ABSTRACT
The first term that I taught at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, was full of surprises and misunderstandings; some were followed by dismay, some by joy and others I only identified long after the event, when everybody else had forgotten my incomprehension. Many of my migrant colleagues now tell me they too were caught unaware by how much there was to learn, to think about and, above all, how different the expectations of pedagogy and scholarship were. I wonder now about the enthusiasm and the innocence that guided and guarded me back then. It helped me through the challenges of becoming a senior staff member while having no idea what a course outline was or why I should let others know what my course readings would be, and the puzzlement and frustration I felt when I realised I was not free to decide what to teach and was expected to apply to a whole raft of committees if I wanted to make curriculum changes for the following year. The binding pre-course agreements on assignments, readings, tutorials and lecture outlines seemed an intrusion into my personal sphere as a university teacher that I found hard to understand.
