Academic Culture and International Relations

I got home from Munich last night, and I've been doing a lot of thinking about how to sum up my very first proper conference experience.  It was the first time that I was presenting instead of organizing, like with the PhD and Phil Taylor conferences.  I was extremely nervous and didn't know quite what to expect.  It was going to be my first time in Germany, too.  Despite having a BA in European Studies and being the German II student of the year in 2004, I really didn't know that much about Germany (apart from the cliches of WWI and WWII, efficiency and order, bratwurst and beer).  The night before the conference, I walked around the city centre and saw the Rathaus, and looked around a grocery store for an hour or so (always one of my favorite things to do as a tourist).  Back in the room, I went over my presentation notes and watched 'South Park' in German.  By dubbing his voice, they've managed to make the character Butters creepy rather than adorable...

I didn't sleep well and was really nervous, but calmed down once I actually arrived at the conference.  Everyone was friendly and interested in my project--and surprised that I was American, since they had seen that I was at Leeds on the programme.  "It's usually the other way around, with Europeans going to the States."  The conference was smaller than I'd expected--just 20-some people and half of them were presenting.  After chatting with some of the other presenters about their conference experiences, though, I think a small crowd was probably the best environment for my first presentation.

They were all historians, and most of the other presentations were WWI-era.  It was great to have feedback from a non-communications perspective--I've always felt that my research doesn't fit with communications, but now I know that it doesn't quite fit with history either.  They were interested in the ICT angle that I had just briefly mentioned at the end of my talk, when discussing future research directions--the idea that the student experience is different now in the modern communications environment (the ability to communicate with friends/family back home and transmit culture learning back home more rapidly--even concurrently!), and that students' study abroad blogs could be used as texts to learn about their experiences. They sparked a lot of ideas and gave me useful advice, and I have a long list of recommended reading now.

The main thing I got from the whole experience, though, was confidence.  I often feel like my research isn't worthy of a PhD, that I need to write something amazingly original and groundbreaking in order to prove myself.  The thirst to prove myself has always been a thing for me--from a psych perspective, I was much younger than my siblings (7 yrs and 12 yrs) and I always wanted to catch-up to them.  But it also has to do with defying people's expectations.  As an American, they don't expect me to be interested in international affairs, to be living abroad--or to even hold a passport.  As a woman, they don't expect me to be doing a PhD, and they don't expect me to actually use it to work in academia (or if I do, then I must be single and childless for life).  

(the Google search, my favourite way of measuring commonly held attitudes:  worrying about how the PhD will impact one's chances of getting married is a more popular search than scholarships for women are...ugh.)

But now, after chatting with professors about my work and being treated as an equal, I'm feeling much more confident and my research seems much more PhD-worthy now.  I'm more confident in my presenting skills, too--the powerpoint was a good balance of images and minimal text, and they laughed at the right bits, which is so encouraging.  I'm feeling better about my writing, too--after months of struggling, I actually wrote some sentences that I loved in this conference paper.  I haven't had that feeling in ages, and it's reassuring.  It makes me feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing with my life, and that feeling is seriously underrated.

Kazakhstan and Borat

This morning I read about how the movie 'Borat' boosted tourism to Kazakhstan (posted on John Brown's blog) and had to share it on Facebook--my friends and I loved 'Borat', and it's a great twist in the story.

Back when the film came out in 2006, Kazakh officials were famously upset about the film's depiction of Kazakhstan as antisemitic, sexist, impoverished, technologically backwards, etc.  I actually took a Central Asian Studies class the following year and on the first day of class our professor mentioned 'Borat'...it was the only thing that most people in the room knew about Kazakhstan, for better or worse.

Now, apparently, the government is grateful that 'Borat' has sparked an interest in Kazakhstan.  Tourism has increased tenfold (the article doesn't give actual figures, but even if it meant 2 visas/year has become 20, that's a significant jump).  You can even take a 'Borat-themed tour':

"One travel company even boasts that a Borat-themed tour to Kazakhstan is 'coming soon' on its website. 'Who is the real Borat from Kazakhstan? What is Borat Sagdiyev's country really like?? There are different opinions. Join us and we will discover together!!!' the Oriental Express Central Asia company promises."

The tour is sure to disappoint fans of Borat--the real Kazakhstan is not what was portrayed in the film.  Quite literally, it wasn't--the shots of Kazakhstan were actually filmed about 3,000 miles away in Romania (villagers there were offended by the film, too).  And it really goes without saying that the other aspects of Borat's village are not going to be found in the real Kazakhstan--the backwardness, the anti-semitism, etc.  Although, why would you want to go to the 'Borat' version of Kazakhstan, with all of those negative qualities?

