment that will help them get there, rather than just stuffing as much content in as you can. I can see the temptation to try to impart a lot of information, especially if it's a subject you are passionate about, but the reality is you can only get across so much in a semester. Quality over quantity, pretty much. One of my friends missed class so I was filling him in afterward, and he had never considered why traditional essays might not be the best way to measure learning in a class, so I'm glad I was able to bring up something for him to think about. I know I have been pondering this for months since that Teaching Week session on the ineffectiveness of traditional lectures!

I experienced my first bad lecture here with the "What If Computers Could Save Lives" public lecture by the head of the supercomputer at the university. It was frustrating because on a campus that has been continually cutting funding to the Arts, he basically appropriated all kinds of philosophical questions about big data and technology and ended with scaremongering and warning us to be wary of robots taking over. He also used old science fiction (Isaac Asimov and HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey) and never once mentioned the term nor gave credit to the fact that Arts people have been discussing these issues for quite some time, and maybe his poorly-researched talk would have benefited from some of their input, or perhaps he should have stuck to what he is an expert in and that actually would have been a lot more interesting than a scare session to a largely aging audience. (His actual research is on analyzing brain pathology using math and computer models.) I don't think it did the university any favors.

The new Digital Humanities seminar series is really interesting. Last one was on the internationally-used program LaBB-CAT (Language, Brain, and Behavior Corpus Analysis Tool) designed by researchers here and how it can analyze and mark up audio files a lot faster than doing it by hand. What used to take a researcher years -- going through audio files and listening for language changes and patterns -- can be done by the program in a day. The current research is on the New Zealand English vowel shift, where the second-generation New Zealand settlers began pronouncing their vowels differently from what they heard from their British/Scottish parents. Fortunately for linguists, a group of people in the 1940s went around the country with a van and a microphone and recorded people talking about their early lives, and some of these people had been born around 1850 and were the first people to learn English here. Many visitors and expats know about the vowel shift, because it is sometimes difficult to understand people even when they are speaking clearly because the vowels are pronounced so differently.

Sample image of LaBB-CAT from the website

I've been continuing to learn a lot about all sorts of topics. I created two websites in WordPress over the weekend and remembered how much time web development takes. It didn't help that years ago Google had converted their old Google Sites to "legacy sites" so I didn't have Super Admin privileges to be able to make some changes on the site I was migrating. And it took a couple hours to figure out why things weren't working, because every time you try to Google something that Google no longer thinks is important, you end up wading through all of their new Help forums that don't answer your question. Thanks Google.

I found an awesome book on world-building in science fiction and fantasy called Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. It includes media beyond books and movies too, like radio and video games, and was so interesting, I ended up reading most of it and finding a ton of good quotes for my research. Lots of Star Wars in there, too, although it came out before Disney took over the franchise so some of the information on the canon is out of date. 

I learned about life in the Chinese countryside and how birthdays aren't usually celebrated in China, which made me sad. I told my Chinese friends that I would make them a cake next year so we can have a Western celebration. They find it interesting that we make such a big deal about them. It's really through these kinds of conversations that you realize how much you think is normal is a product of your culture and what other people have passed on to you. Also, apparently karaoke is really big in China and there's a place here near the university that some students go to, so that might be on the radar for me to visit in the next year. Another friend taught in Japan for a while and was telling us about the strict education system and the high suicide rates there, which I didn't know about.

At home, I got some kind of black scuff marks all over my down jacket which I wear every day, tried to get them out with soap, mostly succeeded, then made the mistake of hanging it out on the clothes line after it had rained, and it got green spots all over it from the moss/plant residue runoff from the roof over the clothes line. These are times I shake my fist at New Zealand. 

Although many things are expensive, I had to take a picture of the price per kg of peppers at the grocery store, because it just doesn't seem to make sense for things like this to have the price per kg -- it makes it look outrageously expensive. Spring is officially here, so once the weather warms up, it will be time to start up our pepper factory again so we don't have to pay so much for the bottled ones.

