I'm Rather Old

Well, I'm much older than I'd realized. Hanging out with a bunch of twentysomethings will do that.

Apparently only old people have hotmail accounts. When I give a twentysomething my email address, they always say "Hotmail? Is that still around?" Apparently it's like saying you still have 8-tracks. Or that you watch your movies on Betamax.

Here's something else that cracks up all the twentysomethings: when I say I remember the Carter administration. I swear, it makes them roll in the aisles every time. They've even begun to request it when I see them in class.

Do you know another way I've realized I'm old? I had to buy a bigger pillbox. I used to have the smallest pill box, with enough room for one, maybe two pills in each day. But I had to buy the next size up so all of my daily medications could fit. Pretty soon I'll be like my 95 year old grandmother, who has a pill box so big it looks like seven bread boxes all in a row.

So I'm this old, and yet I'm in some sort of arrested development. I have a Walter Payton poster on my wall. My parents drove me and my stuff out to college this summer. I have a locker at the ed school. I know people who live in dorms. Someone even passed me a note in class this week.

I bet I'll be hitting puberty soon.

Longing for El Salvador

I suppose I'm longing for my trip to El Salvador for many reasons. But here's one: I miss having only one shirt to wear. It was a red plaid shirt with snaps.

This was the only button-down shirt I brought to El Salvador. Sure I had some undershirts or t-shirts to mix in, but every day it was back to the same red plaid shirt with snaps.

And why do I miss it?

I like not having to think about what I'm going to wear. Every day I woke up, realized it was that same red plaid shirt with the snaps, and then all my fashion thinking was over. And when you wear the same shirt for days on end, it will begin to soften itself. And a week or so later, you don't just wear it--instead the shirt curls into your contours, cradles you, becomes a friend and a second skin. As Heidegger says, if we are really connected with the world around us, certain objects seem to choose us as much as we choose them. And towards the end of my time in El Salvador, the shirt was practically leaping out of my backpack to hug me and say hello every morning.

Same Problem

Once again I'm ensconced in my Harvard problem. (Yes, I used the word "ensconced." Very Ivy League isn't it?)

The problem? Too many speakers, too little time.

Yesterday I had to pick between a poetry reading and a Jonathan Kozol lecture. Today, I just saw Ralph Nader and Bruce Fine take the law students to task. I'm about to hustle to the Ed School because the chief of the Choctaw Nation is speaking. And tonight there's a poetry reading with 15 poets (a benefit for Haiti) with the likes of Robert Pinsky and Jorie Graham.

When will I ever do my homework?

Addendum on the Winter

I haven't bought a winter coat in well over 10 years. I usually just cobble together some combination of sweatshirts, windbreakers and fleeces. I usually wear this one thin blue coat I bought at a second hand store in Ann Arbor in the mid-90's. All this clothing is tattered, frayed, threadbare, and run-down. Yes, I look like a homeless person.

But do you know what's great about looking like a homeless person? The real homeless people never ask you for money.

And give me a couple more years in the same coats, and they'll start giving ME money.

Chicago Tough

I think everyone out here on the east coast is weak when it comes to the cold. WEAK!

They'll say "it's freezing today!" when it's only 20 degrees. And the even WEAKER people are all these students at the Ed school from other places: Arizona, California, Singapore, etc. They're freezing even when they're indoors.

I'm not. I'm never cold. This is mild. This is one of the easiest winters of my life.

Because I'm from Chicago.

Now I'm not tough in any way. I don't fight people, I don't fix cars, I don't own weapons, I can't even handle the "medium" sauce at Taco Bell. But Chicago has made me winter tough.

One day, when I was sitting I class, I looked up and glanced around the room and saw people in sweaters, scarves, sweatshirts, and even some in their coats. I had on only a t-shirt, and I was feeling just fine.

The other day I was outside wearing a t-shirt and a fleece, and a bunch of bundled up people walked over and said "aren't you cold? How can your dress like that? Don't you have a winter coat?"

I remember seeing a photo this fall of Obama walking outside the White House without a coat, and everyone was surprised that he didn't need more clothing. And the captions said something like "he has a Chicago flinty toughness."

I like that. I want to be flinty tough. I don't know what "flinty" is, but I'm going to put it on my resume.

I've Concluded

Apple cider is always better than apple juice.

The New Rock and Roll

I've been shopping classes over the past few days, trying to figure out what I might take. My schedule is beginning to shape up: Advanced Poetry Workshop, Arts in Education (core course), and Moral Adult/Moral Children. But the last class is up in the air. I was dying to take the Buddhist Bodies and Moral Cultivation seminar at the Divinity School, but they had to give precedence to other Divinity School students. Imagine! But I was really bummed I couldn't take it--imagine learning how complex ideas such as phenomenology are situated not just in the mind, but in the body too.

That's right, I said phenomenology. I'm an east coast snob. Or attempting to be.

There's another class at the Divinity School called Issues in Native American Religion which seems pretty interesting, but the teacher isn't all that dynamic, and I've already done my share of reading on the topic.

So I then I sat in on an ethics class at the Law School titled Self, Serenity, and Vulnerability. It's co-taught by two genius professors, one a specialist in Eastern Philosophy and the other in Western Philosophy. They have framed all of human thought into three orientations, and the class will look into each as a lens for guiding the human enterprise. You know, light stuff.

