music: Something for Rockets- Something for Rockets
The dust has finally settled. I’m squarely entrenched in a quasi-normal living situation that falls squarely within the parameters of 21st century American social norms. Despite the various ideations and fantasies that have floated through my mind in the past four months, I’m not backpacking the Far East or South America, hiking a seriously long trail (as if the HST-JMT stroll were a short one…), squatting in converted warehouses or industrial buildings, or anything else that deviates too far from what is good and reasonable. No, despite the infinite possibilities, despite the steps I carefully took to ensure that I could really truly honestly do whatever I wanted, I played it safe. I’m now paying rent, receiving mail at a regular street address, buying groceries, paying bills. I have a job, I receive health and dental benefits, I own furniture. I am conscious of my allotment of daytime minutes on my telephone and the number of miles until I need to change the oil in my car. I do my dishes. I separate recycling from food waste from other trash. I am located in a major metropolitan area, with coffee shops, bars, and various commercial chain stores within walking distance. There is a steady stream of email coming into and out of my computer. I have picked up, moved, and unpacked, and in the resetting of my life 3,100 miles to the West I have, more or less, held to the same basic operating rules and assumptions I left behind. And now that the dust has settled, and I am able to survey the foundations I’ve laid here in San Francisco, I realize I’ve played it safe.
I’m sure that from some people’s viewpoint driving alone across the country with all your worldly posessions packed into a Toyota Camry is an enormous leap away from playing it safe. To me it was standard operating procedure. If anything, it was an appetizer, a small taste of what could be. If there ever were a time in my life to stray from societal norms it would be now: I am young, independent, unencumbered, relatively free of responsibilities, have a bit of money saved up…and look what I’ve gone and done. Got a job, a lease (albeit month-to-month), bills to pay, the whole domestic bit. And two weeks ago, once the dust began to settle in earnest, I started to think about going back to school.
Applying to grad school can be a full-time job, and I began to realze that applying to Ph.D. programs would prove much more involved, more intense, more specific and delicate than applying for a Masters was. It would be a minimum of four years, would involve a stipend in exchange for teaching undergraduates or assisting with research, it would culminate in my designing and conducting original reseach and scholarly work, contributing real and unique knowledge to the world. It would be an enormous commitment, as well as an enormous encumberence. Doctoral work and instruction at the post-secondary level is something that I want to do at some point in my life, but over the past couple days I realized that right now is not the time for it. I have always behaved well within the bounds of normal and expected action. I have played society’s game, and by most measures I have played it well: respectable colleges, well-paying jobs, a sparkling credit history, and the like. I have had a vague-yet-concrete roadmap of the likely path my life would take, born and cultivated in the suburbs of the Midwest and tempered in the intellectual soil of the Northeast, but there always has been an undercurrent of dissent, an interest in alternative living situations, a fascination with falling off the grid for a little bit.
After taking a small step in that direction this summer, and a small step back from that direction so far this fall, I have come to realize that jumping back into graduate study right now would be a step away from the momentum I’ve been building since rolling out of Boston and walking through the Sierras for a month. That I have resettled in a big city and almost immediately resumed paying rent and seeking employment is enough. I’ve taken an enormous pay cut for the sake of extra free time (and opportunities to spend my days outside in a National Park!) and pay about $500 per month more in rent than I have to in order to have access to certain opportunities. There are reasons why I have chosen to do what I have done, however passive and automatic, but now, more than ever, I’m fighting not only to maintain a philosophy of freedom but also practice freedom. Now, if ever in my life, is the time for it. And because of this I made the decison today as I was driving back from Los Angeles not to apply to graduate school for the fall of 2007.
There are more practical, mundane, concrete reasons. One, my GRE scores could use a boost. Two, the deadline for applications is in three weeks and I don’t know if I could reasonably get my letters of recommendation back in time. Three, I haven’t adequately researched programs and, more importantly, professors whose research aligns with my interest. Four, on an even broader scale, I haven’t narrowed down exactly what I would want to study and make my profession for the rest of my academic life (potentially the rest of my natural life). I know generally which fields of study I want to dip into, and know that I want my doctoral work (and all work for that matter) to have real-life impact and application, but until I can succinctly state what it is I want to study and how I believe it can impact the world-at-large, I have little reason to apply to doctoral programs. This all began to creep out some time last week when I sat down in front of my computer and began to draft a generic Statement of Purpose.
The Statement of Purpose is perhaps the most personal part of the Graduate School application, and the hardest piece to include. Graduate study is not something you jump at uncertainly in the same way you do when you apply for college out of high school. In applying for my masters, I had to narrowly focus my interest and intents, and as I started to try to piece together a Statement of Purpose for doctoral work, I found that I could not do it. An outright statement of your intentions, desires, goals, and aspirations as a potential doctoral student is a very hard thing to do preemptively. It should demonstrate commitment, interest, tenacity intellectual prowess, and reflect one’s willingness to work very, very, very hard. I realized quickly that I could not claim to possess all of these qualities at the present moment, perhaps because I just removed myself from a professional situation in which many of these qualities were demanded of me in such high quantity that I was drained of them by last June.
So instead of writing a Statement of Purpose that I would submit to graduate schools, I instead find it much more appropriate at the present time to make a simple statement of purpose here and now. And here it is:
I want do do everything I can. And since I’ve focused so much on the intellectual for as far back as I can remember, I want to do something else for a while.
