Postdoc-depression

Some weeks after my dissertation the daily question I had to answer was: How do you feel now? Any post doc-depression vibes? As a social constructionist (today) I feel that words have a power to make us into something, so the post doc-depression came. A sudden feeling of restlessness and so-what and hysterical thoughts that blur your mind...and then of course new opportunities you would like to try out...But of course your dissertation is like a premiere where you aim for some kind of confrontation or meeting in public and you're not able to hide behind closed door with your ideas anymore. That takes a lot of energy and you need to rest sometimes afterwards to get the creativity flowing again. There is also a certain responsibility to act like someone who is knowledgeable. And yes, of course, you know a lot about your subject. I know more about aging in combination with consumption but above all I have learned how to deal with the everlasting brain gymnastics that research is all about. Relating concepts to each other and defining them and knowing that when you read and learn more you feel like you know less. I call it the information anxiety as you know how much information there is that you can't handle. If I had lived in a small village with no connection globally I could have had another identity as a PhD than today in an ever connected global world where you have to be aware of so much more and feel your littleness. But in order to stop dwelling in some post doc swamp I have decided to be happy and not worry about the future and simply think that I am good enough. When I was little, three-years-old I liked to sing and I had learned a lot of hymns in the Sunday school. One Sunday I was in church and during the service I sang eagerly in some of the hymns I recognized and afterwards I cried "I was good" so the church walls echoed. This story was told by my mother and sister all over again during my childhood. I always felt a little embarrassed about this story as you're not supposed to be so self confident. But I would really love us all to be able to think more in this way and stop putting a damper on our feelings of joy and success.

40 is the limit

I heard the astonishing news yesterday (from a reliable source) that one finnish headhunter had recommended the recruiting firm not to hire anybody over 40. So finished at forty that is...Unfortunately I don't have any other details but you could speculate...Who the h*ll is so childish that (s)he puts rigid age limits to development and learning in a society that fosters a lifelong learning culture and antiageist culture? We have the same situation if we say that don't hire a 30-year-old. Arbitrary age-limits are so old-fashioned and narrowminded but I suppose this is the way we have constructed our reality since we were born. I admit that chronological age could be informative when you talk about entering the education system as a child but even then we know that this age concept doesn't tell us everything. It would be interesting to know if a person saying that 40 is the limit is younger or older than forty. Anyway (s)he is perhaps not taking into account the cultural change in the attitude to learning and to the fact that we are living longer nowadays...We have to use all the brain capacity in our country and people are innovative and creative without age limits. I surely would like to know more about this firm to be able to hurt their brand a little...If somebody reads this, what do you think? Are we all finished at forty? Should everything happen in the age of 30 to 40?

Students and plagiarism

One of my tasks as an information literacy teacher is to discuss the ethical use of information with students. To put it simply it's a question of using reference technique correctly and being aware of the difference between your text and somebody else's text. So if you refer to other authors in your text in a correct way and the author's name combined with the article she has published is found in the reference list you should feel secure. But then there is of course the discussion of when something becomes common sense, common talk and doesn't need to be referred to? I had a student coming up to me after a lecture about reference technique and he was really worried about how he should know which thoughts are his own and which are not. And he added that he had been reading a lot since he was three years old...Can he ever be sure that he isn't plagiarising someone somewhere? My answer was that if you feel unsecure you can always use your information searching skills to try to find out if there's someone that has come up with the same idea. But being afraid of plagiarising shouldn't cause fear of writing. It's easy to find traces of plagiarism if someone has copied and pasted a text but how should we find the owner of ideas? I suppose the experts in immaterial rights can answer this...Anyway I am afraid that the plagiarism talk today, plagiarism discourse could even result in the death of creativity and passionate writing.

Interesting seminar for women as entrepreneurs

Yesterday I attended a seminar for women entrepreneurs arranged by the so called Junior Chamber Havis Amanda. The seminar was well organised with really interesting speakers as the CEO of Kalevala Koru Laura Lares, Riitta Saarikangas an experienced educator and coach, Juha Rouvinen from the digital media agency Gyllene Skor, Sisko Sammallahti from Stockmann and the legendary Esko Reinonpoika Alanko. All the speakers gave their own contribution in inspiring the women listeners to believe in their capabilities, to be aware of their own values and staying truthful no matter what. I especially liked the way Laura Lares used alliteration and metaphors and that's really one thing we should remember: leadership is mostly about talking in a convincing and down-to-earth way. So why don't we have rhetorics as a mandatory subject in our business universities?

What else then? One woman in the audience asked Laura Lares about the three most important characteristics of a good leader. She answered like this: Predictability, Fairness and A true enjoyment in other people's work. This is something I would have loved to discuss more...I would like to add that a true enjoyment in other people's success and happiness is something that should characterize not only leaders but everyone of us. But maybe the leaders enhance the feeling of success and happiness?

Voting for those who work with the unwanted work

I work at a university and I would really like to bring out those people who work year after year with one of the heaviest loads of all: teaching the basic courses for all students! This means that they have to examine at least 200 students that are more or less uninterested in the subject as it is mandatory. And this results of course in a situation where the poor teacher has to use all the charm in the world to try to motivate the unmotivated...I suggest that lecturers, THE workers of the academia, should get some special reward every year they have coped with the heavy workload. Today we are mostly admiring and rewarding those who write in top ranked journals, something a lecturer can only dream about.

Kauppalehti Thursday 9th of October

I read in Kauppalehti about a seminar that had been arranged for advertising people. In this seminar they were again discussing seniors as consumers and how they are treated. The old thought that glorification of youth is the obstacle to finding new ways to market to older consumers, was popping up AGAIN. Are we really still at the point of elementary knowledge about older (than what?) consumers? Maybe some researchers cannot see the symbols that are created for the older consumers? Maybe it's only a question of being myopic and not seeing that the older consumer is constructed all the time but without emphasizing in a subtle symbolic interchange...

Old stereotype

Walking to my work to the library today I thought of the image of librarians. In Finnish and Swedish women working at the library are named "kirjastotäti" or "bibbatant" which means something like the library spinster...Do we have to find out a new title for us working daily with interesting information retrieval practices and really being on the edge of technological development? Some social creativity to get rid of the disempowering title is needed...Information wizards?

About my thesis

Contemporary senior consumers are often described as financially strong and with a willingness to consume. Combined with spare time they become an utterly attractive consumer group. In spite of that, marketing to the older consumer has been off the track, as old age has meant thriftiness, decline and withdrawal. At the moment a change is to be seen. Age can be commodified in order to sell more to the older consumers who are eagerly waiting to be noticed and to blow their money. In this commodifying process, marketers as well as society in general offer different ways of interpreting and giving meaning to age when talking about or visualizing the older consumer. By this representation they at the same time create boundaries for how older age and aging will be and can be interpreted. These boundaries construct age identities. The thesis contributes to consumer culture theory where marketing is seen as a discursive practice with an ideological character. By using discourse analytical concepts in combination with a cultural approach to consumption the thesis provides tools for grasping commodifying identityshaping processes where marketers are involved.

There is something in Swedish also behind this link: http://www.hanken.fi/staff/suokannas/