Tag: Regular Column

• Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect

  March 31, 2019 12:45 am Comments Off on Practice Doesn’t Make Perfect

  What is perfection? The Oxford Dictionary says that being perfect is to be free from any flaw or defect in condition or quality; that it’s a state of being faultless. For me, the idea of perfection has aspirational value but is a little counter-productive.
  Perfection is something which we struggle to put our finger on, but which is strangely familiar to us. It permeates through teachings of faith, themes of literature and the brushstrokes of art. Pop-culture though has really brought perfection to the forefront of our minds. Advertising selling us the ‘perfect’ lifestyle and simultaneously reinforcing our own sense of imperfection. But perfection is so often defined in the negative by expressing simply what it is not. Faith and religion, for example, articulate what is the divine by acknowledging and condemning our own imperfection.
  When we were young and starting to learn a new musical instrument, because our parents thought that it would make us smarter, or we had just started a new team sport, we were constantly subjected to the phrase ‘practice makes perfect.’ But, since perfection is an innately unattainable standard, what are we actually being taught to aim for?
  Towards the end of last year, I too was told to practice. A very seasoned editor said to me: ‘you need to just become comfortable with putting out articles that you’ve done your best on and are 80 percent happy with… and get over your perfectionism.’
  My desire for my writing to always be perfect, to project my ideal self constantly, had been preventing me from actually writing. I’d have an idea but then would abandon it because of my uncertainty over whether I could make it mind-blowingly awesome. Uncertainty about whether I could make it perfect.
  I was introduced to the idea that you should, as a general rule, become 80 percent happy with your work. The remaining 20 percent is significantly more challenging and is largely affected by factors outside of your control. These could be your physical health or your state of mind, or you might not ever get to 100 simply because of subjective standards.
  When I wrote my last column piece, some people gave me constructive feedback, some agreed with the sentiment and others dismissed my thoughts as part of my personality style. None of this was unexpected, nor was it unwelcome. But I achieved my goal to push through my perfectionism, and as a bonus, I was able to inspire a couple of readers’ existential crises.
  The thing is though, practice does actually make you better. Practice makes you engage in a process of trying things out and succeeding a little bit and also failing a little bit. In so doing you are actively learning what doesn’t work, what is useful and what is unnecessary, enabling you to allocate your time and energy appropriately.
  If you are going to perform a music recital you have to work on the parts of the music you find most challenging because otherwise, the overall piece will sound terrible. You won’t know which parts of the music they are until you’ve completed at least one trial run or practice.
  It is also important to bear in mind the need to be constantly pushing yourself to do better. It is not enough to reach the point in a task where you think you have reached your 80 percent and then automatically finish it with a thought of “it’s good enough”. It is not good enough – it is a cop-out. It is a cop-out because you are not actually improving, or even really completing the task, you are simply compromising within your comfort zone.
  Perfection may be unattainable, but your best is a moving goal post. By not pushing the boundaries or the goals, you are settling for second-best. You can move it forward by one centimetre, one metre or one kilometre – it does not matter; what matters is that you have improved and that you have achieved your best. That is a truly admirable accomplishment.
  So, there you have it! Me writing a column this year is really just a slightly polished form of practice and all of you readers are here for the ride.

  Ben Lawrence discusses his unhealthy perfectionism. Especially unhealthy when you consider that perfection is innately unattainable.

