Real Genius

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.

Use-value

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.

Harper Lee

I started this a while ago and never finished it. It’s been bugging me since. Time to get it out there, imperfect as it is a tribute to the author of one of the greatest novels I’ve ever read.

Harper Lee passed away this past week. I’ve been talking about writing her a fan letter for … probably 30 (or more) years. And now it is too late. It was one of those things that never was quite important enough to do today, but that was something I wanted to do.

I first read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was 11 years old. It was the summer before the 6th grade, and I knew it would be required in school that next year. I couldn’t put it down, not that that was unusual for me with books. I remember crying when I came to the ending, not because it was sad, but because I would never have the pleasure of reading this book for the first time again.

I have read that book many times again. Perhaps 40 times or more. When it was assigned during my 6th grade year, the class seemed to make little progress on the book, with irregularly spaced discussions. My memory (perhaps faulty) says that I read the book 18 times during the period in which we were discussing the book, and then earned a D on the final reading comprehension test. My parents had nothing to say on the topic, but a friend’s mother was outraged, and felt this was a gross injustice. It might have been. I probably knew the facts of the plot reasonably well. It might not have been. I am not sure that at the time I truly understood the complexities of the rape accusation or what it said about the accuser, or many other subtleties in the novel. Those have seeped their way into my brain slowly over many years.

Adulthood and modern-day discussions of privilege, racism, and sexism have left me with mixed feelings about this favorite novel of mine. Yet another story with white person as the hero. I see this and I know that partly I am sad because I want to be that white hero, defending the oppressed. I can want this even while recognizing this robs the oppressed of their agency.

And yet. And yet. There is still much in this book to love, and much from it that I learned.

There’s Calpurnia, servant to the Finch family. She takes Scout and Jem with her to church one time when Atticus is gone. During the course of this adventure, Scout asks her,

“Cal,” I asked, “Why do you talk nigger-talk to the— to your folks when you know it’s not right?”

“Well, in the first place I’m black—”

“That doesn’t mean you hafta talk that way when you know better,” said Jem.

Calpurnia tilted her hat and scratched her head, then pressed her hat down carefully over her ears. “it’s right hard to say,” she said. “Suppose you and Scout talked colored-folks’ talk at home. It’s be out of place, wouldn’t it? Now what if I talked white-folks’ talk at church and with my neighbors? They’d think I was puttin’ on airs to beat Moses.”

“But Cal, you know better,” I said.

“It’s not necessary to tell all you know. It’s not ladylike—in the second place, folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ’em You’re not going to change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut and talk their language.”

Emphasis mine. Those words of Calpurnia are what started to teach my arrogant little know-it-all self to start pulling back and not having to show off everything I know. There’s a difference between being right and being kind. It started me thinking about meeting people where they are, instead of trying to force them to meet me where I thought they should be.

There’s the sharp-tongued neighbor, Miss Maudie Atkinson, who gave me another view of the woman I wanted to become. I want Miss Maudie’s generous spirit and incredibly sharp tongue. This is one of few portrayals of women’s efficacious and righteous anger. Miss Maudie is able to put people in their place with a single comment — a power I desperately wish I had. Her command of scripture is formidable, and she is able to use it to deflect the foot-washing Baptists who might criticize her yard. Yet she is generous to the children, taking Scout seriously unless Scout intends to be funny, honoring their experience and helping them see a world broader and more complicated than others portray it.

True enough, she had an acid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhood doing good, as did Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with a grain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Jem and I had considerable faith in Miss Maudie. She never told on us, had never played cat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our private lives. She was our friend.

There’s also the incredible craftsmanship of the writing, where one large story is told by the intricate interweaving of a thousand small stories. I open this book again and again and marvel at the seamless complexity of its plot and subplots, down to a few sentences in a half paragraph on any page you might open the book to.

These are the reasons that I owed Harper Lee that letter I will never send. So that, perhaps, she would read this from me, and know how much her book has meant to me for the past 35 years. Rest in peace Harper Lee. Few will ever hold a candle to the mastery of craft you displayed in your writing, and I will always treasure the delight of reading what you wrote.

