Queen's day

April 30 is Queen’s Day in the Netherlands. It’s the day when Dutch people celebrate the birthday of the queen, whose birthday happens to be in January. Her mother’s birthday, however, was April 30, and to commemorate her mother, and probably because the weather is so much nicer at the end of April, Queen Beatrix decided to maintain April 30 as Queen’s Day.

Several people have asked me if the Dutch are very pro-monarchy since we have dedicated a special day to the royal family, and I can never seem to explain the phenomenon properly. I always seem to repeat phrases such as “sack races” “alcohol” “orange”, and “silly hats”.
To be honest, I’ve never thought of the Dutch are very much in love with their royal family, so then why this sudden explosion of patriotism? On Queen’s Day, half of the Dutch population seems to develop this desire to spend several hours in front of the television watching the royal family travel to small obscure towns jumping with excitement to treat the queen and her family to fun-filled activities such as jeans-hanging competitions, a local art exhibition, sack races, and dancing the salsa with overexcited locals dressed in orange. The other half of the Dutch population will venture into town, which will have been decorated with enough orange to make any Halloween party seem subdued. Here they can be treated to similar activities, only without the added glamour of a royal family. Children can join in games like bobbing for apples and the three-legged race, while adults can sit on benches hastily erected for the occasion, drink alcohol in the middle of the day, and listen to a wide variety of musical expressions, from opera to rock bands to church choirs. To top it all of, most Dutch people will feel the sudden urge to don bright orange clothing, including enormous hats, large sunglasses, and inflatable crowns.

Perhaps this sudden outburst of patriotic joy can be attributed the otherwise almost puritan nature of the Dutch people: “Just act normal, and you’ll be crazy enough” is an often heard expression. If a people get so little opportunity to let their hair down, it’s a definite possibility that when they do, they literally paint the town, well, orange, obviously.

Living overseas makes the whole Queen’s Day experience very different. When I was a kid, our parents would take us to events featuring hordes of Dutch people we had never met before (and would not see for the remainder of the year). These events were always far more patriotic than anything I had been to in The Netherlands; imagine a line of twenty cars driving into the mountains behind Grasse, France, each of them sporting a Dutch flag waving out the window, and a group of forty people without any kind of prompting, spontaneously bursting into the national anthem before a potluck dinner held in an empty field. Absence definitely makes the heart grow fonder.
Today the celebration is not quite as festive, mainly because it’s a weekday, and I’m in the middle of finals (another oft-heard expression in Dutch is “business before the girl”). I did replace our American flag with our Dutch flag last night though, while very quietly, and somewhat absent-mindedly (I think after three lines, I turned into “the star-spangled banner”) humming the Dutch anthem. Now all I’m waiting for is an unsuspecting neighbor to ask me why I have an “open” flag hanging off my porch, or to wonder which state we’re from. I also told those students who have to take their final today that if they wore orange, I would give them one bonus point on their exam. And I pulled out the brightest orange blazer the world has ever seen. No sack-races, bobbing for apples, or drinking wine while listening to St. Agnes’ women’s choir. But the sun is shining, I’ve seen pictures of the royal family ice-skating and, yes, dancing the salsa, and life is pretty good anyway.

Simple pleasures

Small things are highly underrated. You know, those little unexpected events that can really make or break your day. Somehow, those things never really get mentioned. The comments I get on this blog, for instance, can really make me happy. On the other hand, that time our sprinkler system was still on, covering the driveway in a heavy rain, when I walked to my car did not make me very happy.

Living in another country means that there are a lot of new little things. Little happy occasions that can make you smile or annoying incidences that make you break out into hives of frustration. I’ve mentioned some of the latter in previous blogs: bugs, the roundabout way of talking, and the lack of fog lights in cars. But there are a host of little things that are actually really good.

Like the wonderful scent that I can only associate with springtime in the south. Recently, our entire town seems to smell of honeysuckle. We’ve taken to driving through town with the windows rolled down so that this thick sweet scent can just waft into our car. The campus also smells of all the flowers that have been planted alongside the buildings, which makes for a lovely arrival at work each morning. Although I spent most of my life living in the country known for its flowers, I can’t say that spring has ever smelled this good.