  Ben Lawrence

• There’s Something About Teachers

  April 17, 2018 2:40 pm Comments Off on There’s Something About Teachers

  Until quite recently, I was enrolled as a science student, majoring in physics. I had somehow persuaded myself in high school that I enjoyed physics.
  After two years of studying physics at university, I can confidently say that I am not a physics person. It hit me during one of my final exams last semester. As I was solving a question, I looked at the numbers and letters my pen was writing. What do these symbols mean? What am I even finding here? How is it that I know what to do to solve the question, but not what it actually means?
  Now I feel at home doing another, social science.
  So, I raised the question to myself: ‘Who performed this master deception, fooling me into believing that I like physics?’ I think that my teachers in high school played a significant role in that.
  I am lucky enough to be able to say that my high school teachers were fantastic. They were caring, knowledgeable, and passionate. Heck – they were so good that they made me love subjects that, in hindsight, I was thoroughly not of the right calibre for.
  After I graduated high school, I picked up tutoring jobs and started to realise just how good my teachers were. Other schools’ teachers seemed to be incompetent and devoid of passion. They had no long-term plans about the curriculum and seemed to just do everything to pass the time.  
  When I arrived at university, I was frankly amazed by the people surrounding me, but especially in science. While I was struggling to understand basic concepts and to motivate myself to slog through the content, so many students seemed to be taking it in their stride without so much as a stumble. Their intellect, work ethic and drive were awe-inspiring. The thing is, the bachelor of science at ANU doesn’t have a very difficult level of entry; what were all these ridiculously intelligent people doing here?
  A great number of them told me that they were there because of their teachers from secondary schooling. They told me stories about how their teachers were so passionate that it rubbed off on them, or how their teachers instilled a curiosity about science within them. Some students told me about how their parents were resistant to them studying science, instead wanting them to study something with a higher bar of entry. The PhB program was essentially made for this particular class of students – high-achieving students who want study science, whose parents were hesitant because of the low ATAR requirement.
  Teachers, with one sentence, one smile, one question, have the capacity to shape their students’ interests, ambitions and future prospects. However, in Australia, we seem to have just agreed that it is perfectly acceptable for teachers to not all be of a certain quality. We seem to have all agreed that it is perfectly fine that students have to go to a private school, or in some states, selective schools, to get to meet with, and learn from, these amazing teachers. This is not to undercut the fantastic work that teachers are doing all over the country; I hold the utmost level of respect and appreciation for them. However, it is a fact that in universities, and especially courses with high cut-off marks, private schools and selective high schools are severely overrepresented; on average, private schools in Australia perform 11 ATAR points better than government schools.
  Instead of firing off about Asian tiger mums or ‘pay-to-win’ tutoring practices on the letter section of the Sydney Morning Herald, perhaps the real discussion we should be having is why education isn’t attracting the best and brightest students and why we’ve all just silently acquiesced to this poor standard of secondary teaching in Australia.

  Noah Yim

• The Right to Translation

  March 24, 2018 1:24 pm Comments Off on The Right to Translation

  Looking back, the evolutionary path of democracy is remarkable; the ancient Greek practice of old white men meeting on a hill to discuss pressing issues is barely recognisable as the precursor to modern Western democracies. This path has been carved out by an eternal struggle to uphold two fundamental tenets of democracy; equal franchise and free speech. We value free speech so highly that it was the First Amendment to the US Constitution, it is Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it is often cited as the impenetrable argument in issues regarding media, education, art, and in some cases, cake decoration.
  Our preferred tongue for free speech in Australia and the US is English; government, courts and public discourse are conducted almost exclusively in it. We see highly polished and sophisticated English in newspapers and journals, and a colloquial, snappy vernacular online. However, a quick glance at these nations’ demographics reveals that English is not an ideal language for all its people to digest, discuss, and present thoughts and opinions in.
  Data from the Australian government shows that as of 2016, 49 per cent of Australians were born overseas, or had at least one parent born overseas. 21 per cent of Australians spoke a language other than English at home. The US is similar. Though we rarely see these individuals’ opinions in mainstream public discourse, they are avid participants in free speech; niche language media has bloomed. The Epoch Times, the largest Chinese language newspaper in Australia, prints 1.6 million newspapers per week and boasts an impressive 200 million pageviews per month. Monolingual free speech sufficed in bygone eras where globalisation had not yet taken hold and proudly multicultural nations like Australia and the USA espoused racist policies and demanded cultural assimilation. At the time, an acceptable portion of the public could participate in free speech as was conducive to good democracy. Today, however, linguistic diversity poses a threat to free speech.
  We have now reached the climax of this chapter in the history of democracy. Is globalisation deemed to be repugnant to free speech, or will society find a way to mediate the two?
  To continue down the path of globalisation, we must introduce a universal right to translation. It will act to remove the linguistic barrier to fair, representative democracy. Furthermore, it will initiate a global culture of free speech and truly unlock the communicative and cooperative potential of the Internet.
  Such a right already exists to some degree; in US Federal courts, the accused possesses a right to an interpreter where appropriate. Also, services like Google Translate allow for reasonably accurate translations between many languages. However, they cannot capture the subtleties of language such as its connotations, diction, and tone, which are paramount in public discourse.
  The torch of democracy has been passed onto us to continue free speech. It is now time to create a universal right to translation to achieve this and show our commitment to equality, diversity, and acceptance.

  Noah Yim

• Meanwhile, in Canberra… #3

  March 19, 2018 1:46 pm Comments Off on Meanwhile, in Canberra… #3

  Before you could go through each day without any need to talk to anyone in person thanks to technological automation and intervention, there were some pretty menial tasks that people got paid to do.

  Not just the kind that Henry Ford made possible with the development of the production line, where a person would be tasked with screwing in a screw what would have seemed like a million times a day. We all seem to know people from our parents’ generation who entered the workforce doing some pretty tedious stuff, limited skill required.

  Sadly, it’s pretty hard to find a job in mostly office-bound Canberra that would involve separating pages from a tractor-fed printer these days, or working as an assistant in an architect’s firm tasked with writing the names of objects on plans with a Rapidograph pen and miniature stencil.

  We’ve got technology that can do that for us now. The stakes are higher to gain employment.

  A typing pool is more likely an exciting art installation of typewriters submerged in water in a makerspace in San Francisco, than an integral part of day-to-day communication and administrative work.

