University: Grad School Applications, Languages & You (First Nations & Asian Languages).
12 October 2017 [link youtube]
ADVICE NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR!!!!
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so I just did a 30-minute video talking
about First Nations Cree Ajab way languages indigenous Canada and you can see in that video how much I care about the topic in the past I decided to devote the rest of my life to it and then I decided I had to find something else to do with the rest of my life because there was no way for me to move forward with it in Canadian emia so in our own chit chat this brought up the question of how do you find options for graduate school ma PhD a lot of this would be true even of a BA how do you find these career paths what would you do with it after you got the diploma and you were basically asking what would I do today if I want to get back into First Nations languages and studies what have you I want to say first before we're getting any technical details I think it's really profoundly problematic that today this is really put entirely on the shoulders of the student and I I have I have white privilege like I have a huge advantage over other students in doing this I can put on a suit and tie and walk into any university in the world and make an appointment to talk to a professor and be taken seriously my voice right now the voice you're hearing think about how much harder that is to do if you're a Pakistani immigrants you speak with an accent think about which others do if you're born Cree or a chip way or you know you have other disadvantages my manner of speaking it's funny anyway in the past I was involved Buddhist studies people talked about me as if I was at some disadvantage because I was too abrasive or too too forthright that's supposed to walk initials and I would say vegetable no I have huge advantage that I'd been all over the world I'd visited universities all over the world in Asia in Europe in North America and I'm treated with a lot of respect partly on the basis of my research partly on the basis of my experience better but partly it's just the swag like you know what I mean that's it not everybody can do that not everybody can walk in and even if the secretary treats you like crap say hey excuse me you know I'm here to make an appointment you know what I mean you whatever it is you're used to being in a in an institutional context and hustling not every week either but I have decades of experience of this but I think in the past decades ago professors understood was really part of their job whether or not they formally had the title of graduate advisor to really advise their students about what their options were for MAS for PhDs for other things and for the professor to be the conduit of information for the professor to talk to the other universities and say well look I've got a kid here about a candidate who wants to do this or that kind of research or has this ad that kind of background their interest and today it's really left up to the student alone with Google the student alone with email the student alone with Wikipedia to look around and find these things I found that even when I went in and talked to graduate student advisors or student about the different people whose job it was to help and again I have a huge advantage I really have befriended a huge network professors when I was at University of Victoria the professors weren't just providing me advice like any other student they were really taking time and thinking about it was still completely useless I mean still came up with absolutely zero viable options the only recommendation I got from my professors at University of Victoria was to join the CIA does again and again they told me to join the C I felt like you ever feel like you're living in a bad sitcom you know what I mean it's like you're going around talking these people it's like have you considered the CIA it's like is it my hair is that like you know so yeah I believe me I'm not insulted I mean they're not telling me to go work at McDonald's or something but you know anyway weird I never got a single positive result of that but yeah it now falls in the students shoulders to go around and look at these things email response like these are the requirements this is right you know here's our informational session schedule please show up at the next informational session and you'll get all you know you'll get all the information you need I did that for nursing and did that for you that's gene I did that for speech pathology I did that for counseling you know I did that for and did you do face to face conversations with your own professors at your undergraduate university or no did you go in and talk to them okay no because because you weren't specialized enough okay yeah the University other ones who didn't have any of those programs just like specifically those programs okay for that reason okay okay okay because they didn't have expertise in the areas you were you were interested okay so that's interesting because I was gonna say I mean a lot of students don't feel comfortable sitting down I'm talking to professor that way yeah and you know on both sides you have to go you do have to build up the comfortable size you have to make the professor comfortable too you can't just walk in as a complete stranger and you know yeah at those informational sessions they were like well if you have any questions at the end you can ask me yeah and so I would say most of the time it was like you need to talk to need to talk to the university about the actual requirements for getting into this program like but I mean the advice I'm normally looking for is is this program good and if so what is it good at and what you know it's more nuanced information I'm looking for I'm looking for off-the-record recommendations and warnings and that kind of thing yeah but I can tell you in Canada the professors don't see that as their role they're not prepared to give that advice and they're they're generally you know really bad at it you know so we're surviving with Cree and First Nations but I mean like the kind of mission you need and professors here when China really have it I kind of feel like I should have put this at the start of the video but you know one of the things that really struck me when I dealt with professors in China in the Chinese speaking world so it's including Hong Kong and Taiwan about obviously China the level of Guana see the level of right okay silly to give an example if I talked to one professor in Taiwan and one professor in China so talk to a professor of anthropology in Taiwan they know of every other professor in the discipline and what I say they know