Finally Maturing

This is What Brings Me Back?

2008-04-03T08:35:00.002-05:00

On of the reasons I don't post is I'm afraid of controversy. I don't like being attacked, and I especially don't like being attacked for something I haven't said. Since that was a response to one of my first posts, I'm even more extremely gun-shy.
But the essay here that Dr. Crazy, New Kid, FemaleScienceProfessor, and others, responded to, makes me just too mad to stay out.
Has the man never heard of Dooce?
Okay. Granted. That was, what, 6, 7, more? years ago, and in the accelerated evolution of electronic media, that's generations. But the woman was fired for blogging "dirt" about her company. I would like Mr. (Professor? Dr.?) Plagens to illustrate other industries where critical bloggers are welcome. Because I can't think of any.
That doesn't mean there aren't any, it just means it isn't common.
And academia is.
Oh, sure, we get lots of flex time; we work harder than many industries and get less credit (both monetary and "regular") than many industries; we get to think about things instead of working with our hands (unless we work in a discipline -- engineering; art -- that requires it, but even then it's a different kind of handiwork); lots of other things that make us special.
But we're still an industry, and we're still made up of people. People of all kinds. Despite the dream of the ivory tower, academia is just as full of divas and blowhards and cranks as any other industry. That is, it's just as full of people who do not want anyone to be different from themselves, and who will do everything in their power to make sure difference is squashed. (To misquote Anastasia from months ago when she went to a conference, for a bunch of liberals academics can be awfully conservative.) More to the point, the power held by such people can be quite considerable. In fact, it seems to me that only in the entertainment industry is it as easy to guarantee you'll never eat lunch in this town again; despite the desperate wish for a meritocracy, academia is rife with gossip and who-you-know-ness.
New Kid & Profgrrrrl addressed the Google question. They addressed it from the point of view of their students, but I do think there is still an attitude that academics should not have lives outside of academia. If you have time to blog about leaky faucets, or the cute apron you sewed up yesterday, you're not working hard enough.
Finally, being on the internet in and of itself is risky. I had posted pictures of our daughter on my professional website, and my husband asked me to take them down because he doesn't want something to happen to her. Sounds paranoid, right? It probably is -- but just go read FSP's post, and see if you still think pseudonymity is really just a response of a "fragile, frightened creature."

'Cause I Haven't Posted in a While

2008-01-22T09:07:00.000-05:00

Seen at a bunch of places.

From What Privileges Do You Have?, based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University. If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.

1. Father went to college
2. Father finished college
3. Mother went to college
4. Mother finished college
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor (I'm not sure, I don't know many of my relatives; I grew up in an entirely nuclear family.)
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home. (I think I have over a hundred of my own to pass down to my child.)
9. Were read children's books by a parent. (Oh! the stories my mother tells me of reading to me.)
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18 (I almost forgot the dance lessons when I was very young.)
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively. (Except when the media is being contemptuous of academic/intellectual types.)
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs (I think I won one very small scholarship.)
16. Went to a private high school
17. Went to summer camp
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18 (Ha! yeah, right)
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child (My mother & father's, but it was original & it does mean they had time to produce it. That was mostly when they were being hippie/bohemian types, but that's pretty much a class privilege also, isn't it.)
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home (I think my mother was still paying the mortgage, but it wasn't rented.)
25. You had your own room as a child
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course (See #18.)
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school (But I grew up before that was the thing to do.)
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
31. Went on a cruise with your family (It was some offering from my mother's work, and there were a bunch of her colleagues also; I can't imagine us going otherwise.)
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

Yeah, There's No Gender Inequalities

2008-01-11T12:44:00.000-05:00

School Popularity Affects Girls’ Weights But why should we study boys? and why should we be concerned about the fact that there will always be someone at the bottom rung of the popularity ladder (because if there weren't, it wouldn't be a ladder now, would it.)

Giving Disorganized Boys the Tools for Success (Taking this at face value...) But why should we look into why girls are organized? or why boys don't "understood that in seventh grade he was responsible for handing in his homework, instead of waiting to be asked" (~12 paragraphs down on the webpage)?

I'm Annoyed*

2007-12-07T12:39:00.000-05:00

I hate when people modify "unique" with comparatives. Something can't be "fairly unique" or "one of the most unique" X, regardless of what dictionary.com says. Unique means there's only one. This modification is common, so common I fear "unique" will some mean only unusual. It's also so common that my reaction is now knee-jerk: I get annoyed even with appropriate modifiers, such as "genuinely," until I remember they're okay.
But you know what's worse? When the New Yorker uses the term "trending."

*I'm all kinds of negative things, but I'll just leave it at this for now.

In Which I Prove Myself Master of Avoidance

2007-11-14T09:52:00.000-05:00

I am the number one Goggle hit for "how many calories does teaching burn." It is the most common way people get to me. Who knew so many people were interested in the topic?
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Have any of you read "Um"? I'm very disappointed, and am thinking of blogging a nitpicky comment (that is, hardly a review) of it. Just because I'm that mean.
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The most annoying thing about yesterday is when I went to another university address & found that I'm still on a mailing list I should have been removed from over 6 years ago.
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Thank you for stopping by & being supportive. I'm trying to ignore it right now.
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The misspelling at the top is on purpose. I'm trying something.

I Want an Endowment

2007-10-29T10:23:00.000-05:00

Not a line in the state budget.
My university has a pretty good library, with subscriptions to almost all the journals I read, but it doesn’t have everything. (What library does. That’s not my point.)
However, I am a lucky little student, because my university belongs to a nationwide consortium of universities, wherein a student/staff/faculty can get library privileges at little to no cost at the libraries of any of the other universities. It’s sort of like ILL, except I can actually go to the other university’s libraries, even those that are restricted to affiliates of the other university. Why is this special? Well, first, not all journals have print versions anymore, and so ILL won’t do any good. Second, if the university is close enough, I can get to the library sooner than the libraries can get the book/journal to me. Third, libraries don’t necessarily lend out journals. So I took advantage of this deal recently, and visited a private university that’s part of this consortium.
I.love.that.university.
The spaces – I went to three of the libraries – are beautiful. There are maps on the walls of the bigger libraries, explaining where different call numbers are. The libraries were quiet.
They have a library devoted to my field, so almost all the journals are in one place, and are not mixed in with other fields.
The library employees are helpful. As I said, the bigger libraries have maps, and I took advantage of them. Every single time, a not-student-aged woman stopped to ask me if I needed help figuring out where I was going.
And I think all of that has to do with the money.
-At my university, "pretty" takes a back seat to "utile." A very far back seat.
-At my university, the big libraries double as computer labs, so there's a fair amount of chatter from people working on projects or socializing online.
-At my university, there isn't enough money to separate out departments quite as much, even though my department is pretty well-funded.
-At my university, when the budget was slashed, the work didn’t go away with the salary line, and the people left are doing the work of at least two; they don’t have time to stop and ask if someone needs help.
I know endowments aren't everything, but there is something very important about the space in which you work. (For example: I've been working at home, and the mere presence of a window has made such a difference that my work output is orders of magnitude better.) And a line-item in a state budget can't produce that kind of space.

Meme

2007-10-25T10:01:00.000-05:00

Kate already has grandchildren in the mutation meme, and I haven't even started. (Hah. Look, today she's reminding me us. Er, on Monday. I'm a little behind.) I'm a little afraid of becoming inviable, because every time I hear "best" or "favorite" my mind goes blank. But here goes.

Kate passed this meme on to me. It was started by PZ Myers at Pharyngula as a means of demonstrating evolution in cyberspace.

First, the rules:

There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:
You can leave them exactly as is.
You can delete any one question.
You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question. For instance, you could change "The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is..." to "The best time travel novel in Westerns is...", or "The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is...", or "The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is...".
You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...".
You must have at least one question in your set, or you've gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you're not viable.

Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers. Remember, though, your success as a Darwinian replicator is going to be measured by the propagation of your variants, which is going to be a function of both the interest your well-honed questions generate and the number of successful attempts at reproducing them.

My great-great-great-great-great-grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-grandparent is Primate Diaries.
My grandparent is Thus Spake Zuska.
My parent is Kate.

The best young adult novel in SF/Fantasy is: The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley

The best scary movie in scientific dystopias is: Until the End of the World

The best sexy song in classic rock music is: Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin (Traditional, but I'm a radio-listening kind of gal.)

The best cult novel in pre-Victorian fiction is: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (I agree with Kate on this one.)

The best high-carb food in Polish cooking are pierogi. (Again, traditional -- but have you had them? Mm, mm, mm. Especially with fried onions.)

I am propagating this meme on to:

Anastasia

Parts-n-Pieces

Bardiac

Wolfa

and anyone else who hasn't been tagged. Let me know if you play!

With All Due* Respect...

2007-09-27T13:48:00.001-05:00

...how the hell do idiots get to be big names in the field? I don't mean jerks; I mean idiots
Okay: I do sort of mean jerks, but the kind of jerks that insult the readers, not the ones who make snide remarks about other lines of reasoning.
See, I'm not very good with names. But I was reading an article today and the author pulled this nasty trick -- again, on me-the-reader, not on me-the-person-who-may-have-something-different-to-say -- and I realized that I knew exactly who this author is because s/he pulls this trick all. the. time.
Big name. One of the top 5.

*Well, there may be a little respect lacking...

Return to Silence

2007-09-26T10:48:00.000-05:00

So you haven't blogged in a while.
Well, I've been busy.
Hm.
I'm not sure Sudoku counts.
Well, I'm busy now.
Except you're reading blogs.
But I shouldn't be.
And it takes me so long to write an entry.
Hm.
Remember why you supposedly started this blog? Dr. Crazy's post from yesterday shows it works.
Fine.
I haven't blogged because I think people won't like me for not blogging in so long.
Hm.
So you only read bloggers who post every day?
No, of course not, but --
You're not that nice of a person.
What?? I'm nice! I try to be --
I mean, you're not Cinderella; you're not nicer than everyone else. Don't you think what you're saying is a little selfish on your part?
Oh.
Yeah.
Okay, I'll post.

Hostile Tone

2007-08-30T09:41:00.000-05:00

I act the perfectionist with blog entries; I re-read & tweak & wonder if I'm truely getting my point across.
Apparently, I am very very bad at it.
I read my previous entry by actually accessing my blog, and for some reason, the nasty hostile tone hit me then, well after posting. So I'm posting this one without previewing; I mean the words of this entry, not the arrangement.
That is: I apologize for sounding hostile about bloggers. I was desperately trying to sound not-hostile because I do not think blog-authors have done anything wrong, but I failed, and I'm sorry.

In Which I Attempt to Purge My Inner Pollyanna

2007-08-28T14:06:00.001-05:00

I've been frustrated by a lot of posts recently.
MaggieMay, of whose I am a lurker, is considering putting her blog behind password protection.
Brightstar, where I comment rarely, is taking a blogging break for reasons that are so personal, she had to take them down in less than 48 hours. And her blog isn't even googleable.
(Which is why, by the way, I am not linking to any of the bloggers.)
Professing Mama had a post two or three months ago about her plan for eating if & when she got pregnant -- and then had to spell out that she was not, in fact, talking about losing weight while pregnant, just about gaining an appropriate amount.
(And now I have to spell out that I do not blame any of these bloggers for their actions.)
There's two things I don't understand about this.
1) Why are people so eager to ruin (other) academics? Every pseudonymous, regularly-posting academic blogger I read has taken down something because it's too "personal." That is, it makes them too easy to find. Because if they were found, someone would use their blog as a way to ruin their work life.
Do I really need to repeat I do not blame these people or think they are being something, anything, negative?
Why, yes. Yes, apparently I do.
One of my first posts was about a reaction I had to someone else's blog. While I did not spell out that I was not attacking the blogger, I did write that I was happy for the blogger and people like her. That was not enough. I received an anonymous comment, long enough to be its own blog entry. I don't remember exactly what the comment said; I deleted it. However, there was no way to read the comment as anything other than an explicit attempt to tear me to shreds.
This brings me to my next issue.
2) We're academics. We're supposed to be the masters of close reading. Doesn't matter where on the spectrum from arts to science the field falls, you aren't going to get the point if you don't read closely. There is information packed into the writing that needs to be teased out.
Blogs aren't written densely.
But bloggers still need to put neon signs around "I'm not attacking you or your friends! I'm not doing something obviously condemnable!"
Seriously. I was furious that Professing Mama had to explicitly state that she wasn't planning on losing weight if/when she got pregnant. That was completely clear from what she said before.
But.
She knew that someone was going to come along & skim her post & see "diet" and "pregnancy" and immediately launch into an attack against her, without bothering to actually read the whole post. Not close read. Just read. So she had to put a big neon sign around it. Had to.
That is, she was absolutely right for doing so.
(Here's the pollyanna.)
Why are people so hostile in academics?
Of course, the answer to that is: people are just hostile. There are people out there who are quick to take offense -- attack first, ask questions later -- in every field (including unemployment). And there are other people who get pleasure out of writing hostile comments, even when they have no personal stake in the conversation. And I imagine there's even more classes of hostile people.
But it's still sad to me that academic bloggers have to be so gun-shy, especially of our own kind.
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(Non sequiter of Personal Best: Despite being a poor blogger, I have almost as many subscribers to this blog as I have to my craft blog: go me!)

Because I'm a Follower

2007-06-27T08:38:00.001-05:00

As seen most recently at Anastasia's, but also lots of other places I don't remember.

Your Score: Loner - ISFP

13% Extraversion, 33% Intuition, 46% Thinking, 26% Judging

Ahh...the sweet serenity. The utter perfection of all creation. The wondrous beauty of nature. The sweet sparrow singing along in the great orchestra we call life...

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? You're the type of person people always love to mock because they don't believe there's anyone ACTUALLY like you.

Do realise that you ostracise people with your behaviour or is it all subconscious? You're so quiet and reserved it's almost impossible to get to know you well, and when someone finally does, all you want to talk about is grace and beauty and harmony!

Ugh. Sure, you "genuinely care for others" and all that rubbish, but when it boils right down to the basics you take life far too seriously.

Throughout the entire test, I bet you were searching for "further clarification and hidden meaning" so that you might improve your pitiful life. And woe and behold if it betrayed your intense values system!

You need to STOP smelling the daisies. Believe it or not, logic does have a place in this world...imbecile.

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If you want to learn more about your personality type in a slightly less negative way, check out this.

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The other personality types are as follows...

