Danish Classes: Part 1

Part 0 of this could be Jeg beundrer Tori Amos. Part 2 is what I started to write back in October, but it has been a challenge to wrap it up, so I am making this detour instead. It was inspired by the recent discussions I had about Danish classes with one of my PhD students and some of my new colleagues at ITU.

 

I completed all the Danish class modules one should ideally go through before taking the mandatory Danish language test to apply for Danish citizenship (for all) or permanent residence (for non-Schengen-folk) back in summer 2020. I also passed the mandatory test around the same time.  Of course, when all was done, it was very rewarding. But the process of going through these modules and preparing for the exam was sometimes rewarding but mostly frustrating.

 

Let’s start with the rewards.

I met the person who became my #1 partner-in-crime in Denmark during Module 1 of the Danish class. I called her, temporarily, partner-in-crime-in-Denmark in Sore Throat post, but I finally have an official blog nickname for her: Sister in Movies, which she also approved. During the many round-of-introductions you perform during such language class modules, I learned that she was from Argentina and her university education was on films. Plus, she activated my feminist radar. I told myself “You should try to be friends with that person.” So, I did what every normal person would do. I asked her if she would be interested in seeing two bad movies with me at Husets Biograf. (The movies were The Room and The Apple if anyone is interested.) She thankfully said “yes.”

I learned how to be more compassionate and patient toward my own students as a professor thanks to being a sub-optimal student in most of the Danish classes. Up until Module 5 (which is the last module of Danish classes before the mandatory Danish exam), I seldomly did my homework because I was too exhausted as a junior academic and the homework wasn’t fun. Module 5 was the first module where I had the luxury of giving a class for the second time at the university, which helped carving the time to do my Danish homework more properly. My pronunciation of Danish words was also terrible up until Module 5. My Module 5 teacher, Anna Gerd Mc Nair, fixed that, and I am grateful to her for it even though I didn’t enjoy the process.

I was able to follow movie subtitles in Danish roughly one year after I moved to Denmark, which helped me enjoy my life in Copenhagen more. If you aren’t a passionate movie-goer, you may not understand why this is so important, but to me it is crucial not to be stuck with English-speaking movies when I am living in a foreign country. Pedro Almodóvar released two excellent films since I moved to Denmark, which I watched together with Sister in Movies as soon as they hit the movie theaters in Copenhagen. Life is more beautiful when there is an Almodóvar film to look forward to.

I discovered gems like Borgen, Rita, Skam (Norwegian not Danish, but an acceptable distraction on the path), ToveDitlevsen … while trying to learn Danish.

In September, I managed to cancel movie tickets over the phone in Danish. Negligible step for humankind, extremely big step for me.

In October, I visited Norway for the first time. While I couldn’t follow spoken Norwegian, I was able to understand written Norwegian signs and instructions on the streets.

In December, for the first time, I managed to schedule a doctor’s appointment in Danish and went through the first half of my appointment in Danish as well. The second half required knee-vocabulary, which I don’t have in any language, so I switched to English.

Since 2019, I have been able to follow Danish politics enough to have my own opinions and frustrations about it.

I like being able to hear the differences between Danish and other Scandinavian languages when people around me or in movies speak these languages. They used to sound like the same noise.

 

Now the frustrations.

My social life had to be way more restricted during the time I followed Danish classes. For example, I refrained from signing myself up for a hobby course or even gym because going to the Danish class twice a week was already too much in addition to my job. I didn’t want more commitments during the week even if they would be for fun. The most I could commit to during most weeks was going to the cinema with Sister in Movies. Shortly before reaching Module 5, I decided to switch to once-a-week Danish class as opposed to twice-a-week ones. Some may think that this is sub-optimal since it isn’t as frequent exposure to Danish during the week, but it made my life better. I gained an extra evening where I either went to the gym or was able to plan more social activities, which in turn improved my mental wellbeing.

