Technology Dark Ages

After the appropriately named Generation X, the title of the following generation appeared to stump demographic specialists. I’ve seen various labels pop up from the somewhat anti-climatic Generation Y, the corny Generation Next, to the intriguing Echo Generation. My personal favourite is the I-generation or more streamlined, i-gen. They are the first generation to grow up with the technology for instantaneous connection to news, friends, entertainment, and knowledge through a touch of a computer keyboard, the flip of a phone, or the push of a half a dozen ‘On’ buttons.

When I pressed that ‘On’ button on my laptop this week and nothing happened, my instantaneous world came crashing down. As an international student and an i-gen enthusiasts, my life is literally digital.

I maintain contact with a global network of friends through e-mail, social networking sites, and chat services. I do all my research online from scanning Google scholar and Google books to see if a source would actually to helpful to pulling articles from Informaworld and Interconnect. I don’t even know where the academic journals are kept in the school’s library. Even with real books, I take all my notes electronically so that they are easier to organize for writing papers. Of course, I stupidly saved the notes on my desktop and not the school's network so now I have no access to them.

I don’t own a television or a radio. Why would I when I can use I-tunes and YouTube or stream music live from my favourite independent radio station in Akron, Ohio USA over the Internet. I read half a dozen newspapers a day, all online (not counting of course my slight addiction to the gossipy free papers in the subway). Even my pictures are digital and shared through sites like Picasso, Snapfish, and Facebook.

As I wait for the replacement part from America, I spend my days in the computer lab at the library. I’ve formed a kind of kindred with the students who spend six hours at a time in the warm dungeon of the academic fortress. While other students flutter in and out, checking their mail quickly before heading to class, the lifers stake out our territory. We each have one computer that we use every day. We spread our stuff out across the table and even leave everything there when going on those inconvenient food runs or bathroom breaks; the others will make sure none of our stuff is stolen.

When I reached home this evening, I was at a loss as to what to do. I couldn’t work on one of the three papers due in a month. I couldn’t order those books I needed for my dissertation on Amazon or through the library catalogue. I couldn’t even look up on Wikipedia what the third language was on the Rosetta Stone. That quandary bothered me on my commute home, and I couldn’t think of the answer. (Turns out it’s Greek and TWO scripts of ancient Egyptian.) Instead, I’m writing a blog entry LONG hand to transcribe online on my return to my electronic lair tomorrow.

This i-gen’er cannot wait until a certain piece of snail mail arrives.

Parliament Parable

One of the major pitfalls of having such distinguished professors is that they are always cancelling class to attend highly confidential debriefings of returning British soldiers from Iraq or are invited by the Chechen President to the opening of a new mosque in Grozny. When one of my professors cancelled class because Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee requested him to provide testimony on Afghanistan, my classmates and I were already in the eye-rolling and thinking “again” stage of our education. However, this time, we were invited to come along (since British Committee meetings are open to the public not because we were special).

We became giddy with our academic fortune…again.

In our excitement we reached Parliament two hours early because we were afraid it would fill up, and we wouldn’t get sits. It turns out other than some frantically scribbling journalists and a school group, few people were quite as enthusiastic about Parliamentary proceedings.

Since we had just a tad bit of time to kill, a friend and I wandered around the grandiose halls of Parliament. We were both shocked on the amount of freedom we were given to explore. We kept expecting a burly security guard or Kevin Costner look-alike to jump out and escort us off the property, but it never happened.

We were only stopped once while we strolled down one of the oak-panelled Committee room corridors. Expecting the wrath of latent British Imperial might to smite us for our American presumptuousness, we were taken back by the immaculate politeness of a ridiculously unflustered staffer. “Pardon me ladies, are you members are the Corn Lobby?”

My first unfiltered thought was, “How could he possibly know that I’m from Ohio.”

My friend was a little more logical. “No. We are not”

The staffer apologized and simply stepped out of our way to let us continue snooping.