And these two professors blew the roof off the lecture hall. Like they were in a killer rock band.

And they're unlikely rock stars. The Western Philosophy professor is an old guy, who speaks in deliberate gestures, a hoarse voice, and total conviction. He spoke for 20 minutes in complete eloquence and cohesion, without a note card in sight. The Eastern Philosophy professor is a mid 40’s man who looks like a muppet, and his voice cracks 50% of the time. That is not an exaggeration.

These are men who have been immersed in the hardest books, the deepest thoughts, and the most provocative arguments for years. It's a pure pleasure to see minds like theirs laid bare for their students. As I was in the midst of the two-hour lecture, I had an old feeling come over me. It was the feeling of being at a rock concert. There was adrenaline and moxie. The performers fueled me, left me with more energy than when I first walked through the door.

It was wild roller coaster ride with anticipation, dips, turns, surprises, and speed. It was downhill skiing on a slope that's a little too hard for you.

But I still like the rock star metaphor the best. The professors are my new Mick Jaggers.

But not all is well in Self, Serenity, and Vulnerability. To be completely honest, I'm scared to death. It's the Harvard LAW school for goodness’ sakes. It's a different world over there than at the Education School. The folks at the Ed School are smart enough--maybe more good-hearted than they are brilliant. But when you walk into a Law School class like this, you're stepping into the most elite tier of intelligence on the planet. I'm not in that elite tier. At all. I'm worried I might fail the class or something. If I write one of the worst papers in class, which is a real possibility considering the genius cliental, can I still get a "C"? At least?

I pondered not taking the class, mostly out of fear. But I suppose some fear is good--it will keep me on my toes. Maybe fear has to come with the rock-and-roll rush. I mean, this is a class that actually lives up to the Harvard pedigree and mystique. So, I might as well go to the top of the mountain. I'll go to the top of the mountain just to see what things look like from up there, and hope they don't break my shins on the way down.

Notes Towards Some Future Blogging

I'm in Guatemala as I type, soon to be leaving for El Salvador with the Harvard Learning Through Libraries project.

I remind myself to write about:

1. My strange reaction when I arrive in a Latin American country
2. How life is hard for most people
3. How crowded it is in Latin America, and what that says about community, loneliness, culture, etc.

So there.

You might want to imagine those blogs yourself, which will probably be better than what I'll eventually write. Like how a science fiction book is always better when you look at the title and cover and imagine what's inside, vs. the actual reading.

Thoughts on Poetry Part 1

Years later, when I look back at my time here in Cambridge, I'll remember it as one that was filled with poetry. I think I always wanted to be a poet. I remember a couple of poems I wrote as a kid called "Goat Coat" and "Price-Tag Bag" (see how clever? Those words rhyme!). And then I cranked out a lot of lyrics for punk/folk songs over the years, and finally threw in a couple of week-long summer workshops at the University of Iowa. But it's sort of like I've been circling around poetry without ever taking the full plunge. But I did this year. One of my four classes this semester was a poetry workshop, but psychologically it often felt like it was well over half of my entire workload--probably because I enjoyed it the most.

So what is it about poetry?

Well, for one, it's nice to birth new things into the world. That's what my poetry professor said one day when we were sitting in front of some of our new poems--that these were brand new to the world.

I like that. Maybe it's only marks on a sheet of paper, maybe no one but a few people will ever read it, but you've just added something to the world that didn't exist before. Reading literature is great, taking a philosophy course is fine, but in those endeavors you fill up your mind with someone else's stuff. When you write poetry, your only task to bring something new into the world. Not a bad thing at all.

I Loves Me Some Grade Inflation

Well, I got my first official grade for an assignment. It was a philosophy paper. I got an A-.

Grades really recede into the background here, as they should. My Arts in Education class is pass/fail, so I never think about it. My philosophy class has two papers and two grades, and I'm waiting for the second. Grades haven't come up once in my poetry workshop, and you get your grade after your final project in neuroscience.

I almost never think about grades. Most folks in the program don't.

As it should be.

In that pass/fail class, we recently turned in a big paper. No one would ever fail the course--unless you never turn anything in. So passing is a foregone conclusion. But when I wrote the big paper, I put in the same effort as I would a graded paper. I thought about it, organized it, outlined it, researched it, wrote it, rewrote it, edited it, and had other people proofread it.

In neuroscience you're not really accountable anything specific. They don't take attendance since it's a big lecture, you're never given a recall exam over the information, and you're never quizzed on the readings. No tests either. And yet, you go to all the lectures, you take notes, you do all the readings. Why wouldn't you? Would you pay thousands in tuition, blow off the work, and then "trick" a professor into giving you a good grade? What kind of sense would that make?

So back to my A-. Probably a classic example of grade inflation. Grade inflation is simply that: no one gets a C (unless you do nothing), and your poorest effort garners you at least a B-. It's not like high school or undergrad.

People who went to school before grade inflation like to complain about the current phenomenon. But really, who cares? Grade inflation is another way to forget about grades altogether, to the student's benefit. It's done me well.

Here's how grade inflation works, as far as I can tell: What used to be an A- is now an A. And what used to be a B+ or B is now an A-. And what used to be a B- or C+ is now a B+. What used to be a C is now a B, and a C- or D+ is now a B-.

By that scale, my A- philosophy paper was basically a B. Just like my grades in high school and college. Some things never change.