Leaving Things Behind

I was at a big conference this weekend, and I saw a friend from graduate school. We remembered a few people, and she remembered some that I don’t. It made me realize (not for the first time), that I leave things behind. I move on, and I move forward. I might keep a few people in my life, a few things. I leave a lot of things and people behind. They fade from my memory as I stop thinking about them, and eventually they go away and it is as if they had never been there at all.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I have a good memory, in general, but apparently that is only for short-term things, and perhaps only the things I notice.

I wonder if I don’t bond with people the right way. That disrupted family of origin thing. Then I recall that I have one friend that dates back to when I was 6 years old, and other that dates to when we were 11 or 12. Maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s just that things are the way they are; you have to put your bad experiences behind you and move forward.

How much do people remember, and about what things? We all remember different things. Maybe I remember as much as anyone does. It is impossible to know for sure.

Leaving things behind can be a good thing, since everything changes. We cannot remain centered on our most negative experiences. Let them go and move forward. Forget the details. Forget the bigger things. Don’t stress about it.

Writing Habit

One thing that has gotten broken this past year is my writing habit, and it is one I would like to restore. When I was writing here regularly, I was better able to find things I wanted to say regularly. Out of the habit, today I am struggling with what I should write.

One thing I learned from Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before (and I didn’t even finish reading that book or count it as a book I read this year) is that I am someone who is great at keeping obligations to others, but not so great at keeping promises to myself, or just doing things that I should do. Meeting friends to exercise worked for me on so many levels. I bundled work with fun and social time. And I had a situation in which I was obligated to others to show up, which helped me keep an obligation that I wanted for myself.

I did finish reading Charles Duhigg’s Power of Habit which told me that when our lives are in flux, it is easier to change our habits — or have them changed on us. Habits are powerful. Mine are messed up. I am out of my groove, and wondering if I can get it back.

So, tonight, my goal is to post this post, regardless of quality. And for the rest of the week it is to make one more post. Regardless of quality. And to try to keep that up. If you are a reader, and an encourager, I welcome comments — and even reminders if you notice I haven’t posted in a while. I can’t guarantee a prod will work, but it sure won’t hurt.

One thing I learned when I started writing here regularly was the power of having a very modest goal. My goal is 250 words (and 200 is acceptable). Put together a 250 word post — that won’t necessarily take longer than a half an hour. And post it! That’s short enough that I can do that regularly. Maybe for a while I should cut that goal down to 150-200 words, until I feel like I am back in my habit. Will I ever be back in good habits in general? I don’t know. But if I don’t start, that’s a definite answer of no.

Some things I am grateful for today:

  • I am grateful that I made this post tonight.
  • I am grateful for warm slippers.
  • I am grateful that I haven’t had to shovel snow for about a week!
  • I am grateful for YakTrax which keep me from sliding around on ice and snow.
  • I am grateful for all the people who remembered me over the holidays when I wasn’t pulling myself together to send anything to them.

And that is 400+ words, so I guess even if quality is minimal, I am doing okay.

Radio Silence

Finally, the day comes for me to break radio silence. My last post was on February 5, titled “Are you okay?” and for a while, the answer was mostly no. I know I haven’t gotten that answer back to yes. Maybe it still is mostly no. But I recognize that it isn’t helping me to avoid doing things, like writing here, that just plain give me a sense of satisfaction.

It’s also hard to address an absence. Yes, if you are a friend of mine, I would be glad to hear from you. On the other hand, I don’t want you to worry. I’m not drowning, and I don’t need a rescue. Honestly, lately, I’ve been a not-so-great friend, I’ve been doing far from my best job at keeping in touch with people that I care about. That, too, is a symptom; one that I need to work on changing.

I think these depressive funks we all get into tell us that we do need to change something. Or several somethings. Having been through a year of big changes, it is hard to face more, and it is also hard to figure out what exactly to do. Some problems take time to solve. Some problems you cannot solve, you can only run away from them.

