Dr Sherrie Lee | Category: Phd

Final Destination: I’ve Found What I’m Looking For

28 October 202110 March 2025admin2 Comments

Seven years ago I made the most significant life decision to date – uprooting my family from Singapore and moving to New Zealand for what many would regard as ‘a better life’. I felt my family was complete with three young children, had an epiphany about doing research and preparing for an academic career in international education, and wanted to start fresh in a new place that would welcome us wholeheartedly, a place we could grow to love, a place we trusted to provide a more equitable future for our family.

Today, seven years after making that decision, I have finally found what I’ve been looking for. 2021 has become the year of the ‘final destination’ not because there’s nowhere else to go from now on, but the culmination of residency, house ownership, established relationships and meaningful employment has marked the end of a seven year journey towards being and feeling settled.

I never thought it would have taken seven years when the typical time was 24 months, at least according to well-meaning advice from the New Zealand government in the form of a settlement curve (Note: While they say it is different for everyone, there’s no other example given). But perhaps those seven years were necessary to build up resilience through struggles of varying depth and emotion, and to fully appreciate the complex feelings and mental state around migration and settlement.

The journey started on shaky ground.

We arrived in Hamilton in late November 2014 close to the start of the summer holidays and were left wondering if we had chosen a ghost town to reside in in the first couple of months. That meant having to do a whole lot of DIY in finding familiar people and networks, much like how we had to figure out how to DIY around the house. You might consider this just an initial blip of an otherwise upward trending settlement experience (again, according to the settlement curve theory). But the experience was more like ‘peaks and troughs’ unevenly spread out, interspersed with flatline day-to-day routine living of school drop-offs and pick-ups, supermarket runs and going to church.

Peaks were often associated with feeling part of the community (whether this was school, work or church) where we could express ourselves without fear of ridicule or suspicion. These were positive outcomes of coming to New Zealand. But the most significant peak was securing sufficiently paid employment that was considered relevant for a residency application. That was the biggest deciding factor for our future in the country after I completed my PhD study. This meant moving from Hamilton to Wellington, and changing my life and career trajectory altogether.

The troughs, in contrast, can be characterised by feelings of rejection by the host country. Rather than singular events, it was the reminders of how Kiwis were largely ‘friendly but not friend making’; efforts to establish personal relationships were either misplaced or flat out unreciprocated. But then again, new friendships in my stage of life – middle-aged with three children turning into teenagers – were going to be far and few between. And so I quietly resigned myself to the temporary friendships with fellow international PhD students for several years. When I started working, navigating collegial relationships in the New Zealand workplace was another new experience to grapple with. I remember having coffee with a new team and feeling like a foreigner all over again with jokes and cultural and sports references zipping past over my head. And during times like these, I would hear the soundtrack playing the song of whether the strange would ever truly become familiar.

Through the seven years of peaks and troughs and flatlines in between, as well as pandemic induced lockdowns and border restrictions, I have learnt how to do more of ‘living in the moment’ – a challenge for someone who thrives on order and being organised. Carpe diem – seize the day – as my 20 year old self would remind me.

I’ve also realised that the initial dream of ‘a better life’ in New Zealand has changed into something else. It has been muted by the reality of creeping housing prices and inflation, petty politics and shortsighted planning. But the desire for a more equitable future for the family is playing out in different ways and unfolding over time. The grass is always greener on the other side, and to New Zealand’s credit, the air is fresher and personal freedoms are greater on this side of the world. Particularly with greater personal freedom, I’ve experienced and achieved a number of things which would have been difficult or impossible if I had remained in Singapore.

Part of the dream of ‘a better life’ was about creating an environment where we could appreciate different worldviews and other cultures while being comfortable with ourselves and others. Today we have the permission to call New Zealand home, a house we own, a community we belong to, new and meaningful friendships, and most recently, landing a job that meets my pragmatic, professional, intellectual and aspirational needs. So in some ways, I’ve fulfilled my dream, but it’s really a dream in progress, working at embracing all of the good, and overcoming the struggles and setbacks.

P.S. The title of this blog post is a response to U2’s song. It has a catchy tune but I’m glad I’m not singing this in my head anymore.

Careers / Phd / Professional Identity

Using your PhD in a non-academic job

3 May 202010 March 2025adminLeave a comment

… and staying true to your world-changing aspirations

It has been one year since attending my graduation ceremony at the marae grounds of the University of Waikato. It was a momentous occasion to mark the achievement of attaining a Doctor of Philosophy in Education. The preceding months of successfully defending my thesis and having my thesis bound and deposited into the library felt like a holding statement, and the graduation day was the public announcement that I had become a ‘doctor’!

