Learning across Nations

Hey all y'all! This is the opinion piece I wrote for the Armstrong Student Newspaper about the differences between a University Education between the US and NZ.  Enjoy!

Within my first week in Savannah, I thought I was under attack.  It sounds silly now and I guess it always was, but for a second when I heard three jet fighters thunder across the blue Savannah sky I thought my nine month trip might be over a lot sooner than I had anticipated.  Please let me explain myself; I am from the small, peaceful, pretty, but rather insignificant nation of New Zealand.  Not only does New Zealand have some of the most interesting flightless birds in the world, it also has a mostly flightless airforce (with only a few passenger aircraft and helicopters).  If we hear fighter jets over our heads it means that things are VERY bad.  Either the Australians have finally got tired of their giant desert island full of poisonous creatures and decided to claim ours, or some other nation has come to take our...sheep?  This episode was just one of the many, many cultural differences I experienced here while on the Georgia Rotary Student Program, a scholarship that sponsors students all around the world to study in a Georgian University and exchange what makes our cultures special.

So what are the differences between Kiwis and Americans? I thought I would be able to answer that question by now but my problem is there is no way I can define the ‘average American.’  America as a country is comprised of such a diverse range of colours, cultures, accents and lifestyles that it’s hard to even start.  Now I’m not saying that we New Zealanders are identical robots, nor would we want to be.  But because we are huddled together in a few islands down the bottom of the world most of us have a similar low nasal accent, an affinity with the outdoors and a devotion to the state religion: rugby football.   However it is difficult to even sum up the culture of Savannah- let alone Georgia or America. 

So instead why don’t we narrow it a bit and look at the difference between Armstrong Atlantic and a typical New Zealand University experience.  Close your eyes and imagine you are a young Kiwi.  You have just finished high school and are looking to go to University to study the subject of your dreams.  Unfortunately in this parallel dimension New Zealand the ‘HOPE Scholarship’ doesn’t exist- meaning you are taking out a $10,000 dollar loan each year for education, housing and food.  The good news is the Bachelor’s degree you are working towards is only going to take you three years to finish, probably because there are no ‘Subject areas’ that you need to complete.  You choose the exact courses you want, meaning if you are passionate about doing a degree in English, basically all you do will be writing.

The first thing you will notice is the campus, more specifically how there isn’t one.  While the Armstrong campus features housing, recreation and educational buildings, campuses in New Zealand are a lot like SCAD- just not quite as pretty and $45,000 cheaper to attend.  Sure you see your fellow students walking around the campus, or in the student bars, but you are spread out over an entire city.  What this means is that the people that you get to know and interact with are usually from the same subject area as yourself.  While always having someone around to talk to about your lifelong passion of ‘Environmental Physics’ might seem like the best thing in the world, personally I think that New Zealand is missing out by not giving the students a chance to mingle with those in different faculties. 

 Your first test in Alternate Reality New Zealand could be a surprise.  For all the SCANTRON fans in the house I have some bad news, I have never seen those little blue sheets on campus.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that your education will be better in New Zealand, but it does mean that by your second year, you should be adept at researching and scribbling out a 2000 word essay on a chosen topic.  Also prepare to get loud.  In ‘tutorials’, a small group of students meet after the lecture to discuss the ideas presented.  If you are that person in your group who loves to argue with anything or anyone (be honest), you might just have found your nirvana here.  Not only can you debate the ideas with students, but if you don’t agree with the ideas of the lecturer you are encouraged to tell them.  The Southern respect for lecturers that borders on unquestioning reverence is not present here. 

 Finally let’s do an Inception and have a dream inside a dream.  We are jumping ahead 8 months and imagining that in Alternate Reality New Zealand you are not doing well.  Unfortunately you have been taking advantage of the ‘Buy Alcohol at 18’ law a little too much and now you are sitting on a 65% grade after your final exam.  There is bad new s and good news here.  The bad is there is no extra credit to boost the grade.  For whatever reason, extra credit in New Zealand never really took off- if you missed the points you missed the points.  The good news for your little dream avatar however is that in New Zealand, a 65% is a B+!  The New Zealand pass grade mark range stretches from 50% to 100%.