Formal academics funnel you into tighter and tighter spirals; as you move on in school, your field of study gets narrower and narrower. And this is not the direction I need to be moving right now. One of the hardest things about growing up was having to make choices about what I would study, what I would do with myself, because with each decision made there is also avenues not taken, opportunities lost, doors closed. I am very glad to have studied psychology and education, to have taught high school and done biological and psychological research, to have worked in outdoor education. It may turn out that I do some or all of these things again. But I would have also liked to seriously indulge in other fields: music, engineering, river guiding, creative writing, political philosophy, computer science, ecology, exploration, cultural anthropology, carpentry, ethnomusicology…
I still want to do it all. I still have not given into the idea that life is finite and time is limited and that I won’t ever accomplish everything I would like to accomplish. Like Siddhartha(novel) I believe we are necessarily bound to different sorts of experience on the path towards enlightenment: the intellectual realm is only one of many. With the exception of two turbulent years following college, I have been in school for my entire life. So instead of committing to the highest form of intellectual training I could imagine, I instead want to take the near future and do other things. I want to make music, begin to compose more, study jazz theory and push my guitar playing to the next level. I want to hike, meander and saunder through some of the most fantastic natural beauty available to humankind while it is still natural and beautiful. I want to spend time in the ocean I live so close to now, perhaps take up surfing or windsurfing or diving. I want to put more energy into my relationships with others. I want to open myself to possibilities, to not define myself by my job or my formal education. I want to struggle in new and exciting way such that I may progress in new and exciting ways. This involves certain risks, certain deviations from the roadmap I’ve supposedly internalized. This may upset certain sensibilities or value systems in certain people, but it’s not their life I’m living. This is Thoreau finally succeeding. This is the practice of freedom. For what it’s worth, I’m going to let the application deadline for graduate school come and go, opt out of the expected and known, risk a little, and give it my all to try to not let the dust settle on my life too much.
music: Phish- 4/5/98, Providence, RI
“I can’t possibly accomplish all that I want to achieve…”
That is how the final piece to my TEP portfolio started. It speaks volumes, and on many levels: I want to do it all, but I know that if I’m both lucky and good, I still won’t come close to doing it all. But I will still try. I wrote the above line in reference to my becoming a teacher, but it could very well apply to most things in my life, including this weblog, but for the past couple of days I have been considering the notion with relation to the ideas generated and the training I received in beoming a teacher. I have finished my graduate program; I am now for all intents and purposes a ‘Master of Education’ and a ‘Harvard graduate.’ Both seem fairly meaningless from where I stand right now, but whatever social capital they carry will most likely become useful one day in accomplishing my goals. On that most shallow of levels, I hope I can be considered by the world-at-large properly credentialed to know what I am talking about. To some extent.
This has been a very intense and emotional week. I have been confronted with numerous goodbyes to people whose presence I have taken for granted this past year and who I do treasure immesurably. This week has been more about expressing my appreciation for these people and achieving some sort of closure with them than synthesizing what I have learned in class and in practicum. About 10 of us went out to Walden Pond today after a game of football on Cambridge Common, and in that trip, I was confronted with one of those essential facts of life: what is important is the people you meet. We have done a good job of celebrating each other this week with multiple nights out, a talent show last night, and extended nights out. It is tough to think that I am saying goodbye to so many of these people, but it is heartening to know that we are to spread out and do some of the most important work our society has.
This has been a week riddled with ritual and ceremony. I liken this entire voyage to my LTIII summer at camp, a position of training, yet one of incredible responsibility. I can not easily pin down a list of things that I have learned this year, but I can say that I am quite different now than when I started. I shared my thoughts regarding education, and urban education in particular to members of my cohort this past week, and in doing so reinforced my own beliefs and rededicated myself to the goals and values I have set for myself. It was, in many ways, like taking an academic rag. The formal year ended with some degree of ceremony, both at HGSE and at my school site, and we, apparently, are now set on our ways to live out what we have learned. I have refocused and distilled my vision for education’s role in society over the past couple weeks and while I have something to show for that work, I don’t think that it is complete. I think I have a blog entry about my vision of the Revolution in the making and will let things simmer a little longer before i dive into that.
Perhaps I am too close to the event still. Perhaps I have not made the mental break with grad school and student teaching because I will continue to teach until the end of the school year and still have to plan lessons and grade homework. Perhaps I am presently too tired to really dig into what this past year’s training and learning meant for me. Perhaps all three, and then some. Whatever the case may be, I have completed this mini-journey, and in the final analysis am better for it. I can not possibly hope to accomplish all that I want to achieve, but I can push towards it hard enough to make some sort of positive impact.
I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never” -
“YOU LIE!” he cried,
and ran on.
-Stephen Crane
music: Peter Gabriel- Secret World Live d.1
Today was the final day of the HGSE teacher education program. It was quite emotional, moreso than I originally thought it would be. It’s been quite a long day and I have to teach tomorrow at 8 AM. More on the matter later, when I have some time. And have gotten some sleep.
music: Altitude Music- 3/10/04
We received a certain piece of advice from one of our TEP directors at the start of the year: “if three people tell you you’re sick, lie down.” I’m not listening. Not to worry my mom too much, but a good number of people have said “David, you’ve lost some weight.” (no, it’s genetic) Or “David, you look exhausted.” Or some freshman at school, god bless them, say stuff like: “Mr. Taus, you look pretty beat.” You have to appreciate the honesty at some level, i suppose. But I refuse to listen. I’m eating enough. I’m not exhausted. I’m doing this fine. And for the most part I am doing this fine, but the pace I’ve set for myself is not sustainable. I’ve only begun to admit my own mortality as of late and allow myself some time for R&R.
It’s a painful schedule: up at 6:30 every morning, all day at high school. If I have classes at Harvard I leave around 3:30; if not, I’m leaving around 5:30 or 6:00pm helping kids or grading papers. Then usually straight home to my own schoolwork-some of the last hoops I’m going to have to jump through in this Master’s/certification program. Add a recent angle to the Live Live project, a bunch of horrific roommates, and a crisis at the radio station that could very well shut us down for good and I’m not one with much spare time. Oh-and some new ideas I have for songs that aren’t being acutalized. And friends. Remember them? I sort of do. I wonder if they remember me.
