Beyond CLESOL 2012: Emerging oportunities in new learning spaces

I have just returned from CLESOL 2012. I felt I had started to miss the conference even before it finished, just two hours ago, when I was sitting in the Rec Center, the hub of the conference, in IPC. That was the time the key note speakers and the conference organisers were having final words about the conference highlights. They were also saying thank you words for everything, and I was being overwhelmed with the urge to say thousands of thank you words to everybody, the thing I was unable to do physically in the spot. In fact, Gillian did pose me the question of what I thought about and how I felt being in CLESOL early this morning, the final day, when we met in the Rec before the conference started, and I tried to make my answer compact and most revealing of what I was feeling and thinking about, but the answer would  never be enough for it is increasingly added to.

Key note speakers: Left to right: Prof Andreas Lund, Prof Cynthia White, Emeritus Prof Paul Nation, and Sunita Narayan

Personally, being in an international conference like CLESOL makes me feel different, and hopefully, better about me. I have realised I am possessing something, which I don't know was worthy or interesting or whatever to people, that they liked to (or probably like to) listen to. I received possitive comments and supportive questions to my presentation, and I was not sure if people meant so when they said so. However, I told myself just to be optimistic, and relate the situations to the conference theme to think "they are trying to make opportunities emerge". Significantly, being in the conference has made me feel going public is not as daunting as I had imagined. This might not be true in other situations but CLESOL conference, which was very supportive, encouraging, and stimulating to me, a young bird first time flying out into the big sky. The feeling of a young bird (I don't know if people were viewing/knowing me as a young bird) who was counted in, listened to, and paid attention to, was amazing and stimulating. Above all, the feeling of not being daunted at all has helped trigger some more confidence inside me and opened more of my hidden selves.

Me in my presentation: Negotiating roles and identities in a new teaching and learning space: Wiki writing in Vietnamese tertiary classrooms

What would be far more worthy to me, at least at this time, was the professional values the conference brings to me. Opportunities to observe, listen to, and to think and relate to my research are numerous. I have found connections and reference to my research from every branch sprung out of all the presentations I was in. I have felt the passion for doing research and academic endeavours radiating from every face, which made me start to believe that only does a genuine interest accompanying hard work make people excel, retain accomplishment and most importantly to realise their idealism. Apart from that, I also saw potential paths to put my steps onto to expand my teritory of learning, the teritory that is already charted by forefathers and will be enriched and flourished by newcomers. My eyes have been opened, my views have been widened, my path has been brightened, my mind has been fuelled, and I have been hugely inspired. Why not embark on the journey of discovery and excellence?

Professor Lund and Professor White giving comments to my presentation

Opportunities have been emerging from this CLESOL 2012. Things have just started.

Dear Writing

Dear Writing,

We have been staying so closed during this time, closer than ever before, I believe. Just to let you know, whenever asked, I describe to people I am in the stage of writing. So you can imagine how integrative you are in my life at the moment. I used to wish that I had a job in writing or a huge opportunity to do writing a big lot, for you guy are my favourite thing buddy, and I believed I was nothing but your close friend. The wish has come true, but I have been thrown twists on, not by you, don't you think.

I am writing over and over again. I really never know when I can finish a thesis chapter without re-writing it. I am always writing as if it was the final draft, and every time after the meeting with my supervisors, I feel you are a strange and remote person challenging a shift of my view. I not only think about you then but also think about me as to how I should treat you. Is that because you are tough and hard to get closed, or because I am not grown enough? Perhaps you are still what you are, and what I understand about you is not thorough enough.

My dearest Writing, the latter is the most likely to be the reason of my struggle. I don't dislike you Writing, because every of my endeavour to approach you is worthy. At the end of the day, there is no point of making you bigger and tougher. To put it precisely, I bet no one can do that, for you are divine enough, as always. The point is I can move nearer and nearer to an ideal me of being your close friend in this struggle with you. I have learnt that you always stay still and I am moving towards. That's good enough don't you think.

Dear Writing, I am not saying you are torturing me but the opposite way would make more sense. No pain no gain hey buddy. Please be staying there and guiding me. Also please lit up the road to widen my views in the journey of seeking an ideal me.

Thank you and love you Writing.

Your struggling buddy.

Having started my third year

How time flies! This year is my third year of PhD. A little bit scary thinking of work ahead which I dont know from where to start with yet, a little bit proud of myself being able to overcome twists and turns the last two years have thrown on me, and a little bit ambitious thinking ahead a little further beyond the graduation day, when hopefully I will be able to surpass the limit of a young bird to fly far and wide. Possibilities are still possibilities, but I know for sure I have grown a great deal from this journey, at least to be able not to feel uneasy when being thrown out of my comfort zone.

