Dearest TCHblog faithful,
Although I am apologetic for the neglect over the past few weeks, a personal update will have to wait. Instead, a short and hopefully thought-provoking post for the current situation the US finds itself in. Despite the information distributed via Fix News and the not-so-accurate-talking heads of Cheney, Gingrich, Fleischer, Hannity, and the rest, I have one question: even if torture (if you consider waterboarding torture as the US did when the Khmer Rogue used it against countless Cambodians) produced "useful" information, is it worth it?
Am I the lone liberal who feels that it would be nice if the O admin could get the general approach to this situation better coordinated? Between the Pres, his Chief of Staff and "full court Press" Sec, Americans, at least on the Left, expect more than retreating from "torture" to "enhanced interrogation techniques." If someone could find the signs that ring: "America, the greatest nation in the world" I've got some non-torture water and we'll all HOPE they were designed with waterproof ink.
Where is the transparency in all this, Pres Oby? Please don't make me agree with Cheney ever again...let's see all the memos. I have little doubt that they will only demonstrate further what the past administration authorized was in fact torture and that no matter political affiliation, those involved should be prosecuted. Please pay no attention to the "publishing these memos only lets our enemies know our interrogation tactics" crowd. Unless I missed it, you put a stop to those tactics, right? Now, for Dick. It looks to this ole' boy that former VP-man is betting on the O admin not releasing the memos; thus, he can, as he always has, claim whatever he wants (namely, that he and Bushy defended America better than anyone else ever has and ever will) buttressed by his "Oh, I've seen it, I was there, believe me, believe me" mantra. Finally, why would Americans (people who say they believe in the rule of law) want AG Holder to hold-off on appointing an IC to prosecute ALL those involved in this mess?
Finally, can we agree that those directly involved in writing Bushy's legal memos to legalize illegal "tactics" should not be federal judges?
For weeks, Rachel Maddow's coverage of all of this has been excellent.
TCH
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Perils of the Modern Lecture: Lessons Learned from Non/Miscommunication in the University Classroom
I have, thus far, on this blog, resisted posting any pseudo-academic writing as to not harass or coddle readers who, I hope, will get a great kick out of the following post. As much as it has something to say about the American college classroom, the post is equally a kind of social commentary that I have been brewing over for some weeks now. Those of you who have had coffee, lunch, or dinner with me lately (poor LP who chats with me daily) will no doubt read echoes of my ranting from portions of our conversations. Below is a version of the talk I gave this weekend concerning why the American university classroom is so non/dis/un-functioning. Agree, disagree, whatever. As always, comments are welcome.
__________________________
Ami Zusman contemplated the current status of American universities in a chapter in a 2005 anthology entitled American Higher Education in the 21st Century.
Zusman’s assessment: “The twenty first-century has brought with it profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education in the United States. Societal expectations and public resources for higher education are undergoing fundamental shifts. Changes both within and outside the academy are altering its character—its students, faculty, governance, curriculum, functions, and very place in society.” Zusman concludes “…current changes are transforming higher education to an extent not seen since the end of World War II.”
(Zusman, “Challenges Facing Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century” in American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges, Philip G. Altbach, Robert Oliver Berdahl, Patricia J. Gumport, JHU Press, 2005).
This morning, I would like to consider three “lessons learned,” from my five years as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of G. that I believe might fit within this paradigm shift suggested by Zusman’s work.
Area One: “The brilliance of we academics”
The notion that humans communicate in a wide variety of ways is a “truth” that even the most strident post-modernist could agree with. In a number of different courses I have watched as out-going, and down-right-charming professors use their personal appeal to get students engaged in the course and its material. At the other end of the spectrum, I have observed the painful exhaustion of socially awkward academics suffering through their own lectures while over half the enrolled students drift from sleep to awake, from facebook to espn.com to tmz.com, you get the idea. I believe that this complex centers on communicative abilities; but should not be limited to one’s ability to construct a “cult of personality.” Rather, there is something that will always provide variety of classroom experiences simply because academics are human and will produce lectures or construct learning environments differently—not necessarily better or worse—just differently. The point, I believe, is that we should be attempting to communicate with our students in the best ways we personally can. With that said, I have developed some general points that (I hope) most professors already consider as they, consciously or subconsciously, develop pedagogical frameworks.
1. When we construct courses, particularly those at the introductory level, we should realize—that is , NOT blindly avoid—the fact our students are not our peers. They have not set through hours of graduate courses, seminars, colloquia, and conferences. More than likely, they have not read anywhere close to the amount of scholarship that we have—nor should they have. In introductory, and even capstone level courses, these are undergraduate students who we are guiding through processes of learning through which we began our own journeys some years back. Thus, we must struggle with a kind of conflict of interests, that is, striking the most delicate of balances as excellent professors: keeping in check our expertise and the drive that our graduate training/career aspirations inspire while NEVER allowing students to take in a semester of coursework unchallenged and non-stimulated.