of them they know who they are they know what their area of expertise is what kind of research they do what kind of research they don't do they have that kind of knowledge of them they may not know them personally they can call in a favor but they have met them and they're there in contact so when I talk to one professor in Taiwan it was as effective as talking to like 30 professors in Canada you'd really be getting use information and here in China I've less experience but seven both professors in anthropology and professors in Buddhism they would know what the options are so if you were a student in that situation you could talk to one professor and they'd be able to say you okay well this is the kind of work you want to do these are your strengths that we know so this is what you need to know this is what you know they'd have a and in candidates the opposite extreme when you talk to one professor in Canada you're talking to one cul-de-sac one dead end and nothing they have no access to those they don't know anything else they don't even know the other department other professors and their own departments around the own their own their own University and I don't think I've mentioned this on youtube before but one of my professors at University of Victoria and I have respect for him and he also has respect for me after I'd meet after he maybe read two of my two papers that submitted them and you know so he knew me he'd seen my resume and he did he respected my work a lot he respected my intelligence he respected the papers had given him I said to him well look you know I'm I'm out here trying to find a master's degree program so you know do you wanna supervise maybe I could do it here you know here at University Victoria I could just progress on to doing a master's program and this was his answer he sat there and he said every single graduate student have had I tracked their progress after they finished this diploma not a single one has gone on to full-time employment you know of any kind of it of any kind and that's you know this is so this is the thing you've got to ask the right questions when you're out there seeking advice and professors you've got to ask their questions you've also got to be willing to really hear their answer when they're giving it to you like I took that with all due gravity and a lot of people especially if you're a younger person maybe you're 21 years old or something I see a lot of people be like oh no no no no it'll be oh oh it's wonderful or they'll just you know reiterate vague platitudes about how wonderful the university is or the value of education how wonderful something is in general it's like no this this dude is being as honest with you as he can be right like he's not telling you this is a bad program my life is a lie it's going close right but you know he's coming as close as he can to really telling you don't enroll here it's a bad idea and you know yeah so you know I took that seriously now that same professor he probably would be happy to supervise me but you know there's probably a lot that's what he can tell me there are probably other things he can't tell me so again you've already heard this example but you know University of Minnesota when I was asked her in there about First Nations oh I have another good example too at a Algoma University but you know these are different universities that first Asian programs one of the main things I was trying to ascertain when I got touched them eyes look do you guys really teach this language really really like it's it's very easy to put a language on the well on the list of courses say you've got in the program what's what really is the situation and University of Minnesota I talked to one of the older members of faculty and after he'd talk to me for a little bit he said look the opportunity here university Minnesota really was a few decades ago today we don't do this thing anymore that is gold that's exactly the kind of information you're you're mining for you know you have to know who to ask you have to know the right questions asked and then you have to be able to take the answer when that gives you you know don't say back oh no University of Minnesota has a great reputation in this area of studies I'm sure a wonderful take my $40,000 no you got to hear that even if it's if it's subtle you got to know you got to know when to shut up and and feel with the full gravity that they may be hinting at or telling you an understated way because you if they if they tell you the truth in an e-mail you can screenshot the email and send to their boss or something you know what I mean like if they say to you this department is a disaster which it may be you know whatever or they say hey look you know actually the guy who took over that program is a religious yeah it's great for a frickin Young University you don't know right like you know what what are the issues what's what's being unspoken there or something right and with alcohol my University it was it was deep into email correspondence and I remember they wrote back to eventually and just said you had talked to several different people several different professors and they said look what you're seeking in terms of being able to just take courses and Cree is so sorry in that case it's a jib way take courses in ship way and learn the Ojibwe language Anderson Ave we want to be able to offer that we hope to be able to offer that in the next years but right now we really can't you know we really don't we're not delivering that's it you know I'd say say no more so yeah you get you get different person different people I'm in a really weird position in terms of the two areas I might have options in or that I might I might be tempted to still go back at a PhD in AI I mean I know what I'm missing I've spent so many years asking those questions and going to visit campuses and meeting with professors and again asking for those indirect endorsements you know maybe someone at the University of British Columbia can't be honest with you about what's good and bad about their department but somebody at an adjacent University somebody next door you know what I mean can can say well look you know it's it's not so great or no they don't really do you know what you want to do or something whatever whatever the problem is and sometimes you have to make these judgments just on the basis of absence of praise you know what I mean where it's like well look this is a political science department or this is a this is a you know but a Studies department or agency a department and nobody's ever told me anything good about it and that can be very significant especially if you directly ask a professor to endorse it or not if you say is this good or not simply