Or how about coming home from a very long and tiring day, full of unhappy students, and then having your neighbors offer you a glass of wine and some chocolate. I have lived in many different places, but this is the first time we've met a set of neighbors who were that welcoming. It’s just so nice to have people wave at you and ask how your day was (or in some cases even why you got home so late) whenever you pull into your cul-de-sac. I’m not sure if this is a southern thing, or just an American thing, but it definitely puts a smile on my face.

And then there are the students how come in to your office to just say “hello” and “thank you for the semester”, the people you don’t know in the hallways who still smile and say hello, the fact that it’s almost always sunny down here, and the sound of crickets chirping at night. Yes, since I’ve moved my life has gotten a whole lot crazier. But there are many, many little happy moments that make up for it.

Rebel(tje)

Diep in mijn hart ben ik, of nou ja, was ik, stiekem een beetje een rebel. Ik was zo’n student die, als docenten mij vroegen een paper in de linkerhoek te nieten, het dan expres in de rechterhoek niette. Een fietser die, als het kon, lekker door rood karde, en zich niet zo heel veel aantrok van “hier geen fietsen parkeren” borden. Zo eentje die leuk in voetgangersgebieden fietste, en dan tegen een agent, die aangaf dat dat niet mocht, heel blij riep “Dat weet ik!”, en leuk doorfietste. Zo iemand die enorme dreads in haar haar liet vlechten terwijl ze docent op een universiteit was, en iemand die altijd bij alles vroeg “waarom?”.

Maar helaas is de mogelijkheid tot het uithangen van rebel de laatste tijd toch beduidend minder. En eerlijk, het ligt niet alleen aan het wonen in het zuiden. Eigenlijk is dat begonnen toen ik manlief leerde kennen. In de militaire gemeenschap zijn regels namelijk echt regels, en valt er met politie niet zo heel veel te discussieren. Als je verteld wordt dat je, als je niet subiet je helm op zet terwijl je aan het fietsen bent, je toegangsprivileges kwijt zou kunnen raken, en je man op het matje geroepen kan worden, dan geeft zelfs de grootste stiekeme rebel toe.

Maar verhuizen, en het aannemen van mijn huidige baan betekende een nog verdere inperking van het kleine rebelletje dat ik soms ben. Niet alleen heeft mijn universiteit de veelbesproken dresscode, we worden geacht elkaar met “dr so and so” aan te spreken, en moeten een badge met onze naam, functie, en department erop dragen. Daarnaast verwachten onze studenten dat we niet vloeken en al helemaal niks negatief zeggen over het geloof (het is dan wel een public school, maar we zitten nog altijd in de bible belt). Nu kan je heel stoer roepen dat je daar niet aan meedoet, maar ja, dat kan nare consequenties hebben.

Zo heeft een college die openlijk aangaf niet gelovig te zijn de laatste meer moeite zijn studenten gemotiveerd te krijgen. En studenten komen aan mij fluisterend vragen of het echt waar dat Mr so and so atheist is, en waarom hij niet gelooft, en of ik dat niet heel erg raar vind. Als je een keer niet strak in het pak verschijnt, krijg je door opmerkingen als “wow, you’re looking sporty today” heel gauw door dat dit niet helemaal de bedoeling is. En zonder badge verschijnen betekent overal moeten bewijzen dat je toch echt geen student bent. Maar het kan erger. Zo kwam een potentiele toekomstige college laatst een proefcollege geven. Haar kleding was, voor academische standaarden zeker netjes, maar het was niet helemaal volgens de kledingsvoorschriften hier op de universiteit. Maar ja, mijn collega's en ikzelf komen allemaal van universiteiten waar docenten in gescheurden spijkerbroeken, en oude, vale t-shirtjes van vergane jaren 80 bandjes rondliepen, dus wij zagen het niet zo. Tot onze grote verbazing vielen de studenten in de lengte en de breedte over haar kledingkeuze; "Did you see her shoes?" "And those hose! Who wears black hose nowadays?". Ook het dat ze de phrase “pissed off” gebruikte, en een keer het word “sh…” zei viel total niet in geode aarde. De studenten protesteerden zo heftig dat het aannemen van de kandidaat in kwestie zelfs in twijfel werd gesteld. Ik wil maar zeggen.