The actually Committee meeting was very interesting for what is was and for what it was not. Although sitting less than a foot behind my professor, I felt like I was in the mist of a hostile Congressional inquiry rather than an informational session. Of course, that sensation could also be because I wasn’t used to staring at the back of my professor’s head as he shared his vast amount of knowledge since typically he’s looking at the class.

The experience was definitely worth the pre-giddiness though I mercifully wasn’t the most over-eager of my classmates. This time I wasn’t the one who burst into a private Committee meeting and sternly told to leave by the less-than-amused Chair. Of course, I’ve already done that in America. I still can’t hear Congressional Appropriations Committee without cringing slightly on the inside.

Academic Courtship

We have reached the time of year. Winter has begun to thaw. Birds renew their perky morning songs and wake everyone up at the break of dawn...dissertations are in the air.

My fellow master’s students and I have been dreading our dissertations like an approaching junior high dance when Jimmy Baker asks arch frienemy Lindsey Arnold even though every day in pre-algebra you have been staring determinately at the back of his head, willing him to turn around and ask for a pencil. Choosing the topic that will define your professional specialization is nothing compared to the agony and potential public rejection of selecting a dissertation advisor. The experience is teenage dating angst all over again.

After spending months in class with a professor, you are still left with all those too familiar uncertainties: “Does the professor like me enough to want to see me over and over again into the summer?” “Does she remember the time when I confused Hamas with Hummus?” “Does he even know who I am?”

Worse is when that one professor who would be perfect for your dissertation is not one who is leading a class. After admiring from afar and after pouring over the potential mentor’s publications and theories, a moment to converse finally arises and you hope beyond anything that your comments exceed the academic equivalent of saying, “I like cheese” in the dating arena.

Whether the professor is personally known is practically irrelevant to the amount of nervousness that builds when having to ask that all important question, “Will you be my dissertation advisor?” That request has all the pitfalls of that ultimate, “Will you go out with me?”

And just like that dating black hole of insecurity, possible answers of “I’m already advising as many students as I can handle” or “I don’t think your topic really aligns with my expertise” or “I don’t think it will work; our research styles are just too different” could drive any hardworking student to the anonymousness of online degrees.

The litany of possible rejections is enough to reconsider career choices and opt for gardening instead.

Augustus Gloop Goes to Lisboa

After living in London for four months, I finally crossed the channel to meet a friend in Portugal. While I should begin by saying that Lisbon is beautiful and mysterious with its narrow cobblestone streets winding up hills, where laundry dances in the breeze and brushes against the brightly painted tiles of the packed buildings, what is a higher priority to me is the unbelievable deliciousness of the food.

I sustain on cold sandwiches and a hundred varieties of potatoes in London. Going to a seaside city with as many different dishes of cod as days in a year made me feel like Dorothy stepping from Kansas into Technicolor. Every meal whether it was a simple homemade meat pie to more elaborate seafood dishes made me question why I didn’t undertake to learn Portuguese instead of the dynamics of conflict. It seems the very first lesson of conflict resolution in my program is to compromise culinary happiness.

We never really had a bad meal on the trip. Even the somewhat harsh encounter with a waiter, who made both the Muppet’s Swedish chef and the Little Mermaid’s knife-welding cook look positively sociable, was not a completely terrible meal. The traditional soups he served were tasty if a little odd. The experience of eating cold vegetable soup and egg on bread floating in broth was certainly unique though I somewhat wonder if the waiter managed to chill our meals with his cold stare.

While the country is known for its scrumptious pastries, particularly egg custards, we stumbled across the most renowned pastry shop in the city. Hoards of revellers stalked the entry and waited to enter like the masses outside Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. The theme continued on the inside as people lined up to buy ridiculous quantities of tarts like they might contain the Golden Ticket. Considering the cabinets were filled with many tiny bottles of port and delicacies, I would not be surprised to find Everlasting Gobstoppers and Fizzy Lifting Drinks among the merchandise.