2. This balance naturally requires that we assess early on our students’ familiarity with and/or interest in our courses. Unfortunately, the genuine interest of students in our topics, I believe, goes unnoticed by most professors simply because we do not take the time to listen to our students’ interests and make the connections so desperately needed; for example, at the beginning of every semester, I ask each student in my two-25 person breakout sections to introduce themselves and tell the class about their major. I know this sounds, to some, like a waste of time and I’m sure some students find it dull or even embarrassing, but as students introduce themselves I get a chance to show interest in their individuality by placing names with faces and also making the case that their major, be it art history, music, finance, math, or whatever has a connection with our course; so right there on the first day, I can see it, many students say to themselves: “Ok, I have to be here in this intro history course and spend my Friday afternoons with this strange guy, but at least he’s open to other things outside history.” This initial conversation also knocks down the level of intimidation that I was aiming at when entitling this section “the brilliance of we academics.” After a number of conversations with colleagues and former students, their number one point of agitation with professors was not grading irregularities, attendance policies, or even the lack of media in the classroom—-it was personal attitude. Too often, the expert at the front of the room lusts after the recognition of persons in the audience forgetting to fight the good fight to maintain professional/professor balance.
3. Whether with personal attitude or within our syllabi, it falls on us (like it or not) to make the course appealing to our students. Like my first-day conversation with students, we have to make the effort to connect our students’ likes and interests with the course as best we can. Will this always work?... of course not. But if we aren’t trying, I dare say that we aren’t reaching as many students as we might. In some ways, this gets us back to the idea of showmanship and personality types that I mentioned earlier, the general idea here is that we must force ourselves to interact and engage our students—if we don’t, given the power dynamics in most college classrooms, students will not make the effort and the learning environment will remain a flat and uninteresting space for both the lecturer and students. Granted, there are professors out there who… just… don’t… get the point; one, in particular, upon observing one of breakout sessions stated: “Chase, you shouldn’t have a classroom full of students who like you.” Of course, s/he also informed me that I was pressing the students too hard to think critically, was working too hard, and had extremely high expectations for my students. Again, sometimes it’s all about attitude.
4. A final note on our collective brilliance: I think we must be aware, as in the real estate business, pre-sub-mortgage crisis, of “location, location, location.” Please be sure to hear me when I say I am not advocating regionalism as a go-to guide for appropriate topics and approaches to learning. Quite the contrary. What I am advocating is acknowledging where you are in the world. Normally, in those first-day introductions, I ask students to include where they are from, if they feel comfortable doing so. But perhaps, a local example of this location awareness will provide greater clarity: when teaching the post-1865 U.S. History survey, students’ with differing racial/ethnic backgrounds receive information and interact with their peers in all sorts of ways—so much so that international students are often at a loss for understanding the kind of micro geo-politics that are unleashed when discussing black/white relations in southern society at a southern university. Given recent events, apparently topics concerning gender and sexuality also touch the nerves of at least a few Georgia state legislators and could be added to the “just be aware list.” So, is the solution to avoid such topics? Not at all. However, I think academics should be smart and sensitive to students who might have never questioned their socio-cultural frameworks, or worldviews, before and how such questioning can often result in anger, defensiveness, and/or hostility within the classroom.
Area Two: Intellectual Exhaustion: The greatest pox on the American classroom
There is, raging in lecture halls and seminar rooms across America a kind of intellectual exhaustion that has, in my opinion, resulted from professors’ and students’ inability to effectively connect or communicate with each other. Interestingly, as I’ve observed it, the timing of the exhaustion doesn’t usually run parallel for these two groups. Students, be they traditional freshmen aged 18-19 or non-traditional, say 40+, can gage whether the class is going to be worth the struggle and if they will, in fact, get anything out of the course by about week 3 or 4. Much of this is based on interaction with the professor and fellow students and, more crassly, whether they think they will ever need any of the skills to, and the phrase is an apt one, HOPE-fully pass the course. For professors, it’s a little longer: past the midterm and into, say, week 9 or 10 of a 15 week semester when s/he realizes, with mid-term in hand, that the students just aren’t getting it. So what to do—for professors, at least?
1. Professors have to be willing to meet students where they are when they arrive in the classroom. We have to, as I suggested earlier, be sensitive to who they are, but EQUALLY, we must be constantly pressing, at least in the humanities, and probably elsewhere, why they hold the worldviews they do. Helping students realize 1. That their notions of self, world, politics, relationships, and even their participation in socially constructing race, gender, and class have all been, well… just that… socially constructed. And 2. That the greatest goal of higher education is the discovering and (re)shaping of who we, as individuals, are… for and by ourselves. However, in this process we have to be willing to have our own worldviews questioned and defended as well. Often, it seems, academics are unwilling to engage because engagement might take too much effort and we might be unable to logically defend our own ill-formed notions of the world as we see it. I’ll return to this sort of double-standard in just a moment.