Pushover - Introverted Sensing Feeling Judging

Criminal - Introverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving

Borefest - Introverted Sensing Thinking Judging

Almost Perfect - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving

Freak - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging

Loser - Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving

Crackpot - Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging

Clown - Extraverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving

Sap - Extraverted Sensing Feeling Judging

Commander - Extraverted Sensing Thinking Perceiving

Do Gooder - Extraverted Sensing Thinking Judging

Scumbag - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving

Busybody - Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging

Prick - Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Perceiving

Dictator - Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging

Link: The Brutally Honest Personality Test written by UltimateMaster on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Testing Frustration

2007-06-19T12:31:00.000-05:00

My child is in daycare. It's a good daycare. It's not going to win any academic awards (like the one affiliated with my university), but it is accredited by NAEYC, and it is academic enough that the town will allow residents to keep their children in the daycare for kindergarten.* Therefore, the school/daycare has to monitor the children's development; after all, the other institutions want to make sure the kids are keeping up to their standards.
The school uses a standardized kit. Said kit is produced by an educational organization that's over 40 years old, and is published by several well-known educational publishers.** It does all sorts of tasks that remind me of my developmental psychology class. Since I am not up on recent research in developmental psychology, nor in developmental psychological testing, I can only infer it gives results that are least average in accuracy-of-assessment, as compared to other tests out there. And for all I know, it may be better.
For some reason, my child didn't want to take it. In such cases, parents are allowed to come in & sit with the child during the test. So one day recently, that's what we did. I behaved myself, and didn't coach her, or give her extra clues to come up with the correct answers.
There were questions & tasks she isn't able to do on a consistent basis in day-to-day life. Frustrating for this former brilliant-child (why isn't my kid academically advanced? oh, right, because no one's pushing her and that's just fine, paranoia queen), but nonetheless developmentally normal. My problem with the testing came when she failed to correctly answer questions or do tasks that she nearly never does wrong anymore. At this point, the test had been going on for 45 minutes, we could hear other kids playing in the gym, etc.
The examiner seemed to be getting bored. I was certainly bored. It's no surprise that a pre-schooler was also bored.
It was pretty clear that she was making these mistakes because she was bored & no longer paying attention.
Yes, children need to learn to sit still for longish periods of time. Yes, they need to learn to concentrate. But this test isn't supposed to be testing that. It's supposed to test gross & fine motor skills, cognitive skills, and language. And my child wasn't making mistakes based on capabilities in those areas, she was making mistakes based on a lack of endurance. If the modules had been in a different order, she would have made mistakes in an entirely different area.
The test isn't an accurate assessment of what it's supposed to be testing.
That's what frustrates me.

*That is, kids can go from the daycare directly to first grade.
**I'm not linking to it, because my comments are directed at such testing in general.

Comments

2007-06-14T09:28:00.000-05:00

I think I agonized about this before, but I never know how to leave comments. Bardiac, today, had a post about The Omnivore's Dilemna, pointing out some of the deeper dilemnas of eating locally; I had just seen a comment/article in the NY Times on-line about issues with eating locally. But I feel silly -- condescending, or dense, or both -- trying to leave comments. The comment turned out to be more about goods than food, but the author did have one point that might have been of interest, and Styleygeek had already made it.
I'd like to comment, connect with bloggers I read, but I feel like I'm coming into a conversation late when I do.
I know. Boo-hoo. Poor me.
Back to work.

Very Short, Spam Impelled

2007-06-11T08:49:00.000-05:00

Is there really a class/lecture for historians about recent runes?

Is It a Good Witch, or a Bad Witch?

2007-06-08T10:40:00.000-05:00

The lead article on the CNN website right now is about a man who killed a teenager. It's an incredibly creepy story, and the man sounds -- well, I can't think of an accurate negative adjective. "All kinds of bad" is the best I can come up with.

But the blurb -- y'know, the one that is there to lure you into reading the article, so it gives the most lurid teasers it can? -- says that on his Facebook-or-similiar-social-network-hub website, the man calls himself a "sweet troubled soul."

Okay, so not a good phrase. But. But but. It's a line from (and possibly title to) a song.

Which is not, by the way, to say that the man is not horrifying. He is. He's depraved and what he did is abhorrent. I just don't think trite, adolescent-style "deepness" is profound evidence for it. I don't think it's evidence at all.

**ETA: the title doesn't refer to the person in question, it refers to pop culture. I'm not clear on how I meant it to refer, so I can't explain it.
I don't want anyone thinking I meant there was any question about someone doing something what he is accused of possibly being good.

As Seen at Anastasia's

2007-06-08T10:01:00.000-05:00

It's probably all that studying...

You scored as Wizard, A few unintelligible words and a fleeting gesture carry more power than a Battle-Axe, when they are the words and gestures of a wizard. These simple acts make magic easy, but they only hint at the time a wizard must spend pouring over her spell book preparing each spell for casting, and the years before spent in apprenticeship to learn the arts of magic.

Wizard

80%

Ranger

60%

Druid

60%

Sorcerer

50%

Monk

40%

Bard

40%

Barbarian

40%

Fighter

30%

Paladin

30%

Cleric

30%

Rogue

30%

Which D&D Class Are You?
created with QuizFarm.com

I Got'Cher Generalities Right Here

2007-06-07T14:23:00.000-05:00

Tenured Radical, here discusses grade disputes. Adjunct Whore made a comment about the frustration of students going over the heads of those who aren't in power; TR & gayprof pointed out that it's easier for everyone concerned to just let it go by giving the student a grade. I think I might agree with AW, though; it's so f***ing frustrating for students to get what they want because they're creating a bother.
Actually, it's frustrating when anyone does that.
I worked in a theater box office once that had a no-return policy. Well, that was the stated policy. Anyone who got annoyed enough to "ask for my manager" got a return. Which made the front-line staff look like incompetent idiots, and rewarded entitlement.
I understand the reason, I just don't like it.
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I am so mad at student A.
So student A first [1] because s/he [2], which was pretty bone-headed, and s/he understood that. Then s/he [3]. Whatever. However, next, s/he [4] because [5]. Uh, no, [6] and because [sidebar-alpha] and [sidebar-beta]. So that made me cross. But then, s/he [7]. Irritating -- extremely -- but well within the culture of the university, so not really ire-inducing.
I try to let it go. The semester is over, nothing to be done now.
Last week, A [8], and when [9], s/he [10], [11]. This is when I start to get angry, because so no. When I [12], s/he [13], where s/he [14]. Now I'm really angry. I still [12], because I need to calm down.
Today, [15] which was in response to [16] that said [17]
Angry does not begin to describe it. I absolutely did not abdicate my responsibilities as a professor in such an egregious manner.
However, I [18], including [19], and [20].
And I'm pretty damn proud of the response I made.
Of course, now, I expect it will nonetheless escalate...

Because I Can

2007-05-22T08:39:00.000-05:00

A Music History Meme.

Note: "genre" refers to the marketing/mainstream-media label that would be assigned to the band, not the label (or lack of label) that real fans or the band itself would claim.

1. What's your earliest music memory?
I have a synesthetic memory associated with Brahms' Lullaby: I "taste" some sort of rubber, probably the toy that played that song when I was less than a year old. But I think the question is about more traditional memories. "Take you riding in the car car" sung by Woody Guthrie or "Little Boxes" sung by Pete Seeger.

2. What's the first pop song you remember hearing?
"Don't you want me baby" by the Human League. I was already old enough to go to sleep-away camp. My parents were big public radio listeners.

3. What's the first rock song you remember hearing?
I don't know, but I expect it was something traditional. My dad is a big fan of the Rolling Stones & Janis Joplin, so maybe one of them?

4. What's the first classical music piece you remember hearing?
Hm. First? Well, I adored the Pirates of Penzance by the time I was 5. Let's go with that.

5. What's the first piece/song you remember that doesn't fit into those genres?
Well, it'd probably be the folk songs from when I was a toddler.

6. What's the first album/cd you bought for yourself/you asked your parents to buy for you?
Probably Arena by Duran Duran

7. What's a favorite song from grade school?
Careless Whisper by Wham!

8. A song that reminds you of school dances?
Rock Lobster by the B52s

9. Which genre do you listen to most now? ("Most" can mean you have one more song in that genre than in any of the others)
Alternative.

10. Which favorite song/album/piece from your musical history are your readers least likely to know?
Equinoxe by Jean-Michel Jarre or Scenes by Michael Galasso. Of course, neither one is quite as obscure as an album called Cicada, the performer of which I cannot even find. (It's not the new one by the band Cicada; it's at least 20 years old.)

If I still have any readers, I tag you all. Leave me a comment so I can come see it!

Forgotten but Not Gone

2007-05-17T10:12:00.000-05:00

My semester is over.
Okay, it's not over. I still have one make-up to administer, then correct; another make-up to correct; and I have [x] students who will be completing the semester before the university's No-Really-Now-You-Have-To-Be-Finished date.
My subject is one that allows for multiple choice exams, and the university structure is such that encourages them. Plus, I find them helpful. There's a right answer and three or four wrong ones. If you pick the right answer, you win! the point; if you don't, you lose it. Why do I like this? Because there is no room for a student to say "You just didn't like me, that's why I have such a low grade," and there is no opportunity for me to say, even unconsciously, "Well, I do feel sorry for this person, I'll just grade them lightly." It's fair to everyone.
And yet I've spent the last week fielding requests for a better grade. "I'm so close, can you just...?"
I think my favorite is the person who threw in every single possible sob story you've heard or seen on blogs -- except illness -- into why s/he should get a better grade. This student came to meet with me after all the in-class exams had been administered, ostensibly for help, but said as s/he was leaving "Well, I just wanted you to meet me."
Oh, wait; maybe my favorite person was the one who demanded that I produce evidence that my grading system was comperable to the rest of the departments' grading. Because I'm the one who's supposed to run around and do all kinds of extra work to defend myself -- to the person who failed every exam and never came for extra help.
Did I mention I'm frustrated?
See, my university is a state university; while somewhere between a few to several of the graduate programs are among the best in the country, the undergraduate pool comes almost exclusively from in-state -- and therefore is highly non-competitive. I am well aware that there are good students here. We even have brilliant ones: one undergraduate alum went onto graduate school in a humanities subject, and landed a job straight out of graduate school with one of the most prestigious universities for that subject in the country. But such students are rare.
I love teaching: I love the expounding, but I also love helping people understand things, and I would love to inspire people with the love of understanding things too. But 95% of my feedback is from people who don't care about the subject, about learning, about curiosity.
So I'm frustrated.

Bullets of I-Didn't-Want-My-Blog-To-Be-Discontinued

2007-03-20T09:10:00.000-05:00

[dot] I've finally changed to blogger/google
[dot] I've been doing a lot of cryptic crosswords. I saved two or three years' worth of Games magazine just so I could do them when I finally taught myself how.
[dot] Here's the "cryptic" part of a clue on how I feel about the new...thing...which has unsubscribed me from a large number of my blogs, sometimes by actually deleting the blogname in my subscription service.
"Addled dear doesn't have sugar, right?"
I might be misusing the question mark, but I'm pretty sure it's only the exclamation point that indicates a kind of clue.
[dot] I'm not coming up with a good clue for the other word I want to use, but it's the one the parent company claims to not be.
[dot] I lost my voice due to a sore throat in the middle of class recently. If I was in better shape, I could've projected over the pain & finished the class.
[dot] The irony is that if I was in better shape, I probably wouldn't've gotten sick in the first place.
[dot] The further irony is that I'm not sure I'm using "irony" correctly. I get why "isn't it ironic, don't you think" song is not, in fact, ironic, but I'm not sure about my own usage.
[dot] I don't know how to make bullets.

Stuck

2007-02-01T10:33:00.000-05:00

I was listening to the radio on my way to work this morning. Some morning talk show djs were discussing the thing that happened in Boston yesterday, and I got so mad I started ranting, to no one, for about three minutes.
Have you ever talked to yourself for three minutes? Try it. It's a long time.
And I didn't notice I was doing it.
I'm extremely upset about this. Because I'm extremely upset about the pervasive anti-authority-figure attitude in the media.
And this is where I get stuck. Should I write about this? because it starts to sound like I'm pro-patriarchal-patronizing, when I'm not. I'm in favor of people not being dismissed because of the class to which they belong. Like being over 25. Yeah, sure, the media demographic is 18-34, but really: the 31 year old they're aiming for is the one who's pretending to still be fresh out of college.
I hate watching afternoon cartoons because the ads are so anti-school. God forbid teachers should have something useful to say, to offer. God forbid teachers, parents, adults, should be afforded basic human respect.
Even supposedly educational PBS-Kids gets in on it.
--Professor Wiseman has to send food to the international space station. When the astronauts come on screen to say they found a peanut, and can they eat it? the scientists (Wiseman, Einstein & -- Pizza? I think?) have to have a conference about whether it's okay. Einstein & Pizza, meanwhile, have set up the rocket so that it requires 4 hands to deploy the cargo -- yes, a set up so that Curious George can go into space instead of the Man with the Yellow Hat, I get that, but do you get how that makes scientists look? Especially to people who wouldn't consider the literary structure (or whatever it's called) without being nudged?
I agree with Anastasia*, honestly; I think that students get much more education, at any definition, from an exchange of ideas, and that "exchange" does really mean in both directions. And I think that very few students are getting much out of a class that is run with an iron fist (probably Dean Dad's* dutiful A students get the most out of it, and aalmost definitely not as much as they would out of a more give-and-take atmosphere.) However, I get frustrated by/annoyed by/ballistic about the kids who think that they know better simply because they're younger than the professor, and more hip, & cool.
And so I ranted -- shouted -- for three minutes to no one. Because the radio djs, by suggesting (or outright stating, I don't remember which) that the "kids" who came up with the ad campaign shouldn't be prosecuted are encouraging this idea. The admistrators of Boston are stuffy, uptight, anal retentive, squares who aren't hip enough to understand coolness.
TOO FUCKING BAD.
The "kids" and the ad company and the tv executive who approved the campaign should take responsibility for their acts. Because intentions are not enough. You have to have respect for the people who are not in your target demographic -- whether you're promoting a tv show or yourself -- as well.

*I can't link because Blogger is "unable to complete my request." I'm supposed to submit my error to Blogger Support or the Blogger Help Group, but there is no immediate link to either place and I'm not wasting my time searching for it, even though I suspect it wouldn't take more than two clicks to find it. I want to be catered to for a change.

Teaching Can Be Fun!

2007-01-16T14:26:00.000-05:00

I got my teacher's version of the book today. It doesn't come with just-a-book. Oh, no. It also has:
-a student study guide
-a paper test bank
-an electronic test bank
-an instruction book on how to make power-point slides
-a disk of power-point slides
-a binder of lectures.

I don't even have to come up with a syllabus: it tells me how!

Who knew teaching could be so easy!

**********************************

While I'm shocked, or flabbergasted, or something, by the excessive laziness and incompetency these additional, um, resources imply, I am nonetheless glad to have them. If I'd had a semester, or even two weeks, to prepare, I could read the book and come up with all the summary information on my own; with two days, I will take all the help I can get.

One-a-Day

2007-01-15T11:05:00.000-05:00

I want to teach. But I am not someone who is good at planning things six weeks away, let alone six years, so I have almost no experience. You know it: the class from this summer. So over the break, I asked if there were any classes that needed instructors.
Naturally, there were not. I didn't expect there to be, but there was no harm in asking.
I went away for the last week of vacation. The day I left, I received an e-mail from The Person Who Knows that a class had suddenly lost a teacher and would I still like to teach?
Of course.
But being away, I couldn't prep. I was actually unable to get any materials (instead of just having lots of "I have to do this first" excuses). It's Intro, so it shouldn't (ha ha ha) be hard for me to remember the information, but I worry about making a lecture class interesting. Good. Instructive, for those who want to be instructed.
I should be working on the syllabus so I have something to present to the class that first day.
And I'm catching up on all the blogs that accumulated on my week away.

Brash? Timid? BrashTimid..

2007-01-04T14:19:00.000-05:00

I am trying to compose a letter (e-mail), a sensitive-ish one, to my advisor.
I am realizing that most of my e-mails -- to anyone -- are timid and submissive. "I think it might be good if we..." "Maybe we should..." "Is this a good idea..."
(I am hoping these are not, in fact, direct quotes.)
I am realizing that this does not put me in a good light.
I am realizing, even given the fact that the precise placement depends on the person reading the e-mail, I have no idea where the general area of the line between "confident" and "arrogant" is.
I am writing about this on my blog so that I don't have to face the fact that I just have to pick some words and then hope that either (a) my words aren't arrogant or (b) my advisor is in a thick-skinned mood or (c) both.
Here I go, facing the fact...

edit: it's done. it's sent. now for the stomach knots...

Hey. Let Go.

