Country and City

I've been spending a lot of time driving across vast expanses of prairie (or similar landscape) over the recent months and it's gotten me thinking about rural and urban spaces. I've also moved from a small urban space to a much larger one, and it has got me noticing the differences.

All of this has reconfirmed for me that I am a big city gal at heart.

It's not that I love the congestion and the sometimes lack of privacy that a large urban center offers. Nor is it that I don't like the friendliness that a smaller town or city can offer. It's mostly the amenities that come with an urban center that exceeds a certain size that makes me like the big city.

I've lived in all kinds of places. From a small hamlet of under 300 to a sprawling metropolis of 15 million. Now, I will grant that the huge metropolis can be intimidating, and there certainly are downsides to such a huge place. Transportation becomes more difficult and in some neighborhoods can be downright dangerous. You don't even need to be a metropolis for that to occur. But even though getting around might be a bit harder, you've usually also got a lot more options.

Whereas living in a little hamlet, transportation isn't a problem - the whole place is only about 10 square blocks. But to do any business, you need to travel to a larger center, and getting there can sometimes be a problem. Not to mention everyone knows everyone else's business. There is something slightly consoling about the anonmymity of the city, knowing that if you have a bad day and don't feel like smiling, it's not going to start a rumour about how bad your life is - there's a good chance no one you meet on a day like that will remember you.

But mostly I like the amenities that come with a larger city. Take the one I live in now. In the next month, there's a film festival, a book festival, two concerts I want to see, and an academic conference in my field that will be held here. In a smaller place, I'd have to travel to get that - and then I would be travelling, not able to retreat home after each event. It also is large enough to boast several playhouses, a decent music scene, and a variety of restaurants and clubs that will not leave you wanting when the mood hits for something specific.

And decent public transit if I want/need it.

In a smaller urban center, or in a rural one, there certainly are more people who "know your name" and who you can count on to remember you and to say hi as you pass. In a larger place, there's a lot less of that. But what you don't get from your neighbors, you can still find. There are far more people available to connect with - to find people who share the same interests isn't difficult, and so you create your social networks not out of proximity, but because you share the same interests or values.

It's a bit like social networking on the internet - in all its formats, not just the most recent incarnations - from usenet groups to facebook - you can find someone else with whom you share an interest in almost anything. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes it's not. But I like the idea of having a lot of strangers around me, some of whom will make good friends when I get to know them. Yes, I suppose I pay a price because I could become more isolated within a sea of people, but then again, when I went to blend into that sea, I can dive in and no one will take notice. Then I can go home and call on the network I've created out of that sea. In some ways, there's a certain level of comfort to be taken in that.

Creepy people

I first ran across the idea expressed in this article The Undead Zone: Why realistic graphics makes humans look creepy when I was reading Scott McLeod's Understanding Comics. The author even mentions McLeod in the discussion.

The essence of the article is that we are comfortable with humanoid creatures, in video games or even robotics, but once they get too be human-looking, we focus on the 1% that isn't quite right and get creeped out by it. Of course Freud's unheimlich is the same kind of thing as well.

Today I walked into the living room while a sports show was on television. And just for a moment, the two athletes on the screen looked like CGI characters, not real humans. I felt that kind of creepiness when I thought they were CGI-ed. But when I realized they weren't CGI'ed, that's when they just got a whole lot creepier.

I felt sorry for men who would go through life resembling CGI characters because of their physical features. And then I started wondering if perhaps I had only made that mistake because they were athletes - you know, muscled bodies, few physical defects etc. Both happened to be pale red-heads too, and I wonder if that had something to do with it. After all, the most realistically CGI-ed characters in video games tend to be white, don't they?

I haven't really thought it all out yet, but it got me thinking about the reverse of what the article is talking about. What happens when we think the humans look unrealistic? Is it the same effect as when CGI-ed characters look too human? Something to think about a bit more perhaps...

Finally starting to swim...

... or at the very least, finally keeping my head above water...

...seeing the light at the end of the tunnel...

...emerging from a under the weight of a mammoth to do list.

(pick the phrase you like the best)

I don't know that I'm back on track - I suspect my sense that things are improving is simple self-delusion and wishful thinking. But I do know that I feel much better today about where I stand in relation to all my obligations and commitments. So I'll take the good feelings when I can!

Moving of course is one of those things that eats up incredibly huge amounts of time. It's not just the packing up of all your stuff, the loading it in a truck, the driving it (probably the shortest moving-related activity this time) or the unloading it. It's all the other stuff that goes with moving. The cleaning up of the old place. The fixing of old and/or new place. The changing registrations of cars, schools, utlities, taxes, blah, blah, blah...

But the moving is mostly over. There are a lot of places that don't have a change of address yet - I'm relying on the forwarding to keep me in touch. So that still needs to be done. And there are several boxes that still need unpacking. But life has mostly settled down.

Before the move, I had my classes prepped for two weeks in advance (minus marking of course). Those two weeks got eaten up awfully fast and I was left scrambling the night before a couple of times. I'm working on rebuilding that lead and can say I'm actually getting there. So that's becoming one less thing hanging over my head.

There were a few birthdays following right on the tail of the moving. And I had to finish editing a paper for a deadline. A couple more things - pleasant - but nonetheless requiring time, that kept me busy for what felt like every hour of the day. There's still another paper to edit. Oh, yeah, and that dissertation thing-y to write. But I'm feeling a bit more caught up now, which is nice.

Long and short of it is that there should be more posting - at least a bit more - from now until it all falls apart again...

Singin' in the rain

Sometimes we don't pay attention to the good things in life. It's the annoyances and irritations that get all the headlines.

But over the last two days, we've had showers on an off. On Thursday, I wasn't expecting them and was wearing a sundress with a cute but not really functional sweater, so when it started to rain as I drove away from work, I anticipated cold dashes through rain to the errands I had to complete. When the sleet started, I really got depressed.

But by the time I arrived at my errands, the rain let up. And only restarted when I got home.

Same thing Friday. Rain while driving home. None once I got out of the car to go into the grocery store.

Sometimes I just forget that luck does occasionally go my way. Sure, rain is a small thing, but sometimes, it might be all you have. I'm thankful for how the rain coincided with my schedule the last couple of days.

A matter of style?*

Editing another person’s work and having your own work edited by someone else is an interesting project. Two different people’s writing styles and habits come into contact with each other in the editing process, and the question then becomes, “whose style wins out?”

I suppose a precursor question to that one is “what constitutes style?”

Everyone has their own way of doing things. This of course extends to writing as well. But there are different levels of expertise in writing too. Some people are better at it than others. So how do you tell the difference between an editor’s suggestion coming from the fact that they are better at what they do than you, and when it is just a stylistic preference?

In my MA thesis, my the members of my committee were provided with copies of the thesis before my defense, and of course after the defense, they each had suggestions for things that needed to be done before they would accept the thesis as complete. Most of the suggestions were about content, but one of my committee members had covered the pages of the thesis in commas. She was suggesting throughout the thesis that my commas were not properly placed.

I started editing the thesis, inserting all those commas in, but stopped halfway through because I realized that this was just a stylistic difference. Her writing used more commas than mine, but it wasn’t any more “right” than my style of writing. (Of course commas are the most flexible form of punctuation to use and styles range from almost nothing to insertion between every phrase.) In that case, the suggested comma inserts were a stylistic difference and by not inserting them, I don’t think I produced a poorer quality thesis.

But now I’m faced with a similar editing comment. I’ve been told my style in employing citations is faulty. It wasn’t that the MLA citation style was wrong; the comment was that I don’t do enough to set up quotations before inserting them into my writing. The suggestion for changing it felt artificial to me, like how you set up quotations when you’re first learning how to do so, but the advice was coming from a good place, so I took a look at my citations.

Now at first I accepted this advice and revised the way I embedded citations in my writing. But what’s making me wonder if this is simply a stylistic difference is that I’ve been reading other people’s writing, and realized that there is a wide variation in writing. In particular I’m reading Walter Benjamin, who was really big on citation. He seems to employ citation in a way similar to how I do, but contrary to how my editor indicated it should be done.

