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I got this in my email this morning from 43things and it gave me such a good feeling. One week ago today I handed in my last exam and met with my advisor to discuss my major paper. Here’s what the email said:

Dear future self,

I’m reminding you about your stated goal on 43 things, to
“finish school”.

How’s it going?

Sincerely,
Your past self

I’m done! And getting this email reminded me that I’ve accomplished a major goal. It hasn’t been easy juggling school, work, and parenting, but somehow I managed even if it is all a bit of a blur now. I’m soaking up time with Rob and my kids now and catching up on projects that have been sitting a bit too long. I’m spending a lot of time gardening and it feels so good to see the sunflowers, anemones, nasturtiums, and morning glories coming up. My eczema has all cleared up and I’m exercising again. It isn’t ballet four times a week like it was in first year, but it’s something. Life is good.

photo by RaeA

The semester’s over here. Know how I can tell? The eczema* on my right hand, specifically my thumb, index, and middle finger has cleared up. Completely. It’s wonderful to be able to touch things again, to work, to hold hands, to give a massage, to shake hands without pain and without wondering if anyone’s grossed out.

*from Wikipedia:

Eczema is a form of dermatitis, or inflammation of the upper layers of the skin. The term eczema is broadly applied to a range of persistent or recurring skin rashes characterized by redness, skin edema, itching and dryness, with possible crusting, flaking, blistering, cracking, oozing or bleeding. Areas of temporary skin discoloration sometimes characterize healed lesions, though scarring is rare.

It was bad this semester, the last four months of my undergrad. I didn’t feel more stressed than usual but maybe I was. Compounded by the furnace running all winter. And not consuming enough water. I tested negative for a bunch of allergies although I discovered that the dishwashing brush that I use was making it worse. I’ve used one for a few years, since my last run in with eczema because getting my hand wet to do dishes left me cracked and bleeding. Turns out the grippy rubbery handle on the brush triggered a reaction, same with gripper pens. Now I wrap it with a dishcloth and it helps a lot.

I wrote an exam with a Papermate “flex grip” pen, all soft and anti-slip and again: cracked and bleeding right hand by the end. For my final I actually considered asking Special Needs if this would be enough to get me a computer in the special needs office. I didn’t ask though. Instead I found an old fashioned hard plastic pen by the time I needed it. Who would have thought?

My usual remedy of calendula cream did nothing this time. I went in for the stronger stuff. My nurse practitioner gave me some cortisone cream which I used for 2 weeks, no improvement. Then I saw a dermatologist who prescribed a stronger steroid cream for morning and an ointment for night. The ointment was unavailable but I used the cream twice a day for 2 weeks: no improvement. I went back again and she prescribed protopic which I’d read about and caused me some apprehension. Each of these treatments has long-term side effects: adrenal system for the steroids, cancer for the protopic. (These studies are readily available so I’m not going to quote them here. Anyone who wants to read more can use their favourite search engine. And yes I know we’re talking reeeeally long term use and in high quantities, but too much risk for me right now.)

I took the prescription but never got it filled. I wrote my exams and got several extra bottles of Aveeno fragrance free skin relief moisturizing lotions. I started using only Aveeno skin relief body wash for handwashing, showering, and shaving. I put one bottle of lotion at the sink, one by the washing machine, one by my bed, and one at the computer. I put it on All The Time. I’ve used mild and envrio friendly washing products for years but I made an extreme effort to stick to Aveeno this time. And I found a pair of gardening gloves that are cotton on the inside. It may be that the same thing that’s on the pens and on my dishwashing brush is also inside rubber gloves because rubber gloves have always made my hands burn. I’d rather take the extreme cracking from working barehanded than the burning that comes from rubber gloves.

Then exams were over. By the day after my last one, no more eczema. And now my hands are very very soft. Someone told me so.

Last time I had eczema I had another similar cure: my ex moved out. Within a week of him leaving, the eczema I’d had for 2 years was gone. Coincidence?

I got a small patch again yesterday from a long day of many kids (PA day here), lots of gardening and lots of dishes without covering the handle of the brush. It’s mostly gone already. I’ll need to come up with a way to manage my stress better before life gets crazy again. For now I’m off to knit at The Coffee Exchange with a bunch of Actiongirls. We’re planning some more radical cheerleading!

I went to the Teaching and Learning Conference at the University of Windsor on Tuesday. It turns out that this conference is worth at least a couple of blog posts. First one up is about laptops in the classroom.

