Talking Fiscal Responsibility with Teenagers

 

This morning I had a somewhat frustrating meeting. Another person and I are trying to help save a third person's job, but this third person is not doing themselves any favors by not doing what their boss asks. It's not like their boss is asking them to do something illegal or immoral, they just think everything their boss asks them to do is stupid and pointless, so they don't do it, and now they're being disciplined. I really don't know what to do about this. I mean, who hasn't had a boss ask them to do something stupid and pointless? That's just life. You can always ask why you are being asked to do something stupid and pointless, without phrasing it that way, of course, but you still have to do it. I'm just mystified that this person doesn't understand something so basic about life.

Over the lunch hour I went to a Just Bach concert, where our local harpsichordist played selections from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Now I'm a simple creature who plays the mandolin, and so I only want to play in four keys (G, D, C, and A if you really insist) and their relative minors, so a tuning system where those keys sound great and some (looking at you, F# minor) are completely unusable seems just fine to me. But well-tempered tuning is kind of brilliant in that all the keys are usable, but they all sound a little different, so each one has its own color. As I was leaving, I said to the host (my OTHER choir director's replacement) how good it is to hear something not in equal temperament, and another guy told me, "I tuned my piano at home like that." My response? "Wow, that's so cool!"

But the big thing I had to do tonight was give a presentation on fiscal responsibility to the teenagers where Travalon works. I was kind of scared - who loves public speaking? - but I felt prepared, with handouts discussing spending, debt, savings, and scams. Right when I got there, Travalon introduced me to the little kids he works with, and one said, "Your wife is so beautiful!" Aww! I felt a little intimidated to meet the teens: there were about seven of them, and they were all boys, so we didn't have age, race, or gender in common. But they actually listened to me, and one really connected and asked lots of good questions. I could tell I had gotten him thinking about his spending habits. Afterwards it occurred to me that this combined two sides of me I hadn't expected: the side outraged by injustice (like loan sharks preying on poor people who don't understand money), and the maternal side of me, because I felt motherly toward these boys as I explained how money works. Maybe they kind of picked up on how I was trying to save them from "The Man." Hey, if one kid remembers this talk before signing up for a loan with 60% interest, then it was a complete success.

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Had I Gotten a Doctorate...

It can be annoying when the faculty return after having basically the whole month of January off, and they say, "Oh! I have to get used to setting the alarm for 7:30 again!" Here I am thinking, I had to work the whole month of January and set my alarm for 6:00 a.m., but I make half of what you make. But honestly, I would have been a lot worse off if I had actually finished graduate school and gotten a Ph.D. Let's face it, I was not the most attractive candidate and couldn't even get funding, so I had to take out massive loans to go to grad school. A couple of years in I realized I couldn't play the academia game, so I cut my losses and dropped out. If I had stayed in six years or whatever to get that Ph.D., I would have been far deeper in debt, and I probably would not have gotten a tenure-track position. Then I would have ended up in Adjunct Professor Hell, like so many people with Ph.D.s have over the years. They make half my annual salary, and they don't have retirement plans or even benefits in some cases. They have to have lengthy curriculum vitae proving that they have published and taught just to get one-year, non-renewable positions, while I could get another position like my current one with my two-page resume. I may never make a lot of money, but I am so much better off than a lot of Ph.D.s I know. So I should quit griping and just keep setting my alarm for 6:00 a.m., because at least it is very likely that I will still have this job next year.

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Locked out of Work

Yesterday when I got off the bus with my bus buddy, we saw my coworker standing outside the building. He said, “It’s locked – I can’t get in!” My bus buddy was able to unlock the door with her key card, but she works up on the special floors, so we wondered if she had a more powerful key card. Just then I saw the 11 bus pull up, and I said, “There’s my colleague – hold the door for her!” Sure enough, she got off of the bus and came over, wondering why we were holding the door open. We explained that the doors were locked, so she said, “I’ll try my key card,” and sure enough, hers worked, so it was something with my coworker’s card. We wondered how the students were going to get in, since they don’t have key cards, and there was an alarm going off somewhere… and just then one of the robots rolled up.

“Someone must have ordered breakfast,” I said, and my coworker held the door open for the robot, but they won’t come into the buildings. It just looked at us (not really, but it seemed like it did), and then it changed direction and rolled off again.