How do I get started doing things? I know to break big tasks into smaller tasks and do one small step at a time. I know the coping strategy of setting a timer for 5, 15 or 30 minutes and getting serious for that small amount of time. The harder it is, the smaller the time period you pick. I still feel myself dragging my feet, sitting and web browsing rather than typing, opening up computer code, scheduling tasks, unpacking, cleaning, chore-doing, etc. Sometimes I can even drag my feet on going to bed.

I’m looking at this post, and I’m not satisfied with it. And you know what? Satisfied or no, it’s complete. I’m about to hit publish, and I hope I can take some satisfaction from that.

Cutting Corners

I was grading papers and computer code earlier today. When students’ code doesn’t agree with mine, I wonder why. When it looks nothing like the pseudocode in our book, I wonder where it came from. First hit, Wikipedia. There’s the same code with a few names changed to disguise it.

I’m clear in course policies that copying code is against the rules. It’s printed on every assignment that involves code. Do not copy code. It’s in the syllabus, noting that the minimum sanction will be a zero on the assignment.

On the flip side, you can go from the pseudocode in the book to actual code, and I’ve got no issue with that. That’s what the pseudocode in the book is for.

The first case was so blatant, that it’s pretty obvious what I need to do.

Then there’s the second case. This time the code from Wikipedia was modified to fit in an alternative environment, but it’s still pretty clearly the Wikipedia code, and certainly not the pseudocode from our book.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. No, I don’t want to forbid students from looking at internet resources, I think you can learn a lot of valuable things that way. But, if you are assigned to code something we learned about in class, I expect your main resource to be either materials from class or from the book, not copying and pasting something off the internet.

It never occurred to me that I would have to spell that out. Maybe I need to spell that out.

I see an ugly situation in my future. I know I can handle it. But this year has been such a year of handling and struggling. Part of me just wants to hide.

Add to my mistakes: looking myself up on RateMyProfessor. Never got any feedback from Texas A&M. But the complainers are out from my new school. I give too much work and it is *so* hard. I don’t help enough in class, and I have a good teaching philosophy, but I just don’t use it.

Note to self: don’t look at that stuff. Haters gonna hate. Your job is to teach, and to ask hard questions. If you are only asking easy questions, something is wrong with what you are doing.

But another part of my job is to motivate students to want to try and do well. I wish I knew what I could do better at that. On that, I thought this was a good article. Rethinking Positive Thinking.

Discouragements

The last thing you want when starting a new job is to run into trouble straight out of the starting gate.

My grad class is now down to 2 students. I had 4 last quarter. Both of the students who dropped either are struggling with prerequisites and the material, or struggling with study skills and study habits (or possibly both). I don’t think anythings gone off the rails this quarter; the opposite in fact.

For background see

Instead of having me lecture and them sit passively (since I can’t stop them from being passive), I am having them read the sections and hand in an outline before we cover the section in class. The outline is worth 2 points. You did it is 2 points, you sorta did it is 1 point, and you didn’t bother is 0 points. I discovered quickly that “outline” is a foreign concept. If you are outlining a section that is broken down into subsections with differently colored bold faced headers, then, it seems obvious to me that every subsection must be summarized by at least one sentence. And, if there’s a major formula, theorem, or method of doing things in there, that should definitely get a mention as well. Last, they should put any questions or points of confusion in their outlines. I review these before class and make sure I’m ready to answer their questions.

I’m sure computer science isn’t happy about this. Of course, after they blew off my request to talk about the course over the break and complained to my department chair instead, I am also not so happy with them.

I wonder how this will all figure into the tenure equation in a few years. Meanwhile, I am trying to remind myself to bring my honor to my work. It doesn’t have to be my best work ever, but it has to be an honorable effort. To try not to work too hard, since part of the reason for coming here is to have more of a life. And to enjoy what I can, each day and each week. Our lives are time, and we don’t get redos on the past. In the worst case, I get to look for another job eventually, and there’s a good chance I could get one of those tech jobs I’m supposedly training this group for on the west side, and earn 2x what I am here for doing it. That would not be the end of the world.

