Archive for May, 2009
The great thing about having friends is that sometimes they express your thoughts more accurately than you do.
I’m analyzing the situation intellectually and finding irony or amusement or a familiar aesthetic in its informational topology. But once I stop doing that, once I recognize that it’s my body that’s living this surprising disappointment, once I give up on using thinking as a barrier to feeling, wow it’s going to hurt. –Sumana
This isn’t a comment on my current state of mind; it’s more a note that when I am in pain, this post of hers is remarkably accurate, down to the phrase “shield frequencies.” I’m fascinated by my pain, my fear… and when I’m curious, I want to be aware of what I’m fascinated by. Sometimes it makes for quite a battering.
The other day I found out I’ll be rooming in the sink (a room named for the sink that it contains) this summer with Matt Ritter, the original Oliner-turned-pikan. Both of us are hyperactive. Both of us encourage the other to be excited. This dual positive feedback loop has usually been terminated by one of us having to go to class, or catch a bus, or otherwise not be in close proximity. It’s been predicted that we’ll either wear each other out or spontaneously combust in mid-July from being overly enthusiastic about everything. I’m looking forward to this! Also happy: borrowing Spang’s fire staff while she’s away this summer.
Liz came out today; we played some piano and made an apple/almond/dried-cranberry/candied-ginger salad with homemade raspberry dressing for pika’s dinner, which went over very well. Andrew is back in Nashville, and I miss him already. It’s not often that I get to hang out with these folks, and they’re good company. Mark has been back in Texas since Monday. You know someone’s your friend when you see each other for the first time in two years and immediately start arguing. Well, debating. In the challenge-thoughts-but-don’t-get-angry way.
I’m still stunned – and I think I always will be – that this having friends and being happy, feeling good thing can be normal. In one sense, it’s normal. In another sense, it’s never going to be. And sometime, probably sometime soon, I’m going to have to learn that I can go back to the way I was before, and be okay; living, maybe not thriving, but coping. That I can still handle it, being alone and overworked, and that I can consciously choose to climb back out. I don’t want to be so afraid of losing what I have that I hold on to it too tightly and end up smothering it.
Right now, I’m rather tired. (It’s interesting to note the subtle variations “tired” can have when you’re not always cranked up to 11 to drown out exhaustion all the time.) My eyes are gently fatigued, my thoughts are kind of fuzzy, the large muscles of my body feel heavier and the small ones are picking up the slack by slowly pulling into tension. I’m going to try and counteract this, go lie down, rest without sleeping for a while, and then sleep. See what that feels like. I already found out this afternoon that I still have the ability to banish tiredness at will; now I’m going to practice not using it.
Oh. And I’ve started learning how to document things. It took a while to type this post because I read it out loud first, then wrote it down. I’m not sure if it makes my writing any clearer, but it definitely slowed it down.
Time to rest. Tomorrow I will be more graceful, more reliable, and more aware. That sounds insanely corny, but it’s all actually going to be true.
*sleep!*
Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
On Saturday, I learned my pants are stronger than my knees. While herding very post-party friends back to the designated car, my left foot snagged in a pothole; the remainder of the night was spent deciding whether to limp on a sprained left ankle or a dripping right knee staunched with a torn-off section of a paper bag that had contained my breakfast scone.
Project: learn how to get bloodstains out of dress pants. These pants are magical; although my right knee is still a scab with bits of paper bag embedded in it (my knee bled through the bag, and touching the scab too much right now opens it up again), the pinstriped dress pants I wore to Suzanne’s graduation show absolutely no signs of wear. This is a better track record than what my blue jeans have.
I wonder how I would react to actually being injured. Multiple-broken-bones severity, something I can’t just brush up, ignore, and walk away from. (Then again, it takes a lot to keep me from walking away from something. Even a car crash didn’t do it.) I hope I never have to find out, but it’s something that I honestly don’t know, though I may have caught a glimpse when the RSI was at its peak.
