Category Archives: mistakes

Cecil the Lion; Hunting and Conservation

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“If we want wildlife to be around for future generations, we have to understand that that wildlife has to have a value. If it doesn’t have a value, especially in the continent of Africa, it is going to be gone.”

“Living next to a black rhino is a nightmare.”

When the whole Cecil the Lion thing blew up, I kept quiet, not wanting to have the Wrath of the Internet (or of even just my friends) come down on my head. But I thought the dentist was being demonized without good reason. Surely he shelled out $50,000 for a hunt because he wanted a legal hunt. If anyone is to blame here, surely primary blame should be on the professionals he hired.

Today I’m gathering my courage and posting about this, because yesterday I listened to a Radiolab episode on this. Twice.

You may find hunting detestable. You may think it is in conflict with conservation. But I want to ask you how much money you have given to conservation this year? In your lifetime?

The least you can do is listen. Listen to this.

Or download from Radiolab and listen later
The Rhino Hunter on Radiolab.

Cutting Corners

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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.

Painful truth

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Dear Students,

I know I upset one of you today, and goodness knows whether I will upset more of you tomorrow when I actually hand back homework.

The student I talked to today worked very hard and felt he got robbed on his score. Unfortunately, he just got the math wrong. Scores in general were lower than I would have liked them to be. I know I caught some students out — they were not thinking that 2 weeks to do homework means 2 weeks of homework to be done. I know others got caught thinking that if a few problems were easy then they all would be easy.

I don’t know if I’m harder or more conscientious than other instructors. I do know that I believe that all of you can master this material and get it right. I know that I am going to push you to get to that level.

If I tell you that you got something right when you really didn’t, I am leading you into complacency when you are capable of doing more and doing better. I would rather have you angry with me and have you figure out how to make a stronger, better effort to get things right and understand why you are right than have you satisfied with your grade and mediocre at solving problems.

Would you rather believe a pleasant lie or know a painful truth? I have always lived on the side of painful truths. Today feels like one.

Honestly? I want you to like me. I want you to enjoy my class. I want you to learn a lot. I want you to grow. I know that all those things go together. If you hate me, and you hate my class, learning a lot and growing are less likely to occur. But if I have to give you a false sense of the merit of your work to make you like me, that won’t work either.

So, if you get this homework back and you need to be angry with me, I encourage you to be angry with me. Anger at me that keeps you motivated and working is better than anger at yourself that is paralyzing and makes you think, “Why should I even try? Why should I even bother?” Or worse, fall into inaction because of those thoughts.

I am a grown woman, with a strong soul. I can handle your anger.

That said, I hope that I can bring honesty and encouragement and grace and motivation to you. I hope that I can be someone who helps you to believe in yourself. I hope that I can hold you to high standards, and motivate you to hold yourself to high standards and help you see that you are capable of meeting them. Even when the work is far, far from easy.

That’s what I want for you. That’s what I want for me. That’s what I want for this class, and every other class that I teach.

With sincerity, and encouragement, and even, yes, with love,

Dr. Jinx

Dogs and responsibilities and consequences

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I’ve been thinking about dogs today. About their owners/keepers. About my Dad.

I think the guy with the dog that ran into my fellow hiker, and who then was reluctant-at-best to leash the dog after she got injured is now removed from the hiking group. I think that’s just. He didn’t come back to help us carry her down. While I’m not a fan of leaving dogs in cars in Texas in the summertime, we aren’t in Texas. It was a cold day; carrying a person down the trail is a hard job even for a sizeable group of people, and the dog could have been left in the car.

That makes me think of my father and the dogs in his life. He had a lady friend with a Boston terrier. I think he liked her better than the dog, but maybe it was a toss up. The Boston had a rough childhood with older dogs that beat up on him, and his attitude toward the rest of the canine world was, “it’s me or you, and I’m getting my licks in first.” He’d attack any other dog without provocation.

Dad would still let him off leash. I know Dad paid several ~$500 vet bills because of “accidents”. He still couldn’t bear to keep the Boston on a leash.

Later, he had another friend with another two dogs, and Dad loved these dogs too, taking them for walks, and again, he couldn’t bear to keep them on a leash. Until one day one of them ran out into traffic, was hit by a car and killed. Dad was sorry, but sorry in the sense of saying so, not in the sense of doing something about it.

