49 ADVENTURE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING – Contributions by Susan Houge Mackenz
49 ADVENTURE AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING – Contributions by Susan Houge Mackenzie
Following the river: Exploring a journey to and through tourism academia
Preface. When I think about how I began my academic journey, I often think of a river. Not a metaphorical river, although I’ll explain below why I think this is apt, but an actual river in Aotearoa New Zealand where I worked as a riversurfing guide for many years. As this publication affords a level of creativity that is often unavailable in academia, and asks authors to tell their personal and academic stories, this chapter uses a literal and metaphorical river to interweave these narratives. The river represents the dynamic, uncertain, challenging, and rewarding nature of the academic path, as well as illustrating the various tributaries and channels that have characterised my academic journey. Hopefully this preface and visual helps to connect the themes within this chapter and in its sister chapter (Letters to future women tourism scholars). Finally, please be kind in your judgement – I’m not a storyteller and if I had my time over, drawing lessons would be at the top of my to do list!
The source. I was born and raised in Minneapolis and was always interested in reading and sports – normally the kind only boys played. But, perhaps as a result of parents who were adamant that gender should not dictate life choices (e.g., my yellow birth announcement read “It’s a person!”), this did not bother me. In fact, looking back I think I must have enjoyed challenging people’s perceptions by playing stereotypically masculine sports, like rugby and (American) football, alongside stereotypically feminine sports such as figure skating. While I tried everything from badminton to unicycling, football (soccer) has been my lifelong sporting love. Even now, surprisingly, football remains a reliable source of physical and mental well-being in the face of life’s many unexpected hardships. Arguably, playing this sport has influenced my life course more than any academic aspirations. It led me overseas, to meet my partner, and to my academic mentor and career.
Midwestern values such as “work first, play second” coupled with perfectionist tendencies created a strong motivation to achieve in sport and education when I was young. I completed a demanding International Baccalaureate high school degree followed by graduating summa cum laude with an undergraduate degree from a rigorous psychology programme. Please don’t mistake these lines for hubris; rather, I write this as a cautionary tale. By the time I finished university, I was completely burned out by American cultural pressures focused on external measures of success, such as income or educational status, which relentlessly demanded ‘more, more, more’ of everything.
To escape the high-pressure pathways I saw looming, I turned down further study at Cambridge and took up an invitation to play football in Australia with a New Zealand stopover. Once I had a taste of