Graduation - Part 2

Here's a cool part of graduation. Every school carries a different representative object to wave. The law school had gavels, the divinity school had a halos over their heads, public policy had inflatable globes, the ed school had books, and the design school built structures out of legos and taped it to their hats. I saw one person with a gavel AND a halo . . . must've been a double major. Or maybe he was representing the justice meted out by angels. The business school waved American flags, though I think dollar bills would have been better. (Or can you somehow wave the oppression of 3rd world peoples? Isn't that what they've been learning?)

Then came the honorary degrees. A was a pretty impressive bunch: a philosopher of justice, an experimental sculptor, a bioethicist, a researcher in blood-based disorders, a molecular biologist, etc. People who probably never get stoned. Or couldn't name a single NFL player. And yes, Meryl Streep also got one. It's a little disheartening to see how everyone craned their neck when her turn was up, after dozing through everyone else. Sure breaking the boundaries of science or revolutionizing philosophy are both impressive, but if you give us a movie actress, we are INTERESTED. Sure your research may solve a fatal illness, but did you star in "Mama Mia"? Because Meryl did.

My favorite recipient of an honorary degree was Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of a U of Maryland university and a founder of multiple programs that serve underprivileged african-american youth. Why did I like him so much? Because he has two degrees from the University of Illinois. My school.

So I have three schools under my belt now: U of I, Northwestern, and Harvard. If you've gone to multiple colleges, sometimes you wonder where your loyalties lie. If the schools played each other in football, who would you root for? For me it's easy: University of Illinois first and foremost, and always. No contest. Your undergraduate years are somehow housed in your DNA--that formative time is inextricable from who you are. For me, the other schools are nice add-ons, but they'll never touch U of I in loyalty.

So there I was sitting in the hot sun in Harvard yard, half paying attention, when I hear "Mr. Hrabowski completed is graduate degrees in mathematics and education at the University of Illinois." And do you know what I did? I whooped. Loudly. Really loudly. I didn't plan it--it wasn't one of those times when you think "well, I know what I could yell . . . should I do it?" It was an involuntary whoop that I couldn't have retained if I wanted to. But people had to know I was there to REPRESENT.

Of course graduation is a big day for the Harvard University president. Right now that's Drew Faust, and she made her presence known in a strange way. Before one of the honorary degrees was given out to a person, someone would stand up and read their straightforward bio. And then Drew Faust would stand up and add HER two sentences. And what a two sentences they always were. You could tell she had working for the past 6 months on making her lines JUST SO. Once she spoke you could hear the (deliberate) elevation in eloquence and vocabulary. She'd say things like "his perspicacious insight has us soaring to new scientific heights" or "his vertiginous climb to the top of his field is only matched by his galvanisation of the movement." At one point my friend April took out her iPhone, got online, brought up dictionary.com, and started to type in every unknown word that would come out of Drew's mouth.

In the afternoon, things got down to business. All the schools broke into their own ceremonies, and soon enough I was walking across the stage and shaking hands, and I was graduated.

Well, almost.

It's entirely likely that a Harvard graduate is an insufferable person. They think they went to the best school, so they likewise think they're amongst the best people in the world, and what they say is some of the best things humans have ever said. As my brother told me a few months ago, "you're now going to be really insufferable, aren't you?"

I don't think so. As I sat back in my chair with all of the other graduates, I looked down the aisle and saw everyone opening up their large, sealed envelopes to pull out their diplomas and have a look. To sit back and admire it. I started to do the same: pop the golden seal, lift up the red flap, and look inside for that piece of parchment paper with the calligraphic script you've been working so hard for.

But mine didn't have a diploma. It only had a single sheet of paper.

Apparently you have to complete some financial aid payback forms before you can graduate. Supposedly everyone knew this. Supposedly there was email after email, and reminder after reminder. And I missed it all. Maybe it was my laziness, maybe it was my flakiness, maybe it was my disorganization. All I knew was I didn't have a diploma--instead I had a little piece of paper that was gently scolding my neglect.

I looked down the rows and saw all the diplomas in the proud hands of the graduates. And then I looked down at my sheet, which might as well have been a note to the principal's office.

If I ever seem to have a bit of that Harvard arrogance, I assure you, it's only an act.

It Changes Everything

Do you want to know what changes everything? What can change your day, your week, your whole year? Something that, if you started with it, just about everything else falls into place?

Naps.

That's right, taking a nap.

I had the good fortune to be able to take naps this year. Because I had the varied schedule of a student, I could nap an hour in the afternoon here and there, or sometimes in the late morning, or right after dinner (since I was going to go to bed at 2 am anyway). I would take a nap at the library, take a nap in my own bed, take a on the couch downstairs . . . I napped with the best of them.

