Join Episode 47 of the Creative Work Hour podcast as Dr. Wai Ling Fong shares her inspiring PhD journey, dissertation defense insights, and the role of community support in achieving her dreams.

Greg
Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative Work Hour podcast. This is episode 47 and wait I can see something in the distance. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a doctor. It's Dr. Wai Ling Fong. Wai Ling, the dissertation you did earlier, is absolutely fantastic. Isn't this just so cool?

Alessandra
It is the coolest thing. I have never been invited to attend a presentation for a dissertation before. I was like, what do I wear? What is it like? Do I turn my camera on? Do I hide in the back? You know, do I show my pronouns? What do

Greg
I do?

Alessandra
And so it was just really, it was just really very special. I was lucky enough to get to attend Wai Ling and Eric's wedding. two years ago, and this is every bit as important as that. I didn't have to travel because case in point with how education was all changed during COVID, instead of closed rooms and juried committees for dissertations, now they're on Zoom.

Greg
I know that so much preparation went into this by so many people. Wailing, what's some of the points that, you know, leading up to today? Because you hit it out of the park. You really did. So what did it feel like to be called a doctor? What's that like?

Wai Ling
To be honest, I am still processing. I've been in the doctoral program since 2017, taking coursework, and then this research only began, it took 17 months, so I would say from fall 2023, and then like after I got the approval, the IRB, and then I began data collection and so forth. This was like the latter part of the journey but yet it was the most important one because it culminates the whole dissertation journey. Even this time last year, I wasn't even sure if I would arrive at the finish line because it was just, doing a research is always very messy, there's a lot of ambiguity.

Wai Ling
There's a lot of feeling like, oh, I should have known this, but no, it's just a lot of uncertainty. It's like moths turn into weeks, weeks turn into days, and suddenly the day of the defence arrives. It's still sinking in for me. I think I will need some time to really, you know, like come to the arrival.

Greg
You're positively glowing, you really are. It looks like you're in a studio, so how did that happen?

Wai Ling
Yeah, so I would say I have to, I'm very thankful for the support that I have received from the Creative Work Hour. And I'm not just talking about the daily focus sessions that we all gather, but it's through the many years that we've been coming together. It's about taking chances and sharing our work publicly. And the very first time I engaged with Copper Joe, the practice session was when I did my 3MT, which is a three minute thesis competition that was back in fall. And then having done that, I knew I had to engage, I would want to engage with the crew for the defence preparation.

Wai Ling
I was really struggling to put the presentation together because I'm only given a 15 to 20 minutes time frame and yet I also know that this is important work to share so I just Share whether the work is in progress ready or not. I think when I did my first run on Monday, I was not ready. The slides were still wonky. My speech was not was not up there yet. But the value that I really took away is Just do it before you're ready, because from there, you get feedback. If I were to wait for things to be perfect, people may also feel like, oh, I'm not sure if it's my place to give any feedback, but when you approach in a very vulnerable, you know, willing to learn place and people and then you accept those feedback, you are often going to learn and see things that you don't see because people are willing to like, hey, have you thought about this?

Wai Ling
Have you thought about this? So that's been very helpful to be ready for today's defense.

Greg
I can say I know a lot of people have been along this journey with you, and it feels like a victory to all of us, actually, that, you know, you knocked it out of the park. It's like we're sharing it with you. And we were there. We were there in the Zoom rooms.

Alessandra
I have a few shout outs for people that have spent good time with Wai Ling in crafting mindful feedback. One of the things that we do in Creative Work Hour, if it's a work in progress, is to share what we're doing or a tiny desk concert, which is a 90% ready kind of demonstration of what we're working on. But I have these names that were there with you in the room while you were doing the thing that you've been preparing for for 17 months. We had another creative work hour crew Cara Monroe, who has been through the whole thing like you have.

Alessandra
She has her PhD. She was there for you. I know that Michael Johnson was working on his PhD at, was it Caltech? Devin Dingler was there. He's got a Master's in Finance and Taxation and then a Juris Doctorate. Andy Sporring is a maestro and quite a writer. Greg is our producer on the podcast, and he too has a hat stand full of 10 hats of things that he does extremely, extremely well. And we saw our friend Bianca Piera that some of us know from Linking Your Thinking, and you've kept up with her over time. And then, yeah, so it was really wonderful to see the crew come together to sit with you and be with you through the process.

Alessandra
What was that like?

