In the first of a new series of commentary and analysis pieces, CHE student Iain MacKinnon shares his experience of “the CHE way,” comparing it to the very different experience of starting a PhD in Ulster.

Once, in an outburst of impassioned eloquence, I called it fairy dust – and I think of it still as fairy dust. Vérène Nicolas [course coordinator] began sprinkling it on us on at the start of the MSc, 24th September 2005. As this thing called human ecology unfolded all around me I was taken on a journey through a world full of weeping – my own tears too – to a place where I felt safe to let something shift inside of me.

The Centre for Human Ecology changed me as a human being. It fostered a courage I did not know I had and gave me the strength to try compassion as a response to difficulties in relationship. Now when the darkness comes, as it often does, I find I have a new refuge and a new torch!

Carl Gustav Jung once said that the vestiges of past experience are not dead moments preserved in memory – instead they remain “still part of our living being.”

So many moments continue to nourish me and ground me: time spent at Ulrich Loening’s house and visiting the Ormiston Yew, and once, afterwards, seeing Ul – all 70+ years of him – sprinting indoors from the garden as the heavens opened. He had a bucket full of tatties and gleeful boyish grin on his face. Falkland with its palace – a little white cottage in the woods with a campfire near the door – where music as a living thing stole back into my soul. Kingussie where I was able to reflect on the virtue of kind ears, gentle hearts and soft voices. Eigg, being in sight of home, and the awful loneliness – the tremendous distance I knew I had travelled and the tremendous distance I knew I had still to go – the first footfall on the island of a new mythos, generated from within.

All of that richness, all of it from the first dusting of the circle. Think of it: sitting in a circle, all nerves and prickliness, strangers and strangeness.

Bring that moment back to me, pull it into me, re-embody it and feel how far I have travelled. Look back there now: Those suspicious looking folk, hmmm… that crusty with the dreads (no more, no more!); the sour-faced one; the smiler; the loud-mouth; the little one.

Think of that, then. And now, the strong feelings of care and of love I have for our number – for that circle. I love you all. I watched you all become human beings along with me. I was given a space where I could become a human being with you. This is my truth: I am a more understanding human being, a more caring human being, a more demanding human being, a more forgiving human being, because of you all.

And I am more aware than ever I was that I have ever so much more to do. I have more understanding to find, more care, more forgiveness. Oh yes, and more demands.

This eulogy to the CHE and its people has sprung from my clattering back once again into academia and feeling myself detached, isolated, individual.

It is the University of Ulster I am at. It is not a bad place and the people I have met are not bad people – some of them twinkle in fact. But there is an ethos here that needs some magic worked upon it. And I can’t see any fairy dust.

What an introduction. Here comes the ethos: At registration the new PhD cohort were left to find an out-of-the-way room deep in the heart of the main building – a room which, as it turned out, was mislabelled on the registration instruction sheet.

The Vice-Chancellor for Communication was the first to address us. He over-ran his time slot by at least 20 minutes, giving us little but a dizzying account of the university’s accounts – reams of facts and figures about funding that went straight over my head.

I believe his lengthy presentation could have been effectively communicated like this: “This university gets £XX million a year to spend on research. But in this crazy competitive world we live in, we have to fight for every penny of it. The work you do over the next three years will play a really important part in that fight. You have been given a great opportunity. Don’t screw it up for us, and don’t screw it up for yourselves. Grab it with both hands.”

I think if I had heard that, I would have cheered – it would have had a clear message, at least. We were talked at by professors and administrators for two and a half hours. I am sure all the boxes were ticked and they were all content at fulfilling their duty to give relevant information to the new students, but I found the most useful part of the exercise was when I met one of the other students during a break. In fact, truth be told, we in the toilet when we said hello. It turns out he is doing a project on indigenous people which is something I am investigating too.

There were thirty students in that room (the registration room – not the toilet!), passionate and dedicated and crazy enough to devote three years of their lives to something that burns inside them, and three hours later I left knowing three of those people – because I had asked. I knew how much money the University gets each year – because I had been told – but I forgot within five minutes. I still remember Liam, Cahill and Alex, though.

The next encounter with bureaucracy was the induction – and it felt like being inducted by the nose. The Head of Public Policy told us we would have to “compete in a competitive world,” that once our studies were over we would be working in industry, for government or for management.

He divided the group along research categories. He said that arts projects tended to be ‘blue-skies,’ which meant that they are not much use in the ‘real world.’ I told him that mine was an applied arts project. He didn’t seem convinced, so I told him that I intended to use action research to look at the effects of colonisation on the Highland psyche and see whether community development with respect to traditional values and the tenets of deep ecology could lead to the decolonisation of Highland culture. This is obviously not in line with his idea of public policy in the ‘real world.’ His eyes began to glaze over as I was speaking, and part of me thought: “see how you like it then.”

A woman from Career Development gave us some psychometric tests, which she assured us were based on Jung’s psychological theories. We were supposed to draw dots on lines that would enable us to be pigeonholed into a job at the end of the process. I’ve always treated these things with a bit of scepticism since JigCal in first year of high school made me into a librarian when I wanted to be a footballer – so this time I drew a big heart all through the line instead.

Somebody (else) felt uncomfortable with the psychometric process so the career person re-assured us by saying that “it is not a serious test” and “it is not something that’s meant to help you.” Well, I’m sure Carl Gustav would be pleased.

Later, Action Learning teachers split us into groups to think about how we would go about winning some money from the X-prize for sending people to the moon. We had to construct the team of people who would get us into orbit. My head was spinning.

There were some pretty convincing lunar explorers in the room who drew up all the necessary plans and, as far as I could see, were heading for another planet altogether.

However, my fellow indigenous scholar’s group decided that they should get a team of monkeys working on the problem – arguing that if they didn’t come up with a rocket they might come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Our group said we would hire Steven Spielberg and Elliot Gould and fake the whole thing like the Americans did with the moon landing.

Then we got some puzzles designed to test our assumptions. They never tested all of them. All through the day we never got to know who among our fellow students was in the same faculty as us, or on the same campus as us, or who might have overlapping interests – and if I didn’t have a weak bladder I wouldn’t have known either… Still, another box ticked.

It all seemed a bit like a steamroller. I felt a bit overwhelmed by the end of it. I spent a couple of days fuming and feeling squashed. And then I started thinking of positive alternatives.

So, in the spirit of ‘little acorns’ I hope to improve my facilitation skills next year by offering to sit with the new Arts faculty students on my campus, telling them a bit about life as a postgraduate and giving them space to introduce themselves and their projects to each other.

Hey, Vérène – any chance of some fairy dust?