Earthquake, Pollution, Voting

It’s been a busy time lately, and New Zealand was once again on the international news with the 7.8 earthquake that devastated Kaikoura and also parts of Wellington. It was different from all of the other earthquakes I've felt here so far: over a minute of a gentle rocking, like being on a houseboat rather than in a house. It wasn't scary, although apparently the tsunami risk goes way up if a quake lasts for that long, and the evacuation plan for the coast is, well, not quite formulated very well. People ended up stranded for hours on a narrow peninsula and would have been engulfed if an actual tsunami had gone. Needless to say, residents over there are ticked.

I went to my first hui, which is the Maori term for a meeting, and that was an interesting experience where the topic was a very contentious political issue regarding children. I also went to a talk on freshwater pollution in New Zealand, which was very illuminating. New Zealand bills itself as clean and green but the reality is quite different. 74% of NZ freshwater fish are threatened or in decline and in a few decades there won't be any left. Plus, there is no protection under NZ law for them. 43% of NZ lakes are polluted and have too many nutrients (causing algal blooms). 67% of NZ waterways are polluted and the Canterbury region (which is where Christchurch is) has some of the highest rates worldwide of gastrointestinal disease. They're sobering statistics for sure.

algal bloom from report on freshwater in NZ

In the academic realm, I have gone back and forth on my thoughts on its function in today’s society. In discussions with some professionals outside of academia, I discovered that people outside the ivory tower have a surprisingly low opinion of academics. Their view was that many academics are the people who never left school, have little understanding of the ‘real world’, and couldn’t necessarily be successful having to work with other people in another job. They saw academics as more likely to be dysfunctional, which then explains why things like aspects like discrimination and backward-thinking still proliferate without much consequence. I have to say I’m starting to agree with some of this viewpoint, because of the resistance to change and lack of dialogue about critical issues that I have found this past year. Also, when I was helping tutor a student, I realized that they weren’t relating the book at all to their own life and struggles, and it occurred to me that we’re failing as educators (or the lecture system is failing) if they aren’t connecting what they’re reading and learning to their own life.

As part of this system, I had the opportunity to do several teaching sessions this year and experienced first-hand the issues with the lecture-style of teaching, because it is such a one-way, non-engaging style. It is still quite persuasive though, and allows you to shape others’ opinions. I also have been able to do more public speaking in front of hundreds of people, which I certainly wouldn’t have thought possible a few years ago. Practice definitely helps. I helped organize a conference and a different seminar and in the process found a great TED Talk on how technology distracts us. I keep coming back to it (especially his bit about how checking social media updates is like gambling) so I think it’s a good one.

Other things that have happened were good celebrations of Halloween and Thanksgiving with friends. Funnily, I put out candy on my office hour but the New Zealanders were largely too timid to take it while I was there, but then when I came back most of it was gone. In the U.S., that wouldn’t have lasted a week! At a weekend festival, I tried fried pumpkin for the first time and it was yummy. And finally, I voted via email for the first time and it was very easy, and I hope that in the future electronic voting can become more of a thing, because I think it would increase the percentage of people who actually partake in elections.

 

Visits from Arabic Language Professor and U.S. Ambassador

I finally finished the first draft of the journal article I've been working on for seemingly ever. Every time I think I'm done with the research, I find something else that needs to be looked into. It has been a humbling experience. Next it goes to my supervisors for feedback and then off to the journal for review.

But I still have another journal article to work on, and that one is on pedagogy (teaching). Let me tell you, researching pedagogy is like going into a huge black hole: there is so much out there and you can easily get lost in it. However, it's quite interesting reading about what people have to say about what makes the best teaching practices, and I find myself reflecting on my own experiences at school and what worked and didn't. I have learned and continue to learn a lot about teaching this year.

I was involved in a second session of teaching/leading at the tutoring center and it was quite fun preparing for and presenting because the topic we chose was holiday celebrations. I made a quick 5-minute presentation on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Christmas in the U.S., and everyone seemed to enjoy all of the pictures and my stories of shopping and making cookies and decorating. I told them all that they need to try pumpkin pie at some point because it is so good. I can't wait for October to be here so I have an excuse to make lots of pumpkin treats. Sure, the Libby's Pumpkin is $5 a can, but it's so worth it.

