Real Genius

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A friend had never seen Real Genius, and I managed to do a good enough sales job that he wanted to watch it. I certainly had not seen the movie in the past decade, at least not with anyone who hadn’t seen it before and loved it for all the science nerdiness and adoration of clever practical jokes.

When I watch something with someone else, I am only partly in my own experience. Part of me is thinking and seeing along with them. Seeing this film that I have loved for years with someone who wasn’t already a fan meant that I was forced to see it with adult eyes. I was cringing at the way the women were treated, at the casual bro-culture evident in the film. From the opening scene with the meeting room full of men casually joking about weapons of war, to Chris Knight’s interview at Darlington Labs where, despite his juvenile humor, he gets an overture from the sexy Sherry Nugil who is trying to sleep with the Top Ten Minds in America. All of whom are male of course.

Mitch, the main character, is as sweet as ever. 15 years old, the youngest student admitted to Pacific Tech (loosely based on CalTech) mid-year, he was out-of-place in high school and is clearly uncomfortable in his early awkward moments at PacificTech. The arc of this story is predictable; he starts to meet his kind of people. He is taken under the wing of Chris Knight, a legend in the National Physics Club, a former prodigy, now grown into a confident, rebellious and muscular young manhood. Chris is soon to graduate, but he missed his younger self and so he asked Professor Hathaway if he could room with Mitch.

Next enters my favorite character, Jordan. Jordan, with her short-hair, an incredibly fast cadence to her speech, always arrives on scene with some interesting device she’s built herself and an experiment to test it to see if it works as she intended. Jordan is the saving light of this movie for me. 19 years old and hyperkinetic, she was, undoubtedly, the vision I had for myself of the sort of girl that I’m not exactly, but that maybe I would want to be.

Real Genius (1985). You are showing your age. Maybe we have made some progress in the past 31 years. I still love the practical jokes. I still look at Jordan and hope I see myself. The juvenile humor doesn’t quite work anymore. Maybe it shouldn’t have back then either.

Keep In Touch

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First day of a new mathematics seminar, a tried idea that has not had much success in my department before. We need to create a better community with our majors, and, well, no one has any other ideas. I took point on putting it together. My first idea was a meet and greet with games for faculty and students. My colleagues indulged me, and we had students and faculty continue playing well over the hour mark, and feedback was good that this was fun. I was pretty sure I could see it in the students. I think there were even some good conversations about how math could be seen in the games. Cross fingers we can carry this momentum forward to victory!

I get a little overexcited and overstimulated by things like that. I came home wanting a hug. My wish was to be granted, the following arrived in the mail today, from a former student. 20160926_194126 She’s recently completed a tour in the Peace Corps, and enclosed was a souvenir and postcards from her post-Corps trip as she returned to the USA.

I had a voicemail waiting as well from another student who took the GRE today and kicked some serious GRE booty. Somehow I got some credit for that, but I’m not the one who was butt in chair doing the studying.

I tell students that I love to hear from them in the future. If ever they want to write and wonder if they should, YES, YOU SHOULD. And it’s true; I absolutely do.

Help a little

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We have a new bike skills area in one of the local parks. I helped with this, at least a little. I attended half of 3 different work parties. I contributed some money to help buy a tree for landscaping. Of the two, the monetary contribution was the easiest, and it got my name on the sign in bigger typeface (name on the sign twice!), the irony of which is not lost on me.

The work parties ran from 8 to noon; I would arrive around 10, and stay to the end. There’s the little voice in my head saying I could do more. And I could have done more; you can always do more. It occurred to me when I was out there last that I also could have done less. Because if I stayed for 4 hours and really didn’t enjoy it, it would be easy to justify not coming the next time; heck, I went to a work party, what more can anyone demand? Showing up for half the time and putting a good effort meant coming back 3 times and putting in over 6 hours. Not only more than staying home, but more than just one work party.

And I don’t mean to boast here — I’m a slacker on this stuff and I know it. There are folks who put in 3 full work parties worth and gave larger sum of money to boot. All I’m trying to say is, I can see how easy it would have been to just skip it. Stay home. Read a book. Go hiking. Do something I find more rewarding. Showing up for half is sure-as-heck not showing up for the whole thing. But it is better, tons better, than doing nothing.

Figure out where you can help a little. Then help a little. Don’t give it up for not good enough.