2. In this process of challenging intellectual exhaustion, we have to take on the epidemic I like to call: “of course, you’re right, sweet baby.” As a graduate student, we fight on the front lines of a culture war that lifts high this banner from the moment students enter pre-K programs until exiting secondary schools; thus, we inherit high school students who bring with them the notion that they are always correct and take personal offense when we dare to question this truth. The answer and reality is that “yes, one can be wrong” and we must be willing to inform students of this. If this strikes you as radical, hold on, because I'm not done yet. We must explain to students why we think they deserve a B minus and not an A+. A personal example comes to mind to illustrate the double-standard I mentioned before: After recently submitting a grant proposal, I received a rather bland and formulaic "we're sorry" email that offered little direction for improvement of what the review committee said was an unclear proposal. After several emails and a short, strange and stoic meeting, I was left with the dumbfounded feeling: “I really hope I’ve never made one of my students feel like this.” I really do not know how we can expect students to respect us as we wage war against this “always right” epidemic if we are unable to clearly explain their lack of clarity and concision in, say, essay assignments. It might take one or two meetings and several emails, but we owe it to our students to explain how they can make their writing better. This level of engagement could be extended further: Can we be bothered to write letters of recommendation for our students? Help them in graduate school searches? Engage in email dialogue to making sure that difficult concepts discussed during class were grasped by all students?
Area Three: Is technology on our side?
Although all sorts of commentators seem to be reconsidering whether social security will remain the notorious third rail in American politics under the Obama administration, the third rail in 21st century pedagogy is technology and its appropriateness in the classroom. From seasoned professionals to newly-minted PhDs the opinions are all over the boards: the ardent defenders of the “no-technology”school hold fast to the creed of no power-point, audio or visual clips, smart boards…nothing beyond the outstanding personality of the lecturer, a black board and stick of chalk (for some reason, many of these advocates seem to be anti-Expo markers, as well). At the other end of the spectrum, there are professors who can’t seem to get enough: everything is on the powerpoint slides, will be posted online before or after the lecture, there will be music greeting the students on arrival, movie clips and photos scattered throughout the lecture, and perhaps an intricately choreographed musical number put on by the TAs to bring the lecture to a close. Ok, maybe a little much on the musical, but you catch my drift. Two main points present themselves here:
1. Technology, I believe can provide great teaching tools. There is certainly something to be said for the engagement factor that movies, music, etc. can bring to the classroom. However, there are certain drawbacks: moving from one form to the other must be seamless, planned, and distraction-less; when TAs (or worse, students) have to repeatedly help the professor with the technology s/he should reconsider its usage. Students, no doubt, appreciate the attempts to be “modern” but when technology becomes distraction instead of aid, I think the classroom would be better off without it.
2. Unfortunately, many tech-savvy professors seem to believe that utilizing technology absolves them of several of the earlier points presented here today: namely, communication and connectivity. There is also the risk that we become so reliant on technology that several uncomfortable problems can occur: all lectures will be neatly guided by powerpoint (what if it fails, where does the lecture go?); students can easily print out the outlines and materials that are posted online (so why go to class?).
In some ways we end where we began, or somewhere close by… with balance. Technological advancements in the 21st century will continue to press college faculty to keep pace with where our students are headed. Podcasts and e-textbooks may well be the wave of the future that started yesterday, but we have to strike the balance between tech overload and underload just as much as we do between status as professional and professor. Does this mean tolerating some students reading Salon.com while you lecture? Maybe.
And yet, despite all the perils of the modern lecture, the oh-so-heavy burden falls on us to present students with intellectually stimulating as well as memorable classroom experiences. Again, the battle is ours for the fighting, and if they do read the NYTimes online once in a while, count it a bargained triumph for some level of success has occurred in your classroom; for if the next generation is to be our partners in facing the “profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education” I would much rather have it, albeit selectively, reading the Times rather than engaging in the mindless miasma of twitter.com.
TCH
__________________________
Ami Zusman contemplated the current status of American universities in a chapter in a 2005 anthology entitled American Higher Education in the 21st Century.
Zusman’s assessment: “The twenty first-century has brought with it profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education in the United States. Societal expectations and public resources for higher education are undergoing fundamental shifts. Changes both within and outside the academy are altering its character—its students, faculty, governance, curriculum, functions, and very place in society.” Zusman concludes “…current changes are transforming higher education to an extent not seen since the end of World War II.”
(Zusman, “Challenges Facing Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century” in American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges, Philip G. Altbach, Robert Oliver Berdahl, Patricia J. Gumport, JHU Press, 2005).
This morning, I would like to consider three “lessons learned,” from my five years as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of G. that I believe might fit within this paradigm shift suggested by Zusman’s work.
