What’s your o t h e r interest?
What other PhD or work would you do, if you could choose a completely different topic?
Listening to a great podcast I discovered a week ago (the episodes are awesome and about 5 minutes long), Before Breakfast, I got to thinking - a lot. The episode was called Develop a taste for quality and the host, Laura Vanderkam, was talking about how much it helps us in all aspects of our lives to surround ourselves with good quality materials - books, podcasts, the works - and I found myself nodding along in agreement all the time.
Don’t get me wrong, I also like to watch the occasional silly YouTube video or spend some time doing nothing really important (like last night - I went down a rabbit hole of watching numerous renditions of Take On Me by a-ha - when they first came out, later at the height of their fame, a bit older now but still amazing - in concert in Chile, on Norwegian TV, on Top of the Pops😃Short videos, too many, but I needed this break).
Magne Furuholmen, Morten Harket and Paul Waaktar-Savoy of a-ha
So anyway, back to our podcast episode and the thinking I went through. At some point, Laura mentioned how great she finds it to have an interest totally outside your work. She spoke about Cal Newport and how he developed a liking for cinematography, but did it through really high quality material and learned a lot of things for his life in general.
I was thinking at that moment how much I’ve read about the Cold War. It’s my greatest interest outside of Linguistics - I have numerous books about it, collected articles, watched lots of documentaries about it - I was even thinking of doing my PhD on it before I was accepted to the Linguistics program (who knows, maybe after this one is finished!). I remember when I lived in Zug, Switzerland and a museum had a huge exhibition on the Cold War in Switzerland and I learned things that I never even knew.
This is my huge o t h e r interest. I absolutely love history per se, but anything about the Cold War really grabs my interest.
What is your interest outside of what your work or research is? Is it connected to what you’re doing now?
Is it completely different?
The Saturday Scholar
My pick for today is none other than Pat Thompson, Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham. Pat is amazing - I’ve mentioned her a few other times in previous newsletters - and shared a lot of her knowledge generously.
Every Monday morning, I always get her new post in my inbox from her blog, patter (it’s lower case there too). It is the best way to start the week and going back to her old posts, you can always find something to help you.
She has written numerous books about education and academia.
Saturday’s Music Highlight
A new feature on my Substack will be music that I love - I promise, it’s not all going to be 80s music! (Whoever knows me, knows that 80s music is my absolute favorite.)
Since I mentioned the amazing guys from Norway, today’s pick is a-ha. They are still touring (I haven’t seen them live, unfortunately - yet!), still making great music, and I love how humble they still are (last night I also saw a clip of Morten Harket, the lead singer, cutting his own Christmas tree a couple of years ago, in the forests of Norway).
Here we go with my top three songs of theirs:
The Living Daylights
If you didn’t know, this song was the intro song for the James Bond movie of the same name.
Hunting High and Low
Oh my gosh, this is a masterpiece. Musically, vocally, the works!
Take On Me
Whenever I hear this song, it reminds me of a show called Chum 30 on Canadian TV and the only show that my mom let me watch every Friday evening (that wasn’t a kids’ program). I used to wait all week to watch and when this done first came on, I went crazy! I was 6 years old🐤
Plus, the video is a masterpiece of animation.
Let me know in the comments what other fields interest you and why (and if you also like a-ha 😉).