En nou moet ik het toch echt zeggen; dat was “in mijn tijd” toch wel anders. Wij verwachten niet anders dan dat de docent in oude kleding verscheen. Als we een docent kregen die er te netjes uitzag, dan begonnen wij automatisch altijd de academische kwaliteiten van de docent in twijfel te trekken. Iemand die er zo netjes uitzag, die moest wel iets te verbergen hebben. Ook schopten wij tijdens colleges tegen alle heilige huisjes aan die er bestonden; geloof, overheid, taalgebruik, alles. Nee, ik ben geen hippie uit de jaren 60, en ook niet van de roerige jaren 80, maar gewoon iemand die gewend is dat rebelleren onderdeel is van je hele zijn. In ieder geval, dat dacht ik dus altijd.

Vandaag zouden een collega en ik gaan rebelleren. We zouden allebei in korte broek, t-shirt, en slippers naar de uni komen. Het is ten slotte finals week, dus wij vonden dat dat kon. Het was tijd om eens te laten zien dat je om goed les te geven er niet als een bankmanager uit hoefde te zien. Maar ja. Toen hoorde ik dat ik vandaag salarisonderhandelingen zou hebben, en sja, toen durfde ik niet meer. Dus nu ben ik toch maar in nette pantalon en blousje gekomen. De andere kleding ligt in mijn auto, om aan te doen na de onderhandeling. Hmm...wat een rebel!

A professor with a problem

One of my teachers used to always tell me "write what you know". Well, today I know that I am somewhat, no, actually, deeply disappointed in several of my students. In fact, I'm not just disappointed, I'm also slightly upset and even insulted.
Yesterday, as I was grading the research papers one of my classes had to write as part of their final grade, I discovered that six out of twenty students had chosen to plagiarize parts of their paper. Not just the one or two lazy students whom you will find in every class who think they can get away with a simple cut and paste their job. No, six. Almost a third of my students had used parts of other people's work without any kind of reference or citation. I realize this was a tough assignment, but this surpassed even my worst nightmare.
To an academic, plagiarism is as bad as cussing in church to a pastor. Or eating a snack right before dinner to your mom. Or cheating on your husband on your wedding night. It's not only wrong, it completely ignores the purpose of the activity at hand. In the case of academics that would be to carry out original research. I can't even begin to describe the blood, sweat and tears that go into producing an academic article of paper, not to mention the intense labor it takes to write a doctoral dissertation. Now I don't expect my students to produce either. However, to ask them to please write their own paper, while including a lengthy lecture on citation rules and the APA styleguide, should not be asking too much, right?
Well, it seems as though it is. And it's not as though the students made any effort to hide their plagiarism by changing a word or two. Nope. Apparently my students believe that if I read "my research will looks at the manor in which people interpret reality programs" on one page and then on the next page see a paragraph that starts with the words "This study, besides examining the ideological potential of reality shows, will also venture into the racial discourses offered by these texts", I won't think anything of it. Hmm.
And then the culprits didn't take the work from obscure articles and books either. In most cases, students copied sentences and paragraphs straight from the internet, and preferably from websites I told them not to use, such as wikipedia. It's somehow very insulting to my intelligence when students seem to assume that I don't know how to use google. And don't even get me started on wikipedia. Whoever decided that that was a trustworthy source of information..well, they definitely need a talking to.
Yesterday, as I was grading the papers, my heart just sank every time I would see a suspect sentence, and then see my suspicions be confirmed. I want all of my students to succeed, and I do my very best to create the conditions for them to do so. I lecture them about all the important aspects of conducting research. I spent at least one lecture talking about plagiarism. I asked them to hand in their first drafts, to come see me with any questions, to let me know if they had any problems. And then to have students merely assume they can get away with a complete disregard for the basic rules of academia almost feels like betrayal.
The worst part is that once I catch a student plagiarizing, there is very little I can do to guarantee their success. Our university's student handbook dictates a whole set of actions to take when students plagiarize. It includes such nasty penalties as failing them for the class, reporting them to the chair, dean, possibly even the president, and the possibility of academic probation. I dread having to talk to the dean on Monday, but my professional integrity does not allow me any other option.