At any rate, I think the tenfold increase in tourism is a brilliant unintended consequence, and it just reaffirms the idea that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

The trouble with working from home...

I think I need to write at Starbucks today.

Conference Paper

Last night I had my first PhD-related nightmare. I'm surprised it took 18 months, actually...I didn't have any nightmares during the upgrade process.

It was the day of next month's conference in Munich and I realised that I had missed my flight. I had so much going on, I had mixed up the days--and to make the situation even worse, I hadn't even written the paper yet. I panicked and tried to write something while Richard drove me to the airport where I could (hopefully) get on the next flight. Such a stressful dream, and it reveals a lot about my recent worries...I really do have too much going on (some placement work issues, but mostly personal stuff).

But at least the nightmare inspired me to finish up this conference paper asap!

Archival Research & Scope

The textual records room at Archives II, College Park, MD--my home-away-from-home for 3 days last week (image from)

On my last day at the Archives, I was really sorry to leave. I had a great time there--which I suppose means I'm doing the right thing with my life. I loved seeing the documents that I'd read about elsewhere, like the very first annual report to Congress from 1948. I loved finally finding the numbers I needed to fill in the gaps on my data tables (even though that sounds painfully nerdy...). The staff were helpful & the other researchers were friendly (my tiny Samsung netbook was a great icebreaker). I came away with 25,000+ words in 63 pages of notes, and a better understanding of what the archives have on the Fulbright Program.

The main thing I got out of this trip was a reminder about the importance of scope. When I left that last day, I thought "Oh, I forgot to look at that...I missed out on that...I wish I had more time!" But then it occurred to me that the National Archives are huge. It's simply not possible to compile a 100% comprehensive study of a 65-year old programme in 3 years of archival research, much less 3 days. I realised that for me, for now, the goal is not to do it all, but to do enough (and to do it well, too, of course). Phil Taylor made me think that the point of the PhD was to become the world's greatest expert on your topic, but the more I interact with people who have PhDs, the more I realise that it's not about being an expert at all. Someday you might become the world's greatest expert on your topic (especially if it's obscure enough. Case in point: my University of Washington Central Asian Studies professor, Dr. Scott Radnitz, a former Fulbrighter to Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Brilliant guy, but would he have become an assistant professor by age 30 if he had specialised in Germany or France instead of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan?) but research interests and career aspirations can change, just like they do when you're a kid dreaming of what you want to be when you grow up.

The point of the PhD is not to do an exhaustive, expert-level study--it's to do an original piece of research that merits a PhD. But what, exactly, merits a PhD? I've had a look at some of the successful dissertations in our research room, and it really does vary--there are little concise ones and massive tomes, historical ones and contemporary ones, interview-filled qualitative approaches and number-crunching quantitative approaches. The only general conclusion I could make from them is that most are specialised, just like Dr. Radnitz above. They focus on a single case study, or just one narrow aspect of a larger phenomenon. I'm starting to realise that these successful students didn't specialise just to be obscure and original--they did it because they had to narrow their topic down to fit the scope of a PhD project.

On Wednesday we had an open day, and ICS was filled with prospective students and their parents. Some of the current MA students came into the PhD room to chat with us about their interest in doing a PhD here in the future. One asked me "how do you know if your topic is right for a PhD?" The 2 main bits of advice I gave to him: 1) It has to be something that interests you enough to keep you engaged for 3+ years, and 2) It needs to have the right scope. The scope bit is the part that I'm still working on, a year and a half into it.

Selecting future leaders

After re-reading Alice Stone Ilchman's chapter in America's Dialogue with the World, I've started reading her book on competitive scholarships, The Lucky Few and the Worthy Many. Just a quick read of the introduction has given me plenty to think about in terms of my research...