“You have a class this morning!” said my colleague, shaking me out of my puzzlement. I dashed off and headed to my class, and later my coworker told me that something malfunctioned, and our building and the one next to it were affected. He tried to put a rock into the door to block it open for the students, but you know how they are – one went through and then kicked the rock away, so then the others couldn’t get in. That’s America’s Future right there, as Mr. Icon would always say.

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Making Time for MOOCs

I am wondering if any of my readers has ever taken a Massive Open Online Course or MOOC (pronounced “mook”). These are free courses online that generally don’t have tests or grades, put out by various universities. My Irish teacher alerted some of us to the fact that City University of Dublin had an Irish 101 course on a platform called Future Learn, so I signed up. Now I have done Irish 101-108. Future Learn then sends me emails about other courses I might be interested in. I did one on the culture of Catalan which kind of seemed to be an apologia for separatism, put out by the Universidad de Catalonia. I also did an interesting one on the Book of Kells put out by Trinity College of Dublin. Future Learn suggested a course on Hadrian’s Wall put out by Newcastle University, so I am doing that one now, but whoa this one is hard! All sorts of archaeology and forensics, Latin inscriptions and anthropological questions. Future Learn wants you to upgrade each course for a charge, and it didn’t make any difference for the other courses, where there were free quizzes, but this one has actual tests you can take if you upgrade. I haven’t yet. I’ll put in a plug for the Irish language courses – they also have lots of cultural stuff, and the series starts over every few months, so if you are interested, watch for Irish 101. I would recommend doing them in order.

Today I took some pictures of the tulip tree blooming with my good camera, but even when I zoomed in, they weren’t that great. Then I took a walk and discovered yet another, very large tulip tree in the woods along the lakeshore path. I tried to take a picture of this one with even less success. Maybe my good camera is not as good as Travalon’s – check out this photo he took of a catamaran off the coast of an island in the Bahamas we passed on the cruise ship. We couldn’t even see this with our naked eyes!

Here are the pictures of the tulip tree blossoms I took with my good camera. Travalon promised he could take some with his good camera soon.

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Educational Talks

One advantage to working on a university campus is that there are lots of educational talks all the time that aren’t actually aimed at us working stiffs, but if they say they are “free and open to the public,” then they can’t really stop us from going. I used to work at a place where they did a lot of brain research, and those were some really interesting talks! One speaker had been a well-known record producer before becoming a neuroscientist, and he gave a talk on a disorder that causes some intellectual impairment but, for reasons nobody can yet explain, enhances musical ability. I asked if these kids had sharp senses of humor, since in my experience more musical people are more quick-witted, and he said he hadn’t noticed that with these particular kids, but it did seem to be true back when he worked in the music industry. “Stevie Wonder was the funniest guy I ever met!” he declared. Then when I worked in an area that dealt with critical care medicine, they had some really fascinating talks, although I always felt like they kind of looked at me askance for going to them when I wasn’t an MDeity. Now that I work in a language department, the talks are right up my alley – linguistics! Today they had one about how motion is perceived differently by speakers of Russian and English, since in Russian the verb has a marker to denote whether the motion is in one direction or not. So one person walking or two people walking the same direction would have the unmarked verb, but two people walking towards each other would have the marked verb describe their movement. I had no idea! Apparently this aspect of Russian is very hard for native English speakers to grasp, since we have nothing like it. Just a head’s up in case you were thinking of studying Russian.

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Know Any Upcoming College Graduates?

Some of you may know someone who is going to be graduating from college in the next few months. Thinking back on that exciting time in my life, I would make the following suggestions. First, do not give a book as a graduation present. A relative did that to me, and it wasn’t even a fun book like a murder mystery or a romance novel, but a book About A Subject with a bibliography and everything, like I hadn’t just spent four years buried in such books. If I were just released from prison, would this relative give me a striped shirt and a length of chain to commemorate the occasion? (Probably.) Today’s college grads are leaving with a lot of debt, so cash would always be a welcome gift. My best suggestion, however, is something to aid with travel. (Which cash can do, admittedly.) This is the best age for a person to travel; you can sleep on the ground and skip meals without a second thought. Also, when I was in Europe in my early 20’s, there were a lot of hot German guys traveling around on Eurail passes who all seemed to play guitar. They never did more than sing a song for me, but it was fun to fantasize that I might end up with one of them, and that is a fantasy that just doesn’t work when you are old enough to be their mother and don’t stay at youth hostels. I presume those guys from my youth now have sons who are equally hot and musical for the new college grad to fantasize about. Who knows? Maybe she will even end up with a hot German husband.