Wai Ling
I want to say thank you to Alessandra. I remember when we were waiting for the committee, when they were deliberating, you brought up this beautiful point about how it feels to see all these people from different circles of your life coming together. When I was extending the invitation, it was actually my way of honouring all these people that have walked alongside me and realising that you can't accomplish a big thing like this by yourself even though you were the one who's doing the research and writing right but it is true that talking with people even the support that you have received in that may not be directly related to the work but just give you the encouragement to keep going so I thought like these are the people that I want to be there and I have my friend Victor which I'm so so happy he came.

Wai Ling
Victor was a friend all the way back in 2014, Dr. Alibi. He's actually a visiting professor at Brown. He also completed his PhD I think two years ago from Indiana and then I have Bella all the way from Norway. We kept in touch after Ohio University even if we we don't meet after all these years but we were just like texting like oh hey what do you think of this i'm having trouble with this but it was really really very nice to know that but when i was about to go into the defense today it's the idea like all of these people who have been in my corner are gonna be there and it just feel like yeah i got all these folks just there to hear me talk about my work and i know they're they're happy for me

Alessandra
We're all in it together.

Wai Ling
08:11 - 08:14
There were so many people in the room that I had to scroll

Alessandra
to see everybody. And I know that you couldn't do that because you were like, you know, you were in the camera. But I was like, holy smokes, there's so many people here for Wai Ling.

Greg
Wai Ling, if someone else is on this journey, right, maybe they're just starting out. And I know that some Creative Work Hour members are in school as well, they're at different stages. in their journey, but what's a couple of words of advice that you might offer to someone? Now that you've done it, you've seen it through, you've reached the end, you're a doctor, right? So what words of wisdom or encouragement might you offer to somebody?

Wai Ling
I think it's when it comes to pursuing a research or a creative project, right? You have to surrender to the journey. As much as you want to have clarity of what is next or how you want it to end, it's often when it projects like this it almost has its own temperament and often it's always I don't know where it's gonna lead but it is having that faith okay this is what I know I'm gonna do this next and let's see how we go from there so it's always like that the next step then just take the next step the next step the next step

Alessandra
well what I wanted to ask you about because this is the flip side of the coin of what Greg just asked you about what advice is what was the lowest point where you're like, I don't know if I'm going to make it. What if I don't make it? Like, did you, did you have any low points like that? Because it looks like it is not for the faint hearted what you've done.

Wai Ling
Yeah, I think my low point was actually the week before Savannah. So for our listeners, I had a conference in Savannah in the last week of February, and the goal was actually to submit the whole manuscript before I leave for Savannah so that I can be at my conference. But there were some major foundational changes that I had to get to and I was battling with a lot. I had very little time before the conference, I needed to pack and I think I was also working at a very unsustainable time period for the last couple of months so it was all building up.

Wai Ling
and i remember just unable to finish a simple edit and that's and then i was the the the tears were flowing very naturally and and i feel like it's because my body was coming to a point saying like hey we need a break like it was rioting it was basically saying like i know we need to do this but all of us are suffering and that's when i knew i was hitting my my low point i was bursting out in tears without like it was just coming out and and I think it's just my body trying to process what was going on because it's not just writing it's also the man like I was making decisions on a daily basis and I think it was that cognitive overload and I was getting tired a decision fatigue yeah the decision fatigue yes yeah and also the lack of lack of rest so I remember I was really so low and I was telling Eric too, like, I don't even know if what I'm doing matters.

Wai Ling
I don't even, like, I was questioning everything. I was questioning my work. I was questioning the worthiness of being where I am. And it was very tough, but then I picked up the phone and I talked to a friend who defended me a couple of months ago, and she said this, she said like, Wai Ling, you have to give yourself permission to take a step back, and it's okay. And then that's when I just thought, I'm going to take a break. I'm going to go to Savannah. And it was so, so good because I was like, I was stepping away from my work for the first time in months.

Wai Ling
And I was like, you know, just doing my thing. I was checking out new places. And I think just stepping away from my normal environment, it brought so much rest. It was the respite There's this

Alessandra
picture that you took of yourself and you were on the train, like I feel like I'm going to cry, you were on the train between Savannah and getting back to DC. and you were with your journal and you probably just took your phone and propped it up on your at your coffee cup or something and you took that picture and it was like the most peaceful that I had seen you in months and I knew that just a few days before that you were hurting exhausted decision fatigued and I was I was concerned Not that you wouldn't make it through, I knew you would make it through, but that when we're pushing ourselves so hard and we're moving into gears that are the not kind to self gears to get a thing done, It's a scary place to be.