Hm. Must take care of self.
Must also visit dry-cleaner.
Monday, May 18th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I do enjoy – and miss – the ritual of blogging just about every day. It feels a little pent up to not braindump as often, though I catch fragments in my notebook. It forces me to be okay with missing chances for introspection in exchange for more experiences to think about, which is a tradeoff I don’t often make.
Lately quite a bit of stuff has happened, and I won’t even make an attempt to make this an exhaustive account of all of them. The first one is that Olin’s 4th class graduated, marking the end of an era – Ash, Bonnie, Leslie, Boris, and the others were “the freshmen,” just as my class was “the juniors” – we composed the first full complement of students. It was good. 15-word passages (with so few students in each class, we have the time to have each senior give a short quote to be read as they walk across the stage, and still have a short Commencemet) included a rickroll, Jonathan Coulton lyrics, and a marriage proposal (congratulations, Jenn and Gui!)
A good number of my friends are married now, or will soon be. This month, Ben and Becky tie the knot. Over the summer, Amanda. Then in September (on Talk Like A Pirate Day), Bonnie and Matt. There are more engaged and married couples from Olin, and even some from high school; some of my friends have children, even. (Meanwhile, my grandmother calls me on my 23rd birthday and tries to convince me to start dating.) It’s… odd. I’m not used to having friends get married; I’m used to knowing people who are married, or people who perhaps are dating, but watching friends make the transition into a relationship that’s supposed to be for life and may eventually beget offspring is a total phase shift. How do you react, except with “congratulations!” and much happiness and a complete lack of knowledge of what this all is supposed to mean about what’s going to happen?
Chris got me an IBM Model M keyboard as a birthday present! I opened the box, pressed down a single key, felt that lovely buckling click-clack spring, and exploded with glee.
I have been getting over my aversion to physical contact. (Mm, mental reprogramming.) I’ve realized I can’t work on it unless I feel completely safe in the place and company I’m with. This is very difficult, and also very rare. (It also serves me as a good gauge of how much I trust the environment I’m in.) If I’m tired, nervous, suspicious, uncomfortable, uncertain, anything like that, I’ll just hunch in and freeze up. It’s amazing to be aware of that (occasionally), how much my slouch and tension may have been formed by habitual cringing, how much I still revert to that now, how I can actually sometimes work to counteract it, or at least parts of it.
It’s also getting easier as I’m becoming more aware (I love massage therapy, even if it’s marginally painful/sore at times) of where and how my muscles should work and run – the extent to which the shoulder joint ought to be mobile, the sensation of your collarbone and shoulders and sternum and throat being anything other than the fused mass you always assumed they were supposed to be – the discovery of how to articulate and isolate things, then move them in synchrony in ways you can’t remember them moving before… RSI turned out to be an unexpectedly beneficial (and well-timed, really – better now than any other time I can imagine) blessing in opening up this world to me.
And you know what? Sometimes, physical touch feels good. Really, really good. Once/if that signal cuts through the “OH MY GOD SOMEONE IS HUGGING ME AAAAAAAAA” (etc.) noise, it is nice, and comforting, and warm, and safe, because if that cuts through the mental screaming (which I’m learning to treat as a judgment input rather than a direct control), then I really do feel safe around that person at that moment. Ah, brain reprogramming. It’s really weird.
Other people have big dreams and go for them; other people have seen the world open to them and gone exploring in it, go out of their way to care, live an awesome life. I surround myself with folks I want to be with, want to be inspired by, want to be more like, widening the circle not in a way that shuts out others, but in a way that welcomes people in. It is a fascinating way to change the world.