Yet, I have to admit, it felt anti-climatic. The long hours of research, reading and painstaking writing did not bring me to the promised land of academic milk and honey. In fact, I had fallen out of love with the university and academia, almost like a jilted lover after years of unrequited love and adoration.

Recently, I shared my story of how failure to secure an academic job led me to the public sector, seemingly by accident, but in hindsight, it was the right match for my interests and passion for social justice.

While I have indeed taken my PhD elsewhere, the PhD in me hasn’t disappeared completely. My academic reading habits have helped me scan wordy or lengthy documents for key ideas, and be sensitive to underlying epistemologies and critical of seemingly easy solutions. So while the PhD is not usually a pre-requisite for government jobs, or the vast majority of jobs for that matter, having the frameworks and skills of rigorous thinking has given me great tools for navigating rapidly changing landscapes. The challenge, however, is being able to do this as fast as possible to keep up with the changes!

My interest in good ideas and arguments hasn’t disappeared either. I’ve taken an interest in policy research and have been following the updates of policy think tanks such as The New Zealand Initiative and the professional organisation for public servants IPANZ to keep pace with the latest thinking in the public sector.

At some point, I would like to return to research and writing, but this time for a professional audience, and with the purpose of addressing the elephants in the room. I already have one topic in mind: The Case for Slow Thinking in Fast Places. And another: Is Multiculturalism All Things to All People? And to make a neat three: The Freedom to Act Justly and Love Mercy.

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

Higher Education / Internationalisation / Phd / Research

The Power of Peer Support

4 October 201810 March 2025adminLeave a comment

Peer support for doctoral students meets emotional and cultural needs outside power relations imposed by institutional structures and authority figures.

I was recently invited to contribute a blog post to the Trust Me! blog, an amazing resource for research supervisor development, helmed by Dr Kay Guccione, Chair of the University of Sheffield Mentoring Network. My post is based on a recent article I wrote about how peer support and student advocacy are important resources for supporting international (indeed, all) doctoral students. The original post is re-produced here with kind permission from Kay Guccione.

[Journal article ref: Lee, S. (2017). Peer Support for International Doctoral Students in Managing Supervision Relationships. Journal of International Students, 7(4), 1096–1103. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1035971]

~~~~~~~~

I write from the perspective of a former postgraduate student leader (peer-mentoring others) and an international doctoral student. Based on my personal doctoral experiences, and interactions with fellow doctoral students, I share how peer support addresses supervision-related issues that are not easily met by administrative processes or supervisors themselves.

In the New Zealand context, the early period of one’s PhD candidature is ‘conditional’ and the candidate has to prepare a research proposal (or report), and a research ethics application if applicable, to be approved by the end of 6 months (extendable to 9 months). Thus, the most important milestone of a first-year PhD student was reaching ‘confirmed enrolment’. The stress of not seeming to make progress in meeting that milestone is compounded for international students who face family, societal, and/or financial pressure to succeed.

The stress of possible failure, as I have experienced for myself, comes about from supervision practices that do not provide encouragement to the developing researcher, and/or clear guidance for the documentation required for confirmation. Students who are new to the country and the institutional culture may be trying to make sense of their supervisors’ communication style and unspoken expectations. One may be trying very hard to read between the lines, while respecting the supervisors’ authority, and at the same time, wondering how far, and how best to assert one’s autonomy and epistemological perspective. Such negotiations may even continue past the confirmed enrolment stage and into the unfolding doctoral journey.

Across self-help guides and well-meaning (or maybe just mean) advice, such worries are often dismissed as ‘normal’ or somewhat needing to be better managed by the student. Rare is the response that asks supervisors to take greater responsibility in engaging with their students, especially those who are negotiating with intersecting demands of cultural ‘adaptation’, scholarly independence, and personal pressures of dealing with failure (however defined by the individual).

In my role as a postgraduate student representative at the university, I regularly engaged with international doctoral students. After I stepped down from the leadership position, I continued to mentor peers as and when the need arose. Having gone through a fairly rough first year, but coming out stronger at the end of it, provided me the insight to assist my peers in making sense of their experiences. I had also personally been on the receiving end of constructive advice from a more experienced peer. Had it not been for her regular following up on my situation, I might not have taken action to address my own well-being as a doctoral student.

In my conversations with fellow doctoral students, the issues they raised was more often than not related to the supervision relationship or supervision/communication practices. I usually respond by pointing out the various institutional structures that provide support for doctoral students. While many students had some idea of the hierarchy and reporting lines, few were prepared to use official routes of seeking redress. The suspicion of the efficacy of bureaucratic intervention was one reason; not wishing to expend additional emotional and mental energy was another; avoiding the embarrassment and shame of being exposed was also a likely reason if admitted. We would then discuss communication strategies, talk through possible outcomes, and debate on what a best case scenario would look like. Sometimes they concluded that institutional intervention was necessary. At other times, they chose to ‘wait and see’. It was also useful for us to rehearse what they wished to say to supervisors or other authority figures. Our conversations, done in private, did not promise to make things perfect. If anything, it reinforced the reality of imperfect but negotiable supervision experiences.

The doctoral journey is notorious for being isolating and emotionally draining. Institutions, especially at the faculty level, need to make concerted efforts to encourage peer interactions and peer mentorship so PhD students have opportunities to consult, debate and consider possibilities regarding supervision issues in a safe and supportive environment. As an international doctoral student, I have experienced and observed the benefits of peer support, especially when institutional structures and authority figures are not able to satisfactorily meet emotional and cultural needs.