Wai Ling
Yes, yes. And I also want to talk about how important it is to take care of yourself in moments like this, because I knew if I were to push on and if I hit burnout, it's going to be worse. I will probably be like, yeah, the downtime will be even more. I know it's so difficult for us to say this, right? Because we all have this idea like, oh, we gotta arrive at where we want to be at the time we want. But like every work out there, it has its timeline. I know it's so weird.

Wai Ling
It's like so woo, but it really has its timeline. It's like you can't force it.

Alessandra
Well, I think this is part of how Creative Working Hour came to be, i was the idea of How the hell do we improve our relationship with our work? Because the relationship with our work is the relationship with ourselves. Because the way that we come into the world, before we take that first breath, it's up to us. We take that first breath and we grow. And we get to the point where we're doing our own work. And nobody can do it for us. And until that day that we no longer have breath in our bodies.

Alessandra
There's something there about that relationship with work, which is the relationship with self. And when it is strained because of the loftiness of an ideal or a goal, or we grasp for the things that are going to help us get through to accomplish. But sometimes what we grasp for is obsession or perfectionism or workaholism or what have you. So I just want to commend you, not as much for the 17 months of work as I want to commend you for saying, I'm going to pack that bag and I'm going to go to Savannah and I'm going to help some other PhD candidates with the kinds of design that they need for doing their posters that strengthens what they're doing in their work, which in turn improves their relationships with themselves.

Alessandra
That's what I want to commend you on, because sometimes when we step aside and we take care of ourselves, when burnout is barreling at us 60 miles an hour, like an oncoming train, Stepping aside and out of the way to care for self is the bravest work of all. And had you not done that, your name would not be Dr. Wai-Ling Fong right now.

Greg
What would you say to anyone thinking about doing a tiny desk concert? Because, you know, we've got some people on the fence with that as well.

Wai Ling
Yes, I would say start before you're ready. Don't think about sharing your work when you think it's ready because it never will. It is through the unreadiness to show even before it's completely baked. and then to get the feedback and trust that you're not just so not not trust but be open to the idea that your feedback is may not be directly related to your work but the behind the scenes that you have to take care of like for example how you approach how you present yourself to the audience your voice your intonation things that you may not think about but when you bring it to a group of multi-generational creatives, like all these creative people in the room with multiple hats and talents, you never know what you're gonna get.

Wai Ling
And it's, I'm so fortunate, the creative work hour folks have been very, very supportive of my work. And not only that, they are like the ones who are behind me, it's so precious, like to know that this group of people are genuinely invested in my success.

Greg
I think we're very fortunate as well that you've shared your journey with us and you've been vulnerable in that building in public. You've built this in public and you've put yourself in a very vulnerable situation and we're privileged to be able to have a little bit of insight into your journey and what it's been like. You listen

Alessandra
to Uncle Greg, he knows what he's talking about. 

Speaker 9
Thank you for being here today for Wai Ling Fong's dissertation defense. A dissertation defense is a really important milestone. It's nearing the end of one journey and the beginning of another and we're just delighted that Wai Ling has made it to this point with some really excellent research and things to share, and that you're all here today to learn about her research and to share in this part of the journey. I'll just briefly explain the process. So We Wai Ling will present an overview of her research and findings. We'll then start with questions from the committee.

Speaker 9
And as time allows, we'll have time for a few questions from anybody else who's here today as well. At the end of that conversation, the committee will go into a breakout room to talk and we'll return at the end to the Zoom after that conversation. So, Wai Ling, take it away. 

Wai Ling
Thank you. Good afternoon and I would like to thank everyone for being here. So, I would first like to begin by taking us back to March 2020, when higher education and the rest of the world came to a sudden stop. During this time, faculty had to move their in-person courses to teaching online with very little preparation. It was a time of uncertainty, there was no roadmap, and yet we need to continue letting students learn. So in the midst of all of this, centres for teaching and learning in higher education across universities had to step in to provide emergency faculty training support.

Wai Ling
at George Mason University. One of these programs is called the Online Course Design Primer. It was piloted in spring 2020. It started with five modules. There were 298 participants in the first pilot, but it was expanded to seven modules. There was some feedback saying like the time was too short for the content that it needed to be relayed to the faculty. So in summer and fall, it was expanded and carried. Thank you for watching! So the purpose of the OCDP really was to equip faculty with essential online teaching skills that they can apply immediately.