Ginneh and Erin are my driving heroes. Yay! And Mark is coming for breakfast in 6 hours before he flies back out to Texas (we haven’t seen each other since our graduation, and it’s wonderful to catch up after 2 years), so I probably should actually sleep. Andrew is already out cold; a reasonable amount of beer was consumed at Sunset tonight, so I’m a touch groggier than usual myself. I’ve discovered that as I appreciate drinks even more, I want to drink smaller quantities of it – as I take more time and thought to figure out the taste, even a shotglass of ale goes an awfully long way; I don’t need to down a pint. I don’t like the feeling of being inebriated, anyway. It’s a nice progression. And it means a lot more friends are going to be asked “hey, do you want to split a X?” or “can I just try a sip?” and so forth now.
It is extremely weird to have a past to look back on and think about and learn from now that seems substantial, instead of only a future to look forward to. There’s that as well, of course; we’re all still young. But more and more the future isn’t all there is. Having a past brings me more fully into the present. It’s kinda nice.
Monday, May 18th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Working for a big company* is going to be different. FedEx came today with a shiny red box; I opened it and was flooded with glossy paperwork, headphones, a window cling, and a USB stick with snazzy videos on it featuring employees from… it seemed like every continent except Antarctica. There’s an actual orientation to go to. There are departments. I’m scratching my chin and going “Oh! This must be what it feels like to have… infrastructure!”
It will be different! This is going to be an awesome learning experience.
It does not, however, prevent me from having to repeatedly explain to my family what exactly I am doing, though I think my dad’s accepted the “if they’re on the NYSE, they must be ok” argument. (“But then how do they make money?” “Support, dad.” “You mean to say there are more crazy people like you who make things for them for free?” “Sure, and sometimes they pay us too.” “And they sell the software?” “No, it’s… <insert libre/gratis explanation here>.” “But then how do they make money?”)
One of my goals this summer is to be able to explain open-source business models and what I do to my parents. If I can do that, I can explain it to anyone.
*I realize that Red Hat is not exactly massive compared to, say, IBM, but when the largest office you’ve ever worked in had 75 people, it’s definitely a “hello! minnow, meet extremely large pond!” moment.
Friday, May 15th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 4 Comments »
“What have you been working on this week?”
“Arpeggios.” I sit at the piano, bright yellow t-shirt slightly sticky from the rain.
“All right, let’s hear them. On the grid, diminished.” I begin a clumsy two-handed dance up and down, tangle the notes, and stop. “Um, I’ve, um, mostly been doing them with one hand, mostly in the up direction.”
“Ok, show me how you practiced then.” My right hand stretches out over a major C chord, soaring up, teetering on the third finger – and then my thumb sledgehammers sideways into the second octave, slamming my right elbow out as it goes. Da-da-da… WHAM-da-da… WHAM-da-da.. WHAM-da-da… a neglected pinky grasps tenously at a high C, and then it’s back down, third finger limping over the thumb. Da-da-daWHAMSPLAT-da-daWHAMSPLAT-da-daWHAMSPLAT.
We agree that teaching me how to work out fingerings for these might be a good idea.
I have a decent-sized classical repertoire… which all came pre-notated with fingerings. All I can do is cheat on pieces with fingerings requiring larger-than-Mel hands. So trying out chord inversions to experiment with different places to pass my thumb under is something new to me.
“When I play arpeggios,” says Kevin, running up and down the keyboard with a grace and ease I envy, “I try to move my elbow as little as possible. Especially when you’re playing fast, you get that extra millisecond.” My elbow continues to fly up, pinning my shoulder blade towards my ear. I grab my right elbow with my left hand and fight it as I crawl up and down on the diminished Eb, grimacing in concentration. After a while, it feels less awkward. I let go of my elbow, and my hand flies smoothly down the keyboard, starts upwards again, and rockets my elbow up to the ceiling. I mutter under my breath and grab it again.