Area One: “The brilliance of we academics”
The notion that humans communicate in a wide variety of ways is a “truth” that even the most strident post-modernist could agree with. In a number of different courses I have watched as out-going, and down-right-charming professors use their personal appeal to get students engaged in the course and its material. At the other end of the spectrum, I have observed the painful exhaustion of socially awkward academics suffering through their own lectures while over half the enrolled students drift from sleep to awake, from facebook to espn.com to tmz.com, you get the idea. I believe that this complex centers on communicative abilities; but should not be limited to one’s ability to construct a “cult of personality.” Rather, there is something that will always provide variety of classroom experiences simply because academics are human and will produce lectures or construct learning environments differently—not necessarily better or worse—just differently. The point, I believe, is that we should be attempting to communicate with our students in the best ways we personally can. With that said, I have developed some general points that (I hope) most professors already consider as they, consciously or subconsciously, develop pedagogical frameworks.
1. When we construct courses, particularly those at the introductory level, we should realize—that is , NOT blindly avoid—the fact our students are not our peers. They have not set through hours of graduate courses, seminars, colloquia, and conferences. More than likely, they have not read anywhere close to the amount of scholarship that we have—nor should they have. In introductory, and even capstone level courses, these are undergraduate students who we are guiding through processes of learning through which we began our own journeys some years back. Thus, we must struggle with a kind of conflict of interests, that is, striking the most delicate of balances as excellent professors: keeping in check our expertise and the drive that our graduate training/career aspirations inspire while NEVER allowing students to take in a semester of coursework unchallenged and non-stimulated.
2. This balance naturally requires that we assess early on our students’ familiarity with and/or interest in our courses. Unfortunately, the genuine interest of students in our topics, I believe, goes unnoticed by most professors simply because we do not take the time to listen to our students’ interests and make the connections so desperately needed; for example, at the beginning of every semester, I ask each student in my two-25 person breakout sections to introduce themselves and tell the class about their major. I know this sounds, to some, like a waste of time and I’m sure some students find it dull or even embarrassing, but as students introduce themselves I get a chance to show interest in their individuality by placing names with faces and also making the case that their major, be it art history, music, finance, math, or whatever has a connection with our course; so right there on the first day, I can see it, many students say to themselves: “Ok, I have to be here in this intro history course and spend my Friday afternoons with this strange guy, but at least he’s open to other things outside history.” This initial conversation also knocks down the level of intimidation that I was aiming at when entitling this section “the brilliance of we academics.” After a number of conversations with colleagues and former students, their number one point of agitation with professors was not grading irregularities, attendance policies, or even the lack of media in the classroom—-it was personal attitude. Too often, the expert at the front of the room lusts after the recognition of persons in the audience forgetting to fight the good fight to maintain professional/professor balance.
3. Whether with personal attitude or within our syllabi, it falls on us (like it or not) to make the course appealing to our students. Like my first-day conversation with students, we have to make the effort to connect our students’ likes and interests with the course as best we can. Will this always work?... of course not. But if we aren’t trying, I dare say that we aren’t reaching as many students as we might. In some ways, this gets us back to the idea of showmanship and personality types that I mentioned earlier, the general idea here is that we must force ourselves to interact and engage our students—if we don’t, given the power dynamics in most college classrooms, students will not make the effort and the learning environment will remain a flat and uninteresting space for both the lecturer and students. Granted, there are professors out there who… just… don’t… get the point; one, in particular, upon observing one of breakout sessions stated: “Chase, you shouldn’t have a classroom full of students who like you.” Of course, s/he also informed me that I was pressing the students too hard to think critically, was working too hard, and had extremely high expectations for my students. Again, sometimes it’s all about attitude.
4. A final note on our collective brilliance: I think we must be aware, as in the real estate business, pre-sub-mortgage crisis, of “location, location, location.” Please be sure to hear me when I say I am not advocating regionalism as a go-to guide for appropriate topics and approaches to learning. Quite the contrary. What I am advocating is acknowledging where you are in the world. Normally, in those first-day introductions, I ask students to include where they are from, if they feel comfortable doing so. But perhaps, a local example of this location awareness will provide greater clarity: when teaching the post-1865 U.S. History survey, students’ with differing racial/ethnic backgrounds receive information and interact with their peers in all sorts of ways—so much so that international students are often at a loss for understanding the kind of micro geo-politics that are unleashed when discussing black/white relations in southern society at a southern university. Given recent events, apparently topics concerning gender and sexuality also touch the nerves of at least a few Georgia state legislators and could be added to the “just be aware list.” So, is the solution to avoid such topics? Not at all. However, I think academics should be smart and sensitive to students who might have never questioned their socio-cultural frameworks, or worldviews, before and how such questioning can often result in anger, defensiveness, and/or hostility within the classroom.
Area Two: Intellectual Exhaustion: The greatest pox on the American classroom
There is, raging in lecture halls and seminar rooms across America a kind of intellectual exhaustion that has, in my opinion, resulted from professors’ and students’ inability to effectively connect or communicate with each other. Interestingly, as I’ve observed it, the timing of the exhaustion doesn’t usually run parallel for these two groups. Students, be they traditional freshmen aged 18-19 or non-traditional, say 40+, can gage whether the class is going to be worth the struggle and if they will, in fact, get anything out of the course by about week 3 or 4. Much of this is based on interaction with the professor and fellow students and, more crassly, whether they think they will ever need any of the skills to, and the phrase is an apt one, HOPE-fully pass the course. For professors, it’s a little longer: past the midterm and into, say, week 9 or 10 of a 15 week semester when s/he realizes, with mid-term in hand, that the students just aren’t getting it. So what to do—for professors, at least?
