Stirling Minds: Jock Scott (Entrepreneurial Focus)

This article was published in the 2014 edition of Stirling Minds, the Alumni magazine of the University of Stirling.

Jock Scott

BA Philosophy 1982
Mediator, Abune


"After 25 years in human resources, I wanted to use this experience to do something different.

I’m a bit of a change junkie and like the challenge of developing and maintaining relationships in the most difficult of circumstances.

I’m used to dealing with difficult organisational problems and understand the enormous pressures they put on both management and the individuals involved. And I have been involved in countless disputes.

So I trained as mediator.

All about sex

[Another article written for university.]

Her life is all about sex. She reads, writes, and talks about it. Thinks about it - a lot. And on her office window high up above the city, there is a three-letter sign: SEX. Some people might say she is obsessed with it, but for Jocelyn Wentland sex is her job. She is a sex researcher at Ottawa University, and has been studying relationships, both sexual and otherwise, ever since she took a sexuality class as an undergraduate. Wentland is very outspoken person who feels comfortable with using straightforward street-level sexual words, which don’t always sound exactly scientific or academic.

"Stefan Franke" / www.jugendfotos.de

For her honours thesis at the University of British Columbia, she looked at why women have casual sex. Wentland says, "We found that women engage in casual sex for the same reasons men do: They are drunk, they are horny, they want to do it, the guy is hot and they want to take him home from the bar."

Since then she has moved on to focus on how both gender's definition of relationships have changed, on which she focuses for her PhD thesis. "Classically, you hear ‘relationship’ and think of committed, long-term, monogamous situations, ending in marriage, kids and a house in the suburbs. But for many people, especially young adults, the notion of what qualifies as a relationship is very different."

Many might only think of strangers and the classic one-night stand when hearing 'casual sex', but Wentland sees a more nuanced definition in her research. There are three other types of relationships she looks at: the 'Booty Call', 'Fuck-Buddies' and 'Friends With Benefits'. "They are casual sex relationships, but they are ongoing, and there is an element of knowing the person, which is definitely not there with the one-night stand," she explains.

But with all these nuances, there's also the problem of defining casual sex. "Are we talking about intercourse, any kind of sexual activity, oral sex and do both people get oral sex? That is a big problem with the literature, that researchers don't define casual sex." Her very own definition for casual sex is the “sexual activity that happens outside the context of a committed relationship”.

While friends and family know what she does for a living, Wentland is a little careful in telling other people. She has two ways in which she answers what her job is. If it is a friend, or someone who she thinks can handle the truth, she says sex researcher. Other people get the more diplomatic answer, a psychologist or a relationship researcher. But the reactions can still be quite interesting. "I've heard everything from 'I can't believe you're getting a PhD in that' to: ‘You must be some sex-crazy nymphomaniac' and everything in between", says Wentland. That might be why many of her fellow researchers identify themselves as relationship researchers. "That's safer, essentially. Maybe I'm just pushing the envelope, but I'm happy to do sex research."

And for all the time she spends researching relationships and sex, she cannot define her own sexuality. "I will have to think about that", she says with a shrug. "Yes, I do sex research, but my personal life is pretty private to me." She continously tries to separate the research from her personal life: "My career is very different from my sex life."

She pauses a moment to think, then says, "I notice that I am immersed in this pretty much full-time: Reading about sex, writing about it, researching it, analysing sex results and findings from my study. I am always in it, and I am able to talk about really intimate and personal things, but they are not that intimate or personal to me, because I have that researcher's hat on. For me, sex is not something that only happens behind closed doors." She has had dating partners in the past who had problems with her being a sex researcher. "They would ask me whether this was Jocelyn, the sex researcher or Jocelyn, the girlfriend," she says. "It's a balance. Sometimes I have to remind myself that not everyone lives the life of a sex researcher."

“I gave up everything”

[This is an article I wrote for university.]

Born in India and educated in Scotland, Tessa Ransford founded the Scottish Poetry Library in 1984. Now aged 73, she lives on her own in Edinburgh and still writes poetry every day.

I have rheumatism, so when I get up in the morning, I first do around 20 minutes of exercise. At the same time, I'm listening to radio programmes like “Start the Week”, or “Woman's Hour”, depending on what time I get up.

I have porridge for breakfast, but that's partly because of a thyroid cancer operation I had last autumn - I couldn't swallow hard things like cereals, so now I have porridge. I sometimes eat bread and marmalade, but I always end up throwing away the rest of the bread, because it is very hard to get through a whole loaf if you live on your own. It's not fair, the supermarkets say “Two for the price of one”, but you don't want two if you live alone.

After breakfast I buy the paper and go for a walk. I love listening to the birds while walking though the park. I do any shopping I need, come back, have a coffee, and then I write until lunchtime. I'm writing every day. At the moment I am working on a review of a book in which Scottish poetry was translated into German. But I don't get paid for this work. I don't make a single sou, in fact I lose money by being a poet.