I loved my Dad, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t always respect my Dad or like my Dad. To this day, thinking about this makes me feel sick in my stomach. And sad, deeply sad, because I just don’t understand it.

Sad, too, because I realize that one of his legacies is that I have never had a man in my life who has had my back. When the going got tough, I took care of it. I took care of us. Or I took care of me. I shut up and dealt. I didn’t like it, but after all, in my world growing up, men are never responsible for anything. They may be “sorry”, but they aren’t sorry. If I don’t toe the line, if I complain, if I insist then I nag, and I become a harridan like my mother. Since that’s the last thing in the world I want to do, I put up with a hell of a lot of shit.

A hell of a lot of shit.

I wonder if there were good men in my life, and I didn’t recognize them at the time. Or if I picked the best of what I had available to me (after college, never exactly a glut of suitors).

I wonder if I’ll ever find someone again. If I do if I’ll find myself again putting up with a hell of a lot of shit. Whether I will tell it to take a hike. Whether I have finally changed enough that if I let him in my life, that it will be better. If I will ever again find anyone at all.

I try not to focus on loneliness. On feeling unloved. None of that gets you anywhere but a pity party. Focus on the love you want to give, not the love you want to get. It works better that way. But days, some days, today, all of this tastes like ashes, and I want what I wanted, what I still want, and I know I will never get it, and I will have to make do.

And tomorrow I will wake up and make do better than anyone has ever made do before. But tonight, tonight, I am sad for all that was, and for all that is, and for all that will not be.

Mothers

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I found myself trying to explain my mother to a new friend today.

My mother was toxic. To so many of us. But how to capture that in words.

I remember a few (two?) nights when the whole family was up into the wee hours with threats with a knife and arguments and upset. I remember the last night I spent at home, when she was crying in the bathroom and my Dad told me she threatened him with a gun. I remember Dad coming to visit me at college with bruises that she gave him.

I remember wanting to kill myself when I was a young teen. Thinking I was crazy because things happened in my family that apparently only I saw or thought was wrong. I remember her being angry when I asked for a bra, because some other girls teased me and told me I needed one. I remember I don’t think I ever had one that fit.

So many other things, I shouldn’t start with this. I shouldn’t try to catalog them all, like a litany of complaints. Or should I try to write it down, so that I have a coherent picture for myself of what it was, both good and bad?

On the good side, I remember that she’d take us to all sorts of different parks in the area; they had names, usually with an animal. The Lion Park, the Turtle Park. I remember her taking us swimming every day in the summer, often meeting my cousins.

I spent years wanting to save my mother. When she died, I spent months grieving that I never would. I’ve spent many more years trying to understand where she was coming from, and trying to be a better person than she was. Trying to see the good things. Trying to make peace with the rest.

I am left with more questions than answers. Including about myself. I am 45 now, and I will never have children. So I don’t know whether I would have been a good mother, or whether all the negative things I saw modeled would come out of me under stress. I’ve seen them come out, sometimes; I’ve felt them want to come out in others. Moments of stopping myself and realizing that thought is a completely wrong thing to think and a worse thing to do.

Does everyone feel like this about their childhood, or is this a legacy for those of us who grew up in permanent insecurity? It makes you who you are, either by default, or by explicit choice to do something different. When you can see and understand what was happening. Because you don’t always see or understand; it sometimes takes years of mistakes before you get it.

That little niggling fear, toward the back of my brain. Am I really better? Really healthier? Really more wholesome for the other people in my life? I think so; I hope so. Or have I just been lucky to avoid the stresses that she succumbed to?

And this, Mom, is your legacy. I don’t think this is what you would have chosen, had you realized you had a choice. I hope it is not. For your sake. For mine.

And still struggling

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I think of the teaching award that I won last spring, and I think the universe must be laughing right now to see me struggle with my graduate class.

Homework is due at noon. Homework is due at noon because a few weeks ago, when homework was due at midnight, I had a student demand that I make time help him that afternoon. I didn’t have office hours scheduled, and I did have several other things that I had to do. I was angry enough to let my anger show. That’s not a productive situation.