1. Professors have to be willing to meet students where they are when they arrive in the classroom. We have to, as I suggested earlier, be sensitive to who they are, but EQUALLY, we must be constantly pressing, at least in the humanities, and probably elsewhere, why they hold the worldviews they do. Helping students realize 1. That their notions of self, world, politics, relationships, and even their participation in socially constructing race, gender, and class have all been, well… just that… socially constructed. And 2. That the greatest goal of higher education is the discovering and (re)shaping of who we, as individuals, are… for and by ourselves. However, in this process we have to be willing to have our own worldviews questioned and defended as well. Often, it seems, academics are unwilling to engage because engagement might take too much effort and we might be unable to logically defend our own ill-formed notions of the world as we see it. I’ll return to this sort of double-standard in just a moment.
2. In this process of challenging intellectual exhaustion, we have to take on the epidemic I like to call: “of course, you’re right, sweet baby.” As a graduate student, we fight on the front lines of a culture war that lifts high this banner from the moment students enter pre-K programs until exiting secondary schools; thus, we inherit high school students who bring with them the notion that they are always correct and take personal offense when we dare to question this truth. The answer and reality is that “yes, one can be wrong” and we must be willing to inform students of this. If this strikes you as radical, hold on, because I'm not done yet. We must explain to students why we think they deserve a B minus and not an A+. A personal example comes to mind to illustrate the double-standard I mentioned before: After recently submitting a grant proposal, I received a rather bland and formulaic "we're sorry" email that offered little direction for improvement of what the review committee said was an unclear proposal. After several emails and a short, strange and stoic meeting, I was left with the dumbfounded feeling: “I really hope I’ve never made one of my students feel like this.” I really do not know how we can expect students to respect us as we wage war against this “always right” epidemic if we are unable to clearly explain their lack of clarity and concision in, say, essay assignments. It might take one or two meetings and several emails, but we owe it to our students to explain how they can make their writing better. This level of engagement could be extended further: Can we be bothered to write letters of recommendation for our students? Help them in graduate school searches? Engage in email dialogue to making sure that difficult concepts discussed during class were grasped by all students?
Area Three: Is technology on our side?
Although all sorts of commentators seem to be reconsidering whether social security will remain the notorious third rail in American politics under the Obama administration, the third rail in 21st century pedagogy is technology and its appropriateness in the classroom. From seasoned professionals to newly-minted PhDs the opinions are all over the boards: the ardent defenders of the “no-technology”school hold fast to the creed of no power-point, audio or visual clips, smart boards…nothing beyond the outstanding personality of the lecturer, a black board and stick of chalk (for some reason, many of these advocates seem to be anti-Expo markers, as well). At the other end of the spectrum, there are professors who can’t seem to get enough: everything is on the powerpoint slides, will be posted online before or after the lecture, there will be music greeting the students on arrival, movie clips and photos scattered throughout the lecture, and perhaps an intricately choreographed musical number put on by the TAs to bring the lecture to a close. Ok, maybe a little much on the musical, but you catch my drift. Two main points present themselves here:
1. Technology, I believe can provide great teaching tools. There is certainly something to be said for the engagement factor that movies, music, etc. can bring to the classroom. However, there are certain drawbacks: moving from one form to the other must be seamless, planned, and distraction-less; when TAs (or worse, students) have to repeatedly help the professor with the technology s/he should reconsider its usage. Students, no doubt, appreciate the attempts to be “modern” but when technology becomes distraction instead of aid, I think the classroom would be better off without it.
2. Unfortunately, many tech-savvy professors seem to believe that utilizing technology absolves them of several of the earlier points presented here today: namely, communication and connectivity. There is also the risk that we become so reliant on technology that several uncomfortable problems can occur: all lectures will be neatly guided by powerpoint (what if it fails, where does the lecture go?); students can easily print out the outlines and materials that are posted online (so why go to class?).
In some ways we end where we began, or somewhere close by… with balance. Technological advancements in the 21st century will continue to press college faculty to keep pace with where our students are headed. Podcasts and e-textbooks may well be the wave of the future that started yesterday, but we have to strike the balance between tech overload and underload just as much as we do between status as professional and professor. Does this mean tolerating some students reading Salon.com while you lecture? Maybe.
And yet, despite all the perils of the modern lecture, the oh-so-heavy burden falls on us to present students with intellectually stimulating as well as memorable classroom experiences. Again, the battle is ours for the fighting, and if they do read the NYTimes online once in a while, count it a bargained triumph for some level of success has occurred in your classroom; for if the next generation is to be our partners in facing the “profound challenges to the nature, values, and control of higher education” I would much rather have it, albeit selectively, reading the Times rather than engaging in the mindless miasma of twitter.com.