  But before we all get terribly excited about a new dawn on the age of leisure, where knock off time is brought forward and start time is pushed back, there’s some politics to contend with.

  Jobs have always been politically convenient. Those in power like to be seen to be creating jobs — take a look at Donald Trump’s Twitter — and those who would like to be in power like to point out that those who are aren’t creating jobs. It’s very predictable.

  Remember the 2016 budget? The era of “jobs and growth”, a political catchphrase that sounds fantastic, is what voters want to hear and is yet somehow totally devoid of meaning by itself. The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, boasted of the results this year. There were 400,000 jobs created in 2017 and 75 percent of them were full time.

  But wage growth is stagnant and many predict we’re heading towards a cliff: the future of work is far from certain and we should be doing more to think about what having a job and being employed will look like in the future. No wonder the Australian Council of Trade Unions launched a “Change the Rules” campaign, the largest since the “Your Rights At Work” campaign of WorkChoices-era, in response to four years of stagnant wages in Australia.

  But it’s not the only part of the story. In 2013, David Graeber, a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, described what he called “bullshit jobs” in Strike! magazine. “It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states, such as the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as it had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat),” he wrote.

  “Bullshit jobs” are things like telemarketing, public relations and unnecessary layers of administration which don’t add anything to the actual delivery of a service.

  Since then, the gig economy — ad hoc employment for single tasks epitomised by Uber drivers and people scurrying about on Deliveroo bicycles — has continued to undermine old notions of what it meant to have a job.

  Young people predominantly make up those in casual employment, often working in jobs around university commitments. It offers flexibility while they study. But if casualisation continues to creep into industries where once an employee could have expected benefits and security, we’re in strife.

  New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that 32 per cent of people who were looking for work in 2011 are now employed full-time. Only 17 per cent of people who weren’t in the labour force in 2011 were employed full-time in 2016.

  You have the greatest chance of getting a full-time job if you’ve already got one. For the rest of us, it’s getting tougher. We’re working longer hours for less in insecure positions.

  In November last year, the McKinsey Global Institute declared in a study of 46 countries, which considered 800 different professions, that 800 million jobs would be replaced by automation in little over a decade.

  So how are we going to support ourselves?

  There’s the utopian model of universal basic income living, where we’re free to make stuff, think stuff and do stuff. Heading in that direction, though, would require us to get off our current course of intense work culture, where worthiness is pegged directly to busyness.

  In reality, it looks like we’re heading towards a job-starved market where our generation is forced to work across as many casualised positions as possible, never certain where the next pay cheque is going to come from. Already, there are academics, journalists and people in service industries who live like this.

  After considering this, hearing how the government talks about innovation doesn’t suggest they’re ready to confront what seems to be coming.

  The then minister for industry, innovation and science, Arthur Sinodinos, told a conference in May 2017 that we “have to be optimists”.

  “I know some people now ask ‘should we be a bit scared because innovation means that jobs are going in some areas’, but jobs are growing in others,” he said.

  New jobs were being created that we “we have no idea” about, Senator Sinodinos said. “This is the lesson of history. This is the lesson of technological progress.”

  In politics, saying that we “have to be optimists” is a bit like putting your head in the sand and hoping an issue will go away.

  The trouble is, it doesn’t look like the job dilemma is going to correct itself. It might pay to give it some attention.