The quoting changes have already been made, and I’m happy to leave then as such in the essay, but now I’m left puzzling over whether I need to work on this, or whether it is just a stylistic difference for the next time I sit down to write something. I really don’t know.

*blog post originally written Aug 24th.

*breathing a (small) sigh of relief*

We are moved. Or as my husband says, "now all our crap is in our giant, expensive crap-holder."

The tao of moving

Posting will be sparse to non-existent for the next week. We're packing up this weekend and won't have internet access till the middle of next week in the new place.

Having a conversation with my father about moving the other day got me thinking about the way we think of moving. There's of course the saying that good friends are the ones who show up to help you move, and I've certainly had plenty of friends help me move in the past, so that's been borne out as far as I'm concerned.

But this move we'll be going solo. Just the four of us. Two adults and two teens are a pretty reasonable moving team - especially since we're hiring movers for the two specialty items - the pool table and the piano. I've even got my fingers crossed that the landlord calls tomorrow to say that they or the new tenants will take our washer and dryer off our hands. The new place comes with them (and they're better quality than the cheapie ones we bought while on a student budget) and if someone wants to take them off our hands, it's one less thing to move.

My dad and mom actually offered to drive 6 hours to come help us move, which of course would also likely involve sleeping on the floor and another 6 hour drive back, all probably within a couple of days. I love my mom and dad too much to take them up on such an offer. It was nice, but I wouldn't feel like a very good daughter if I agreed to something like that. I'm sure the four of us will do just fine.

But moving got me thinking about how moving and friends mix (or don't). We aren't having any friends help us this time. Mostly because I haven't asked. I already know that many of my friends are busy/on vacation this time of year. And some are just not the kind of friends who will help you move - they'll do all kinds of wonderful other things for you - but they don't even move themselves, let alone help friends move.

And sometimes I think I've got a moving-karma deficit. I feel like I've done more asking of friends to help move than I've done for friends. Not that I've ever said no to a friend who's asked for help, but I just don't think I've been asked as often as I've been the one asking. The last person I said I'd help moved changed the loading date to a day that I was out of town, so I couldn't even fulfill that promise, which I really regret. Perhaps I can be there for their next move...

So we'll be going solo. But we've booked the truck for an extended period because we knew this would be the case, so we don't have to knock ourselves out with a time limit. We're trying to be fairly zen about it, which makes it more than manageable I think. At least with a local move, you can always make a second trip if you feel the need to do so. Cross-continental moves are soooooo much harder!

One of the advantages of moving only a year after the last move is that you haven't accumulated a lot of junk. Don't get me wrong. We accumulated a lot of stuff - seems like we spent all last September and October buying crap for the house - but it hasn't hung around long enough to become junk yet, so the enormous garage sale or trip the the charity hasn't been a feature of this move.

I just find it interesting that moving brings up all kinds of thoughts and feelings that really don't surface at any other time. Maybe it's just the change that does so, or maybe there's a sense of identity associated with places that gets disrupted when you move. I'm not sure what exactly it is - I just know that moving is a really strange experience when you come right down to it.

Slow-moving hockey animals

I actually don't read the comics section of the paper that often, but yesterday's Get Fuzzy set me and my family laughing longer than usual.
(If you're having problems making out the image, follow the link instead)



Just the day before, we'd found an excellent sale price on a Flames jersey, so now I finally own one. But I'd better watch out for the sloth section when I go!

Moving Week

So this is the week we begin moving. I say begin because we'll be stretching it out till the end of the month - which is a real luxury, especially after all our cross country moves - but it begins Friday.

Obviously posting may be even more sparse than usual... or maybe more than usual as I distract myself from boxes...

On second thought, if I'm not packing, I should be revising the paper that's due at the end of the month. So I guess if you're seeing a blog post over the next week, I'm either sailing through the revisions, or I'm logjammed against an immovable and nasty syntactical behemoth.

But while I'm off packing boxes and furiously typing, I leave you with Tenured Radical's Ten Commandments of Moving. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Gone but not forgotten

Last week I had been feeling forgotten, like I was falling prey to "out of sight, out of mind" because of the vast distance between me and the academic people I hang out with.

But last night, my writing group and I met online, and it was fabulous! It took us a good week just to find a day that worked for everyone, but we did it and it was almost like being together. Almost. But it was so good to chat with the members and talk about our writing. As usual, they gave me some excellent ideas, and I'm really excited about implementing them. And I'm absolutely riveted to their narratives - I can't wait to read the next installments!

So this long distance thing does work when everyone's committed to it. It's just getting the committment that's the problem!

I don't remember asking for the "challenge" package

Life has felt like an extra challenge the last few days. I can't even just chalk it up to moving-related stuff. It seems that every aspect of my life seems extra challenging lately.

It is 4pm already and all I can really say I've accomplished is to have taught my one hour of class today. Or at least that's all that feels like it was productive.

If I'd been sipping Mai Tai's on a beach or something the rest of the time, I wouldn't be quite so bothered, but today has been eaten up by a lot of minutiae, which is always annoying. Some of those minutiae exploded in size and the amount of time they ate up, which is doubly annoying. It's one of those days when you start looking at the clock because you can't wait for it to finally be over!

I must admit that I spent some of my time just sitting in my car. I think it was time that I needed to spend there though. This morning as I was driving between errands, I approached a green light. Since it was green, I went through. Twenty-odd years of driving has borne out the assumption that "green means go". Halfway through the intersection, I had to slam on the brakes to keep from being wiped out by a guy in a truck who blew right through a solid red light.

Guess what he was holding up to his ear?

I was shaking so badly from the shock that I had to pull over and sit in my car for a bit. Even then, I almost dropped stuff at the bank because my hands were still shaking.

My car has a really good safety rating - I just don't want to personally test how good it is.

The good and the bad

Given my last post, I realize another personal post like this might be too much. But I still want to say it, so here goes.

Last month a good friend called me up and asked me if I'd be interested in teaching some writing courses at a local technical school. I'd been out of the classroom long enough that I said "sure!" and a little while later, she forwarded sample syllabi for the courses.

The teaching has been fabulous so far! The students are really engaged. For the most part, they're there because they want to be. Of course I do have a few students in each of the two classes I teach who think it is unimportant to come to the English class - they see little value in the class and they've told me so. I'm not making it easy on students like that because we do a lot of in class work, so they're bleeding marks rapidly.

While that may not make them see the use of being able to communicate clearly, it will force them into the classroom and participating - hopefully the incidental result is that they pick up a few things while they're there...

So far I've even enjoyed reading my students' writing. Some of it is predictable, but so much more of it than I thought I'd get is imaginative and plays with the goals of the assignments, and those ones definitely make up for the duller ones. These students aren't afraid to take risks in their writing, and while sometimes it bombs, it also pays off huge dividends for them.

The school is having some serious problems with my electronic access - I have none right now - which was mostly a minor inconvenience until Friday. On that day, I had three different administrative personnel come to ask me for the same thing, which I'm unable to deliver since I can't access any of the drives on the server. (I can access the online learning environment, which is great 'cause I can talk to my students, but I can't use any of the computers at the school to do so.)

It was a little frustrating for me to have three different people come to chew me out for not doing something that I'm unable to do. It was particularly frustrating because I'd made sure I told people about my lack of access, and they said that was fine, I could catch up on administrative paperwork later. Then all of a sudden on Friday it became urgent for me to do this, and I ended up feeling incompetent for not having solved the problem myself. Probably an overreaction, but it still felt like that.

At least this deadline put a fire under a few people's asses and it looks like they might finally get me some network access.... But I'm not holding my breath.

The biggest problem right now is that I've got two (new) class preps on top of my online work and all this moving stuff. So right now it feels like I'm constantly writing a new assignment, or otherwise prepping endlessly. I should be prepping right now instead of blogging...!