if they don't say anything positive about it you've got to want to take that seriously cuz they're they're not in a position to say to you well you know the problem is you know old man McCloskey or something you know he's nuts and he's tearing the department apart they probably can't tell you the inside gossip although plenty of the time I get the inside gossip too when you were looking into a University of Victoria for learning Chinese did you know about the issues because you talked about it recently that they condensed a whole right year into one so with with Chinese they took a year well okay so I guess they doubled it twice they took they took the amount of time they cut it in half and cut it in half again and then with Japanese they cut it in half again so it was a doubling process but the Japanese was even worse than the Chinese it was it was ridiculous what they did right so like an impossible right and I put together a formal presentation about that to the Ombudsman I took that to the D the Ombudsman and said look this is the number of new words they're expected to memorize in a week in Chinese in this course because this used to be over three months and now it's one week or something you know the compression so ridiculous so I answer your initiation so how did I do it ultimately the question about whether or not you Vic was a good bet came down to email with one professor and that was the professor the senior professor teaching the Chinese language courses and she reassured me she said no we have a good program and the so it works in this the layout and so on and what she told me I mean she really only knew about the course she taught herself however I talked to an official advisor someone whose full-time job is just being a new student advisor and everything that person told me was a lie was false yeah I don't know to what extent that was intentional her competence I mixed of the two or a hundred percent in confidence but that was where every single thing that person told me was false and then when I well and then when I got there but those questions that woman wasn't wasn't wasn't specifically for the Asian Studies department but a lot of it really impacted my life because it was like okay so we know he's fine because it was like I already have one bachelor's degree if I transfer the credits does that mean I can do this concurrently you know there were technical questions and I assumed I would go there and I would just take Chinese courses and have a part-time job and when I got there was like no that's not possible you have to be a full-time student with a really intense it was way more intense than normal undergraduate study load you have to do a study load where you're doing all 400 level courses all the time your whole and it's it is just too much work the workload you need a mix of 400 level in one of the level courses just nerves the amount of reading and writing involved and you know I did handle it because I was up but was 36 years old or something I was very disciplined and I had no distractions I remember I got a big laugh out of one of my professors I said look I can cope with this I don't even have a girlfriend some students have one girlfriend some students have two girlfriends but like you you've got to set up the workload in a way that you can manage it but you know when I was explained to them the amount of time and what-have-you but yeah however the short answer is the University of Victoria that decision ultimately was maced up based on limited information informational website talking to this one advisor who told me nothing but falsehoods whether intentional or unintentional I've still have no idea and then directly talking with the professor or the senior professor of Chinese who who taught you any self yeah that was all that was what I could do you know yes it can still be a disaster and in many ways that's right yeah that's true yeah so that's that's what I'm trying to avoid yeah and I think I've mentioned you the example of one of the universities that have program in Thai this is a tha I the Thai language and when I got the guy on the phone that was an email we had email first and I just asked simple questions like well I've looked at the faculty list for the department's who is teaching Thai he refused to answer the question I didn't just ask like maybe three I'm sorry cuz you know then he said something irrelevant back as I'm sorry I'm asking you who is the professor who teaches the Thai language classes and he was so fuss Kotori innovations I said look I've looked at because you know with any list of faculty you know Department like that doesn't have that many it's not like they have 20 people in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies there are only so many it's very clear okay this person does Indonesia and this person doesn't Malaysia and this is the one person who does Thailand it was a cool and you know I was asking probably said and I think I said to him oh do you teach it yourself like you know it's another professor or what and his refusal was so strange to me I interpret at the time as meeting they don't really teach the Thai language at all but I was wrong he's white teacher i a later photo from another professor when I when I when I reported this oh he's embarrassed cuz it's his wife and I assume his wife doesn't have a PhD or wasn't fully qualified I assume that was the that was just very often the case in western universities being married to someone qualifies you I was offered a position with only a bachelor's degree teaching at the University where my wife was a professor just because I was married to her so there's a lot a lot of corruption in that kind in Western definitely in in Canada and in the United Kingdom and I don't know I can't talk with the United States so it definitely can to the United Kingdom's part of our part of our proud Anglican tradition I guess of English being academia so look so it's completely hopeless I mean First Nations is a really strange situation because it's not cash-poor there's a lot of money in the game there's infinite research funding there's infinite project sorry pardon me project funding I was gonna say program and then I suppose that's what I have there's a preeminent program funding its infinite project funding there's there's so much money for anyone with a legitimate project to stand up and get it and there's a lot of government support now to compensate for decades of neglect what there is is a crucial lack of of talent there's a crucial lack of people to teach you or work with or foster you or answer the answer the phone call where's the email so you know how do you get ahead you know for me you know the the fundamental log jam is I don't think