  Jasper Lindell is Woroni’s political columnist and a former news editor

  Jasper Lindell

• Meanwhile in Canberra… #2

  March 7, 2018 5:00 pm Comments Off on Meanwhile in Canberra… #2

  By now we can only hope that Barnaby Joyce has slipped off into what passes here for ancient political history: a couple of weeks ago.
  Despite having a reputation which some might say is more tarnished than your grandparent’s silver, that hasn’t been used since their wedding day in 1956, Joyce didn’t rule out a return to the front bench or the leadership.
  And of course he wouldn’t. Politics is a strange place. Anything could happen, even when it probably won’t.
  Speaking after a game of political football (no, really – the politicians do actually get together to play touch football at Parliament House), Joyce told the conveniently assembled televisual journalists: “I don’t expect to return, but I will always do the very best job I possibly can in any role given to me.”
  Would he be like Tony Abbott? The man whose famous statement after losing the prime ministership that there would be “no wrecking, no undermining, no sniping” was clearly meant to be taken sarcastically. No, he said. “I will be Barnaby,” he said.
  Conservatives in Australia are often accused of wanting to return to the 1950s. As prime minister, Paul Keating got stuck into John Howard across the despatch box: “[Howard said the 1950s were] a very, very good period, a golden age. That was the period when gross domestic product per head was half what it is now; when commodities occupied 85 percent of our exports; when …” You get the idea.
  Joyce, though, is probably wishing Australia had stayed firmly planted in Howard’s golden age. Chances are, he’d still be deputy prime minister.
  Ream after ream has been dedicated to whether The Daily Telegraph should have splashed their front page with a photo of Vikki Campion, Joyce’s former media advisor and the woman with whom he is now expecting a child.
  The answer is clearly no.
  Should Barnaby Joyce’s affair have been exposed earlier? “Oh, I don’t know anything about that, Sir,” the schoolboys all lining up to participate in the cathartic act of denial would say. I’d heard about it though, and you have to wonder if the political columnist at Woroni is aware, who else might be…
  Hypocrisy is a quick way to wreck your own political fortunes in Australia. Joyce, the country conservative sticking up for family values while leaving his wife of two decades and his four daughters for his younger media advisors, had clearly trodden the path. We cringed as we looked on.
  However, in the old days of parliamentary Canberra (as much steeped in mythology as misogyny), this would never have got out. It was all hush hush, for those blokes parked out in that Parliament sheep paddock, a town of only 6,000 fellow Canberrans nearby.
  Now, a media advisor can find themselves in hot water for sending out a meme that showed a picture of Joyce and Abbott sitting next to each other in Parliament with the caption, “When you get in trouble in class and get sat next to the weird kid no one likes.”
  With more witnesses, participants and technological intervention comes more a sophisticated rumour mill and greater scrutiny. The standards the voting public demand may or may not be any higher than they ever were, but it’s much clearer now when they aren’t being met.
  You can see why Barnaby, from his back bench vantage, might be irritated with the modern world. The new Nationals leader and deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, is probably quite happy with the arrangement: more opportunities to claim travel allowances to his wife’s property in Kingston.
  Once upon a time, Malcolm Turnbull was incredibly popular. Now, in his diminished state, he’s left make sure the government doesn’t look like a total disaster. “Yeah, but he’s better than Tony Abbott,” is, in many cases, the foundation of his political support.
  With a trip to the US planned while Joyce was scheduled to take personal leave, Turnbull left the finance minister, Mathias Cormann, in charge. He was fourth in line.
  And with Turnbull out of the country, the man who is touted as the next Liberal prime minister, Peter Dutton, took to some pontification at the National Press Club.
  “In my view, there is a place for the pledge in a broader rejuvenated civics effort with school-aged children, regardless of their background,” he said, noting that new citizens already pledge allegiance to Australian laws, liberties, rights and the nation itself.
  A textbook example in how to make a headline. “Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton calls for US-style pledge of allegiance for Australian school children,” said The West Australian. Well not quite, but close enough.
  And then acting prime minister Cormann backed it. “I think it’s quite important for all Australians to be aware and conscious of our history, our culture and values,” he said. Never mind we constantly struggle to have any productive conversation about that history, culture or values.
  Australians, on the whole, don’t like to make a song and dance about their national pride (if they have any), so this sort of stuff will often sound a bit naff. But for Dutton, a person for whom the leadership speculation must have gone to his head, it’s a clear signal of the sort of Australia he’d lead. And the kind of campaign he’d run. And that he’s prepared to do it.
  His approach to immigration is hard line and cruel, Australians will be patriotic – or else, and he’ll be tough and will revel in the opportunity to demonstrate it.
  Which is exactly the kind of political leadership that the world is overloaded with. Toughness in spades, thoughtfulness in limited quantities.
  When’s Turnbull’s downfall? Does Bill Shorten actually play any part in it? Will Peter Dutton be PM?
  But for now, teetering on the edge, Turnbull holds on. Still the best option in the eyes of his party – and never mind the voters who haven’t had a chance to have a say yet.
  No wonder Turnbull looks pleased to be putting his thumb up next to Donald Trump’s, which he did when he visited Washington last week. He’s still in the game, even if it has us cringing culturally on the world stage.
  Jasper Lindell is Woroni’s political columnist and a former news editor

  Jasper Lindell

• Life is beautiful?

  October 20, 2017 8:42 pm Comments Off on Life is beautiful?