The prepping itself isn't hard - I've got lots of good material that I've developed over the years. But it does need to be adapted for the new environment, and because the pedagogical goals are different, some of it needs to be created from scratch.

One thing I'm spending lots of time writing is lab assignments. I've never taught a writing class before that had a lab component, so I have to create all those assignments from scratch.

But I'm also loving having the students sitting in front of computers for two hours a week. It gives us so many opportunities to write, and to write small assignments. It gives the students a sense of accomplishment. It allows me to play with ideas that I've had but never figured out how to work into an essay assignment. And it also gives me a chance to work with them as they write, to identify which students have which problems, so that I can tailor my writing suggestions to addressing their specific problems.

Whenever I'd have a choice about it, I would definitely choose running a writing class with a laboratory component. It's just provides so many more opportunities for the students to write.

Just thinking about writing this post made me think about how much of teaching (or any other job I suppose) consists of both the good and the bad, both inside and outside of the classroom itself.

Isolation

When we made the decision to return home last year, I knew that writing a dissertation long distance would mean I would be more isolated from feedback and the advice/support of colleagues and advisors. I accepted this because the benefits of moving outweighed the disadvantages of it.

But I also assumed that the problems of isolation could be overcome by me if I made the effort to stay in touch. I figured that the problems would mostly arise if I didn't keep the communication lines open and keep on track.

I never really considered the possibility that my advisor or colleagues would adopt an "out of sight, out of mind" stance toward me.

But that's what's happened. It was a bit of a shock when I realized it.

Of course one of the lessons you learn in life is that there's nothing you can do to change someone else's actions. All you can do it change your response to them. My first response was a feeling of being hurt and rejected. Which of course makes it hard to contemplate continuing a relationship. While I still feel hurt by being ignored, I know the only thing I can do is to continue to make the efforts I've been making, to hold up my end of the bargain so to speak. Which I will do.

But it doesn't make the sense of isolation any easier, knowing that my communications may continue to be ignored. This is the struggle of the long distance dissertation writer I suppose. The distance makes it more evident exactly what value others place on your relationship. Perhaps it's good to know where I stand instead of assuming a support system that doesn't really exist. That way I can work to create the support system that I need.

Small things amuse small minds

I just discovered and downloaded an excellent image capture software program and am absolutely tickled at how easy screen shots for our latest work project are now going to be.

Small thing... small mind.

This is a public/private service?

I try to regularly read a couple of elearning sites/ejournals every week. Recently I ran across a link to this blogpost, It's not plagiarism, it's an easy essay, which simply astounded me.

The service offers to custom write essays for students. Now this is nothing new. "Betsy" at Harvard has been doing this for years. What surprised me was the justification for it. In an email interview, the Custom Writing representative has this response to a question about the organization's role in education:

No person can be equally good at everything – if he/she is, then this is the wrong path, a student talent is lost. There are people who are good at Math and IT – let them develop their skills in this field instead of torturing them with writing assignments. What is really the point of this, if students must waste hours developing skills they will never be professional in instead of concentrating on the field their future career will depend upon? I really see the role of custom writing services in education as a relief for those who have already chosen their career, who know their path, and have already somewhat succeeded in it – since services are somewhat costly and in order to buy a custom written paper, a student must have a job (the most part of our customers). Furthermore, academic writing services spare time for students to develop in the field they chose to, so, to some extent, this is a plus for their education too.

First, I really doubt students purchasing these papers are using the time they save to study. I admit it could be possible, but somehow, I doubt that time is used for learning.

Second, why is this only an argument used for writing? If as this genteman argues, one shouldn't spend time learning things that aren't directly relevant to one's line of work, then why did I suffer through all those math classes? Shouldn't I have been excused from them? Perhaps in that case there should be an organization that provides a proxy for me for math exams.

But wait a minute! you might say. You use math everyday. Whenever you go into the store and compare prices, or need to calculate the tax on something, you use math. Nobody carries around a calculator all the time, and even estimating when you'll arrive at your desination, knowing how long the trip is, takes some basic math.

And I would agree with you. I probably use math probably every day in some small way.

But I would also then argue that you use writing skills everyday as well.

Now, I admit, I know people who don't write very often, let alone every day. And yes, it's possible to get through life without learning to write coherent prose. Just as it's possible to get through life without algebra.

But there's something that the Custom Writing representative is missing here in the statement that students do now need to know how to write essays. It's the same thing I constantly harp on to my students, though I know I don't sell all of them on the idea.

"Writing" is not just about putting words on paper.

Thinking that writing an essay is about stringing together sentences and nothing more employs a very limited idea of what writing is about. Consider the OED's definition of writing: "The action of one who writes, in various senses; the penning or forming of letters or words; the using of written characters for purposes of record, transmission of ideas, etc."

The definition has three elements: the first identifies writing as an action, while the second describes the medium in which this action takes place. The third and openended element, is the one that writing teachers like myself are most interested in conveying to our students.

The transmission of ideas is the primary purpose of postsecondary writing assignments. It's also the most inclusive element in the definition, since the transmission of ideas can take many forms and can include any subject. When you think of writing as the transmission of ideas, then you hit right on the money what writing classes in postsecondary institutions are trying to teach - the ability to organize your thoughts on a particular topic into a clear transmission of those thoughts and ideas.

Being able to clearly communicate your ideas to other people is not something just required of the humanities set. Clear communication, which relies of course on critical thinking about that topic and the best method for communicating it, is required in most human endeavours that involve more than one person.

If you cannot clearly communicate your ideas to other team members, to other computer programmers or other mathematicians (to use the example from above), then you will be less successful at your job than someone who can.

This is what writing classes are designed to teach. Having students write essays is less about whether they know grammar and spelling (though problems in these areas can muddy up the meaning of what you're trying to convey), and more about whether they can think about a topic, and then arrange those thoughts in a way that makes it possible for a reader to understand what they are thinking.

This ability does not even need to be demonstrated through the putting of words on paper. This ability can be developed verbally or even visually, but the ability to arrange one's thoughts with an audience in mind in order to communicate with them is absolutely essential to most of the jobs that require any kind of postsecondary training simply because of the nature of human work and collaboration.

I can only assume it's sheer ignorance of the goals of writing programs that could lead someone to think of them as a complete waste of time and irrelevant to certain classes of students.

But then again, I'm a writing teacher, so I think these things are important. And I'll do my damnedest to show my students why it is important to them as well. Organizations like Custom Writing rob students of the opportunity to develop a skill they will need, even in the most technically oriented of jobs.

On not knowing what's in my own mind

The long weekend has finally given me the opportunity to play catch-up in my teaching prep and in my elearning work so that I have some time to dedicate to the dissertation.

I've been fairly faithful in my New Year's resolution to think/read/write about the dissertation for at least 15 minutes a day, which has been useful in keeping my mind in dissertation mode, but you can't write a dissertation without dedicating some serious and contiguous time to working on it. So now that I have more than 15 minutes to spare every day, I've been taking advantage of it.

One of the tasks on my to do list was to map out in detail all the sections of the dissertation. Not just the chapters, which have been described in the prospectus, but the details within the chapters, section by section, or topic by topic. The plan, after mapping out this detail, is then to read what I need to write a single section, write it, then move on to the next one.

My hope is that in this way I will make the dissertation manageable, because it is big by anyone's standards, and could easily become even bigger. The idea is that unlike what I've been doing so far, which is reading a lot with less writing, I'll be reading exactly what I need, when I need to read it, and then writing the necessary section.

Funny thing is, that when I sat down to map all the sections, some of the chapters that I thought would be the easiest ones to map out, have proved the most difficult. And one chapter for which I had my doubts (and my committee expressed the same), turned out to have real justification for its existence once I sat down and filled in the details of what I wanted to talk about in that chapter.

Strange to think that what I thought was in my head, was not the same as what came out when I started to write it down.

I keep telling my writing students this - heck, I told them that just this week - and yet sometimes I forget it myself. Sometimes writing really is the only way to complete the thought process and to know what's actually in your own mind!