The session was called “Excellence in Teaching: Ten Useful Strategies for New and Experienced Faculty” and presented by Dr. Mary Stein, Associate Professor in Teacher Development & Education Studies at Oakland University. I had high expectations because I figure there is so much I need to learn and all of these people will know so much. It turns out that panning for gold as far as teaching strategies goes isn’t easy.

Some of the strategies were clearly true. The one that came up under a few headings was planning. Plan out the syllabus, plan assignments, plan assessment, plan your classes. Determine your expectations before the course begins and have it all in the syllabus. This makes good sense — except that a lot of the other sessions talked about interaction between faculty and students and the importance of active learning. There has to be balance between planning in infinite detail and student participation in learning. I think this gets easier with practice.

Another of Dr. Stein’s strategies was to give students sticky labels with their names from a pre-printed class list. In a conversation after the session, two of us were questioning whether or not this would violate the privacy policy at our university. While there’s something to be said for getting to know your students (and it’s important to note that this is much more likely to happen in a class of 20 or even 40 than it will in a class of 700 students) requiring name tags may be a privacy violation. Should students be required to share their names in the classroom or should they get to choose how and when they identify themselves in class?

Dr. Stein also ‘encourages’ her students to upload a photo to the learning management system and joked that during the first week of classes students will generally do what she asks (hinting to her power as “controller-of-the-grade”). Yikes.

One paper-marking strategy I never considered was only marking grammar and spelling errors only so far and then drawing a line where you’ve stopped. The point is to get students who need writing help connected with the resources that will help them learn to write better, instead of spending all of your own time correcting pages and pages of these types of errors. I like this.

The importance of routines was also mentioned and it reminds me a lot of parenting. Lots of parenting books talk about the importance of establishing routines. Clear routines have clear expectations. Clear expectations lead to better cooperation or at least a starting point for discussion when things aren’t working. It’s interesting to see overlap between parenting strategies and teaching strategies but I shouldn’t be surprised. I read Rahima Baldwin’s book, You are Your Child’s First Teacher when my daughter was a baby. Do educators see the parallels and take advantage of the resources written on parenting strategies?

The shocking bits of the session came in the “Learn from your colleagues” section. Someone asked about strategies for student questions and the presenter said she has specific time set aside for questions so that her teaching isn’t interrupted. Another said he has a “parking lot” on the chalkboard where students can write their questions, again so that teaching is not interrupted. I realize that sometimes students will find that their questions are answered if they just wait a minute in the lecture, but it was repeated several times during the conference that lectures are an inefficient way to teach and learn. Why discuss strategies for something that shouldn’t be happening? If the goal is student engagement, active learning, and learning-based pedagogy then students have to have more opportunity and encouragement to engage. If they have a question or comment, doesn’t that show they’re engaged? Isn’t that what everyone is after? If you tell students to park their question, it shows students that their questions don’t count and they’re going to disengage with the class. Moving to other teaching styles is the answer for dealing with this issue.

The ultimate shocker for me was the negativity towards laptops in the classroom. It was incredible — not one positive comment got through although maybe in the hands that didn’t get to comment there were others besides my own. People complained that students who appear to be taking notes are actually doing other things. (omg? really??) Students have always done other things in class besides take notes. Sleeping comes to mind as an example, so does talking, passing notes, drawing, doing other homework, and making grocery and chore lists. As with all things, there are advantages and disadvantages to laptops in the classroom. My favourite example comes from a computer science professor I know. He was teaching a programming class and was showing how to conserve resources in a program. Unaware to the prof, while he continued teaching, a student with a laptop connected to the university’s server and ran the program. Then they raised their hand and said, “I don’t see the results you predict.” Because this student had initiative and resources to do this, the class then went on to explore why it didn’t work according to the theory. This is learning, this is active, this is an opportunity to engage with the students and explore a real problem. Why take this away?

So maybe it isn’t the laptop in class that is the problem, it’s the Internet. Could it be that bringing the Internet into the classroom challenges who is the authority? Does this make some professors uncomfortable? The Web contains multiple viewpoints on every subject imaginable, and I’ve seen it where students look things up to challenge what the prof is saying. I’ve also seen students bring up examples that support the prof. It works both ways. It a women’s history class we were discussing some of the major womens’ organizations in North America over time. Someone asked if one of the groups still existed, prof didn’t know. Again, unknown to the prof, someone else surfed around, found the group’s site, gave an update from their front page, and shared the address with the class. Again: bonus because a student had their laptop in the classroom.

