Orientation, patriotism, relocation, scholarship, and registration

The last week has been a series of adventures in finance, orientation,  patriotism, relocation, scholarship, and registration.

Thursday the 31^st of January started with a trip to a bank to set up an account. So many retail transactions are done with debit cards here that having one is a necessity. I visited a branch to make choices, sign papers, and learn that PINs and cards would arrive in a series of letters, for security. I also learned that banks do not do cash. You can’t bring in your coins and get bills, you can’t break a larger note into smaller ones; there are no tellers. There are ATMs for any transaction you need, and everything else that can be done, is done online. I would later learn there are no post offices any more, either. Mail gets delivered. I will have to see where you take packages.

Marcel Ooman

Linda Pietersen and I
review to-do list

The second stop last Thursday was at the Fulbright Center, for a formal orientation, and to get a US State Dept insurance card. The staff at the Fulbright Office are wonderful, smart, committed, yet down-to-earth people who clearly enjoy what they do. Marcel Oomen, the Executive Director, describes their office as the information center for Dutch families investigating college opportunities in the US, from experiential and educational perspectives to how safe it is to be on an American campus. They coordinate dozens and dozens of students and scholars from the Netherlands to America and vice versa. Linda Pietersen is the Fulbright Program Coordinator, who is both processing applications for next year’s students and scholars, but also emailing me on the steps I need to get settled, paid, etc. She also asks, “Are you going to ride a bike here? If so, remember to ride *across* the tram rails, not along them.” Ignore her advice and you find out what the US State Dept insurance card is for.

Thursday evening took me by train to The Hague, to a reception at the home of the American Ambassador (on a street with many countries’ Ambassadors’ homes – each house a different country) to meet American scholars and students, Dutch students who had been to the US, some of the embassy staff, and to hear a piano recital by Sun-A Park.  It was a lovely event. As most of you know, this kind of thing happens to me all the time. 

with Sun-A Park

It was also an interesting and quite humbling experience to realize that the US recognized me and was supporting my career. It made me reflect on the assistance I’ve received over the years, from the State of California when I started college, to the State of Arizona whose regents’ scholarship paid for my undergraduate tuition. But even in a larger sense it had me thinking of the American story I was in the middle of: How may grandparents and my father came to the US from Europe, where they could work and prosper, send their children to college, and how, a generation later, I could be honored by my country in recognition of my academic accomplishments. It is really amazing and quite stirring, and reminds me (as I am often reminded) of how extremely fortunate I have been. I spoke with John Kim, a counselor for legal affairs with the Embassy, and we reflected on our great opportunities abroad and our good luck in having found our ways into them.  I also met Tilly de Groot, the cultural affairs specialist, a vibrant person who has a knack for connecting people and expanding opportunities for Americans in the Netherlands, who invited me to call for coffee and local recommendations next time I visit the Hague.  

Friday I moved into my apartment on Geldersekade, two minutes from Centraal Station, ten  minutes to the university, with living room windows looking out onto a picturesque canal. To the rear of the building is another canal and church. The walk to the office can be down Geldersekade, although there is not much room with cars and bikes sharing the slim brick-paved road, or out the back along another canal to a Chinatown-type street, leading to Den Waag, and then to the university on Kloveniersburgwal. It is roomy and light inside the apartment and quite comfortable. I spent a good deal of the weekend shopping for some basic household supplies, things to cook, and things to cook with, at stores and at the Albert Cuyp Market, where Saturdays are generally quite hectic but where intermittent 1-minute hailstorms thinned out the crowd.

Albert Cuyp Market
noticeably crowdless

Monday was a great day at the university. Jochen Peter and I met to discuss research ideas. It is really a pleasure to discuss things with others who share concerns with theory and rigor in their studies. Jochen’s thinking intrigues me. He sees things I don’t see when we look at the same problems, and if Monday’s work together is any indication, I bring him a similar kind of complementarity. Jochen suggested a study they were considering doing about online self-presentation, which I liked, and observed that there could be reasons to hypothesize the opposite outcomes than Jochen originally expected. This kind of puzzle is fun, because it encourages us to think more carefully and to design research studies that can identify specifically under what circumstances one set of outcomes may occur and what should happen if the circumstances are otherwise. I was also able to recommend intriguing work by our friend Nicole Ellison whose recent ideas about online self-presentation include concerns about how long a time might pass between an online meeting and an offline encounter. We discussed another two studies in very tentative ways before deciding it was best to wait for Patti Valkenburg’s return and the inclusion of Maria and Dian, the PhD students who have been brainstorming with us individually on these ideas.

Monday afternoon was my first day teaching. The masters degree students have a variety of interests, and focus their studies on youth and media, political communication, and persuasive communication. They had a variety of ideas about how the study of online self-disclosure might teach them more within their respective interest areas, which I thought was fascinating. I need to remember to listen more and talk less sometimes, so I can learn from their academic, personal, and cultural backgrounds what these things we are studying mean to them in their own intellectual and personal experience. They also seemed to follow quite well, and seemed interested, when I described what my own concerns were with the topic and where I thought there were critical problems with our theories and research findings in the area. And not a one of them seemed to be doing something else with a computer while I lectured. A good first teaching day.

I met with Peter Neijens briefly on Tuesday to thank him for making so many of the arrangements that enabled me to be here (although I did complain to him about promising me I could skate the canals to work).  He is the most agreeable person I think I have met, and prolific scholar as well, and we started a discussion I look forward to continuing on how communication research is converging: Mass media and public relations researchers who formerly studied 1-to-many transmission of messages needed to know little about interactive conversations. New media is making it important to understand how communication among peers and pairs takes place (as in recommendation systems or Tweets), and how observation of those exchanges by onlookers may affect attitudes quite broadly.  I also brought Peter some weather-appropriate apparel from Spartan-land.

Finally, yesterday I became a registered resident of Amsterdam by visiting the municipal authorities at City Hall. I presented both my German and American passports; as a dual citizen of a European Union country, there are fewer permits I am required to have to reside in the Netherlands. I also had a birth certificate with an apostille, and my apartment lease, which they required. I also offered to present my letter of invitation from the university, my proof of health insurance, and other documents that, it turned out, they had no interest in. This is not the first time in my life I have over prepared for a test. 

Now I am official.