But, honestly, how hard is it to write your own work? I just did it.

On tea

While writing my post yesterday, I realized that I wasn’t being completely fair by describing myself as some sort of international chameleon. After all, I do have certain behaviors and characteristics that are so “me”, that I can’t imagine changing them, no matter how often they amuse or confuse people down here.

Drinking tea would be one of those things. And by tea, I don’t mean “iced tea”, I mean “hot tea”. You know, the kind where you boil water, add a teabag, add a little milk, and then, wait for it, wait for it,…drink it while it is still hot. Yes, I drink tea while it’s still warm, with a touch of milk. In my opinion, nothing is as refreshing, cooling, or soothing as a nice mug of hot tea. In fact, “Shall I boil you some water” is an expression used in our house that indicates that you must be either really tired, incredibly crabby, or in need of some real comfort.

However, I can’t tell you how many times southerners freak out when I tell them I drink hot tea in the morning, as opposed to coffee. Now coffee is as much a staple down here as it is pretty much everywhere else. However, I do have the feeling that of all the places I have lived, the locals here are least open to the idea of someone having a hot beverage besides coffee in the morning. Juice, sure, if you’re a health freak. Milk, well, if you’re over the age of 16, people may look at you funny, but it’s still alright. Coke, hey, anything to wake you up in the morning. But hot tea? No. That is just plain odd.

Southerners appear equally amused by the fact that I much prefer hot tea in the afternoon to “sweet tea”, or a soda, or juice, or water. I can’t tell you how many times people, while opening their third can of something really unhealthy, have told me that drinking too much caffeine will apparently “dry me out”. Hmmm…if that is true, then I should have turned into a prune a long time ago. And whenever I request a cup of “hot tea” in a restaurant, I at times almost feel bad for those waiters who look at me as though the sky has just come crashing down, and then spend a good ten minutes trying to desperately figure out how to meet this request.

But I will not give in. I am standing tall, and for all those tea-drinkers among us, I say: join in on the tea-volution!

When in Rome

or in the deep south, you do as the locals do. Or so the saying goes. Having been on the move every few years since I was probably around two years old, adapting to local customs and traditions has become second nature. So over the years I have developed an interesting array of habits, from the French love for sitting in the street and watching the world go by, to the Dutch penchant for being far too honest, to the German-like punctuality. And over the past few months, I've been able to add several characteristics to that list.

Liking tinted car windows is one of the characteristics I adopted surprisingly fast. This doesn't come as much of a surprise, since summers here are hot enough to make pavement melt (or at least get really soft and squishy). I'm not talking about the light-green tinting you will see in most cars nowadays, I'm talking about the deep-almost-black tinting that is mainly seen in programs like "Pimp my ride" (or Georgia, apparently). Back in Europe, tinted windows used to, at best, make me think of really important politicians, and at worst, of some form of criminal, so needless to say I did not have a very positive attitude towards them. Funnily enough, I never noticed that husband's truck had tinted windows too - perhaps that was because the whole huge truck with quad cab thing was enough of a rarity. Anyway, the new car that we bought last August did not come with tinted windows, and my first response was "oh great, I don't want my car to look like that anyway". My second response, after about a day of feeling like I had driven around in a sauna, was, "Oh crap, where can I get my windows tinted, and how dark can we go?"
So much for my dislike of tinted windows.

And how about saying "Thank you" and "oh that's great!" when you're doing someone a favor? I think this falls into the southern-discourse I blogged about earlier. Now don't get me wrong, I have always been a polite person, I was taught to say "thank you" and "please", and I like to think I have been doing pretty well in that department. But here in the south, we take politeness and gratitude to the next level. You thank everyone. And I mean everyone. You thank the person who bumps into you and then apologizes. And guess what, it's contagious too. Whenever I would just visit the south, I would shrug it off as an ancient idiosyncrasy. But now that I live here, I find myself doing it more and more. So when a student calls me with a question, I end up thanking them for calling. When I call, say payroll, to correct a mistake they made, I tell them it would be great if they could get that fixed, and thank you so very much ma'am. Now I have to be honest, but I have also gotten the feeling that perhaps my adaptation here is more of a survival mechanism than an additional layer of politeness that I just picked up on (even though I'm sure my mother is proud of me). I have begun to realize it is a way of life, and you had better adapt, or else you will not get anything done.
So, thank you for reading my blog today:)