Wai Ling
So think of it like a band aid that they needed in a very desperate time. It brought faculty from course planning, aligning their assignment with learning outcomes, communicating with students, and also how to create assessments that are applicable in an online teaching environment. and it was led by the Stern Center. There was support from faculty facilitators who were faculty from the campus, mentors in some ways. Participants were group in similar disciplines to enable the sense of camaraderie and also to have a shared sense of learning from the same discipline. It was delivered via Blackboard, Mason's LMS.

Wai Ling
There was a sandbox feature that allowed participants to essentially create without the fear of making mistakes. While the pandemic was a catalyst that shaped my research, the idea really didn't come until much later because I had time to take a pause and just think about how unprecedented this whole situation was. I experienced fully in person and then almost overnight we were all thrown into online and then along the years we had hybrid and now we have a mix of in between. So, I also know that many faculty, not only at George Mason, but across many universities, went through similar training like this.

Wai Ling
And so I wonder, what lessons stuck with faculty after the training? And in my research, I learned that most faculty developments are evaluated in the short term. This means they were conducted right after the program, it captured participants' immediate feedback and reaction, and they are usually quantitative by nature. Now there's nothing wrong with this because it's easy, it's quick and you want to know what participants are thinking. But the flaw of short-term evaluations is that it doesn't really capture the longer lasting impact of a programme. So in comes long-term evaluations which can be conducted months This is a the program was either supportive or did it hinder the long-term training.

Wai Ling
So I came across the Kirkpatrick evaluation model which is a widely used framework in training and program evaluation. Now what I appreciate about this model is that it's able to tell us the shorter feedback of participants through their reaction and their learning, but there's also the more extensive part to really understand the behavioral changes that took place, as well as the organizational outcome that can come from the training. And with this, the overarching research question that guided my study was, How did participation in the online course design primer influence faculty's teaching practices over time? And using the Kirkpatrick model, I further broke down my research into three layers.

Wai Ling
RQ1, how did participants respond to the OCDP? RQ2, what knowledge or skills did they gain from the OCDP? And RQ3, How have they applied their learning to their current teaching practice? I did not apply the larger Level 4 because my focus is on the experiences of faculty. instead of the overall organisation. To answer the research question, I employed a qualitative case study focused on a single site here at George Mason University. It's intrinsic because my focus is on understanding OCDP here at Mason and it's exploratory because long-term evaluations of COVID-19 faculty training It's still a very novel thing, seeing that the pandemic was just a couple of years ago.

Wai Ling
So I really don't know what I'm going to find, so hence I just wanted to see what's there. I'm using data sources from 2021 and 2024 and I use thematic analysis to look at my data. And with every case study, I ensure that there are boundaries that I adhere to. So as the OCDP modules, there were two different versions. I only look at the summer and fall modules because this shared seven modules. My participants had to have completed either the summer and the fall or the fall. and more importantly they were prior participants in the 2021 extended assessment interview which was conducted by the Stern Center.

Wai Ling
I will talk a little bit about this in a later slide. There were a total of 14 participants in my study. They taught multiple, they come from multiple disciplines and they hold different rankings. Majority of them are from the summer semester. I have one from the fall semester and their motivations for attending the OCDP is because they either reported that they have no prior online teaching experience or they needed more guidance to teach online and in terms of their teaching modalities in 2021 All of them were teaching online, but in 2024, 10 of them had returned to in-person teaching.

Wai Ling
So we have a combination of both faculties in between two different modalities. Now for my data sources, I work with 2021 and 2024 data sources. The 2021 extended assessment interviews were conducted by the Stern Centre one year post-OCDP and their objective is also to understand what How did participants apply their learning one year after the programme? It's a combination of closed and open-ended surveys and they are all self-reported interviews. This means we are understanding what they reported to have learned from their own self-report and I'm very fortunate to have my hands on this but I have to preface that because I did not In 2024, I made a call for interviews with the same participants who did the 2021 interviews.

Wai Ling
My interviews were qualitative, they were semi-structured, and again, relying on self-report. I also talked to facilitators from the Stern Centre. I reviewed the OCDP modules on Blackboard so I can really understand what participants went through. And I also wrote researchers' memos to track the evolution of my thinking. My research phase can be broadly categorized in four main phases. So in phase one, I call it the familiarization with the 2021 data. Because I did not collect this data, I needed to see what's there. So my approach was to first conduct a first cycle coding using inductive coding with just no expectation, but just to see what surface, who were the participants, what were they talking about.