So I’ve started to realize that this is a lifestyle that is really difficult. I’ve been able to maintain it to some extent and have been somewhat successful at getting most of the stuff done but it’s beginning to take its toll on my mental well-being. As a counter-measure, I’ve started to take time for myself when I can get it. That usually means an hour nap when I get home from school, allowing myself to eat meals on the run more, especially when I don’t have time to cook (which is all the time), including more meat in my diet (efficient source of protein and energy), and letting some things slide that really should get some of my attention were there time. I’m moderately successful. I’m eating better, but I’m still exhausted. And I can count on a migraine about every two weeks to keep me sidelined and force me to take things slow. Still not managing much time for friends though. That’s the next step: re-including fun social things in my week. Visits with friends. Checking out music (something I haven’t done much of, I realize, since the 1ey took off for parts unknown). Allowing some time to gather myself and just breathe in the mornings and before bed. I’m getting better. I went to Murphy’s for a special night of Geoff Scott’s Altitude Music (listening to it right now…sweet stuff) and furthered some ideas that tmo and I have had regarding the future of Live Live.
Stress will be there. Stress will always be there. On the whole, I think I’m dealing with it fairly well. Consider the following: The radio station is in a tailspin, scheduled to wreck on May 1st. Only a miracle will save ABFree at this point. There’s only so much I can do though, and even if I had the time to do it 40 hours a week, I don’t think I’d want to given the other people involved. The curriculum we’re using at school is entirely self-generated, and out of my content area. I find myself talking and teaching stuff that I really don’t know all that well. Pieces of the end-of-grad-program portfolio, a final statement on msyelf as a teacher, are due with increasing frequency. I’m not sleeping much. I haven’t seen friends in a long, long time. And now, on top of that all, I’m beginning to look for a job for the fall.
Small bites. This was the big lesson I learned during my solo travels in Europe. It’s good to keep in mind here. Putting blinders on anything farther away than a week or two (except the job hunt) might be the thing that saves me. That and more sleep. Speaking of, g’night.
music: Pink Floyd- Meddle
This is how the past day or so has broken down:
Friday was a full day at school. I was in at 8:00am. The morning was teaching, the afternoon was meetings about things coming up next week (our on-the-fly curriculum), next month (museum of science field trip that I’m organizing), in two months (water project). It’s all hard to juggle. I’m managing. Then our weekly faculty meeting. Then grading. I got out around 6:30pm. That was the fourth ten-hour day this week. Fine. A quick nap and then onto more work. The Water Project curriculum I was working on was apparently shit. So I have to overhaul it.
M. calls with an invitation to go hear some music. I talk to her a bit on the way home. I must be a loser and decline for two nights in a row. I haven’t seen her since December, since she went to Central America and back and I’ve been there and back again. We’re long overdue for a check-in, but that will have to wait too.
Tmo calls. I forget what I said to him. Something about a promise I made to work on some audio editing for the Murphy’s stuff. Whoops.
A nap first. The nap begins around 8:30pm, and like a champion I sleep until 3:30am. I lied in bed for a while thinking dark thoughts, getting really angry and feeling very lonely. Then up for some work, some tea, some scotch, then back to bed. Then up at 8:00am on Saturday. More work. Then some errands. Some food. Then back in front of the computer.
M. from NY calls somewhere in there. I couldn’t sustain a thought to make conversation meaningful. I’m having visions of reservoirs, sewers, and effluent all the while. Shit.
So with brief interruptions on the phone and 45 minutes for dinner, I’ve been blasting away at this water unit. It’s not done. It’s pushing 2:00am Saturday night now. And I still have to crank out a 15-pager about the unit plan once it is done. I’ve missed catching a show with M., catching up with tmo, a birthday party in Central Square, and I haven’t really talked to anyone today. Work is not near finished. What sort of a life is this?
music: Bob Marley- Songs of Freedom d.2
Brown students know the drill: the SciLi closes, and you gather your stuff up, walk across that concrete balance beam, and plant yourself in the CIT until whatever it is you are working on is done. That’s how it goes during finals. The CIT was a zoo-people sleeping in the corners of hallways, coffee and cigarettes, people sleeping at their computers because they didn’t want to give up their spot, etc etc.
Three years later. Different scene, same deal. I’ve left the Lamont and made my way to the Cabot, the 24-hour study space du jour. The drab interior, the chairs just uncomfortable enough to keep you awake…yes, yes. I’m right at home, ready to type into the wee hours. It’s probably better that there are no windows.
It’s early in reading period, so things aren’t crazy yet, but I’m looking at one of those nights. And teaching tomorrow. It’s finals. And to put a cramp on things, I’m considering a quick trip out of town Friday-Saturday. That, really, is why the crunch is on tonight and tomorrow. It’s gonna suck, but I’ll get through it. I’m armed with some things I didn’t have last time around: my laptop and my chinatown slippers. Both are indespensible tools at this hour. But enough. No more time to waste typing here…I have a long night of solitude ahead of me so I can…um…write about solitude. How meta-appropriate.
music: Taj Mahal- In Progress and In Motion
It is one thing to enroll in a graduate program and complete it (gettin’ there). It is quite another to represent the program publicly. True, true, this one was voluntary. I figure: someone’s gotta represent the program. And if they really want me to represent the program, then I’ll represent the program. But, I made clear, it will be me representing the program. My words were left pretty much intact, which is important. I wasn’t too contraversial in my submission, even though I’ve somehow gotten a reputation around HGSE as a revolutionary. Still, somehow I doubt they will want link to anize.org…
music: Godspeed You Black Emperor!- f#a#oo
I woke up this morning in a basement hide-a-bed in Milwaukee, and am now sitting in my apartment in Boston. I spent the last hour or two putting everything away from my sojourn to the homelands of the midwest and now, by all measures, I’m back. My break is over and everything is pretty much just as I left it, ready to be picked up and worked through. Breaks are cruel in this regard.