 You may say that this gives you much more chance to succeed, and that’s true.  Crucially though it also gives a lot more opportunity for students to fail, to make mistakes and try new ways of approaching ideas that may or may not pay off.  I think that may be the biggest adjustment I have had to make in the Armstrong Education system- students are often scared of trying new ways of doing things because a single bad grade could push your GPA down and lose you thousands of dollars in scholarship money.  Universities in my mind should be teaching people to explore new ideas and think in creative ways- isn’t that how new ideas are formed?  Thanks for coming on the New Zealand Alternate Reality University tour, you can now open your eyes!

(NOTE TO SELF: Next time don’t ask readers to close their eyes while reading your column).

Two Minutes

Here is another little video I've put together. This time it's for one of my sponsoring Rotary Clubs, who have given me 4-5 minutes to sum up my entire year and say goodbye to them.   Instead of trying to memorize and spit out my entire year in two minutes, I created this video.  

You Know You're in Georgia when...

While I was here, I thought I would post up a little animation I made a few months back about the differences I've found here in Georgia:

Weeks 21-30: Winter in Georgia

Hey y'all! Sorry it's taken so long to get updates up- my American experience is nearly at an end and I'm trying to squeeze in as much as possible in my last month and a half.  Here's another snapshot of what I've been up to in 2011:

Week 21: Christmas with the Jennings's.  My host mother, Judy was not a huge fan of the Christmas season but together we had an amazing Christmas dinner including a Kiwi Pavlova baked by yours truly.  Luckily even in the middle of winter, the temperature in Savannah stayed warm- nearly 18 degrees Celsius. 

Week 22: New Years in Florida: Together, about 25 GRSP students and friends rented a house in Fort Lauderdale Beach, Florida (About two hours north of Miami).   This was just like a Kiwi Summer:relaxing at the beach or pool with a hot sun, good food and great friends.   

Week 23: Buried in Fort Lauderdale Beach.  We stayed at the house for a few days after New Years to take advantage of the amazing Florida weather and beaches.  For many of the Europeans it seemed surreal to be on the sand during winter- they're usually buried in snow!

Week 24: Presentation Numero 3.  Through chance, a group of young businessmen and businesswomen affiliated with Rotary were going to my home region in New Zealand and asked me to do a 50 minute presentation about what to expect.  By the end, I had covered NZ's culture, history, taught the group some basic Maori and how to treat the hobbits with respect. (Picture from one of my later presentations)

Week 25: Learning Graphic Modelling.  Yes, yes, I know that this isn't really a holiday picture but this is what I have been doing in my spare time here in Georgia: Learning the Autodesk digital modelling software to add to my Digital Media CV.  While I have been relaxing here I am keeping an eye on my career opportunities back home.

Week 26: A flooded Armstrong Campus.  Crazy weather hit Georgia in January (Locals say they hadn't seen the like in 20 years!) including snowfall across half the state.  Georgia goes crazy when it sees snow- Atlanta called a State of Emergency and one of our GRSP weekends was cancelled.   While Savannah didn't see snow, the campus became waterlogged from several days of rain.

Week 27: Magic Show! After our weekend was cancelled Caroline, a student from Denmark organised a student weekend up in Cartersville. We explored some of the interesting museums in the town, went horseback riding and watched "The Amazing Spencers" - a husband/wife magic show who used to be one of the best in the business.  

Week 28: The Lincoln's Birthday/Anti-Valentine's Day Cake:  This was a fun night with some of my American friends in America.  With all of us single on Valentine's Day we had a Lincoln's Day celebration night including movies and this delicious cake.  

Week 29: Homecoming Parade at Armstrong Atlantic. Armstrong has an entire week dedicated to the start of their basketball season including parades, dances, talent shows, greek fairs, casino nights and tailgating (beer drinking).  

Week 29: Climbing Mount Blood. We met a Rotary family last year who offered to take us on a hike into the Appalachian mountains (a mountain range that runs from Georgia all the way to Maine).  While I wasn't feeling up to doing the whole 3 month trek, we had a great day-trip hiking up the side of the ominously-named Mount Blood.