The bookstore on campus had a further reduction in their clearance books -- only $2 each! -- so I couldn't resist buying several. Okay, maybe 14. But most are gifts!! Much cheaper than buying a Secret Santa gift, and it's good for people to read. :)

We also popped by the British store that we haven't been to since we arrived to see what they were stocking. It was taken over by new management so the prices were a little better. They have boxes of Shreddies which I think I can use as a Chex replacement so I can make Chex Mix and other treats requiring that kind of grid cereal. D bought a can of Heinz Spaghetti with O-shaped pasta (looks like Spaghettios but unfortunately doesn't taste like it) and we both got packages of Bachelor's pasta which we had almost weekly while in the UK. It still tastes the same!

Professor Sahar Amer (Chair of the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures at the University of Sydney), whom I heard at the ANZAMEMS conference this past July, was visiting the university and gave two presentations on Muslim women. The first was on "Gender Trouble in the Seventh Crusade" and focused on the first female sultan of Egypt, Shajar al-Durr, whom I had never heard of. The second was on "Muslim Women's Rights in Post-Colonial Europe" and discussed modern Muslim women and veiling practices. We learned about the rising Islamic fashion industry which is becoming a substantial source of revenue for Europe; she played a clip of award-winning British Asian Muslim comedian Shazia Mirza poking fun at her culture, as well as a clip from The Hijabi Monologues. I was glad she had brought these things to our attention, as I know I had never encountered them before and probably wouldn't have otherwise.

Finally, the US Ambassador to New Zealand, Mark Gilbert, paid a visit to the university. First, the International Recruitment Officer said a few words about how great it was that U.S. students were helping expose New Zealand students to new ideas (and helping fulfill part of the new graduate profile: "being globally aware"). He said he travels a lot in the U.S. and finds that the two peoples are quite similar in values and being hardworking and motivated. I was thinking, where do you get that idea?! I have not found many people here who have the same work ethic that I find in the U.S., but maybe in different circles or in Auckland things are different. Next the Chancellor spoke about the importance of a strong relationship between the two countries. The Ambassador got his chance to speak and reflected some on his career moves from Major League Baseball to 30 years in the banking industry, and then becoming part of Obama's campaign and getting this position. He spoke about how many entrepreneurs he's met across New Zealand and advised us to try to see some of the cool things going on on-campus, like drones. Very business-oriented, but that's to be expected from his background. He did make a funny joke about feeling less wind chill in his house in Florida during a hurricane than in New Zealand because of the poor quality of insulation and window thickness. He said New Zealanders could learn some things from the U.S. and we all laughed because we know how cold it is here!

Ambassador Mark Gilbert with U.S. students studying abroad

White pigeon young-lings at school

Japanese cherry blossoms

Grading, Seminars, and Dentist Appointment

My cat loves his pet bed and the microwavable warmer. I heat it up in the morning before leaving for school and it is still warm when I get back in the evening. I found a New Zealand supplier (pet.co.nz) so I didn't have to wait.

I really enjoyed Jurassic World and all of the science fiction implications. If we have time while in Sydney, I'd like to see it in 3-D IMAX! The ending is pure awesome.

Grading 30 essays was a huge pain and took me 3 days to complete. The good news is some students did a lot better than last time (not that anything in the class was about improving their writing) and there were fewer instances of plagiarism. However, some students did worse and evidently didn't feel like putting much time into their work. A lot of them clearly struggled with the essay questions, but only a couple sought my help.

Seminars & Conference

I won one of two travel scholarships to one of the Australia conferences I'm going to in a few weeks, so that was great news. They would like to present it to the awardees at the conference banquet as well.

I attended several of the Teaching Week seminars on-campus and learned a lot of good information on diversity, ineffectiveness of the lecture for student engagement and learning, and motivations and profiles of first-year law students. I feel like I'm being stuffed full of information which is all coming together with common themes.

The National Digital Forum held a one-day "barcamp" which is a kind of conference where the people attending decide on the topics they want to see covered, rather than the program being pre-determined. It was an interesting way of organizing. Attendees ranged from library staff, to academics and teachers, to students, to museum and gallery staff. We shared tools and resources, ideas on how to digitize content and why it is so important, ways of helping people learn coding and tech skills, and how to enable partnerships between libraries, museums, and students. I have quickly become a big proponent of Digital Humanities and the importance of turning the critical eye of the humanities to digital content and not letting the small percentage of programmers dominate the tech sector. I am looking forward to the international Digital Humanities conference in one week in Sydney!