I spent a good deal of time organizing and sorting and getting from here to there with the least amount of friction possible. Mom, as always, was indespensible on the Milwaukee end, and tmo was a lifesaver on the Boston end. I brought back my drumset which made things a little trickier than usual, but I miraculously didn’t have to pay extra for any of the oversized and overweight boxes. Between a rolling cart and tmo’s truck, the drums found their way safely to 9 Lothrop and will see good use there under the care of our newly engaged friends, along with OGD, Jeff, and the dog called Sam. They couldn’t have a better home. I guess anything beats them collecting dust in the attic as they have been doing for the past 2 years. But time for music will become a luxury in the next few months.
Now that everything is back in its proper place I can take a minute to glimpse at the state of things here and now, and it does look like I’m standing under a tsunami. I have to finish researching the solitude paper, finish planning a unit on water for my teaching, and write two essays on cognitive theory between the 20th and 23rd of this month. I inherit my own chemistry classroom on the 26th. I realize that right now is the moment of calm before the mad rush; once things are set in motion, I don’t see them slowing down until June when I graduate. And here I am, already thinking about the summer and beyond. I’m getting ahead of myself. There are promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
Taking a break was nice, but it really killed any momentum that I had as far as school was concerned. I hit a nice pace here and had figured out a decent and somewhat sane schedule, but no more. Milwaukee has made me soft. After spending two weeks in revelry and sleep, having meals cooked for me, driving everywhere, enjoying the quiet and the open space, I got soft. I lost some sort of edge that the hustle and bustle, the crowdedness, the intensity of Boston and the East coast keeps sharp. The two places are indeed different, and it is only when I slip between worlds that I see just how different they are. Although I sometimes would have it otherwise, I am glad to be out here, caught up in this chaos and din, being pushed into action and productivity. Things in the midwest move such that I’m not sure I would have the momentum to accomplish all the things I’m setting out to do here. Tonight, though, it’s more of a struggle to work with such pressures after I’ve been free of them for the better part of two weeks. I have gone soft, out of shape. It’s been quite a nice time spending my day how I most would like to spend it, but here, back in the real world, I have promises to keep. The post-travelling ritual of putting everything back in its place today has given me some degree of focus; tomorrow the workout resumes in earnest.
music: Ryan Montbleau- 5/30/03
Higher Education is a curious thing. I’m taking a break from some really strenuous reading to complain about it. And of course, to avoid doing more of such reading in the next couple of minutes. My brain, it seems, has a refractory period.
As I’ve been reading some heavy cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind ( Chomsky, Vgotsky, and friends, as well as my two esteemed professors ), I feel compelled, at least, to get something down about it for fear it shall be lost forever to the vast store of trivia. I’d like to retain this as useful knowledge by connecting it to other schemata, specifically by using a piece of Zen thought as a metaphor. Piaget would be proud.
First Stage: Mountain Is Not Mountain
We are born to the world with a basic operating system and a set of reflexes. It is from this template that all our knowledge is created. So when we are young, we don’t have any specific knowledge. We go about interacting with the world, and in doing so, construct knowledge. It’s a process that occupies the majority of childhood development, especially in the early years.
Second Stage: Mountain Is Mountain
By the time we are teenagers and capable of abstract thought, we have amassed a body of specific knowledge about the world that will more or less serve us for the rest of your days. We even give things names to make talking about it easier. And here, for the most part, we take it for granted that this is true. There really is no need to argue about whether or not a rose called by any other name would smell as sweet. This carries us through high school, give or take.
Third Stage: Mountain Is Not Mountain
Enter Higher Education, that institution by which we youth are indoctrinated into the adult world. Here, now, comes in that wonderful cognitive privilege of ours called metacognition. Here comes deconstruction, unpacking of ideas, semiotic analysis, and other hallmarks of post-modernity. Here comes a very close analysis of something to the point where it doesn’t look like anything anymore. We’ve taken the block castle of knowledge that we spent the previous 20 or so years painstakingly assembling and we’ve knocked it over in order to better handle the pieces, which themselves are pretty meaningless.
Fourth Stage: Mountain Is Mountain
Now that we more fully understand the pieces we automatically and intuitively used to build our knowledge in the first place, we can more expertly assemble our block castle again. Here is a re-integration of knowledge, where we see the forest, the trees, the biological processes that made the forest grow, and the lumberjacks who cut the the whole thing down.
I’m currently wallowing in stage three, with a distant hope that stage four will roll around come time for my re-integration with the working world in May. Perhaps this is just the nature of reading cognitive psychology at the graduate level. And perhaps, yes, I’m committing the cardinal sin of the psychology student: applying what we’re learning about to ourselves. But my sneaking suspicion is that when we’ve reconstructed the tower and are hanging out in stage four, it will look pretty much like it did in stage two. We only took things apart and re-assembled them because of our mistrust of our own automatic cognitive faculties. A greater point to consider, though, is whether or not things proceed stepwise in this fashion at all. This sort of process, of course, is never as linear and discrete as I’m making it out to be here. On a micro level, this sort of thing is happening all over the place, every day. More than that, there really isn’t a stage four. Despite our greatest hopes, wishes, and dreams, the tower will never be finished, the book will never be written. This business of living is a process, subject to continuous revision. Brainstorm, write, and rewrite. Another topic quite familiar to grad school…
music: Sound Tribe Sector 9- 9/6/03, Red Rocks
Two papers due tomorrow. Two papers finished tonight. Just because they were short doesn’t mean they weren’t tough. Sometimes it’s worse trying to cram a book’s worth of thoughts into a few pages. At this point, though, it doesn’t matter. They are done, and I can finally go to sleep.
