Okay, great! The feelings
part is over.
So, last you heard, my journal and I had narrowly survived a
seafaring expedition in the middle of a cyclone in Papua New Guinea. Gee whiz guys, thanks for checking in on me. After finishing things up in PNG, I then
moved back to America, completed my Master’s degree, and had a really great
time* which brings us succinctly to the present.
An Interesting Day
The best part of working at a summer camp is that when you
arrive in the morning, there are instantly at least 100 mini-humans with all of
their mini-human dramas to distract you for an entire day. That worked well to quiet my anxieties, until
a text message arrived in the afternoon.
My parents were traveling through Lower Sussex, Delaware and saw an LSD
sticker – it could mean the acronym for the place or the drug, but in this case I
knew they were seeing their own mysterious signs that day – these were in reference to the initials and nickname of my potential doctoral advisor. Weird Thing #2.
With the time difference to New Zealand, the work day there
begins during the evening here in Philadelphia.
If anyone was going to contact me about the decision, it would be some time
after I’d left work. I hopped in the car and this time on the radio as I headed home was Rod Stewart’s Tonight’s the Night. Weird
Thing #3.
Letting my slight inclination toward impatience govern me
while I sat by the phone waiting for an email (funny how we do that now?), I
logged on to the application portal out of habit when I opened my browser. And there it was.
Offer Accepted.
An Adventure I’m Arranging
- I’ll be living in Dunedin, New Zealand, a coastal town on the South Western side of NZ’s South Island. Interestingly enough, a place which takes its name from the Celtic word for Edinburgh – a city at the opposite side of the world which I’ve also studied at. I am very excited for some of the cultural experiences Dunedin has to offer down the track.
- The University of Otago has granted me a Doctoral Scholarship with full funding and a living stipend to complete my PhD in Science Communication. The Centre for Science Communication at the uni is the only of it’s kind in New Zealand, and a rare species still throughout the world.
- Not sure what science communication is? Check these resources out.
- The project I’ll be working on is truly a fascinating amalgamation of my passions for science, education, the outdoors, and film. Working with Dr. Lloyd Spencer Davis, I will be designing an outreach program that teaches these tech-savvy secondary students how to make their own natural history documentaries. We’re basically getting them interested in science by making them science communicators. Learning! Science! Action!
- Oh yeah, the documentaries will be based on NZ National Parks. So yeah. I get to teach kids how to make movies about one of the most dramatic and beautiful landscapes in the world.**
Will post more soon about preparing to move to this
incredible country (with a quick stop in Australia to see all my bogan friends
on the way)! For now, I hope to enjoy my last few weeks of fast internet and 2-day shipping and give thanks to all of you folks who’ve supported me in getting here. With this adventure being such a hybrid of all my skills and experiences, no one has played a part too small in helping me find this path.
Lots of love!
-Kaitlyn