The trip to Portugal was much too short before I had to return to London and my studies, but I had at least a short reprieve before returning to the city of sandwiches.

America: There and Back Again

After an incredibly long and relaxing break in America over the holidays, I returned to the old country to continue my academic advancement, aka self-impose confidence torture and paranoia-inducing sleep deprivation. Floating between countries as I have now for the past two years, I can’t help but make comparisons between the culture I’m presently trying to blend with and the one I most recently left behind.

I’ll be the first to admit that when I’m home in Ohio, I am spoilt rotten. Imagine Snow White’s cabin just without the chore-addicted woodland creatures and with a foot of snow, and the picture describes my month long hiatus from anything remotely unpleasant. I sat by the fire and had the option of staying sitting there all day with only occasionally wondering twenty feet into the kitchen to steal from the array of cookies my mom was constantly baking. A little more effort is required in London. Fourteen flights of stairs: that is the average amount I climb each day between the library, the subway, my apartment, and the school.

The Ohio countryside is enveloped with blissful silence. Even my family’s old Labrador has given up any pretence of scaring away shadows and instead of barking spends his days and evenings rotating from lounging in his bed to lounging in front of the fire. London is in a constant state of construction. Supposedly, the architecture is beautiful but since half of the buildings are covered in scaffolding, I can’t know for sure.

Even after dodging the wrecking balls and demonically loud chainsaws, I still have to negotiate the labyrinth/horizontal catacombs of King’s College, where on multiple occasions I have gotten locked in classrooms and computer labs. I half expect the Minotaur to lunge at me from behind one of the deer-path wide corridors by the Philosophy Department. In fact, after spending years in complex, abstract thought, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the philosophy professors actually morphed into the Minotaur like an academic Gollum.

In America, proportions typically run in supersize or extra supersize. I can skip down the street twirling and waving my arms around and never interfere with the slightly befuddled other pedestrians for the most part. Even cities like New York are nothing like Oxford Circus, where no standard foot traffic direction is followed. Yesterday I felt like the average peewee football player staring down the field at charging Pro-bowlers as impatient shoppers speed-walked in wall formation towards me.

Instead of having time to catch up on creative writing and nonfiction like in Ohio, in London, I am falling behind on heavy reading because I’m too busy reading.

Instead of eating hot, homemade comfort food, I have sandwiches smeared with butter.

Instead of ploughing through mountains of snow, I’m fighting off the constant British drizzle.

Even though I routinely have to hike up endless flights of stairs in light rain while dragging my weight in books I should have already read as I'm dodging Mr. Hyde professors, I’m still glad to be back in London. It’s where I’m becoming the person that I’m supposed to be. Besides, the gossip in the daily Tube papers is SO much better than their counterparts in the States. Did you get a picture documenting the company and exact time Emma Watson went home last night? I don’t think so.

Americanism: Abroad

November 2000- On a morale-draining cold and damp night eight years ago, I was on a train between Bruges, Belgium and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. America was still in the mists of the suffocating grip of the first “indecision” as all eyes were on the Florida recount. Instead of spending the few hours catching up on much needed sleep after an exhausting international conference, I sat through an hour plus lecture on the irresponsibility and narrow-mindedness of America.

In the near decade since, I have spent 447 days abroad (yes, I recently counted) including in places that are neither as friendly nor as safe as the border of Belgium and the Netherlands. Over and over again, I found myself in situations where I was requested, with various degrees of assertiveness, to justify policies that I had no part in formulating. Without even realizing it, I developed a defensive attitude about being American.

In an interesting paradox, America is both admired and despised abroad. Surprisingly some of the harshest criticism would come from the citizens of America’s closest political allies, and without question the highest acceptance of my nationality I’ve experienced was in China.