2007-01-04T11:26:00.000-05:00

I'm a radio person. I don't love it -- there are long stretches of "Ick" and "Didn't they just play this song three seconds ago?" -- but since I'm not enough into music to be willing to spend money on something I'll discover I don't like, it works for me. And I sing along with the songs I like. This clues the toddler into the "coolness" of the song (toddlers are lovely the way they think grownups, especially their parents, are the ultimate cool); the toddler sings it sometimes, and requests it fairly regularly. I don't own the song (hm: maybe I'm just cheap), so we have to wait for the radio to play it. It's falling out of rotation; that is, I can no longer feel confident it will be played every morning, let alone every day. Therefore, I was extremely excited when I heard the opening bass line this morning as we drove to school. The toddler didn't quite get that it was Paralyzed until the chorus -- but that was all that was needed; we were off and singing.
My point? Apparently, I'm an attention whore. I desperately want to call the station and thank them for playing the song because my toddler loves it blah blah blah -- because I think they'll play the call on the air.
I am so very much not calling.

Let It Go LetItGo...

2007-01-03T10:56:00.000-05:00

I had a revelation in the shower this morning.
(What? Isn't that where all revelations occur?)
People keep trying to run education like business. Cut out the deadwood, make sure that people who don't perform are fired, whatever.
But.
Business, see, is not just output. It is also input. And the quality of the output depends, in no small (but maybe no large either) part, on the input.
But no one is policing the input. If the student is a legacy, he's accepted, regardless of how capable he is. If a student is a famous/rich person, or child thereof, she's accepted. If a student is an athelete...
This is probably obvious. Well, no. I take that back. It may be obvious to us, but it's clearly not to people who want to treat education like business. And it's not just college & up; while there's no screening of who-can-get-in in public schools, there's also no room for the difference in the input. A refiner wouldn't treat aluminum ore like iron ore (let's just pretend there's a plant that processes both. Or not; actually, it doesn't matter.) A financier wouldn't treat bond information from her dentist the same way she'd treat bond information from the WSJ. Yet educators are expected to treat children the same. Sure, there's divisions of "bright," "normal," and "slow," but what about when kids with lisps get classed with kids with ADHD? They're not "slow" in the same way.
(The title refers to not having the entry be perfect, because I, like luckybuzz, can't let anything go.)
(No, you're right, she didn't say that, but that's what I thought of in reference to myself when I read her entry.)

Uh....

2007-01-02T11:48:00.000-05:00

As seen at luckybuzz's

Phobic

You scored 57 anxiety, 48 awkwardness, and 18 neuroticism!

You don't seem to be particularly neurotic, but you certainly are Phobic. You are a nervous person, with fears, worries, and doubts--but, unlike a true neurotic, these don't manifest themselves visibly. You manage fine in social situations, despite underlying nerves--the best advice I can give you? Chill!

Your high anxiety score implies that you are unable to relax, worry about the future often, and probably are plagued by irrational fears and self-doubt.

Your low awkwardness score implies that you are socially capable, are personable and charming, and probably go to parties and have fun. So. Very. Not.

Your low neuroticism score implies that you don't exhibit subtle neurotic behaviors--your nails are probably an acceptable length, your pencils aren't covered with bite marks, and your bookcase isn't arranged alphabetically by genre. Congrats!

__

See the other results!

Well-Adjusted

The Neat Freak

The Dork

The Geek

Phobic

Obsessive-Compulsive

The Subtle Neurotic

The True Neurotic

Link: The Neurotic Test written by littlelostsnail on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Yeah, It's the Professors

2006-12-12T13:17:00.000-05:00

A New York Times article
Note the first paragraph on the second page.
Notice how the only dollar amount listed is $500,000. Carefully placed at the end of a paragraph for emphasis. Notice, to, that "college and university presidents, more than 100 of whom now receive at least..." is merely tucked in between "professor salaries" and the enormous number.
Maybe I'm underestimating NYT readers. Maybe they'll really get that the $500,000 is an unexpected salary at a college, even for the rarified position of president, which is in general salaried at 5-10 times the amount of an average professorship.
I'm thinking not.

Orthogonal, Not Oppositional

2006-12-05T10:30:00.000-05:00

Question 11, that is.

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 10% Conservative, 90% Liberal

Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

How Liberal Or Conservative Are You?

As seen at Anastasia's

Really Bad Editing

2006-12-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

I'm reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics (no, I'm not linking. For my lurkers who haven't read it, sorry.). I'm about half-way through. The author/narrator mentions someone:

holding tight to the horse's reigns.
(Not in quotes because I'm not sure that's the exact quotation.)

How, exactly, did this get past the copy editior?

Well, It's Progress. Maybe.

2006-12-04T10:00:00.000-05:00

My out-of-control dreams involve driving a car in which the brakes don't work well. It's not that I can't stop the car, it's that I can't stop quickly enough; no matter how much I stomp on them, the car doesn't slow down fast enough.
Yes, my subconscious has all the subtlety of a neon sign on a brick wall.
Last night, the car's brakes worked just fine. Instead, I wasn't paying attention and "had" to pass a large vehicle by crossing a double yellow line*. I slowed down after that though.
At least the brakes were working properly.
Which means I'm in control.
I think.

Oddly, today I watched an SUV pass about 5 cars by crossing a double-yellow line, for almost the same reason as my dream: the traffic was too slow. Well, actually in real life traffic was stopped, but at least I come by the idea honestly.

When Will the Mantra Kick In?

2006-11-30T11:32:00.000-05:00

The best paper is a done paper.
The best paper is a done paper.
The best paper is a done paper.
The best paper is a done paper...

But It Doesn't Feel Good When I Stop

2006-11-28T14:43:00.000-05:00

Remember the papers I was supposed to crank out? The ones I kinda started the blog for? So I'm working on one of them. (Yes, I know exactly how far behind this puts me.) (And that's why I'm not cut out for research. Teaching has all kinds of nice deadlines.) But Oh.My.GOD I cannot stand my primary source. Hate it hate it hateithateithateit.
Yes, that much. More.
Myopic, self-congratulatory, self-contradictory, and "clever" in cutesy ways such a book should never be, like asides.
(Anything that's of argueable taste in a blog? definitely does not belong in such a book.)
Unfortunately, I can use none of these reasons to explain, in the paper, why it is such a Very Bad Book.
Sigh.
I guess I'll go see if anyone's posted a blog entry, and then get back to the slog.
thud
hateit
thud
hateit
thud
hateithateit...

Number {mumble} Way In Which I Am Nearly Perfectly Normal

2006-11-28T10:20:00.000-05:00

I hate my mother in law

How Analogies Can Be Useful

2006-11-27T20:41:00.000-05:00

original title: "Let's Pretend..."
Let's pretend I'm in hairdressing school. I'm studying haircutting; it's taught in a separate section of the school from dyeing, and perms, and sets (for the clients who come in every week). I can take a class or two in other sections, but all my hairstyles have to be constructed with scissors. The problem is that I really prefer styles constructed in the perm section. Of course, I can't use hot rollers.
Hm. Maybe I should try to think of a way to use scissors to get perm hairstyles.
(And I didn't see this until my ridiculous analogy because why?)

Some Typing Mistakes I'm Making

2006-11-27T16:16:00.000-05:00

wait becomes what
Typing becomes Typo
m becomes µ (let's see what blogger does with a mu.)
Others I've ~~fog~~ ~~forog~~ forgotten.
Why can I not type today?

So I'm Average, But....

2006-11-27T14:54:00.000-05:00

I went to a certain big box store t'other day. (It wasn't the one that starts with wall. That's the problematic store I've chosen.) And I tried on some clothes. And I was astonished by the vanity sizing. Because remember how I said I'm perfectly average with respect to height and weight? Well, said average would have relegated me to Lane Bryant in the old days. But now? I'm a size 10. I mean, I'm happy to not have to face the fact that I really should be trying on clothes that have an X or two, but 10 is taking it too far.
But that's not the weirdest part.
The weirdest part is that said big box store has decided to vanity-size to weight -- but not to height. I'm wearing one of my new shirts today, and I have to roll up the cuffs 2-3 inches. You decide if that's really appropriate on a "long-sleeved tee." I know my answer. And my new pants, which I also considered wearing, are over-long by about the same amount.
So apparently the average American woman is getting heavier, but is still willow-tall.

Because She's the Most Brilliant Parodist Ever...

2006-11-21T16:24:00.000-05:00

...any of you who don't regularly read The Little Professor must go instantly and read this.

Stupid

2006-11-21T13:04:00.000-05:00

Why can I not come up with intelligent, not-entirely-about-me comments for people's posts that I desperately want to comment on?

Privacy and Other Things

2006-11-21T10:20:00.000-05:00

I worry sometimes about posting certain stories; I'm afraid they'll give me away. Not in the sense of "Our football team is now number 1 in the Pac10! Yay!" sort of way, where a reader can say, "Oh she's at UCLA, which I can know even though I'm at Carleton."
No, I mean the kind more along the line of "I looked fantastic today: I wore my purple velvet witch's hat, and my magenta swan's-down cloak," and a reader says "Oh my god, I saw her today."
(Not that I own either of those items, mind you.)
But this one is... Well, it's of a piece with this entry. And I... It's just...
See, my husband has "merely" an Associate's Degree. He's insulted when come home and ask him if he knows what these words mean; "Just because I'm not in a fancy PhD program doesn't mean I'm stupid," is basically what he says.
So the latest one: "salient." Now, two people asked about "vested interest," and that seemed like a lot to me. And while "vested interest" is not particularly important to that particular exam's discipline, "salient" is to this one's.
And not as a special definition; no, it's merely particularly useful.
And to the whole discipline, not just the particular subject.
Which is a junior-year-level subject.
So how many people asked what salient means?
Seven.
SEH VEN.
Clearly? when my husband says "fancy"? he's playing up the idea that an AA means he's a yokel. He is not referring to the quality of the university.

Signs. Read the Signs

2006-11-17T15:34:00.000-05:00

Granted, the building is confusing. We get that. We all had the same problem when we first came to it too.
But that's why the signs are there.
Read the damn signs.

Can Someone Please Explain to Me....

2006-11-17T10:19:00.000-05:00

...How one can get into college without knowing what "akin" means?
Or "oblique"?
Or "vested interest"?

I'm in Mourning

2006-11-10T11:51:00.000-05:00

Stupid football...

Because I Am an Egomaniac, Thank You Very Much

2006-11-08T14:37:00.000-05:00

The "Things I've Done" meme? Seen (in no particular order) here, here, here, here, aaaaand here, among other places?
I changed it! I made a comment, and it's now part of the meme.
Hee hee! it's like Telephone, but with typing!

Tolly Not Part of the Plan

2006-11-03T10:33:00.000-05:00

But too fun not to do. Seen at K8's and Anastasia's

(Except-- the memory? not so good. So I can only say I think these are all accurate...)

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea – from the shore
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg – no, but that seems cool
19. Slept under the stars – but I don’t like camping just the same.
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon – I wish!
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb – one of those I don’t remember; I may have
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster – wheeeee!
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking – only way I can dance
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment – I don't remember when, but I do remember it
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk.
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe.
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing – well, sort of, but not in the real way, so...
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving – eek! no!
51. Visited Ireland – someday, I hope
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan – another want-to-do.
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight – I’m pretty sure it was more than 6 hours.
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch – why is this on here? hasn’t everyone?
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music – not professionally, but that’s not the question, is it.
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date – I think?
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently well enough to have a decent conversation
95. Performed in Rocky Horror — ditto to Anastasia: never performed, but have dressed up.
96. Raised (raising) children (child) – I’ll just leave Anastasia’s, because it’s right.
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart – wish I hadn’t
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild – ick! mushrooms!
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper – I want to say yes, but I can’t remember
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach – again, ditto Anastasia: “unfortunately”
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes – who I apparently think I am, because I’ve made them also
134. Read The Iliad – no, but I did read the Odyssey over and over
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

Writing, Writing, Over Inadequacy...

2006-11-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

John Kerry is a wishy-washy idiot.
(Just had to get that out.)
So. I started this blog with the aim of writing every day -- er, every work day. That's clearly not happening. See, I'm just too fiddly; I look over it again & say, "Why didn't I phrase that this way?" or "...use that word?" Of course, the writing-every-day thing was supposed to help me with that fiddly-ness.
Isn't working.
New topic: While I have a raging ego, I also don't like it, and am also a depressive. Between the two, I manage to tell myself exactly how completely unspecial, boring, dull, etc. I am.
And a tangent: I was going to do a 100 things about me collection. My last one is...
Please hold; your party will be with you shortly
Dee da da da daaa da...
...here. Number 28. Now, see, the thing about these 100-things-about-me is that they seem to be the cool, the unusual, the special. I alluded to the fact that I don't see a lot special about myself, so this is a little difficult.
But.
I'm going to turn this all around. I'm going to start posting more often; if I can't think of anything cool enough to say, I'm going to post a 100-thing. And -- this is the part I love -- I'm going to turn around that "I'm so average" talk, and try to come up with all the ways I am average*. (This is going to be fun.) Because that's going to be just as hard as coming up with all the ways I'm special.
(I have no idea why I love this so much.)
So, for my first completely average thing (number 29 on the 100-things): I am within half an inch of the average height and 10 pounds of the average weight for an american woman.

*Okay, so it's not going to be perfectly average. I may choose some areas where I'm in one of the top 5 most popular categories. Like instruments: ocarina lessons? unusual. Either the piano or the violin lessons? "average." (Maybe I should use the word "common," hmm?)

And Policy-Makers Wonder Why Americans Do Poorly in School

2006-11-01T09:34:00.000-05:00

I could rant and rave about the anti-school attitude embodied by children's advertising, but I prefer to give two examples from adult-land.
(I'm tired, and more at a loss for words than usual. Please forgive the portemanteaus.)
*A popular NYC radio station makes elaborate fun of an ad posted in a local paper (I don't know which one) in which a research facility is looking for meth users. I don't remember the details, but the facility wanted to pay the users X hundreds of dollars if the users stayed with them for Y number of days. And rather than supporting this as a worthy step in the fight to understand and control the addiction behaviors which fuel the drug culture, this prominent media outlet spoofs it as ridiculous.
*There exists a magazine (it starts with "W" and ends with "ed," and is an anagram of a synonym for "eerie." I have no wish to be Googled by its fans.) which seems to be an entry into geekdom for the non-geeks. One would think, therefore, that it would portray geekdom in a positive light.
Oh, no.
--October's issue: they profile a topologist. A knot theorist, to be more specific. And comment, in parenthesis "(yes, they give out doctorates for that)".
--September's issue: they discuss the peer review process for scientific articles. It starts out seeming to be reporting from the side of the scientists (vs. the non-scientists, not vs. the editors), with a not-snarky tone, and one is lulled into thinking that this will indeed present a sympathetic entry view into science. Approximately 2/3s of the way through the article, the author mentions a website called arXiv. Another parenthetical comment: "(The X is supposed to be the Greek letter chi; it's pronounced "archive." If you were a physicist, you'd find that hilarious.)"
--The November cover, which I'm quite astonished Pharyngula has not yet commented on, is "The New Atheism: No Heaven. No Hell. Just Science. Inside the crusade against religion."
Yeah. Well, that just makes me want to run out and get a job in science. Doesn't it you? because look at the abuse you'll get from your supposed allies when you do.

Because Everyone's Doing It

2006-10-30T15:28:00.000-05:00

Random bullets. Of Whine

-My advisor no longer acknowledges me. Of course this means he's ashamed to be affiliated with me.
-I'm eating a pomegranate. Of course this means I now have pomegranate juice on my shirt.
-I hate spelling pomegranate. I always spell it wrong (so I'm not looking it up & correcting it, now).
-I have many problems. I know what many (of that many) are. Knowing is so very not half the battle.