One more to write tomorrow. Gettin’ there…
music: Martin Sexton- Black Sheep
Whomever said that the ends justify the means has never been hiking. Anyone who has strapped on a backpack and set foot to trail could tell you that it’s very, very rarely about getting anywhere. Instead, it’s about how you get there. I had the good fortune to spend my Monday on the trail in New Hampshire with 1ey, Duncan, Amy, OGD, and friend C., hauling ass at a reasonable speed for the top of Mt. Monadonock. Now that I’m back down, out of the woods, and back in the big city, I realize the whole process was rushed for the sake of reaching the top, then reaching the car. The situation was framed by extraordinary time constraints. Yes, I walked the trail and could be given credit for doing so, but while doing so there was not a lot of good time spent enjoying and learning from that particular experience.
Hiking is not about getting anywhere. It’s about process, how the getting is handled. Because, of course, the only thing waiting at the end of a hike is no more hiking. A strange paradox, but one that we learn over and over in many avenues of our lives. We work on something, work towards something, only in the end to have it not be something that requires our attention anymore. It’s a model based on negative reinforcement.
I’ve had a hand-wrenching time writing papers due this week. They are turning out to be concise little exercises in distilling vast amounts of information. I am pretty certain that I do not have nearly enough information to adequately address some of these topics I’ve been asked to tackle, and yet I am faced with the prospect of handing in some of my supposedly well-developed thoughts to the foremost authorities in the field. I am not allowed to remain agnostic here. And so, like my hike today, I am much to preoccupied with getting it done and really not enjoying or learning from the process of doing it. Hardly something exclusive to written assignments; I have been more worried about getting all the reading assignments done than concerned with actually getting something out of the readings since this whole graduate school ordeal began in June. This is the way it always has been with schools in my experience. I can’t help but wonder if this is an absolutely horrible way to go about things.
The hike today was actually a great time. It was only meant to be a day’s worth of walking in the woods with some friends, and in that, it fulfilled all my expectations. But taken in a larger sense, it made me realize how quickly we move from one thing to the next, how great a priority is placed on getting things done. As I forge through school assignments, I fight the urge to simply get things done as much as possible. I think that if I had it my way, I’d tend to linger more, walk slower, read closer, relish a little more in the process of becoming instead of moving as quickly as I can towards completed.
music: Fugees- The Score
At the most basic level of survival lies two very important energy-producing and energy-conserving physiological mechanims: eating and sleeping. These two simple acts are necessary for survival. Duh. Funny, then, that educated folks seem to forget about these two very basic biological prerequisites. Being a grad student can be quite unhealthy.
I do eat, and I do sleep. I eat enough so that I have enough energy to make it through the day. I sleep about 6 hours a night on average during the week; just enough to stay awake and generally alert through my daily obligations. however, as the day wears on (especially towards the end of the week), I am increasingly hungry and tired. Thursday nights have become studies in headache as of late, most likely due to not eating and not sleeping enough. And inevitably, about once every three weeks, my body finally lets me know that I’ve been a bad biological entity and I eat a lot of decent, nourishing food and sleep a good 10-12 hours.
It’s not that I don’t want to eat and sleep more regularly. I would really like nothing more. My schedule generally prevents it from happening. In between class work, intern hours, and studying, there is little-to-no time to cook. On top of that, my oh-so-glorious housemates don’t want to share food (but apparently have no qualms about eating my avocados and onions…) so there is little incentive for me to put into making a good meal because it’s just me who will be eating it. Plus, then, late nights and early mornings translate into less sleep than I would want otherwise. And despite my best intentions and hopes, I’ve yet to settle into a decent and suitable routine. It’s a glorious setup.
I’m trying hard not to piss and moan about it. I’m trying hard to get quality sleep, to eat decent food, to generally take care of myself. But time is short, and grad school is hard on the nerves, and I generally say to myself that there are more important things to worry about than the amount of sleep I get and what I’m eating or not eating. There’s books to read, papers to write, things to think about, great teaching to do. Strange, then, that basic physiological needs would be pushed down the list. Maslow would be disappointed in my decision making.
I was reading this afternoon, and once again had trouble concentrating on the book. Whcih was strange, because I was reading Thoreau’s Walden, a book I find wholly relevant and inspiring to my personal philosophy. Yet, I couldn’t concentrate on it. Yes, part of it was the fact that Ol’ Man Henry rambles worse than a schizophrenic, but I came to realize it was also that I hadn’t eaten enough breakfast and needed more food. Lord knows why I didn’t make the connection earlier in the school year…priorities were shifted and I set off in search for food. As I snacked upon a less-than-savory apple, I realized that the problem also is that generally speaking, I’m always hungry. There really is no way to solve the problem of hunger, as Auster so adeptly outlined it in the first story of The New York Trilogy.
But I am human. I have physiology that demands food and sleep. Even at the expense of schoolwork, it might be time to start taking care of myself a little bit more.
music: Yonder Mountain String Band- 4/20/02
End of September. Weather turning, days shortening, High Holidays impending, and first semester in full swing. And man-oh-man, is it ever. This was, essentially, the first week that I was on a regular schedule: classes on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday; high school internship on Tuesday and Friday. Live Live on Tuesday Night. And reading, reading, reading. reading. reading.
There is so much reading that it’s almost counterproductive to do it all. Or even to try to do it all; lord knows that even if I had the ability to buckle down and give 100% after a day on-site or after five hours of class and on a relatively empty stomach it still wouldn’t get done. The reading that does get done is merely that: done. I have scanned the words with my eyes, highlighted a bit, jotted down some notes in the margins, and could probably paraphrase certain sections, but long-term retention is laughable. After a while that which is retained blurs together and generally loses all meaning by the time I go to class and have an opportunity to discuss it. Then, inevitably, the majority of class is spent on the one article out of four that I didn’t get to.