In the eighties, I had my first two or three books of poetry published, and although they'd been reviewed, I didn't have anyone to talk to. I was a housewife, I didn't have anyone to get feedback from. In those days, even if you had poetry published, you didn't mention it to anyone. It was very isolated.

So in 1981, I started a workshop for people writing poetry, called the “School of Poets”. There were twelve of us. It was a workshop for people who were already writing, not for people who thought they might like to write. I called it “practicing poets”. People rather jeered at that, saying that any genuine poet wouldn't need any teaching. It was incredible what some said. But my reply was: “You don't know what you need to know until you need to know it”. You're always learning and experimenting. You're absorbing new ideas. So the interaction with other poets is vital.

After that, through meeting those other poets and realizing the emptiness of the literature scene for poets, I founded the Scottish Poetry Library in 1984, and we got some funding and got the project started. I felt, no one else is going to give up everything for this, so I did. Lots of people contributed wonderfully, but me, I gave up everything. Everything, that's what it took. I don't regret doing it. There's no point regretting things.

I ran the library for 18 years, until it moved to the building it's now in, and then I retired. My work wasn't for nothing, it succeeded, the Poetry Library has got a huge amount of money now and it's doing really well.

I got an OBE for the work I did with the Poetry Library. It was very exciting. I felt that it was important to accept it because of all the work other people had done to make it possible, it wasn't just for me. It was in Holyrood Palace, and Sean Connery was getting a knighthood the same day. I was in the same building with the Queen and Sean Connery, and the captain of the Scottish Rugby team.

You can almost see Holyrood from my window. When I first came to this flat, I wrote poems looking out of the window for a year. “Shadows from the Greater Hill” consisted of poems from different seasons and different times of day. Since I had the operation, I've used the view over Arthur's Seat once again for inspiration. The painter Cézanne painted this mountain Mont Sainte-Victoire over eighty times. Well, Arthur's seat is my Mont Sainte-Victoire. It's so close, you can almost touch it.

After writing, there's lunch. I like rice, tea, marmite and butter. I love butter. I always put lots of butter on my bread and lots of butter in my cooking. I don't care about cholesterol. I think that's because we were short of everything when I was a child during wartime. I try to have salad and fruit often. I used to have chapattis for lunch, but now I have pancakes.

After lunch I check my e-mails, and usually work until 5.30, if I don't have the grandchildren here after school. I have eight grandchildren, six boys, two girls. The eldest is 25, she's a professional dancer and singer, the youngest is seven. They are all amazing.

My father was a Royal Engineer. After the First World War, he was posted to India. That was what happened in those days, it was quite normal to go to India, and he stayed there for 25 years.
I think it was a big culture shock for me coming to Scotland having been born in India, but I was only a child. What made me realize that it must have been pretty traumatic was when I came back again, having spent eight years in Pakistan, when I was 30, and then I felt the culture shock consciously - that, what I must have experienced unconsciously as a ten-year old. I was married to a church of Scotland missionary, and went with him to Pakistan. I learned Urdu and Punjabi by using index cards. 300 sentences written on little cards with a bamboo quill. In one of my books that comes out this year, there's this poem called “Don't mention this to anyone”, which uses some of the Urdu model sentences we had to learn.

I consider myself Scottish, and I want independence for Scotland. I want it badly. Desperately. I remember being in the Poetry Library once and this man in a long black coat came in. It was a cold winter's night, and he walked around the library without saying anything. But then he came to my desk, slapped a book down on the table and said: “This is the best poet in Scotland.” And I said, “Oh, that's interesting, where are you from?”, and he replied “London”. And that's just typical! I mean, I was so furious, I was livid, but I just smiled and said: “Thanks for coming from London to tell me who the best poet in Scotland is.”

After writing all afternoon I look at the news and have supper. I don't eat much meat. If the children are coming, I might get some to make a stew, but not for myself. I make things like macaroni cheese, risotto or fish pies - simple food. I used to cook for four children, so it had to be simple.

A person I would love to invite to dinner is Lynne Truss. She wrote this amazing book about Tennyson, “Tennyson's Gift”. I read it in hospital and it kept me alive. She's incredibly witty and funny. We'd have lots of laughs. So I would have her and Maggie Smith. She's got that bitter edge, and I like people like that. I don't like people who are too goody-goody.

If I'm not going out in the evening, I read and watch the telly and do my knitting. I decided to take up knitting again when I had the thyroid operation, because I had to rest, and with not being able to dash about, I thought it would be nice to do some knitting. So I knitted a big scarf. I asked my daughter, who's a midwife, what to knit next, and she said that they're always looking for little squares for the premature babies. So I'm knitting squares for premature babies now. It feels nice, I like doing it. I'm contributing to the future.