Dentist Appointment

We had our first experience with dentistry in New Zealand. Apparently, it is uncommon to have dentists and hygienists work together in the same office. So when you go for a dental checkup and X-rays, this is performed by a dentist in a 15-minute window. To get an actual teeth cleaning, you have to go to a hygienist and pay anywhere from $80-$150 because dental things are not subsidized by the government healthcare system. The dentist said he would really like to have a hygienist in his office, but he has faced resistance from New Zealanders who think that it is a strange concept. 

He was a fairly young guy who has a lot of complaints about the abysmal state of healthcare, especially dentistry, here. He recommended American or British doctors because they will be more thorough and caring (threat of litigation still weighs on American doctors he said). He and his staff were telling me horror stories about their encounters with the healthcare system, like a family member getting metal in an eye that ended up rusting and causing permanent damage, all because the initial doctor said there was nothing in the eye (and the person can't sue in this system). I said they could probably be a millionaire in the U.S.! They also mentioned doctors giving wrong prescriptions and ignoring a woman on the floor in pain who clearly needed emergency medical attention. He was also upset that the government was trying to pretend there were no waiting lists for healthcare by pressuring healthcare providers into essentially hiding their waiting lists. It was all very disappointing to hear.

Tutorials and Popular Art

It is possible I have taken on too many jobs, partly because of the last-minuteness of planning in New Zealand so that I didn't know for sure if I would have the tutoring one which takes the most time until right before classes started, and partly because I have trouble saying no to new opportunities (and more income). I am up to six now, though some of them are just for a short, fixed period of time and others will be in bursts when papers are turned in for grading. This will be a test semester to see how everything goes.

Meanwhile, I survived my first two tutorials! I was nervous but it wasn't too bad and after the hardest part -- starting the class and having everyone look at you for leadership -- it was mostly just prompting discussion through questions. The first group took longer on the questions so I had to rush at the end, but I still had time to give them the recent news article on human head transplants only being two years away and relate it to Frankenstein's relevance today, almost two hundred years after its publication. The second group was in a smaller room actually meant for that kind of small group which does make a difference in the atmosphere, and they were more active. I have so much more appreciation for the prep work that teachers do and the energy it takes to be that person in the room that everyone is expecting to lead them. I think the nervousness will diminish over time as I get more comfortable with the role and the groups feel more comfortable discussing and asking questions. You are so thankful for the contributors because they make the job that much easier. It is a unique position being the one in the room with more knowledge and experience, and I enjoy that power and ability to guide their thinking and questioning into certain directions. Sometimes they make the leap themselves, but other times you have to tease it out. It is odd that it has taken this long to have the opportunity to lead a classroom, after going down a degree path that points that direction in most cases. But I have to say, getting to discuss and write about literature for a living has to be a good gig. Probably why professors rank so highly on the job happiness scale!

I had a meeting with two women executives from the Canterbury Women's Club on the startup of the postgraduate network group. They were eager to hear my ideas, and we settled on a monthly meeting on-campus where a few women would give a brief overview of their research and then a woman speaker in the workforce would share her experience. The idea is to build a network and practice skills like presenting, mingling, and preparing for life after the degree. I hope everything goes well and is successful. If I decide to stay on in New Zealand after completing my degree, networks like this will be useful in finding employment.

My literature class had another good lecture which related some to my project. The lecturer was talking about the importance of studying both "high" art (like James Joyce and Picasso) and "low" or popular art, because just like now, people interacted with and consumed both types. He said, Wouldn't you want to look at what 95% of people were reading or watching? This relates to science fiction because until recently it was not seen as worthy of study in academia. Thanks to a generation of people fighting for it to be recognized, and the acknowledgment that studying popular culture is important too, it is now generally accepted at most schools as an appropriate topic for serious academic study. In my view, what we read and watch has a big role in our socialization, so it absolutely makes sense to critically analyze and engage with the culture we live in (or used to live in).

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.