I know the deal. This is a master’s program combined with a licensure program, miraculously completed in one year’s time. And that means that there is a lot jammed into that year. Professors spend their entire professional lives reading and writing and thinking about some topic, and as a grad student, I am thrown into their discourse, expected to have some level of expertise, expected to handily navigate really difficult and diverse reading selections and have full command of them. Read and absorb completely. It’s a model, ironically, that we are told never to use on our high school students.
But there’s a lot to know, a lot to study, and only one year to do it. If I had the time to take it all in at a more appropriate rate, I would be more than happy to do so because there’s really some good stuff there. But as things are set up, there’s really no choice but ot cram it all in. On top of an internship that comes close to 20 horus a week, of course.
The result: an all-you-can-eat buffet of ideas and knowledge and words printed on many, many pages. And you need to eat it in however-many-minutes-or-less. you need to eat it all now. So I’m currently in the process of stuffing my face indiscriminately. It’s intellectual gluttonly.
I read and read, and after a while I realize that the close, meticulous reading style that results in a decent comprehension of the material does not leave me with nearly enough time to get through the reading. The only way to complete the assignments is to skim, to gloss over the readings and thereby not even look at all but the most essential points. To read for understanding, to read with any degree of thoughtfulness would only ensure that I not finish most of the readings. I’m in the process of self-creating an education that is an inch deep and a mile wide, and I’m not sure how to stop it from happening. A bad way to become a so-called Master of Education.
There is no clear solution to me at this point. The rate at which I have to read and comprehend is far greater than the rate at which I can read and comprehend thick and complicated academic writing. After two classes today in which I was grossly ill-prepared, I realized just how Lucy must have felt with all those candies coming down the conveyor belt. At least the undone readings for today can be crossed off the to-do list now…
Quality is shortchanged by quantity. It’s getting to be too much. Either I miraculously figure out some way to read effectively for six solid hours after a full day of classes or internship, skim everything, or delve into one thing at the expense of the others. I’m not happy with any of these options, but with this force feeding at the all-you-can-eat buffet, I’ve got to do something or i’ll puke ideas everywhere.
music: Club d’Elf- 8/8/02
reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading reading
friday night! yeeeahh!
music: Altitude Music- 5/28/02
School started yesterday on two fronts. The first was the welcome back to Harvard. God bless the TEP faculty for being so organized, but the amount of stuff thrown at us was just short of unbelievable. This, of course, was all before the Ed School’s formal orientation. 1000 other grad students arrive on the scene next week, and things grow increasingly complicated. This, it seems, is the fate of our postmodern human condition: tendency towards the complex until that point at which death or cataclysm will inevitably hit the reset button on the complex-o-meter. Regardless, this year will be a schedule juggling and time management feat of herculean proportions.
The second front was at my high school site placement. Quite a place. The staff there is phenomenal, reminiscient of camp staff. The focus on the arts is to be applauded, and the type of kids the school draws is very much inspiring. This week is absolutely overwhelming; the “it takes a villiage” philosophy of the school is not really geared towards a thorough orientation and acclimatization period for interns. So I’m doing a lot of watching, imitating, and stumbling this week. I haven’t been set up with a mentor teacher yet, and am feeling a bit aimless and homeless. But the structure is slowly falling into place. Given two weeks’ time, it will all be much more clear and comfortable.
I’ve been busy making charts, lists, and shuffling papers to more appropriate piles. The stacks of paper labelled “summer” are still taking up space on my shelves, milk crates, and under my desk. Remembering my first weeks of school as an Undergrad, not much gets figured out or solidified before the third week. So week one is in full swing, and progress is being made. Still, I can’t help but think that the amount coming in is much more than the amount going out. And, of course, all of this prevents me from getting through any more of the pre-fall reading for the Ed School. My goal is to finish Friere before orientation. This is realistic if I put in some time this weekend, and will absolutely serve me from a theoretical standpoint during the year and beyond.
11:45 pm, and judging by when I have to wake up tomorrow (6:30) and how much I have to pack into the day, it’s past late. The behemoth of teaching and grad school lurk in my shadow. I will tame the beast, but probably a great cost to personal liberty and sleep. Here we go again.
_music: ambient techno on WERS 88.9 FM_
Up late, typing papers, no satisfactory end in sight, daylight impending…
…somehow, it’s good to be back in this quasi-desperate academic late-night mindset. Here’s to the first of many this year.
music: Phish- Fukoka, Japan 6/14/00
It struck me today how much I’ve habituated to city living. It’s almost comical. Two years ago, in the throes of a painfully hot summer in the attic of Chowdahaus, I knew for a fact that I was not cut out for city living. I worked in the inner city, a landscape of concrete, broken glass, auto body shops, and convienence stores. I sought refuge in the vast expanses of New Hampshire, Vermont, Western Massachusetts, and Maine that summer. Tried to avoid the city as much as I could manage. Did not look towards the urban social rituals of clubbing, barhopping, or even movies for solace. I was almost extremist in my stance; damnit, I needed my quiet open space.
And now, two years later, I’m enrolled in a program that is training me to teach kids in impoverished urban environments. Basically, I’m in boot camp for city living. What happened?
Two years is certainly enough time to habituate, to know that the car alarm is going off but cease to really hear it. Two years are enough to understand that there are pockets of quiet open space out there, and that I have access to them. Two years are long enough to recognize the positives about living in a bustling city environment. Now I take for granted that there are so many options at my fingertips, so much within one hour of where I am sitting right now. One of the biggest reasons that I’ve stayed is that the music scene is nothing short of phenomenal here. With the exception of five or six other cities in the country, anywhere else I move will not have nearly as much music. (And I’m pretty confident that nothing in the country could match Murphy’s on a Tuesday night.) This is stuff that can not be found in the Great Outdoors.