The teacher

There are no official statistics on the number of German nationals living and working in Scotland, but the German consulate in Edinburgh estimates it at 40,000 people. One of them is Kerstin Pfeiffer, who is teaching German at Heriott-Watt University in Edinburgh. After living in Scotland for more than eight years, she has no desire to go back to Germany. “I am rooted so deeply into Scottish earth now, I am here to stay,” she explains. She studied English back in Germany, and did her PhD in medieval drama at the University of Stirling, while teaching German at the same time.

When she first came to Scotland, she planned to stay for a year. But when the year came to a close, she decided to linger here a little longer. She likes the openness and relaxed manner of the Scottish people. She likes how unbureaucratic Scottish life can be. She likes how informal and welcoming people communicate here. And then there are the highlands, just half an hour away, where everything is calm and quiet, where Kerstin Pfeiffer can relax and enjoy the beautiful Scottish countryside. Now, in her mid-thirties, she feels like there is nothing that could make her decide to move back to her home town in Rheinhessen, a rural wine-growing region in the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

However, when asked about her feeling of national identity, she makes it clear that she is not just from Germany, but, more specifically, from Rheinhessen. “In our area, local patriotism and pride in our heritage is still very strong,” Kerstin Pfeiffer explains. She enjoys being able to speak her local dialect there without raised eyebrows and pitying glances. And really, if she has to identify herself as other than from Rheinhessen, she would say that she is European. “I only say 'I'm from Germany' when people abroad ask me about where I come from. It would be too much explaining otherwise.”

Kerstin Pfeiffer enjoys living in Scotland. But there is one thing she could do without. “Sometimes I feel afraid walking home on a Friday evening because there are so many extremely drunk people on the streets,” she tells me. Even though she comes from a region splattered with vineyards and wineries, the Scottish binge drinking culture is something she had not seen before.

In a recent YouGov survey commissioned for the annual Anglo-German Königswinter conference, 40 percent of Brits and almost as many Germans questioned thought that the attribute “drunk” applied to the British population. In stark contrast to that, only very few individuals thought that German people could be described in the same way. Germans who had visited Britain in the past were actually more likely to describe the British as “drunk” than those who had never been to the UK.

But other than the fear of drunken Scots, Kerstin Pfeiffer has so far had nothing but positive experiences in Scotland. Sometimes, when she tells other people that she's from Germany, they tell her about their favourite currywurst-stalls and long nights in a Bavarian Bierzelt (beer tent).

The student

“I don't mind the weather,” Johannes says. “Really, I don't. It's what you make of it.” Johannes Butscher is 22, and has been living in Scotland for almost two years now. He studies Politics at the University of Stirling, and is currently running as a Green party candidate for the local council elections. He chose to study in Scotland because of the free university education for European students, and because of the high reputation a British education enjoys abroad. He is not alone: Twenty percent of all students in Scotland come from abroad, three percent more than the British average.

According to the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA), there are currently more than 16,000 German nationals studying in the UK. The only other European country sending more students to the UK is the Republic of Ireland.

Germany has one of the most mobile student populations worldwide, with students being encouraged to go abroad from an early age. The German government wants at least half of students to spend a term or more abroad, and consequently ensures that funding and supportive programmes are in place. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) currently sponsors 55,000 individuals a year to give them the possibility to go abroad during their studies.

Johannes Butscher likes the Scottish people for their friendly and open demeanour. “People here still have a sense of pride in their country, a kind of positive nationalism, and I really enjoy seeing that,” he says.

Nationalism is seen with one sceptical and one worried eye in Germany. Even though the 2006 Football World Cup has had a major impact on national pride and the confidence to admit it, many Germans still feel uncomfortable with the black-red-golden flag portrayed anywhere else than on official buildings. There is a fear of the spark of national pride growing into something bigger, something fearsome, something, that has happened once and should not be repeated.

Even though the younger generations of Germany see this in a more relaxed way, the suspicion is still there. “Germany is not yet ready for nationalism,” says Johannes. Instead of being proud to be German, he is proud to be European. Like Udo Seiwert-Fauti, Johannes considers himself to be a citizen of Europe. He shows me his passport. On the cover, it says in big golden letters Europäische Union, and in the next line Bundesrepublik Deutschland, federal republic of Germany. Even on a passport cover Europe ranks higher than Germany.

But even though he feels very European, his standards, he says, are German. “I grew up with the trains system and bread there, and when I compare those features of daily life to the ones in Scotland, I think we can be proud of some of them.” One thing Johannes Butscher doesn't like about Scotland is the overflowing alcohol consumption. He puts it down to a lack of confidence. “Here, people seem to need alcohol to have the courage to be themselves”, he muses. “I think people here are insecure about their identity, about who they are and about who they are supposed to be.”

He misses drinking alcohol in a way that is more about enjoying the taste than about drinking as much as possible in as little time as possible. Once he gets started on the things he misses, it's hard for him to stop. “Think of the food in Germany – it's healthier, tastier, and not everything is fried. And there's only one tap in the bathroom instead of two. Things like that make life so much easier.”