20 Weeks in Pictures (Weeks 11-20)

CHRISTMAS UPDATE PART 2: 

Week 11: Getting shaved by a crazy Bulgarian.  A group of students were shaving their heads to raise money for breast cancer awareness and a friend offered to find me $50 to donate if I did it.  She found the money and the skin on my head saw the sun for the first time. 

Week 12: Tybee Beach in Savannah.  Tybee is known for two things- a pier and a swarm of jellyfish that attack during summer.  Luckily when some of the GRSPs decided to come and visit us they were nowhere to be found and we spent a relaxing day on the beach.

Week 13: The Armstrong Atlantic Rugby Team (I’m front row, second from right).  This is before our big grudge match game against the Savannah Shamrocks- the local men’s team- also my first ever game.  We started well with a couple of quick tries but then the Shamrocks brought on their impact subs: Hawaiians with arms wider than my head!  Luckily we were able to hold on for the win.   

Week 14: A whale shark cruises the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.  This is the largest aquarium in the world, with over 8 million gallons of water and 60 exhibits.  We visited it as part of a GRSP trip to Atlanta.  Our other stops included the ‘World of Coke’ factory (A word of warning: trying to drink samples of all 60 Coke products without stopping is NOT as much fun as it sounds...) 

Week 15: Some of the GRSP’s during our weekend in Elijay, North Georgia.  We rented a cabin in the mountains above a stunning lake.  As you can see the ‘Fall colors’ in the trees really started to come out and I went a bit tree crazy- this is one of the few photos in my camera with people in it!

Week 16: With some of my favourite United Statiens: Megan, Tershal and Robert.  Robert was at first convinced that New Zealand sat somewhere above Sweden, but we have moved past that and become good friends.  All three are great fun to be around and helped me celebrate my 22^nd Birthday in Savannah.

Week 17: The unfortunate Thanksgiving turkey, which is about to be carved by my host parents.   Thanksgiving is a big deal here in the USA; a good excuse to catch up with family, to relax and to stuff yourself full of delicious food.  I had Thanksgiving dinners back to back- by the time I was finished eating you could nearly roll me down the road...

Week 18: Tinkerbell and Lawrence of Arabia.  Mia (from Denmark) and I agreed to help out in this Rotary charity auction which raised funds for the local library.  As literary characters we would move around the crowd and charm/demand/plead higher bids from the Rotarians.  Good fun. 

Week 19: Festive Swedes!  As soon as my classes finished in Savannah I joined a car going south to Miami and the Bahamas.  The girls are wearing our road trip essentials- Santa hats and novelty sunglasses.  On the way down to Miami we explored the historic cigar town of Ybor and had dinner with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia!

Week 20: Our cruise ship ‘The Norwegian Sky’ (the fancy one in the back).  It was my first ever cruise and it lived up to all expectations.  There was unlimited food (a good start), the chance to explore Nassau and the Bahamas, and even a private island so we could sun ourselves in the middle of winter! Oh and did I mention the unlimited food...

Hope y'all had a great Christmas- wishing you the very best for New Years

Craig 

20 Weeks in Pictures (Weeks 1-10)

MERRY

CHRISTMAS!!!

Has it really been 5 months already?  It’s strange thinking about the passing of time over here.  The more I think about it, the faster it seems to slip through my fingers.  The way I see it, it’s better just to relax and enjoy the ride.  And what a crazy ride it is: these last 10 weeks have seen me travelling from the northern mountains and lakes of Georgia to the islands of the Bahamas.  It really is the adventure of a lifetime.

The people of Georgia continue to amaze me with their hospitality.  Sure the Rotarians have pledged to be friendly, honest people, but they have really opened up their doors and lives to us over here in a way that is overwhelming at times.  There is also a culture in the south that is similar to small town New Zealand.  As you walk or bike Savannah’s streets people go out of their way to say hi to you, as if they know you.  Also unlike Wellington and Whakatane, conversations in elevators are very common (Wellington is more formal and Whakatane doesn’t have elevators...). 

That’s not to say that Savannah is perfect.  My university of Armstrong Atlantic is in the south of the city, which is an urban sprawl of strip-malls and residential houses.  For a student without a car, trying to get anywhere is difficult, and to get downtown by bus is over an hour.  On weekends the Armstrong ‘Pirates’ find themselves stranded on the (dry) deserted campus of AASU (see what I did there!).   Luckily for us, the campus caters to our needs pretty well, with a good dining service, full gym and plenty of sports teams on campus. 

