Rambling - Part One: London

Lesson 1:  Cryptic phone calls can turn into international adventures. Just gonna put that one on the table to start. The process of organizing my first-ever trip overseas went roughly like this:

Monday:
Molly: "They [this awesome, fully-online program in Addiction Studies jointly-run by VCU, King's College London, and Adelaide University] are going to London and they want to document their work. Could you go?"
Emma: "Um. YES?"

Friday:
Email Preview: "Confirmation - Your Flight to LONDON, UK has been Reserved..."
Emma:  (passed out on floor)

It happened that fast. On May 22, I jumped in a van with some of the most lovely ladies ever and rode to Dulles International -- about 8 hours later, we landed in London-Heathrow Airport in the United Kingdom.

Mary and Me.

The whole point of this trip was to give the faculty at VCU, KCL, and Adelaide the opportunity to meet in-person and discuss the state of the program. The International Programme in Addiction Studies is a collaboration between 3 premier research universities, and in the short time it's been around, it's drawn hundreds of students from six different continents. IPAS really epitomizes some of the things we love at ALT Lab -- connected learning, breaking physical boundaries, and great use of online tools.

Femke, Mary, and Kyle -- IPAS' current triumvirate of awesome.

While in London, I documented IPAS faculty at their working meetings and grabbed a ton of footage of instructors explaining their courses for trailers and orientation videos. It felt pretty special being present with 9 faculty who had only collaborated through screens prior to this meeting.

Without getting too heavy into detail, the trip was a big success -- IPAS seems to be at a pivotal point in its growth, and as the programme scales larger and larger, it was good to see that some of the most crucial issues are being addressed. You don't usually think about the infrastructure of academic programs, but this was a great experience in seeing how high-level planning is accomplished. This little videographer is excited to get to work and see how far IPAS can go.

Dinner at the Athaneum. 2 generations of IPAS, 1 extravagant dinner, unmeasurable spirit.

This was my first trip overseas, and amidst the barrage of fashionable Europeans, espresso drinks, adorable accents, and taxi-induced anxiety, what really stood out to me (apart from the crazy quickness with which IPAS folks jumped into their work and the indefatigable Mary Loos) was the process of assimilating into British culture. Granted, assimilating to the U.K. is about as easy as it gets for an American overseas (and 10 days in a new country isn't enough to claim you've even remotely begun assimilating)... but there are still some distinct things Brits seem to approach in a fundamentally different way than we do.

A view of City Hall from the Tower of London

I was most surprised by the slower pace of the London -- it's an ancient city interspersed with fantastically modern buildings, but it still seems to hold traces of a trudging medieval way of life: workers taking long, drawn out lunches; the home-y interiors of the pubs that dot every block; open markets with no trace of chemicals or processing; the foggy curtain on winding streets which demands its walkers take a meandering, extended commute... or maybe it just seems that way to a post-Industrial American baby like me. I'm aware I have a tendency to romanticize things that are new and charming to me, so any Londoner reading this post will probably think I'm talking out of my (as they say overseas) arse.

Tell me where to find this in Central Virginia. Mouthwatering displays at Borough Market.

But I'll stand by this: Aside from feeling the blunt of my smallness and insignificance next to structures that outdate me by 2500 years... Being in England showed me that accomplishing good work shouldn't come at the cost of missing out on life. I think Europeans in general have mastered this idea of work and home being separate things, and it's a divide we tend to ignore in the U.S. Seeing the lovely people of IPAS come together was wonderful, not only because it was an opportunity to accomplish significant work, but it was also an opportunity to strengthen bonds, break out of familiar settings and literally see how people work on the the other side. It might be easy to assume that online, we all exist on the same nationless, borderless plane where all the variables of the external world don't affect our ability to share and produce content. In reality our cultures deeply impact the way we interact with things that aren't bound by time and space -- and maybe it's the veil of the Internet that keeps us from seeing this clearly (for better or for worse). It's a neat idea to see play out in front of you.

The moment we officially arrived in England. Cheers!

You can find more photos of my trip right over here. For future reference, check out my Instagram account for cultural revelations as they happen in real time.