And it’s not just for students, professors can play too! If instructors had a messaging client open during the lecture (sounds off) students could message their questions, effectively dealing with the earlier concern of how to handle questions. There are positive applications of the technology!

So what are the real laptop issues?

• Students surf.

Sometimes they surf because they’re bored. Answer here is engage them with your teaching. That was actually Dr. Stein’s strategy number one: Don’t be boring.
Sometimes they surf material that isn’t rated E for Everyone. Maybe some guidelines are in order or maybe we need to accept that we can’t protect students from the big/bad/ugly. Students can spend some time at the beginning of the semester establishing a class code of conduct – it at least brings the topic into the arena of discussion. Students who would be offended are forewarned. Same advice we give to people who are offended by breastfeeding: don’t look. Small screens minimize this, and so do bad LCDs that have a limited viewing angle. Only the person close-up and directly in front can see.

• Students don’t pay attention.

This isn’t a new phenomenon created by laptops. Laptops are just a scapegoat. The students who came at least thought there was something about your class that was worth getting out of bed. They could alternatively still be sleeping or hanging in the pub. They are in your class — it’s a start. They will get more out of being there and not giving it their full attention than they would if they weren’t there at all. And students today multitask with amazing proficiency. Even without Alt-Tab. I share that with as many people as I can cause it pains me to watch them click through tabs in the task bar.

The answer here is definitely not invoking the hokey pokey as one attendee at the session suggested (not in those words but bad enough). It was more along the lines of “require a full body response to a question.” Like raising your hand to different heights to indicate level of agreement with a statement. This is a fine strategy, especially to engage kinesthetic learners, but only to get people to take their fingers of the keys? Missing the point.

And requiring students to put away laptops/close lids during discussion? Only if you’re also taking away pens, pencils, and paper from all the students.

So what about having laptop section in the classroom? Near the outlets for those who need power. If you don’t want to see the multitasking going on, you don’t look. If the typing bothers you you sit on the other side of the room. It’s true that sometimes the keys are loud. This can be as annoying as screeching chalk. Solution? Quieter keypads and getting over it. Or maybe wearing an ipod is the answer. ;)

Wasn’t it just International Women’s Day? Couldn’t we celebrate instead of attacking women?

Update: Contact phone number for John Jay High School in NY: 914 763-7200 Leave a message with the principal in support of the Megan Reback, Elan Stahl and Hannah Levinson.

I got a link to the censorship taking place at John Jay High School in the mail today. Seems women’s bodies are still dirty and unsuitable for children (er well, it’s okay if we give birth to them — lots of them in fact). It doesn’t matter that these girls defied the order not to say the word “VAGINA” — that order was Wrong. There is nothing wrong with what these three girls did, nothing at all. I’m glad to see support from the community, and how it’s crossing borders into Canada and soon will go beyond. Hopefully it will come from far and wide and this school’s admins will realize that rules like this try to make women feel ashamed of their bodies. I’m especially glad to read this quote from Dana Stahl, Elan Stahl’s mother, “To me, they were reciting literature in an educational forum and they did it with grace and dignity.” Way to go Elan!

I wonder if there are other words associated with women’s sexuality that are not allowed at this school? Like rape? Could you imagine a school where girls are not allowed to talk about rape? Scary scary — what we do not hear does not exist, right?

I’d like to see the principal apologize to these girls and the community and tell us that he does not think women are shameful, sexless, dirty and offensive. I’d like these girls to organize some mandatory workshops for staff about the importance of a healthy attitude towards women’s bodies and how this is directly linked to women’s position in society (i.e. the end of misogyny). The staff could get a special certification at the end of the workshop (which includes writing an essay on the topic) — maybe “Gynophile”? or how about this classic: “Teacher”? These workshops would be adapted for the students at the school too because they’ve all been told now that “vaginas” are a problem. I’m not looking forward to seeing how that plays out in their futures. What do you think Megan, Elan, and Hannah? Actiongirls would be happy to help!

Here is the entirety of principal’s statement. He’s insisting that the girls are not suspended because they said vagina but because they said vagina when they were told not to say vagina. This is sooo not cool. Mr. Leprine, really, it gets easier the more you say it. And as for kids hearing it — it wasn’t that long ago that they were sliding through their mothers’. They’ll be okay. Maybe even better than okay.

March 6, 2007

Dear John Jay Community Members:

I appreciate the concerns expressed by students and parents over the monologue issue that occurred last Friday night at the “Open Mic Night.”