I would have any legitimacy and First Nations if I don't become fluent in a First Nations language to me that's that's very fundamental because otherwise I'm just so I'm like going so and there are no and there are people who would say oh well I got my first diplomas political science so why don't you just get a degree in political science about helping First Nations design to me no it's not acceptable same way if you want to be involved in politics of China you've got to learn the Chinese language if you want to be involved the politics of the curry or the edge of way you got to learn a language like Korea or jib what you know your choice or if you'll want to do mohawk or Inuit your choice I mean that's a very serious barrier and entry but the situation program by program Department up by Department can totally change in five years the Department I was just at at University Victoria is currently in receivership which means the professor's within the Department refused to get along so much they can't appoint who's in charge they tried to appoint someone external in charge and that failed so like the department is falling apart where the season is a disaster right and you may you may not know it as a student that does impact you the department is a disaster this is this is not secret information so I can say this on the Internet's that the department has fallen apart this way the last time I asked that was right into the department I said oh so who's the current chair who's the core head of the department and I got a message back explaining well hmm there is no chair currently you know one professor can totally define a dominant department especially in a specific language or specific discipline whether that's curry or a jib way or Thai or Chinese or anything else most of these fields unless you're talking about a huge department unless you happen to be at a university of where you know the Department of Biology is 300 professors or something but most of times come into it to a small number of people and you know to make that decision today all of it is on the students shoulders you got to go there right the emails make the phone calls you have to somehow get in touch the professors ask the right questions and then be willing to hear it when they when they give you those answers as of this moment yeah okay so this is the other point you know professors who I knew well I have sometimes asked them do you know one good option under this heading so the First Nations is a really powerful example of that because there is a very small university and for it's right by the border between United States and Canada so I forget I think it's in Minnesota but it's in one of those it's in one of those Great Lakes states so there was this small University of small college that's strongly tied to local First Nations people basically a jib way and some other people there and I discovered that this university exists just because of a they have a publication that the magazine and at that time I was going through everything that had ever been published in or about Cree in a cheap way and no different places in States than the American side of the border so I found this small college and I remember I emailed some people I had like a jib weigh discussion group I emailed about it I said oh you know um is this a g-way publication from this small town from this small small college and I got emails back you know I mean everyone's a snob it's okay but I got emails back saying like how could you not know about this college they're like one of the most important places for for the edge of oil language and so on and I wrote back and I said look I'm gonna tell you something I talked face to face and by email by phone with every single major professor in this field and I asked them do you know one good option for studying a Ghibli and none of them mentioned this college none of them I brainstorm with you class so if you are telling me this is a great college or a good college or even an adequate college to study a jib way--at I have a really serious counterfactual claim here I have reasons to be to be skeptical because when I asked the professors who are in that field who are lifetime specialists not one of them said oh yeah I know a good place for you to go in and learn a jib way right now you could say that about Korean in other situations but in Asian Studies that cuts even deeper because theoretically there are so many institutions in Asian Studies and when I was asking professors well do you know even one good place and some of the conversation is do you know one good place for an ma PhD within Canada but sometimes it was global or centers specifically like looked you know one to place in Japan but I mean these were really broad questions and where I'm face-to-face the president presser sits there for a while and thinks about it and there is either no answer or they say something after thinking about it for a while like did you ever apply to join the CIA seriously 1 1 1 professor I remember he said have you considered going to business school getting degree you know business management degree you know you've got to take the significance of that you know what I mean don't it's so easy for people to you or themselves he's like oh I'm sure there were lots of great options I'm not sure and there are not lots of great option and I'm someone who's now been doing this kind of low-level research for like 15 years continuously I don't want to count the number of years of talking to professor's in these in these different fields and yeah sometimes you get a really clear answer like the door is closed against you or the doors open and they say you're welcome come on in but a lot of the time what you get are mixed signals it's like well you can get an MA here you can get a PhD here but and that's where you really need to try to get other sources of of intelligence you know it's tough and today I think a hundred percent of the burden is on the students I think the professor's I was asking that way I don't think they're used to being asked that question they don't see that as part of their role of fire they don't see their role as finding and creating opportunities for for students so and it is normally if you read their job description especially the professor that has graduate advisor and they're in there in their job title it really is so yeah we'll see I mean we're looking now at such a crazy variety of options including going to a practical college and getting degrees as Baker's learning to attorney had a baked bread learning at a bake a cake and the thing is for me that still doesn't preclude the possibility getting a PhD because for me if in the next 10 years I can work as a baker to work as a caterer can work in a kitchen and I can easily get a PhD in my spare time but I need an institution to help me doing anything that's a wrap