I’ve found myself playing a lot more sport since I arrived here.  As a Kiwi I got talked into joining the University rugby team, which has been a great experience.  There is a lot of pride in the Armstrong jersey and we’re a good group of mates off the field as well- catching up for parties and weekend retreats.  Tennis is also a popular sport at Armstrong (we have the champion US women’s team) and I’ve had a lot of fun challenging friends to games after classes finish in the evening.  I have also just finished a golf class through the university (yes, we get academic credit for golf!), in which we spent 3 hours on a Monday playing the local course- not a bad way to spend an afternoon!

Anyway enough of the boring text, I’ll let the pictures tell the story!

Happy Holidays!

Craig 

Week 1: In front of the famous Chinese Theatre in Downtown Hollywood.  Jonathan (the other NZ student) and I stopped in Los Angeles for a few days on the way to Georgia and I jumped at the chance to see Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis at the premiere of the movie “The Expendables”

Week 2: This is the summer sun setting outside my host mother, Judy’s home.  Judy welcomed me into her household and made sure I was set up for University.  Her house sits on the Isle of Hope, a friendly community that’s surrounded by marshland.  

Week 3: Lightning strikes near our university campus.  I was at the beach an hour before I took this picture and saw how quickly the weather can change from a cloudless day to a lightning storm.  Warning sirens were going off telling residents to stay inside their homes.

Week 4:  Leading a haka at the Savannah Conclave.  The conclave was the first time we met the other GRSP students and it was a great weekend.  On Saturday night we had to perform a cultural item and I spent the day teaching three Welshmen, two Hungarians, two Australians, an Italian and a Kenyan the Maori Haka.

Week 5: My official presentation to the Savannah West Rotary Club.  I put together a short film and PowerPoint presentation about New Zealand and presented it to Rotarians.  They seemed to like it- especially my Australia jokes...

Week 6: We had another Rotary gathering this weekend, which included fun at an artificial lake created for the Atlanta Olympics.  We participated in challenges such as sand sculptures and sailing boats made from cardboard and masking tape. 

 Week 7: Treasure Savannah Day.  I helped volunteer for the school in helping to pick up litter around the central city.  This was a bit of a forced publicity shot (I was the only guy there) and I wasn’t really sure whether or not to smile for the camera while picking up trash rubbish. 

Week 8: This week I went to my first American football game: Georgia Southern vs. Elon State.  It was an unforgettable experience.  The guy standing up at the right of picture would do a chant and victory dance every time GSU would move downfield. 

 Week 9: This is the group from our trip to Helen, a replica Bavarian town in the middle of Georgia.  We camped out in tents and had a great time exploring the town.  By lucky coincidence there was also an Octoberfest beer festival on at the time we were there...

Week 10: This is Imogen (from Scotland) and I relaxing on a yachting trip around Savannah’s marshy islands.  These islands were used by pirates such as Blackbeard to hide from the British navy and we nearly found ourselves marooned on one of them when our dingy ran out of gas!

Weeks 11-20 Coming soon...

Culture? What Culture?

Last month my promising rap career burst into flames- roughly 15 seconds after it began.  Until that point my night at the ‘GRSP Idol’ karaoke night had been pleasant enough.  I had watched some truly talented performers like Mathilde from Sweden and Gudbjork from Iceland, as well as some fun sing-along groups.  Then a dangerous thought hit me: wouldn’t it be great to represent New Zealand culture on a global stage, by performing the Flight of the Conchords classic Hiphopopotamus vs the Rhymenoceros.  It was about the point that I tried to slide across the floor on my knees that I realised a) sliding on your knees makes you look like a bit of a fool b) There was no rhythm to my rapping and c) while thinking about a and b I had forgotten the words to the verse and finally d) that there was a high definition camera in front of me recording every embarrassing second.  Needless to say I wasn’t a big hit with the judges- but hey, you can’t let the haters get you down.  Besides, I’m glad I was able to contribute something from my culture, because back in New Zealand I wondered if we even had one. 