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Head spaces

Adaptability has its limits, and I notice this most when I travel for business. As hated-on as it is, the standard office cubicle has it benefits for facilitating work flow: compact space with no potential for physical exploration; a consistent environment with regular neighbors; lower volume levels, neutral color palettes, a relative lack of embellishment. As a creative person, it's weird that I find myself longing for this space when traveling with work in mind. It brings up ideas of finding the "'right' head space" for facing and accomplishing tasks, how subtle changes in environment can impact the thinking/learning process.

Unforgettable moments at Gate B71

 After my first flight, I decided I loved flying -- a decision quickly reversed by my second trip, which involved 3 layovers and a total travel time of 14 hours. Yes, there's still that vague feeling of "adventure!" when you step into the terminal with your roll-y bag, but I don't think I'm the only one who feels a slight nausea and anxiety when they see a packed terminal. Last week, I traveled to Orlando. I had plenty of extra time to sit at my gate and work some, but trying to review my meeting itinerary and respond to emails was hopeless. The combination of self-consciousness, feelings of ill-preparedness, distracting co-travelers, and ansty-ness to catch the flight culminated in me seriously being unable to focus... but not only that. I found myself feeling more and more impatient-- super unusual for an early riser like me. Why did I feel so unlike myself? Who had the power here: my environment or me?

I was traveling for Calibration: a big, weekend-long meeting my sub-committee takes every year to hash out a bunch of decisions and pitch new ideas for current and future conferences (some background: it's a sub-committee for the Student Volunteer Program for a little conference called SIGGRAPH.).

cal·i·brate

ˈkaləˌbrāt/

verb

gerund or present participle: calibrating

       mark (a gauge or instrument) with a standard scale of readings.

• correlate the readings of (an instrument) with those of a standard in order to check the instrument's accuracy.
• adjust (experimental results) to take external factors into account or to allow comparison with other data.

The idea of going to Orlando wasn't just spurred by the fact that it's off season for theme park resorts.  Sometimes it takes new scenery to break yourself out of your usual patterns and think outside the box. In order to bounce ideas off each other and speak with complete honesty, we needed to be in environment that wouldn't allow us to fall into the usual traps we do at home; mindless escapes into the computer, biases reinforced by everyday happenings, and even the barrier of a screen are all things that can hinder truly productive collaboration.

Three days of collaboration in the strange-smelling house let us work our brains to the max in a total "control" environment. In the same way the hectic airport brought out the negativity in me, being in the blank slate AirBnB allowed some of my inborn personality traits emerge. Instead of feeling the need to behave a certain way (a pressure you typically can't escape in any situation but solitude or family time), I could let go of my self-imposed "shoulds" and play to my individual strengths. Without any external pressure influencing our behavior, we revealed ourselves to be a pretty well-balanced team of talkers and listeners, passives and aggressives).

The idea of environment dictating personality plays into another I had an idea for another blog posts about hallowed halls of learning and how feelings of reverence for historic sites/figures can affect the way students approach work. If all modern classrooms were actually located at the site of Aristotle's Lyceum, would lessons feel more meaningful? If my Calibration meeting had taken place in Boulder, Colorado at the site of the very first SIGGRAPH conference, would we behave any differently? It's strange to consider how many factors can potentially shift the way you think.

My 5 awesome teammates + a gremlin at Harry Potter World on our last day.
 

The experience was very revealing and brought to light another important aspect of collaboration, too: bonding. Connected learning via the internet is a big thing at my work (and that's a big understatement), and though I know it's great from an academic point of view, there's something to be said about learning from, connecting, and engaging in-person with people you trust and enjoy spending time with. The fact that we came together being completely ourselves amplified the learning experience. One of my teammates said something really significant: we come to Calibration with the objective of accomplishing a few specific tasks, but that's not what it's about. It's about accomplishing objectives while learning about one another, feeling out the group dynamic, and gauging what efforts are needed to become the most successful, happy team possible. This is an idea that I'll certainly carry with me into my own work, especially as it connects to collaboration and connected learning.

At the airport, I learned that Psychology Today is actually not that awesome of a resource for finding academic articles about psychology; BUT it does make you look smarter than everyone else in the terminal as you enjoy your $17 muffin and coffee.

The takeaway from all this is a potpourri of "be yourself," "be aware of yourself," "be aware of your surroundings," and "don't underestimate the power of friendship." Oh, and "don't go to Harry Potter World thinking you'll accomplish anything." You think you'll sit down and discuss the last of your meeting agenda, but you won't. Too many dragons.

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