All life is an experiment

"At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is your own survival. That's what humans and cockroaches are best at."

I'd be lying if I'd say the past two weeks have been a walk in the park. They've not. My life is work, coming home at 9:30pm, having dinner around 10:15pm when my rice is cooked, watching some netflix, having a shower and going to sleep. It's different, but boy I love the teaching aspect of work!

My students are great fun and with every lesson teaching is getting easier. My coworkers are great, even though we usually don't get much of a chance to have a chat because — work. However, today onwards is working days aka no normal lessons and today I have for example found myself singing "Murijaanein kuningas" at work by accident (under my breath, of course).

I'm not going to lie and say that it's been easy to live here. It most certainly hasn't. It's not been as difficult as it was back in 2012, but it's not been easy either. It's been different. At times I do miss being an exchange student, despite all its challenges, you had people to talk to and you got to just go to school. Now? At the moment, I don't really have friends. I have work 12pm-9pm or 11am-8pm tue-sat. However, I do like the fact that I have my own apartment — even if my winter duvet is a joke but thankfully amazon is an option and will help you out.

Lunch on Wednesday — some things got better and I had snow crab sushi amongst others for lunch

While I do sometimes wake up to a new day filled with dread, it's the little things that remind me of why I'm here. Like the restaurant I went to today for lunch — I got given an English menu but spoke Japanese throughout my lunch as per, and the waitresses were just incredibly sweet. When I go to a Starbucks and ask my sandwich to not be heated up, they'll apologize and say that it needs to be, they'll just heat it up a little. I go to a grocery store 15mins before it closes and the cashier doesn't have a face on that tells me "why are you here, we're almost closed?!". I get complimented on my Japanese even when all I say is "yes, it's okay" or something as trivial as that. Japan is not perfect, far from it, but I still love it. It has it's issues, my current situation has its issues, but Japan itself has not let me down. Even if for the past week all I've craved has been non-Japanese food.

I'm thrilled to have two days off, even if being alone on Christmas feels quite weird. I've never been a Christmas person, but now that I'll be alone? I've been getting emotional over 'Tiernapojat' today. Luckily, Toyama has illuminations and a potential fireworks show in the 24th, so that's where I'll be heading. In a way it is quite funny to all of a sudden to live in Japan alone — had someone told me this in May 2012, I would've laughed. Mainly out of despair and need to not be back. Now? I'm happy to be back, I do love Japan even if at times I don't.

In due time there might be a blog post with actual content to it, but this will have to suffice for now. There's only so much you can write on Facebook, right?

All the best,

Kiia

ps,

If we do normally talk on a regular basis or you would like to chat, please don't hesitate to message me! I'm off Sundays and Mondays, and 29th of Dec until the 7th of Jan — I'd love to hear from y'all but especially after work I'm just knackered. oops. I will answer when I can, cannot promise quality of responses and especially a generic "how's it going?" is pretty difficult to answer to — this doesn't mean I don't want to talk to you all. It's just.. life, I guess?

Let's pray for the weekend babe

It’s been almost two weeks since we arrived to Japan and what weeks have those been!

 The training was super intense, 10am until 7pm every day with just an hour’s lunch break. We had a number of model lessons to teach to each other, received plenty of useful and sometimes not so useful feedback, had fun, were tired, almost fell asleep and dealt with clothing issues.

 Yes, Japanese workplace dress code IS formal. Yes, you have to wear a suit, neat shoes, cover ALL tattoos and piercings, are probably not allowed to wear jewellery and need to have your hair up so that kids can’t grab it. Additionally, if you wear a dress, it needs to be plain — those of you who have seen me over the past year or so know that I don’t really do plain dresses apart from my graduation last year, so shirts and skirts it is. Unless I choose to wear a skirt over a dress (which I have done last week because my tattoo was visible through white shirts and I had no white undershirts to cover it). There can be variations depending on your specific workplace, but you get the gist. It’s regulated and you can’t deviate from it, which is certainly something new. It’s not difficult to adhere to the rules, but it’ll take some time to get used to walking in dress shoes — my shins are killing me after a week so we’ll see how it’ll be once I start my daily 900m commute to work.