I missed the wedding of Sister in Movies because it was during early days of COVID and very close to my mandatory Danish exam date. Some may think this is an extreme overthinking on my part. Maybe it was. But if I got unlucky and got COVID during the wedding, that meant not being able to attend the exam and waiting for another six months to take it. I didn’t have the nerves for such a wait at that time. I wanted to be done with Danish classes and become free of the exam stress. Sister in Movies didn’t mind, but I am upset that I missed her wedding.

Most foreigners around me told me that they learned to speak Danish fluently from their Danish spouses and the classes aren't enough for that. This made me feel like I was a lost cause in this battle. 

I was often frustrated with our written assignments. There were several reasons for it.

First, the advice you give as an academic supervisor in Computer Science to your students on writing and the advice you get from your Danish teachers on writing are at odds many times. The more complicated sentences you manage to form or the more pronouns you use, the better grades you get in Danish. I understand this from the point of showing how well you can use the complexities of the language. However, as an academic, we both receive and give the advice of “keep your sentences simple and don’t rely too much on the pronouns” while writing. It is more important that a broader range of audience understands what you write.

Second, what you write, or your ideas don't really matter. The key to a successful Danish class/exam essay is keeping it to one page: four-five paragraphs (one intro, one ending, 2-3 argument paragraphs). There is no room for you to get into the nuances of the topic. Even if there was room, your Danish isn’t good enough to get into the nuances of the topic. In any case, you aren’t judged for your ideas. You are judged on your Danish language writing skills. It is much better to stick with straightforward ideas and generalizations. This drove me crazy on topics that I actually had a lot of opinions about. Over time, I somewhat learned to detach my emotions from my Danish homework, and when given the option between two topics, I picked the one that I cared less about. On the other hand, the Part 2 mentioned above is about the Danish writing assignment that I struggled the most with. Coincidentally, it is giving me a hard time for this blog as well. Spoilers: It will be about Dansk Frisind and alcohol.

Third, the writing and in-class discussion topics are often picked based on what Danes and Danish politicians have been discussing recently, because Danish classes aren’t just for learning the Danish language, but also for your integration to Denmark. I can write a separate blog post about the topic of integration and how much it triggers in me, but let’s put that on hold at the moment. Here are some of the topics I either had to write about or discuss in Danish class or both: lifestyle diseases, alcohol over-consumption among teens in Denmark, pros/cons of immigrants, plastic accumulation in human body, impact on climate change on crops, the negative impact of longer human life expectancy on accumulated taxes … I find it ironic that a country that exports the concept of hygge abroad forces you to discuss week after week a set of topics that would even be strong enough to get Pollyanna depressed. The only topic I enjoyed discussing in class was when I chose “history of abortion rights in Denmark” as my presentation topic in one of the weeks.

 

Overall, Danish classes were like a medication that I had to take for my own good but was super grumpy for having to take due to their undesirable side-effects. In the end, I was glad that they were over and made my life healthier in Denmark.

 

In Defense of Sleeping Beauty and All the Others

A few years ago, I received an International Women’s Day message that said something like this: “Happy International Women’s Day to all the women who actively fight for what they want rather than waiting for a prince to wake them up from sleep.” The message was sent via WhatsApp printed on a picture in Turkish. I unfortunately no longer have the picture, because I tend to delete such over-shared WhatsApp picture messages, so this may not be the exact quote, but the theme was along the same lines.

 

I have identified as a feminist as long as I can remember. It is probably one of my pre-existing conditions. I am a feminist who believes in sisterhood, and I am grateful for the sisterhood I get to be a part of in my life. I love International Women's Day mainly because it is a day to celebrate this sisterhood. I receive and send more messages on International Women's Day than my birthday.

I also love Sleeping Beauty and many other heroines of the fairy tales. This message was clearly a stab at them, which I had an issue with.