Culture is one of those funny words like ‘Love’ or ‘Eow’ (from the common Whakatane greeting ‘Sup Eow!’); it’s a word that has yet to be completely understood or defined in the English language.  Culture does have a kind of vague, understood definition of values and knowledge that a society has in common though, such as the French eating frogs.  Often history plays a key role in these unique customs and beliefs as they are built up generation by generation.  And here’s New Zealand’s cultural issue: we just aren’t that old.  There is no doubt the native Maori peoples of New Zealand have created a distinct and vibrant culture from a number of tribes, but I’d always thought 'Pakeha' (or foreign) historic culture in New Zealand was lacking a unique spark.  There were our interesting early days of being the ‘Hellhole of the Pacific’ (which I’ve always thought would make a cool theme park), but that was swept under the carpet as we were moulded by Britain into ‘Godzone’; a puritanical nation of farmers, whose sole purpose was to provide meat for the motherland.  Over time our links with the United Kingdom have faded but their cultural footprint remains- a watered down version of original customs such as the English diet or the occasional Scottish bagpipe tune.  At least Australia, our neighbouring colony, had some convicts and crocodiles to spice things up- all we had were pretty mountains. 

This issue struck me the most in 2005, while I was visiting the Kingdom of Tonga in the Pacific Islands.   I was over there for a youth meeting of the Pacific Anglican church as a representative of ‘Pakeha’ New Zealand, and as part of the event our delegation had to do a performance to demonstrate our culture.  I remember our group of pasty Pakehas looking at each other thinking ‘what the hell are we supposed to do? Act like farmers?’.   The Maori group already had the pois swinging and the Pacific Islanders were gliding gracefully across the stage in their traditional outfits.   And the Pakeha? We sang the New Zealand folk song ‘Ten Guitars’ by Arnold Dorsey.  There are a few cultural issues with this choice though: Mr Dorsey was actually an Englishman, who grew up in India (but never lived in New Zealand) and wrote a song popular with displaced Maori-in other words, nothing to do with us.  So it can be a struggle in New Zealand to find our point of difference in the world.  I think sometimes our country has been guilty of trying too hard to manufacture a personality or image for ourselves- such as the ‘100% pure’ environmental tag that director Lee Tamahori mocks in the opening shot of his film ‘Once were Warriors’. These attempts to create our own culture from our meagre history has lead to what has been called ‘cultural cringe’- a kind of post-colonial inferiority complex, in which we see the culture and achievements of other countries as much more important than our own.  I have to admit that before I left New Zealand I was often one of the cringers. 

And then I landed in America and everything changed.  The blank looks I got as I first tried to communicate the word “bar” in our lazy nasal semi-Brit accent meant that whether I liked it or not I was a foreigner.  Culture, a term I was looking at cynically immediately became concrete- in the words of the great Martin Lawrence: “sh*t just got real”.  In Georgia, the New Zealand way of life stands out and manifests itself in tiny things- the direction that you flick a lightswitch, the temperature of a room or the packaging on generic candy bars.  The world hasn’t turned upside-down for me, it’s just shifted on its axis a bit.  However it is impossible to ignore an overall change in mindset that comes from living in the world’s number one power (which is something I’ll explore later in the blog).  Also Kiwiana- the gimmicky stereotyped images of New Zealand like plastic kiwis and novelty t-shirts suddenly take on a whole new significance when you’re the only New Zealander for 300 miles.   Back home, the sight of Kiwiana would bring out the ‘cultural cringe’ factor.  Here though they have tangible significance- if only for a one New Zealander living in the middle of the American South.

   

There's always been a thin line between bravery and stupidity in history.  Sometimes you can be both- like the charge of the ‘Light Brigade’ in the Crimean war.  Those men sharpened their swords and rode gallantly and fearlessly straight at the rows of enemy cannons...and got absolutely massacred.  That’s probably the best way to describe our GRSP idol tribute to the Flight of the Chonchords.  But I didn’t travel halfway around the world to just sit in the corner and be embarrassed of our culture.  New Zealand may suffer from being ‘Little Britan’ but that doesn’t mean our culture doesn’t exist.  If you want proof just look at your surroundings and think how strange the concept of ‘normal’ life is in the first place.   As for me, I’m off to destroy a certain piece of evidence on a high definition video camera.  Enjoy the weekend!