John Jay High School recognizes and respects student freedom of expression in the context of the school setting. That right, however, is not unfettered, particularly when an activity or event is open to the general school community where it is expected that young children may be in attendance. The challenge is to balance the rights of student speakers and the sensitivities of the community. The School’s response to that challenge was to pre-audition the students before several faculty members for the “Open Mic Night” and to determine the suitability of the intended presentations for the audience. In many cases, younger siblings, often elementary age, attend these types of events. This event was also being videotaped for the local cable television channel.

When a student is told by faculty members not to present specified material because of the composition of the audience and they agree to do so, it is expected that the commitment will be honored and the directive will be followed. When a student chooses not to follow the directive, consequences follow. The students did not receive consequences because of the content of the presentation.

There is a clear difference between putting on a production of a play such as “The Vagina Monologues” and an open performance at the microphone of an excerpt from the play before unsuspecting parents and their children. In the first case, the community would have been aware of the nature of the production and could have made an educated decision to attend or not to attend based upon that knowledge. In the case of the “Open Mic Night,” the community was invited with the expectation that the pieces presented would be appropriate for the general community, including younger children. Parents and community members did not have the ability to make an educated decision about the appropriateness of the content of the presentations for younger children.

There is also a clear difference between what is read and discussed in the classroom and what is presented in an activity open to the entire community. Our judgment was guided by the forum, the audience and the students’ commitment. Our decision was made in a considered, careful and thoughtful manner.

Sincerely,
Rich Leprine,
Principal JJHS

I turned in my application to the MA history program with an exciting proposal to collect oral histories from the last women to give birth on Pelee Island,Ontario, back in the 1950s. By then most women were relocating to either mainland Ontario (Leamington or Windsor) or to Ohio to give birth. I’m excited because there’s a personal connection – my grandmother was one of the last women to give birth at home on the island (to my father). Even though she died over 10 years ago from breast cancer, I feel connected to her through this project. It also means I’ll get to go to Pelee to talk to people and talking to the older generation of islanders is always a hoot. (photo credit Jonath, flickr.com. Click the image to go to the photo’s flickr page.)

I’m working on a directed study this semester, cross-listed between the Women’s Studies and History departments about how the emerging technologies of blogs and user-generated media have changed the form and content of communications between mothers and information about mothering. I’m not a mommyblogger but I’ve followed the flurry with interest since BlogHer 2005 where it was identified as a radical act by Finslippy. I’ve watched La Leche League change from a personal mother-to-mother organization for breastfeeding help to an organization with a strong emphasis on online helping and information sharing – including providing mothers and health care professionals with links to Dr. Jack Newman’s video clips for help with latch and positioning and the online Community Network for leaders, and forums for mothers. It’s still mother-to-mother, but it’s changed. Online communities help with the sense of isolation mothers can feel after having a baby, but the technology changes the style and who has access to helping. The project is still too large and it’s hard to cut out pieces of the research in order to make the project more manageable, but it’s getting there.

I’ve begun writing a summer project grant that will (hopefully) allow me to make podcasts of historical Canadian texts in the public domain. I’m excited about it and hope to work with Toronto’s Mitchell Girio for production quality and also hoping for some original music from Mitch and some local Windsor artists. I’ve had some skeptical response to the idea from traditional historians who wonder if people would actually be interested in downloading and listening to Canadian history on an mp3 player — but I see it as a great way to encourage interest in our past — and to give attention to works that maybe haven’t been included in the traditional canon of what is Canadian History. I think it’s incredibly exciting and of course, you never know until you try. I know I would do it, and I know my kids would be into it too. That’s enough for now, for me.

Actiongirls is getting busy too. We’ve planned a pile of Stitch n Bitch sessions with more to come. This project is slowly attracting community interest. There was a reporter from the Windsor Star at our meeting yesterday who asked plenty of baited/leading questions. No doubt there will be an article filled with misquotes in the paper on Monday. /sigh/

So… I’ve discovered that there are places where people with ideas like mine gather and brainstorm and plan and develop and change the world. One of the conferences I’m trying to get to is later this month: Norther Voice 2007. They’re offering a travel subsidy (deadline today, Feb 2 at 12 PST). I never considered that I might be able to go to this since travel across Canada is crazy expensive but when I found out about the funding assistance I decided I should try. With the bursary I could get there and learn and contribute my experience as a women’s-studies-history-IT-student-mom-activist-artist-geek. Without it, there will be nothing but homework and dishes and laundry for me until I save more pennies. Maybe it will help me sort out where I’m headed, trying to combine computer science, history, feminism, activism, and art. Either way I’d get to see the Rockies.