Dinner Party, Cold Weather, and End of Semester

Home

We had our first dinner party last weekend and it was a success. We made Mexican food since they don't have good Mexican food here: cheese enchiladas, refried beans, rice, and cheese dipping sauce for chips, then pumpkin bundt cake and chocolate-covered pretzels for dessert. Afterward, we played some board games and engaged in some movie debates about The Hobbit movies and upcoming sequels. One of our friends brought her friend who is back home in New Zealand for a brief visit -- he is in a doctoral program at a university on the East Coast so I asked him about how he is liking the U.S. He definitely likes having access to Amazon Prime and affordable shipping.

It is -1 C (30 F) in attic and 9 C (48 F) in house.

With temperatures plummeting, I invested in a thick winter comforter (duvet) that was on sale. It could be a half measure warmer, but it should work for the next couple years. It is a challenge to keep the house warmer than 40-50 F (8-10 C). I do not like being able to see my breath inside. I use the timers on the heat pumps to have both of them turn on an hour and a half before I wake up so the house is more bearable, around 60-64 F (16-18 C). Then it is an ice-box when we return home from school -- I miss having a programmable thermostat and central gas heating!! Power bill is hovering around $10-$12 a day, so easily $300+ a month for electricity, and that is with us not being here most of the time. It is hard to get used to this climate in these conditions.

My umbrella broke in a particularly fierce windy, rainy day, so I will have to get another one. The rain often comes in sideways though, so you still get soaked even with an umbrella or hoodie on. Our cat has been so cold he is sleeping under the bed covers, so I bought a microwavable pet warmer that a friend from the U.S. recommended. We are going to get him a pet bed to put it in. I know, he is quite spoiled.

School

The semester is now over, along with my tutorials. I have learned a lot in a short time about students and learning and having to deal with systems of education that don't always make sense. I accepted that students were not keeping up with the reading and prepared alternative sessions. For one session, we watched a half-hour movie called Flatland: The Movie (with Martin Sheen and Kristen Bell voicing the main characters) based off an early science fiction novel and discussed political systems and how open people really are to new ideas. It was surprisingly enjoyable. Knowing how things work now, I will hopefully be able to prepare better for future tutorials, although every group of students is different.

One of my fellow doctoral students and I gave an essay workshop one evening in the library based on the mistakes we saw on the first round of essays we graded. Since it is difficult to get students to come to anything, we considered it a success to have seven from both of our classes attend. It was partly for selfish reasons, to give us practice presenting and something to put on our resumes. But two of her students recently turned in an assignment and showed marked improvement in their structure and received the best grades out of dozens of their peers (assignment was graded by one of the "hard" grading lecturers). So that made us proud and like our time and energy was worth it.

I have agreed to help peer-review and edit articles for a new campus academic journal coming out online in a few months. Not that I have the time, but it will also help improve my resume...

I sat through over thirty oral presentations by Engineering students to give them a grade on their presentation skills. A lot of them needed work, but there were some really good presenters. I learned a lot about building materials, types of aggregates, lighter concrete with recycled PET plastic, insulation, and 3-D printers on Mars. I have to admit, these students have been showing up my arts students with the amount of eagerness, dedication, and willingness to work they bring to their education. I can't get my students to read a book, but several of these students were coming up to me for feedback and ways to improve. They really cared about how they were doing. My final conclusion is that making things for assessment/a grade is a powerful motivator for today's students.

Finally, I went to an interesting presentation by one of the History students on education reform in post-war Japan and Germany. I had no idea how much effort the U.S. went to in order to try to ensure these countries did not become militarized dictatorships again. It sent educators over there to rewrite textbooks and insert democracy and freedom ideas. And it seems that they were largely successful. It shows the power of education and its "indoctrination" aspects.

fall colors on the walk from our car to school

It's the Target dog! Made me miss Target stores...

This article was in a wellness magazine dropped off in our mailbox. 

They know the cold and damp are bad for our health!!

Training, Visiting Scholars, Chinese New Year's, and Macbeth

Yesterday we went blueberry-picking on one of the farms about 25 minutes drive away. It was quite enjoyable and the berries are tasty. D suggested I make a blueberry pie (for me, not him), so I might do that this week. In the evening, we saw an "Open Air Summer Shakespeare" performance of Macbeth. It's one of my favorites and was performed very well.