 

I didn’t pay much attention to fairy tales back when I was a kid. My mom preferred making up her own stories to tell me instead, the one I remember most vividly had a worm who lived in an apple. My dad was more interested in stories rooted in Anatolian and Greek mythologies. And Disney’s influence wasn’t as strong back then where I grew up. I knew the famous fairy tales like Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, etc. from the books I was gifted. I read them, but they didn’t make me think much, I was just practicing reading.

 

From my teenage years till the start of my 30s, my attitude toward the fairy tales was similar to the attitude of the International Women’s Day message that I received. I remembered (or rather misremembered) them being only about ladies saved by men and ended up with a prince/king. Hence, relating to those stories were difficult. I have neither dreamed of being a princess (unless you count Xena: Warrior Princess) nor getting married to live happily ever after (unless maybe to Frodo at some point). Being the queen would be nice, but not a princess, even though one is a very likely precondition for the other unless you marry a king as a non-princess, which does not necessarily sound like the better deal. Anyway, most of my royal family info comes from Game of Thrones universe, not sure if I am right here.

 

Then, roughly one month before my 30^th birthday I moved to Denmark, and shortly after, while my dreams didn’t change much, the way I consumed fairy tales did.

My first year in Denmark was the most isolating time in my life, even the first COVID lockdown wasn’t that isolating. Sure, some of the friends I made that year later became additions to the pillars of my support system, but the feeling of safety and comfort near them was something that has evolved over time and wasn’t yet fully formed back then. Maybe I write about that year in more detail one day, but I won’t get into more details here.

During those isolated days, one of our adopted family members, I will call her Sister Blue, which is close to her nickname in my phone book, recommended me a podcast about storytelling. The podcast host was a French lady called Judith Liberman, who was a storyteller and lived in Turkey. She spoke Turkish well and she interviewed people about folk tales and told a folk tale herself in most episodes.

As I followed the tales told in her podcast, I started thinking more deeply about them and the popular fairy tales with princesses without the cynicism of my teenage years and 20s. Since I was for the most part isolated, I had plenty of time to spend in my own head. According to Sister Blue, as an introvert, I am more naturally gifted when it comes to self-analyze reasons for my actions in my own head. The folk tales started to become a catalyst for such self-analysis and stream of consciousness writing inspired by the tales. In turn, this created a form of therapy for me, which was both cost- and drug-free. It reduced the feeling of isolation without me having to fake being a social butterfly. It reduced my self-doubts about my actions and inactions since I could trace their roots easier. It made it easier to make peace with my failures and weaknesses as well. I can’t claim it worked perfectly all the time, but so doesn’t regular therapy. All I know is I needed help, and this was the type of help my inner stubborn bitch welcomed without resistance.

In the early days of following the podcast, as far as the popular fairy tales go, I thought about Sleeping Beauty the most, because I could relate to her sleeping state.

First, let’s make something clear. Sleeping Beauty wakes up because the curse is over not because the prince kisses her. This is one of the things some people mis-remember from the tale. Second, the big accusation against Sleeping Beauty is her passivity. This is why the picture-messages like the one I received on International Women's Day exist and some people think fairy tales are actually bad influences on children, especially girls.

Well, have you never been in a state in your life where it was even too difficult to get out bed day after day? Danish winter alone can cause some people to enter that state. Have you never been depressed? Have you never grieved? Have you never focused on one part of your life too much causing it to overtake all the other parts creating a sleep-state for those neglected parts in you? Have you never needed time to recover and therefore shut out the external world?

When Sleeping Beauty finally wakes up, she is once again open to experience the world. Her sleep wasn’t for vain. She isn’t the child she used to be. She is still herself, but a different person at the same time. She has grown.

You can say that “well, how is a kid supposed to relate to that.” That is fair. I didn’t relate to this when I was a kid either. It took me to reach my 30s to relate to it. But let’s think about a different perspective around the same theme. Have you never experienced something good after patiently waiting for a long time? Not everything in life requires aggressive action all the time. Everyone who observes the changes across seasons in a year should be able to relate to that. Or what about bears? They sleep in winter, and no one thinks they are passive.