Oh, No...

2006-10-18T14:34:00.000-04:00

My dream job, my very dreamiest of dream jobs, is available.
And not only did I miss the deadline, I'm really not qualified.
Expletives...

More Facts About Me

2006-10-18T11:43:00.000-04:00

26. I have still not read my course evaluations from the summer. What if they didn't like me???
27. Yes, I know this is a ridiculous attitude.
28. Remember my clean desk? It's an out-of-control mess again.

Because Everyone Else Is Doing It

2006-10-18T11:12:00.000-04:00

The Peach
Random Gentle Love Master (RGLMf)

Playful, kind, and well-loved, you are The Peach.

For such a warm-hearted, generous person, you're surprisingly experienced in both love and sex. We credit your spontaneous side; you tend to live in the moment, and you don't get bogged down by inhibitions like most women your age. If you see something wonderful, you confidently embrace it.

Your exact opposite:
The Nymph

Deliberate Brutal Sex Dreamer

You are a fun flirt and an instant sweetheart, but our guess is you're becoming more selective about long-term love. It's getting tougher for you to become permanently attached; and a guy who's in a different place emotionally might misunderstand your early enthusiasm. You can wreck someone simply by enjoying him.

Your ideal mate is adventurous and giving, like you. But not overly intense.

DREAD: The False Messiah

CONSIDER: The Loverboy, The Playboy, or The Boy Next Door

Link: The 32-Type Dating Test by OkCupid - Free Online Dating.

Um. So, no.

(See at B*, Anastasia, lucyrain)

Because I'm Just. That. Cool Unusual.

2006-10-17T10:31:00.000-04:00

HowManyOfMe.com

There are:
0
people with my name
in the U.S.A.

How many have your name?

Oddly, my first name is more popular than my last name. Who knew?

(As seen at Lucy's and K8's)

Oh, Those Crazy Students!

2006-10-05T12:19:00.000-04:00

I proctored an exam this morning. About five minutes into the period, a young man comes rushing in, brandishing a pencil & nothing else, and reaches out for the exam I'm about to hand him, and says:
"Is this Gov Civ?"
Three guesses what the right answer is. And the first two don't count.

Since I'm Sulking Anyway...

2006-10-03T13:46:00.000-04:00

I want to like Studio 60... I really do. I loved the West Wing, pre-9/11. I love Bradley Whitford (he's married to Jane Kaczmarek! who's older than he!), and I actually really like Matthew Perry. Backstage shows? check that one off too.
But...
"Science shmience?" What a stupid segment. And not because I claim to be a scientist, but because I claim to be vaguely intelligent and approximately open-minded (I think that was the worst part, the mean-spiritedness of it). Maybe if we didn't watch any of the show-within-a-show, it would be better. And the born-again Christian? she's too righteous to be funny.

Exhausted

2006-10-02T11:19:00.000-04:00

I'm tired
I'm tired of not writing
I'm tired of failing.
I'm tired of being worse than everyone else.
I'm tired of not being as competative as everyone else.
I'm tired of not being able to spell "comptetative" without looking it up in a dictionary.
I'm tired of trying to explain to my husband why it's wrong to say things like "Just what I expected" when he finally sees the face of the annoying driver, or why it's wrong to say to our daughter that "Don't shoot: first of all, you're not a boy, second of all it's wrong."
I'm tired of letting my advisor down.
I'm tired of being lonely.
I'm tired of not exercising.
I'm tired of not getting things done.
I'm tired of procrastination.
I'm tired of beating myself up instead of doing something about it.
I'm tired of the expectation that I will barely have time to take one day off a week.
I'm tired of the expectation of balancing family & work.
I'm tired.

I Must Be an Academic After All

2006-09-14T09:33:00.000-04:00

You know those dreams you have, where you wake up, and you can't remember what was happening, but you know it was fun/happy/positive, and you want to recreate the story so you can savor it a little longer?
I had one of those last night.
About one of the papers I'm supposed to have finished already.
Too bad they weren't practical ideas after all...

Lost the Race Again

2006-09-13T12:40:00.000-04:00

So PZ Myers stole my latest post idea.
I try to watch all the shows that have brilliant people as main characters: House, CSI: the original, Law & Order: Criminal Intent (D'Onofrio version, although I like the other one too), Numb3rs. I think brilliant people are under-represented, especially as sympathetic characters, and I want to do my best to support the ones that exist. I know, it only matters if I'm a Neilson household, but I'm still trying.
I understand (as articulated better by most of the contrary commentors to that Pharyngula post linked above) that TV is TV: among other things, it is fiction, it is constrained by time, and it is constrained by the producers'/writers'/network suits' assumptions about the intelligence of the audience. When you don't know anything about the subject -- for me, that would be House -- it's easy enough to accept the more obvious lapses in logic. For example: of course the fact that the child last night was an in vitro baby would be important, but I didn't know how obvious that made the answer to doctor & biology types. That's what the network people are counting on: that most of the audience won't know that. (I think they're also counting on the audience not even realizing that the in vitro fact is the important one, but that may be my inherent cynicism about network suits.)
But. But but but...
My undergraduate degree is in math*, so watching Numb3rs is a challenge for me. A big challenge. Even though I only have a BA in the subject, a BA that's over 10 years old, and no experience whatsoever in the academic field, I know that a mathematics professor won't have an intimate understanding of chaos theory *and* abstract algebra *and* topology *and* combinatorics *and*... I even get annoyed by the shows I don't have any background in: CSI's ability to dedicate four or five techs to one case, the beautiful facilities they work in, and the way they always get results; or the fact Dr. House suggests 4 or 5 tests per episode, all except the last of which put the patient at great risk, but he's touted as a perfect diagnostician.
On the other hand, I adore Goren (L&O:CI) his immeasurable knowledge about every single subject, and his unparalleled ability to psychologically manipulate his suspects into confessions. Maybe these shows wouldn't be so annoying if they were as over-the-top and obviously impossible as L&O:CI is.

*My current work has nothing to do with my undergraduate degree, so that doesn't really give you any help in finding me.

Help Me, O Internet

2006-09-06T16:43:00.000-04:00

Does anyone have an idea as to where one would search for jobs at SLACs? or perhaps where one might find a listing of SLACs?

I Just Should Have Known Better

2006-09-06T15:17:00.000-04:00

...than to drive to "Town" on the second day of classes.
So today was the annual doctor appointment -- you know, that doctor -- and it brought up a variety of topics, like:
-why do most of the pregnant women there already have at least one child? that is, where are all the first-time mothers?
-it takes no more than a year for the Stupidity of Patients to wear a Very Nice Woman down to a Brittle-ly Nice Woman.
-why is "feminine" bad? and why does it feel like I'm uttering heresy asking that?
-nurse practitioners really are just as "good" as doctors.
-is it crossing a picket line to be a patient?
-why can't I remember things? like the other questions the visit brought up, or the brilliant post that I was going to write about research vs. teaching?

Who We Are vs. Who We Write

2006-09-01T14:39:00.000-04:00

Lucy pointed her readers to Wolfangel's post about who we blog vs. who we act, and the dichotomy between the two that sometimes arises. Honestly, I'm a little surprised by how many bloggers say "I met Blogger X, and she was just as [adjective], [adjective], and [adjective] as she is on her blog." My (extremely limited) experience has been mostly the opposite.
But that's not my point.
My point is that jo(e) had a post where she tried to start a meme. So I decided it would be amusing (to me) to try to come up with outlandish, unlikely, stupid, and (hopefully) occasionally funny questions that could have provoked those responses.
A couple of disclaimers. I don't know jo(e) in real life (telling her I'm doing this is I think the first contact I've had with her) and I don't read very closely (I just noticed about a week before her meme post that her on-blog profile says Northeast; I'd thought she was in the Mid-west). So if I create a question/answer combination that you know is offensive to her, please don't jump down my throat; I don't know jo(e)'s personal preferences.

1. If you hate the snow so much, why don't you just move away from Bison City?
2. Do you tell the truth to the police?
3. What's your favorite album size?
4. Why don't you talk about your department chair more?
5. If my husband's & my 28th wedding anniversary is before the end of the year, how long have we been married?
6. You know, I murdered my father/mother/kitten. Are you going to turn me in?
7. Why didn't you get into surfing as a profession?
8. Do you have a parakeet?
9. Do you like it editing stories?
10. Are you ever mean?
11. Did you ever tell readers about your favorite restaurant?
12. Does anyone in your family read the college/university newspaper?
13. Can I figure out your real name from your blog?
14. Why don't you let your husband do the chores?
15. How long have you defended vegetarianism as an anti-terrorism act?
16. You know, I keep hearing about Reiki nowadays!
17. Why do you buy all those shawls and drapey things?
18. You have such a connection to your family history. What's their religion?
19. What's your favorite drink, and how often do you go to the monastary?
20. What's the color you use to flag e-mails as urgent?
21. How serious are you when you take pictures?
22. Why choose easy-to-remember pseudonyms? aren't you afraid of being found out?
23. Are you going to tell us about your sex life?
24. Why would you blog about a funny fight with your husband?
25. Do I really have to ask you a question?

Last One Today

2006-08-30T16:50:00.000-04:00

I am the number one Google result for
-- wait for it --

crankyness

Of course, it's just because I have spelling issues.

Right?

Still Procrastinating

2006-08-30T16:37:00.000-04:00

But at least I'm not playing endless Sudoku.
You know what's really great about companies that measure your stats? You get to find out about all these lurkers that you had no idea were reading you. Why, in the past five minutes, I just discovered two -- two! -- new bloggers who have me on their blogroll!
(I'm not linking to y'all because you haven't said hi, so I don't want to impose on your privacy.)
(Because, y'know, we all have so very much privacy on the internet.)
What an ego boost. I guess I should write more.
Ha ha.

Bonus!

2006-08-30T11:19:00.000-04:00

While cleaning the, um, office, I found a clean mug & a whole bunch of (bagged) tea!

Cleaning

2006-08-30T10:17:00.000-04:00

I don't clean. I just don't. My husband has to cajole, threaten, plead, guilt trip, beg to get me to help him do maintenance like vacuuming or dishes. So if I start cleaning things, you know it has to be a Really Big Mess.
This weekend, we cleaned an area of our house that had become a sort of box room. I had wanted to use it in part for my craft-work; there's unfinished things from over three years ago that I'd like to get done. But it's hard to find time to craft, and it's hard to find room to put stuff in our house, so the space had become a catch-all for stuff we didn't know what to do with at the moment. It's beautiful, now. There's a floor, and I can almost get at the craft materials; all that's in the way is other craft stuff. Soon, I'll clean off the desk that had been meant for me to do real work, as well as crafts, and I can finish some things. It's very exciting.
I also cleaned my advisor's general area at school. I wasn't feeling entirely altruistic; my cubicle is in this area, and I have to walk through the group area to get to it. This wasn't so much a question of mess. While my desk was becoming impossible to work at, the general area was more of a procrastination. But it looks better, and I feel like I did something, even though it wasn't academic.
It even inspired me to blog.
I'll sign off with another good spam name: Novice B. Unless.

Politics

2006-08-24T12:17:00.000-04:00

I just returned from a talk (why o why was it offered in what is, technically, our summer break? my advisor might've liked it) where
-I was one of only 2 women. Granted, there were only about 12 people, including the speaker, but still;
-there were a lot of muckety-mucks: at least one department chair and one vice-president for [this'n'that];
-it was offered by a department that has, nominally, no connection to my department (the sub-areas are much more interconnected);
-there was a big gun from my department.

Perfect chance for schmoozing! Look at me! rubbing elbows with big-wigs! and showing off my dedication to this semi-obscure-given-my-department area of research! Why, I even walked back to our building with the superstar from my department.

But did I say anything of interest? No, of course not. And I was so very noticeable, he'd forgotten I was there 2 minutes after we separated.

(No, really: we happened to be in the same hallway when another Very Important Person asked him if anyone else from our department had gone to the talk, and he didn't remember that I had.)

I know there's politics in academia. I never assumed there wasn't. (Quite the contrary, actually.) But I still suck rotten eggs at it, and I hate rubbing that in my own face.

*sigh*

Now I'm off to an impromptu lunch with the new students. Watch me go...

More Things

2006-08-24T11:55:00.000-04:00

16. You know the saying "memory like an elephant"? Or "steel-trap"? Not me. Except when it comes to useless things, like identifying quotes from certain, um, trashy novels.
17. I hate reading tragic books. I tried reading The Poisonwood Bible the other night, and I had to skip to the end to try to cheer myself up. (The end wasn't cheery to me, so I ended up reading Calvin & Hobbes instead.)
18. I can't watch tragic movies. There's no way I will go see United 93, for example.
19. I do not hate tragic plays. I find them transcendent.
20. I love live theater.
21. I am a snob about live theater.
22. I worked in the theater business for a while.
23. I miss trains as methods of commute.
24. I don't like summer heat. I never have.
25. I like things to be clean, but I don't care if they're messy.

One of Those Things-About-Me

2006-08-16T11:04:00.000-04:00

I love 100 Things About Me posts, whether they come all at once or little by little. They're hard, though, especially if one is trying to be semi-anonymous. Or pretending to, at any rate. And one per day? I'll never remember them all.
So. Here's a list of 17 things about me.
1. I hate mosquito bites. Not original, but on my mind.
2. I am, therefore, clearly not Ned Flanders.
3. My middle school was run by nuns. We had chapel every day.
4. It was ecumenical in the sense that you didn't even have to be Christian to go.
5. I am not sure "ecumenical" is the right word, but I know there is a single, appropriate word for the "open-access, non-discriminatory-on-the-basis-of-faith" idea, and I would rather use it than that unwieldy phrase. I do that a lot.
6. I always have to do the "i before e" jingle when spelling. Even then, I'm not sure.
7. I got a 65 on the spelling test in sixth grade that involved ie & ei words. It was my worst grade up until that point.
8. I miss the ritual and music of the particular faith of my middle school.
9. I'm agnostic, because I am uncomfortable with some of the judgements supposedly made by gods.
10. I like reading Anastasia, post-doc, and B* because they remind me that faith and religion can make people happy.
11. I love diet Dr. Pepper.
12. I didn't like kids until about 3 years ago.
13. Many still make me nervous, because I think they'll see right through me, or I'll bore them.
14. I never know what to say to anyone. This makes schmoozing unusually difficult.
15. I like playing with graphic design -- organizing text and pictures on a page. (See? #5 again.)
16. re: #7: I remember it was 6th grade because I remember the room I was in.
17. I dream about my schools. The only one I haven't dreamed about is my undergraduate institution.

Okay. I've run out of things off the top of my head. I'll do some more later.

Best-Laid Plans

2006-08-15T12:57:00.000-04:00

Every day I come in with a plan. Currently, the plan is to do the easiest of three papers that I have due by the end of the summer. But no matter what the specifics are, I come in and say: I'm going to do work today! I'm going to read my work e-mail, not open the web-browser, and I'm going to work!
This never happens. Of course, because then I would have to be one of the productive, useful members of society, and what would I do when I failed?
I did manage to not read all my bloglines for a day or so, but now I'm catching up on those instead of writing the paper. I'm thinking about An Annoying List for the blog, because to find something positive to talk about would be too much trouble -- and also too identifying. I'm playing endless sudoku, even though it's getting boring.
And the paper? which I could probably whip out in a day, if I was really honest about it? (because it's that easy of a paper, not because I'm that good.)
Still not getting done.