The limits of multi-tasking

Most people if you ask them will tell you they're good at multitasking. Most people will also tell you that they are better than average drivers, which of course is a statistical impossibility since at least some of those people who think they are good drivers aren't.

So, most people will tell you they think they're pretty good at multitasking.

I think for the most part I do okay at it. I have met people who cannot deal with more than one task at a time, or who become overwhelmed by multiple tasks at an earlier stage than I do. But I know I'm not superwoman.

Why does that word look funny? Shouldn't women be able to lay claim to super power as well? Perhaps Übermensch (without all that nihilism) would be a better word since it isn't gender specific, just referring to humans...

Anyway, I'm no Übermensch. But I think I've figured out one of the secrets of multitasking: you can get a lot done when it's something you've done before.

When you've done something before, you have two advantages over someone who has never done that task before: you know how long each step of it will (should) take, and your body remembers what it feels like to do that task.

Think about when you learned to ride a bike, or drive a car, or even tie your shoes. The first few times you did each of those things, it required a lot of concentration. When you learned to ride a bike, you were tempted to look at your feet on the pedals instead of where you were going because you were concentrating so hard. When you learned to drive a car, your parents probably made you turn to radio off so it wouldn't distract you. When you learned to tie your shoes, you concentrated on the task (and perhaps your tongue found its way out of the side of your mouth as you concentrated on learning how to tie your shoes... of maybe that was just me!)

When those tasks were unfamiliar, you spent a lot of mental and even physical energy learning them, but once they became familiar, you stopped thinking about them. When was the last time you thought about bunny ears, or over around and through?

But while you learn, it takes a lot of mental energy. If you're doing many activities at the same time that you've done before, you'll use much less mental energy than concentrating on trying to perform a new task.

The other advantage in multitasking things you've done before is that you know how much time everything takes. Think of the first time you tried to cook a dinner that had multiple dishes. You probably had some of the food ready far earlier than needed and were impatiently waiting for something else to cook. (Or again, maybe that was just me!) But after you've done it a few times, you know exactly when you need to start everything in order to have it on the table when you want to serve it.

(I will admit I consistently underestimate how long it will take me to cut fruit. Don't know why, but if you come over to my place for food and it's not ready, look for the fruit plate - that's what threw me off - everytime.)

I've been exhausted lately and trying to figure out why, because I've been getting enough sleep, exercise, food etc.

Then I realized - I've been doing quite a few "new" things lately, and simultaneously, and I think that's why my brain and body are rebelling. Too much overload. I'm teaching two courses at a new school, one of which is a course I've never taught before, and both require new preps to match the objectives at this particular school. We're also trying to buy a house - and we've had some hiccoughs. And we're beginning a new elearning project - one that's really far beyond any expertise that I have - I've been talking to lots of engineers and architects for the project, and they speak a language that's unfamiliar to me.

So I've reached the limits of my multi-tasking. My brain and body need a break from all these new experiences, or at the very least, it needs a lot fewer of them. I don't really see when that will happen, but until then, my ability to do multiple things at one time will be compromised.

Abandoned

This week's Piled Higher and Deeper pretty much sums up how I feel right now.

A more innocent stem cell line

Japanese Researchers at Kyoto University recently announced progress in creating stem cells from adult somatic cells. Stem cells are the earliest types of cells in our bodies and they are valuable to researchers because they have the ability to become different kinds of cells. A liver cell when it reproduces will always produce another liver cell, but a stem cell can produce a liver cell, or a skin cell, or a neuron. Because stem cells are precursors to other kinds of cells, they disappear in the body in very early stages of gestation, so to get new stem cells, they must be harvested from fetuses. That's where the ethics of stem cell research comes in.

But if the researchers are able to convert mature cells back into stem cells, this harvesting will not be necessary and the restrictions that limit harvesting will no longer continue to have an effect on how researchers can obtain and work with stem cells.

Why am I interested in this? Well, in part because a shift in the issues around stem cell research will likely occur if there is no longer an ethical debate about the source of stem cells.

But stem cell researchers who are enthusiastic about the whole field propose that stem cells will have wide application within medicine, including radical rearrangements of our original cellular composition by reprogramming cells to improve them. That would then shift the debate about stem cell research squarely into the question of how much modification a human body can undergo without losing its claim to that identity. And that's one of the questions posed by the technologies that I'm writing about.

It will be interesting to see if this development turns out to be as good as it sounds, or if it's like cold fusion and other 'developments' that have turned out to be disappointing after the hype. But if it does turn out to be replicable, then I'll be interested to see if it shifts the debate surrounding stem cell research the way I think it will.

Boy, is it hot here....

How hot is it?

It's sooooo hot....


Only in Canada, eh?

Redux

Part of those zillion and one things to do lately has been house hunting related stuff. Yep, we're hoping to buy a house. I say hoping because I'm starting to lose hope.

Being out of town made the whole want-to-make-an-offer thing really difficult, but we managed to put together an offer and submitted it earlier this week. We gave them 24 hours to consider it. In the 21st hour, our agent called to say that the sellers had pulled the house from the market. Apparently the job transfer had fallen through so they won't be moving.

I know the advice is not to get your heart set on a house before you've closed, but I admit, I was starting to really get to like this house.

Now it's gone, as are our #2 and #3 picks.

So we're back to square one. And right now, the pickings look pretty slim. It's disappointing for sure.

Wow!

Exhausted. Many things going on. Many different things.

For the first time in a very long time, I'm having difficulty ranking my to-do list because it's all on the "A" list of urgent AND important. Strange feeling. Especially because it's just the last 48 hours and will probably only last another 24. But still a very strange experience for me to not know how to prioritize these three days...

Travellin'

Returning to Boston has felt strange every time (this is the third) and I can't quite figure out why. The first time it felt very strange, and I chalked it up to being the first time. But even this time it feels weird.

Normally I'd guess that it was because I lived here and now am visiting, and the dissonance between 'living here' mode and 'visiting here' mode is too large. But then I realized that I never felt that kind of dissonance when we would return to Calgary to visit while we were living here. Returning to Calgary was always very comfortable, like slipping on a favorite shirt that you haven't worn for a long time. Returning to Boston is more like slipping on a pair of 4 inch heels. Not as comfortable, and you're acutely aware of them at every moment.

There is the possibility that right now I'm just feeling sour over a meeting that didn't go as I had hoped, and that's why I feel weird...

But I've gotten a couple of things done, seen some friends, and I'm looking forward to visiting Cape Cod tomorrow, since I've never been there before. I still have a couple of friends I'm trying to connect with, and I hope it works out. But if it doesn't, I'll just have to catch them the next time.

But it's still a very strange feeling being here - not quite vacation, not quite home.

The lighter side of working the tourism industry in Alberta

It will be a busy day getting ready for a trip to Boston today, and during the trip posting might be light, so I thought I'd leave you with this amusing post, courtesy of a good friend and longtime reader.

All Time Dumbest Questions Asked By Banff Park Tourists

Yes, they're ALL TRUE as heard at the information kiosks
manned by Parks Canada staff!

1. How do the elk know they're supposed to cross at the "Elk Crossing" signs?
2. At what elevation does an elk become a moose?
3. Tourist: "How do you pronounce 'Elk'?"
Park Information Staff: "'Elk.'"
Tourist: "Oh."
4. Are the bears with collars tame?
5. Is there anywhere I can see the bears pose?
6. Is it okay to keep an open bag of bacon on the picnic table, or should I store it in my tent?
7. Where can I find Alpine Flamingos?
8. I saw an animal on the way to Banff today -- could you tell me what it was?
9. Are there birds in Canada?
10. Did I miss the turn off for Canada?
11. Where does Alberta end and Canada begin?
12. Do you have a map of the State of Jasper?
13. Is this the part of Canada that speaks French, or is that Saskatchewan?
14. If I go to British Columbia, do I have to go through Ontario?
15. Which is the way to the Columbia Rice fields?
16. How far is Banff from Canada?
17. What's the best way to see Canada in a day?
18. Do they search you at the B.C. border?
19. When we enter British Columbia, do we have to convert our money to British pounds?
20. Where can I buy a raccoon hat? ALL Canadians own one, don't they?
21. Are there phones in Banff?
22. So it's eight kilometers away... is that in miles?
23. We're on the decibel system, you know.
24. Where can I get my husband really, REALLY, lost??
25. Is that two kilometers by foot or by car?
26. Don't you Canadians know anything?
27. Where do you put the animals at night?
28. Tourist: "How do you get your lakes so blue?"
Park staff: "We take the water out in the winter and paint
the bottom."
Tourist: "Oh!"

