Identity and learning

(I wrote this a couple of weeks ago - sorry I only am just getting around to posting it!)

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I think I’m having an identity crisis.

Alton, a wonderful mentor and professor at the University of Idaho, asked me before we left Moscow what my main lesson had been over the three years. I told him with sureness, “I have learned to love.”

Despite love being something I’ve since found that you can’t “know” once and for all and you can never fully learn it, it’s probably a fair statement considering the anti-love, anti-commitment girl that started at the university in January 2010.

I took a big exam this a while ago. I didn’t do very well. In fact, I left before anyone else, leaving multiple blank answers. It was something I thought I was “good at” – general knowledge, writing, basic grammar and numeracy, and last but not least, exams. I thought that stuff came naturally.

I thought journalism stuff comes naturally, that’s one of the main reasons I’m doing it.

In Idaho I studied Anthropology and International Studies. Of course, despite all that training, I didn’t come away telling Alton, “I learned to be an anthropologist.” No, I learned about love.

What on earth am I learning about now? I wonder, as I lie on our bed with a headache and barely energy to type.

Perhaps it is to learn. That’s what I’ve been wondering today anyway.  “Learning to learn” was the catch-phrase when I went to school. I should have taken that more seriously.

Now, faced with my own inadequacies, I see that I can’t, and don’t want to, just float on by doing things last minute and still getting “good grades” (quotation marks implying I don’t know what the worth of those really were in the end). I want to, and need to, truly learn things. Repeat. Visualise. Discuss. Articulate. Question. Repeat.

Or perhaps it is to say sorry. That’s something I’ve always struggled with, that humility thing. I may say it was the cancer that has “brought me to my knees,” but don’t believe it.

The cancer was only a trigger. It was a situation I found myself in that required me to rely on others, and that made me act out of character and have to apologise for it. I didn’t want it to be an excuse, ever.

I guess time will tell what I’m learning from this stage of life. I hope, and am sure; it’s not just journalism. 

The City that Cried Wolf

"Just a Sharpie and a glass: Kiwi ingenuity leads to easy quake measurer"

The house we are staying in overlooks Wellington. It’s beautiful. The Tararua mountain range in the distance, the Orongorongas stretching down the other side of a harbour on which weak, dappled sunlight wavers. It all seems quite…developed. Affluent. Peaceful.

Yet, “20 seconds of horror” screams the headline. The first seven pages of today’s newspaper are all about the quakes that have shaken the area over the weekend.

Emails with solemn tones have been circulated between journalism students. The expectation is to rush in to the un-earthquake secure building at dinnertime on a Sunday night and excitedly find people who had to rush to shelter, whose bookshelves lost their books or whose vase broke.

It’s not that I don’t care about the earthquakes, or the people who have to pick up bottles or books or even the one person who was injured by their TV coming loose off the wall.

It’s just that, well, I worry.

I worry about the fact that my friends in the US and around the world are being told that an “earthquake more powerful than 100 atomic bombs and the Christchurch quakes of 2011” has hit Wellington. For, on first glance of these articles, they are completely justified in feeling worried that we are in a dire situation.

Beyond that, I worry about what Wellington would do if a really devastating earthquake hit, whether the world would think nothing of it as we think nothing of natural disasters in other small nations. It’s not their fault for not being concerned - they’ve just heard it all before.

So let’s take a new approach.

New Zealand sits right on the fault line where the Pacific plate has been jammed under the Indo-Australian plate. In fact, that subduction line that circles the Pacific and creates the ring of fire is right behind our house.

“Wellington Earthquake free for eight months”

The media reaction to something so natural to the earth as an earthquake serves as an illustration of how humans have unquestioningly come to believe we rule the natural world. Unfortunately, monotheistic religion can take a lot of the blame for that, in propagating ideas of the earth being ours to reap and condemning other belief systems that consider humans at one with nature.

“Kiwis reminded of the incredible power of nature”

For how dare the earth, which formed by these processes over billions of years for us to live on and enjoy now, shake the house we have built with cut down trees or paid for with a concept of money we have created?

“Amazing subduction process going on right under our feet”

Despite my hesitancy at going into a field that expects me to instill fear in people in one of the safest countries in the world for the sake of selling papers, hits or page counts, I do love journalism. I love telling important stories about important issues, I love inspiring people, entertaining and educating them, and believe this is what the media should be about.