I seem to be in a perpetual struggle for a secular education for my kids at the local public school. This past week my daughter brought home a spelling worksheet with the sentence “Insects are one of the many creatures God created. The word insects was underlined to be replaced with one of the list words. The sentence was also used on the test at the end of the week.

I complained (again) about religion in public schools and about the school teaching creationism, the teacher responded that I was surely exaggerating — that this was hardly creationism. I think “God created” is very clear creationism. Next he said that I can hardly hope to expunge god from everthing — but in a public school I certainly can and do expect a secular education for my children. Next there was something about him being a geologist… and he grudgingly apologized.

My friend in Toronto ran into another religion-in-the-public-school incident when she attended the Remembrance Day assembly with her son at his school where she is a volunteer. The school choir sang a United Church hymn filled with references to god as a male figure.

Later, she talked to the teacher about why they chose this song given all the songs written about creating peace in the world. The school is diverse and is part of the Toronto public board. Religion is not a part of the curriculum, including teaching god as a male deity. She learned that the original choice of songs for the kids was “If I had a Hammer” but the principal had vetoed it because it was too socialist. Full lyrics to If I had a Hammer here. I cannot believe that promoting Chrisitianity over socialism (if the song can even be labeled that) is happening, here, in 2006. What’s wrong with socialism?? And the only answer for choosing the hymn was that the kids knew it already.

The choir also sang an edited version of John Lennon’s Imagine with the line about “And no religion too” removed (full lyrics to Imagine here.) I cannot imagine why they’d edit it out — it’s a great song about peace and I think it’s a good point that religion divides people. It certainly happens in the schools here with there being two separate systems of publicly funded education: one Catholic and one for everyone else. It’s very divisive – ask the kids who go or went to one of the split schools where the two boards share a building.

What is so wrong about If I had a Hammer? And will we ever secure secular public education for our children?

Today is December 6, 2006. It is 17 years after the day a gunman shot and killed 14 women at École Polytechnique in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Thirteen were students and one was an employee of the university. Today we remember these victims of gendered violence and reflect on women everywhere who are victims of gendered violence. The Montréal Massacre was not an isolated event. There are many women suffering today for the sole reason that they are women. For some it’s because of war, others face sexist laws, religions, and customs. Some are somewhere at the wrong time, like the women who were in class and on campus on December 16, 1989. Others are victims of repeated violence in their homes, at work, and in their neighbourhoods, by family and people they know. Think of them all today.

The Fourteen Not Forgotten

Geneviève Bergeron b. 1968 – civil engineering student
Hélène Colgan b. 1966 – mechanical engineering student
Nathalie Croteau b. 1966 – mechanical engineering student
Barbara Daigneault b. 1967 – mechanical engineering student
Anne-Marie Edward b. 1968 – chemical engineering student
Maud Haviernick b. 1960 – materials engineering student
Maryse Laganière b. 1964 – budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department
Maryse Leclair b. 1966 – materials engineering student
Anne-Marie Lemay b. 1967 – mechanical engineering student
Sonia Pelletier b. 1961 – mechanical engineering student
Michèle Richard b. 1968 – materials engineering student
Annie St-Arneault b. 1966 – mechanical engineering student
Annie Turcotte b. 1969 – materials engineering student
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz b. 1958 – nursing student

Bonnie spoke for Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter back in 1989 following the Massacre, “Many women have paid a high price for equality and liberty in our struggle. We call on men to tell each other that you have no permission to commit any act of violence against women.”

Please, remember these women, and what Bonnie said. It is needed as much today as ever.

Revised to add: You can read last year’s memorial post here.

This is based on my experience as an undergraduate TA. I thought I would share what I’ve put together to help students understand what an abstract does if they’ve never done one before. An abstract is brief, clear, and concise. It gives the reader enough information to know what an article is about but not so much that they can cite it just from the abstract without reading the article.

A lot of abstracts are set up to provide the following information:

A: What does the piece do – what does it explain, address, discuss ? This part often starts with something like, “This essay/article examines….”

B: Some background, what the reader needs to know – brief, but enough so the reader knows if it might be what they are looking for, if they should keep reading.

C: How does your paper do what it does? Does it analyze data or experiences?

D: What sources, theories, etc. does your paper draw upon to make its conclusions (and why these, not others) — and everyone’s favourite bit: What is the thesis??