After nearly an entire hour of working clumsily through fingerings for all the different arpeggios, I have a lot of notes and an intellectual understanding of what my hands and arms ought to be doing. The muscle memory is slower to arrive. (Keep your fingers close to the keys when passing your thumb. Turn on black keys with your 4th finger, not your 5th. Play them evenly spaced; don’t accent every third note. And so on.) It’s practice time for me. I’ll have to listen to plenty of Art Tatum for motivation. (Or maybe if I start going “CURSE YOU ART TATUM!!!” I’ll go back to listening to Monk.) This setting of muscle memory isn’t my favorite kind of work – I prefer the crazy intellectual “ooOOo, it’s math!” theory, but that’s also the imbalance that I’m trying to fix; less overthinking, more playing. And I have to learn how to love the plateau, and how to love the fundamentals.
Besides, there’s no way I’m ever going to play “Groovin’ High” at more than a poky tempo if I don’t get fingerings worked out. My current ad-hoc method involves fingers slipping and smashing into keys like panicky overgrown colts in inflatable sumo wrestler suits on a buttered ice rink and 10% more notes sounding than should actually be played. So… progress gauge: I have one.
This is fun.
In other news, I have to figure out how to get a rental car from the airport when I get to Raleigh on the 25th. I’ve never had a rental car before. (I didn’t think I was even old enough to drive a rental; apparently I was mistaken.) This will be an interesting adventure! I even get to stay at a hotel for a week! *is excited* Yes, I realize the glow of travel may wear off if I start doing it 200 days a year, but while it’s novel, I am darn well going to enjoy this.
Thursday, May 14th, 2009 | music, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Man, if LetterMeLater works as advertised, I am going to be one happy hacker. I’ve had a hard time finding a good way to send recurring emails.
Thursday, May 14th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Somewhere in between riding in Andy’s car talking about startups, brainstorming with Matt (who took me to Jessica’s Renewable Energy course design pow-wow), working on Joe’s online portfolio, being mobbed in the dining hall, geeking out with Bonnie on reading journal articles, having dinner with Chris, Liz, Nikki, and Greg, and riding back to the train in a Jeep on a beautiful clear night, I realized I was happy. Really, really happy.
And that I had been happy for… a long time. Not just excited, but actually happy – deeply content – and at the same time, I was relaxing. For the first time in my life (or at least the first time after 5th grade), I’m relaxing for an indefinite period of time and I’m… okay with that. No, thrilled with that.
If that’s the only thing I take away from the past 4 months, that time was well spent. How to be content and comfortable and energized in stillness, solitude, and self-direction.
I’m not in stillness and solitude and a low workload very often, mind you… but now I can cope with it if it comes, and I know how to carve that time and space out if I need it.
On another note: So many friends coming this weekend! It is wonderful to see people now – it will be wonderful to see more come tomorrow and over the next 3 days for Olin’s 4th graduation. (And then my freshmen will be seniors – how the blazes did that happen?)
I’m not particularly eloquent tonight, I realize. I’m pretty tired (gently tired, not exhausted like I’d have to be a few years back before I noticed it) and it’s time for bed – I just wanted to get that down.
Thursday, May 14th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I’m not sure how this happened, but I seem to be turning into a “I want to be cool on the internet!” coach despite not actually being all that cool on the internet myself. (I don’t actually strategize/pay attention to my personal online presence, but it’s easier to do for projects that aren’t… me.)
Attempting to turn this into some sort of methodology. Then perhaps I can apply to self.
Also, my family is pretty awesome. Including brother. Who started a campus group called “Love as a force for social change,” or “Love club” for short. I am impressed. And how he needs a website…
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
In honor of my mom obtaining her dual-citizenship. It turns out that my dad can’t, since he was nationalized as a child (his parents were Chinese citizens when he was born in Manila, and the Philippines doesn’t do jus soli.)
After repeated (failed) attempts at getting my parents to use our new, perfectly functional dishwasher as something other than a dish rack, I’m accepting that I’m Filipino. See #35. (Also, for reference, “Tagalog” is pronounced “tah-GAH-log,” with the stress on the second syllable; it is not stressed on the first syllable, as that makes it sound like you are playing a children’s running game with large chunks of tree.)
Bolded items are the ones I don’t quite do.
Names
- Your middle name is your mother’s maiden name. (Lim.)