about First Nations Cree Ajab way languages indigenous Canada and you can see in that video how much I care about the topic in the past I decided to devote the rest of my life to it and then I decided I had to find something else to do with the rest of my life because there was no way for me to move forward with it in Canadian emia so in our own chit chat this brought up the question of how do you find options for graduate school ma PhD a lot of this would be true even of a BA how do you find these career paths what would you do with it after you got the diploma and you were basically asking what would I do today if I want to get back into First Nations languages and studies what have you I want to say first before we're getting any technical details I think it's really profoundly problematic that today this is really put entirely on the shoulders of the student and I I have I have white privilege like I have a huge advantage over other students in doing this I can put on a suit and tie and walk into any university in the world and make an appointment to talk to a professor and be taken seriously my voice right now the voice you're hearing think about how much harder that is to do if you're a Pakistani immigrants you speak with an accent think about which others do if you're born Cree or a chip way or you know you have other disadvantages my manner of speaking it's funny anyway in the past I was involved Buddhist studies people talked about me as if I was at some disadvantage because I was too abrasive or too too forthright that's supposed to walk initials and I would say vegetable no I have huge advantage that I'd been all over the world I'd visited universities all over the world in Asia in Europe in North America and I'm treated with a lot of respect partly on the basis of my research partly on the basis of my experience better but partly it's just the swag like you know what I mean that's it not everybody can do that not everybody can walk in and even if the secretary treats you like crap say hey excuse me you know I'm here to make an appointment you know what I mean you whatever it is you're used to being in a in an institutional context and hustling not every week either but I have decades of experience of this but I think in the past decades ago professors understood was really part of their job whether or not they formally had the title of graduate advisor to really advise their students about what their options were for MAS for PhDs for other things and for the professor to be the conduit of information for the professor to talk to the other universities and say well look I've got a kid here about a candidate who wants to do this or that kind of research or has this ad that kind of background their interest and today it's really left up to the student alone with Google the student alone with email the student alone with Wikipedia to look around and find these things I found that even when I went in and talked to graduate student advisors or student about the different people whose job it was to help and again I have a huge advantage I really have befriended a huge network professors when I was at University of Victoria the professors weren't just providing me advice like any other student they were really taking time and thinking about it was still completely useless I mean still came up with absolutely zero viable options the only recommendation I got from my professors at University of Victoria was to join the CIA does again and again they told me to join the C I felt like you ever feel like you're living in a bad sitcom you know what I mean it's like you're going around talking these people it's like have you considered the CIA it's like is it my hair is that like you know so yeah I believe me I'm not insulted I mean they're not telling me to go work at McDonald's or something but you know anyway weird I never got a single positive result of that but yeah it now falls in the students shoulders to go around and look at these things email response like these are the requirements this is right you know here's our informational session schedule please show up at the next informational session and you'll get all you know you'll get all the information you need I did that for nursing and did that for you that's gene I did that for speech pathology I did that for counseling you know I did that for and did you do face to face conversations with your own professors at your undergraduate university or no did you go in and talk to them okay no because because you weren't specialized enough okay yeah the University other ones who didn't have any of those programs just like specifically those programs okay for that reason okay okay okay because they didn't have expertise in the areas you were you were interested okay so that's interesting because I was gonna say I mean a lot of students don't feel comfortable sitting down I'm talking to professor that way yeah and you know on both sides you have to go you do have to build up the comfortable size you have to make the professor comfortable too you can't just walk in as a complete stranger and you know yeah at those informational sessions they were like well if you have any questions at the end you can ask me yeah and so I would say most of the time it was like you need to talk to need to talk to the university about the actual requirements for getting into this program like but I mean the advice I'm normally looking for is is this program good and if so what is it good at and what you know it's more nuanced information I'm looking for I'm looking for off-the-record recommendations and warnings and that kind of thing yeah but I can tell you in Canada the professors don't see that as their role they're not prepared to give that advice and they're they're generally you know really bad at it you know so we're surviving with Cree and First Nations but I mean like the kind of mission you need and professors here when China really have it I kind of feel like I should have put this at the start of the video but you know one of the things that really struck me when I dealt with professors in China in the Chinese speaking world so it's including Hong Kong and Taiwan about obviously China the level of Guana see the level of right okay silly to give an example if I talked to one professor in Taiwan and one professor in China so talk to a professor of anthropology in Taiwan they know of every other professor in the discipline and what I say they know of them they know who they are they know what their area of expertise is what kind of research they do what kind of research they don't do