Stories the last two years have woven in my PhD fabric are diverse and colourful. Life of a woman, a wife, a mother, a researcher and of course some other identities I have been playing all at the same time has been sometimes very crazy and some other times sweet enough. It's life I know. But what I know far more is when I live to the fullest of me, life turns out to be very encouraging and can present me with worthy life-changing moments .

Well I must tell about my research, which is anyway something I have to do almost all of the time now. I remember reading some scholar saying about a professional self and a personal self he got to live for, in separation he admitted. When it comes to those two huge selves in me, a separation is unreal and impossible. I am truly living the way they supplement to each other. For the data collection, I had to meet many people, especially students, at my home college. Surrounded by them and the teachers, I could not help thinking about the learning environment in our home college, which is surely raising up the student learners, their minds and their souls. Thinking about the reality and envisioning the future felt like bitter. Anyway, the collection went well, which was in a large part because of me listening to and thinking heavily about the reality and the responses from people. I was not only a researcher in my home college but also a teacher, a colleague, a friend, and a folk fellow to all the teachers and the students, which I believe enabled me to be a good listener and professional inquirier. Doing the job of a data collector in this setting is nothing but amazing and worthwhile. What has grown in me as a new plant in the garden of research is you have to be a truly person before you want to be a truly researcher.

I have started my 3rd year. Thoughts to share, stories to treasure and ideas to challenge are plentiful. Shall I be able to weave them all in my PhD fabric, the fabric of crystal clear lights and nights, realities and fantasies?

A coffee at Wharerata

It was a sunny morning of spring in its full swing, at Wharerata. We chose the sweet things and the drinks at the counter, we decided to be outside in the garden, and we talked. We were open to every thing ranging from our children, our ex- boyfriends, our marriage, to women's thinkings and concerns, family's issues and the research. We were talking like mum and daughter, friends, and women. We got to know more each other as person, and felt connected.

"Let me take you for a walk", and we moved to under a big tree, in a bench, stayed silent to sense the difference and the unspoken love, and to feel overwhelmed, and we continued along the fern walk. We were hidden away from the reality and some possible current distance between each other and merged into one heart, in which we were feeling as humans without any boundaries. I became speechless then, was feeling the sensation and the purity of love, between two persons from two different worlds.

"I am from England and you are from Vietnam, and we meet", I was then being brought beyond any limitations to fully sense the connection of two humans and truthful love. It was too sensational to be verbally spoken. There was definitely much more than what I could utter "I love you".

That's how the coffee at Wharerata became a slice of my life, very flavourful and meaningful for me to realise how we can get connected and merged into the immensity of love.

Who I am

It is something I am seeking for answers when it comes to the question of Who I am. But, according to Prof White, I am not a gourmet in a buffet. Instead, I must be a scientist of a dish in that buffet. :)

The definition of who i am surely goes beyond the research area in order for it to be comprehensive. In this journey of seeking the definition, which i believe is endless, (and this post thus possibly is endless too), it is the elements that help giving meanings to the definition and the catalysts that help transforming the content that are captured and valued more than the final product of definition.

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity

The second phase of data collection

It is not something as dull as the title may sound. Firstly, I did not think I would go to the second phase of data collection, simply because I had only one phase all together. So the unplanned phase came up with lots of surprise-behind-the-winding, which somehow aligns with the emergent and open spirit of this research. The much more worthy thing is thanks to this second phase, I have a precious chance to travel home, to spend Tet with my parents, to stay in my extended HOME, and more than those.

This entry is not devoted for a description of the second phase. I don't know what to say, but thinking of the possibilities ahead, I appreciate what life has offered me, with people and their relationships, with chances and opportunites, and above all with lots of lots of love and faith. Reflecting on the conceiving conditions of the second phase, I asked myself why that way. I dare not put the answer in this post, because i don't know for sure what causes what, but what i know for sure is nothing transcendent comes to you all of a sudden. When it comes to wondering how and why a venture comes its way to me, I find myself often feeling appreciated what life has blessed me, without very often understanding that I have myself been creating opportunities from a me digging a dark tunnel every day and also a me possessing assets like the ability to see the light in the dark and the ability to believe me.

I don't allow myself to expect to see my performance at this stage. What I really want to do now is to be able bridge the distance between a me digging a dark tunnel and a me with extraordinary abilities to create opportunities.