Perspectives: Heading Home

There is great strength in diversity and we value what each individual brings to our team. #HHLPerspectives is a new series featuring the voices and experiences of the diverse members of our team as they navigate graduate school, research, partnerships, communication and other essential aspects of our work.  

For our first #HHLPerspectives piece, meet Roland Eveleens, HHL’s inaugural Masters student from Aotearoa New Zealand. Roland moved to Canada in 2019 before the pandemic took hold of the world. 

What does working from home mean?  

What does working from home mean or look like? You can probably answer far too well from personal experiences in 2020, but it’s something I’ve significantly reconsidered lately. As I write this somewhere 9000m above the Pacific Ocean en route to my homeland of Aotearoa New Zealand, my home office is shifting from within walking distance of our pre-pandemic lab base to the opposite side of the world. I had intended on using this blog to reflect on moving, but as I write this, I realize that in the time since deciding to shift home and finish my thesis remotely I’ve already done a lot of it. Hopefully sharing some these reflections gives some food for thought on continuing to act on what matters for you. 

Moving has been a bittersweet process, as the excitement of heading home to reconnect with family and friends has been tempered by feelings of abandoning new friends and colleagues, as well as sadness leaving behind freshly formed connections related to my research on freshwater mussel conservation. I’m hoping to generate useful insight through my thesis research and ensure impactful outcomes through partnerships with traditional owners, land stewards and management organizations. I've been lucky enough to be involved in some fantastic partnerships and being accepted into the newly launched FishCAST program, but this has required putting in the time and effort to show up in person in the community and build trust. In my own project, I’m lucky enough to have great partners from the St Clair Region CA and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, but now working remotely means I need to find new ways to contribute to and grow partnerships like these. 

Pictured from left: Roland Eveleens, Katrina Keeshig, and Kelly McNichols-O'Rourke (DFO) doing freshwater mussel surveys in the summer of 2020.

Beyond the people, connection to place is something else I thought a lot about in my journey through graduate school. Coming to Windsor, Canada, I had naïvely though I could minimize the personal importance of connection to nature and landscapes, despite having been spoilt by easy access to New Zealand's natural riches. But the pandemic made me rethink this; With the opportunities for travel heavily reduced this year, the pull to leave Windsor for more invigorating places was strong. I know how fortunate I am to be able to choose to move countries for graduate study, and don’t take that for granted. As a white male essentially acting as a colonial scientist (i.e., coming to Canada to do research/gain a degree and then leaving) but engaging in conversations around decolonization, it also gave me food for thought about how to make positive contributions in the communities where my research takes place, rather than just upping stakes and leaving. In other words, instead of viewing international graduate school as a transactional experience, I’m reflecting on the importance of creating reciprocal benefits through my experiences with local communities and trying to ensure that my thesis work contributes to ongoing work. 

This all lead to plenty of thinking and conversations about what I could gain and what I could contribute from both staying in Windsor or leaving, while trying to be realistic about what’s possible in the current pandemic. Ultimately, that all led to deciding I’d completed the necessary essential field season and data collection in Windsor and that it was best to head home to complete my thesis while also reconnecting to whānau (family) and wild places from a different home office. I’m excited to continue working and contributing from a distance, and I’m grateful to be able to do that.  

Here’s to a better 2021, wherever your home office is.