Book Me-Me

2006-08-07T21:21:00.000-04:00

I am still here. I have all sorts of reasons for not posting, including the very logical (and, I'm guessing, somewhat familiar) reason that I haven't done anything, so I can't go back until I have something perfect. Yes. Well. Moving on.
Both ScienceWoman and post doc have honored me by tagging me for a meme. I always consider the first meme tag one's notice of arrival in the society, don't you? Oh, no? Hm. Clearly I am not yet versed...
Oh. The meme. Yes.
(No, wait. First: Don't y'all just love Arecibo? I adore it, for no very good reason. But it is so freakin' cool.)
Ahem.
1. One book that changed your life: See, this is the reason I didn't jump up and do this meme as soon as post doc tagged me. Because I can't think of a darn one that changed my life. If I could remember, it might be the first book I didn't read all the way through, whether I liked the thing or not. Or maybe not, because even though I finally let myself put a book that I didn't like down, I think it was more situational than book-related.
Or maybe I just really have a reeeeeeelly bad memory. Did I tell you the stories about my bad memory? Wait. I'm doing something, aren't I?
2. One book you have read more than once: Really? Just one? People read books only once? Maybe this one should be books I have only read once -- except I can't remember any of those (oh: maybe some of those romance novels, or the ones by Carol Goodman (although don't think I won't read her new one when my library gets it, oh no))...
I read most books more than once. Especially now, when everything makes me cranky, and I can only find comfort in repeats. No, really: I do know exactly how pathetic I sound.
3. One book you would want on a desert island: Well, I was going to go with a blank book (I'd finally have time to write my own Great American Novel, except it would be Desert-Islandian), until I read twf (who may have the best name ever, especially since I have no idea what it means) her answer, which is the Complete Novels of Jane Austen. Since she's one of my constant re-reads, I'm pretty sure I won't get bored with her as fast as with anyone else.
Er, "she" being JA, not twf. I'm sorry to admit I hadn't read twf until ScienceWoman linked to her.
4. One book that made you laugh: I like Jane Austen, honestly, and some of her writing I find amusing -- although it might not make me laugh. And P.G. Wodehouse is always good for a smile. But, laugh? Maybe there are some, somewhere, in the mists of my rotten memory, but right now, all I can think of are blogs.
5. One book that made you cry: Now, after all that hand-wringing about not remembering anything, you'd think I wouldn't have an answer for this one, wouldn't you. And yet I remember it like it was yesterday -- better, probably. Bridge to Terabithia. I read it on a vacation with my parents, and I finished it while they were taking a nap, and my dad was mad at me for crying for some reason (he's a crusty, cranky person, and that is not as mean a response as it sounds), and my mother wanted to know what was wrong, and I didn't want to tell them it was only a book. I can't read books that make me cry, anymore. It's one of the reasons I can't find any new, good fiction.
6. One book you wish had been written: I... don't know.
7. One book you wish had never been written: This was the third question that put me off. I mean, there's a whole bunch of books that I have the normal, liberal, knee-jerk reaction to, but I can't really condemn the authors or publishers for making the book, because I'm sure there are just as many liberal books about which conservatives feel the same way. On the other hand, twf had a really good answer to that one too: The Rules is just so... ooh!
8. One book you are currently reading: Josephine Tey's The Singing Sands. A re-read, for when I run out of New Yorkers. I don't leave much time for book reading.
9. One book you've been meaning to read: Well, there's a bunch for my work, but naming them would specify me a little too much. There's a couple of books for my crafting stuff that I'd like to have, but that's more as a library thing, not really a read. I'd like to read some more Michael Chabon; I loved Cavelier & Klay (even though I probably can't spell it). And I really want to read Finnegan's Wake. Silly, I know, but I read a quote of it once, just loved it, and wonder if I could stand hundreds of pages of sentences just like that one.
Okay! So I'll be gone again for the rest of the week, but I'm really (no, really!) going to try to come back regularly next week. No, really!

It's Too Hot Awards

2006-08-02T20:01:00.000-04:00

I know, I'm stealing from Phantom Scribbler, especially given the day of the week. But this is when I thought of it. And I couldn't wait because the heat will (better!) be gone soon.

"You Have Got to Be Kidding Me" goes to the 30-40-ish man today who was overheard saying that it wasn't that hot, and he remembers playing double-headers in little league when it was this hot.
"You're Nuts" goes to anyone wearing long sleeves or long pants. Bonus points to someone wearing both. Triple points to someone wearing a coat as well.
"I Love Trees." The area in their shade is noticeably cooler than the outright sun, despite probably having been in the sun not moments before.

(Yes, I know. But, really: there aren't many of you and there aren't many of them (ITO Awards). Can't we have both for just one week?)

Spam Names

2006-08-02T10:34:00.000-04:00

Two recent, excellent names from which the e-mail supposedly originated:

-Gauntlet S. Insecurities
-Rubbinshing U. Forsythia

Lurv Me'sa Meme

2006-07-21T09:30:00.000-04:00

I can't seem to find time to formulate a coherent post on all the things annoying me, so I'll do the minor meme form instead. I've seen it at Anastasia's among others.

1. Grammatical pet peeve:
"[modifier] unique." People. "Unique" is one of a kind. You can't be "very" one of a kind. That's like being a little bit pregnant.

2. Household pet peeve:
Hm. This one's harder. Of course, I'm not the one who takes care of the household.

3. Arts & Entertainment pet peeve:
Okay, it's been done to death I'm sure, but I am so very sick of women being sticks. (That might be a little stronger than a peeve...)

4. Liturgical pet peeve:
I'm not religious, so I can't really have one.

5. Wild card:
I was going to devote a single entry to this before I saw this meme: poorly designed restrooms. Is it really so hard to get faucets that hang over the sink, so you don't bang your hands on the back trying to wash them? Bonus: automatic-turn-off faucets that don't stay on long enough to rinse your hands.

Bonus: Things that I do that become other people's pet peeves?
As I said, I don't take care of the household, so I'm sure there's a whole list there. I think I might go on too long when I talk. I can't think of any others. (That's not to say I don't think I have any other faults, just that I can't think of any that cause others merely peevish reactions.)

Crankyness

2006-07-11T10:54:00.000-04:00

Is anyone else as pissed off as I am about the New York Times article "Small Colleges, Short of Men, Embrace Football"? (It's here, but I think it requires a membership.) I had to stop reading after this quote:

"I could have started a spiffy new major of study, spent a lot of money on lab equipment and hired a few new high-powered professors," [JoAnne Bolye, president of Seton Hill University, a 123-year-old former women's institution] said. "I might have gotten 25 more students for that. And I couldn't have counted on that major still being popular in 15 years.

"Instead, I started a football team, brought in hundreds of paying students, added a vibrant piece to our campus life and broadened our recognition factor. And in the long history of American higher education, one thing you can count on is football's longevity. Football is here to stay."

Yes. Because so many of those football players pay to go to school. And so many of the alumni who now will give money, give money for the school in general instead of earmarked for the sports. And because paying students are the most important thing, not providing a quality education...

Oh, why am I even trying.

I know why I'm trying. Because my institution pours enormous amounts of money into sports -- football, primarily, but others as well -- while the academic departments scramble to find enough money to pay instructors.

Not professors. Not even fucking TAs. Instructors. Adjuncts who get paid, at most, a couple thousand bucks per course.

Crankyness does not even begin to cover it.

"I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV"

2006-07-07T09:33:00.000-04:00

So, first, I have to apologize again. I just looked at my email, & discovered there were a couple/few/several comments I never acknowledged because, um, I forgot to look to see if there were any. So thanks for stopping by, everyone!
(No, really. I will get the hang of this blogging thing eventually.)
-------------
I'm not a writer. I can't craft elegant jewels of analogies or pitch-perfect responses to idiotic states of the world, or even just a quick, coherent note to the internet (I am so not telling you how long I spend on these entries).
But.
I was reading a biography of a figure who is tangentially related to my area. My mother gave it to me; I don't read biographies, but she thought I might find it interesting. And I would have, except for the Oh My God What Kind Of Crap Is This Writing. Two examples:
- "[Person of note] had brilliant arguments against [something {ceresina's} not very happy about either] [but we authors are going to completely not mention a single one]" I mean, come on: even I know you're supposed to show, not tell.
- "[Brilliant theories] flourished in the nutrient-poor soil of [Big Repressed Country]" I... I... I... What?
How is it that these people get published?
On the other hand:
Yesterday, I received an e-mail response from a professor who's in charge of a particular area of funding. The complete e-mail, from saluation to sign-off read:
"That is an accurate description of the position."
And you know what? That makes me so happy. I usually find him very intimidating, but this e-mail somehow just humanizes him for me. I know that is just about a complete reversal of what should be, but -- there it is.
*Sigh* I guess I can't avoid my unhappy students anymore. I wish I could've made them all happy...

So How Many Calories does Teaching Burn?

2006-06-21T14:00:00.000-04:00

First, a note: I may have, being tone deaf, inadvertently suggested that teachers/professors who do not take bull from students are Bad People.
I did not mean to.
I do not think that.
What I meant to say is that I find it useful to not notice bull. I have a complete lack of poker face, combined with a deep resentment for cheaters & Entitled People & other such I Don't Wannas. (This deep resentment is not mitigated by the fact that I sometimes find myself doing the same thing.) However, I also would like to help the students who take a class from me do as well as they like or need. Therefore, I find it useful to not catch on to people who are trying to cut in line; so long as I have strict rules about where the line starts, and how to get there, I don't need to.
That's a very poor metaphor. What I mean is that I don't mind offering help to people who would like to get a break, so long as it's the same help I would offer anyone else.
Because were I to realize at the time that they were trying to get a break, I would, in all likelihood, be less willing to offer the help I offer to everyone else -- and much, much less able to do it politely.
And this is all due to my own particular combination of quirks. And thus may very well have nothing to do with anyone else.
*******************************
My class is small, about 10-15 people. It takes place in a room, deep & narrow-ish, that can seat 80. I use power-point because I find it helpful: I can put the slides on the web for students to download (so they don't have to copy that part during class), and they help organize my thoughts. However, it creates a funny dynamic for me: I feel less involved in the class if I'm sitting.
A lot of it is the arrangement of the room, the "desks face the teacher" arrangement, rather than a seminar room. It should be this way, for this class; it's not that this material cannot be taught in a seminar, class-discussion fashion, but rather a combination of it can be taught as lecture, and I have no experience leading discussions. But it does mean that when I sit down, there's no focus to the room, no human focus.
It also means that when I sit down, I can't see the students as well.
On the other hand, I feel odd, just standing between a big screen and no more than 17 people, talking, the way one might at a, well, talk.
So I find it useful to have something to write on the board. Examples. Further terms that are important, but there's less damage to the student's understanding of the subject if they don't remember them. The board is tricky, of course; writing neatly enough to be read, big enough to be read, not spending too much time with one's back to one's audience, and not spending too much time writing instead of explaining.
Even when I'm not expounding (ahem) on what I've just written, I also have to remember to stand still. To not sway. To not adjust my shoulders when I realize they're hunched up around my ears. To stand up straight.
It's an interesting test in proprioception. So far, I'm mostly failing.
So I'm learning as well. It's not about the same subject. But it's still just as it should be

First Exam

2006-06-20T13:24:00.000-04:00

I gave my first exam last Thursday.
I may have mentioned that already.
What I haven't mentioned is that I finally had a chance to grade them. (Since it's the summer, and classes are smaller, I gave some short answer questions as well as the multiple choice; MC take longer to -- *ahem* -- want to grade.) My husband was watching television while I did. I got to a particular student and mentioned that I felt sorry for him; he'd shown up late that day.
My husband said I was a sap.
-What? Why??
-Because that's the way he wants you to feel. He wants you to feel sorry for him and give him a break.
-Well, but if I don't give him that break, am I still a sap?
Honestly, I don't remember his answer. I don't think I am, but he may still disagree with me.
The grades were kind of interesting; the distribution was verging on bi-modal, instead of normal.
Today, I handed them back. I wanted to go over them in class, because I want to keep them; it's possible I may use these questions again.
One student pointed out that I'd given him too high a score. Something I would do.
And then the ones who failed came up to talk to me. One student had actually sent an email early this morning, before the exam came back, but after I posted the grades on-line.
This student had a litany of excuses. No outward attempts to get me to give special consideration, but I'm sure trying to clear the way so that I would.
I felt sorry for the student. I did not offer special consideration, other than to work out what kind of grades were needed on the future assignments in order to get the desired grade.
After the class, after I'd packed up my laptop (you should see the high-grade bag I have for it *cough cough*), after I walked to my car, I realized what my husband had meant about me being a sap.
Because I was one. I believed the student's excuses.
And I had forgotten that this student spends about half the time in class instant messaging & talking with friends made in class.
But I was glad I had been a sap. Because I am a first-time teacher: I cannot win a battle of "This is how you should really behave in class" with a student. An established teacher might; a first-time will not.
And the fact that I had forgotten class behavior meant that I could help the student, instead of writing the student off, instead of pissing the student off because I didn't have the faith and conviction of the parents.
I love teaching because I love explaining. I love to help people understand. I love to help people do well.
I need to be a sap to do it. A sap with principles. But a sap nonetheless.

On Why Teaching Isn't So Bad

2006-06-16T10:50:00.000-04:00

I brazenly claimed on Post Doc's blog that she shouldn't be scared of teaching. She called me on it, even suggesting I might be wise.* Since I don't want to hijack her blog, I thought I'd explain why here.

Also, I think that her situation is applicable to others as well. Her story happens to be a well-explained one that is easier for me to respond to.

To me, the most important part about starting to teach is knowing the material. One of the trade-offs of going to a university as an undergraduate is that you become part of the learning process of graduate students; in a way, undergraduates are the subjects of the graduate students' experiments in teaching. But that's part of the undergraduate-at-university experience, and graduate students have to accept that the first few semesters they teach will not be brilliant. A hard thing to accept, of course: part of the reason we're graduate students and post-docs and researchers is because we do well, and it's hard to feel like we're not.

In fact, to me, it's not even necessary to be so comfortable with your material that you can present it without notes. If you do feel that way before your first-ever class, you are a step ahead of most first-ever professors-in-training. And (therefore) that is better; but while it's something that needs to be a goal, it's okay for it to be a goal when you start.

Post Doc has a lovely post (well, all of her posts are lovely, actually; you should go read her if you don't already) on trying to explain why 11*11 is 121, rather than 111, to a group of junior high students. She associates? (that's not quite the right word) this to peeping through a crack in the wall between her and teaching. I suggest this is not tentative peeping through a wall, testing whether she should go over it, but rather trying to climb the mountain of explanation that exists beyond that wall. It is hard to explain why 2+2 is 4, not 5, or 3, or 22. In other words, the challenge she had with the junior high students isn't one she should have been able to conquer. Teaching as a post-doc (or as a pre-doc, or as a researcher, or as a professor) to undergraduates doesn't usually involve deep, fundamental issues such as why 2+2 is 4.

Well, not in the sciences, anyway.

The reason why Post Doc sounds like she could be a good teacher is exactly what her collegue said: feeling confident, but willing to be interrupted. Good teachers are confident in the material and their knowledge of it. Good teachers are willing to be interrupted, because they know they won't lose track of where they are going, and because they know they have a source of knowledge that is likely to provide the necessary response. A willingness to be interrupted also indicates a confidence in yourself to say that you don't know when you don't; you don't have to know everything as a teacher, just all the information you think the students should leave the class with.

So, Post Doc, that's why I think you don't need to avoid teaching. You've already climbed much more of the wall than you think.

Of course, that doesn't mean you'll like teaching. But I do think that liking and being able to are two different things altogether. And you've demonstrated more than ample ability to try it out.