  SOCRATIC QUESTIONING IN WORLD POLITICS
  Richard is a second-year student studying Finance and International Relations. He is an international student with a very broad experience with NGOs and academics. His articles will analyse global affairs from a political and economic point of view. He uses the Socratic way of questioning to provide a philosophical perspective in perceiving contemporary global affairs.
  1 October was one of the bloodiest days in American history. More than 50 innocent people were killed, and more than 500 were wounded during the ‘Life Is Beautiful’ music festival; to some people, life might not be that beautiful after all.
  ‘Thirty people will be shot dead in America today. On average. It could be more. If it’s less, then more will die tomorrow. Or the next day.’
  Gun-related homicide has always been a controversial topic in American politics. Despite the significance and impact of these incidents, US politicians cannot reach a consensus on the preventive method. While left-liberals have been trying to push for stricter legislation on gun control, right conservatives have always bid against this. Conservatives suggest that tougher laws are not going to change criminals’ behaviours. Instead, they advocate prevention through improving education on guns and other hazardous weapons. As controversial as gun reform seems to us outsiders, it is significant to consider if there is a correlation between gun control and gun-related homicides. In other words, would the establishment of a tougher law prevent gun violence? To answer this question, it is important to recognise the fact that the law on gun control varies from country to country, and so do corresponding gun-related homicide rates.
  In 2016, the US Supreme Court ruled that ‘ ‘bans on civilian ownership of handguns are unconstitutional’. Under the Second Amendment, the ownership of guns is a fundamental human right. The underlying presumption is that the ownership of firearms can protect citizens and guarantee the constitutional right of self-defence. For this reason, any action against this doctrine (often cited by the right-wing), is unconstitutional. This argument is the most significant hindrance preventing the establishment of a tougher gun bill. Beyond the debate of left and right, it is important to cautiously consider if the assumption that having more guns will make us safer is valid.
  According to domestic institutions including Harvard University, the US gun homicide is 25 times higher than other developed countries over the past 30 years. In comparison with other developed, high-income states such as Japan and Germany, this rate is rather astonishing. Japan has one of the most stringent and intolerant laws on the gun ownership. Many argue that Japan’s intolerance on gun ownership contribute to the low rate of gun crimes. The legal ownership of guns in Japan was less than 300,000 in 2011, and accordingly, the reported gun deaths were only six in 2014. Does this mean that tougher laws on gun control will correlate to a lower rate of gun violence?
  In the past, there have been several cases of mass shootings in Australia. Around 1996, a shooting spree resulted in 35 deaths. The then prime minister John Howard, after rigorous consideration, proposed a new package of gun reform – including enforcing the licencing system as well as requiring people to have ‘genuine reason’ for possessing firearms. The implementation of this policy has economically lost country millions of dollars, yet there have been no mass shootings for over 20 years (only 13). Purely based on Japan and Australia’s experiences with guns, it is premature to conclude that tougher law is equivalent to the low crime rate.
  On the contrary, Germany has one of the highest weapon ownership rates in the world but has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in Europe. The death rate is 0.05 per 1000 people in Germany whereas the number is 3.34 in the US. Germany’s experience can easily challenge the established conclusion – that the tough gun control is equal to the low gun crime.
  As a result, it is not difficult to conclude that there is no noticeable causal relation between the strictness of gun control and the number of gun homicides.
  Considering the complexity of the American social-economic context, banning guns might not be the best measure to stop gun homicides. Particularly with the presence of the Second Amendment, it is not only economically challenging to restrict guns; it is also politically infeasible considering the environment of the US Senate. Notwithstanding, from a political point of view, it is a kind gesture for the US government to show the public their determination to end the gun violence.

  Richard Haowei Hong

• The Myth of encounters between East and West

  8:38 pm Comments Off on The Myth of encounters between East and West

  East and West, Liberal Arts and Science, sense and sensibility. A born Libra always weighing her choices, Boya finds it important not to jump to conclusions. A previous foreign correspondent for a Chinese newspaper, Boya is now a second-year Master of Business Information Systems student at the ANU. In this column, she puts observations of cross-cultural phenomenon into perspectives.
   
  ‘East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ I first heard this quote not through Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Ballad of East and West,’ but from an English Speaking competition held in China when I was in year six.
  The national winner of that competition, Mr Rui Chenggang, a student studying at the China Foreign Affairs University at the time, struck a note with judges by arguing how wrong Kipling was: ‘a century later, the east and west have met in business, education, and art.’
  For a long time, I thought it was a clever and politically convenient argument – the past century has seen unprecedented globalisation. Many confrontational views of the relationship between the East and West are now dismantling.
  I didn’t have a chance to read Kipling’s work until fairly recently when I found out that Mr Rui had actually misinterpreted his words. Following ‘never the twain shall meet’, Kipling wrote ‘there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth.’
  It turns out that the British author was relating to his own experience in Asia by describing how an English officer and an Afghan horse-thief Kamal discovered friendship by respecting one another’s courage and chivalry.
  It was an interesting discovery. Although I pondered this quote for a long time, I came to understand the true meaning of Kipling’s. Nevertheless, the myth about the actual relationship between the East and West, in my mind, has not diminished. Instead, it is exacerbated by anti-globalisation sentiments and a resurgence of racism that we’re seeing more frequently.
  Indeed, when Mr Rui talked about globalisation in his speech in 1998, he spoke of the ‘honeymoon period with the West when the low-hanging fruits of globalisation are only beginning to make themselves available.’
  It took less than a decade for people like him to find problems with the rosy picture of globalisation. Harmonisation is difficult: the East and West are expected to meet and work together.
  In 2007, Mr Rui, who then became a well-known bilingual news anchor for the state TV station, criticised the presence of a Starbucks shop at the Forbidden City in his blog. He said that Starbucks invaded a site of Chinese heritage and that this was a negative influence of globalisation.
  Rui’s comment is a poignant reminder of what he dismissed ten years ago of the risks of an identity crisis in globalisation.
  Fast-forward to the problems that we are seeing today, such as rising trade protectionism, a surge of nationalism in both the East and West. The willingness to meet between the East and the West is so fragile that it starts to wear thin in times of economic difficulties.  The question that lingers in my mind is: where is the sweet spot of infusion between the East and the West?
  I doubt that I would subscribe to any side of the argument on globalisation. Cultural conflicts will occur if the East and West do meet. Can they meet productively and graciously? Or will the future will be characterised by cultural conflicts?
  It appears to me that different civilisations do eventually work their way into each other through migrants and trades. However, it will take a lifetime if not several generations, for cultures to merge. Once that is done, a complete conversion (naturalisation) will also mean losing the majority art of one’s original identity.
  I’ve heard so many stories of how American born Chinese kids grow apart from their parents because the kids find themselves having to choose between rejecting their Chinese identity or conforming to Western culture.
  In a revealing TEDtalk titled ‘I’m not your Asian Stereotype’ by Canwen Xu, she, as an 18-year old Chinese-American felt the need to reject her identity to feel integrated in the States. She spoke about how she eventually found it was not right to completely lose her attachment to her Chinese origins.
  Canwen said at the end of her speech, ‘I’m proud of who I am, a little bit of American, a little bit Chinese, and a whole lot of both.’
  Canwen was brave and lucky to find her sweet spot between the East and the West. For others in today’s globalised world, the possible sweet spot between the East and the West is found when we keep our identities and make an effort to live with a growing awareness of the other.
  I see no other way around this.