Wai Ling
So when I entered Phase 2, it's when I started my data collection, I made the call for interviews through purposeful sampling, I conducted interviews with the facilitators, and all of these first, all of these 2024 interviews also went through a first cycle coding, again with the expectation just to see what's there. I know you know just to open my mind on what I'll find. Now when I enter phase three I have a general understanding of what I'm seeing in 2021 and 2024 but they are really like comparing apple and orange because they are different data and I needed a way to look at this data in a standardized manner and this was when I pulled in the Kirkpatrick evaluation model as a framework to look at this data.

Wai Ling
And the lens was really, really very helpful because of the very clear, clear understanding of what is reaction, what is learning and what is behaviour. So that guided me on how I look at the data. I also make sure I check with, I share the interviews with the participants, and make sure that it's accurate. I also compare with the modules and also just to really understand like what was the background with the facilitators. And when I enter phase four, this is when I start the parallel analysis of 2021 and 2024 and I wrote the data. So what did I find?

Wai Ling
Now, level one reaction is all about how the participants respond to the program. In the Kirkpatrick, there are three main things that they look out for. First, favorability. Second, relevance. And third is... So, favorability, relevance and... and satisfaction. Sorry, yeah. So, yes, these three things. So, one thing about the program is that it was very positive. Both 2021 and 2024, participants were very happy with the program. And when I look at what they were happy about first, they were... they were very pleased with the support that they gained from the facilitators. They mentioned facilitators were available even after the OCDP ended.

Wai Ling
They were very, they appreciated the feedback that wasn't just general feedback, but they were tailored to their circumstance that they face. So this shows that support from facilitators really made up the experiences of the participants. Now, when it comes to course content, participants mentioned it was timely. Because of the situation they faced during the pandemic, they really needed this support to help them transition. And in 2024, they mentioned that this course content are still applicable in their face-to-face teaching. Learning through community is another really core occurrence that participants were sharing simply because they value the opportunity to learn from each other.

Wai Ling
They were able to see how someone taught a class in their particular discipline and just to have that platform to just share ideas and ask questions and learn together. So in level 2, this is when we move into the more tangible skills that participants are saying when asked, what did you learn? So in my findings, I find that there are four occurring skills that they kept mentioning. 

Wai Ling
First, modular course organization. When before OCDP, participants may have a more go with the flow structure because think about it, when you are in an in-person environment, you get to see your students often, communication is more frequent, so they felt like yeah I can go with the flow and just you know like adapt my syllabus as I go but in an online environment when there are asynchronous classes they find that they have to be intentional from the get-go and this is when they really make sure that the class is actually organized in very clear weeks with their learning outcomes Chunking is another skill that came up repeatedly and the reason is they really understood the importance of not overbearing their students with like a firehose of information but instead chunking, parsing them out in a way that just makes teaching and learning so much easier.

Wai Ling
For the third skill, regular communication with students, there was a lot of understanding that you can't just reach students in one avenue anymore. So there was no more in-class interaction, but there has to be more touch points. So it could be like email, through the LMS, and if there are any updates via the course, they will make sure that there are just, it's just more frequent touch points with their students. And finally, assessment design. participants are now more intentional with aligning with their learning outcomes and there is this sense that it's actually quality over quantity as long as they are testing students in a way that align with the learning objective So in level 3, this is when we really come to see the longer term impact influence of the program so it's actually pretty surprising that even if this course was centered on online teaching skills participants were actually applying some of these skills in their in-person classes so it was actually very it was an unexpected finding and also it shows that Online teaching skills are not just applicable in the online environment.

Wai Ling
In fact, when applied right, it can actually carry through different modality. So participants share the types of strategies that they still apply in person. For example, they were more intentional with using discussion boards as an asynchronous assignment before they meet for class. They like the idea of using certain tools. For example, there was an app called Padlet, which is like a discussion board. They find that when they have students participate in that, students are actually doing better work because their work are now being seen by the classmates instead of just the faculty. So these are some examples.

Wai Ling
Now, key change drivers are actually very key when it comes to evaluating a training. So think about it, lessons that participants learn will not translate for the long term if there are no systems in place to make sure that it's accessible. So what I find is that participants still go back to the resources like the templates, the rubrics, and discussion prompts that they learn from the OCD pre-modules in their class. And this shows that these were the items that actually kept that sustained their teaching practice so these were actually this really points to the importance of creating resources that are applicable that is customizable and also retrievable it means like participants can go back and get it anytime.