- Your parents call each other “Mommy” and “Daddy.” (Occasionally “Mom” and “Dad.”)
- You have uncles and aunts named “Boy,” “Girlie,” or “Baby.” (Yep. Auntie Baby.)
- You have relatives whose nicknames consist of repeated syllables like “Jun-Jun,” “Ling-Ling,” and “Mon-Mon.” (Nono, Num-num, and Tin-tin are all sisters, too.)
- You call the parents of your friends and your own parents’ friends “Tito” and “Tita.” (Well, the Filipino ones, yes.)
- You have four or five names. (I think I actually escaped this one; I have a first, middle, and last name. And a nickname. And a confirmation name. And then- wait. Never mind.)
Family and friends
- You’re related to everyone. (Even when I went to Manila last January at age 21, I was still meeting relatives I’d never seen before… and I’d already met what seemed to be the entire population of the Philippines by that point.)
- You consider your close friends your cousins. (Kind of? I consider friends to be like family, I suppose… I dunno about this one.)
- You greet your elders by touching their hands to your forehead. (I only mano po to Filipino relatives, but sure.)
- You always kiss your relatives on the cheek whenever you enter or leave the room. (Old relatives, yes.)
- You follow your parents’ house rules even if you are over 18. (Well… I’m supposed to. We have issues with this one.)
- You live with your parents until and at times even after you’re married. (Emphatically not doing this one.)
- You make your children sing and dance to amuse your friends and relatives. (I have no children. However, I put on piano performances for visitors when I was little. It was not my favorite thing to do.)
- You bring food to your uncles or aunties or whoever anytime you cook food.
- Your grandma wears those long dresses w/different designs at home. (My grandma tries to get me to wear dresses instead.)
- You bring mangoes (or other produce) with you as a gift when you visit peoples homes. (Not necessarily mangoes or produce; cookies work too, and tea.)
- Your parents never go to the movies. (They do watch bootlegged Chinese DVDs with awful subtitles.)
- Your mom and all of her MJ friends always complain about how bad each of their children are. (Oh, yes.)
Home
- Your house has a distinctive aroma. (I don’t think so, but I usually have a cold.)
- You decorate your living room wall with your family’s framed diplomas and plaques. (They’re displayed in the basement, actually.)
- You decorate your dining room wall with a picture of the “Last Supper.” (No, but I know a lot of people who do!)
- You keep your furniture wrapped in plastic or covered with blankets. (True when I was younger. No longer true.)
- You have carpet runners in your house. (I don’t think we ever did this. We certainly didn’t after all the floors were replaced with hardwood.)
- You always leave your shoes or slippers outside the doorstep.
- You have a Sto. Nino shrine in your living room. (Yep. Funny story behind that one, too.)
- You keep a fly swatter in your kitchen. (Formerly. No longer.)
- Your kitchen table has a vinyl tablecloth. (Formerly. No longer.)
- You recycle shopping bags as garbage bags. (Wait, doesn’t everyone?)
- You have a drawer full of old pens, most of which don’t write anymore. (I’m trying to throw these out…)
- You have a piano that no one plays. (Hey, I play it. When I’m not visiting my parents, though…)
- You hang your clothes out to dry in a laundry line. (We live in Chicago. The weather is not amenable to this.)
- You keep a tabo in your bathroom. (No, but I think it’s actually a good idea.)
- You own a barrel man from Baguio. (What?)
- You have some kind of garden in your backyard. (Stones.)
- You use the dishwasher as a dish rack. (Yes.)
- You have never used your dishwasher. (I think we may have used it once or twice while I was visiting.)
Consumption
- You eat with your hands.
- You eat more than three times a day.
- You think a meal is not a meal without rice.
- You eat rice for breakfast. (Sometimes.)
- You use your fingers to measure the water you need to cook rice. (What else would you use?)
- You eat your meal using a spoon and fork. (Of course!)