It's stampede time!

So we went to the Stampede today. First time I'd gone in probably six years and I would guess only the fourth time I've ever gone. Stampeding is an expensive proposition, and when the kids were young, there wasn't much for them to do. But the day also saw a couple of firsts. I attended my first stampede breakfast held on the grounds itself (Native Calgarians find it pretty hard to avoid some kind of invitation to a stampede breakfast of any sort - there's so many - but most of them take place in other parts of the city). It was also the first time I saw a rodeo, which was kinda neat, but ranks up there with the time I watched a bullfight. Interesting, but not the kind of thing I'm going to pay for a second time. And I bought myself my first ever cowgirl hat. I've owned boots for years - very comfy things - but never had a hat. Guess now I'm fully outfitted!

If you've been to the Calgary stampede before, there's not much to say. If you haven't, well, it's hard to describe in just a few words. It's part midway, part rodeo, part agricultural show, part place where old people spend the day looking at all the vehicles, RVs, and houses that you can buy lottery tickets for. It's certainly much more diverse than the agricultural show that was held in the city I grew up in, but after Universal Studios and Six Flags, the kids found the midway much more disappointing than they remembered it.

So that's how I spent my day. Eating free food, paying way too much for a few midway rides, and trying to avoid the exhaustion, sunburn, and heat stroke that so often accompany a trip to the Stampede. I'm happy to say I managed to avoid all of them.

Running into the wind

I was running into the wind for part of my run today and it reminded me of a metaphor I came across while reading Privilege: A Reader. I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but I'll paraphrse:

For people coming from unprivileged positions, running always feels like running into the wind. You're well aware of the wind, and you have to work hard at making progress. It often feels like you expend a lot of energy without actually moving forward. For people in privileged positions, running always feels like the wind is at your back. The running feels easy and you don't even notice the wind helping you along. It feels like it's all you and it feels good.

That got me thinking about my own position vis a vis privilege. Sometimes I am in privileged categories. Sometimes I am not.

I'm sure that I don't notice how easy it is as a white person to go places, to be heard, to be accepted, or even recognized. Certainly walking into a business, an office, a classroom, an English department, the post office, a public park, or any other myriad places don't cause me to pause for a moment. I never wonder if I will be accepted, if I will be able to conduct business, or if I will meet with a racist who will ignore me, not take me seriously, or even insult me.

I know I take these things for granted. I know how blind I am to how my experience is different than for others because friends have told me they don't experience the world the same way I do. When I have a rude waitress, I assume she's just rude to everyone. It doesn't occur to me that she might just be being rude to me because of the way I look.

But I have friends who wonder about it all the time. Because they don't look like me. And they have had rude waitresses who were only rude to them. It really makes you think when you're confronted with someone else's experience like that. But it's also very easy to forget those things when the wind is at your back and you feel like everything's fine.

The one thing that does remind me that the wind isn't always at my back is my gender. Although as a white woman, my colour doesn't affect the way people interact with me (for the most part anyway), my gender sometimes has, and that's when I really have gotten a taste of running into the wind.

There are two times that really stand out in my mind when I think about having problems getting things done, getting my voice heard, as a woman. One happened just a few months ago. I was introduced through work to a subject matter expert who was going to provide us with some content for a course. During our initial meeting, I had a great deal of difficulty making and holding eye contact with him. At first I thought it was a cultural effect, or perhaps because I was the new person in the room. But then the second time we met, I had to reintroduce myself because he had forgotten my name.

Now I've got a bad memory for names - not faces so much - but certainly names, so I can understand lapses. Problem is, he didn't have any problem remembering all the men's names at that meeting. I still didn't think much of it until the third time we met. I had exchanged emails with this man several times, met him twice, and now we were scheduled to meet at an office to do some work. We both approached the (locked) office at the appointed time. He turned to me, without an ounce of recognition in his face and said, "Do you know when this office opens? I'm supposed to meet some people here". I responded that I too was supposed to be here and introduced myself for the third time. He didn't seem the least embarassed that he hadn't recognized me.

I felt absolutely invisible at that point. In fact, I wished I was invisible and didn't have to go through with the rest of the meeting. But then I got angry after we went inside and started working, only to find that he hadn't read the document I'd sent him ahead of time so that he could be prepared. He hadn't bothered to learn my name, and he hadn't bothered to read the document I'd created that he needed for the meeting. We spent two hours together that day. I wonder if he'll remember me when we meet next time?

The other really distinctive time was a double whammy - two men ignoring me for the price of one!

I was serving as chairperson of a residents council and we had decided we wanted to erect a new playground for the kids in the area. This was going to be a big undertaking; we had to raise money, and we had to get all kinds of permissions from various interested parties. It was a bigger project than we'd ever undertaken before, so it required a lot of planning.

One of the first steps was to get some permissions. I contacted the appropriate gentleman and left a voice mail message. And then a while later I left another. And another. And another. I even popped in unannounced at his workplace to try to catch him. No luck. Reporting my failure to gain permission back to the council, I was told this wasn't surprising because this man didn't like talking to women.

The council secretary called him, got a coffee date within a week and permission during that initial meeting. The secretary was a man.

I was angry. But we had our permission.

Next step was to generate funding. We had already received two generous donations, but we still needed to do some fundraising and throw our own money into the pot as well. During one meeting, we discussed our current financial situation as well as fundraising options. We knew we'd been running a surplus for the last few years, so we made a motion requiring the treasurer to provide a report on how much surplus we had.

During the meeting the next month, we anticipated a report from the treasurer. He refused to give it. I was shocked. I asked if he had misunderstood the motion of the previous month. He replied that he had not. But he did not feel that he should reveal how much surplus we had. He did not think we would be satisfied with spending just the surplus but that we would dip into the contingency fund as well. The council as a whole reassured him we knew the importance of the contingency fund and would not dip into it, and re-stated the request, asking for the report the next month.

Well, next month came and we awaited the report. I really had thought that the previous month had simply been a misunderstanding, and with the entire council reaffirming their desire for a report, it would be produced. It was not. The treasurer again refused. This time it got personal. He said he would not produce a report if I was the chairperson, suggesting that if the secretary or one of the other male members of the council were chair, he would produce it.

---

It's a very frustrating feeling to know that you're smart, capable, and doing a fairly good job in this volunteer position but that someone else thinks you cannot possibly understand accounting principles simply because of your gender. It's as if the person who discounts you because of your gender is lying, saying things about you that aren't true, and in a sense, when someone says you can't do something because of your gender, even though you know yourself capable of it, it is like a lie.

But it's mostly frustrating because you know there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot reason with a person who is prejudiced, particularly if they are prejudiced against you, because they won't listen to you. You have nothing important to say. In this case, it also disrespected everyone else on the council and in the community who voted and said, "yes, she's capable of doing this job".

It's hard to describe how horrible it feels. In this case, I knew he was wrong. And there was some consolation in that. But it still rocks your core sense of who you are, this realization that some people can't see past the surface.

I've probably been lucky in having very few experiences like that. But if you ran into the same prejudice time and time again, when it seems that everyone is telling you the same thing... that you're not capable, or not trustworthy, or invisible... well, wouldn't you just start believing it after a while? If you think so highly of yourself but everyone else around you seems to disagree, wouldn't you start to doubt yourself? Might you not start to believe that what all those people are saying must be true?