Maybe what a child can get from this tale isn’t a princess being saved by a prince, but the value of waiting and taking time for yourself. You can emphasize this when telling or reading the story to the child. You don’t have to give all the control to Disney when it comes to these stories.

 

Let’s also briefly address Snow White, since the picture-message I received may also be referring to her instead of Sleeping Beauty. I haven’t thought too much about Snow White myself yet. But regarding whether she is passive or not, I can give an alternative narration based on one of Judith Liberman’s interviews. Snow White is a child who experiences parental abuse because of the way she looks. She somehow escapes that abuse by either convincing the hunter to let go of her or hunter’s tenderness depending on the Snow White version you listen to. She manages to survive in a forest on her own and finds a hut. After all that trauma and despite being someone who was raised in a castle, she learns to live together in harmony with seven random dudes (or the forty thieves depending on the version) without any issues. None of this is really passive. It requires a lot of strength. It is the type of strength we tend to under-value over physical strength in this world. Therefore, we under-value Snow White.

 

Originally none of these tales were for children. There were tales for the folk in general. We are the folk who tells the tales, and these tales have variations across regions based on the folk who tell them. None of these will badly influence children or include anti-feminist messages as long as we take control of how we tell them.

I would rather include the ladies of the folk tales in my sisterhood. Princesses, queens, witches … are all welcome.

 

P.S. I am well-aware that there are many books that psychoanalyze folk tales creating archetypes and viewing all characters in the context of a single person. I love reading those books. I prefer having my own less-scholarly analysis first, though, when I can, so that I am not too influenced by others.

Sunday, October 9, 2022 - Sore Throat

I have sore throat. I stay still in bed for a while making a list in my head of things I have to sort out as a result of waking up with a throat that gives you pain upon swallowing.

These are the mornings I wish I lived in a place with family nearby. I start to feel melancholy rising in me and want to call my parents. But that item isn’t on the list yet.

 

Let’s start with the first item.

It feels like the soreness I had when I had COVID earlier this year. That was the week Denmark lifted all its COVID restrictions. I was there to celebrate it at home with my COVID just five days after I got my third COVID shot.

I have to find a test to make sure. I have none at home. I took all of them to my parents in Turkey during summer holidays. I feel guilty to go out to buy some test-kits in case I have COVID. Should I call someone to get some for me? The closest person I can call for this is still a bit far and is probably sleeping at this hour. I put a mask on and go out. I decide to try supermarkets instead of pharmacies hoping that would prevent close interactions with people in case I have COVID. I find self-test kits at the second supermarket I try.

I come back home and do the test. It is negative. I feel some relief. Though, I know this isn’t a definitive answer. Will do another test tomorrow.

 

Moving to the next list item.

I need to feed myself. I prepare breakfast and eat watching the latest episode of Rings of Power. It makes me forget my sore throat for a while. But since I am more melancholic than usual, I end up crying several times during the episode.

 

Third item.

I have things to put in order at work. I know there are different degrees to sore throats. Some you can recover from in a day, some will need slightly longer time but wouldn’t prevent you from drinking coffee, and some will not only need longer time but also make your best friend coffee temporarily your enemy. What I have right now is the last kind, and I know I cannot and should not make it to the university tomorrow. I email my PhD student and postdoc for my class so that they take it over. I am glad that at least I have this luxury now, which I didn’t have up until two years ago when I was without funding to hire people. I also email the people I had meetings with and cancel them asking to synchronize over email or Teams chat.

 

Fourth item.

I still have to finish preparing the second class-project. I assigned the preparation of the first and third projects to my two PhD students, but I took over the second one. I am almost done with it but need to write up its description before the class. I finish it while baking in parallel, because soon I will be hungry again.

 

So fifth item done concurrently with fourth.

 

Six.