While most days were spent in training, we did get some days off too. However, to be honest, I didn’t do much apart from the first day off last week Sunday when I went to see Okayama Castle and had a look at Korokuen Gardens. With the whole trying to get used to a +7hr time difference and being surrounded by people effectively 24/7 (I had a roommate for the first time… in forever, if sharing a hotel room with Nuppu this summer doesn’t count), you’re tired. Thus, whenever there was a slight chance to spend some time alone, I took it. It was nice to spend time with the others on evenings and grab a couple of beverages, but I most certainly also enjoyed the nights when I would watch Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix and just have a bubble bath.

At the end of the day, I’d be lying if I said I’m going to miss these two weeks. It’s been fun and it’s always nice to meet new people, but it’s also really exhausting and frustrating to be in a bit of a limbo — you have unpacked most of your things but you know you’ll have to repack soon, and you don’t even have all of your belongings. Hence, I’m super happy to be finally getting in to my own apartment in Kanazawa today! Okayama as a city is not something I’ll miss. It can be nice, but I feel like this time rather than making the most of our days off, I was just too tired and lazy to do much.

There would’ve been a lot of options for day trips outside Okayama, but I don’t regret deciding to just do a couple of things and then focus on getting enough rest in order to have even some energy for the week. Getting up at 6am on your day off and traveling in a suit is not ideal, but doing that and knowing that at the end of it you’ll have your own apartment and will be able to just unpack and slowly start to make it your home makes it worth it. It’ll also be interesting to meet the person who will be The Boss for your next year (at least).

 There are a lot of similarities to the PAO we had with YFU six and a half years ago. At times, we have been babied a lot — for example, for traveling to our cities, we will be met by someone at each station. I suppose it can be helpful if you don’t speak Japanese, but man do I find it frustrating that I “need” someone to help me to catch my thunderbird from Osaka. However, I know that they do mean well and it can be super beneficial especially if you’re going to e.g. Tokyo Station (like many of us are).

It’s just the tiniest things that have so far been frustrating — like not being able to have water with you in the training room and having to step out to drink. That combined with my (apparently) everlasting cough hasn’t been great — imagine teaching a lesson, having to be a student for the next one and coughing your lungs out with no relief? Yeah. It’s not fun.

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The text above was written in the train on my way to Kanazawa. I’ve now had my shadow week and taught a few lessons. Next week is my first full week of teaching. I caught a massive cold on Monday so I’ve been ill the whole week, coughing my lungs out on lessons and trying not to drown in snot.

It’s good and it’s bad and it’s everything in between. Growing pains, a bit of a culture shock and perhaps a side of things just not being ideal. Such is life, eh? It’s about what you decide and how you deal with situations that are a result of your actions and the actions of those around you. It’s not always fun nor terrible, it’s just life.

I’ll try to write more when I have the energy & time, but at least it’s time to have two days off now. It's exactly what I thought it would be and it's nothing like that.

Facing the future and the changes it brings

Well well well, it's been a while. I haven't forgotten about this, but I've had more pressing matters to attend to and quite frankly my life has been filled with work, Netflix, sleep, and a side of horse polo. There hasn't been any time to write and I've not had the need to make time for that. Thus, I'm in no way surprised that I haven't written anything since last year. I've been working on my MSc in Social and Applied Psychology at University of Kent, and I am more than happy to say that it is now over. The year was filled with stress and work, but I managed to squeeze in a ridiculous number of flights (and a few train journeys) around Europe — for work.

Over the past 12 months I have been to at least Switzerland, Finland (x5), France, Netherlands (x2), Belgium, and Japan. Out of those, only France, Belgium and Japan have been holidays, and about five days around first of May in Finland. Everything else, volunteering with YFU or WAGGGS. Safe to say I'm quite done with the commute from Canterbury to Heathrow Airport, haha.