One student has been having a hard time getting his homework in on time; even with a midnight deadline, things would come in at 3 am. I warned him in a comment on his last assignment that this should not continue. Guess who has his computer open in class today? “What are you doing with the computer?” I asked. “Working on my homework,” he replied. “No you aren’t. You need to pay attention in class. Put it away,” I said. He did (fortunately). I turned back to my lesson and got a few more sentences out. Then I sat down to talk about what just happened. And the related issue that none of my four students takes notes in class, and there have been several times when they missed something done in class that was relevant to homework or exam material. I don’t think I won that battle.

After class guess who asked for an extension on the homework. My short answer was “NO.” “Do you know why the answer is no?” The student looked puzzled. “Two reasons. One, there is a late policy for this class, which requires you to ask 12 hours ahead of the due date for an extension. You didn’t follow it. Two, you were just very disrespectful in class. And that adds up to a NO.”

And there I am. I know I need to do something to change things, one of which is to start expecting things like this to happen so that they don’t rankle me as much. I also have to figure out how to reeducate this group. I never expected to have to go through this with a graduate class; that’s certainly one of the challenges — I am fighting my own frame of reference as well as dealing with the behavior.

When I am geocaching and can’t find a cache, it is often because I am functionally fixed on how I think the cache should be hidden. This causes me to be blind to however it actually is hidden. When I am in that state, I know I need to think differently, but the problem is, I don’t know how. Sometimes it takes several trips back to a place before I have the insight. Sometimes I’ve had to get some help from someone else to show me the hiding spot to break me out of the fixed thinking patterns. I feel like that is exactly where I am at with this class right now.

Starting over and making mistakes

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I really thought I’d mostly had the teaching gig figured out when I was at TAMU.

Then I come somewhere new, and man, I am back at square one again.

It has been a frustrating and difficult quarter.

I have made so many mistakes. I didn’t assess what my students already knew. I found I had many assumptions about what they knew that were not true. I had many assumptions about how classes like the ones I am teaching were structured that were not true. I had assumptions about the advice I was given that were not true.

And this has all hurt my students and me, much to my frustration.

Still. I have managed to turn things around in my calculus classes. I am doing a lot better at knowing what to do and how to do it, and how to reach these students. I am still worried that I did them a big disservice at the beginning of the quarter, but there isn’t anything I can do about that now. Or, rather, I have been doing what I can in consistently assigning review problems on that material, so that it wouldn’t get forgotten, and might be improved. (I think there are some problems that I have assigned 2 or three times now … they should be getting better at those … right? 🙂 )

One consistent source of extreme frustration for me has been my graduate class. It is small. And the aura of bad attitude (mine and theirs) has come to permeate that class. I don’t want to go, and I arrive in our classroom with only a few minutes to spare. I notice that students are consistently late. Students don’t take notes (and haven’t from the first — easier to take pictures of the board when I was using the whiteboard; now I use a tablet), and I’ve even had several borrowing pencils in class when I have asked them to do something. The homework is too hard, and it takes too long to do. Etc. etc.

I know that me being negative isn’t going to turn this around, but oh my gosh, am I ever having a problem not going straight into anger and sarcasm. WTF, students, coming to class without a pencil and not fixing that problem right at the beginning? WTF, not taking notes? I’m not wondering why you are having difficulties retaining then information later, and even the recollection that the information was discussed.

I know their expectations of graduate school are probably also being challenged, just as my expectation of graduate students are being challenged. It’s not a continuation of undergrad. There are hard things to be done, and faculty expect that you are going to suck it up and get it done. If you are missing pieces that you need to succeed in a class, well, you are responsible for finding them out and getting the help you need. Or to go back and take a prerequisite course and then take the class over. We expect you to start your work early enough to come ask us questions if you are confused or cannot do it. And we don’t expect you to be pestering us late in the day it is due or insisting that we have to help you because something is due this day.

I dread having to teach that group again next quarter, but there it is. I have to. And so I have to work on figuring out how to help us all get happier. I have to also think about teaching this class in future quarters and how better to prepare students for the rigors ahead.

Meanwhile, I’m tired. The 5 day a week teaching thing has its advantages, but it also has its downsides. I never feel quite ready for what comes next. I know I will get through this. I know it will get easier. But here and now, it’s tough and I am frustrated.