I signed up for an online writing class for this weekend during summer. It is time for that. I am glad for the class since it allows me to sit down and relax a bit at least. It is where I write the first draft of this text during a 10minute writing exercise with a pen and notebook. My PhD advisor once told me “it is a good thing you have a computer”, my handwriting is terrible.

I feed myself again while following the last hour of the class and take a paracetamol for the fever.

 

Seven.

I have to inform my partner-in-crime-in-Denmark (I know I need a better nickname for her, working on it) who I planned to hang out with on Tuesday about the possibility of canceling our meeting since I don’t want to give her germs.

I also inform my visitor coming next Saturday from USA. I really hope that I will be well by then. We have been planning this trip since beginning of COVID. I am looking forward to it.

 

Eight.

Call parents and listen to your mom telling you to prepare mouthwash with carbonate and buy vitamins.

 

Nine.

Call your grandma because it is Sunday and try to sound not-ill.

 

I think I am done. I am hungry again.

 

I dread being ill. It is really tiring. It leads to further piled-up work. It makes me feel weak. It amplifies my melancholy. I end up questioning my life choices and over-analyzing the cost I pay for my belief in independence, which was the main life goal I had since I was four (I don’t remember before the age of four). I know I will firmly believe in my life choices again once the fever goes away and my throat recovers to a state where I can drink coffee happily again. This is not the first time I am ill and won’t be the last one, but each one is a strange emotional rollercoaster. Maybe all this is just caffeine withdrawal.

There used to be a time where being ill was actually fun. I was a dependent child back then. Being ill meant skipping school, being taken care of by the adults in my life (parents, cousins of parents, family friends …) and playing games with them at home, occupying the big couch in our living room getting unlimited TV time or watching E.T. over and over on the VHS tape my dad recorded during one the times it was on Turkish TV. Later in life, I apologized to my parents for subjecting them to certain kids shows (e.g., Blue's Clues), but I will never apologize for subjecting anyone to E.T.

Now being ill comes with complications I have to take care of, and I avoid watching E.T. because I know it will make me cry too much at this state and that isn’t good for my coffee-repellent sore throat and creeping fever.

In retrospect, me being ill when I was a child probably created even worse complications for my parents even discounting the worry they felt (and still feel) for it. What I remember as fun memories wasn’t really fun for them. And being ill now isn’t that bad, because I will get to enjoy a longer breakfast tomorrow (minus the coffee, unfortunately) and take a long walk during the day while the Danish sun is still out there with all its intensity. What a luxury that is to have as an independent adult on a weekday.

  

Aggression

“You need to be more aggressive.” is an advice I often receive at work from the people who want the best for me. It is also the advice that frustrates me the most. I don’t know what to do with it or how to act upon it. Other people’s aggressiveness often works as a repellent on me. 

I know that what people mean by aggressive in this context is assertive, but these two words are often used inter-changeably at work, and sometimes boundaries aren’t very clear. I also have to confess that I am a person who often feels anger and rage. I love and welcome these emotions as a compass in life, but I don’t like acting on them with an outward aggression.

When I was a PhD student, I thought I should quit my job several times after receiving the “be more aggressive/assertive” advice. If the only way to exist in this profession was through being aggressive, I didn’t think there was a place for me in it.

Progressing in my career made it clear to me that one doesn’t always have to be aggressive to survive in our profession. But, more importantly, I realized that surviving all these aggression dynamics doesn’t have to be the responsibility of the non-aggressive side. I wish people advised the other parties to be “less aggressive” as much as they advised me to be “more aggressive.” This isn’t a one-sided interaction, and I don’t always have to be the one bearing the responsibility for the lack of constructive conversation. For example, my first manager at IBM Almaden, Guy Lohmann, made a real effort in team meetings to avoid cases where one person is dominating the discussion by being aggressive and shutting everyone else down. When Guy realized such a dynamic, he politely told the dominating person to wrap up and gave a chance to the people who couldn’t speak up as aggressively to express their opinion. 