But I have gone far beyond just being comfortable with the city. I have enrolled in a program that trains me to be a part of the city, to reach kids who live in cities, to work with special issues surrounding urban youth. Framed like this, it’s quite a shift. And slightly paradoxical to my general tendencies, I must say. It’s a topic worth thinking about.
I returned to Boston in early June having never felt more comfortable in the wilderness in my life. Two weeks of sleeping under the desert sky will do such things to a body. Even now it seems so far away, and even as I returned the city seemed so natural, almost like a default setting. I quickly grew accustomed to the construction going on across the street, the garbage collection, the loud drunk pedestrians. Checking email. At this rate, I’ll have a cell phone before New Year’s. Right? (Proabably not.)
I think it’s less that I like spending time in the wilderness and more that the wilderness brings out a mindstate and lifestyle that I particularly enjoy. Too much in the city is based around cheap sensory stimulation and short attention spans. The wilderness allows me to focus and concentrate on certain things for long periods of time. I worry about nothing but the basics: What will I eat? Where will I sleep? How will I get from here to there? These are really the important questions. And moreover, these questions are answered directly through personal action. There is no intermediate step (money) between me and food in the wilderness. I carry all that I need on my back, and nothing more. I produce very little waste, all of which I am responsible for carrying as well. This is what Thoreau meant when he said “I went to the woods to live deliberately, to front the essential facts of life”.
This sort of thing is not a challenge in the wilderness; it is a necessity. In the city, living in such a way is a challenge. I guess you could say it is my current challenge. But in deciding to teach urban kids, the challenge expands. Soil here is rocky, infertile for the most part. Lessons learned when confronted by the magnitude of the natural world (which, to me, are among the most important lessons one can learn) are now to be brought into high school biology classrooms in the heart of the urban experience. Seeds are to be planted in this soil, in these minds who have never seen a night sky not filled with streetlights.
I miss the wilderness a lot of the time. But I don’t miss the minute-to-minute toil and discomfort of that mode of existence. Rather, I miss the intuitive connectedness I find out there. As Abbey said, it’s sometimes enough to be aware that the wilderness is out there. It is almost too comfortable in its starkness. For now, the challenge lies here. The city is where help is needed most.
music: Club d’ELf- …As Above d.1
It’s no joke; this is exhausting work.
With the exception of one weekend getaway to Vermont, I’ve been going full tilt for 5 weeks now. It’s almost a camp counselor schedule, except there are real-world things to deal with. And much more reading, writing, and planning. I guess it should be no surprise that sickness is approaching.
I have that tingle in the back of my throat, that just above annoying scratch and swelling at the opening to my larynx. This gives me a fairly reliable sign: sickness impending. It’s started to take a bite out of the TEP population. Too much work and no play makes anybody sick, I suppose. So tonight, where there was to be readings on special education in the general education classroom, there were some chores surrounding the far-too-neglected radio show that I am dragging along behind me, a light brushing over of the MTEL which I am to take on Saturday. No need to do some readings on special ed; I think I had quite enough of that last year.
Student teaching and grad school at the same time has more or less consumed my entire waking life. It’s all I do. I like it, and that’s a good thing, but I’ve really grown detached from the life I had before grad school started. I pop out for quick visits with friends on the weekends sometimes. Most of the time I try to plan something, like meeting for dinner, and then end up dropping the ball or cancelling because I have to read something or go to the library or lesson plan. I’ve been tearing through this grad school experience with reckless abandon, really leaving the rest of my life to gather dust. I missed a dinner opportunity with Tim and Volker yesterday because I had to catch up on my reading. Duncan and Amy drove by in their minivan today as I was walking home from teaching and it honestly took me a couple seconds to piece together that they were who they were, and that’s why they were catcalling me. It’s been that long. I haven’t gone to a concert (Murphy’s included) in over a month now. That hasn’t happened since 1997.
But at the same time, it’s more or less unavoidable. I could cut back on the things I know that I’m not going to be graded on and have some time with which to budget to social endeavours, but I’m not too keen on not doing work just because I can get away with it. I’m not finishing all the readings as it is. Learning and school have ceased to be about getting by, and because I only have a year, I’m hellbent on squeezing as much out of the experience as I can. And as a corollary, I’m putting myself in a position that forces me to be willing to accept the consequences for such a life.
One such consequences is that ominous tingle. It’s telling me that I had better take care of myself better, treat myself nicer, get more sleep (6 hours a night isn’t going to cut it), and listen to my body. I have my limits, and need to respect them and prevent physical burnout at all costs. Hopefully with enough sleep and self-maintnence I can prevent the throat scratch/tingle from blooming into a full-blown sickness and take the MTEL healthy. Luckily I still have a healthy amount of mental energy and positive outlook on teaching and learning most days.
The summer segment of my program ends on August 8th. That’s in two and a half weeks — followed by a nice three week chunk with no school obligations except a second summer reading list (wha…). This seems to be the way of things with summer jobs…camp…citizen schools. I’ll come through, push hard, and then enjoy three weeks of relative freedom. For now, I must tend to my throat tingle.
The test spoonful of not-so-fresh yogurt I ate yesterday probably didn’t help things either, now that I think of it.
music: Townhall- The New Song
Today we had our first actual class: Intro to Teaching. One of our instructors was showing us how she uses certain techniques to connect with her students, one of which was football. She’s a Cleveland Browns fan, so she sets up her “shrine”. Included in the shrine is a big blanket that says “BROWNS” on it. She takes it, and drapes it over the podium, which by the way has “Harvard Graduate School of Education” engraved on its front. But the blanket was folded in such a way that all you could see was “BROWN.” In big block letters. And it was even the right color.