  Boya Li

• The World Is My Oyster, And The Pearl Is Back Home

  September 20, 2017 7:11 pm Comments Off on The World Is My Oyster, And The Pearl Is Back Home

  UNWIND IN BETWEEN
  East and West, Liberal Arts and Science, sense and sensibility. A born Libra always weighing her choices, Boya finds it important not to jump to conclusions. A previous foreign correspondent for a Chinese newspaper, Boya is now a second-year Master of Business Information Systems student at the ANU. In this column, she puts observations of cross-cultural phenomenon into perspectives.
  It was a cold spring afternoon during the first week of the break. Not much of a crowd could be seen on campus, but an auditorium in the Australian Centre on China was bustling. There were more than a hundred students (who were mostly Chinese), lined up for a ‘lock in China’ employment information session.
  The speaker, Queena Zhou, is a recruiter specialising in connecting overseas-educated students with Chinese enterprises who favour them. She instilled a sense of urgency to the audience by beginning her talk on how to find a good job in China. ‘Now is the time most of your peers in China begin active job-hunting…if you wait for three months, most of the openings will be filled.’ Zhou’s workshop is part of her recruitment company’s 80-day tour, visiting more than 100 universities in UK, US, Australia, Germany, and Italy. More companies like hers are setting eyes on the pain points of the 660,000 overseas educated Chinese students who will return to China to work this year.
  It is very confronting: there is a tension between their high expectations and a fiercely competitive job market. To get an idea of how heated competition can get, 20 openings in a well-known bank in Beijing attracted over 100,000 resumes in a week’s time. Moreover, not all employers favour returning applicants just because they are educated overseas. Locally groomed students who have more practical expectations for offerings may turn out to be better choices.
  More and more Chinese students are studying abroad, making it have the largest, cumulative international students around the world. One in every four international students in the world is from China. Returning students are also highly educated. The 2016 annual report on the development of Chinese students studying abroad reports that 81.45 per cent of Chinese students who return to China to work have a masters degree and 11.09 per cent have doctorates. These highly educated students are returning to China because of shaky visa policies in their countries of study, and there are better career prospects in China. For most of the masters students majoring in finance, accounting and management; cultural and language differences would lock away a large part of their talent assets abroad.
  Students are losing patience with taking under-appreciated jobs when they could have more promising prospects back home. Statistics have shown that returning students may not get an obvious advantage in their first job, but they usually display greater resilience and potential in long-term performances. China’s fast developing economy is affording increasingly diverse opportunities. Foreign companies are no longer the most appealing recruiters. Currently, the dominant players are Chinese enterprises like Alibaba, Hainan airlines and start-up Internet companies like Didi who want to expand in overseas markets.  
         
  In 2015, a resignation letter from a 35-year-old middle school teacher went viral. It read: ‘the world is so big, I want to have a look.’ It is analogous to Shakespeare’s ‘the world is my oyster’. The enthusiasm for an understanding of the outside world is prevailing.
  At the same time, China is embracing the largest number of returning students in its history. Just a decade ago, only one in seven would return to China after studying abroad. However, today, eight out of 10 will do so. With globalisation and technological advances, the ‘world is my oyster’ is now suffixed with: ‘the world is so big, go for a look and come home soon’.      
  The change in mentality is clear. The thinking that, ‘only those who did not do well overseas would return to China’ has changed to ‘only those who are not ambitious in their careers will stay abroad.’
  It is yet to be seen how this current generation of overseas-educated students will shape and change China’s modernisation. But what we do know is that for an increasing number of students, they are clear that the world is their oyster, yet, the places to find the pearl is now back home.