Itsukushimajinja in Miyajima, Hiroshima

As a result of my last trip to Japan in late June I decided to do something I've been thinking about doing for a few years now; apply for a job in Japan. After all, I didn't get funding for a PhD and if I'm having a gap year, might as well do something I've thought of doing but have never really had the time for. I spent a weekend writing job applications and got an interview for one job, the other day they called me offering a position and here we are. 

I'm moving to Kanazawa in Ishikawa prefecture at the end of November and will be living and working there for a year teaching English.

It feels weird to be going back home. I'm thrilled, of course, but at the same time a little bit terrified. It's been 6 years and 156 days since I left for exchange and a lot has happened since. My exchange was in no way a walk in the park, and in a way I am really glad that I had no prior knowledge of the challenges that it brought to me. However, as I've said a thousand times before, I don't regret it. It was one hell of a ride and I wouldn't be who I am today if it weren't for my exchange. The past years of living in the UK have of course taught a lot more, but living in a foreign country where you don't speak the language during your formative years is bound to change you.

I have no illusions that I wouldn't get a culture shock this time — I'm pretty sure I will, I mean, living and working in Japan after being a student for the past 15 years and basically having very little responsibilities is going to be a shock. As is the fact that Kanazawa actually gets SNOW during the winter. However, I'd like to think that after being an exchange student, having travelled back three times and having lived in another country for four years, it would be a little bit easier. The challenges will be different, even though this time I won't be expected to be social once I get home, I'm also going to be in charge of everything myself. There will probably be times when I wish I could just be back in England where I know exactly how things work and I feel at home, but I'm looking forward to the challenges. It will be weird to be at work on the 24th of December — at least I get the Christmas abroad I've always wanted, haha.

I'm not making any promises about regular updates, we all know those would probably not be fulfilled anyway. I'm going to try to update regularly though, but we'll see. In terms of language... I don't know, more than likely to be English, but who knows if I get a sudden urge to brush up my Finnish? (unlikely).

I'm going back to Finland for over two months in a couple of weeks time and it's going to be the longest I've been there since summer 2015. It's going to be weird and I'm already dreading the darkness of October and November, but at least at the end of November I'll be heading back home to Japan. ...and it is necessary to be back there, I need to get my visa sorted and all those fun formalities you need to do prior to moving to a non-EU country. It's gonna be a lot of paperwork, but hey, I'm going home!

xx,
Kiia

At the junction of interest and passion

While 2016 can be argued to have been a bad year on many fronts, after careful consideration I could conclude that at least for me, it wasn't too bad. Academically, I finally got the chance to conduct "real research", got offered a job as a research assistant, started as a statistics tutor, continued as a student rep and started yet another research project alongside a lecturer. Personally, well, living in Paris was an experience that I wouldn't change for anything, despite it being a bit challenging to live in a house with strangers after getting used to living on your own. However, it is the academic matters I wish to focus on this time, because let's face it, it's all that matters?

I have known for quite some time that I want to get into academia, get a PhD, maybe work as a post-doc researcher and POSSIBLY eventually consider trying to get tenure. I've just always thought that an academic career cannot be a real, viable career option because let's face it — even getting on to tenure track is difficult, let alone getting tenure. You need to be ready to work casual contracts, work-life -balance seems like a utopic dream and the work itself quite solitary and requires a lot of menial things e.g. marking. Thus, I never really considered academia as an option for my future, it was one of those things I just "wanted to try for a while and then move on". As I've spent most of my semester 1 sat in a windowless cubicle, desperately waiting for people to show up to do my study, I've been alone. However, I've been in an environment where our lecturers work. I've had the chance to get a glimpse of what academia is like and with all the ... despair and sometimes madness that comes with it... I'm loving it.