Wai Ling
So as with every case study out there, there are also limitations and considerations. My sample size is small, I've only spoken to 14 faculty and it's based here at George Mason University. There's also a potential for recall bias because with longitudinal studies, there is the potential that participants may not really remember things accurately and there's also no control group for comparison. But with these limitations in mind, what can we learn and what can we apply from this study? So first, when it comes to centres of teaching and learning, How can we support lasting faculty training is first creating positive faculty experience.

Wai Ling
From my conversation with the participants, when they like the facilitator, there is a sense of trust. And with trust, they will actually be willing to return to the course again and again and to seek the support. So this leads to long-term engagement. Personalised guidance and feedback is very key. Participants know when they are given a generic, yeah, do this, compare with, have you thought about this for your class? So these are the things that really touched them. And finally, providing reusable, accessible resources that participants can go back to again and again. For institutions, in my study, the support from institutions is key in making sure faculty get the training that they need.

Wai Ling
In the OCDP, some participants did receive financial incentive to participate. You can get someone to the door, but really, it goes beyond that. And for more sustainable faculty development, you can actually think about how you can locate, recognize, and leverage the internal expertise that you have within an institution. reward teaching innovation that faculty are doing and also foster learning communities because time and again in my interviews participants really love the community aspect. There's nothing about, there's nothing that you can replace when it comes to learning with peers who are doing the same thing as you.

Wai Ling
So for recommendations for future programs is that Every program that goes out there is not just imparting knowledge, but rather the participants are looking at this as the model to emulate. So think of it as a way that everything that you give out to your participants, they're actually going to find some way to adapt to their own. Creating a centralised resource repository would be a worthy endeavour especially one that you continuously go back and update and maintain the relevance and also encourage folks to keep going back into and also to prioritise support that facilitators give out within the training.

Wai Ling
Now, on long-term assessment, having done a long-term assessment, I would say that it's not easy because it's very time and resource intensive, but it is worth it. In my study, I find that the opportunity to speak with participants 4 years after a program and to hear that they are still implementing these things is actually very rewarding. And that is something that you don't get until you do a long term assessment. I also realised that long term assessments like this, especially in the qualitative method, you get to hear the more personal side that really inform you why this works for them.

Wai Ling
And finally, it's good to incorporate a combination of methods that is not only self-report, but observation and artifact analysis. So in conclusion, while this study is only focused on OCDP at a single institution in a time that is, let's hope will not come back again, What I learned is that the principles of what made faculty development work, for example, relevant content, reusable, accessible resources, facilitating learning communities and regular communication, these are all timeless and can be translated to other programs. So yeah, with that, I am going to stop sharing

Speaker 9
and we will move to our discussion. Beautifully organized. I love your strong visuals. You know, it's just a really nice job presenting your work. Dr. Baker and Dr. Sleater.

Speaker 2
Wai Ling, I just have to say that it is an honor to work with you and learn from you on this journey. It's a beautiful presentation that I think really synthesized this journey you've been on. This study was so timely, and it's so important, and it really has this potential to advance the field. Kudos,Wai Ling. This was really great. Fantastic job with your presentation. I'm so excited, and I want to thank

Speaker 6
you so much for keeping me plugging along with all your Zoom writing sessions and everything. Hi, Wai Ling. Great job,

Speaker 9
this is

Speaker 6
amazing,

Speaker 9
and I have so many thoughts. One of the things that I, one of the findings that I really loved, and you touched on this a couple times, but the idea of, you know, doing this opened up for some people the idea that teaching is something they can work on, and that they can improve, and that's something not everyone starts with that mindset. Thank you all so much for being here. The committee is gonna pop into a breakout room and How do you feel right now?

Speaker 7
And Wai Ling, is it an unusual experience to see your different worlds come together? Your academic world, and your friends, and your family, and your creative work hour crew?

Wai Ling
Yeah, thank you everyone for being here. I'm so happy. I have all these great people in my life, like friends all the way from Ohio. I have a friend, Victor, all the way from my Fulbright days attending. Yeah, people I work with, Megan, and my Mason friends, and Bianca, my learning community mentor. So yeah, it's just really nice. I also have some friends from Malaysia attending,

Speaker 6
So thank you so much.

Speaker 7
I'm so excited for you.