  Boya Li

• The Talk

  September 13, 2017 9:08 pm Comments Off on The Talk

  UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM
  ‘How can you hate me, when you don’t even know me?’
  That’s the question African American musician Daryl Davis wanted an answer to. And he knew there was only one group that could give it to him: the Ku Klux Klan.
  Davis started befriending members of the KKK. They became the ‘invite his family over for dinner’ kind of friends. Davis has a level of patience you wouldn’t believe.
  He never set out to convert anyone, but Davis ended up being responsible for 200 klansmen renouncing their membership from the Klan.
  Davis collects the robes of the klansmen he converts and plans to give them to a museum. ‘I pull out my robes and hoods and say, “This is what I’ve done to put a dent in racism”,’ he said. ‘I’ve got robes and hoods hanging in my closet by people who’ve given up that belief because of my conversations sitting down to dinner.’
  If we want to rid racism from the world, it’s imperative that we rethink how we discuss contentious topics. As attitudes toward race and gender have changed over time, words like ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ have rightfully become pejoratives. That’s to say, when somebody is accused of being a racist, it’s interpreted as a personal attack on their character.
  Now, you might ask, ‘What’s wrong with attacking the character of racists?’ Fair point. If there’s a character that deserves attack, it’s probably those of racists. And given Australia’s history of racism, it’s an understandable reaction. But we should be less concerned about abusing racists and more concerned about the difficult task of reducing the prevalence racism.
  So, how do we do that?
  David Broockman at Stanford University shows that it is conversation, not abuse, that allows us to unlearn prejudice. Broockman engaged in non-confrontational 10-minute conversations about trans* issues with 500 voters in Southern Florida. He could have just waited for his test subjects to say something remotely transphobic and pounce, but he didn’t. He found that by having non-accusatory conversations about contentious issues, the voters were more likely to defend trans* rights, even after just three months.
  There are lessons to be learnt from the 2016 US Presidential election. During the election, Clinton supporters threw everything but the kitchen sink at Trump supporters. Protestors at Emory College accused Trump supporters of ‘hate speech’ for writing ‘TRUMP 2016’ in chalk. Clinton herself even said: ‘You could put half of Trump supporters into what I call “the basket of deplorables.” They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic; you name it.’
  Not only does this tactic shut down debate, but it’s an obvious act of virtue signalling. It makes the person hurling the insults feel good, but it doesn’t do anything to change their opponent’s mind.
  When we hear morally objectionable opinions, we seem to catapult the person with the most emotional and aggressive reaction to the top of society’s moral hierarchy. But we never pause and think. Are they actually doing anything to stop that morally objectionable opinion from propagating?
  It doesn’t take an expert in psychology to realise that if you insult someone, they become hostile and reluctant to hear what you have to say. Insulting someone is never an effective way of changing their mind. No one cares that you think you’re better than them. Just ask yourself, how many KKK members do you think Davis would’ve converted if he had resorted to insults?
  Insulting people probably has the opposite effect. Being constantly insulted, generalised and prevented from speaking, Trump supporters fled to insular online communities that lacked intellectual diversity. Spend a few minutes on YouTube, and you’ll see how popular they still are. Insulting someone doesn’t stop them from speaking, it just stops them from speaking to you.
  If we show people with morally-objectionable opinions that we’re willing to listen to them without insulting them, they’ll likely reciprocate. And, if we haphazardly insult everyone we disagree with, they’ll continue doing the same.
  Grand Dragon of the KKK Roger Kelly said this of Davis: ‘We don’t agree on everything, but at least he respects me to sit down and listen to me, and I respect him to sit down and listen to him.’ Kelly eventually left the KKK, years after befriending Davis.
  I’m not saying we should all befriend our neighbourhood neo-Nazi. I’m saying that if we’re serious about eradicating racism from society, we should use the same rules of persuasion for racists that we do for everyone else. Why? Because they work. Calling someone a racist or any insult is a personal attack, not an expression of disagreement. And no one changes their mind because of a personal attack. It’s called the ad hominem logical fallacy for a reason!
  When talking to society’s moral heretics, we should follow Davis’ lead. We should debate facts and ideas, not our personal superiority. Only then, will people genuinely listen.