*********
*I'm just teasing.

Absence

2006-06-15T13:38:00.000-04:00

So.
I had meant, originally, to post every day here. Well, every working day, of course. But it got harder & harder. After all, it's one thing to free-write for oneself; it's another to free-write and hope people will read it.
But lately, what's holding me back is how busy I am.
My last entry mentioned that I'm teaching. I still love it, for some reason. I'm not as inspired, as euphoric, as I was, and I often feel like I could have done better, but there's something so satisfying in reading an introductory text, and pulling out the important information. There's something wonderful about being able to answer people's questions. There's even something to be pleased about when a student asks a question I can't answer: s/he has taken a step off the path that I'm following (but the class thinks I'm forging), and tentitively crept into new territory. My discipline is a "learn facts" discipline, rather than an "understand the text" discipline, so I don't have to worry about creating a conversation among the students. I am pleased with my ability, unexpected, to extemporize on a theme I know fairly well. I love watching the students become friends (although I could do without the talking in class). I love writing on the chalkboard, to further illustrate a point I make in the p0wer p0int.
On a vainer note, I love being called "Professor," especially as it comes with that illicit thrill of knowing that's not quite an accurate title. I also, apparently, love to talk (and if you knew me in real life, you'd know how odd that is.) I love that I got up in front of strangers and had nearly no stage fright. I love that I can look these strangers in the face (I rarely look anyone in the eyes, even the people closest to me.) I love that I have let go of my nervousness of looking dowdy and style-less; while it would be neat to be the cool professor, it's okay with me that I fit the mold instead of break it.
I gave my first exam today. It was the most nervous I've been for the entire "semester." I had no idea if it was too hard, too easy; I have no idea how much students are going to complain about their grades; I was afraid no one would finish it in time, that people would complain about it the instant the exam period was over.
But it wasn't as bad as I feared, standing up there at the chalkboard with the blank exams in my hand. Everyone had their own row, so there was much less opportunity for cheating. Almost everyone finished with time to spare. No one complained to me, or loudly to each other, about how hard the test was. And I enjoyed listening to the students cram before the exam. I even found some pleasure in the conversations I passed on the way out of the room about "Maybe she'll give partial credit for that."
I am no longer one of them. I am the teacher.

A Confession*

2006-06-05T14:47:00.000-04:00

profgrrrrl has a post about a terrible grad student she has to advise. No, she doesn't use the word terrible, but I would. And I feel okay doing so, because... well, if my adviser were female, and if I hadn't stuck with the one advisor, and if I hadn't stayed on the same project that I used for my masters... Well, I'm a terrible grad student. Equally problematic -- wasteful of valuable advising time -- as this student of pg's sounds, while not feeling nearly so entitled. (E.g. I don't think I'm brilliant; on the other hand, maybe I come across as thinking so.) I have to get moving. There's only so much time available to graduate students, and I'm getting much too close to the end.

So recently, while procrastinating, I've had a legitimate reason (e.g. not blog-writing): I've been prepping for my first class. I'm a fellowship student, see, and I've never had to teach a class before, not even in the extrodinarily remote sense of running scantrons through the correction machine. Why is this a good thing? Well, because I'm not a big fan of research, it turns out. I thought I was, but it's not my cup of tea; I don't constantly have new thoughts & questions, a la profgrrrrl (whose research plan impresses the hell out of me), or... well, probably, any of you. And now I've been teaching for a couple/few weeks.

Here's my confession.

I love teaching.

I adore it.

*Sigh* I am so being kicked out of academia for this, aren't I.

******************
*I wonder how many blog posts are titled this?

Bad Research

2006-05-22T20:35:00.000-04:00

I've come to realize that I'm not one of the best researchers in the world. I don't think quickly on my feet; I don't make clever connections; I am not "instinctually" critical of material placed in front of me.
It's funny, possibly even ironic, that I use "instinctual" to describe a process that isn't in this particular entry. For I know that researchers learn how to be critical of studies, media presentations, texts, etc. In other words, the habitual critical faculty of academics and intellectuals is not an instinct; to take it into a common division, it's "nurture," not "nature."
So what does that have to do with this entry? Well, since I'm not a very good researcher, since I'm not very critical, it makes me extremely angry to read research that even I can find fault with.
I think I've mentioned my guilty annoyance, namely women's magazines. I was reading yet another one the other day, R3@l S!mple. In it, there was an article discussing the medical differences between men and women.
Before I go on, I need to make clear that there are medical differences. My favorite story (possibly myth) about this difference is that breast cancer was not considered a major medical problem for decades because men didn't get it very often. But I also think it's important to realize that it's very -- extremely -- difficult to tease out whether something is due to nature -- genetic differences between men and women -- and nurture -- differences due to society influences, which start at birth. Don't get me started on Lawrence Summers' example about his daughter/granddaughter and the trucks.
So the fact that there are medical differences between men and women is important.
But.
The first difference this article listed was that women react to emotions differently than men. Women are more sensitive; in an experimental setting, women react more (whatever the dependent variable was) than men to emotional faces, that women react to more subtle emotional cues than men do. I don't remember most of the details, but I do remember the closing tidbit. That tidbit was a quote from the lead researcher, where she said that women are evolutionarily programmed to cry because that's the only way they can get men to notice they're upset.
Does anyone else see the problem with this statement? the major hole in the argument? the immediate and obvious possible counterargument that hasn't been ruled out yet?
So maybe -- maybe -- the researcher did actually do some sort of experiment wherein she showed that even newborns react differently to emotional images depending on gender. But do you think so?
I don't.

Of course I am

2006-05-18T11:44:00.000-04:00

If the book is open on my lap while I'm playing Sudoku, that means I'm working, right?

Procrastination is a Wonderful Thing

2006-05-11T15:49:00.000-04:00

I have two or so hits on my blog (so far) from google searches. Here's a sample:
"divorce due to husband's lack of ambition"
I talked about husbands' lack of ambition a few entries ago -- not mine, if you recall -- so I guess that makes sense. But I didn't talk about divorce.
So it must be pretty far down in the search, right?
Wrong.
Two things:
1) How is it that a web-page that doesn't even have all the search terms ends up being in the top ten out of 280,000? Does the 280,000th even have any of the search terms?
2) How is it that a highly unlinked (both to and from) web-page ends up being in the top ten out of 280,000?
In other news, I have already received an e-mail from one of my summer students. I wasn't expecting such eagerness, and am far behind in my planning.
I guess I should go work now.

House Spoilers, Because I'm in a Rage

2006-05-10T10:16:00.000-04:00

Remember how I said I tried to be a nice person, see the positive side of anyone's story, tried to come to discussions from the angle that the misunderstanding/conflict may be due to me?
Or whatever sort of nonsense I spewed?
I am not that person today.
Today, I am in a livid, screaming rage at the writers, producers, and network suits of House.
Last night, one of the side diagnoses was post-partum psychosis. In fact, the woman smothered her son while suffering from it. House, with his patented mix of equal parts sense and lack of anything resembling tact, pointed out that the woman could no more have not listened to the voices in her head than a diabetic could tell her body to start producing insulin, dammit.
Regardless of what crazy movie stars claim, post-partum depression and psychosis are real diseases, of danger to both child and to mother. They are NOT, in any way, shape or form, due to some sort of "weakness" on the part of the mother, any more than a brain tumor is due to some "weakness" on the part of the cancer patient.
House went on to tell the father that he was just as responsible. "A person doesn't become crazy enough to kill someone without first becoming crazy enough to be noticed."
In my opinion, the father was not only equally responsible, but more at fault. He ignored all the warning signs, because they were too much. He was the one who showed weakness of mind; he was the one who had a choice to face difficult truths, the choice to do something hard, and who didn't do it. The wife didn't have a choice.
I'm getting to my point.
House the character said all these reasonable, sane, logical, ABSOLUTELY TRUE things.
The mother still kills herself out of guilt. And the father? What happens to him? He gets to tell the mother, when you see our son, tell him his father is sorry.
So what's the takeaway message?
That the mother is responsible, is at fault.
That she could have done something.
SHE COULDN'T.
And don't tell me that's not the takeaway message. Some bloggers were discussing a Burrrr-gur Royalty ad, and the idea that the implication is men are being sissified by women, and they have to reclaim their higher ground by co-opting the liberation movement. And that the ad is a step backward, and people who have power, who still have power, shouldn't be complaining that they don't have any because a miniscule amount has been rightfully reclaimed from them.
I agree with that analysis. Especially the more thoughtful, clear, articulate version that the original parser put forth.
And I think it's subtle compared to this.

The Fifties Have Not Left Us!

2006-05-03T13:21:00.000-04:00

So I still don't remember my point from yesterday, which is really too bad. It was subtle (well, for me), and it shone a gorgeous light on professors. I'm also a little annoyed at myself for the massive contradiction, i.e. "I never criticize people" and then I go and criticize someone(s). Maybe I should rephrase that to "I never criticize people who I think will somehow hear about it." Which is not only more accurate in general, (see? I told you it wasn't a good thing), but also removes the inconsistency.
But to the point.
************
You know how some people have "guilty pleasures"? Women's magazines -- i.e. F@mily C!rcle -- are my guilty annoyance. I inherit them from a family member, and read bits and pieces at desperate moments of reading-less-ness. A day or two ago, I was having an extremely desperate such moment, and ended up reading an article I would normally have skipped over. It's entitled something along the lines of Don't Nag, Nudge, and it was all about how to get your husband to clean up some of his bad habits.
I think I chose it because one of the academic entries that has stuck with me is Bitch PhD's entry on how to be a bitch. How to get a partner to participate in housework? Now I don't remember the title, but her idea, as I remember it, is to keep a running commentary of everything you're doing, and at some point, your partner will be so annoyed, they'll start doing it too. Clearly, her plan was much more subtle and intelligent than that simplistic sketch I've just written. The reason I mention it is because even her intelligent plan would come under the heading of Nag.
So that's interesting in and of itself. I like her idea; moreover, I like the underlying implication I come away with: women have just as much right to demand as men.
(Nerts. That's not thorough, detailed, nuanced enough. It will have to do.)
This article's title, on the other hand, implies that women don't have such a right (the nuanced, subtle right that I can't articulate).
Oh, wait. It gets better.
The article lists 4 or 5 areas where not to nag: too much TV, not enough help around the house, etc. The second to last one is about the husband's lack of ambition.
A tangent. Do y'all remember, about six months ago, there was a cartoon floating around the blogs? It was a drawing of a happy fifties family, and the accompanying text was a list of all the ways the wife should make her husband's life better: make sure to make yourself pretty just before he comes home. Bring him a cold drink and his slippers. Don't bore him with your little concerns of the day, he needs to relax and unwind. It turned out to be modern, rather than contemporary.
Well, the tips on how to nudge rather than nag about ambition are... not the same, but of a piece. Don't offer advice. Let home be a place where he can relax. He needs to feel your in his corner, so reassure him. If he frets about his weaknesses, emphasize his strengths. The only sentence in the whole paragraph (and it was the longest in the article) that indicated this was written less than 60 years ago was the last one: if your husband just isn't ambitious, maybe you should go do something yourself (not a direct quote).
I can't believe it.
I can't believe I can't believe it.
I'm very sad, angry, frustrated that it isn't as unbelievable as it should be.

Perfectionism Gets In the Way

2006-05-02T10:44:00.000-04:00

The title is by way of apology to you, and chastisement to myself. It won't have much to do with the entry. It's just very frustrating to pile up topics (like women's magazines, and children), and not let myself write about them because I want the entry to be perfect.
Today I want to talk about trolls.
****************
I have another blog, a craft blog, a non-pseudonymous blog. I like the community of people in that particular sphere; I created the blog so that the writers I wanted to talk with had some way to learn more about me.
On of the things I like about craft blogs, in general, is that commentors are almost uniformly positive. Even if -- or rather, when -- the blog veers into personal territory, the commentors are generally supportive. If the blog refers to a touchy topic -- politics, religion -- those readers who disagree tend to not comment. They may stop reading the blog, or they may just avoid those entries, but, for the most part, they don't engage the author, even in a respectful manner, on that topic. The blog, and the community, is focused on the craft.
This is not to say that there are not trolls in this craft community. Maybe some of you reading now would say "trolls" is too strong a word, considering how nasty people can get on political/academic blogs, but they aren't very nice to other bloggers. However, they tend to criticize on their own blogs, where they get the support of their own readers.
Wait, ceresina: isn't that what you do?
So, yes. I respond to issues here instead of on the blog that brings them up.
But no. I don't criticize.
One of the main reasons I respond here, on my own blog, is that I am working through my own feelings; I don't think it's appropriate for me to write an entire blog-entry about me in someone else's comments.
The other part of the "no" answer is that I am never criticizing the author. I am a "good girl" who prefers not to criticize people in public, who tries to find the nicest reason for someone's bad behavior. (I am not saying this as a "I'm better than you because I do this;" along with other criticisms of such behavior, I am well-aware of how annoying Pollyanna is.) But even if that weren't the case, I have not yet read a single blog entry, in this sphere, where I thought that the writer was badly behaved. I have read entries that were hurtful to me (specifically), but I knew that was due to my own sensitivity. I knew there was no ill intensions -- or some lesser snarkiness -- on the part of the author. And so there was no reason to criticize what the author had said.
The craft bloggers I call trolls, on the other hand, use their blogs as an opportunity to say how wrong-headed other craft bloggers are. Thinking about this, I wondered why I was so offended -- not hurt, offended -- by what they write, but I don't think what, say, professors venting about students is offensive.
I think what I don't like about the craft trolls is that they have no patience for beginners. Sure, they claim to, but they don't. Venting professors are venting about... well, I'd call them professional complainers, personally. The students who, a la Cher in Clueless, think they can talk/threaten/badger their way into a decent grade. Craft trolls make fun of people who don't know the first thing about the craft, or who don't approach the One of Ancient Wisdom with enough reverence, or both.
And just because they make me cranky, I will criticize them: they also tend to not like people who are happy.
***************
I had a more profound comparison, but I don't remember it.
Just another problem with perfectionism.

Random Wednesday

2006-04-26T12:52:00.000-04:00

In a confluence of university-related events:
--Gilmore Girls had Paris complaining last night that her exam was take-home; what was next, she ranted, Y@le handing you the diploma the minute you walked on campus?
--Two of the top 10 e-mail articles in the New York Times this morning were this one, which is an op-ed piece wherein the author talks about how he wanted to write a satire on universities trying to sell themselves, but reality out-stripped his imagination, and this one, which is an article about how universities/colleges are trying to sell themselves to their prospectives.
******
In undergraduate, I had a roommate of a particular minority. She was very involved in increasing the presence of said minority group on campus, revitalizing the minority's on-campus organization, organizing protests to get a department of minority studies, etc. She was proud of her status as this minority, and wanted more people to know about this minority.
But.
She would tell us (me and our other suitemates) how frustrated she got by being asked questions about the minority-ship: what it's like to be said minority, what the historical details of the minority were, etc.
So there's a blog out there, somewhere -- two to four links away from one of my regular reads -- written by a woman who has prosopagnosia. (It's not that site; it's a regular blog.) I'm dying to ask her about it, because, in an abstract sense, it's really cool. Obviously, though, it's not very exciting if you live with it. And she probably is just as frustrated as my roommate at being the token.
(Does anyone out there have anything they're the token of?)
******
See Jane Compute has some posts about being harassed, and how her department/university drags its feet about it. Yesterday's post asked if she should push the issue: the higher-ups essentially know who it is, but didn't tell her, still haven't told her, and seem to think everything should be left alone.
I wanted to leave a comment that she should not leave everything as it is. The source for the higher-ups is, as she quoted the higher-ups as saying, "a model student, a pillar of the community, a real nice kid..." All I could think of was: so were the lacrosse students. That is, the higher-ups are jerking her around because they don't want the surface ruffled, but they have a real problem they are doing nothing to get rid of because of school pride.
But I didn't.
Because I don't have to live with the consequences. I don't have to continue to deal with the higher-ups. I don't have to face the nastiness from all the "nice kid's" friends and admirers. I don't have to be dragged through the mud as being a bitter woman just trying to bring down a nice kid.
In fact, I don't even know if that's what would happen. I only know what she can tell the internet without compromising her anonymity. She had been harassed, and attacked, and no one in power is supporting her right to be free of that -- but I don't know the consequences of her standing up for that right.
So I have no right to say she should.
******
Aren't you impressed by all the links I put in?