That's the danger of continuing to let people struggle and run into the wind. Because running into the wind is hard. And if it never let up, if you never get the chance to feel yourself running under your own steam, never get to see how good you can do without being encumbered by the wind, you'd just give up after a while. Why spend so much time and energy for so little gain? Collectively, we lose a little everytime someone drops out of the race.

That's why every time I hear someone complain about reverse discrimination, I don't worry too much. Sure, any kind of discrimination is bad. We should not encourage it. But when someone who's been running with the wind at their back suddenly turns the corner into the wind, they get a small taste of what it's like for other people. And maybe that's not a bad thing.

I'm not saying I run into the wind all of the time, or even most of the time. Mostly the wind is at my back and life seems good. But those times when the wind shifts and blasts me in the face, making it hard to make any progress are good for me. They remind me that the wind is always there, even if I don't feel it very often. We all need to run into the wind once in a while, to remind us what it feels like to do so.

The world needs more teachers

Well, maybe it doesn't need more teachers... but it certainly does need more people who recognize that not everyone was born knowing what they know. And sometimes the knowledge that other people need in order to understand your area of expertise is not the same as the knowledge you need to succeed as an expert.

This instructional design job has been pushing me to the limits of my intuition and practical sense. I've actually been grateful for my age, and my life experiences (even the less pleasant ones) in working this job because I really don't know that someone fresh out of university in their early twenties could actually do this job the way it is structured. That's because I am so frequently required to draw upon my own experiences in interpreting the material provided by experts in order to present it so that the user can understand it.

I've worked on two projects from start to finish and have started about a dozen more that are in various stages of stagnation, searches for funding, or slow and steady progress. And in pretty much every case, the information that I'm given in the beginning of the project is very sparse.

Most of the time when I create an outline for a course, I'm relying upon my own sense of what kind of information might need to be transmitted to a user. In some ways, there's an advantage in not knowing anything. As the designer, I'm in the same position at the beginning of a project as the user - usually knowing nothing of the topic - which means I've got a good idea what the user will feel like going through the course. But that doesn't make it any easier to create the course.

Sometimes however, the group or person supplying (or not supplying) me with information about the course, goes so off target that it takes me a while to realize that what they're telling me about their area of expertise is something that the user will not need. It might be a set of skills or knowledges that the expert uses everyday, and so he/she thinks the user should know about it too. But it really just muddies up the picture.

I just spent several hours figuring this out for one of our projects. The outline the client gave me for the video component of the course is poorly organized because it's not in chronological order. For someone who works there, this would not be confusing, but for me, it took a long time to figure out that the last dozen scenes they had mapped out actually belong earlier in the sequence.

You can also tell there are several "hot button" issues for employees in this organization, because they continually return to these issues in the outline, but there's no recognition that
a) the user has no interest in issues that do not affect him/her, and
b) revealing these issues and inside jokes (yes, there's some kind of joke about a sheep that I just don't get) will just tarnish their reputation with the user, which would counteract what they're trying to do in the project.

I realize it's my job to organize the content of the course for the best delivery and in the most useful manner for the user, but it really is rather astonishing how narrow some people are when contemplating what their work might look like to outsiders.

I'm willing to bet that the person who wrote the document had some senority in the organization, but frankly, I would've had a much better idea of what users need to know if they'd had the guy who was hired a week ago do it. That fresh perspective would've created a document more in tune with the average user of the program and been a far more effective tool for me in helping them create an online program that will educate users about the organization.

After all, someone took a lot of time to put together a power point presentation and a twenty page outline of the course, without thinking for a moment what the user needs to know. All the producer of this document thought about was how their work is affected by this issue. But it's the user who is the focus of the project, just as the student should be the focus of classroom pedagogy. That's what I mean by the post title - the world needs more people who can think like teachers rather than practitioners.

LATER: So I create this post out of minor frustration at a current work project. I finally muddle through an outline for the elearning component and decide to move on to working on my dissertation (yes, I know it's Friday night, why do you ask?). I'm reading up on metaphor, since part of my argument in the dissertation will be that clones and cyborgs are metaphors for other things, and I come across this passage in an interaction designer's thesis:

One of the challenges of being a designer is the difficulty of working in unfamiliar subject areas. Designers are often thrust into domains where they have little to no background knowledge. Traditionally, the way to overcome this is to utilize the help of a subject area expert. But this too can be problematic, as the expert might have too much knowledge and things that seem obvious to him or her are not as apparent to the designer.

Kinda interesting to read of someone else's similar frustration (which is a much nicer description than mine), and in a different line of work - still design, but a different kind of design. There's some solace in knowing other designers often pull their hair out too!

Argh! the agony!

For someone who will be required to write for the rest of her career, I really dislike the writing process sometimes! Some days, it's really, really hard to get words down on paper.

I'm furiously trying to finish that chapter I've been asked to submit. It's not due till the end of the summer, but I want to have it ready and sent to my advisor so she can read it and give me some feedback next week when I (hopefully) see her. But right now, just trying to organize my thoughts is really difficult.

In fact, it's more accurate to say that I have a hard time thinking, rather than a hard time writing. Writing it easy. Writing intelligent, well thought-out arguments, that's the hard part! Ugh...

Who knows how long this will last?

Just popping in to post what's been going on. Don't know how long my internet connection will last though...

On Friday we had a wicked thunderstorm that knocked out our internet. The company had to repair it; by Saturday, all our neighbors had access but we still didn't so we booked a repair appointment. The appointment isn't till Friday, but the internet has been sporadically working since last night.

Sporadic service is less annoying than no service. But since this will be the 4th - 4th! - time since September (yes, that's only 10 months) that we've had someone have to come fix it, I'm getting pretty annoyed overall.

So posting will likely also be sporadic...

This weekend felt like an actual weekend, you know where people do things other than read books and sit in front of a computer all weekend! We went house shopping on Saturday - an eyeopener and very interesting first-time experience for me!

On Sunday we had a really nice Canada Day barbecue - smaller turnout than last year, but entirely different crowd, so not surprising. And it was still a really nice day (well, except for the perpetual wind here in Little City on the Prairie - can't wait till we move into Big City on the Prairie!)

Monday we went hiking up Castle Mountain. A pretty big elevation gain for the distance, so we all pushed ourselves and are a little sore now. But gorgeous views at the top. I'll try to post photos if the internet stays on.

You know, two weeks ago when we lost the internet, I was complaining to a friend who pointed out that it's actually nice to do without the connection sometimes. I agree that it's nice to be disconnected. But I do resent that I don't have a choice over when I'm connected and when I'm not. That's what's so annoying about this whole thing. So keep your fingers crossed for me that stays working, okay?

Flying Time

Despite the best of intentions, it seems everytime I make a schedule for accomplishing work, I find it derailed in one way or another.

The derailment this time is a good thing. It's been about three weeks since I received an invitation to submit a book chapter for a new edited collection. I've been working furiously on it, and have actually made some good progress.

But it means I am now behind on the schedule I set for myself at the beginning of spring. It's not a bad thing, just annoying. Mostly because it seems that this happens every time I make a schedule.

And we're planning on moving this summer, so I'll get even less done as we search and then move. So schedules will have to fly out the window for the next few months.

I do hope this is the last time I have to suspend my reading, at least for a while...

Okay, this got a lot longer than it was supposed to

I recently learned that a friend and colleague has decided to quit graduate school. It was a bit of a shock at first, but after reading his explanation, I understand it.

I have certainly felt much the same way about graduate school. I also used to love to read. But graduate school isn't about literature as much as it is about the analysis of literature. Which sometimes takes you very far afield from literature.

His escape from the ivory tower made me question why I too haven't escaped. Why did I stay under the same circumstances? And then I realized that maybe they weren't the same circumstances. And that some of the things that I thought were handicaps, or negatives in my academic career, might actually have kept me at it.

There are similarities in our stories, but also differences, and in some ways I'm grateful to those differences because they allowed me to get through the rough spots.