  Woroni Editor

• Coming to Terms With ‘You Are What You Decide’

  August 28, 2017 4:40 pm Comments Off on Coming to Terms With ‘You Are What You Decide’

  Unwind in Between
  East and West, Liberal Arts and Science, sense and sensibility. A born Libra always weighing her choices, Boya finds it important not to jump to conclusions. A previous foreign correspondent for a Chinese newspaper, Boya is now a second-year Master of Business Information Systems student at the ANU. In this column, she puts observations of cross-cultural phenomenon into perspectives.
   
  You are what you eat, what you wear, what you read – you are the decisions that you make.
  Last month, when I attended the conferral ceremony of my better half, I came across the Chancellor’s message’ in the graduation brochure – ‘behind every degree lies a tale of individual effort, sacrifice, and achievement.’
  The sentence stayed with me. This week, I was eating hot-dogs with a group of students cheering for ANU’s birthday at the fellow’s oval, and those words struck me again. Looking upon these students, I wondered: what are the stories of this increasingly diverse student body? What sacrifices have we made or are making for education? What do we hope to achieve?
    It feels like a typical internal monologue of someone who is coming to the end of her school life. It’s like when you take a step back from the daily buzz and realise all these encompassing questions haven’t been answered.
  I didn’t have a careful thought of this before I sat in two of my management classes, listening to lectures talking about making decisions as the primary activity of management. In a business context, there is a defined procedure of decision-making. It starts with defining problems followed by gathering intelligence, designing and weighing solutions, and ends with implementing and monitoring them.
  We are told that with the rise of new machines, algorithms can now inform us to make better decisions. The fact that decision-making is a structured and increasingly evidence-based measurable science subject caught me off-guard a bit. For me, decision-making has always been following gut intuitions, following someone’s suggestions or a mixture of both.
  I couldn’t help start reflecting on my personal choices in class. ‘Was I making decisions in a well-informed and logical way?’ Ditching my job in Beijing to study something completely different in Canberra was my most recent big decision. How did I make up my mind? In peak moments of mental tug-of-war, I resorted to flipism (‘a pseudo-philosophy of life in which the most important decisions are made by the flipping of a coin’). When the queen’s face turned up three times out of five flips, I was relieved. I think the coin understood my mind and pushed me towards the direction I was afraid to claim.
  At that moment, it was the rosy picture that attracted me. The excitement of being immersed in an exotic environment to study something trendy (informatics) persuaded me. The possibility of being a part of a different story attracted me.
  A year and a half later, that rosy picture dissolved into a mixed reality of rejoicing campus life along with some anxieties – the immersive experience in Canberra was friendly, but I still felt lonely from time to time. The courage to study something different meant it was necessary for me to commit more time and effort than I had expected. On top all these, it was probably the frustrations over limited job prospects that took the heaviest blow on that rosy picture.  
  I think I was being impulsive and used ‘flipism’ to justify my instincts when making decisions. If I were to redo, I might still choose to study in an exotic environment, but I would spend more time in finding out things on the ground beforehand. If I had learned about the differences between the two economies (Australia and China), I would have been more prepared.
  Admitting flaws and mistakes in decision-making takes courage. Another poor decision was the belief that my parents could make decisions for me ­­­­– It is one of the most deceptive falls.
  In the second year of high school, I had to choose which pathway to follow. In China, we have to decide between the liberal arts (history, politics or geography) or the sciences (physics, chemistry or biology) as subjects for your university entrance examinations (the GAO KAO). Knowing so clearly that I would be good at and feel more comfortable at studying liberal art subjects and not the science subjects, I heeded my father’s call to take science. ‘It’s a no brainer choice,’ he said, ‘studying science will prepare you for more job opportunities.’ I took his advice thinking that he must be right and know what is good for me.
  The journey turned out to be challenging at best: arduous and discouraging at worst. I didn’t do well in the final exam. I studied liberal arts in college and became a reporter after that.
  I guess what that experience taught me was that listening to my parent’s advice was also my choice. I was the one who made the decision, and ultimately, I have had to live with my choice. I figure there are a thousand mistakes to make when making decisions and we can always justify them however we want, given that we are still young and can afford to make poor decisions.
  But what I’ve realised is that that might not be the case. Coming to the end of my study at ANU instilled in me a sense of urgency to think about my decision-making abilities.
  In Meg Jay’s Ted Talk ‘30 is not the new 20’, she said society’s ‘benign neglect’ for the 20s is a real problem and has real consequences. What she meant was that it is important for the 20 something to realise that although they may dismiss decisions they made in their 20s as trivial, these very decisions are defining their lives.
  I think it is very true. As someone who is about to graduate, I’m writing this not to preach the importance of making right decisions, but about the importance of making an effort for making good decisions. So by the end of your campus life, you’ll be more confident with your choices.
  That may mean spending more time in finding out the right information or following structure for decision-making while following your instincts or even picking up some skills in using technologies if you want hard evidence to back up your decisions.
  Don’t freak out by decisions you have already made. I think the answer lies in only waking up to the fact that you are the choices that you make.

  Boya Li