The second piece of advice I would give to someone who knows a person about to graduate from college is to dissuade them from going to grad school right away. In my personal experience, people who go to grad school after four years of college burn out and drop out, while the ones who take some time to travel, work, and just figure out what they want out of life go back to grad school, get their PhD, and land a tenure-track position. Who can face six-plus more years of study after four continuous years of study? Plus the new grad is very young and may not know what they want to do with their life. I would strongly recommend nobody go to grad school before the age of twenty-four, and even that may be a bit young. Then they won’t end up in the position of thinking: “I only got a degree in Experimental Theater because I wanted to be an experimental actor. I didn’t really want to be a scholar of Experimental Theater. Besides, all the major universities are cutting out their Experimental Theater departments, so how would I ever find a tenure-track position?” (Based on a true story.) While times have changed, human nature is the same as it was back when I was a student, and the current grad students I deal with are all more mature than I was when I made a failed attempt at grad school. Nothing good ever came of that. However, the travel I did in my early 20’s left me with treasured memories. So encourage that new college grad to put down the books and get out there to see the world!

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Day of Learning

I hope my readers had a good weekend. Sorry that I didn’t blog yesterday, but Travalon and I were watching 80’s videos. This is a fascinating thing to do; for example, did you remember that the video for “Night and Day” by Al B. Sure! features lots of shots of downtown Manhattan, including the twin towers of the late World Trade Center? And while a lot of the people in these videos had a weird look peculiar to 80’s pop stars, the video for “Waiting on a Star to Fall” by Boy Meets Girl looks like it could have been made last week, since their hair and clothing are totally normal. They even take a selfie, but with a big old Polaroid.

Friday I took the day off of work and went to a really fascinating group of lectures called the Day of Learning, sponsored by the Class of 68 so I was the youngest one there. The first talk was a panel discussion of the riots on campus back in 67-68, by people who were there. The second one was a talk by an alumnus of the Class of 68, a retired astronaut who had flown the Space Shuttle three times. The third one was a talk on ethics in journalism, and the fourth one was the most interesting of all. A professor in the School of Human Ecology talked about ancient remedies for depression that she is studying: gut flora, heat treatments (like saunas and sweat lodges) and psychedelic drugs. The crazy thing is that they work! In the evening I met Travalon at the Union for Beers and Bites, a fun time trying samples of beer with appetizers. We sat with a very cool couple, and my old nemesis hUBIE from a previous job was there, but he seemed quite friendly now that we don’t have to work together.

Saturday we met Rich and the Single B-Boy for coffee, then my band had a gig at the apple orchard as we do every year. This year it was very cold, so my fingers were freezing, and we were down a fiddler so I was also playing melody most of the time. Had I known, I could have brought the actual fiddle. Travalon went to the Badger game while I met Tiffy and Rich for dinner, then Tiffy and I went to a concert of Bach and Handel. I just love hearing that non-equal temperament! Tiffy had spent the day at Old World Wisconsin with the other Rosary Ladies, learning about old beer brewing techniques, and I had planned to go too until being reminded that we had the gig. Ah well, I got $25 of produce for playing.

Yesterday Travalon and I had a coupon for $5 off brunch at a seafood restaurant, so we went there just to discover they aren’t open on Sundays anymore. This was in the same mall with Crema Café, so we just went there, and the lemon raspberry pancakes were amazing. Since the weather was lousy, we sat inside and watched the Packer game, which was also lousy, at least in the first half. Also, their kicker who is usually so reliable missed all five of his kicks, so they lost to the Lions. We watched a little of the Brewers game at Bierock (the Cubs are out of the playoffs so I’m pulling for the Brew Crew), then Rich had a going away party for his Brazilian housemate, and a bunch of the choir people were there, so we were all keeping track of the game via the internet. Travalon was happy because he has never seen so many people who care about sports at Rich’s house. The Brewers did win, so they swept the series, and everyone was in a good mood despite the dismal Packers performance earlier that afternoon.