Firstly, they mention something that I've been struggling with throughout the process--programme evaluation. I 'm starting to feel like my research question is simply "What does the Fulbright Program do?" because after a year and a half of reading, I still don't know. Evaluations undertaken by the Advisory Commission always say that it's effective, that it does so much for international goodwill and that 99% of students were satisfied with their experience. But of course they'd be 'satisfied'--it's a year abroad with free tuition and living expenses. Who's going to say it was a bad experience? More to the point, how do you quantify concepts like "international goodwill" and "mutual understanding"? This quote really spoke to some of the issues I've been dealing with: "The more lofty and abstract the mission (e.g. increasing international understanding), the more difficult it is to evaluate what was accomplished by the recipients or the program in general." (Ilchman, Ilchman and Tolar, 2004, p. 10)

Secondly, they briefly mentioned Bourdieu's reproduction of elites and Harriet Zuckerman's "accumulation of advantage"--both centered around the premise that those who win awards go on to win more. I've looked up Zuckerman now--her research was on Nobel-laureate scientists (she found that they had a history of winning awards). In terms of my own research, I find it so interesting that many Fulbright grantees already have had scholarships before--and some even studied abroad on a scholarship before. It needs supporting evidence, but after reading about so many alums who went on multiple Fulbrights (first as students and later as professors) I think that accumulation of advantage must be taking place here.

Thirdly, there's a lot of discussion about how to identify future leaders. One of the public diplomacy ideas underpinning the programme is the multiplier effect--the prediction that exchange participants will go on to be influential elites in their societies. Their internationalist values, gained during the exchange experience, will be spread to others in their home nations. It's a solid idea, but how do they recognise a future leader in the making? What qualities or characteristics set these candidates apart from the unsuccessful applicants? And, in terms of the programme's ultimate success, how predictable are these markers of future leadership?

In the interest of reflexivity, it's worth mentioning that I never applied for a Fulbright or any other type of competitive scholarship that the authors studied. There are several reasons why: I was unaware of many of the awards, I didn't know what my plans were, and I was put off by the complicated selection process (applications, letters of recommendation, interviews, visa applications, fees, etc.). I feared going through all of that work and spending all of that money, only to get rejected. It had happened to me when I applied to Ivy League universities in high school, wasting about $70 on each application fee and asking my teachers for recommendation letters, only to get rejected like most of the students who apply to the Ivies (Princeton, my top choice, accepted only 9% that year--but 40% of legacy student applicants were accepted--again, Bourdieu's reproduction of elites...). My interviews seemed to go well, I had the highest SAT score in my school, 8 AP subjects, glowing recommendations--they told me I had a chance and I believed them. But looking back, I have to wonder (cynically) if they tell everybody that they have a chance, and they make $70 off of each of the thousands of hopeful applicants.

Enough of my bitterness about the Ivies. Back to Fulbright: As they always have more applicants than spaces, how do they choose from among the 'worthy many'? What factors come into the selection process? They are self-selected to begin with, and then the pool is narrowed down by application forms, interviews, panel reviews, etc. Each of these stages in the process is done by different actors--academic advisors at the institutions themselves (both sending and receiving), the IIE, regional selection panels, and finally the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. How do they coordinate this lengthy, complex process? Is there oversight involved at different stages, or do they just run with decisions made by previous actors? And, a question that might link it all together: how does the selection process influence outcomes?

Phil Taylor Conference & New Year Updates

Now that the holidays are over and I'm back in the office, it's time for a few updates. First off, the Phil Taylor conference was brilliant. It was such an amazing chance to meet all of these academic stars--and since we'd been e-mailing each other since August, it felt like I already knew them. We all had a mutual friend in Phil, too, which was a great ice breaker and made it such a unique conference.

On the first day, I got to ICS early to help set up and coordinate the MA student volunteers. When speakers started arriving, it was so great to meet them and put a face to the name--nearly everyone greeted me with "Oh, you're Molly!" because I'd been e-mailing them for months. Some, like Kate Utting and Paul Moorcraft, were really friendly and it felt like we'd known each other for ages. Some, like Nick Cull, were keen on chatting about public diplomacy and gave me some great tips for my research. With others, like Kate Adie, I was more of an audience member and didn't get a chance to chat. But I really enjoyed meeting everyone, and the conference was a fantastic experience.

The Student's Appraisal Panel

with Cristina Archetti and Nick Cull

...and Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob and Elina Bardach-Yalov

Briefing the MA student volunteers in the morning

Group shot of the conference speakers and attendees

Michael Nelson, former general manager of Reuters, emailed me the day after the conference to say that we'd done a great job and it was "a textbook example of how a conference should be run." Brilliant!

Kate Utting warned me that after the conference there would be a sense of anti-climax, of emptiness. She was right--my inbox suddenly went quiet, and I had nothing to do but marking (and that kept me busy until about 12 hrs before my flight to the States for Christmas). I've got plenty of other things to do this term (like my actual PhD research), but part of me will miss the hectic planning and craziness that filled up my inbox last term.