they have that kind of knowledge of them they may not know them personally they can call in a favor but they have met them and they're there in contact so when I talk to one professor in Taiwan it was as effective as talking to like 30 professors in Canada you'd really be getting use information and here in China I've less experience but seven both professors in anthropology and professors in Buddhism they would know what the options are so if you were a student in that situation you could talk to one professor and they'd be able to say you okay well this is the kind of work you want to do these are your strengths that we know so this is what you need to know this is what you know they'd have a and in candidates the opposite extreme when you talk to one professor in Canada you're talking to one cul-de-sac one dead end and nothing they have no access to those they don't know anything else they don't even know the other department other professors and their own departments around the own their own their own University and I don't think I've mentioned this on youtube before but one of my professors at University of Victoria and I have respect for him and he also has respect for me after I'd meet after he maybe read two of my two papers that submitted them and you know so he knew me he'd seen my resume and he did he respected my work a lot he respected my intelligence he respected the papers had given him I said to him well look you know I'm I'm out here trying to find a master's degree program so you know do you wanna supervise maybe I could do it here you know here at University Victoria I could just progress on to doing a master's program and this was his answer he sat there and he said every single graduate student have had I tracked their progress after they finished this diploma not a single one has gone on to full-time employment you know of any kind of it of any kind and that's you know this is so this is the thing you've got to ask the right questions when you're out there seeking advice and professors you've got to ask their questions you've also got to be willing to really hear their answer when they're giving it to you like I took that with all due gravity and a lot of people especially if you're a younger person maybe you're 21 years old or something I see a lot of people be like oh no no no no it'll be oh oh it's wonderful or they'll just you know reiterate vague platitudes about how wonderful the university is or the value of education how wonderful something is in general it's like no this this dude is being as honest with you as he can be right like he's not telling you this is a bad program my life is a lie it's going close right but you know he's coming as close as he can to really telling you don't enroll here it's a bad idea and you know yeah so you know I took that seriously now that same professor he probably would be happy to supervise me but you know there's probably a lot that's what he can tell me there are probably other things he can't tell me so again you've already heard this example but you know University of Minnesota when I was asked her in there about First Nations oh I have another good example too at a Algoma University but you know these are different universities that first Asian programs one of the main things I was trying to ascertain when I got touched them eyes look do you guys really teach this language really really like it's it's very easy to put a language on the well on the list of courses say you've got in the program what's what really is the situation and University of Minnesota I talked to one of the older members of faculty and after he'd talk to me for a little bit he said look the opportunity here university Minnesota really was a few decades ago today we don't do this thing anymore that is gold that's exactly the kind of information you're you're mining for you know you have to know who to ask you have to know the right questions asked and then you have to be able to take the answer when that gives you you know don't say back oh no University of Minnesota has a great reputation in this area of studies I'm sure a wonderful take my $40,000 no you got to hear that even if it's if it's subtle you got to know you got to know when to shut up and and feel with the full gravity that they may be hinting at or telling you an understated way because you if they if they tell you the truth in an e-mail you can screenshot the email and send to their boss or something you know what I mean like if they say to you this department is a disaster which it may be you know whatever or they say hey look you know actually the guy who took over that program is a religious yeah it's great for a frickin Young University you don't know right like you know what what are the issues what's what's being unspoken there or something right and with alcohol my University it was it was deep into email correspondence and I remember they wrote back to eventually and just said you had talked to several different people several different professors and they said look what you're seeking in terms of being able to just take courses and Cree is so sorry in that case it's a jib way take courses in ship way and learn the Ojibwe language Anderson Ave we want to be able to offer that we hope to be able to offer that in the next years but right now we really can't you know we really don't we're not delivering that's it you know I'd say say no more so yeah you get you get different person different people I'm in a really weird position in terms of the two areas I might have options in or that I might I might be tempted to still go back at a PhD in AI I mean I know what I'm missing I've spent so many years asking those questions and going to visit campuses and meeting with professors and again asking for those indirect endorsements you know maybe someone at the University of British Columbia can't be honest with you about what's good and bad about their department but somebody at an adjacent University somebody next door you know what I mean can can say well look you know it's it's not so great or no they don't really do you know what you want to do or something whatever whatever the problem is and sometimes you have to make these judgments just on the basis of absence of praise you know what I mean where it's like well look this is a political science department or this is a this is a you know but a Studies department or agency a department and nobody's ever told me anything good about it and that can be very significant especially if you directly ask a professor to endorse it or not if you say is this good or not simply if they don't say anything positive about it you've got to want to take that seriously cuz they're they're not in a position to say to you