I cannot tell you how great it is. When you nap your mood improves, your health improves, your cognition improves. You have more energy and you're more alert and you're more present and you're more alive. I'm sure it adds years to your life.

But this shouldn't surprise us: if your body says it's tired, it knows what it needs, so you should go to sleep. Pretty simple.

If you start with naps, everything else can fall into place. True for an individual, true for a society.

Napping is so great and so essential, that I think it's a crime if you can't do it. If your culture has constructed itself so that it's impossible to take naps whenever you want, it's a culture that's gone badly off the rails.

So here is my new gauge of the worthiness of a society: how much napping can you do?

And I'm not really joking. If your culture has ample napping time, it's a culture that honors biorhythms, honors health, and honors individuality. Do you know who does all the napping they ever need? Hunter-gatherers . . . both stone age hunter-gatherers and modern hunter-gatherers. Consider this passage about an aboriginal group in Australia:

"Apart from the time spent in general social intercourse, chatting, gossiping, and so on, some hours of the daylight were also spent resting and sleeping. If the men were in camp, they usually slept after lunch from an hour to an hour and a half, sometimes even more. After returning from fishing or hunting they usually had a sleep . . . . The women, when out collecting in the forest, appeared to rest more frequently than the men. If in camp all day, they also slept at odd times, sometimes for long periods."

That's right, by my formula, the aborigines are more advanced than we are. They have lots of napping opportunities. We have almost none. And we think that's progress.

Bumming Myself Out

I think the oil spill in the gulf is too much. It's too depressing, too demoralizing, too apocalyptic. Our final stab into the heart of mother earth. Or something.

This is one of the first times I am deliberately ignoring an important story, a weak defense mechanism against a crushing reality.

How can we keep ignoring the natural world? Is it that we're lazy? Selfish? Reluctant to give up our comfortable modern lives? Is the truth of it all too depressing?

Credible scientists say that in the future people will be amazed that we spent so much time and money on the Iraq war, when global warming was so much more important. IT'S NON-NEGOTIABLE. Nothing happens if you don't have a landbase. Countless lives are at stake. Countless ecosystems are at stake. Other credible scientists say it may be too late. And still we ignore it.

I'll try to write a more upbeat, casual blog next. Something about graduation. If the oil spill hasn't reached the Massachusetts shore yet.

End of the Minivan Era

Today has been a difficult day for Uncle Steve Jordan.

The Era of the Minivan has come to an end.

For the past 3 years or so, I've driven a minivan. A 1995 Plymouth Voyager, a real honest-to-goodness soccer mom minivan. And I EMBRACED it. I had a bumper sticker that said "My child is an honors student." I have a shirt that says "Soccer Mom." I have another shirt that says "Minivan Mega Fun."

Don't you see? It was ironic. I'm not a soccer mom. I don't have a child who is an honors student. Nor do I have a child.

That's why it was clever. And hip. Because it's ironic.

So I really loved driving that behemoth. Or, as I liked to call it, the green mother ship.

But the repairs became too frequent, the overheated engine became too common, the leaking coolant (and door that didn't open, and cracked windshield, and windows that didn't roll down, and the air conditioning that didn't work) became too constant. So I let her go. Today.

What am I going to do now? Without this ironic part of me? Can I still wear my "Minivan Mega Fun" shirt? Do I have to try to be interesting all on my own? Develop a personality or something?

Because I like things that are a substitute for actually being an engaging person. Like "I drive a minivan." Or "I don't have a cell phone." Or "My favorite bands are more obscure than your favorite bands."

Sigh.

At least my Chicago Blackhawks are tearing through the NHL playoffs.

Wait a minute . . . I'm a hockey fan . . . I drove a mini van . . . I was almost a hockey mom!

Like my hero Sarah Palin.

And as I said goodbye to the minivan, I was wondering, do we really have relationships with inanimate objects? I suppose we do. Certainly children do with their dolls and stuffed animals. But us adults? Are we really attached to things that aren't alive? Do concrete objects actually posses a personality? Do we think they have some kind of soul or something? Or is that just what our minds project UPON them? And if it is just something our mind does, then we should just be able to turn off our minds when we have to say goodbye. Because there's nothing really THERE, is there?

I'll now be on a bike path or sidewalk near you. See you then.

Random Out-of-Context Paragraphs #2

This is what we need to do with the natural world: listen. Then we might know how to live and what to do. I’m not the one to say what that is, since I have a lot more listening to do myself. But we can find people who listen and hear what is being said: the remaining hunter-gatherers, Native Americans, or those who have spent their lives immersed in their bioregion. These are the masters that Confucius talks about, those who have trained themselves through a lifetime of roles and rituals, those who know what to do. Heidegger said “a completely new method of thinking [would be], at first, possible for but a few men to achieve.” The naturalization of the world would be a new method of thinking for many of us, but an old method for others. So we should begin to train ourselves for this new way of thinking, and start listening to those who are already the masters.

