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A Scholar's Progress
Dec. 31st, 2024 05:00 pmThe past year has been an important one for me in terms of scholarship, in the sense of teaching and learning, both formal and informal. This does not include matters I have learned in my personal life and about myself, which, of course, one is fated to be engaging in "continuous learning". That will be the subject of a future post. For now I wish to talk about my academic life, which includes the University of Wellington, Euclide University, Duolingo, and MOOCs. I have already written about my rather extensive teaching and workshop activities at the University of Melbourne, through both Research Computing Services and the School of Computing and Information Systems, and my week at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in my review, "Another Year in Supercomputing (2024 edition)".
In the formal study, this year I completed a Master of Climate Change Science and Policy at Victoria University of Wellington. With coursework completed in the previous year, I had only the dissertation to complete, "Climate Change Impacts, Adaption, and Just Financing for Small Developing Pacific Island Countries". For the degree as a whole, I was an "A" average student, missing out on straight-A's by 2% in one unit. After completing the Master's degree, I looked for an appropriate institution to do doctoral studies. Ultimately, I ended up at Euclid University, a United Nations Treaty Organisation with an emphasis on developing countries in Africa and the Pacific. So far, I've been working through a coursework component, but with prior credit I am aiming to finish by the end of 2025 or early in 2026. Climatology is pretty much my life's project at this point, and what a time to do it; 2024 was the hottest year on record and human activity is to blame (temperatures, by natural forcings would be almost the same as they were 120 years ago).
In a less formal environment, I've continued my linguistic pursuits with Duolingo (I've been in their top 0.1% of learners for three years in succession). As previously mentioned ("Matters of Language, Culture, and Music"), this year I concentrated on Spanish, French, Esperanto, and Chinese, completing the new skill tree in the latter and bringing myself to CEFR level B1 in Spanish and A2 in Chinese. I also won the Diamond Tournament once and the Diamond League three times. In the coming year, I plan to concentrate on Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese as I have plans to travel to both China in the first half of 2025 and South America in the second half. Just for fun, I've started Japanese as well; maybe I'll visit in 2026.
Dovetailing with these linguistic studies was the completion of the Duolingo Music skill tree, participation in the Spanish language choir "Sonidos del alma" (I should join a Brazilian Portugese group as well), and the recent completion of a course in music theory derived from Augsburg University's curriculum, and have followed up on this with additional studies in electronic music. After all these decades as a popular music critic, I realised that, if not the dexterity for performance, perhaps I do have the right ear for composition (dexacuity?). It will be in the second half of 2025 when, alongside my significantly more experienced friend Mel S., the first content will see the light of day, and perhaps with other media included.
That provides a summary of scholarship in 2024 and plans for 2025. My life is one of continuous and lifelong learning, essential in a rapidly changing world, and continuous teaching to those who wish to learn. I am very fortunate in life to have a degree of income, wealth, and disposition that can sustain scholarship. Studying under conditions of an undergraduate's poverty taught me well the need for a materially simple but culturally rich lifestyle, although I do think that the relative impoverishment of our brightest minds is not socially beneficial. Scholarship in itself can bring its own pains; not the least a touch of bitterness in the realisation of the preventable harms in this world. Fortunately, there is a community of scholars: those who do not bow down to Nebuchadnezzar, those who walk away from Omelas, and where at least some virtue can be found.
In the formal study, this year I completed a Master of Climate Change Science and Policy at Victoria University of Wellington. With coursework completed in the previous year, I had only the dissertation to complete, "Climate Change Impacts, Adaption, and Just Financing for Small Developing Pacific Island Countries". For the degree as a whole, I was an "A" average student, missing out on straight-A's by 2% in one unit. After completing the Master's degree, I looked for an appropriate institution to do doctoral studies. Ultimately, I ended up at Euclid University, a United Nations Treaty Organisation with an emphasis on developing countries in Africa and the Pacific. So far, I've been working through a coursework component, but with prior credit I am aiming to finish by the end of 2025 or early in 2026. Climatology is pretty much my life's project at this point, and what a time to do it; 2024 was the hottest year on record and human activity is to blame (temperatures, by natural forcings would be almost the same as they were 120 years ago).
In a less formal environment, I've continued my linguistic pursuits with Duolingo (I've been in their top 0.1% of learners for three years in succession). As previously mentioned ("Matters of Language, Culture, and Music"), this year I concentrated on Spanish, French, Esperanto, and Chinese, completing the new skill tree in the latter and bringing myself to CEFR level B1 in Spanish and A2 in Chinese. I also won the Diamond Tournament once and the Diamond League three times. In the coming year, I plan to concentrate on Chinese, Spanish, and Portuguese as I have plans to travel to both China in the first half of 2025 and South America in the second half. Just for fun, I've started Japanese as well; maybe I'll visit in 2026.
Dovetailing with these linguistic studies was the completion of the Duolingo Music skill tree, participation in the Spanish language choir "Sonidos del alma" (I should join a Brazilian Portugese group as well), and the recent completion of a course in music theory derived from Augsburg University's curriculum, and have followed up on this with additional studies in electronic music. After all these decades as a popular music critic, I realised that, if not the dexterity for performance, perhaps I do have the right ear for composition (dexacuity?). It will be in the second half of 2025 when, alongside my significantly more experienced friend Mel S., the first content will see the light of day, and perhaps with other media included.
That provides a summary of scholarship in 2024 and plans for 2025. My life is one of continuous and lifelong learning, essential in a rapidly changing world, and continuous teaching to those who wish to learn. I am very fortunate in life to have a degree of income, wealth, and disposition that can sustain scholarship. Studying under conditions of an undergraduate's poverty taught me well the need for a materially simple but culturally rich lifestyle, although I do think that the relative impoverishment of our brightest minds is not socially beneficial. Scholarship in itself can bring its own pains; not the least a touch of bitterness in the realisation of the preventable harms in this world. Fortunately, there is a community of scholars: those who do not bow down to Nebuchadnezzar, those who walk away from Omelas, and where at least some virtue can be found.
