Dr Bokor is a Biochemistry Teaching Fellow who is the recipient of the 'Top Teacher' award from the OUSA in 2016.
Although she did not mention it in her talk, just how expert she is was well illustrated in 2016 when she came top out of nearly 370 nominations for the Student’s Association (OUSA) Top Teacher award.
Annika teaches over quite a wide range, including two first year papers, as well as second and third year Forensic papers. Research is not a requirement of Teaching Fellow posts, and she explained this further during her talk.
The formal part of the session was very short, and Annika then invited members to ask “any questions you like”. What follows is an amalgam of her formal talk and answers to questions.
Dr. Bokor’s father lived in Romania under the authoritarian communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu, and became a refugee by volunteering to undertake a suicide mission overseas, and ‘disappearing’.
Asked why she chose to come to New Zealand rather than study in Sweden, Annika noted that there are fairly compelling reasons to study in Sweden - attending University is free, and you get 2 years on full pay. Dr. Bokor told us that, as a teenager, she played a lot of sport, and clearly she was very talented in that area also. “I played handball . . , hockey for the National team, and a type of football for my Provincial team . . . . Sports was all I did. I popped into school, but straight after school I was just doing training and games and things.” That came to an abrupt and rather sad end with a horrendous accident in a soccer game, in which she not only broke her leg, but it turned round completely, creating massive damage. “Very painful” was Annika’s comment! “I couldn’t go back to professional sport, and I was not very happy.”
She had always liked Biology related subjects in school, and decided she ‘had better’ go and study them, but did not want to be in an environment that reminded her of lost sporting opportunities.
She decided to go to a country where she would be forced to speak English - but not Britain, as she did not like the upper class accent, as taught at her school in Sweden. She ruled out the USA on the grounds “I would probably get shot”, Australia where she "would probably get bitten by a spider” , so New Zealand seemed pretty nice.
Some people who were advising those who wanted to study overseas told her Otago University was a really good place to study genetics. As there was no Genetics programme in first year, she did First Year Health Sciences and realised Biochemistry was “pretty cool”, finding it was more of a biological science than school chemistry, and ended up doing a double Honours degree in Biochemistry and Genetics.
From there Annika went straight into a PhD. The topic of her work was to find a way of specifically targeting pests such as the malarial parasite (or possums) with the aim of rendering females infertile. “While working on my PhD, I flew back to Sweden and proposed to my husband.” They both came to New Zealand, where Annika completed her PhD and during that process had two children, making the comment “Not recommended!" She loves her children, but it is not an ideal time to start a family when working on a PhD!
At this point, Annika was offered a Teaching Fellow post in Biochemistry, which suited her well. While liking the experimental side of research, fascinated by the process of first finding questions you want to answer, then how to go about answering those questions, other aspects of research were less attractive. One was the inordinate amount of time needed to obtain money for research, with many grant applications to be made, only a few being successful. Another the need to read “lots and lots of papers”, and perhaps the most compelling of all, raising a young family and both needing and wanting to spend time with them. Then there is the further stress of not knowing from one year to the next whether you would be able to pay staff in the following year to continue to assist with the research. On balance, for Annika, teaching only was much more attractive.
She also said that she had really enjoyed the research in her Honours year, when she was not required to seek funds with all that entails. She commented also that, while she liked teaching at all levels, she found first year papers were the most rewarding in terms of helping people to understand topics, explaining things in a simple way (which she ascribes to her perception that “My English is not that great”).
It is so important to learn the very basic material well, because it is the foundation for the more advanced material you will meet later. In addition, Annika had always liked to make people laugh, and if she could combine that with helping them to learn, that is great. “I’m having fun, hopefully the students are having fun, and learning along the way.”
As a past resident of Hayward College, Annika was asked if she had any stories from there. After commenting that there were many, she related one involving subterranean passageways, students from another college, and arson, which was more than faintly disturbing, most particularly because it threw Hayward into disarray in the middle of a set of exams. After a sleepless night, she had an exam at 9.30 that morning, and recalls falling asleep during it. The culprits, after breaking and entering and committing arson, “got a telling off”. They would not get off so lightly now, one feels.
While Dr. Bokor sees the future most probably as teaching at Otago, she did admit that “if a really good research opportunity came up in a company or something, where the money was no a problem and I would not have to be involved in looking for the money” then she would have to consider it.
These Expert Breakfasts are great value. Do try to make it if you can.
[Ed: In the past, by no means all research groups required PhD students to apply for grants, though it has become such an integral part of University research that it is probably getting more common].