It was a stupendous moment, although only for me.
Oh yeah, I’m reading my eyes sore nightly. Kids on Monday. Buh.
Tuesday evening. Usually a good time for a nap in anticipation of Live Live and Murphy’s. Instead, I’m reporting live from inside the Gutman Library, organizing my thoughts, writing out all my assignments and obligations for the summer, and doing what I can not to break the ice on my course packet thick enough to insulate your attic. There’s also a textbook we’re getting tomorrow. And that’s just one of five of our summer courses.
I guess the question is: will I ever see the light of day before August 9?
In the next six weeks, I’ll be teaching four hours every morning at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School and taking classes in the afternoon. They are calling them “modules”, but it all comes out to about 2.5 courses. So, math fans, that’s 5/8 a semester’s worth of work in 1/3 of the time. Way out of proportion.
I’m up to it. That is a certainty. The real question is: at what price to the rest of my life? What is going to give? Dunno yet. Until I figure it out, I’m going to keep playing ultimate and going out with the team afterwards, and I’m going to continue doing Live Live. My role on the ABFree Board is questionable.
I was just researching Library hours here, and things are less than desirable. The Gutman Library (henceforth to be called “The Gut”) is only open until 9pm Mon-Thurs, and isn’t even open on the weekends. The Cabot Science is open until midnight, which is a little better, but only Mon-Thurs. The Weidner and Lamont are open every day, until 10 Sun-Thurs. No 24 hour study space for the summer, which means that the four-in-the-morning CIT experiences from Brown are a thing of the past. All the better, come to think of it; I’ll be teaching at 8:30 every morning.
College was different because there were only 2-3 hours of classes a day, and the rest of the time you could budget how you wanted. Plus, schedule allowing, you could sleep until a reasonable hour. Now, I’m looking at SEVEN hours of class time every day (same as a full-time job!) and reading and assignments on top of that (a half-time job!). Nothing short of Hysterical.
Well, enough time has been wasted here. Since I’m in the library, I’d really be smart to start my reading. I’ve only got a couple of hours, then Live Live at ten. Never mind I have some nationally known musicians coming on the show or anything….
Hysterical.
music: Andy’s Friends- Manitou
When I was younger, there was a certain ritual involved in the first day of school. It would start about two weeks before the big day with shopping trips to Walgreen’s for pencils and folders. Then in my elementary school years, a trip to TJ Maxx or equivalent to buy school clothes. I used to lay my first-day-of-school clothes out the night before, in the shape of a person, except with underwear and socks on teh outside.
When the ultra-cool Five-Star notebooks came out in seventh grade, I got to buy a set, but was told that they would have to last me through college. I’m packing them up tonight to get ready for my first day of school tomorrow. Except this time, there’s no big yellow bus plowing down the streets of suburban Milwaukee. Nor am I driving Grandma’s old car to high school. This time I’m going to graduate school at Harvard, and I’m going to be a teacher as well as a student. Things sure have changed.
I remember an anxiousness about my first day of school in years past. Even though, on the whole, I knew what to expect. This time around, I have no idea what to expect. I know no one. My clothes are not set out on the floor. There is no lunch, pre-packed, waiting in the fridge. Hell, it’s not even September. Things at this point are strange, almost uncomfortable, but I’m not that anxious or nervous.
I’m sure that will all change tomorrow morning.
This is my first school night in over two years. Now that I’ve finished the time I gave myself in between college and grad school, I can look back on it and be very, very glad that I did it. I’ve learned more in the past two years perhaps than I did in four years of college. Not from books or class discussion, but from experience. This seems to have been the greatest teacher I’ve ever had, and I would be smart not to forget that as I step up to the challenge of teaching classes of my own. What exactly have I learned in my time away from academics? Far too much to summarize here. The two years off were not perfect by any means, but there was a lot. There still is a lot.
Grad school presents a strange limbo for me, especially because I have built a substantial life for myself outside of school here in Boston. On one hand, I am about to dive head-first into an extremely intense and consuming program, and share it with people who are now strangers to me, but I’m sure will become friends in the next year. On the other hand, there are many forces at work in my life that are not only worth keeping up on, but necessary for a balanced and well-rounded life experience. Chowdahaus and its alumni. Live Live. Murphy’s. Weekly Ultimate games. These are important things. I forsee myself straddling two worlds in the coming year, taking refuge in one if the other becomes too much. And trying my damndest to give all of myself to each. I’m not sure how it will play itself out, but I’m determined to stay open to everything that Harvard has to offer on one hand and maintain (and strengthen) my relationships and commitment to certain endeavours on the other end.
Two years of living in the “real world”, supporting myself, and all that is making the return to the world of academia that much more difficult. The required pre-summer reading is more or less finished, although it still speaks abstractly of matters that I have yet to dig into. Once I dirty my hands with teaching, my readings and other work will take on a new light. Hopefully.
Today was an interesting day. Tim, Peet, Volker, Duncan, and Jen Z came to my apt and we made crepes, acting like we do all the while. I hope I didn’t upset my new housemates too much. It’s hard to tell; they were either out or camped out in their rooms. We then braved the pouring rain and saw Herbie Hancock and his quartet offer up an acoustic jazz set. Then Volker, Peet, Duncan, and I went back to 12 Curtis for sausage night. Not quite the same as it was in the Refugee Camp, but nothing will be. All in all, it was a very nice way to spend my last day before grad school: spending time with good friends that I’ve made over the past two years. Fitting, really.
It’s still raining out. My head is racing through checklists of things to do tonight and tomorrow morning. I’d better get cracking, and get some sleep. Tonight, after all, is a school night.