That said, one thing I am glad of. And that is that I made time to write tonight.

Lessons learned geocaching and mountain biking

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Lessons learned while geocaching

  1. Just because you know where it is, doesn’t mean you can find it.
  2. A good question to ask is, if I were the person hiding it, where would I put it? I.e. put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
  3. A GPS (or any fancy piece of equipment) can only help you so much. After that, you are on your own.
  4. Sometimes we all get functionally fixed on something, and can’t see what else is there. If you aren’t finding what you are looking for, think differently about the situation.
  5. Persistence pays off. You may not have your out-of-the-box thought the first time you try, so don’t be afraid to go home and return. Keep at it.
  6. If you really are getting frustrated, ask a friend for a hint or help.
  7. There are a lot of interesting things around you that you’d otherwise never notice.

Lessons learned while mountain biking

  1. There’s nothing wrong with riding up and down the curb in front of your house until you are comfortable with how your bike handles obstacles. I.e. don’t worry about starting small and taking baby steps forward.
  2. Uphill is hard. Keep at it, and you will improve. But know when you need to stop and catch your breath. Or get off and walk.
  3. There’s no shame in walking something that’s beyond your ability level. Better safe than sorry.
  4. You probably won’t get hurt much when you are starting out and scared of everything. You will get hurt when you develop competence and confidence and start riding at your limit. And if you are going to continue, you do have to get back on the bike.
  5. Downhill is fun, but downhill can be scary. If you’re going to ride it and not walk it, get your butt behind the seat, go easy on the brakes, and trust your bike. I.e. you don’t have absolute control. You have to give up some of your desire to control completely in order to have any control at all. (Think: controlled fall. But it is a fall. If you let it, your bike will do its best to take care of you.)
  6. If you can’t stand getting bruised, you are in the wrong sport. But who wanted to be a swimsuit model anyhow?
  7. Listen to your body; it will tell you the difference between minor bruises and really hurt.
  8. Listen to your brain/spirit. It will tell you when you need to take a moment because your fear is taking over your ability to perform.
  9. If you listen to yourself, and take care of yourself, you will find that your fears and anxiety lessen, and that falls that don’t result in real injuries become much less frightening.
  10. Ice is nice. If you know you’re bruised, put a cold pack on it. Take care of yourself.
  11. Persistence pays. Just keep riding, and you will grow stronger and more skillful.
  12. Every fall has a lesson. Make sure you take the time to learn it.

I came off my bike twice tonight. The first time was annoying, but I knew I was fine. The second time, I know I hit the ground pretty hard. I knew I wasn’t really physically hurt; I’d have a bruise, but nothing really wrong. My brain, however, wasn’t having such an easy time of it. I had to sit for a few minutes to pull myself together, because that fall scared me pretty badly.

The one and only panic attack I have had was on a mountain bike ride. There was a rocky, cliffside trail, and eventually, I did, indeed, take a fall down the rocky downhill side. I was bruised up, but not otherwise physically damaged. I was also in a race, and I felt obligated to push forward to get the best time I could. A few minutes later, I was having problems breathing, and it had nothing to do with how hard I was riding. My brain, logically and calmly, analyzed the situation, and informed me that I was having a panic attack. A part of me was all fascination: it’s true that you can’t breathe when you are having a panic attack! The logical part was very calm and said I had to get off the bike, sit quietly, and calm down. It was like I was partially outside of myself observing what was happening. All while something in me was panicking so badly it was taking away my ability to breathe. I wonder if I scared the corner marshall I came across at that time. I took a seat in his chair while I steadied myself. I walked almost every obstacle after that. My nerves were shot, and I knew it.

The terrain, loose dirt and rock, which was skeetering my bike around, plus the dark, did my anxiety level no good for the fall tonight. Four rides in three different places do not get you used to the way mountain bikes handle on different types of trail. I had a light, and that helped, but it wasn’t enough.