- You cut your meat with a spoon or fork. (Yeah, what else do you use? A knife?)
- You feed all your visitors. (How could you not?)
- If you don’t live at home, when your parents call, they ask if you’ve eaten, even if it’s midnight.
- You always cook too much.
- You bring baon to work everyday. (Ok, sometimes I’d buy a sandwich across the street.)
- You keep your stove covered in aluminum foil when not in use. (Nope.)
- You don’t own any real tupperware– only a cupboard full of used but carefully rinsed margarine tubs, takeout containers, and jam jars. (I think I own one tupperware. And then a bunch of re-used tubs, containers, and jars.)
- You wash and re-use plastic utensils, styrofoam cups, and aluminum wrappers. (Of course!)
- Your pantry is never without Spam, Vienna sausage, corned beef, and sardines. (No, but it’s true for my parents’ house.)
- You love to eat daing or tuyo. (daing na bangus!)
- You prop up one knee while eating.
- You eat your meal with patis, toyo, suka, banana catsup, or bagoong. (Or all of the above. Mm, Jufran!)
- Your tablecloths are stained with toyo circles. (What tablecloth?)
- You love sticky desserts and salty snacks.
- You eat fried Spam and hot dogs with rice. (What else would you eat them with?)
- You love to eat, yet often manage to stay slim. (This has been remarked on by a lot of people.)
- You grab a toothpick after every meal.
- You wave a pom-pom on a stick around the food to keep the flies away. (I live in New England. The winters are 6 months long. Bugs die here.)
- When dining out, you always fight over who will pay for dinner.
- When you’re in a restaurant, you wipe your plate and utensils before using them. (Sometimes.)
- You put hot dogs in your spaghetti. (Yeah!)
- Everything you eat is sauted in garlic, onion, and tomatoes. (Not always the tomatoes, but yes.)
- You eat every last grain of rice in your bowl, but don’t eat the last piece of food on the table. (Wait, other people don’t?)
- You find dried morsels of rice stuck to your shirt. (Occasionally.)
Religion
- You hang a rosary on your car’s rear view mirror. (My dad asked me to.)
- You play cards or mahjong and drink beer at funeral wakes. (I don’t know how to do most of this, and I’ve only been to one wake.)
- You think Christmas season begins in October and ends in January. (Oh, yes.)
- You unwrap Christmas gifts very carefully, so you can save and reuse the wrapping (and especially those bows) next year.
- You make the sign of the cross before take-offs and after landings and every time you pass by a church. (I know people who do.)
Travel
- Your second piece of luggage is a balikbayan box. (Second piece? Luggage? I travel with a backpack.)
- You’ve mastered the art of packing a suitcase to double capacity. (With presents. Of toothpaste. That my parents ask me to bring to family.)
- You are standing next to eight boxes at the airport. (Again, from family.)
- You collect items from airlines, hotels, and restaurants as “souvenirs.” (Free shampoo!)
- You feel obligated to give pasalubong to all your friends and relatives each time you return from a trip. (See: #73, toothpaste.)
- You drive a Honda Civic or Integra. (I don’t have a car.)
- You have those air fresheners that you buy at Filipino stores in your car. (See above.)
- You have a trendy perfume bottle and some stuffed animals in your car. (See above.)
- You carry a stash of your own food (usually dried) (See above.)
- You can squeeze 15 passengers into your five seater car without a second thought. (Oh yeah.)
Shopping
- You can’t make a purchase without haggling. (Oh, come on. I’ve done this.)
- You’re a fashion victim. (I don’t care.)
- The condiments in your fridge are either Costco sized or come in plastic packets, which you save/steal every time you get take out or go to McDonalds. (…oh, that’s’ not normal?)
- Ditto paper napkins. (But they’re free!)
- Your mom asks you to pick up the extra carton of eggs on sale (but limit 1 only) and pay for it at a separate check out counter.
- You see corn beef on sale you buy a lot and send it to the Philippines. (This happens more with things like dietary fiber.)
