Engaging

I took the train out of Derry for the first time today. It was a really lovely one-hour jaunt up to the North Coast to attend a seminar in Coleraine on 'Globalising Higher Education.' The first part of the formal conference was a seminar on Universities 'engaging' (one of the infamous education buzz words) with students and the community. Before the formal bit started we all had lunch together, which was grand. I noticed all our tendencies to do the thing that academics and professionals do at conferences. So what it is that you do? What are you researching? Oh very interesting. And it is interesting. The room was full of highly educated and successful people completing PhD's, advocating for progressive higher education policy, and producing reports on groundbreaking research projects.

Still, I felt the need to initiate normal speak and started asking the woman beside me about her brothers and sisters in Uganda. She has 10 of them. 2 of them are Catholic priests and all 5 of her sisters (6 including herself) are teachers. Her father is pushing 80 and she mentions her mother passed away at 50, and she says with a smile of acceptance that 11 kids was just too many. I don't remember now what she was researching.

The first speaker was a pretty down-to-earth guy. He gave a very nice presentation and I took a few notes. The second speaker also gave a presentation but I drifted away. I looked around the room. I'd say at least a fourth were definitely catching some shut-eye and I suspected the others in the room were drifting just like me. On and on about challenges and opportunities, institutional engagement, development, global citizenship and educational partnerships. Ear candy.

I wasn't feeling well, which in fairness had nothing to do with the people present or the presentations. I'm feeling a fairly acute back pain today and I'm hoping it is muscular and not pre-flu aches. Regardless, I found reception to call me a cab (noting the distinct and purposeful way that he translated the way I said Derry into Londonderry). He was very kind though called the railline twice to confirm the train times for the remainder of the day.

I settled into my seat on the train and pulled out some reading. A woman sat across from me and began talking with me as if we had known each other for simply years. I believe she has Down's syndrome and she wanted to have a chat about the people streaming into the train (Another one for Londonderry!) and the train itself and her job which involves selling birdfeed, I think. Sadly my first inclination was that I just wasn't in the mood to talk. I wasn't feeling well. I didn't have energy to hold new conversations with more new people. I wanted to be left alone.

She took out a stack of photos from her backpack and said, "I want to show you my pictures." In that moment, though I suspected it from her hello, it hit me that she wanted to engage with me. She wanted to tell me about her life and asked me where I was going. I flipped through pictures and asked some questions. This one is her boyfriend Jonathan and that's her dog Tommy. This one here is her holding her baby cousin and that's Josh, another baby cousin. I asked her name and she said Catherine.

Catherine spotted another train friend (one whom she knew by name though) and called her over to sit with us. The other woman flipped through her pictures, at one point commenting on the picture of "King Billy" on a horse at a festival. (A historic figure from the 17th century celebrated by Ulster Protestants only in this region.) Catherine says, "No, that's just a man dressed up as him."

Catherine got off at the next stop and the other woman and I continued on to Derry. She talked about her job and how she wanted to move and wanted to know if I voted in November's election. She used to work at the ballot box, you see. We parted at the train station.

I called a taxi though I'd normally walk. Today was not the day to walk. He was young, which is somewhat unusual for a cab driver in Derry. He had one of those deep deep Derry accents that requires you to pay extra attention and translate the local slang. He worked for a year in Boston on a fork lift, but Americans are too focused on their work, he says. He couldn't be bothered with it. He didn't want to always work overtime. So he came back to Derry.

And I am back home. I think about what it means to engage with each other. Not what it means by definition, but what it sounds like. What it feels like. What it smells like. The ways that I engaged with people today weren't really what the presenters were talking about. What they mean to get at and hope to inspire is the sense that in the 'ivory tower' and in our institutions of higher education that we don't have to be so structured, so distant, so isolated from the communities where we study and work. People do engage in higher education. But I'm not sure how much of it you can plan or really 'get people to get' when it comes to stopping what you are doing to look someone in the eye and ask them an honest question or listen to their story or just be present in the conversation. It can be a hard task especially if you're tired, or don't feel well, or just want a moment of quiet to yourself.

If we get past our own agenda, however, there is room for honest engagement every day in personal encounters. This includes professors and researchers and presenters. Just like it includes people you meet on the train or in the taxi. But it's not a matter of policy or theory. It's a practice. And no matter how many nice sounding terms we come up with to say "Talk to people. Listen to people. Work with people. Live beside people. Educate people." You and I either will or we won't.