Speaker 6
So Yiling, this was two things in the chat related to this. Are you still going to be hosting your write nights and write mornings and afternoons and write snack times and write all the times writing? Because that's what

Wai Ling
you've been doing

Speaker 6
for the past very many moons.

Wai Ling
Likely I will still be hosting some of them because I will need to still continue doing some edits or job search in the weeks ahead. So many of you here are also through my writing groups and

Speaker 6
yeah, so so thankful for all of you. Thankful for you because if it wasn't for you shepherding us all through that process, I don't know, I certainly wouldn't have been able to make as much progress.

Wai Ling
Thank you everyone. I'm so grateful for all of you being here. I'm just reading the messages and so honored. Thank you.

Greg
Beautiful job, Bailey.

Wai Ling
Thank you and good to see you Bella and Victor. Victor was a new Victor 10 years ago when I first came to the US on the Fulbright grant and Bella was from Ohio University so these are like folks that I reach out to.

Speaker 1
Good, congratulations. Josh, I'm so proud of you. I'm so excited, yeah.

Wai Ling
And I have Sandy. Sandy, I knew Sandy all the way. Wow, we go way back. We met in Malaysia when she was teaching in Malaysia. And then I got here to the US and she got here a year later and she did her PhD. So we've remained in touch over the years. So it's really nice to have you, Sandy.

Speaker 3
It's so lovely to be here and to listen to you. And we've, yeah, so proud of you.

Speaker 9
Oh, I'm on mute and then I'm frozen. Not to make you wait. Sorry. Congratulations, Dr. Fong. You have passed your dissertation. And I'll just say it's been such a pleasure to work with you and to see you on this journey as you've grown and really flourished as a scholar. We like to say along the way you're sort of developing your scholarly voice and confidence and all those things and to see you Do that through this process has been great and I have learned so much from you along the way, both about digital and visual communication skills, about online learning and teaching and learning in general.

Speaker 9
So it's been a pleasure and congratulations.

Greg
Wow, that was a great presentation, Wei-Ling. That was absolutely wonderful. There was a part that you stumbled a little bit. How was that for you in the recovery?

Wai Ling
Yes, so this was so interesting. The funny thing was, I even had the notes on my laptop, like these three things that I was going to talk about, but I couldn't see it. And I think it's just like a matter of intense scrutiny because everyone was listening to me and it's like this very bright spotlight. and i just it's like i it was there but i just couldn't see it and i knew like this was like the onset of panic but i have to say that the preparation i had with couple joe and the conversations with the crew was very valuable because gray gray he was the one who said like if you forget don't apologize take your time and I did that I was like yes okay because to me I feel like instead of stumbling and say like oh I'm sorry you know like you are actually making the audience feeling awkward and I feel like audience are empathetic people they were just they they are understanding they say like yeah you know she's just collecting her thoughts so the valuable lesson here was really being willing to be imperfect which is fine like it's actually it's fine to to not have everything It was so good.

Wai Ling
I remember when that happened and it was like that tip of tongue

Alessandra
Like, what is that word? What is that word? And I was sitting there, I did not, as a listener, I'm like, I know she has that. That word is just toying with her for a moment. It's toying with her. And then You caught what that word was, you pulled it back in, and you just kept on going like nobody's business. And it was, you could just see, because I had the privilege of being an audience member, and I could just see that everybody in the room was just really happy that you just, you waited for your word, and it came back to you, and off you went.

Alessandra
And that's resilience, isn't it?

Wai Ling
Yeah, and I'm so thankful to Grey. It's also reminding us that as speakers, there is a sense of you're leading the discussion, right? And when you are confident in what you do, in a sense, I'm not saying it confident in a cocky way, but you are actually presenting well, it's actually always thinking about the audience. And when you take care of the audience by not being like apologetic or being awkward, you are actually easing their transition as well.

Alessandra
And it was so interesting because Andy Sporing was in the was in the room and he's he's one of the crew. He was in the room with you. And even this morning, He said to you, because he's a composer, a maestro, a violist, is he was like, no matter what is happening in your phrase, even if there's a slight hesitation somewhere, you just keep going. And when that happened, it was not an oh no moment. It was, I know she's got this. And I literally said to my muted mic, keep

Speaker 7
I love that. Yeah.

Alessandra
I do want to ask Wylene this. Here's the question. Did it feel like time was suspended when the evaluators were out of the room, when they were in the breakout room talking about your work? We all in the audience, we got to wait with you. What was that like for you? And did it give you a very odd sense of time?