I love teaching. I want to do it well. Universe, please help me out here.

Meanwhile, I will remember a favorite quote, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” (Mary Anne Radmacher) I will try again tomorrow.

Dear Dad, Take 2

Dear Dad,

I don’t have a letter I need to write you this week. No weaseling, no considering “maybe a postcard, because I’m so busy.” I just don’t have to get that done. Yet here one is.

We haven’t been able to talk over the phone in years. With your dementia and your hearing problems it was an exercise in frustration. That’s why I started sending you a letter (or a postcard) every week instead.

Why is it, then, that I felt a pang of loss walking home that I would never call you up and ask your advice again? Or hear you tell me about the weather and whatever was going on in your life, then have you ask me if I was okay (“Fine Dad”) and then you’d hang up?

I really haven’t been mourning, at least not beyond having a hard time maintaining my focus. Yet right now, there it is, in the middle of my chest, and I don’t know what to do with it.

Aside to write about it. Right here.

Mom died when I was so much younger. Was I 28 years old then? It seems a lifetime ago. There was so much unresolved in my relationship with her. I struggled with her death for months and months, letting go of my unspoken dream of talking her around somehow, having her become a parent instead of an alcoholic. Almost every interaction she and I had over the course of years was fraught with angst, anger and anxiety. In the years before her death there weren’t many of those as I sought to protect myself. I wanted to make her better, and when she died, I had to let go of that dream. It was so, so hard.

With you, I resolved all that. Let it go, on the most part, realized that it was my choice of who I wanted to be with you in our relationship. And I was that, imperfectly, but altogether doing a pretty good job of it.

I think you got off easy compared to Mom. Your crimes were crimes of omission, unlike her active malice an dysfunction. It was easier for you to evade blame with that shrug of your shoulders and the “I didn’t know.” And apologies without action, far after the fact. It was your job to know. It was your responsibility to know. Although I forgive you; although I forgave you years ago, that burden rests on you nevertheless. It makes me sad, thinking about it.

I’m at peace with that. There is, there was no way for me to fix it. Maybe that’s what makes this easier than with Mom. Or maybe grief is waiting around the corner to come after me. I don’t know. I think there will be many corners for me to turn in these next months, and I will see as it happens.

I’m thinking about you, Dad.

I love you, Dad.

I miss you, Dad.

Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

I should have written you earlier this week, and I’ve been reminding myself and carrying a card around for a few days looking for time. Turns out it really wouldn’t have mattered if I got that letter out first thing Monday or not; you died this morning or last night — I’m not quite sure which. I hope it was quietly in your sleep without fear or pain or stress.

That letter that I didn’t write would have been in transit during the holiday season. I can’t quite imagine that it would have gotten to you yesterday, and I am sure it would have made my sister sad to see it arrive tomorrow. Maybe it is all just as well.

I feel numb today. Stunned. Even though I expected this; there’s a time when you know it is coming because someone keeps getting ill, and that’s been you these past few months. I am glad you hung on so that I could visit you one last time before the holidays. I sent you a holiday card right before Christmas — surely that arrived within the past few days.

This has been the strangest New Year’s Day. Walking in a dream. Between the reality that was yesterday, and the one I face tomorrow.

Losing a parent is hard. With the second one, you know you are looking mortality right in the face, and it smirks at you and says, “You’re next.” I can’t even muster a reaction to that today.

Goodbye, Dad. You will always be my Dad. And I will always love you because you’re my Dad. Now that you are gone, I can look back at what was the last good day, maybe a year and a half ago or longer, in the spring, when you were awake and lively and talkative, and I took you out into the garden. I remember the next day you were conked out and I couldn’t wake you to eat lunch or even say goodbye to me. I realized that moment was precious when it happened. I hoped there would be another. We are out of moments.

And I am sad.

I love you Dad.