TCH
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Recent Events
Updates for those of you out there in the blogosphere:
1. Mardi Gras was a splendid little time that left me with a new appreciation for the phrase "Throw me something, Mister" and a host of new friends.
2. I miss Athens (actually, "my people" more than the city proper) more than I ever thought possible.
3. I am ready to play frisbee (and I mean, play hard) with a group of fellow enthusiasts and take in a whole UGA baseball game.
4. I read constantly and think that the on-going dissertation (both in my mind and on paper) will take the form of a screeching dinosaur that might well consume me and then regurgitate me before my committee who will collectively shake their heads in disapproval. Who wants to see dino puke?
5. I have returned to my running obsession and want to run another 10k and perhaps half marathon before next fall.
6. I am going to the beach, I've decided, sometime this summer and will do nothing but read and work on my tan, aka, skin cancer.
7. For the most part, I am happy and would love to hear from any of you followers as to what you all are up to.
TCH
1. Mardi Gras was a splendid little time that left me with a new appreciation for the phrase "Throw me something, Mister" and a host of new friends.
2. I miss Athens (actually, "my people" more than the city proper) more than I ever thought possible.
3. I am ready to play frisbee (and I mean, play hard) with a group of fellow enthusiasts and take in a whole UGA baseball game.
4. I read constantly and think that the on-going dissertation (both in my mind and on paper) will take the form of a screeching dinosaur that might well consume me and then regurgitate me before my committee who will collectively shake their heads in disapproval. Who wants to see dino puke?
5. I have returned to my running obsession and want to run another 10k and perhaps half marathon before next fall.
6. I am going to the beach, I've decided, sometime this summer and will do nothing but read and work on my tan, aka, skin cancer.
7. For the most part, I am happy and would love to hear from any of you followers as to what you all are up to.
TCH
Friday, December 5, 2008
A quick little holiday story.
Last night, LP and I planned a great evening out: dinner at the Last Resort and then off to a grand holiday concert. Preface to the dinner... I had heard that there would be a Christmas parade in downtown (Clayton Street to be exact) and that it would begin at 5pm. Ok. Fine. We'll just grab dinner at 6 or 6:10, something like that, because surely all the parade craziness will be over by then. I mean what's the big deal, a few wagons and big trucks with frat guys and Santa on top, come on. When I turned onto Clayton, there was an officer standing outside his car with the lights on, but we both thought, hum, must be the after-parade-crowd-control-cop. Fast forward: after a great dinner we come out of lr to find people on both sides of the street marking what looks to be a parade route. It was 7:04pm, and the concert was scheduled to begin at 8pm, sharp.
We had no options...get in the car and drive, down Clayton, hoping no officer would stop us. It was as if we were the grand marshals (and I ain't talkin' about Tommy and John). We were riding along in the center lane as the huge crowds had already starting taking over the right and left lanes...cruising along, waving to the crowds, listening to a Charlie Brown Christmas cd, what a time! All was great, almost surreal, but all I could think was: please don't give me a ticket, please don't give me a ticket. When we got to the end of the street (it is a one way street, we had NO other option!) a great big bear of a man stood squarely in the the right-turn lane shaking his head left to right. I was puzzled, what does he mean, "no"? I briskly shook my head up and down as LP said ok, ok, hurry it up, no need to get in a fight with this guy.
At the end of our personal holiday parade, we both laughed and I thought: this has to make it on the blog. So if any of you yahoo readers out there thought you saw LP and I riding along in my non-US made sedan, you were right! And if anyone from Athens City council is reading this, you can schedule us again next year as the main attraction; I mean TCH and LP as warm up...I think most people left after we passed by.
Happy Holidays, people.
TCH
We had no options...get in the car and drive, down Clayton, hoping no officer would stop us. It was as if we were the grand marshals (and I ain't talkin' about Tommy and John). We were riding along in the center lane as the huge crowds had already starting taking over the right and left lanes...cruising along, waving to the crowds, listening to a Charlie Brown Christmas cd, what a time! All was great, almost surreal, but all I could think was: please don't give me a ticket, please don't give me a ticket. When we got to the end of the street (it is a one way street, we had NO other option!) a great big bear of a man stood squarely in the the right-turn lane shaking his head left to right. I was puzzled, what does he mean, "no"? I briskly shook my head up and down as LP said ok, ok, hurry it up, no need to get in a fight with this guy.
At the end of our personal holiday parade, we both laughed and I thought: this has to make it on the blog. So if any of you yahoo readers out there thought you saw LP and I riding along in my non-US made sedan, you were right! And if anyone from Athens City council is reading this, you can schedule us again next year as the main attraction; I mean TCH and LP as warm up...I think most people left after we passed by.
Happy Holidays, people.
TCH
Monday, December 1, 2008
P.S. Where have all my followers gone?
I know I haven't been blogging much lately, but come on gang; where's the follower love? Thanks to that clever friend who will always be #1 follower on this blog (he may well be the only follower ever for this blog).