Job Training

I had six hours of training for my jobs this past week. It is a bit confusing because what their system calls a "tutor" is similar to what we call a "teaching assistant (TA)" in the U.S. And they call the 1-on-1 tutors "peer learning advisors". So it seems like I have two tutoring jobs and it is hard to differentiate them with the terminology. I have never had a TA/Tutor before, so I'm not sure what to expect. I will be tutoring a literature class twice a week, which involves having a smaller group of students than are in the main lecture class in order to be able to facilitate discussion and delve into the material more deeply. At least, that's the ideal. Thankfully, the teachers for the class have prepared the material and some questions for me to use in the sessions, so I don't have to start from scratch.
I have to hold an office hour where students can come in for help with the essays or material. I also will be responsible for grading the two essays that make up most of the students' grade. Admittedly, it is a bit worrying thinking about being in charge of a classroom for the first time, but hopefully it gets easier as the semester proceeds.

The training for the tutoring was basic and emphasized how to create a good classroom environment where students feel comfortable enough to participate. It also included a lot of what not to do. They said students will form an opinion of you in the first 2 minutes, so you have to be careful how you present yourself at the beginning because first impressions are hard to change. The training for the 1-on-1 tutoring had us role-playing with a partner how to go over a piece of writing. My partner brought in her biology lab report and the terminology made almost no sense to me. It was good practice though, because we will have science students coming in for help. She was equally baffled by my Arts essay, saying she can't remember the last time she wrote an essay. It was shocking to hear someone who didn't know what a thesis statement was. It was a reminder of the big divide here (and elsewhere) between the Sciences and the Arts. Without a general education requirement, students don't have to cross over and do something outside of their discipline. And yet, the employers have made such a protest over Science students graduating without communication skills, the school is finally adding a writing component to the Engineering students' coursework, at least. Their writing assignments will be what I grade for my other job.

Visiting Scholars

Professor Charles Husband, visiting from the University of Helsinki, gave an interesting lecture on neo-liberalism and education. It focused on how the current culture of having to do everything for profit is shifting academics away from pursuing research benefiting society and the greater public good. They are now consumed with research grants, marketing their research, and having to tick the boxes on getting publications and prestige to meet their department/school benchmarks. Everything becomes about their own selfish career goals. Academics are increasingly devalued as the jobs dry up and funders don’t want to put money into things that don’t have immediate value. It was all really relevant to what D and I have been dealing with and reading about recently with regards to liberal education and the Arts. We both spoke up about our experiences, and I said that academics are afraid to organize because the employers are in control with so few jobs available. It was weird hearing the professor say that a few decades ago, if you said you were doing a PhD in the Humanities, you would have been applauded. He lamented that faculty increasingly don’t want to socialize with each other or with students, instead holing up and working on research proposals, spending 3-6 months of a 2-year fellowship searching after the next funding (almost like a politician campaigning at the end of their term). I thanked the professor afterward and remarked how different it was now from the 1960s, which were all about protesting, and he agreed that that spirit is largely gone. I know if we end up going in academia, we will have to face the pressure he discussed, and it is a disheartening prospect.

Then the English department had its first seminar since I've been here by visiting scholar Dr. David Gillott on his research interest, Samuel Butler, a Victorian writer who critiqued Darwin and wrote a utopian satire, Erewhon, which I haven't yet encountered. His presentation focused on Butler's anti-professionalism. The main point I took away from it was that Butler criticized Darwin for deliberately cultivating a public persona of a humble "every man" character while underneath being an ambitious, career-oriented fellow. Butler notes that Darwin used a certain kind of language in his writings to endear himself to regular people and make them more willing to accept his controversial ideas on evolution. Butler was also against artists who worked for money and patronage rather than making art because they felt compelled and inspired to. He said that art created in the former way lacked something essential and could never be as good as art for art's sake. 

Chinese New Year's

I finally finagled an invitation to eat homemade Chinese food by our Chinese friend and his girlfriend. They invited us over for Chinese New Year's Eve and prepared six dishes for us (certain numbers are unlucky, so you have to make an even number of dishes; but four is also out because it is associated with death). We had a nice time discussing differences between China and the U.S. For dessert, we brought pumpkin bread and they had bought balls of a gelatine substance coated with coconut and filled with bean paste. We ate one out of politeness, and they were better than the pumpkin things from the restaurant, but still so different than our concept of dessert.