Shouldn't We Move Past This As A Society?

Nope, not a political rant today.  At least I don't think it's tied up on politics in any way...

What I'm going to complain about is group assignments in educational settings.  It has been the bane of my existence since I was in 4th grade.  I still remember the assistant principal of my elementary school coming into my class and explaining the concept of "cooperative learning."  Back then, it was more structured.  Each group was supposed to divide into rolls:  leader, recorder, reporter, and maybe some other stuff I've forgotten.  I think even as a kid, I was hoping and expecting it to be a passing fad, but the concept has had a distressing amount of staying power.

In my experience, there has been a lot less group work in higher ed.  But in my K-12 years, I heard various excuses for group work.  One thing I heard a lot was that it was a way for students who were doing better to help students who were lagging behind, which always made me wonder how that was fair to the students who were doing well.  Another excuse was that eventually, we would all be in jobs that required massive amounts of group work, and we needed to get used to working together.

Well.  I can't speak for everyone's jobs, of course, but I can speak to the ones I've had.  Some of my jobs, like teaching, have actually required little to no group work.  Other jobs I've had involved completing tasks or projects in teams, but really in those situations, we were usually working individually on portions of projects that would all be put together in the end.  So we weren't putting up with each others neuroses and idiosyncrasies on a daily basis.  Also, it's worth pointing out that everyone was getting paid for their teamwork efforts. Personally, I will put up with a lot more when money is involved.

What inspired this particular rant is that I had a considerable amount of group work in one of my classes this semester, which, I'm happy to report, ended yesterday with the presentation of the last project.  Even under the best circumstances, this amount of group work would have been challenging, but the person I worked with turned out to be a complete nightmare.  She consistently waited until right before projects were due to do any work, and then second-guessed (and sometimes deleted) work I'd already done.  Then she would waste time agonizing over what other students in the class were doing and messing around with formatting.  She would then be miffed that I didn't want to match her amount of time engaged in useless behaviors that masquerade as "working."  In principle, it's supposed to be faster to complete projects with another person, but I'm convinced I would have finished all of the projects much faster on my own.

I understand that some people work better in groups as individuals.  But those of us who work better individually shouldn't be forced into that model, and people should stop talking about how beneficial group work is for us in the long run.  The fastest way for this nonsense to go away is for educators to stop forcing group work on everyone.  Can we finally take that step as a society?

A Bridge Too Far

I had been feeling regretful recently about my lack of both time and material to update my blog.  The time is still a problem (still two weeks left in my semester!), but I now have some (completely unwelcome) material:  There. Is. A. Centipede. In. My. Home.

My building is unfortunately home to various unwelcome critters.  I've written here before about the rodent problem.  Laila usually keeps the mice at bay (she killed her sixth mouse a few weeks ago!).  However, the flip side of having a cat take care of the rodents is that her food attracts roaches, another one of the unwelcome critters.  In general--if I must live in a building with infestation problems--I'm okay with this trade off.  As gross as roaches are, I prefer them to the mice.

However, a centipede is another matter entirely.  Centipedes have always given me the creeps.  They run really fast, and I've hear their bites are painful.  They also just look awful.  Years ago, in another apartment, one somehow got into my closet light fixture and died there.  It was illuminated every time I turned the light on.  I took it as an omen that I needed to move.

Anyway, this current centipede is on the wall in the closet that holds my washer and dryer.  It's high enough up and wedged enough into the corner that it would be difficult to kill.  I'm afraid of I go after it with a broom, it'll just fall down and run off someplace (or worse, somehow fall on me).  At the moment it's hanging out and moving its antennae menacingly when I try to do laundry.  I don't like seeing it there, but I know if it disappears, I'll worry about where else it might show up. 

I'm hoping for less revolting material next time I write here.  Anyone got any great tips for dealing with centipedes that somehow get inside?

Can't We Stretch Out The Magic Of Halloween?

Complaints about stores and their schedule of displaying/selling holiday items are pretty much a cliche at this point.  So I never really thought I would add to the chorus...but I will, since I feel mildly inconvenienced by it right now.

I've been seeing cute little pumpkins for sale for weeks.  Every week, I've been tempted to buy one, but I haven't because there is no shortage of clutter in my apartment, and I didn't have a good enough reason to justify buying one.  But then I decided that one of those pumpkins would be a cool addition to a fall-themed activity I was planning for one of my clients.  I decided to buy one today.

Except that there were none to be found in my supermarket.  In fact, all traces of Halloween had vanished, replaced with a mix of Thanksgiving and Christmas stuff.  It never occurred to me that all the pumpkins would be gone, since (a) Halloween was less than a week ago, and (b)I thought people who liked table centerpieces would want cute little pumpkins for their Thanksgiving decorating.

Well, lesson learned.  My client will have to see a line drawing of a pumpkin, and in the future, I'll recognize little pumpkins as the precious, fleeting commodity that they are.

The Limits To Feline Companionship

I love having a cat, and Laila adds a lot to my life.  But I realized recently that she is utterly lacking in empathy when it comes to human sickness.