TCH
TCH
An arm full of books equals a street full of looks...
After a delightful lunch with a colleague today at one of our favorite haunts here in Athens, I made my way to the third, fourth, and finally fifth floor of the main library. Collecting a variety books that will all (hopefully) be (somewhat) helpful in the ongoing dissertation, I then descended to the line of patrons trying to get their books checked out (side note: I was reminded of what the long lings used to look like at BestBuy and Target during this time of year before the Bushcession hit).
As many of you know, I have a thing for books; I cannot get enough of them. Now I know that this disease paralyzes a number of graduate students early on in their careers and develops into a chronic illness that persists until death; however, my illness began as an undergraduate who preferred to purchase his outside readings rather than fight for them at the university and/or public library. Well, as a graduate student I have had to give up on purchasing every item that I have read or would like to read...I don't have that much space or money right now but am determined to one day catch up. So I retrieved my approximately 26 books from the main library, checked them out, and was faced with a decision of not-so-epic proportions: should I try to find a great friend with office space to stash the books until I can go get my car OR dare to put my life at risk and take the monstrous buses here at UGA OR take it like a woman or man and hike back to my house on south campus? Well, being the scarf-wearing man that I am, I opted for the walk. "Forced into" may be the more accurate descriptors. No friend to be found and I really don't care for those buses, so, off I went with a brave spirit about me, and 7 books in hand, 6 in a bag over the shoulder, and 13 inside a pair of Kroger's plastic bags.
Unlike what you might be thinking, the roughly 1.2 mile (I'm guessing here) trek went rather smoothly: no plastic bag rips or dropped books from the arms. Let me add that it started snowing on the way...I felt like I was the personification of the whole "walked both ways to school, up hill, in the snow..." Well, what peaked my interest, and thus the blog entry, was the looks, stares, and smirks I received from fellow sidewalk-walkers. I passed probably 20 or so people on my way back to my house and almost every one of them (if not all) checked the stack of books and then checked my face as if to be gauging the level of my sanity. By the time I got half the way here, I knew I would blog about this! What is wrong with these people, I pondered, have you never seen someone carrying books in the freezing cold weather? Then it struck me. These people may be startled by the fact that someone actually reads...what a novelty! Someone actually goes to the library, not to buy a coffee or take a gameday piss or try to pick up some woman with the lamo line: hey what cha' readin' that there buuk fer?
You might think that I am being way too bookish/snobbish or perhaps a bit too judgmental of my non-reading, goofish-grinning, sidewalk-walkers. A final example to help prove my point: my last encounter was with a group of three younger gentlemen. One, as he saw me approaching, decided to utter the most brilliant statement to dribble from human lips: "well look at all those books." His compatriots weren't equally remarkable in their assessments. The second of the three commentators, replied, "yeah." Not to be outdone, the third, and most insightful of this motley crew offered me a new expression that I can't wait to try out at my next dinner party: "hey bro, where's your elevator." My elevator? What? What has an elevator got to do with this situation, I wondered. With no real reply that seemed to make sense (what was I going to say, "at home?"), I simply shrugged as best I could and made my way to the house.
Once home, I settled in for a nice cup of white tea after placing my holiday wreath outside while having to control my inner struggle as to whether or not it gives off too much of a bourgeois appearance. It stays, I decided, but tomorrow I'll take an extra bag with me to the library so my excess of books doesn't draw attention or more questions about the location of my elevator.
TCH
As many of you know, I have a thing for books; I cannot get enough of them. Now I know that this disease paralyzes a number of graduate students early on in their careers and develops into a chronic illness that persists until death; however, my illness began as an undergraduate who preferred to purchase his outside readings rather than fight for them at the university and/or public library. Well, as a graduate student I have had to give up on purchasing every item that I have read or would like to read...I don't have that much space or money right now but am determined to one day catch up. So I retrieved my approximately 26 books from the main library, checked them out, and was faced with a decision of not-so-epic proportions: should I try to find a great friend with office space to stash the books until I can go get my car OR dare to put my life at risk and take the monstrous buses here at UGA OR take it like a woman or man and hike back to my house on south campus? Well, being the scarf-wearing man that I am, I opted for the walk. "Forced into" may be the more accurate descriptors. No friend to be found and I really don't care for those buses, so, off I went with a brave spirit about me, and 7 books in hand, 6 in a bag over the shoulder, and 13 inside a pair of Kroger's plastic bags.
Unlike what you might be thinking, the roughly 1.2 mile (I'm guessing here) trek went rather smoothly: no plastic bag rips or dropped books from the arms. Let me add that it started snowing on the way...I felt like I was the personification of the whole "walked both ways to school, up hill, in the snow..." Well, what peaked my interest, and thus the blog entry, was the looks, stares, and smirks I received from fellow sidewalk-walkers. I passed probably 20 or so people on my way back to my house and almost every one of them (if not all) checked the stack of books and then checked my face as if to be gauging the level of my sanity. By the time I got half the way here, I knew I would blog about this! What is wrong with these people, I pondered, have you never seen someone carrying books in the freezing cold weather? Then it struck me. These people may be startled by the fact that someone actually reads...what a novelty! Someone actually goes to the library, not to buy a coffee or take a gameday piss or try to pick up some woman with the lamo line: hey what cha' readin' that there buuk fer?