Use-value

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A friend posted an article about the experience women have getting older (http://www.refinery29.com/2016/09/121633/stacy-london-style-aging-story?mc_cid=1bcdc9acf6&mc_eid=9566b5b4f4), and also on non-traditional lifestyles for women. It’s just a little bit unfocused, declaring at one juncture, “Sociobiologically speaking, in caveman days, if we could no longer bear children our use-value dropped sharply and inevitably,” then, at the beginning of the very next paragraph, “What’s so bad about growing older when it’s revered in almost every society except ours?” Still, as an older … middle aged … woman who has gotten through most of her adulthood unmarried, unpartnered, and certainly unchildrened, I snug right into this demographic, even if my love of consistency and lack of fashion sense leaves me with an eyebrow raised at the article.

It brings out the right note of ambivalence for me. I never intended this path, but here I am, and truly, while it has a generous share of lonely, there are some very nice things about where I am and who I am. As the article says, you can’t imagine being 47 when you are 27. Maybe even those who ended up exactly where they expected to be get to this point have to reimagine their sense of themselves.

Articles like this bring all the niggly little questions up. I wonder if I should continue to take the occasional (surely it is only occasional) selfie or to ask friends to take photos of me, and then post those photos on social media. There’s that nagging doubt that perhaps I should apologize for the grey hairs that are appearing in my eyebrows, the lines appearing on my face, especially those in the middle of my forehead, my slightly crooked front teeth, my stomach, and all the other physical imperfections.

Seriously? Not a bit, but I do have to admit my own inner critic often has a lot to say on those topics, especially as I begin to see age creep into my face. Even when I recognize it’s ridiculous, getting beauty culture out of my head and that inner critic to pipe down is often tough. For women, being wanted and being worthy are so intermingled with being pretty. (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0). Even when we know better.

While we’re at it, this.

Unfair Emotions

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I found myself uncharacteristically furious in a doctor’s office this morning. I finally got in for a follow up on a bad rash on my hands. A rash bad enough that people would notice. I started telling people I had leprosy or mange. I started wearing bike gloves when off the bike to keep myself from scratching the skin off the back of my hands. There were days when I would have happily torn it all off to make the itching stop. I was furious because it took me a month of suffering to make the initial doctor’s appointment, and only then when I found myself explaining to yet one more person about the itch and the mange did I think to myself that this was ridiculous and a normal person would surely have gone to see a professional by now. I didn’t feel very respected or listened to by the first physician’s assistant, and he gave me advice to use nothing on my hands but water — no soap, no nothing — that is clearly not reasonable for the long term, and not really reasonable for the short term. Not even after using the restroom? No showers with soap for how long? When can I wash my hair again?

In addition to his unmanageable advice, he said he’d refer me to this other physician’s assistant with expertise in dermatology. Hope to hear from them by the end of the week. He saw it close to at its worst; surely it was obvious that this was an acute problem needing prompt attention? The wait ended up being about 5 weeks, and it might have been longer. Plenty of time for the rash to abate and get worse and abate again.

So there I was in this new PAs office, and I was angry. Angry for the unmanageable advice. Angry that it took me so long to ask for help, and when I finally reached out for help when I was suffering and that I got put off for 5 weeks, and had to argue to get seen as quickly as I was. Angry because the rash is not that bad this day; in its current state I’d never have bothered to make an appointment at all. Angry because she had nothing really new to say — I’ve heard this and read this stuff before — I know I have eczema on my hands, and I can easily Google the standard advice — I don’t need YOU for that. Angry because each practitioner you talk to has his or her favorite brands of lotion and soap, and is happy to advise you to use that. Not that any of them seem to make a difference. And what are you supposed to do with the other stuff you bought? Landfill it?

I know all this is unfair — not her problem, not her fault, not her job to put up with me when I’m not even slightly feeling like being pleasant about all of this. But there it was. It’s not even about the rash, or the wait, or the products, or the advice.

It’s about the other times I’ve been in crisis and I’ve reached out for help. To be told that it’d be 2 weeks or 4 weeks before I could see someone. When my phone calls weren’t returned. When I was not sure I could hold on. Those times I’d get in to see someone after holding on to hope for weeks and it would be useless. Each time feeling lost and alone, and left to struggle one day at a time forward, under my own power.

I know I’m one of the privileged, and if I’m finding it this hard, how much worse is this for those who do not have my privilege?