Two of the guys on the ride tonight came back to check on me after that second fall. I couldn’t even speak. I realized if I tried, I was going to just start crying. I figured they would appreciate it if I resisted. I held up my index fingers in the universal sign for “give me a minute”. It was hard to breathe, and hard to choke back those tears. If I had been with friends I might have just had my cry and gotten it done with. Those two, more sensible than perhaps they realized, just restarted their conversation and left me be to take care of myself. Which was probably easier when I didn’t feel like I was the center of attention. That didn’t take long, although it felt long for a few moments there. I was lucky, we were almost to the end of the trail; after I pulled myself together, there wasn’t much more riding for me to do. It still took a solid half hour to an hour after we got back in our vehicles and drove down from the trail head until I stopped feeling shaky and scared.

Mountain biking is like that, at least for me. The places I go are peaceful and beautiful. And the trail demands all of my attention, so no worrying about this or that or the other thing while I am riding. It’s almost like meditation in that I have to have a singular focus. I ride my bike and do nothing but ride my bike. I am constantly growing, not just in strength, but in skill. I learn how to do more and more as I go on. But it’s not without its price. I do fall off sometimes, no major injuries, but plenty of ugly bruises and, in the past, I’ve had an occasional lasting sprain or strain. It’s certainly not fun to get hurt, but there’s something fundamental that I learn about who I am by getting knocked around a little. Every fall has a lesson, if I stop to observe, think, and learn it. I won’t do Gu; I don’t do sleep deprivation, or working so hard I vomit. But I will continue to do this. Sometimes I wish I could skip this part, the being scared more than the falling off, but I know I am learning a lot, and growing, and that is why I signed up for this.

Identity

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Before I left Spokane, my friend said to me that he hadn’t realized how much of his identity was tied up with his wife. When she passed away, and as he’s dealt with his grief, he’s had to examine his concept of who he is and what he wants. This is no easy task.

I don’t know that I said much in reply aside from offering sympathy. I won’t claim to be an expert at this one, nor have I had a major grief, like his, to deal with.

Every time I’ve had a relationship end (my, I’ve had a lot more of these than I ever wanted to), I have had to adjust my sense of self. It is easier because I’ve spent a lot of time alone — then I know who I am when no one else is around, and I am mostly returning to this after a relationship ends.

What’s been harder for me is letting go of the things I wanted to be, but will never become. The one that hurts the most is that I will never be a parent. If I can’t find the husband, it makes it hard to have the child. I was never willing to go at that solo. Eventually, I got too old. 45 is pretty definitive. There are days when 45 is pretty hard to take.

There’s all the self-questioning that I can’t quite stop. I should have gone further into online dating. Sooner. Many boyfriends I should have broken up with sooner. I should have dropped the hard shell of defensiveness from my childhood sooner, and softened up. I should have been wiser about people, as if I could have just had the realization that when other people treated me poorly that this is not a reflection on my worth sooner.

We can regret, but we cannot change the past. We can only go on from here.

When we depart from the standard story, or any story we’ve told ourselves for a long time, it takes adjustment. I’m still trying to figure out who I am, as a 45 year old woman, aging more quickly than I’d like, without a family, without a significant other, with an anxiety problem that is fortunately not troubling me much at the moment, and, right now, in a new place without any friends or close friends to lean on.

We need more stories for women. More for men too, but I know less about that. I have female friends who are childless and happy with that, but I can’t think of many stories where that is the outcome for women. It never was an option in any of my happily ever afters. So I have no view of what this should be, even looking at my friends and trying to see through their eyes.

The only thing I’ve figured out is that you have to concentrate on the love you can give, not on the love you wished to receive. That is the path to happiness, but it is not easy to travel it.

One thing I hope is that I find honor and integrity, grace, generosity and kindness, warmth and caring, and lots of love freely given to others in who I am, whoever that may be.

Lost and Found

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I lost my phone this evening. Near as I can tell, it bounced out of my pocket as I ran to cross the street.

I have been lucky with lost phones. This is the third time I’ve misplaced a phone, unknowingly, and the third time the benevolence of strangers has brought it back to me.

The guy who picked up my phone told me I should lock it. I didn’t laugh, but if I did, how would he have been able to find me to give it back?

There are more good people in this world than bad people. Yes, I risk a bad person doing bad things to me with my unlocked phone. But since I’m more worried about me losing the phone than someone stealing it, I leave it unlocked.

And trust.

My trust has been well placed, thus far at least.

I am grateful for that.