It certainly isn't easy, I have absolutely no illusions. I'm collecting 96 participants for a lab study, I lived in my cubicle from the 11th of October until the 19th of December. Five days a week, with the exception of a week in a conference in Iceland and a three-day trip to Norwich. On average, I spent 7hrs/day just sitting in a windowless room, consuming absolutely ridiculous amounts of caffeine. I managed to get 93 participants but I had 33 unexcused no-shows i.e. people who never showed up nor informed me that they are not going to show up. It was bothersome and made me want to cry and/or scream multiple times but at the end of the day I wouldn't change this study into an online one. Sure, lab life is tiring, boring, painful, cold, solitary and whatnot but at the same time it makes me feel like I'm actually doing something. I've been able to get so much more out from this year as I've had the chance to focus on the things that really interest me; social psychology and statistics.

I've also had the chance to discuss with my supervisor/tutor/boss about academia and grad school; his words further ascertained my thoughts about possibly wanting to get into academia. At some point in early December it just hit me: I want to become an academic. I actually want to lecture, I aspire to be as inspirational as some of my lecturers have been. I want to do research. I want to dedicate my life to the things I'm passionate about, not just interested in. There are a number of research areas that I find absolutely fascinating, but they are not the areas I'm passionate about. They are the ones I read about at 2am when I can't sleep, my passions are the ones I focus on during the day. I'll happily start my days by reading interesting journal articles, I enjoy reading research. Sure, at times it is boring and weird and confusing but for the most part I just love learning. Yes, I spent one of my Sunday's reading about the 100 most influential papers of 2016 because... science. I ended up googling about the differences between Hodges' g and Cohen's d as effect size metrics because I had no idea what Hodges' g was. (Turns out it had been mentioned in a lecture at some point but I had no recollection of that happening.)

It has been a weird discovery; I've never thought of myself as an academic, I always wanted to travel a lot and make a lot of money. Academia might facilitate travel but money? Ah, if only. However, from what I've seen, academia allows (and forces?) you to dedicate all of your time to the thing, whatever the thing might be. My days in semester 1 were: lab -> home -> wine -> netflix -> bed (x ad infinitum) and while it was exhausting at times, I absolutely loved it. My breaks (and favorite time of the week) were statistics tutoring for first years on Tuesday evenings; I've been able to leave my cubicle for an hour and just not think about anything because first year stats are just great fun. This might sound really sad, even the workshop leader said that it is sad when I said that the workshops are the highlight of my week haha. However, I'm not sure if that's necessarily a bad thing?

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As of 3:35pm on the 16th of January, I was finished with data collection. Most of the day I spent thinking about the happy dance I'll perform once I'm finished, but at the end of the day my happiness manifested by closing a door a bit too loudly and telling my supervisor how "this feels incredible". At least the worst was over.

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All of the above was written on the 16th of January but never published. Things got too busy, I'm hesitant to say "life got in the way", as many would argue I don't have a life. After all, I mainly read papers, write, code tweets, tutor stats, and watch netflix. Sometimes many of these simultaneously. Second semester got busy with deadlines, returns of things from first semester and promises of future.

I have been conditionally accepted for an MSc in Social and Applied Science at the University of Kent.

I've gained a second RA position.

I've been working as a stats tutor for 2nd year students.

I ended up playing in a national polo tournament and our team came 2nd in our division.

I've been working on my dissertation write-up.

I've been drinking wine and watching Netflix, and consuming lots of coffee.

I've hated everything and everyone, but at the end of the day been so grateful for everything.

I love science and I love learning.

I've finished my dissertation as of 9:58am on Monday of this week and I'll be returning it on Friday, followed by ridiculous amounts of champagne with Ellie — because we're worth it.

It's been a wild ride and this is only the beginning.

But first... it's Japan calling in six days!

Supervisors, tutors, and getting along with people.

I've been trying to find the right platform to talk about a thing that I've found really important and those who've seen my tweets (and heard me talk about pretty much anything uni related) know what it is. Before coming to university I never thought about supervisors but after getting the chance to work alongside two great ones... good supervisors make a difference.