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Irish Language Weekend

This weekend I was very busy with the Irish Language Weekend. Rich and I grabbed a quick bite of dinner before my classes began Friday evening. I was in Level Two this year but had the same energetic teacher from Connemara as last year. Afterwards my regular Irish teacher convinced me to stay for the games in Irish, which were a lot of fun, but then I got home kind of late.

Saturday morning things started up at nine, and then we got a break for lunch so I went up to the Square with one of the other people from my weekly Irish class, the guy teaching the beginning level class, and his mother, who were both from Ireland. The first place we went, Cooper’s Tavern, had an hour wait, as we were told by the Irish maître d’, and he couldn’t even help out a couple of his paisanos. We went to Brocach, which the Irish people thought was great because the name apparently means “filthy” in Irish, so they were taking pictures of the sign. They did concede that the food was good and the interior was very authentic-looking for an Irish pub. We rushed back to class and continued until four, then I met Travalon at St. Patrick’s for evening Mass. A whole bunch of African people in brightly-colored clothes filled the basement, and I found out they were there for a memorial service. I hope people wear brightly-colored clothes to my funeral! Black is awfully depressing for those of us who believe there is something after this life. Travalon had a steak night with the guys that night, so I met OK Cap and Luxuli at Chez Nanou, a French bistro on Willy Street. Afterwards OK Cap and I rushed over to the Baroque concert we planned to attend, but the parking lot was full and we couldn’t find any parking within a mile radius, so we just headed home and prayed a rosary. Luxuli joined us over the phone. I completely forgot about the Irish music concert that was part of our Irish Language Weekend, since I'd been planning to skip it for the Baroque concert.

Sunday morning Irish class again began at nine. Our teacher was great: she had us fill out our evaluations forms, and THEN she gave us chocolate! No bribing from her! Class got done at 11:30, so I hurried home to catch the Packer game. It was beautiful the way they stopped the Rams. Since it was such a gorgeous day, Travalon and I took a boat ride (our last for the season?) back into the marsh, then we went to a park in Windsor and took a long walk on a boardwalk beside the Yahara River, where it is barely more than a babbling brook. It was very beautiful, and I told Rich that I’d love to go there some time with him and Kathbert. We still have about a mile more of trail to explore, since the sun was going down so we didn’t want to get stuck on the trail with no light. Then we watched – you guessed it – more episodes of Soap. We must be nearly done with Season One by now.

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Irish Language Classes

I am guessing that my regular readers want a rundown of my intensive Irish language weekend. It started Friday evening with a couple hours of class. We were divided into four levels, and I was in the beginning “never spoken the language before” level. One woman in our level was kicked up to Level Two the next day, but the rest of my classmates were as clueless as I was. Our teacher was an energetic lady from Connemara who taught us the standard greeting in her dialect, and I can’t even begin to describe how it goes because it has sounds we just don’t have in English. It basically means, “God be with you,” and then the response is, “God and Mary be with you.” Then she taught us how beginning consonant sounds change in Irish depending upon the context, like if you were addressing someone named Colorado you would say, “A Cholorado,” which is pronounced like a ch in German, basically. However, if you were standing in Colorado, you would say, “i gColorado,” which is pronounced Golorado. I was relieved that she and another teacher, who was from Donegal, both agreed that Irish standard spelling makes no sense, so it isn’t just us English speakers who think so!

Friday evening after class we played a game somewhat like Taboo, where we were split into teams with a person from each level on each team, plus a teacher. The fourth level student would try to describe a word in Irish, and then the rest of us were supposed to provide the word in Irish. The teacher was there to do some translating for us poor first level students. Then after about ten minutes we got a different fourth level student so we got to work with all of them, which is only fair since some were better at this game than others. A guy from Dublin was really good at it, not just because his Irish is so good but because he was just good at describing concepts, like he said, “A big plant in the forest” in Irish, and someone said the Irish word for tree. Our team did not win, but we came in second.