Here is a really clear example:

Resisting Neo-Liberalism: the Poisoned Water Disaster in Walkerton, Ontario
Laureen Snider
Queen’s University, Canada
http://sls.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/265

{{section A}} This article examines how relations of governance generate particular forms of resistance, and the mechanisms through which resistance can reconfigure governance. It seeks to clarify actual and potential links between resistance, transformative politics and ameliorative change. {{section B}} Empirically it documents an environmental disaster in Walkerton, Ontario, Canada, when seven people died and 2300 became ill after E. Coli contaminated public drinking water in May of 2000. Following a Public Inquiry and nine months of Hearings, the intensely critical O’Connor Report explained the disaster as resulting from policies adopted by Ontario’s neo-liberal government and its ‘Common Sense Revolution’. The Report forced government to re-regulate and restaff the Ministry of the Environment. {{Section C}} To understand how this critical narrative was produced and why it was heard, the article situates the Inquiry process in its historical, cultural and political context. {{Section D}} Focusing on two particular forms of knowledge/power, science and law, it argues that the universalistic truth claims of science were allied with the normative and procedural claims of law to challenge hegemonic power and interrogate the truth claims of neo-liberal government. Resistance in this case took local form, but its roots and resonance came from history, timing, and world-wide struggles against globalization, free trade and the ever-expanding American empire.

If you try to answer those questions clearly and concisely your abstract should write itself.

In another life I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. This was back in grade 11 physics, which I loved. My teacher recognized that and talked to me about engineering, and I was drawn in to aerospace. I wanted to make rockets. I was sure that this is what I would do until I discovered art and teenage angst the next year and it was downhill more or less from there. Over the next year and a half I took every visual art and music class my school offered. I started working for a semi-pro theatre company and after graduation I ended up in a BFA dance program in Toronto for a few months. I dropped out of that after midterms first semester, got married, was a starving artist for a few years, had some babies, got divorced, and am now almost done a Women’s Studies degree.

I hate how much I’ve forgotten. I work peripherally now in all these tech capacities without much grasp of the foundations. There is so much backbone work that I can’t do. I took computer science in high school and programmed in BASIC (wooooahhh, time warp) and was good at it – enjoyed it even, but I’m no coder now – not a hope.

Next semester I take a basic C programming course to finish an IT minor – and I both dread it and am nervously anticipating it. The anxiety comes from realizing it’s been over 15 years since I’ve done any type of programming/math – and I’m scared. I know I don’t remember how to think that way and I worry how hard I’ll have to work to catch up. My application to grad school (still undecided there) is also dependent on my last semester marks. If I blow my GPA now, there’s no making it up.

But on the other hand, I remember the thrill of an elegant proof and the excitement of geometry – I really loved this stuff. How can a brain forget how to do this? How do we just let a part of our brain fall dormant? Is it dead? Can it come back? How far could I go?

I don’t know that I can look at this the way I did in highschool. Now my time is finite. If I don’t finish something in an hour there often isn’t another hour later when I can come back to it. I don’t have the luxury of closing my bedroom door and working on problems all night – what if I can’t do it anymore? What if I lost my chance?

I wonder about doing a CS degree now, after my women’s studies is done. I don’t have the prereqs. Once I discovered ‘art’ I had to forego calculus. To get into the program I’d have to catch up the highschool credits I missed – even that makes me wonder. It would be wild to spin my brain in those circles again, but at what cost?

I went to a grad school workshop today (not inspiring). And then I read this from Joel Spolsky, posted a week and a half ago on Joel on Software. The combination of the two is pretty bad.

You see, if you can’t whiz through the easy stuff at 100 m.p.h., you’re never gonna get the advanced stuff.

I think what JS is saying applies to a lot more than writing code, getting an A in Calculus, trading bonds, or getting hired. I read this as JS believes that people who work too hard at the basics are in the wrong field. I’m not sure where exactly the basics end and the advanced work begins in the Humanities and Social Sciences, but I know I’m working way too hard. JS’s words are plenty helpful for the person hiring, or the person who is an ace applicant, but for the rest of us? For those of us who didn’t get A+ in our last 20 undergrad courses?

The speaker at the workshop kept going over how important it is to reapply if at first rejected: from funding, from schools, etc. That if it’s where you really want to be you’ll get it eventually, through tweaking your materials, focusing or shifting a research interest, by finding a more appropriate advisor. But I wonder, how many years can a person can keep going through it? I mean, don’t we all have student loans that have to be paid back? We can’t just keep reapplying to grad school, hoping we’ll get in sooner or later…