You might think that I am being way too bookish/snobbish or perhaps a bit too judgmental of my non-reading, goofish-grinning, sidewalk-walkers. A final example to help prove my point: my last encounter was with a group of three younger gentlemen. One, as he saw me approaching, decided to utter the most brilliant statement to dribble from human lips: "well look at all those books." His compatriots weren't equally remarkable in their assessments. The second of the three commentators, replied, "yeah." Not to be outdone, the third, and most insightful of this motley crew offered me a new expression that I can't wait to try out at my next dinner party: "hey bro, where's your elevator." My elevator? What? What has an elevator got to do with this situation, I wondered. With no real reply that seemed to make sense (what was I going to say, "at home?"), I simply shrugged as best I could and made my way to the house.
Once home, I settled in for a nice cup of white tea after placing my holiday wreath outside while having to control my inner struggle as to whether or not it gives off too much of a bourgeois appearance. It stays, I decided, but tomorrow I'll take an extra bag with me to the library so my excess of books doesn't draw attention or more questions about the location of my elevator.
TCH
Friday, October 3, 2008
Some thoughts on this Palin character...
"My friends,"
After last night's Biden-Palin debate, I thought I'd post some thoughts about Palin and what I believe to be one of the most bizarre and dangerous candidacies in American history.
Truly, Ms. Palin did a good job last night. But come on, a good job for this candidate is an illustration of the ability not to "umm" and "ah" herself into a continuous circular statement about moose pies and bridges to mavericks, etc. If you haven't taken a look at the Couric interview, start here! Warning: you may need a drink to handle the fact that this person might become the next VP of the US.
A couple of points to consider:
1. Is it just me or does the fact that the only person that Ms. Palin tells us she has consulted about foreign policy is Henry Kissinger scare you? Kissinger, "American Diplomat": Vietnam anyone? Laos? Cambodia? Watergate? Hum... And all that talk about Joe looking to the past? What of Palin's foreign policy credentials being bolstered by a couple conversations with Dr. Kissinger? The Vietnam-Iraq comparisons are too easy at this point. Come on people, think.
2. "The line is drill, baby, drill..." Did you catch it? In this one line Palin has found an expression that allows her to continue to ignore the causes of global warming (the actions of man and womankind? 'watcha mean by that Gwen?') and front her "energy expertise." Drill, baby, drill? Are you kidding me with this stuff? Insert 10 years for actual fuel supplies to kick in and Palin's eye roll.
3. 'The VP's office is one that the constitution should grant more power' and it should be 'more flexible': Although not direct quotes (they're close), I'm pretty sure that she sides with Cheney on this one; who knows? She never really answered the question. This is where the danger part comes in. I hope that most Americans are waking up to the fact that though they might like Ms. Palin and her folkish attempts at being a populist, she is NOT prepared to serve as this nation's VP, or President for that matter. After last night, I even question what the Alaskans were thinking when they elected this character.
TCH
After last night's Biden-Palin debate, I thought I'd post some thoughts about Palin and what I believe to be one of the most bizarre and dangerous candidacies in American history.
Truly, Ms. Palin did a good job last night. But come on, a good job for this candidate is an illustration of the ability not to "umm" and "ah" herself into a continuous circular statement about moose pies and bridges to mavericks, etc. If you haven't taken a look at the Couric interview, start here! Warning: you may need a drink to handle the fact that this person might become the next VP of the US.
A couple of points to consider:
1. Is it just me or does the fact that the only person that Ms. Palin tells us she has consulted about foreign policy is Henry Kissinger scare you? Kissinger, "American Diplomat": Vietnam anyone? Laos? Cambodia? Watergate? Hum... And all that talk about Joe looking to the past? What of Palin's foreign policy credentials being bolstered by a couple conversations with Dr. Kissinger? The Vietnam-Iraq comparisons are too easy at this point. Come on people, think.
2. "The line is drill, baby, drill..." Did you catch it? In this one line Palin has found an expression that allows her to continue to ignore the causes of global warming (the actions of man and womankind? 'watcha mean by that Gwen?') and front her "energy expertise." Drill, baby, drill? Are you kidding me with this stuff? Insert 10 years for actual fuel supplies to kick in and Palin's eye roll.
3. 'The VP's office is one that the constitution should grant more power' and it should be 'more flexible': Although not direct quotes (they're close), I'm pretty sure that she sides with Cheney on this one; who knows? She never really answered the question. This is where the danger part comes in. I hope that most Americans are waking up to the fact that though they might like Ms. Palin and her folkish attempts at being a populist, she is NOT prepared to serve as this nation's VP, or President for that matter. After last night, I even question what the Alaskans were thinking when they elected this character.
TCH
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