Birthdays and things

When it comes to celebrating major events, I know, as one half of an international couple, that these can be tricky occasions. We sometimes find ourselves talking for hours about a certain holiday, hashing out the most mundane details just to prevent nasty surprises and subsequent cultural wars. Christmas is of course the kicker; we come from such diverse backgrounds that this holiday required days of round-table discussions where we expressed expectations, pondered the different options, and came up with a scenario that was acceptable to both of us. We even conduct a little post-Christmas evaluation each year. These evaluations, although they may sound hilarious, at times lead to very revealing findings. This year, for instance. I discovered that breakfast without candles just did not work for me. Call me an idiot, but there you have it. We've had round-table talks about Thanksgiving (a fairly short one, since this is not a European holiday), Halloween, New Year's, Easter (again, an easy one), and Sinterklaas (husband-dear left that one up to me). The one major event that we have somehow never had to talk about, and yet have molded into our own, overwhelmingly European-style celebration, would be the birthday. This weekend, as we celebrated my birthday, I found myself wondering how this was possible, since there are some distinct differences between Dutch and American birthday celebrations.

For one thing, when should you open the birthday presents? I used to think the answer to this was clear-cut and simple. Until I met my husband. He thought his answer was clear-cut and simple too. Only it was completely different from mine. He scenario for giving presents was indeed very simple. You would either give the presents after work, if the birthday was on a weekday, or right after breakfast if it fell on a weekend. My scenario could not have been any different. In my world, receiving presents from immediate family is a long-standing tradition with clear rules and regulations. The first rule is it must be celebrated on a weekend. A second regulation entails the entire family getting up early, sneaking downstairs and decorating the house while the birthday boy or girl lies in bed, wide awake, listening to all the noises downstairs in excitement. The next step involves the entire family marching into the birthday girl or boy's room while singing a loud and off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday". The birthday boy or girl is then presented with all her gifts, and breakfast in bed. A bylaw involves the family pets; any cats or dogs are at this point in time allowed to jump on the bed, as an exception to the usual rules.
Although my tradition is far more complicated than my husband's, it somehow defeated his more simple celebration. So this weekend I was awoken by singing family members, each holding their presents and a breakfast tray.

Present-giving becomes even more complicated when it comes to friends and family members who come to see you later in the day. In Europe, most everyone I know opens the presents right when you get them. But some of my American friends prefer to wait until everyone has arrived, and then open presents all at once. Somehow, I feel slightly uncomfortable, as I feel that I need to make sure that my present measures up to everyone else's. And I always wonder what they do when two people give them the same thing. When you open presents right at the door, at least you could pretend (in that good old southern way) like you've never seen such a lovely doorstop/vase/corkscrew/candlestick holder before. But what do you do when everyone sees you open two of the same things? Needless to say, I still open my presents at the door, while my husband waits patiently until everyone has arrived. It's a happy compromise.

But when it comes to cake-eating, my husband's tradition won out. In Holland, once you reach adulthood, your birthday cake is usually simple, and served to people when they come in. There is no singing, and no candles to blow out. Not so with my husband's family. All of our cakes are sumptuously decorated (only last year, my husband's read "Older than dirt"), and they are only served after everyone at the party has gathered around the table and sang "happy birthday". I have to admit that being sung to somehow makes that birthday buzz that you had when you were a little child return. It's great.

Now I have to admit that I was never much in favor of the "let's sit around a coffee table in a circle and talk" kind of parties that most Dutch adults I know seem to favor. Both my husband and I are of the "you either celebrate it well, or not at all" school of thought, so that was an easy topic to agree on. I'm not sure if this is an American thing, or just a "Dixiechick and her husband thing". But either way it's great. My last birthday party in Europe involved rock-climbing and frozen margaritas, and this year, my husband suggested renting a bouncy castle, and buying a new blender so we could make frozen margaritas.

Since celebrating our birthdays never involved as much talk as any of the other holidays, I think that during our next roundtable meeting, I am going to suggest replacing the more difficult events with another birthday celebration. I mean, we have got to get our money's worth out of that blender, right? :)