A few years ago I watched clip from a Thelonious Monk concert. The song began with the bass player, drummer, and saxophonist playing first, with Monk walking across the stage to his piano. But halfway there he just stopped, and then started to tap his foot and snap his fingers. For the next few minutes he just tapped and snapped, then walked back and forth in a casual, rhythmic dance, staring upwards at nothing, lost in the music. Minutes later he finally sat down and started to play too. After the concert someone asked him why he didn’t play right away, and he said something like “they were already in a good groove, so they didn’t need me playing yet.” This is my best metaphor for what we should do in the natural world. We should try to be Thelonious Monk with the natural world. We should listen to nature, find its rhythms, snap our fingers, enter into its music. It’s already in a good groove, so it doesn’t need us stepping all over the notes. And if we listen well, we’ll know exactly when to sit down and play along.

Random Out-of-Context Paragraph #1

In my fifteen years as a teacher, I always knew I was working in the very heart of education. But after s300-s301, I am now engaged in the scholarship of education. Before my focus went no further than the four walls of my classroom; I was a teacher and only a teacher, and in no formal way was I a writer, commentator, analyst researcher, or philosophizer about teaching. But now I’ve spent a year thinking broadly about education, I’ve talked with researchers and people working on policy, I’ve begun some of my own research, and I’ve started to think about the field contextually. And I feel ready and confident to do so. Maybe I needed fifteen years of teaching and one year of graduate work at Harvard before I could adequately begin to be a scholar in the field. If I had done it any earlier, or without my work at Harvard, I might not have spoken from a place of deep experience and conviction. And nothing is worse than making assertions while simultaneously trying to justify (to yourself and to others) that you are worthy of those assertions. Or to use Edward’s metaphor, Luke left Degobah for the first time too early, before he was ready to be a Jedi. I wanted to be a fully trained “Jedi” educator before I could be a commentator on the field.

Poems from This Year - Part 3

Two more:

"Window Washer"
"Bedtime"

In the Bowels

Well, I'm deep in the bowels of some Harvard library at an old wooden carrel working on my final paper. This last essay is a heavy one: it tackles Heidegger and Confucius (together again) and indigenous philosophies and more. And it's running away from me--over 30 pages already.

Very hard to birth such a project. But it's a labor of love my friends, a labor of love. I'll be sad when it's over.

Apocalypse

For the past few days it seems like armageddon has arrived. And let me tell you, it's a mighty bleak feeling.

First, devastating earthquakes seem to be happening everywhere.

Second, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is spreading by the second, choking and killing everything in the sea, delicate ecosystems, etc., and is heading for poor, beleaguered New Orleans.

Third, the Red Line broke down a few days ago, which is how I get around.

Fourth, a major water main broke that serves over two million people in the Boston area, and our tap water has been contaminated for days. You can't drink it, you can't wash your clothes in it, you can't wash your dishes in it, they say that even if you used soap to wash your hands, you should still sanitize them right afterwards. There's serious shortages on bottle water--if you go to a CVS or a grocery store, you'll see empty shelves of where all things drinkable used to be.

(Not to mention that I have a horrendous, growing, inflamed face rash that is leaving me horribly disfigured).

What is going on? Have we not been praying enough? Are the cosmos angry?

And if the U.S. doesn't watch out, we'll be demoted to a 2nd world country sometime soon. Though we probably deserve it.

The End Is Near

Well, three classes down, one to go. The end is near. Some reflective thoughts.

1. I love studying and taking classes. It seems like a human right that should never be denied. Because as much as you love studying, you have to break from it eventually to enter the job force to make some money. I know, you can be a PhD student and prolong it all for another 5 years, but PhD work is different--it has to be narrowly focused, and I'm not so sure that's for me.

2. When I'm not teaching I exist differently. I have an appetite, I sleep deeply and soundly. I have more energy. I take naps. Have you ever been able to take naps regularly? It changes your WHOLE life. I nap four or five days every week. That's another human right that shouldn't be denied.

3. What a rare treasure it is to find a really good teacher. Teaching is a tough job. It's very hard to do well. Very few teachers are REALLY good at it. At Harvard I've been lucky to have some pretty good teachers, and I've (for the most part) gotten everything I wanted out of my classes. But it's still rare to get that great teacher, that life-changing teacher. They're an unbelievable treasure if you ever stumble across one.

4. You know how teachers say "there aren't any stupid questions"? That's a lie. Of course there are stupid questions. Lots of them. I've heard them in my classes from time to time. Someone will speak, and I'll think to myself "now THAT was a stupid question."

5. You know how when you get out of the pool your swimsuit clings to your legs? That's one of my least favorite feelings.