A Friend's Completion of PhD through difficulty

Celebration for Dr Alexandra Grey, Dr Gary O’Neill's PhD completion and hurrah to Language on the Move team! Overcoming difficulty and loneliness, Alex has received a Macquarie Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation for Academic Excellence and an Australian PhD Prize for Innovation in Linguistics for her thesis on "How do languagerights affect minority languages in China?”  Her very touching speech is in the last paragraph of this post and here, Youtube, Macquarie uni graduation, April 24. (Alex’ speech starts at 1:13:35).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0y_kap8-mU 

Being an artist is similar to academics, as it tends to be a lone work. What do you think, Friends? Me, too, have learned the importance of having a wise mentor, a good rapport/support system, stress buster techniques and a healthy self-trust or positivism/optimism which eventually helps creativity and turns out good work. We need to share tears and laughter with others to bear ups and downs. Alex's triumph encourages me. I deeply appreciate your friendship through blogging, which always lifts me up. 

Then, Friends, Alex has started her academic career at Law School in Sydney uni!
Wow, Alex, if you bump someone sketching Sydney uni, please smile at her, te-he. Take care and enjoy your journey in linguistics! Hope they will more explore linguistics and enjoy it. Congrats. Go, go, Alex!! You're shining! Language on the Move Team, Porf Ingrid Piller, I love you all! 

Btw, I enjoyed the fun drawing above. I love portraits and caricatures like fun drawing, but I do not want to make extremely distorted images which could hurt models. In my eyes, each person is lovely and shining!  
Friends, Happy Painting!! 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Dr Alexandra Grey's speech  

Language on the Move

· 27 April at 13:53 ·

Doing a PhD, as Dr Grey states in her graduation speech, involves a lot of independent work and at times feelings of loneliness, and so, it can be difficult to succeed without a good support network of family and peers.
The Language-on-the-Move team proudly celebrates the graduation of Dr Alexandra Grey and Dr Gary O’Neill 💐🎓💐🎓
<https://bit.ly/2r1n6tu>

The triumph of completing a PhD - Language on the Move

Dr Alexandra Grey shares her sense of triumph in graduating from her PhD, the result of four years of innovative research in Chinese language policy…

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A Friend's Completion of PhD through difficulty

Friends Win 2017 Michael Clyne Prize and Australian PhD Prize

Two friends, Alex and Shiva won amazing prizes in linguistics (Language on the Move post)! I celebrated their achievements with my fun drawings. Certainly, Prof Ingrid Piller and the LotM team are delighted. 
"Dr" Shiva Motaghi-Tabari, is the winner of the 2017 Michael Clyne Prize for her thesis about “Bidirectional Language Learning in Migrant Families”. The Michael Clyne Prize is awarded annually by the Australian Linguistics Society for the best postgraduate research thesis in immigrant bilingualism and language contact. Prof Michael Clyne is our superhero in sociolinguistics, pragmatics, multilingualism, second language learning, contact linguistics and intercultural communication. Congrats, Shiva!! Let's go to a pub! 

Prof Michael Clyne

Another friend, Alexandra Grey is one of two joint winners of the 2017 Australian PhD Prize for Innovations in Linguistics. Alex's thesis discusses how language rights affect minority languages in China. Congrats, Alex!! Let's have champagne! Btw, Alex was in charge of social media of "Bridging Language Barriers Symposium" hosted by Prof Ingrid Piller and Language on the Move team. Almost without lunch, she worked hard to do twitting for a live coverage. Alex collected questions directly from broad audience, interpreted the point of questions and the symposium answered. Beauty of friendship! I saw other LotM team members supporting Alex behind a scene. LotM members, you did a fantastic job! 

I wrote in Chinese, "I love sociolinguistcs" at the top of Alex's thesis, below. 

It's wonderful to see the legacy of Prof Michael Clyne is alive, strong and nurturing new talents who will lead linguistics and academics. When Michael passed away, he generously funded Michael Clyne Award. I feel the importance of good mentors and pioneers. His lovely personality and enthusiasm of research and want for social justice are alive in my heart. His most famous defined concept is "monolingual mind set" which fails to either recognise or capitalise on the existing linguistic assets/potential in increasingly multilingual societies such as Australia. I was lucky enough to enjoy Michael's lecturers...and sketched him. Aw, it made my direction to a visual artist?!   

Me, too, hope to do something in a visual art, like LotM team does. 
Now, let's have a productive week! 
Friends, Happy Painting!! 

Prof Michael Clyne

Friends Win 2017 Michael Clyne Prize and Australian PhD Prize