Saturday morning class started at nine, which was a bit cruel in my estimation, but I got going with even enough time to grab a coffee and croissant beforehand. We learned some useful phrases, like how to say, “My name is ____,” but if I write them for you, they will make no sense. Irish is a language best learned by hearing rather than reading, is what I got out of all this. For the most part it isn’t too hard to pronounce, though there are definitely sounds we don’t use in English. But I still could not predict how to spell something I’d heard, or pronounce something I’d seen written. One thing I did learn is that a word starting with a bhf is pronounced with a w. Doesn’t that make sense? Or maybe it’s a fbh, I can’t remember offhand, and my notes are at home.

We had a break for lunch, and I went to pray the rosary in the Perpetual Adoration chapel, but unfortunately I still have not learned how to pray it in Irish so it was just good old English for me. In the late afternoon we could take a dancing class, a singing class, or watch an Irish movie; you will no doubt be stunned to learn that I chose singing. My teacher commented on how quickly I picked up the language, and she would ask me if I remembered what particular words meant. It’s good to know I still have a gift for languages, even in middle age. At night there was a concert given by the man who taught the singing class, but I skipped it to hear Bach.

Sunday class began at the slightly more humane hour of ten, so I had plenty of time to get coffee and a muffin beforehand but not quite enough to go to Mass. I was overjoyed to hear there would be free classes in Irish here in town but then very sad to hear they would be on Tuesday evenings, right during my regular adoration hour. Today I called the chapel coordinator, and he was happy to switch my hour, especially since my boss is OK with me taking a long lunch on Mondays to cover an hour they desperately needed to fill. I should be able to stay late on Mondays to make up the time, so I’ll still get adoration in every week, plus I’ll get to keep going with Irish. So life is good.

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Carpe Education

This is an actual email Toque McToque received from an actual college student, with a few incriminating details changed.  (And no, the sport was not football.). Of course, he is "seizing" to be a college student so "therefor" he doesn't actually need to know how to spell, right?

My name is Joe Schmo and I'm a junior at the University. I play for the University badminton team. After my exams I am going to be signing a professional contract and therefor will not be attending the University in my senior year. In order to do this I need a letterhead saying I am seizing to be a college student at this university. When would I be able to come into the office and get this document? I look forward to your response.

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University of Bubblehead

Years ago one woman was determined to ruin my life: Bubblehead. The worst part is that I’m not even sure she was doing it on purpose. She just had a different thought process than other people do. Bubblehead worked at a university which will remain nameless, and which I have never actually visited. My only connection with the place was that they had a summer school program in the Basque area of Spain, and I wanted to attend. I submitted my application and was thrilled to be accepted into the program.

“I’m going to Spain this summer!” I told everyone excitedly. However, when I applied for financial aid, I was turned down because I was not enrolled in the program. This was very puzzling – hadn’t I already received confirmation? So I called the University of Bubblehead and talked to Bubblehead, who sounded like a bubblehead. She seemed to be the only person working in the place. She said oh yeah, she had sent the letter because I had been accepted into the program, but she hadn’t actually enrolled anyone in the program yet. She was going to do that two days before we got on the plane.

“I kind of need you to enroll me right now,” I explained, “or I cannot get financial aid. They won’t give me the money if I’m not an official student, and I can’t go if I don’t get the money.”

So Bubblehead said she would enroll me as a student in the University of Bubblehead, and it only took weeks of calling to get her to do so. When she left a message on our answering machine, my roommate asked who she was.

“She sounds like a total bubblehead,” she said.

“That’s exactly what she is,” I told her.

Finally everything was straightened out, and I was on my way to Spain. I studied Basque and ran around with Basques all summer in the Pyrenees. What a great time! I forgot all about Bubblehead and the trouble she had caused me.

The university in Spain where I was actually studying grades the usual European way, with words like “Excellent” instead of A, “Good” instead of B, etc. Because this was a Basque university, they wrote the words in Basque. My teacher had assured me I was getting an A, and she sent the grades back to the University of Bubblehead, since that was where I was officially getting the credit. When I got home, my report card said I had dropped the class, so I called the University of Bubblehead. And guess what? I had to talk to Bubblehead! Seriously, she must have run the place or something. She said oh, she didn’t understand what the word meant on my report card so she assumed it meant I had dropped the class. What??? And this is at the only University in the United States that has a Department of Basque, so she could have walked down the hall and asked someone, but that would make too much sense. That odd decision on her part took until the following December to fix. Fortunately, I have never had to deal with Bubblehead or the university she seems to single-handedly run ever again.

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