Speaking of my actual PhD research, I've been doing it! Over the break, I went to the National Archives for the very first time. I got my official researcher ID card and sat with a box and took notes for several hours. It was surprisingly fun--I think I must be more of a historian than I'd thought, because there was something really cool about getting my hands on the original documents. They were only from the 1980's and not even yellowing yet, but if it's in the National Archives, it must give me some historian cred.

I didn't find anything world-changing in the reports, but I did find some of the student numbers and funding data that I'd really needed, as well as some useful quotes from FSB chairs and alumni. They also used to print lists with the year that each binational commission was founded, and that was really useful, too--one of those simple little questions that I hadn't been able to answer until now. Having gone through one box in about 5 hours was useful, too--it gave me an idea of the scope of the records, how much fits into a box, and some sense of how much writing I can do until my hand feels like it's going to fall off (22 5X8 notecards).

My trip back to the States was great--we spent a lot of quality time with my family, did some sightseeing, and I had all of my favorite American foods (root beer, proper burgers, Cracker Barrel, as well as US versions of Chinese and Mexican). Richard and I went to NYC for his birthday and it was fantastic. I'd only been once before, briefly when I was visiting Columbia University as an applicant. This time we did all of the touristy things that neither of us had ever done--going to the top of the Empire State Building, taking the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, having a hot dog from a vendor and eating it in Central Park, seeing the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.

When I'm abroad, I always run into people saying that they've been to NYC and they love America based on that experience. I always thought that was odd, because I thought NYC was just like any other big city--very internationalised, like London or Paris or Tokyo. But now, having done the touristy bits of NYC, I get it. It really is a cool place, and it does have its own distinct character (just like London and Paris and Tokyo do...). I can see why it would make someone like the States (even though I still prefer Seattle...just like I prefer Liverpool over London).

Review of last year's New Years Resolutions
10. I will get in to the office no later than 10 am

I've been relatively good about this--mainly because I just had too much to do and needed to get in by 9 or 10 to get it all done.
9. I will be open to more opportunities for CV-building--teaching, conferences, etc.

I definitely did this...a little too much. This year's resolution will be "Learn to say 'no' to CV-building opportunities and focus on the PhD!"
8. I won't let myself get distracted by non-research-related websites during office hours (this means you, Facebook...)

Again, I've been pretty good about this. If anything, I need to limit the amount of time I spend checking and re-checking my e-mail throughout the day. Answering conference-related and placement-related e-mails can really take up an entire workday.
7. I will actually read the library books stacked on my desk, instead of skimming them and leaving them in a pile until they're due back...

Good progress--although overall, I need to spend more time reading.
6. And on a related note, I'll be a better library patron and only check out what I intend to read in a week's time (3-4 books a week?)

I've been good about this, but really haven't spent enough time in the library lately--will resolve to make it a regular habit
5. I will start bringing lunch to work more often, as it cuts down on the lunch break length and gives me a chance to hang out with other PhDs & staff

Ever since Lent (when I gave up cafe lunches and coffees), I've been really good, bringing my lunch in 3 or more times a week. Unfortunately, it's not a social occasion--I've been eating at my desk and using the break to catch up on news.
4. I will write longer, better essays for my supervisor

Since I haven't written anything for Robin since the upgrade (yikes), I really need to make this resolution again.
3. I will pass my upgrade this summer!

Check!
2. I will update this blog at least once a week, because it helps me stay on track & refocus my thoughts

Didn't happen, but will make this resolution again...
1. Finally, I resolve to enjoy the process and treat my PhD like the amazing opportunity it is.

Yes, I absolutely loved the process this year. I loved the reading, writing, conferences, teaching, etc. It was all brilliant, and the past term has really convinced me that I'm doing the right thing. Even when I'm struggling with my research (like now), I still love it.

2012 Research Resolutions

10. I will focus on my PhD research, because first and foremost, I'm supposed to be a PhD student. Not an events planner, not an administrator, not a teacher...

9. I will learn to delegate tasks and say 'no' occasionally (remembering that the one thing I can't delegate is my PhD research)

8. Every day, I carve out at least an hour to talk to my family back home. This year, I'm going to carve out at least 2 hours of reading each day. I seriously haven't been reading enough to call myself an academic.

7. Keep bringing lunch to work, but try to eat away from the desk more often

6. Get a section written every couple of months

5. Write the 75,000 word first draft and submit it to Robin in December.

4. Update the blog every couple of weeks with something

3. Don't let wedding planning get in the way of the PhD. It's just one day.

2. But don't let the PhD get in the way of enjoying your wedding and honeymoon--block out the month of September in your calendar and plan work accordingly.

1. Keep on enjoying the process and living the dream!