Like my friend, I read voraciously as a kid. Loved reading. Not always high quality stuff. But I read a LOT! I did other stuff too, clubs, music lessons, painting and such, but reading was my first love.

When I started having kids, I certainly read a lot less. When they were young, I was usually just tired after they went to bed. And my hopes of staying home with them and raising them were quickly dashed with cold water when the hard reality of only one income squeezed us uncomfortably. So working while having little kids in the house made reading secondary. I chose to read shorter things - short stories, magazines, or even do activities that could be over in a half hour or hour, like crossword puzzles, instead of picking up novels.

But as I worked, I came to realize that the best I could do in the field I was working in was make district manager after a decade or so, and still only pull in about $30K. And I REALLY, REALLY, didn't want to be district manager. I couldn't imagine spending my life doing that. Let alone for the pittance that it would pay.

So I went back to school. At 29 I walked into my first university classroom.

That was a shock, and probably subject for a whole other blog post. And I went through a lot a changing ideas about what I wanted out of the university experience. One thing I was sure though, was that I wanted a degree that would be useful. English literature was the last thing on my mind.

But then I took an elective: The novel and the Short Story with a wonderful professor, who has since died (to the loss of all those students who will never study with him), but it re-awoke that love of literature. And I figured out a way to get an English degree and a Biology degree at the same time, so I felt justified in catering to my love while still earning a "useful" degree.

I took biology because I started considering a medical career. But then I realized I didn't want to go into medicine. It's not that I didn't want to be a doctor. I think I would've liked that. I think I would've even been good at it. I even think I *might* even have been accepted to one of the lower tier medical schools.

What I didn't want was the medical education though. I knew it would require more time and commitment than my undergrad, even beyond what earning two degrees concurrently required. And I wasn't willing to do it. I lived in the family housing on campus, and I watched my neighbor - single mom of three kids, just like me - do it. Yep, she was doing medical school. But it was brutal on that family. And she had a much more extensive support system than I did. I just couldn't muster the energy I imagined myself needing in the same position.

So I gave in to my love and went on to graduate school in English. And I loved it. I knew from the moment I began the Master's, that I wanted to spend my life reading and writing about literature.

I will admit now, that part of my motivation to enter graduate school had nothing at all to do with a love of literature. It had to do with being a newly divorced mother of three elementary school kids with an ex-husband who was beginning to make it clear that he had no intention of paying the child support he owed. I had little confidence that I could earn enough right at that time, to support those kids. I knew I could try. But I also knew that if I was in graduate school, I could supplement my earnings with student loans if I needed them. (I ended up with assistantships instead, but it was still extra cash that I sorely needed)

Perhaps that's a touch sacriligeous. To have financial considerations be part of my choice to follow this career path. It wasn't all of it of course, but it was part of the consideration. But once I was in, I knew this is what I wanted.

(And I actually ended up making more at my job the second year of my Master's than I ever thought possible, so I guess it was an unnecessary worry...)

The Doctoral program was a whole different experience from the Master's though.

My friend, the one who left academia, in part because grad school in English is more about the theory than the literature, went to a really good school. The kind of school I don't think I would've made it into. The kind where there are professors who people really want to work with (at least, I would've loved to work with a few of them). I was happy for him when he got in, but also a bit jealous.

See, this dissertation that I'm doing on Cyborgs and Clones is probably the furthest you can get from what I wanted when I entered my program. I came to my program with a clear idea of two areas of study I wanted to undertake.

I study neither of them now. And the transition from what I wanted at first, to now, has been really hard at times.

One area I don't study because the department did not offer courses during my coursework years that would allow me to study it. The other, I was told I really wasn't qualified for.

Those were both hard blows that first year. And then when I failed the prelims, I really questioned what I was doing in a program that wasn't offering me what I wanted, and really didn't think I could manage what they were offering.

We lost half our class that year too - one transferred out, and the other dropped out, leaving just two of us.

But dropping out wasn't an option. I was in a foreign country on a student visa. If I dropped out, I wouldn't be able to work. And I was the one with the teaching assistantship. Without my income we'd be living entirely off loans. And we wouldn't be able to do that.

It was do or die. If I flunked out or dropped out, we'd have to admit defeat and head home. And that would derail my husband's career too. I couldn't do that to him. And I didn't want to go home having failed to do what I set out to do. So I studied, and passed the prelims, and searched around for a new area of study.

Obviously I found it, but if I hadn't been forced to stay in the program, I wonder if I would've? I never really entertained the option of not staying because it just wasn't an option. But I wonder if it had been an option, would I have stayed?

Right now, I can't imagine not doing what I am doing. I'm loving the research and even the torturousness of drafting and redrafting and redrafting yet again to get the prospectus approved. But I can't imagine not doing it.

So maybe those life circumstances were benefits for me because in the long run they forced me to keep going through the rough spots. And now I'm in a place where I'm happy to be.

Well, either that, or I'm just too stubborn to realize I should've got out a long time ago! But I'd like to think this is where I should be...

Big soccer weekend

This weekend has been filled with soccer. Oldest daughter had a game on Friday and this weekend is middle daughter's tournament weekend. Their team won 2 and tied 1 game so far, so as they go into the medal rounds, we're figuring they'll be playing in the gold round. Not sure who they'll be playing, but we'll know in an hour when the game starts.

Even if they don't make gold, they've really worked well as a team, and I've seen a lot of improvement in middle daughter's play.

She's made herself a valuable member of the team, and they all seem to get along quite well, so I'm ready to declare the season a success regardless of how this game turns out.

UPDATE: They won silver. The medal round game was a tough one against a team that they've only played once before because most of their games against them were rained/snowed out. They played hard, but lost the game.

Congrats on a silver medal finish! and a well played season!

I knew this moment might come

So, I send off what I *hope* will be the final version of the prospectus yesterday morning. In the afternoon mail a book arrived. It's a book that was recommended to me for a non-dissertation related project.

But as I read the introduction to the book, I realize the book is doing much the same thing as I intend to do in the dissertation.

The sensation produced by that realization is certainly not pleasant. Sinking-feeling-in-your-stomach is one way of describing it. The world-tilting-on-its-axis might be a bit over dramatic, but it could serviceably be another.

I know this is a point that probably every doctoral student hits at some point in the research stage - finding someone else who has already done almost exactly what you want to do. My first thought actually had nothing to do with the dissertation itself though. My first thought was actually, "Now I'll have an even harder time publishing the book"

Yes, that's a long, long way away, but if I'm going to be honest, it was the first thought. After all, the expectation is that you will produce a book shortly after finishing the PhD, and you need to do so to gain tenure. The most logical material for a book is a revision of the dissertation, after all, you spent years researching and putting it together, it's the most logical candidate for book material.

After my initial distress at reading what this scholar produced (and just produced - it was published this year), slowly lessened, and I began to try to find the points of difference between what I'm trying to do and what she has done.

I discover there are several points of difference. Though even as I do so, I can't help but admire her book for its polished presentation of some of the same arguments I'm trying to formulate. My attempts look so clumsy and amateurish compared to their articulation in this book. But that just makes me anxious again, and I return to trying to find differences.

And there are differences. Though the major difference between our projects was really only going to be the subject of one chapter of my dissertation. I'm now thinking it wouldn't hurt to emphasize it more throughout the dissertation.

Thank goodness a prospectus is just that - a proposed project - and not written in stone!

Now that the internet's back up....

Lost our internet signal for four days, which seemed like an exceedingly long time.

But now that we have it again, I just sent off the final version of my prospectus. (I've already written most of a chapter, but at least now the prospectus is approved!)

Woohoo! I think I'll go celebrate with a couple of Coronas and maybe fire up the firepit if the mosquitos aren't too bad...

Yes, please do go away

It just started raining as I sat down in front of my computer. I activated the shuffle on my player. Terence Trent D'Arby's Rain started. How fitting.