Bitchin'

2006-04-24T21:05:00.000-04:00

I had to be a bitch the other day.
I hated it.
It was something simple. Some undergraduates were not treating research they were doing with enough respect; the PI was going to get bad (i.e. misrepresentative) data as a result. I told the students to stop the behavior and pay attention to what they were doing.
Not bitchy, right? I mean, that's not really being a bitch.
But it made me upset for about an hour.
And I wondered if it was a gendered thing, if I hate correcting bad behavior because I want to be the "good girl."
And I realized that it is
so
very
not.
I returned to graduate school (mumblty mumble) years after I finished my BA. During those intervening years, I worked. And at every single job I had, there was at least one manager who didn't have the nerve to be bitchy.
Example: a couple of employees in a department are misbehaving in a specific way. Let's pretend it was getting chocolate smears on the walls. No, that can be anonymous. Let's pretend it was getting chocolate smears on their specific reports that no one else does; those employees have to have made the smears. Does the manager take these employees aside and tell them chocolate smears will not be tolerated anymore? No. Instead, the manager imposes a regulation on the entire department. In our pretend story, the manager tells the whole department that not only can we no longer eat chocolate in the office, but we can't eat anything in the office.
Why?
Because the manager was afraid of being a bitch.
The manager, by the way, was male.
And, by the way, the chocolate smears kept happening.

Me too! Me too!

2006-04-24T20:42:00.000-04:00

a.k.a. the ABC meme, as seen at Anastasia's, Bright Star's, Scrivener's...

Accent: None. But I do pick up other people's, so maybe not so much anymore.
Booze: Red wine. In my partying days, it was vodka (Stoli, thankyouverymuch).
Chore I Hate: Really? Just one?
Dog or Cat: Cat. I grew up with about a gazillion of them. Yes, that's a real number.
Essential Electronics: Probably the TV and the internet-connected computer.
Favorite Cologne(s): No. Although I loved to smell the Opium sample when my mom & I went to the mall lo these many years ago.
Gold or Silver: Silver.
Hometown: One of those ones that would just about give me away. I was born in New York City, though.
Insomnia: No, thank god. I have a hard enough time with not-enough sleep.
Job Title: Graduate Fellow
Kids: Yes, oddly.
Living arrangements: House
Most admirable trait: Ummm... I'm quiet?
Number of sexual partners: I like Scrivener's answer.
Overnight hospital stays: Only one, I think.
Phobias: Germs. But this isn't merely following the crowd; I helped start it.
Quote: No favorites, but in college, I posted a daily quote on my door. One of the better ones involved something is better than being "kicked in the stomach by a broody camel."
Religion: None. I loved the Episcopal church when I was younger.
Siblings: Half-brother.
Time I wake up: Weekdays: 6:45-7:30 Weekends: 8:30. Too early, really.
Unusual talent or skill: I used to play the harp. I don't think I have any "unusual" ones currently.
Vegetable I refuse to eat: Mushrooms & olives.
Worst habit: Procrastination.
X-rays: Teeth, of course. Back. I've had an MRI, too. Boy, are they LOUD.
Yummy foods I make: I make a wicked batch of Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies. I can also make a cake from scratch, and sometimes I make good pie crusts.
Zodiac sign: Aries.

Spring

2006-04-20T11:54:00.000-04:00

I love this time of year.
I love the way the early-mid-morning sun gleams through the baby leaves.
I love that day when, all of a sudden, all the bracken and brambles have burst their buds, and a mist of green lies over undeveloped space.
I love spring flowers: daffodils, violets, lilacs.
*****
I grew up in exurbia. We lived in a big, rambling ex-farmhouse, surrounded by woody tracts. We had one neighbor. Our street was so unused, it didn't get a yellow dividing line until I was well into high school. Across the street was a stream, a field, and more, seemingly endless forest and hills. Once upon a time, there had been apple orchards; there was a small pocket of survivors at the top of the first hill, behind the other trees that had grown up since then.
My parents planted a strip of daffodils across the edge of our lawn, right behind the old stone wall. The lawn came down to the top of the wall, rather than behind the wall, so the daffodils were visable from the house, from the road, from the field across the street. Every fall, my father would cover up the bulbs with fallen leaves for winter; every spring, I would watch for the earliest, bravest daffodils sending spikes through their winter blanket. It was a minor event when it was warm enough to rake the leaves off; sometimes, we had to be careful of the daffodils who did not follow our definition of warm.
Spring also meant walks in the woods across the street, walks up the unused road. We had to go look for coltsfoots (coltsfeet?), the first flowers of spring. We had to see if the bluets had started blooming yet, if the pussytoes were showing their soft flowers. We had to see if there were any new violets. We had to make sure that the pussy willows had put out their catkins. We had to check the gnome houses for signs of winter living.
Spring meant we could open the windows and listen to the peepers at night. We knew it was getting warm then. Soon, the bank of lilacs planted directly across from us by the long-gone families who had planted the apple orchard would be blooming. Soon, our own white lilac, and our own purple lilac would bloom too. Meanwhile, there was rhubarb to eat, and vegetable gardens to plan.
Soon, it would be hot. Soon, the rose would bloom, and the crayfish would be scuttling around the stream. Soon, the road would put out tar bubbles. Soon, the wild mulberry down the road would bloom and start bearing fruit. But now there were daffodils, and violets, and green mists in the trees.

The Milk of Human Kindness

2006-04-19T12:02:00.000-04:00

On “House,” Cameron, the “good” doctor, gets burned three times in one episode:
-she discovers the one lover actually does want to leave the other
-she discovers the other did not selflessly donate half a liver to the one
-she discovers her collegue doesn’t think it’s wrong to have not given her a heads up.
*****
A friend from New Jersey calls last night. Her local radio station is running a promotion. Listeners sign up, and if their name is called, they have ten minutes to call back and win $100. Yesterday morning, when the winner calls the station, she tells the DJs that she hadn’t heard her name, but someone called her to tell her that she needed to call. The someone was a stranger, who got nothing from the exchange. The DJs think this is creepy.
*****
Someone is in a marriage for legal reasons. There are no children, and both husband and wife have agreed that, were it not for these reasons, they would divorce. They are dating other people. Another friend thinks this is a scam.
*****
Politicians. Need I say more?
*****
I understand that the general agreement is that the human animal is selfish, is just as tuned into jungle rules and logic as other animals, is out to do what is best for him or herself. But isn’t the blessing of the human mind, of human reasoning, that we know this, that we know that things can be better for everyone if we try to be more selfless, less selfish? Isn’t this the point behind morality, and laws, and religions in general? Isn’t this the reason we are so disappointed in our leaders? because they should be the people who try the hardest to overcome this savanna mind-set and who try the hardest to share with others? Why is it too much to expect?

Nostalgia

2006-04-13T10:52:00.000-04:00

(Note: I'm using spam-like spelling in an attempt to prevent google-finding.)
Why do companies have to ruin a good thing?
I'm not a gourmand by any stretch of the imagination. I rarely can tell the difference between "fine" foods and cheaper foods. If the store brand is made with enough similarity to the name brand, I won't notice.
This is not true for ice cream.
Now, I am an equal-opportunity ice-cream fan. It doesn't have to be Ha@gen Daas. (Actually, I think HD is over-hyped, like God!va chocolates.) I love soft ice-cream cones in the summer. But I hate the store brands. They use the seaweed & the chemicals & the what-not in an attempt to reproduce the creamy feel of real milk. Ick. Gummy, grainy -- and the taste isn't very good either.
High-end branding doesn't guarentee good ice cream. I've already mentioned the HD. Or the high-end version of 3dy's, Dre@mery -- the one they put in the pint containers and charge more than twice as much for. It's not worth it. It's not as grainy or gummy as store-brands sold in half-gallons, but the liberal Vermont ice-cream makers BJ's, and even HD, taste and feel much better.
But, as I mentioned, it doesn't have to be "gourmet," or whatever the branding word is now. My favorite, for a very long time, was 8reyers. I lovelovelove the Twirl: a perfect combination of vanilla and chocolate, with a lovely, creamy mouth-feel. Not high-end-creamy, but real-milk-creamy. My second-favorite was the mint chocolate chip. Minty, white, and nice big chocolate chips.
No more.
The company has re-formulated its recipe. They now use stabilizers -- some sort of gum -- and the chocolate is now flakes, thin bits of flabby stuff that feel like unmixed stabilizers instead of chips.
Next they'll be making it green.
Ick.

Taking a Cue from New Kid on the Hallway

2006-04-12T11:28:00.000-04:00

I really hate not having my little buttons of immediacy. I know coding HTML isn't hard, but it's time-consuming, time I'd rather be spending on composing an entry.
I had an entry, a lovely composition I wrote up in my head last night, and have forgotten it. Having forgotten even the topic, I was going to skip today's entry. But that's not the point of my blog. And NKotH's entry prompted me, in an indirect way, to remember that.
(Hm. I wonder if she does house calls concerning dissertations.)
I could tell you about the dream I had last night, but I've always been told dreams are only interesting to the people who have them.
So I'll talk about TV.
Do y'all watch Grey's Anatomy? (If you don't, this may not make any sense.) There was a repeat on this last weekend, the one that happens after McDreamy chooses his wife, who cheated on him, over Meredith. McDreamy and his wife were in couple's therapy, trying to fix their marriage. The counselor asked them what one thing would bring the most trust back to the relationship. Not in so many words, of course, and the implication wasn't "bring back *all* the trust to the relationship." McDreamy said if his wife moved from NY to Seattle. His wife said if McDreamy stopped talking to Meredith. Neither thought the other was being reasonable, of course. (Well, "of course" at least in terms of a TV show. I don't know this show well enough to know if the requests were unreasonable in reference to the characters' internal logic.)
So the couple is at an impasse. An excessively constructed one, of course; there could be other compromises possibly, but that would require too much nuance for a hour-long drama. McDreamy thinks he should be able to talk to Meredith because he likes her; even though he's not looking to have an affair with her, he was with her for nearly a year for reasons other than sex. The wife (sorry, I don't remember her name) thinks that she shouldn't have to give up her career just to prove her dedication to her marriage; it's a very successful career, and job openings don't grow on trees, even for very successful people.
What to do.
Well, one waits for the plot twists, of course. Meredith's boss (and McDreamy's subordinate) tells him to leave Meredith alone; she's a very public car wreck and his being with her is going to make things worse. The chief of surgery offers the wife an even better (monetarily) job at the hospital. And both are able to agree to the other's request.
So. What's the point, other than summarizing. Well, I think that it's interesting that the couple don't explain the reason for the change of heart to each other. They haven't really made a compromise for the other person; things just worked out so they had to do what the other person asked. (Okay, she didn't really have to take the job; on the other hand, the job was set up to be much better than her old job, with the perk of being near her husband set up to be low on the list of advantages.)
I was also caught by the lack of trust demonstrated by the hands. The couple explain that they have made the concessions to the marriage counselor, who is very pleased with the progress. The wife tentatively holds out her hand so McDreamy can take it; when he doesn't immediately, she reaches a little more toward him, then drops her hand. And then McDreamy makes a gesture like he'll take her hand, with the same hesitation and awkwardness. They can't quite connect. They haven't made the sacrifices for each other, but for themselves.
In particular, these exchanges are intriguing in reference to a later show, which I happened to see earlier. In it, McDreamy comes home and notes that his wife had an affair. His wife -- being someone who can bear the truth, even when she speaks it -- agrees, clearly wondering where he is going with this. And he notes that he may not have been fully involved in the marriage. And she agrees. It's a moment where the trust is coming back; it seems to me that there had to be some restored trust in order to make these admissions, on both their parts. Additionally, there had to be some empathy to understand each other's admissions.
I like it. I like it a lot. I read recently (I believe it was in the Utne Reader) about how love stories are always about the beginnings and the endings, and never about the basic, day-to-day slog through the middle. TV shows are especially prone to this, soaps even more so. And this exchange seems to be indicating that Grey's Anatomy may be trying to get at that slog.
They won't keep to it, of course. Someone important behind the scenes will say it's not interesting enough, and the marriage will fall apart, maybe to get back together again...
But it's encouraging to see this little slice.

I Luuurve Memes

2006-04-11T14:18:00.000-04:00

Yes, this is supposed to be a Write, Dammit! blog, but I got nothin' today. So, A Meme**:

1) Who is the last person you high-fived? Mmm, I think it was a small child
2) If you were drafted into a war, would you survive? Nope.
3) Do you sleep with the TV on? Nope.
4) Have you ever drunk milk straight out of the carton? I don't think so?
5) Have you ever won a spelling bee? Nope.
6) Have you ever been stung by a bee? Yes! I hate creepy crawly things because I'm afraid they're bees. And don't let anyone tell you bumblebees don't sting.
7) How fast can you type? A lot faster than I ever thought I would.
8) Are you afraid of the dark? Yes and no. Depends on where & who's with me.
9) What color are your eyes? Blue.
10) Have you ever made out at a drive-in? I don't think I've ever even been to a drive-in
11) When is the last time you chose a bath over a shower? "Chose"? Well, "chose" would be every time. But I don't have the time to choose.
12) Do you knock on wood? Yes, but as a joke.
13) Do you floss daily? No
14) What happened to question #14? This is one of those things to test humor, right?
15) Can you hula hoop? No.
16) Are you good at keeping secrets? Like B*, I can't keep my own. As for others', so long as I remember they're secrets, I can keep them.
17) What do you want for Christmas? Finished quals & a well-on-its-way dissertation! Oh, wait. No one can give that to me.
18) Do you know the Muffin Man? Or creativity?
19) Do you talk in your sleep? Yes. I can't scream in dreams because I'm doing it out loud & some part of me knows that & is trying to stay quiet for others' sakes.
20) Who wrote the book of love? Maybe it's the fast-thinking. I don't have any of that either.
21) Have you ever flown a kite? Totally.
22) Do you wish on your fallen lashes? Almost always
23) Do you consider yourself successful? I'm a grad student; of course I don't.
24) How many people are on your contact list of your cell? A lot more than I regularly contact.
25) Have you ever asked for a pony? I don't think so.
26) Plans for tomorrow? Trying yet again to get lots done.
27) Can you juggle? Nope.
28) Missing someone now? Yes-ish.
29) When was the last time you told someone I Love You? This morning
30) And truly meant it? Of course.
31) How often do you drink? I drink water & milk on a daily basis.
32) How are you feeling today? Anxious. Stressed.
33) What do you say too much? (That is a fine, fine question.)
34) Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school? No.
35) What are you looking forward to? Getting home tonight
36) Have you ever crawled through a window? Hm. I don't think so. I know people who have, but I don't think I've done it myself.
37) Have you ever eaten dog food? Ick, no.
38) Can you handle the truth? Not really.
39) Do you like green eggs and ham? Again with the humor
40) Any cool scars? Like Brightstar says -- cool? I have scars, but I wouldn't say they're "cool."

**Stolen from Brightstar, hence the numerous references to her answers. As well as an answer (or maybe two, or maybe 10) she made that were just too perfect to change.

