After three years and six months at Lincoln University I am now officially unemployed and heading away on a gap year for grown ups with my family.
I started at Lincoln University in the position of Online Services Manager in October 2009. In April 2012 I became the Applications group manager as well as the online services manager. A friend in the US said “a Mexican promotion – two jobs, one salary”, which it was but it was more than that as well. I became responsible for a team of six people who helped me and whom I hope I helped. It is them and the other people I worked with at Lincoln University that I really tried to express my thanks to in my leaving speech.
I’m blogging my speech because my dad asked for a copy and several people were unable to attend. It starts using the Maori language and ends using the Tibetan language.
----------------
Te whare tipuna e tu nei
Te University e takoto nei
Tena korua
Nga hau e wha
Nga iwi e tau nei
Tena koutou katoa
Thank you everyone for coming , though I’m sure you’re only here for the free food.
When I got my job at Lincoln University a very good friend of mine who has worked with many Australasian universities said
“congratulations, I’ll be impressed if you achieve anything”
When I asked him why he said
“because it’s a university”
I’ll come back to this point later on.
Last year I gave a talk to new staff, and in it I showed them a bar chart about as tall as I am (2m long) with a 5cm blue section on one end. I asked them what they thought it might be.
No one knew what it was until I put the date 1878 at one end, and someone said “that is the length of time Lincoln has existed”. Which it is.
I then asked “what is this little blue bit here?” I explained that was the length of time I had been at Lincoln. Looking at the difference I pointed out to them that the organisational momentum for an institution as old as ours explains why believing you can change things is a little self centred.
This morning over coffee Andrew Frapwell pointed out that the amount of work our organisation does has grown exponentially. And that got me thinking and forced me to rewrite my speech.
I think there are two reasons I was able to achieve things, despite working in a university:
- You all gave up your time in my first few weeks to tell me what you did and share what you knew about Lincoln
- Since 1878 the amount of change occurring has grown exponentially.
So my short time here has coincided with unprecedented desire and need for things to happen.
Some of them we wished for
- new websites – thank you to all you editors who continue to make our online presence vibrant.
- entity blogging – thank you to the Ecology team for blazing the way, Roland for the VandO blog, and Derrick for the Drylands blog.
- social media – well done Alana on our 10,000 member Facebook audience.
some of the things that happened we didn’t wish for
- the fact that some of our friends and family are no longer with us.
- the shaky ground we’ve had over the past 2 years.
Professionally and personally Lincoln has been wonderful for me . . . . apart from a couple of bits, but the less said about them the better.
Most of you won’t know but my association with Lincoln goes back to before I was born. Dick Lucas was a twinkle in my mother’s eye long before I was and Alan McKinnon ensured the familial genes were well settled before I got here.
As a child the Nepali students of the 70’s and 80’s told me stories of their time here too.
So when I got to campus I had a sense of the place, and it’s importance in the world.
Many of you here and some who aren’t here any longer made me welcome and have helped and supported me. For this I thank you and wish you all well.
Tujay-chay Tujay-chay Tujay-chay
Comments