~~~~~~~~

Academic Identity / Higher Education / Internationalisation / Phd

International Doctoral Students as Diasporic Academics

8 December 201710 March 2025Sherrie Lee3 Comments

dandelion-333643_1920

I first heard the term ‘diaspora academics’ at Wendy Larner’s keynote speech at the 2016 ISANA International Education Association Conference in Wellington. Against the backdrop of the internationalisation of higher education, Larner presented an argument about the increasing importance of diasporic academics, that is, those who have multiple national affiliations. Examples of diasporic academics include researchers from one country based in another country working on a collaborative project; an academic from one country relocating to another country; as well as research students from one country carrying out research in another country, or travelling between countries for research purposes. These academics or researchers who stay on more permanently in the host country are known as diasporic academics.

Larner argued that diasporic academics are valuable in advancing universities’ internationalisation strategies and policies. They are valuable because they act as transnational knowledge brokers or academic intermediaries. They broker international relationships between countries by using “their experiential understandings, linguistic skills and ability to read cultural nuance by providing insider accounts” (Larner, 2015, p. 202).

Larner also highlighted that a significant portion of diasporic academics are former international doctoral students who subsequently established their career in the host country. While she did not elaborate on this particular group, Larner’s presentation did get me thinking about whether I, and others, consider international doctoral students as valuable diasporic academics.

The thought of international doctoral students as diasporic academics provoked both excitement and disappointment in me. As an international doctoral student myself, I was thrilled by the idea that I could be considered valuable to my host institution. But the excitement quickly gave way to the day-to-day realities. Instead of being engaged in some cross-cultural understanding between my professional and research experiences and that of the host institutional community, interactions with domestic peers and established academics and researchers were hit and miss occasions in the absence of an authentic community of practice. These nagging feelings resonated with my fellow international doctoral students, often in private or quiet conversation.

Then came along an opportunity to articulate those nagging feelings in a more coherent fashion at a conference presentation. What resulted was a well-received presentation at the 2017 NZARE (New Zealand Association for Research in Education) Conference, as well as an article based on the presentation.

In both the presentation and the article, I share my own experiences and observations of how international doctoral students do not seem to be meaningfully integrated into the larger academic community, but instead, remain within ‘international only’ circles.

Nonetheless, I remain hopeful that our value as diasporic academics can be realised through the indigenous Māori concept of mannakitanga, which means “… mutual care and respect for people, honouring one another or power sharing…” (Kukutai & Rata, 2017, p. 41). As I conclude in the article, if we truly value mannakitanga, then integrating international doctoral students into the fabric of university life would be less a burden and simply a way of doing things.

References

Kukutai, T., & Rata, A. (2017). From mainstream to Manaaki: Indigenising our approach to immigration. In D. Hall (ed.), Fair borders? Migration policy in the twenty-first century (pp. 26–45). Wellington, New Zealand: Bridget Williams Books.

Larner, W. (2015). Globalising knowledge networks: Universities, diaspora strategies, and academic intermediaries. Geoforum, 59, 197–205. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.10.006

Academic Identity / Higher Education / Phd

From PhD to professional: Seeking mentors, finding brokers

11 July 201710 March 2025Sherrie LeeLeave a comment

Sharing a personal journey of seeking mentors but finding mentors instead.