well you know the problem is you know old man McCloskey or something you know he's nuts and he's tearing the department apart they probably can't tell you the inside gossip although plenty of the time I get the inside gossip too when you were looking into a University of Victoria for learning Chinese did you know about the issues because you talked about it recently that they condensed a whole right year into one so with with Chinese they took a year well okay so I guess they doubled it twice they took they took the amount of time they cut it in half and cut it in half again and then with Japanese they cut it in half again so it was a doubling process but the Japanese was even worse than the Chinese it was it was ridiculous what they did right so like an impossible right and I put together a formal presentation about that to the Ombudsman I took that to the D the Ombudsman and said look this is the number of new words they're expected to memorize in a week in Chinese in this course because this used to be over three months and now it's one week or something you know the compression so ridiculous so I answer your initiation so how did I do it ultimately the question about whether or not you Vic was a good bet came down to email with one professor and that was the professor the senior professor teaching the Chinese language courses and she reassured me she said no we have a good program and the so it works in this the layout and so on and what she told me I mean she really only knew about the course she taught herself however I talked to an official advisor someone whose full-time job is just being a new student advisor and everything that person told me was a lie was false yeah I don't know to what extent that was intentional her competence I mixed of the two or a hundred percent in confidence but that was where every single thing that person told me was false and then when I well and then when I got there but those questions that woman wasn't wasn't wasn't specifically for the Asian Studies department but a lot of it really impacted my life because it was like okay so we know he's fine because it was like I already have one bachelor's degree if I transfer the credits does that mean I can do this concurrently you know there were technical questions and I assumed I would go there and I would just take Chinese courses and have a part-time job and when I got there was like no that's not possible you have to be a full-time student with a really intense it was way more intense than normal undergraduate study load you have to do a study load where you're doing all 400 level courses all the time your whole and it's it is just too much work the workload you need a mix of 400 level in one of the level courses just nerves the amount of reading and writing involved and you know I did handle it because I was up but was 36 years old or something I was very disciplined and I had no distractions I remember I got a big laugh out of one of my professors I said look I can cope with this I don't even have a girlfriend some students have one girlfriend some students have two girlfriends but like you you've got to set up the workload in a way that you can manage it but you know when I was explained to them the amount of time and what-have-you but yeah however the short answer is the University of Victoria that decision ultimately was maced up based on limited information informational website talking to this one advisor who told me nothing but falsehoods whether intentional or unintentional I've still have no idea and then directly talking with the professor or the senior professor of Chinese who who taught you any self yeah that was all that was what I could do you know yes it can still be a disaster and in many ways that's right yeah that's true yeah so that's that's what I'm trying to avoid yeah and I think I've mentioned you the example of one of the universities that have program in Thai this is a tha I the Thai language and when I got the guy on the phone that was an email we had email first and I just asked simple questions like well I've looked at the faculty list for the department's who is teaching Thai he refused to answer the question I didn't just ask like maybe three I'm sorry cuz you know then he said something irrelevant back as I'm sorry I'm asking you who is the professor who teaches the Thai language classes and he was so fuss Kotori innovations I said look I've looked at because you know with any list of faculty you know Department like that doesn't have that many it's not like they have 20 people in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies there are only so many it's very clear okay this person does Indonesia and this person doesn't Malaysia and this is the one person who does Thailand it was a cool and you know I was asking probably said and I think I said to him oh do you teach it yourself like you know it's another professor or what and his refusal was so strange to me I interpret at the time as meeting they don't really teach the Thai language at all but I was wrong he's white teacher i a later photo from another professor when I when I when I reported this oh he's embarrassed cuz it's his wife and I assume his wife doesn't have a PhD or wasn't fully qualified I assume that was the that was just very often the case in western universities being married to someone qualifies you I was offered a position with only a bachelor's degree teaching at the University where my wife was a professor just because I was married to her so there's a lot a lot of corruption in that kind in Western definitely in in Canada and in the United Kingdom and I don't know I can't talk with the United States so it definitely can to the United Kingdom's part of our part of our proud Anglican tradition I guess of English being academia so look so it's completely hopeless I mean First Nations is a really strange situation because it's not cash-poor there's a lot of money in the game there's infinite research funding there's infinite project sorry pardon me project funding I was gonna say program and then I suppose that's what I have there's a preeminent program funding its infinite project funding there's there's so much money for anyone with a legitimate project to stand up and get it and there's a lot of government support now to compensate for decades of neglect what there is is a crucial lack of of talent there's a crucial lack of people to teach you or work with or foster you or answer the answer the phone call where's the email so you know how do you get ahead you know for me you know the the fundamental log jam is I don't think I would have any legitimacy and First Nations if I don't become fluent in a First Nations language to me that's that's very fundamental