My relationship with aggression took a slightly different turn after I moved to Denmark, though.

In my first few months in Denmark, I often felt like the aggressive one among a group of people. People I interacted with were the calmest I have ever met, and that level of calmness made me want to be more aggressive. It was almost like their version of calmness was a chain over my emotions preventing me from showing the full range of them, which in turn made me want to burst.

Over time, I found my tribe in Denmark and also realized that the aggression in Scandinavia comes more often in a passive aggressive form. Realizing and reacting to direct and loud aggression is relatively easy assuming the aggression isn’t physical. (I may be saying this since this is the aggression type I am more used to thanks to my Black Sea upbringing.) Passive aggression is a psychological warfare that can leave you with scars that are invisible. In fact, I realized how violent passive aggression could be while sitting at a meeting being completely ignored by a colleague as if I didn’t exist. This was a painful realization and made me self-analyze my own possibly passive aggressive behavior at times. I decided that I despise this form of aggression and do my best to avoid it.

Today, overall, I have a slightly less negative view on being directly but not physically aggressive. While in Denmark, I learned to be more aggressive without feeling bad about it, mainly to self-protect or take up space unapologetically. In the end, it didn’t develop as a response to the repeated advice I kept receiving, but more naturally out of necessity and getting older (or more mature / senior if you prefer these words better).

I still don’t like hearing “be more aggressive” advice, though, either given to me or to another colleague or to a student. I have managed not to give this advice to anyone as a supervisor and professor so far, and I intend to keep it that way. Let’s see how it goes.

Series & Films about/for Grief – Petite Maman

[As usual, I tried to do this without any spoilers beyond the film’s synopsis or trailer, but some of the things I wrote below may hint at certain events in the film, so don’t read if you don’t want any spoilers.]

What happens to the grief that we accumulate when we were children? Is this accumulation only a result of our own losses or also the losses of people around us? How does it shape our actions once we become grown-ups? How does it affect the people around us? Do we seem like sad people with possibly sad childhoods even though that is not how we would describe our childhood?

How do we interpret our parents’ grief, especially when it keeps sparking even long after the exact time of a loss? Do we get so occupied trying to figure out the cause of their sadness and how to fix it? Does their grief blind us to our own grief?

Does a parent’s grief blind them to their children’s grief? Or is it the kitsch we create for children that causes that blindness? That kitsch tells us that children are care-free and joyful beings. Nobody wants to think that children can grieve. Most parents would do anything to prevent their children from looking sad rather than letting them process or express all their emotions. But don’t we actually share many of the losses in a family?

What happens when we were raised by grieving parents or surrounded by grieving adults? Do we internalize that grief? Does it become the emotion we are the most familiar with without really understanding what it really is?

When do we really understand the influence of the losses experienced during childhood? When do we observe the link between them and our fears? Do we need to reach an equal level to our parents to finally put things into perspective, to understand our actions as well as theirs?

When do we become equals to our parents? How much maturity does it take? Is it even possible to be equals with them or will there always be an imbalanced power dynamic between us? Do these power dynamics shift the other way around as we get older?

 

Petite Maman depicts grief from the eyes of a child, Nelly, who just lost her grandmother. Nelly tries to process her own grief. In parallel, to a greater extent, she is trying to understand the grief of her mother, not just the grief triggered by their recent shared loss, but her accumulated grief since childhood.

In just 72 minutes, embodying the folk tale narrative of a hero’s journey, Petite Maman is about many things in addition to grief. It is about being a parent, especially motherhood. It is about our relationships with our parents. It is about love, especially the love between two people who are equals. It is about the path to become equals to people whom we, partly due to the laws of nature and partly due to the laws of traditional society, aren’t equals to by default.

 

During this cold and stormy winter morning, Petite Maman was a very subtle and, in the words of my partner-in-crime-in-movies, tender blanket to be wrapped up in, while (re)visiting one’s childhood.