That’s why I believe people deserve more than simply fear instilling, sensational reporting. That’s why people deserve to hear more about the plates and the incredible forces of nature than someone falling off their seat in a movie theatre. There is a place for discussing emergency plans, which has been done, but why not find out who has opposed earthquake strengthening and see what they think now?

Yes, I know, because we are writing to that mythical eleven-year-old who reads the news every day but wants his or her entertainment.

How about -

“Hey John, Wellington ROCKS!”*

*Earlier this year Prime Minister John Key referenced Wellington as being a “dying city”. Needless to say, people in the capital weren’t happy about that. Cheers Guy for saying this!

Bruises and Brains

You may have seen recently that I've been toying with the idea of changing course in this blog and heading more into research. This, by my journalism instructors definition, is a "rant-style" blog, and is too personal for a journo.

Early last week, James was tickle-attacking me (I call it attack because he isn't ticklish and I am rendered defenseless) and my fingernail brushed my thigh.

It was a light brush, but something in my squealing tone must have changed as I was taken aback by unexpected pain. Tingles shot up into my groin and down to my knee, and a few minutes later tiny, black bruises had splotched themselves on my white, winter skin.

It was all revealed a few days later when I was sitting in the reclining leather chair in the day ward for my chemotherapy, chatting with the nurses and the old man opposite me on his IV line.

"Have you noticed any strange bruising, Bethany?" a concerned nurse asked. I laughed. My platelets are at a record low: 34. The average range is 150 - 450.

Staring down at my now-enlarged bruise the other day, I realized I can't simply research. If I did, the little stupid personal things would be lost, as would my space to express word in whichever way they want to paint themselves on the page.

And so, I made a new site specifically for researching brain cancer. I'm focusing on compiling new innovations, approaches and understandings about tumors of the brain. If you're not of the mind to be bogged down by cancer and all it entails, I've formatted it to make it easy to do a quick scan of the important bits and then take off running!

If you're interested, do check it out: www.brainbuzz.org.

Imaginary Questions and the Relevance of Things

A lady sitting next to me in the waiting room of Aotea Pathology is browsing the Dominion Post. Lady Gaga, always upbeat, buzzes through the radio speakers. I smile - I’ve read that paper front to back. 
As I sit here, the question as to what really is relevant wanders my mind. The media that paints our world in all its (perhaps darker) colors has just been deconstructed in front of my eyes. 

Just as the diagnosis made me question what really matters, I wonder what really matters in the world,  who controls what really matters. After spending a whole morning tearing apart the term “news,” I’m no longer sure.

By the second day of the “Diploma in Multimedia Journalism” at Whitireia, we have begun delving into questions about how the world around us is generated and defined. I’ve been surprised and impressed by the overall caliber of the course and it’s students. It is clear they have deliberately chosen a diverse group of backgrounds to compose their student body. One student is a professional photographer, another has a philosophy degree, and another studied design and another business - I could go on.

An attempted self-haircut

Back to the waiting room. I imagine striking up a conversation with the lady on page 4. “Should National be able to get away with labeling quantitative easing “printing money” in the media, just to screw over the Green party?” I envisage asking. “Do you think the G8 referring the Syrian issue to Geneva stresses or downplays the importance of the situation? Isn’t it ridiculous that the fact that the US NATO forces finally handed over power today and it only got a tiny column at the back of the newspaper...?"

“Bethany, please;” a well-dressed man looks around the room. My mouth is stuffed with last night’s leftovers. I speed up my chewing and swallow. “Oh, yep, that’s me,” I smile at him. 

This week’s jab isn’t too bad – I brave looking down this time and see the blood spurting into the two regular orange and purple tubes. The needle pinches as it slides out and I’m all taped up, ready to head back to class.

We assemble back around the desks for class. I tug my sleeve down over the white surgical tape to cover my secret. Each Tuesday the waiting room will be my lunchroom, and I’m okay with that. 

And now, sitting here in this classroom I wonder again what is relevant – is news itself even relevant for everyone? 

When I was bound to the bed in the IC unit with a catheter in my bladder and face wrapped in bandages, did Peter Dunne’s blunders really matter?