Skip to main content

Change of Pace



A view of the Turku archipelago in the frigid weather. PC: Sami
All of my time in the past month has been spent with doing one of two things: preparing for next year and making sure I get done with this year. The flurry of activity has been a welcome change to the rather luxuriously slow pace that had been defining my days up until now but in the process, this blog has fallen by the wayside. So what are these many things that have been taking up my time? 


1.     Ice skating

This is by far not what has occupied most of my time, but I think it has been the most refreshing. Last year I went ice skating only once and, as thrilling as it was, never got around to going again. Plus, the weather last year was so mild that you had to take advantage of cold days when they came to get much time on the ice. This year has been much better and ice skating has been a great excuse to bring people together. It’s this year’s version of chai. Thanks to my mother, four years of ice skating lessons make this an enjoyable rather than stressful activity and I can even play hockey (or more accurately, play around with a puck) sometimes with my hockey loving boyfriend. The following video was taken by a friend while we skated on Turku's "worm."


2.     Thesis

Working on my thesis has shaped my weekdays and some weekends. The analysis phase was rife with uncertainty as I continuously felt I did not know what I was doing. It helped to hear that other colleagues said they felt the same but what has helped most has been my advisor. His constant patience and understanding has made it easier to approach him with what I think are issues I should be figuring out on my own but have no idea how to begin approaching. In our last meeting, when I apologized for not articulating what I had been doing well enough, he said that learning how to articulate the process was just part of the process of becoming a researcher.

3.     Event planning

This semester has been about planning events important for the community, one for the general Turku community and one for our program community. Both have been very different experiences and have taught me quite a bit about working in groups in ways that class projects never did. I have learned how important it is to check your own ego when working in a committee, which sometimes means constantly reflecting on my own motivations for saying the things I say or do. I have also learned how important it is to remember other people’s egos are at play and to balance as delicately and carefully as possibly while keeping the goal of the event in mind. And most of all, I have learned the benefits and limitations of working with a group.

4.     Planning for next year

I applied to a few places for a PhD and have been considering my options. When I’m not feeling anxious about all of it, it is rather exciting.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dual Identities

A picture of my parents and cousin from Diwali. In my house we celebrate Diwali and have a small Christmas. I don't know many Finnish people, even after being here for five months. But I feel that I've done pretty well, considering I'm in an international program and can say I have four Finnish friends (one isn't quite a friend, but he has helped me out quite a bit) and I can say I have nascent Finnish language skills. I've grown comfortable here, though I still feel like a foreigner. One man who has been living in Finland for almost a decade came here from an African country for his masters. He married a Finn but cannot speak any Finnish himself. And yet, I have the sense that he still does not feel like he belongs here. In one of our classes, he told us how he still gets called racial slurs walking down the street. He commented offhandedly one day “I don’t know what I am.” I understand this feeling, to an extent. I have never been called a racial slur b...
1 comment
Read more

Heart of the City

The past week in New York was jarring to say the least. Though the city still makes me overwhelmed by even the smallest of tasks (where do you go to buy a pack of cards??), I have begun to slowly get used to the constant movement of the city and everything that comes with it. The sound of airplanes flying constantly from La Guardia over my apartment doesn't register any more. I can estimate how crowded the train will be based on what time I am leaving my apartment in the morning or TC in the evening. And although the feeling of always needing to do more still raises the specter of anxiety to make everything I do feel inadequate, I've become resigned to its presence to the point that it is part and parcel of the city itself. Solitude is rare in the city, but last week it was the norm All of these things fell apart this week though, one by one, as another phantom seeped into our lives. Starting with an email from our college president that optimistically called off only no...
Post a Comment
Read more

Critical Wisdom

The Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College has a reputation for being difficult, especially at the doctoral level. It isn’t difficult in the way my advanced data analysis class is difficult, where we are expected to learn complex statistical concepts while also learning how to code in the dreaded Stata software. Instead, it is impossibly abstract and theoretical, with most classes requiring us to write papers where we construct complex arguments supported by plenty of other people’s theoretical musings. These frameworks challenge us at our very core, a process that is fraught with emotional ups and downs, so much so that a professor in the department has called the program as a “Pedagogy of Monsters” and written an article about it. The program has changed the way I see the world. For example, I recently went to go see Isn’t it Romantic with some colleagues from the Writing Center. Besides the social aspect of actually going somewhere that wasn’t to work or acc...
Post a Comment
Read more