My master’s program in London is incredibly diverse as are my friends. I asked a group of them on Tuesday, how many of them ever pretended to be a different nationality abroad. The question was met with complete silence. Unfortunately, many American travelers would understand when I say that at times when people asked me, “Are you American?” with that certain hostility in their tone, the question was easier to answer, “No, I’m Canadian” than the truth. It had nothing to do with a personal unwillingness to defend the principles and virtues of the United States but more to do with a disinterest in being verbally crucified for decisions of a very controversial administration…again.

The world is not to blame for their frustration because, truthfully, they have a significant stake in the American elections. The world might not pay taxes, but I certainly have no claim to say I feel policy decisions more than an Iraqi or an Afghan citizen on the most extreme side of that spectrum. Seeing an American on the street is the closest that many global citizens are going to get to the American politicians who make those sweeping decisions. After all, as part of the American collective, I did vote them into office.

All the above makes this past week that much more heartwarming. I went to class on Wednesday after the elections like every other day though I was significantly more tired. Standing in the hall before class, one of my Norwegian classmates tackled me in a giant hug and kissed me on the cheek. Her intense joy left her speechless, which is very uncommon for those budding orators in the political field.

That incident was hardly the only one. Throughout the day, classmates came up to me and patted me on the back or gave me a hug like I had just swam the English Channel, saved a baby from a burning building, or some other noble feat. I heard so many “Congratulations” that by the end of the day, I actually started to respond, “Thank you”. Even strangers, as soon as they heard my accent, would cheer me. I am certainly not talking only about the British; London is a smorgasbord of cultures and passport holders.

I’m not going to discuss policy alternations or the ramifications of U.S. party changes on the global arena. What I can say for certain, is that for once, it’s nice to be an American Abroad.

In the Beginning

This story begins like many others before it with one restless student in the middle of a city of very non-restless people. After six weeks among the Tories and Tom Fooleries of London, she hoped on a bus and traveled to a mostly unknown town called Oxford.

Upon stepping off the bus, the young explorer realized that she was wholly unprepared for this wilder corner on England. The friend whom she was supposed to meet was nowhere to be found, and everyone around her stared, knowing that she did not belong among the ivory spirals and skyward towers of Middle Academia.

Help arrived in the form of a brief orientation of the land of Oxford and a map. Before long the explorer set out in the chilling day on a quest to discover the mysteries of the fabled city. Our formerly London sheltered student crossed the bridge, and just like stepping through a wardrobe, she found herself in a completely different environment filled with curious characters. Researchers and academics hovered over stacks of sources like dwarves over their treasure troves; tattered facility members mumbled odd formulas; and guards as thick as trolls patrolled the entrances to the different colleges.

As she stepped among the marbled scholarly sanctuaries, a harsh wind pulled at the ends of her coat. The weather had been cold in London but nothing like the frigid Oxford air. It made her wish that she grabbed one of her heavy Chinese coats before heading out the door. The Winter Queen maintained a strangling grip on the bustling village. She clung to the bell towers and pressed down on the cobbled streets and gothic buildings with a disheartening cold that stifled laugher at the very thought and hastened travelers to their destinations away from the cold.

The girl pressed onward on her little journey. Every turn unfettered a new amazement. The adventurer passed under covered bridges with stain glass windows sparking in the determined spurts of sunlight that cut through the clouds. She wandered though the endless courtyards within the library complex until she wrapped around a knoll-shaped library wing. The girl even watched in resigned jealousy as students filed into the courtyard of what she knew to be Hogwarts and wondered cynically if future witches and wizards knew a shortcut to completing her upcoming presentation.

As the sun set and a light rain began to fall, the girl scurried into a cozy pub thick with decades of memories of smoke and heated debates. The Owl and Child is known for once being the meeting place of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. The two great authors would sit together and discuss the surreal fantasies of their literary worlds and are the inspiration for this post. Maybe visiting the pathways and pit stops once patronized by such imaginative masters will provide a little motivation to a certain London weary girl…