Wai Ling
Yeah, I was very happy to see everyone. but reflecting back I felt like I should have done more because all these people are from different circles of mine. I felt like there was a missed opportunity to really connect folks and I would have done it differently in that waiting room but it was I was shaking. I think I was just like coming down from the high. Like my body was like just like oh just trying to get like the nervous system was trying to be recalibrating itself at that point and it was just whatever it's like you throw the ball to the other court and you're just waiting for it to come back.

Wai Ling
That was the feeling.

Alessandra
Well, you really handled that beautifully and it makes me kind of laugh a little bit that you would even expect yourself to entertain the audience while they were out of the room. That's really hilarious. I

Greg
know if I'd have had teeth I would have bitten my fingernails.

Alessandra
I mean if it had been me I would have slammed that camera off and you were just so gracious and you looked so comfortable and like okay we're just we're just gonna wait and you just kind of look down to see you know is there is there anyone's hair on fire on the phone no okay it was just really it was really lovely and you we could see the chat fill up with You know, with congratulations that you had done such a really great job. And, you know, I felt like my role was just simply, you know, as I'm sure that Greg did, that our role was just to be with you and hold that space.

Alessandra
And then when they came back, what was that like?

Wai Ling
Which on the committee spoke to you and called you Dr. Fong for the first time? Who was that? There was a chair, like when she came back, all right, you pass. And then she said, yeah, Dr. Fong, something like that. And then, yeah, she had her closing, right. And I was just like so, I was just still processing everything, like overwhelmed. Like I think sensory overload as well, because I'm, yeah, I'm an HSB, so highly sensitive person. So I was like trying to like regulate while staying calm. and even after after everyone left and she was talking to me about the the outcome of the the conversation she gave me a very surprising conversation i mean she gave me a very surprising feedback the committee accepted the dissertation as is which means no edits and i was very very yeah because i was expecting that there would be some amendments so i'm like huh

Speaker 7
Okay. I

Alessandra
have never heard of that before. Yeah,

Wai Ling
so I was like, okay. I was, I was like, alright. Did you

Alessandra
Do your Snoopy dance?

Wai Ling
It's more like, huh? Because I was, I was ready for edits. I was ready, like, she would say like, okay, you know, fix this, fix this. But she said, the committee is accepting the dissertation as is. And she said, this is rare, because it's only my third time I've experienced this. And I'm like, wow, like, thank you. Yeah.

Greg
She made a point. I don't know if she said, remember to change your name or make sure you change you're saying she was like you you better get this out there you know

Wai Ling
yeah so yep that was what happened and i'm still yeah i'm still processing

Alessandra
still processing what i like about hearing you say that it you know that it's this is a slow Realization that something has changed in your life. Like, these are the moments where you are becoming where it's becoming real. And I think that there is a tremendous amount of self-kindness in that, of not demanding that you just accept it wholesale,

Speaker 6
that

Alessandra
you allow that kindness to make that shift. And in so doing, I think it will fortify your well-being so that there's not that, what we frequently see when a big thing comes to pass, when you achieve a dream and meet a goal, the post-event blues. I think you're allowing yourself to just take it and accept it as slowly as it wants to come to you is the healthiest thing that you can do.

Wai Ling
Yeah, and I also want to add that I feel like people in general, all of us, me especially, like arriving at a point that you once wanted to arrive and then just already thinking about the next thing. I'm already thinking about it to be honest. I'm thinking about job search and what's next and almost very quickly there's this voice telling me like hey hey hey we got work to do right but i i'm trying to remind myself that it's okay like let's just you know enjoy this moment for a bit because if we don't celebrate and acknowledge this when will you do it and then the it's always the next thing the next thing right even if Now, I have to ask you this.

Wai Ling
Do you have a plan to go

Alessandra
out and have dinner with that lovely man of yours?

Wai Ling
Yes, yes. We are going for fish and chips. I want like fish and chips, like good fish and chips. So we are going to a local spot.

Alessandra
Oh my gosh. And I'm wondering, when are your reservations?

Wai Ling
We didn't, we hope that we can do a walk-in today, so.

Alessandra
Well, I bet, I bet that Greg knows what time it is.

Greg
Yep, it's that time again. Thank you, Dr. Fong. You've wasted a perfectly few good minutes listening to the Creative Workout Podcast when you could have been doing something else. Come back next time and we'll have something else in store.