because otherwise I'm just so I'm like going so and there are no and there are people who would say oh well I got my first diplomas political science so why don't you just get a degree in political science about helping First Nations design to me no it's not acceptable same way if you want to be involved in politics of China you've got to learn the Chinese language if you want to be involved the politics of the curry or the edge of way you got to learn a language like Korea or jib what you know your choice or if you'll want to do mohawk or Inuit your choice I mean that's a very serious barrier and entry but the situation program by program Department up by Department can totally change in five years the Department I was just at at University Victoria is currently in receivership which means the professor's within the Department refused to get along so much they can't appoint who's in charge they tried to appoint someone external in charge and that failed so like the department is falling apart where the season is a disaster right and you may you may not know it as a student that does impact you the department is a disaster this is this is not secret information so I can say this on the Internet's that the department has fallen apart this way the last time I asked that was right into the department I said oh so who's the current chair who's the core head of the department and I got a message back explaining well hmm there is no chair currently you know one professor can totally define a dominant department especially in a specific language or specific discipline whether that's curry or a jib way or Thai or Chinese or anything else most of these fields unless you're talking about a huge department unless you happen to be at a university of where you know the Department of Biology is 300 professors or something but most of times come into it to a small number of people and you know to make that decision today all of it is on the students shoulders you got to go there right the emails make the phone calls you have to somehow get in touch the professors ask the right questions and then be willing to hear it when they when they give you those answers as of this moment yeah okay so this is the other point you know professors who I knew well I have sometimes asked them do you know one good option under this heading so the First Nations is a really powerful example of that because there is a very small university and for it's right by the border between United States and Canada so I forget I think it's in Minnesota but it's in one of those it's in one of those Great Lakes states so there was this small University of small college that's strongly tied to local First Nations people basically a jib way and some other people there and I discovered that this university exists just because of a they have a publication that the magazine and at that time I was going through everything that had ever been published in or about Cree in a cheap way and no different places in States than the American side of the border so I found this small college and I remember I emailed some people I had like a jib weigh discussion group I emailed about it I said oh you know um is this a g-way publication from this small town from this small small college and I got emails back you know I mean everyone's a snob it's okay but I got emails back saying like how could you not know about this college they're like one of the most important places for for the edge of oil language and so on and I wrote back and I said look I'm gonna tell you something I talked face to face and by email by phone with every single major professor in this field and I asked them do you know one good option for studying a Ghibli and none of them mentioned this college none of them I brainstorm with you class so if you are telling me this is a great college or a good college or even an adequate college to study a jib way--at I have a really serious counterfactual claim here I have reasons to be to be skeptical because when I asked the professors who are in that field who are lifetime specialists not one of them said oh yeah I know a good place for you to go in and learn a jib way right now you could say that about Korean in other situations but in Asian Studies that cuts even deeper because theoretically there are so many institutions in Asian Studies and when I was asking professors well do you know even one good place and some of the conversation is do you know one good place for an ma PhD within Canada but sometimes it was global or centers specifically like looked you know one to place in Japan but I mean these were really broad questions and where I'm face-to-face the president presser sits there for a while and thinks about it and there is either no answer or they say something after thinking about it for a while like did you ever apply to join the CIA seriously 1 1 1 professor I remember he said have you considered going to business school getting degree you know business management degree you know you've got to take the significance of that you know what I mean don't it's so easy for people to you or themselves he's like oh I'm sure there were lots of great options I'm not sure and there are not lots of great option and I'm someone who's now been doing this kind of low-level research for like 15 years continuously I don't want to count the number of years of talking to professor's in these in these different fields and yeah sometimes you get a really clear answer like the door is closed against you or the doors open and they say you're welcome come on in but a lot of the time what you get are mixed signals it's like well you can get an MA here you can get a PhD here but and that's where you really need to try to get other sources of of intelligence you know it's tough and today I think a hundred percent of the burden is on the students I think the professor's I was asking that way I don't think they're used to being asked that question they don't see that as part of their role of fire they don't see their role as finding and creating opportunities for for students so and it is normally if you read their job description especially the professor that has graduate advisor and they're in there in their job title it really is so yeah we'll see I mean we're looking now at such a crazy variety of options including going to a practical college and getting degrees as Baker's learning to attorney had a baked bread learning at a bake a cake and the thing is for me that still doesn't preclude the possibility getting a PhD because for me if in the next 10 years I can work as a baker to work as a caterer can work in a kitchen and I can easily get a PhD in my spare time but I need an institution to help me doing anything that's a wrap