Although I was a student academic rep in my first year I still felt like there's a gap between students and lecturers, which is quite normal. After all, lecturers are in a position of authority. However, having respect and appreciation towards someone doesn't mean that communication has to be awkward, as I've discovered during the past year. When I was starting up with my research project I was excited but also kind of scared — how could I, a second year student, do anything that would be of any importance and why would anyone really care about it?

I was lucky to be paired with a lecturer who has been incredibly helpful — never in a million years would I have thought that I could work alongside people at a departmental level and feel like they appreciate my input. It has been so different from the "supervisor — student" -setting we had in the IB with our extended essays. My supervisor back then was bad, or well, both of them were, and I didn't really get any support whatsoever. While some part of it was certainly my own fault, I'm not able to think very highly of those people as supervisors. However, past is in the past and it was a good learning process, the whole IB experience was.

Different people will quite likely have their own opinions on what makes a good supervisor and it's not really a "one size fits all" -type of thing. However, I've personally found that a good supervisor is someone who makes you feel at ease when talking to them. They make you feel respected and somewhat at level with them, not inferior and an idiot who knows nothing. Someone being approachable and you having respect towards them are not mutually exclusive concepts — I really respect most of our lecturers and if they're easy to talk to, it's a definite bonus.

The same goes for personal tutors. Again, it's not a one-way street and having rapport requires effort from the student as well. It would be silly to expect to have a good professional relationship with someone whose name you barely remember and whom you've met once in the beginning of your studies. For the most part tutors do want to meet their tutees but students just don't make use of office hours due to various reasons, but one of the most common ones seems to be not knowing what to talk about.

We are supposed to meet with our personal tutors once per semester and got an email about this in the beginning of semester 1. I went to meet my tutor sometime in October and turned out that I was the first tutee to see them because "we are supposed to". Even I spent two weeks thinking about things to talk about, wrote multiple lists in order to have a somewhat coherent idea of what to say. After the meeting I was left with the most peculiar feeling; I felt relaxed and happy even though I'd been talking about things that stress me out (e.g. dissertation/FYP/whatever you want to call it).

Towards the end of semester 1 we were slightly bombarded with deadlines, which meant that I ended up practically neglecting my research project for a good month. After all, assignments do come first. When my supervisor sent an email before Christmas asking about progress and if I'd attended a presentation session in the beginning of December it slightly freaked me out. Yes, I'd done that but apart from the presentation I hadn't done much. The response I received from my supervisor was surprising: I wasn't told off for not doing enough, I was told to not worry?! At university it seems like lecturers are more humans and just overall less scary than teachers in high school were. Of course, this is my very subjective experience, but I'm extremely glad about this.

As my second year at university is coming to an end, dissertation has definitely been a topic of discussion for the whole of semester 2. We had to submit preliminary topic ideas around February and we got paired up with supervisors a bit later; I got extremely lucky and got my first choice of supervisor. I am so happy and excited to work on my dissertation with them. The past month has been filled with ethics, proposal, and material creation, but now it seems like everything might be ready? As long as my proposal is deemed as a pass, I can submit my ethics by the May DL I received a green light for my ethics just over a week ago, will be hearing back from the ethics committee within the next few weeks and hopefully have ethical approval before the start of semester 1 in September, which means the start of data collection! It's kind of funny how this whole dissertation process seems like a process akin to getting married/having children/having to get along with a very difficult person — in one moment you're over the moon and ridiculously excited but in the next you feel like defenestrating everything and everyone. But maybe that's what it's all about? Doing research is definitely not a linear process.

Overall, during these past few years at uni I feel like I've finally found "my thing". Doing research is amazing. Presenting at conferences is fun (based on one conference). Learning is great. I'm so glad to be right here right now even though this is not necessarily where I envisaged myself to be ten years ago.

However, Paris is calling in a week (and one day!) and it will be yet another adventure. Not necessarily the greatest times of my life 24/7 but certainly a learning experience and alongside work, it will be filled with more research as per my dissertation research plan.

Year 2 of uni is officially over and the day after tomorrow I'll be heading back to Finland. Thankfully the weather should be nice, Winchester is supposed to have rain for the rest of my stay :|