We've already had more rain than this month than is usual for all of June (in fact, I think we had more in the first week). Makes everything a lovely green, but also brings the threat of flooding since the snow cap isn't finished melting yet.

Maybe I'm not part of the club yet...

Just when I think that I'm feeling like a scholar (and an erudite one at that), I get these moments when I panic that everyone will see right through me for the sham that I am. I know these feelings are normal, given my status as scholar-in-training, but they aren't any more pleasant as a result.

I just sent off what I hope will be the final draft of my dissertation prospectus today. Yes, I know it should've been completed ages ago. The first draft was. I actually wrote the first draft over a year ago. But since then I've waited a long time while each person looked at it and then responded. So it's taken forever.

I'm really hoping it meets with approval and I can get to what I really want, writing the dissertation itself.

But before then, I've been asked to submit a chapter for an edited collection on Octavia Butler. It's exciting, but also very scary, because I want it to be great. But I've only got two months to get it done, and if I want my advisor to look at it and respond, I've got much less than two months.

So the pressure's on. Look good. Do it in only a few weeks. Yikes!

Excellent vocabulary.

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.

How's Your Vocabulary?

Soliciting my readers' help

So, I've got a question for you - my boss is considering submitting a project for funding tentatively entitled Urban Living: Expectation Management.


The project would be directed at young people coming to a large city for the first time. It would provide tips and information about how things in a city might be different than in a smaller community. Our client often serves youth who come from very small and remote communities (think no sidewalks, traffic lights, shopping malls etc.) Obviously if you've ever moved between rural/small town and large city, you might even have some first hand experience on this.

If you were to give one (or more) tip(s) to someone coming from a really remote and small community to a big city, what would you think was important to mention?

Tough reading

I've been reading two books this week that I'm finding particularly difficult. But for different reasons.

The first, Kevin Warwick's I, Cyborg, is really hard going because the man's arrogance screams through the pages, and you have to wade through it to get at the actual science being described.

All I can wonder is, if this man is like this in writing, what is he like in real life???

The other book I'm having trouble with is also making me disappointed, because I hoped to find some good arguments in it.

Francis Fukuyama's Our Posthuman Future tackles the challenges genetic engineering is creating for public policy. This should be good. It should balance the pro-technology writing of the scientists I've been reading lately. I want to hear from someone not involved in the science about the kinds of issues that we should be keeping in mind while contemplating the social effects of these kinds of technologies.

Fukuyama should be it. But the book is sorely lacking in actual arguments. Which is incredibly disappointing.

Now I will admit that I knew before I picked up the book that I probably would not agree politically or philosophically with Mr. Fukuyama. But I had really hoped to find some arguments worth thinking about, perhaps challenging my beliefs, and spurring me to think about and reformulate my own thinking about what posthumanism might look like, and whether we want to embrace it or fear it.

Some of the arguments I just found unbelievable, mostly because they were presented as statements without examples of how he got to that statement in the first place. For example, on pps 78-9 he states that genetic engineering will not change human nature because "modifying, eliminating, or adding to those alleles on a small scale will change an individual's patrimony but not the human race's. A handful of rich people genetically modifying their children for greater height or intelligence would have no effect on species-typical height or IQ". Okay, I buy that. Certainly one of the criticisms of genetic engineering is that only the rich will benefit from it and the divide between rich and poor will become larger as it also means it is a divide between engineered and not-engineered. (think de-gene-rates in Gattaca)

Then, only a few pages later, he claims that the state would make technology available to all its citizens, not just for the rich to prevent the creation of a two-tiered human species. What?!! Can anyone out there see the American government (all of Fukuyama's examples are based on an American model of science and government) funding genetic engineering for the poorest of its citizens? It doesn't even fund basic health care right now! Why would it fund enhancements?

He also argues that complex behaviors are influenced by large number of genes - an argument that most scientists adhere to. It's hard to imagine that there is only one gene for intelligence, for example, or athletic ability. That's pretty much a given for most geneticists. But then, in order to throw a scare into his readers, he throws out the proposition that we may find complex behaviors controlled by simple genetic interventions!

While it's true there's no telling what we'll discover as we go along, this statement is highly unlikely to become a reality, yet he introduces it as a means of making the point that the rich could easily change complex behaviors with simple (but presumably expensive) genetic interventions.

Overall, the arguments slip and slide around a lot in this book. Most annoying is Fukuyama's habit in the first half of the book of saying things about how a particular technology will affect policy making, but not saying how. I was looking forward to the second half of the book, hoping it would outline some suggestions for policy creation, but it was mostly just a description of existing policy. Interesting, but certainly not as helpful as if he had put his money where his mouth was and actually made some suggestions... but he does have a political career to think of as well, so I guess I wasn't really surprised...

All I know is I was disappointed by the book which held so much promise of good counterarguments to much of the other material I've been reading lately.

Science fiction or science fact?

According to the news in the last few days, a patent has been filed for the basic genes to create life - not genetic engineering, the tinkering of existing life forms by adding/subtracting/changing genes, but genetic synthesis, designing and creating an organism from scratch.

So here as I'm reading bioethicists debating the morality of creating life through what we know of genomics, there's a patent being filed for that very thing.

As I sit here in my office, far removed from biotechnology hubs, I wonder what the effect of this patent application will be - will it get the public talking about genetics, sparking a debate and various regulatory agencies' efforts to produce guidelines for future research? Or will this news story slip back down into oblivion after this brief blip across the radar screen, opening the possibility that a single company will own the patent to life?

Meanwhile, James Watson - the discoverer of the DNA helix - has had his entire genome mapped.

Certainly the million dollar price tag won't have people popping down to the local gene bank to check out a new love interest, as they did in Gattaca, but it's certainly an interesting development arising out of the Human Genome Project.

It looks like science fiction is becoming science fact right now. And it seem to me there's far too little discussion by human beings in the aggregate about how this might affect our lives and our ownership of our own genetic maps.

Grounded

It never ceases to amaze me at how attached we can become to our habits... and the places where those habits are enacted.

Due to an injury, I've had to curtail my running in the last week. It's very disappointing because I was preparing for a long race, and was scheduled to complete a much shorter one last weekend. Not only will I not be ready for the longer race, but I couldn't even participate in the short one.


But was surprises me is how much I'm reminded of this everyday.

I don't think I'd realized how big a part of my life running had become. I look at the weather forecast but realize that it's less important to me now than when I'm running.

I drive past road construction, noting that they've finally laid the sidewalk and my first thought is, "oh, good, I can use this run again" but then I realize I won't be doing that any time soon.

I drive past the trail running park, thinking how much I can't wait to get back to it.

I see an ad for shoes on sale, and realize there's no sense shopping for them because I don't know when I'll be using them... I just know it won't be anytime soon.

I'm trying to stay positive and just concentrate on healing, but it's hard.

On the brights side, I can still hike, so we went to Drumheller's Horseshoe Canyon last weekend. It's a little bit of wilderness in the middle of farmland, and if you don't know it's there and turn into the parking lot, you'd never even see it. But once you get to the top of the canyon, quite a vista opens up.


I don't know what I found more fascinating - the contrast of green and sand.


Or the detailed formations.


And textures.

I also bought a second hand backcountry pack, so if I can find someone who wants to go overnighting it, I'm ready!

It's the sideshow that's the most interesting

I've been half-heartedly following the Stanley Cup playoffs. It's not that I've lost interest in hockey, it's just that I can't get excited by either the Ducks or the Senators.

By far the best part of last night's game was the commentary after the second period. Commentators expected it to be interesting, and it turned out to be amusing, though Don Cherry was certainly not up to his usual flamboyance - either verbally or in haberdashery.

Mmmmm... coffee

Understanding Coffee People. I think I recognize a bit of myself in two of these coffee types. Maybe I'm transitioning between the two...

Finishing touches

We're putting the finishing touches on our two work projects that will be launched next week. It's very exciting to see a project that I began right through to the finish!

I gotta say, I'm pretty impressed with what our team put together - it's a good feeling.