- You know someone who can get you a good deal on jewelry or electronics. (The latter.)
Non-verbal Communication
- You can convey 30 messages with your facial expression.
- You point with your lips.
- You greet one another by raising your eyebrows or tossing your head.
- You hold your palms together in front of you and say “excuse, excuse” when you pass in between people or in front of the TV.
- You scratch your head when you don’t know an answer to a question.
- You smile all the time for no reason.
- You ask for the bill at a restaurant by making a rectangle in the air.
- You cover your mouth when you laugh.
Language
- You respond to a “Hoy!” or a “Pssst!” in a crowd. (Can’t hear consonants.)
- You’ll answer “Malapit lang!”–no matter the distance–when asked how far away a place is located. (No, but I’ll say the English equivalent – everything is very close nearby.)
- Goldilocks is more than a fairy tale character to you. (ONE OF THE BEST BAKERIES EVER YAY NOM NOM NOM)
- You refer to power interruptions as “brownouts.”
- You love to use the following acronyms: CR for comfort room, DI for dance instructor, DOM for dirty old man, TNT for tago nang tago, KJ for kill joy, KSP for kulang sa pansin, OA for over-acting, TL for true love, BF for boyfriend and GF for girlfriend. (Only when I’ve been in Manila for a while.)
- You’re always late for events and parties. (Filipino time) (I’m working on this.)
- You say “rubber shoes” instead of sneakers, “ball pen” instead of pen, “stockings” instead of pantyhose, “pampers” instead of diapers, “ref” or “prijider” instead of refrigerator, “Colgate” instead of toothpaste, “canteen” instead of cafeteria, and “open” or “close” instead of turn on or turn off (as in the lights). (Oh! Okay. It’s not a Midwestern thing?)
- You order a “soft drink” instead of soda.
Miscellaneous
- You’ve dyed your hair blonde or brown.
- You use an umbrella for shade on hot summer days. (My grandmother has tried to make me.)
- You prefer sitting in the shade instead of basking in the sun. (I like sun. I live in Massachusetts. We do not get enough.)
- You can sing and dance at a drop of a hat.
- You love ballroom dancing, bowling, pusoy, mah jong, billiards, and karaoke. (About half of them.)
- You majored in something practical like engineering, medicine, accounting or law. (…yeah, about that…)
- You have a relative who is a nurse. (I don’t think so, actually. Doctor, yes.)
- You always ring a doorbell twice, assuming that the first ring was not heard.
- You let the phone ring twice before answering, lest you appear overly eager. (Yeah!)
- Your parents send money to their relatives in Philippines. (I don’t think so – they’re all doing pretty well. We bring pasalubong.)
- Long distance calls are usually after 11p.m. (given the time-zone difference) (Of course!)
- You at least know of the singer “Sharon Cuneta” (Yeah, don’t ask me why I do…)
Monday, May 11th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Nagle has been prompting me to think lately. Here’s the braindump, which gets progressively less coherent and logical as I go along (my groggy mind and sore fingers both fatigued).
I’m going to be in education as an engineering professor someday, and I want the places that I care about and work within to be organizationally healthy – I’ve seen too many great things not achieve their full potential for want of that, and too many brilliant people whose work can’t shine out because they don’t know or are afraid of some of the same things, business-wise, that I’m terrified of. I don’t want anything I care about – including my own work – to be in that position ever again.
I have been considering several learning experiences to gathering the knowledge and maturity to Make This So. Some of these options happen to gather credentials along the way. In other words, some of the options possibly involve acquiring an MBA, working in a large company’s management training program, and so on. (Many other options do not involve either of these things, or anything that would acquire what folks would think of as Formal Credentials.)
I think it is less likely that a program that happens to give credentials will give me the flexibility to learn what I want to learn. This means it would be harder to find and/or design. However, I think that it may be worth it, if it works out.