And since I'm phoning it in, I thought of another style-over-substance example. I know, it was yesterday and I know, I said I'd learn to let things go, but this one really eats my crumbcakes. The tv show NUMB3RS on CBS has a math professor as one of the main characters, and he's an expert in every kind of math. I mean... who's an expert in every sub-field???

Style over Substance

2006-04-10T10:34:00.000-04:00

I fell into the seductive, but obvious, trap of style over substance.
You see it all over. The New York Times is a classic example, what with its Jayson Blair scandal, and the college e-mail story. I am always shocked when I read an article about something I know and how they get it wrong. I am shocked because I am surprised they get it wrong. I should know better; they always get it wrong.
Television of course gets it wrong all the time. It's a fictional show; I get that, I do, but it still makes me angry that the producers of the Gilmore Girls have Gettysburg close enough to Philadelphia that a school from CT can make it part of their overnight stay in Philadelphia. The lighting on CSI drives me nuts. Everyone is backlit into a halo, but not one character has full light on their face. (They are not *all* standing in each other's shadows.)
Magazines. Discover magazine, which one would think would be interested in accurately representing scientific endeavors, had a story a couple/few issues ago about a mathematician who crochets hyperbolic spaces. The blurb on the front cover and the first paragraph kept calling it knitting, because the copy editors could make all these funny puns like "Knit Theory." Trouble is, the mathematician pointed out that her creations could not possibly be knit, and knitting is not crocheting.
And the internet. Well! the internet. I mean, we all know how accurate that is. (Although I have to say that bit in Grey's Anatomy where the kid thought he was doing something brilliant because he got it off the internet was pretty funny.) Okay, sarcasm doesn't really work here, but I'm running out of specific examples.
Of course, I don't need specific examples. Everyone has a story of how something was misrepresented because the misrepresentation sounded better than the truth.
And now you have me.
In my last entry, I tried to write something that sounded good. Something... literary. (Yes, I do know it wasn't. This is what I was trying to do, not what I succeeded at doing.) And in the process, I made some statements that led to misrepresentations. So I wanted to correct myself.
I have had a very good experience with advisors in graduate school. I don't know if this is unusual or not, but this is my experience. Most of the professors in my department are willing to help students do what they -- the students -- want to do. Most of the professors in my department -- and the few outside of it about whom I hear stories -- are genuinely enthusiastic about helping graduate students find their own paths to this idea of "research" that the professors love so much. Very few of the professors I know of IRL have their own agenda that they push on their students to the detriment of the students' interests or education.
However, there does seem to be a disconnect between grad-student-bloggers and professorial-bloggers within the discussion of grad-student/professor interactions. (My belief is that it mostly comes from the fact that -- much like stories of undergraduates (e.g. thosewho come begging for/expecting high grades) -- it's the frustrating stories people want to tell, need to tell, and it's the frustrating stories readers like to pass along; however, since I'm not the one starting any of the threads, I can't say that with any authority, just as opinion.) I was trying to use that disconnect to write something fancy.
Style over substance. It will trip you up, every time.

Power Struggles

2006-04-06T10:42:00.000-04:00

I was surfing around the blogs yesterday, reading about power struggles between professors and students.
That's too strong a statement. Neither professors nor grad students -- neither the blogging professors nor the blogging grad students whose blogs I read were talking outright about power struggles.
That's not right either. They were talking about power struggles, but I'm hesitant to call it such, because there's a good deal of talk among BPIR (blogging professors I read) that we grad students over-estimate the amount of time professors spend thinking about us. (I have thoughts about that discussion also, but that's for another day.)
But. Power struggles.
Maybe this is the day for those thoughts.
I am perfectly happy to believe that professors do not gather in the dead of night -- or the life of day -- and plot or plan or cackle over how to manipulate grad students' lives. To make it personal, I don't think my advisor spends more than the 15 minutes before our weekly meeting thinking about me -- about the work I'm doing and the progress I'm making.
However. I do think that, in those 15 minutes, he is disappointed with me -- with my progress and lack thereof. I am concerned that he regrets taking me on as a graduate student. I believe that, during our meetings, he tries to figure out ways to motivate me -- tries to figure out ways to get me moving faster. Which is a form of benevolent manipulation.
I also know that there are advisors who do not take their students' best interests into consideration. I know that there are advisors who think there is only one way to do things, and who ruin students' prospects because of this. I know there are advisors who can create such a hostile working environment, they can drive away students who came to graduate school solely to work with these specific advisors.
Of course, I do not say that all advisors are like this. My advisor is not. Even if he is disappointed in me, even if he regrets his choice, he is willing to help me get through what needs to be done. He is not the one impeding my progress.
Power struggles. And choices. There are choices people make to even the power imbalance. I don't think all of them are good choices. Even if my personal and academic lives were different, I don't think I'd make those. I might. I have made bad choices before. But I don't think I'd make those. And if I did, I would come to regret them.
Power struggles. I don't think of myself as someone who is deliberately avoiding them. I expect I would, if I knew about them. I expect that is part of why I would not make those "bad" choices I alluded to above. But I am not involved in the power struggles here. I think that is because I am not involved in my academy's life. I relish the little time I spend with those who are involved because I can catch up on the gossip. The gossip that makes the power imbalance feel a little more even.
Because that may be one of the biggest extenders of the power imbalance: the lack of knowledge. Professors don't spend all their time thinking about graduate students. They don't spend most of their time thinking about graduate students. But they spend some of their time. We graduate students get letters from our departments telling us how much progress we've made, and whether we're on track or not. At some point, the professors had a meeting about us, discussed us, discussed our progress,
And what else did they discuss about us? Yes, meetings are boring. But face it: academics love to talk. There was more of an exchange than just "Student A has finished her masters, and Student B has finished his class work, and Student C just had a paper published." There was gossip among the professors also. What else did our advisor say about us? What did people we don't work with say about us?
Power struggles. No. Bosses never spend all their time thinking about their employees. But they spend more time than they tell us.

Taxes

2006-04-04T11:31:00.000-04:00

I'm staying home to do taxes today (clear proof I'm a student), but in my blog-reading... um, break, I saw this.
Go, read it. So. Very. Funny.

Some Thoughts Inspired by Sex and the City

2006-04-03T10:34:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, I had HBO. I watched some movies; a season or two of the Sopranos; and Sex and the City. I liked the show. It was the second or third or fourth season, and I was so happy to see four women be friends, and not torn apart by jealousy over boyfriends. Someone pointed out that it was just a story about gay men in female bodies; I didn't care. There were no "happy" female friendships that I knew of on TV, and I was relieved to see one show portray them.
This mythical time didn't last long.
I rented season 1 a year or so ago. Additionally, one of the local channels is playing bowdlerized repeats of SatC late at night. I watch it occasionally, when I can't drag myself to bed. Now? I'm horrified by the neurotic, relationship-oriented attitude of these women. Even Samantha, the bed-hopper, starts out as looking for a relationship. And the whole thing with Mr. Big? I don't understand how it is that he treats Carrie so horribly. Honestly, he never lies to her about being in it for fun, so I don't understand why she's so mad when he's... just in it for fun.
I'm sure better writers, and better parsers of culture, have written about this, so I'll skip the rest of the general comments. But last night was the episode when Miranda found out she is pregnant, and it got me thinking.
First of all, even though Miranda's plan is clearly to get an abortion, the word is not spoken. I can only hope that it was edited out. A network that has the "courage" to put mobsters and polygamists should have the courage to say the word abortion. But it wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't, much in the way "masturbation" was never mentioned in the famous Seinfeld episode. After all, Miranda eventually decides to keep the child; that is, the producers eventually bow to the conservative forces in this country that don't allow a major character to have an abortion.
The same thing happened recently on ER: the character Abby got pregnant and agonized for an entire episode (ooh! a day!) over whether to abort or not: she wasn't comfortable with her genetic history, or her nurturing abilities. But she decided to keep the baby.
And on Seventh Heaven, the less famous Duff sister played a young woman who got pregnant while in college. She was quoted in gossip columns as being glad that the writers had her character keep the baby, that her character didn't take the easy way out.
(As an aside: What????)
And I've been pondering a puzzle. I can't tie it directly to this media black-out, but it's at least related on a broad gender level. What's the puzzle? Well, the US has never had a female president.
Now, I confess I took this for granted. The US isn't ready for it yet, I said to myself. But two weeks ago, the New Yorker had a profile of the first female president in Africa. (The first black female? the first of a major country in Africa? Nerts: she's some sort of first, and now I don't remember which.)
I realized that my underlying assumption was that the world was not ready for a female leader of a country.
And that I was dead wrong.
I'm terrible with history, and with names, but even I know that Margaret Thatcher was PM of Britain. In the 1980's. And that Britain has/had even more openly sexist attitudes than the US. And that not only had Thatcher been the head of state (and an of an "important" country), but that I -- me! with my poor grasp of history and world events -- could think of at least two other politically important women: Indira Ghandi and Golda Meir. And I knew there was another woman, whose name I can't remember, and whose country I can't remember, but she was the leader of a Pacific area country for several years.
So why isn't America ready for a female president?

Enough!

2006-03-31T10:38:00.000-05:00

I started this in an attempt to write. I am not in a writing-intensive discipline, and I need all the help I can get. So if I can't think of any deep thoughts, I'm turning to shallow things.
I may even have to get a little tangential.
Here's a list of shallow topics:
House
How Bryers screwed up
Grading essays by machine
Let's start with House.
*****
I love House. I imagine most to all of you know that House is a TV show on Tuesday nights on Fox, and that the title refers to the main character, one Dr. House.
The first odd thing about my love for this show is that I watched it from the beginning. I don't tend to watch shows that are trumpeted as being the next great thing. I don't watch Lost, because I didn't start. I didn't watch Gilmore Girls from the beginning, I haven't tried Veronica Mars, I came late to Grey's Anatomy. Why, I even came late to Buffy, which is one of my all-time favorites (except after they went to UPN.) But I saw the first episode of House. It might be because Dr. House was advertised as brillliant, and there aren't enough smart people on TV.
The second odd thing, of course, is how much I love the character. He's an abrasive personality, not trying to be liked at all; often, he's trying to be disliked. He's lazy, in a way, always trying to get out of work. He likes monster trucks. He likes soap operas. He's a genius diagnostician. He limps. He's brilliantly portrayed by Hugh Laurie.
So why is it odd I like him? Because in real life, I am terrified of caustic people, of abrasive personalities, of people who have no interest in being liked. "Terrified" is too strong a word; but I don't enjoy interacting with them. I like to be liked (I know, we all do). I don't know how to deal with people who don't want to try and like me because they don't want to try and like anyone. And yet I find Dr. House incredibly attractive.
Then there's the actual show. I don't know why it's so popular. It's the same thing every single week. Someone comes in with a bizarre illness. House sends his minions (students? employees?) to run tests on the patient to see if this hypothesis or that hypothesis is right. House avoids talking to the patient. House takes pain pills. House reiterates how patients lie. House rags on his minions or his friend for trying to be a good person. The fact that House never makes mistakes comes up. House tries to get out of doing clinic duty, but can't; so, he sees an absurd patient who inevitably and unknowingly gives him the key to the true diagnosis of the main patient. The main patient is healed (except once, maybe twice, where she or he died.)
Did anyone notice anything about that list?
That's right; not only is the show cookie-cutter, it contradicts itself. Almost every show (I think it's every show, but I could be wrong so I'll say almost), someone says how House is so afraid to make his first mistake, how he's so brilliant, he always makes the correct diagnosis. But... Every show (this really is every show), he makes the wrong diagnosis at least twice, mostly because a correct diagnosis wouldn't last a whole 44 minutes.
And yet I still love House.
McDreamy has nothing on him.

Changing the Pattern

2006-03-27T10:33:00.000-05:00

A week or two ago, I was driving from yon to hither in the muddle that is suburbia. I witnessed the following.
Four boys were walking down the sidewalk in the same direction I was creeping. They were probably from the middle school nearby, so they were probably late middle school age. Something happened, and one of them ran off the sidewalk onto a lawn, trying to avoid another boy; usual wimp running away from the "bigger" kid in the group.
Let's unpack that statement before I go on to what really bothered me. There seems to often be a dynamic in groups. There is a leader or two: the people who make most of the decisions about what the group will do, in all senses of the word "do." Rachel McAdams' character from "Mean Girls," and the first Heather to die from "Heathers" are two examples of the power-hungry, popular, high-school-aged female stereotype of this person, but there are other versions. Then, there are often some middle-level types, people who are basically fit in, but aren't really paid attention to. I can't think of the character in mean girls, but the other blond Heather in "Heathers" qualifies: she wasn't the leader, but she wasn't at the bottom of the pack either, in the sense that the lead Heather never really gave her a hard time. Finally, there are some followers: people who don't quite fit in, who aren't quite adept at the social conventions particular to that group, but are tolerated for some reason or another. Shannon Dougherty's Heather was one of those to start, and the character who tried to get "Fetch!" to catch on in "Mean Girls" is another.
I'm not claiming this social structure is inherent to all groups. I'm not a socialogist, or any other -ist that studies groups, so I don't know. I'm also not claiming that the structure is always mean. That is, "Mean Girls" and "Heathers" are about very cruel groups, where the social structure is preserved through hostility and psychological warfare. While I can't think of any media examples, I would not find it at all surprising that basically positive social groups have a similar structure: the doers, the people who like the ideas that the doers have and therefore follow, and the subset of followers who sometimes just don't quite get the mores, but who aren't the group's punching bags because of it. (Maybe "The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants" has one of those structures; I didn't see it.)
And this group structure is not isolated to girls. This group of boys I saw definitely presented this structure in the two minutes I was watching them. And (to return to the actual story), the boy who was running away was the one at the bottom.
It wasn't anything that bad; the boy ran because he knew that, even though what he had done was not taken the way it would've been taken had someone else done it, what he had done wasn't worth the other boy's effort to really chase him down & give him (the runner) a noogie or something.
So the chaser gave up, as expected, and the runner returned to the group as they were walking.
But.
Something else happened. I really can't remember what it was. I don't know if the light changed and I had to watch traffic while I moved 25 feet, or if I've just forgotten, but I didn't see what happened. What I do remember is that all of a sudden, the other three boys had ganged up on the runner and were beating him up. Actually punching him. They knocked him to the ground. One (two?) of them started kicking him in the stomach.
And I honestly couldn't believe I was seeing this.
I thought that I must be overdramatizing what I was seeing; that the three weren't really hurting the one that badly.
And then I thought "I have to do something, but how can I get out of this traffic to do it?" Because even if bruises weren't intended, some could happen. And anyway, how could boys think that beating a "friend," even mock-beating, was appropriate behavior?
And I thought "What if I did pull over and they turned on me? They're middle school kids, but I'm an out-of-shape 30-something." And I hated myself for putting my own safety over the safety of this kid. And then I hated myself for hating myself because I have good reasons to keep myself safe that have nothing to do with me directly, and I know that.
And I didn't know what to do.
So I got home that night and I told my husband about it. He said "Did you call the police?"
The police.
I should have called the police.
I have the non-emergency number programmed into my cell phone.
It never once crossed my mind to call the police.
And I think that's what disturbs me most about the whole situation. I tied myself up in knots and did nothing to help someone who may or may not have needed help because I didn't think to tell the appropriate authorities.
And I should have. One of the things I don't like about the Harry Potter (and other children's) books is that HP never tells any adults about what's going on, and therefore never gets any help. I don't understand that. Okay, maybe there's nothing Dumbledore can/will do about Malfoy, but if there's an evil spirit chasing HP, I think that Dumbledore could probably help out.
How can I change my thought patterns so that I remember to call the police?