Spring 2023 PhD Seminar Debrief

I've had a few days to shake off my jet lag, and so I thought that I'd write up a debrief of last week's spring seminar at CHEI (Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation) while it's still fresh in my mind.
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​If you've been following along, you'll know that as a part of the doctoral program at CHEI, there are two required seminars each year - one in the spring in Brescia and one in the autumn in Milan. For various reasons that aren't worth going into, including the fact that I started the program during the pandemic, this is only my second in-person seminar. My last was a year ago...but it certainly didn't feel like it had been a year.

​I have to start off by saying a word of appreciation for the wonderful community that CHEI fosters among us all. We come from all over the world and have wide ranging research interests, but it really does feel like one big family.

We each have had our struggles and doubts, but thanks to the community around us, none of those things lasts for too long. As another member of the group said last week, "Sometimes it's the research that keeps you going, but much of the time, it's the people here. It's a family".

My prep for this seminar started a few months ago when I submitted my "Jello draft" of my research proposal - see a previous post for more on that. 
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Shortly after returning from my extended partner visit trip across Europe in February, my feedback came in. To my surprise, the feedback was actually fairly positive! Like so many others, I suffer from the dreaded imposter syndrome, and so to have three academic readers give me feedback that didn't completely rip my work to shreds was a much-needed boost. They rightly pointed out that my APA formatting was atrocious and that I made some obvious blunders in defining the scope of my research. But at the end of the day, I'm pleased with what I got back.

From that point on, I spent much of my time working on organizing my brain for the main "deliverable" that we all have for the seminar - a 10-minute presentation followed by live feedback. Thanks to my past life as a study abroad road warrior, I generally feel comfortable giving presentations, but these PhD presentations make a conference session feel like a breeze. I've seen extremely competent and well-prepared researchers shake in their boots over these things.

I gave my presentation of Thursday morning, and so I had a few days to prep. I have to admit to you that I made the rookie mistake of making changes to my core ideas in the run up to my presentation. I changed a few words and tinkered with my research questions a bit, and I think that it probably broke up the flow of my thinking when it came to talk it through in front of the group. It wasn't a terrible mistake, but some of the feedback that I got was directly related to the changes that I had made...whoops! Still, those few minutes of feedback aren't the time to get defensive, and so I took it in stride and made my mental notes to fix what I had broken.

Again, the feedback from my peers was fairly positive, which felt nice. I have the benefit of presenting in my native language during these seminars - a privilege that isn't shared by everyone. If I had to give this in Italian, for example... well, let's not even go there. It wouldn't be good. The folks in the program who are presenting in their second, third, or fourth language....amazing.

I always love seeing what other folks are working on - the massive breadth and depth of knowledge in the CHEI community is always impressive to me, and it keeps getting better as more people join us. From work on university alliances to national-level internationalization policy to hybrid/blended mobility program models, you can find just about every corner of the field represented. Half of the fun of the presentation sessions is realizing how little you know about internationalization.

It was a great week, as it always is. Now, our little cohort that started together two years ago is moving into the next big phase - applying formally to Cattolica. It's a whole other set of requirements and hurdles that we'll be experiencing over the next six months, but Lord willing, we'll all come out the other side as "First Year Students"... PhD students at Cattolica.

So, I'll be spending the next 6-8 weeks revising and strengthening my research proposal, bouncing ideas off of various other COIL/VE researchers that I've been privileged to get to know through my work, and starting the search for funding. On that note, if you happen to stumble onto any sources of funding for virtual exchange research, please let me know!

​If you had told my undergraduate self that I'd be traveling to Italy twice a year to talk about my doctoral research, I'd probably do a spit take. And yet, here I am. Frankly, I'm as surprised as anyone. 

My plan is to continue to chronicle this weird journey here via blog posts, but I'm also increasingly active on Twitter, so if you really want to see the ups and downs, follow me over there as well. 

Until next time - read more papers, take lots of notes, and remember that in the end, AI might take your job anyway, so have that second negroni.

​Ta.