Although I am an advocate of unschooling, I do not personally reject school outright. I don’t slavishly adhere to it as the only option either. Schools are a subset of options within the many, many options that one has on how to learn a certain set of things. To see that subset as the whole set is just as rational as the decision to exclude it; without examining each individual option, you don’t give yourself the chance to see if it might be a good one for your situation.
One could argue that unschooled options have a higher probability of being better – even if this is true, this is the same statistical argument used by credentialists (“students from $prestigious_school have a higher probability of being smart (because they’re pre-screened)”).
If I put on my engineering hat and do a functional evaluation of the options available to me, I can say that yes, a plus-real-world experience (I think that phrasing is more accurate, if also more gawky, than “minus-schooling-institution”) is a very important function that heavily weights what the “best” option is for me, for just about anything. It’s not the only thing, though. I also use nearly all open-source software. But I bought proprietary speech-rec software because I found libre alternatives lacking enough to overcome that (really, really, really strong) preference. Sometimes, at least for me, school is the best way to go – not because it’s school, but because it’s best.
Credentialism is not a good thing, in my book. In fact, Gill pointing out the rationale behind it during my senior year of college was probably the only time I’ve ever been angry at him – it left me unable to deny something I desperately wanted to disbelieve, but it’s the truth. I also believe it’s more than schooling that promotes this. It’s systemic. I’ve also learned that I change systems by blending with them. This usually means I change them from the inside. And this means that sometimes I do get credentialed to do something in order to ensure I will be among the last to have to do so.
It’s one of the reasons why I’ve chosen not to pursue grad school at funky, multidisciplinary places (see: Media Lab). I would have fun preaching to the choir, but they’re already baptized. To be a missionary, you have to be able to speak the language and be able to gain respect in the culture that you want to change – and this includes appreciating where their values come from so they can, perhaps, someday appreciate your own. And it means actually understanding them first, not having the ulterior motive of changing them (yes, this is contradictory to my earlier statement; they’re both true).
I’m also used to living multiple lives at once and knitting them together so that immiscible worlds can emulsify. It’s a lot of stress and strain sometimes, and it’s high-risk that someday I might not “come back” – but if I really believe in something, I should not just be unafraid to pursue it, I should also be unafraid to pursue something that (seemingly) contradicts it, because if what I believe is actually true and the system is broken, I will have better proof of that, and possibly have brought some folks back with me on the way.
I’m guessing that Nagle’s unspoken question went something like this: Why am I assuming that an MBA is the way to learn about organizational behavior?
The best answer I can give right now is that an MBA is one type of way to do that. There are tons of other options. One plus to an MBA (or studying in general): when I can use credentialism to my advantage to destroy credentialism, why not do it?
This may make more sense when I’m better able to explain exactly what I’m trying to do with this (which I haven’t really touched on describing here). I’ll be asking friends to talk about this when I see them, and to brainstorm options with me… but without a better phrasing of the problem, the above justification for my solution non-exclusion methodology likely sounds fuzzy and doesn’t make much sense. This is something I’ve thought through somewhat, but not well enough yet to say I’ve thought it through completely.
In one sense, I’m overthinking this problem.
“But why shouldn’t we learn what we want, and teach one another whatever we want to learn?” –Nikki, on student-run courses
In another sense, I’m struggling to translate something that I already do (teach and learn, drawing from many options, including but not limited to credentialed ones) into a very foreign tongue. It’s like when I first started listening to jazz; it actually feels painful for me to think this way, for me to read books or hear people talk this way. Cognitive dissonance galore. The faster I immerse and learn to cope with that, though…
In other news, Sumana went to a keysigning! I have yet to go to one; I’ve missed two big ones due to travel schedules. Tomorrow is my last day in Chicago; Tuesday I fly back to Boston and continue the whirlwind of scheduling which will settle down on May 23rd once Olin’s commencement is over and I’m happily settled into pika for the summer.
My posture is also much improved after this weekend. More on this at some point in the future.
Monday, May 11th, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