Pursuing a doctoral degree for most is not just about following one’s passion, but is likely to be motivated by a desire for a career in academia or research. However, finding an academic teaching or research position is increasingly difficult, not just in New Zealand but also in Australia and elsewhere. As a result, PhDers are often encouraged to think about their ‘transferrable skills’ and look at non-academic options. Regardless of whether one chooses the academic or non-academic route, moving from PhD to professional is more than filling out an application form. Developing an understanding of possible future careers and taking steps to be employable are crucial. While there may be guide books, seminars and career services to draw from, the most valuable resource, I believe, are mentors – those who have been there, done that, and offer advice that meets your particular needs and aspirations.

As an international doctoral student seeking career opportunities in a new country, searching for mentors seemed like an impossible task. For one, I didn’t have any established social networks in New Zealand. Secondly, at least within my faculty, there didn’t seem to be a culture which encouraged doctoral students to engage with faculty staff or the wider disciplinary community. Unless you had a pro-active supervisor, or knew how to get into the inner circles of your field, important opportunities remained invisible. This reality dawned on me early on and I began to consciously seek out individuals and interest groups that aligned with my research interests, in the hope of finding mentors.

I joined one particular research group and made an effort to attend its meetings and presentations as often as I could. After a few months of being an active participant, I was asked to help coordinate its meetings. Through that role, I interacted with a few academics who were in a field I considered as a career possibility. However, to approach these academics to ask them to become mentors was quite another matter. We did not meet in person as much as we interacted through email, since we were in different departments or different organisations altogether. Nonetheless, the occasional conversations over coffee or in a corner away from the crowd were helpful in some ways. For example, I gained an insight into academic culture in New Zealand (political and precarious!), and was able to ask one to be a referee on my CV (but as yet this hasn’t landed me a job!).

I also followed the widely promoted advice in books and from the mouths of career advisers – I attended conferences. Conferences are often touted as prime networking opportunities. But as I soon found out, for a conference newbie, networking was (at best) a few good conversations without any promise. This was particularly true for conferences that already had regular attendees. These regulars were part of an existing academic or professional community who were more interested in renewing ties and meeting important contacts, and seldom interested in making connections with those at the periphery. As challenging as it was for an outsider to break into a fraternity, I finally found a conference that made the challenge less difficult. This particular conference had a session reserved for doctoral students’ research, and included a workshop tailored for doctoral students. At least for a few hours in a three-day conference, there was a deliberate attempt at recognising those at the periphery of an established community of academics and practitioners. The academics who facilitated these sessions were friendly, helpful and inspiring. However, again, there were some barriers in approaching them to be mentors. They were there at the conference for a particular purpose and only for a limited time. They were not part of my regular and immediate environment. Most importantly, they had no obligations towards me and neither could I expect any.

By the start of my third year of PhD study, after having been involved several research interest groups, symposiums and conferences, I started to evaluate my mentoring-seeking efforts. What had become of these academic acquaintances? Could any of them cross into the ‘mentor’ zone? Mentorship, even in its simplest form, had to be intentionally and willingly done as part of an ongoing relationship in a shared context (see this resource on mentoring from the RSNZ). Why then bother chasing after these relationships that could take far more time to build than it would take to simply complete my PhD? Why not embrace the precarious and fragmented nature of academia, or many other contexts for that matter?

Given my frustration after my unsuccessful efforts to pursue a formal mentoring relationship, it was ironic that that my own PhD research was on informallearning and I had used the concept of brokering to understand how first year international students strategically approached peers and others for academic help. Despite the overtones of a task-oriented transaction, brokering was what I had been engaging in all along – the very thing I had mistaken for failed attempts at accessing mentoring. I had been doing the right things, but calling them by the wrong title.

I realised I had already cultivated several brokers over the past two years – individuals from specialised fields or who held particular positions, who provided useful responses to specific questions or predicaments. These brokers were insiders in the fields of my potential future career. I communicated with them as and when I needed to, sometimes in person, sometimes through email, but often through social media for those who were comfortably connected with me in those online spaces.

With this epiphany, I now have a different attitude towards mentorship. While I still recognise the importance of having a more formal mentor, I no longer have it as part of a to-do or wish list. I now view it as a bonus. It may happen that some of my brokers will evolve to become mentors in the future. But for this season of preparing to transition from PhD to professional, I appreciate the brokers who have already become authentic social and professional connections.