I've been sick with a cold for about the past week and a half now.  I initially thought I'd be able to kick it pretty fast since, after all, it's just a cold.  But of course colds come in gradations, from the "just a cold" variety to the "monster viruses that bring on secondary infections and leave your abdomen sore from all the coughing" variety.  My cold belongs to the latter category.  Throughout this ordeal, it has been clear that Laila doesn't like my coughing, particularly when I have a coughing fit while she's in my lap.  But she hasn't seemed to connect the annoying sound to any discomfort on my part.

Her lack of empathy became very apparent Friday night, when I had hoped for a good night of sleep that would put me on a fast track to feeling better.  I got up for the second time at around 4 AM when it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to sleep because of all my coughing.  When I came out to the living room, Laila concluded it was cat breakfast time and started meowing loudly.  I told her it wasn't time for breakfast yet, and started making myself a cup of hot herbal tea to try to calm my cough.

The worst moment was when I sat on the couch with my hot tea in hand, started coughing before I could set the cup down, spilled scalding hot water on my thigh, and yelped.  Laila's response?  Industriously scratching the couch.  She didn't even look up at the sound of my yelp.

I still highly recommend cat ownership to anyone.  After all, cats are fun most of the time.  But don't buy expensive furniture if you're going to have a cat.  And don't expect any concern from them at all when you're sick.

I Stand With Dr. Christine Blasey Ford

I am still adjusting to my new level of busyness, but when I have spare moments, I find myself turning to coverage of Brett Kavanaugh and the women who have accused him of sexual assault and misconduct.  At this point, three such women have come forward.  I believe all of them, but I chose to focus the title of this blog post on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford because she spent the day testifying before the Senate and we know the most about her experience.

Why do I so firmly believe her?  After all, I wasn't a witness to what happened.

Two reasons:
1.  Sexual assault is so extremely prevalent in our society that it does not surprise me when I hear that someone was assaulted. 

2.  She had absolutely no incentive to fabricate this.  From all outward appearances, she has had an extremely successful adult life.  Since coming forward with her allegations against Kavanaugh, she has experienced harassment and threats.  Why would she throw her own life into utter disarray, aside from a sense of civic duty?

Why am I so interested in this case?
1.  Because while I don't share Ford's exact experience, I've had other bad experiences with harassment and aggression from men.  The MeToo movement has shown me just how common such experiences are, and it makes me angry.  How much more mental energy would women have if we weren't trying to avoid harassment and aggression or trying to mentally recover from experiencing it?  What could we collectively accomplish with that additional mental energy?  What would life be like if women's bodies were not so routinely treated like public property?

2.  Because I resent the implications some have made that the fact that Kavanaugh was a teenager at the time somehow makes it okay to assault someone.  Sure, he can move on from that...but what about Ford?  She has had to live with this experience her whole life.  The fact that she was a teenager at the time does not make it any better for her.

3.  Because we are talking about making a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.  It's a foregone conclusion that I'm not going to be thrilled with anyone Trump nominates.  But the risk of a Supreme Court justice who attempted to rape someone--yes, even decades ago--is unacceptable.  Surely there are other people he could choose from, and surely not all of them have a history of violence.

4.  Because I'm appalled at how little we have progressed as a society.  I was in sixth grade when Anita Hill testified that Clarence Thomas had repeatedly sexually harassed her on the job.  Though I was still young at the time, I remember the skepticism she encountered.  Actually, one of my most vivid memories of that time is my (female) social studies teacher that year speculating that Hill had had a crush on Thomas and was acting out of unrequited love.  I would have hoped than in the intervening 26 years, our society would have become more enlightened.  I'm not asking for anyone to automatically believe anyone who brings forward allegations of sexual misconduct or assault, but I do wish that everyone would seriously consider them.  At a bare minimum, people who bring forward such allegations should not have to fear for their own safety.

The United States deserves better than this.  I deeply admire all the women who have come forward to try to ensure that we get better than this in the end.

A Few Grad School Observations

The past few weeks have gone really fast!  It still feels a little scary to be back in school, rather that working at a job and earning money, but I also think it's entirely possible that my whole five-semester program will go by in a flash.  Here are some thoughts on the experience so far:

• I'm really busy.  I thought I knew what I was getting into time-wise.  I thought I might be busier in this master's program than I was in my last one, so that isn't a surprise.  But what is a surprise is that I'm also busier now than I was in the past couple of years working full time and taking classes on top of that.  Gulp.
• Learning ASL has given me another way to be uncoordinated.  Usually language classes aren't too difficult for me.  At this point, ASL is proving to be the exception because it involves a level of coordination that I don't seem to have.  It reminds me of trying to learn the moves to the Macarena when I was in high school...by the time I learned, the dance had become unspeakably uncool.  I hope it will come in time.  I do think it's a fascinating language.
• I have a distinguishing feature of some sort.  When I was teaching, it was very important to me to learn all of my students' names.  However, it was not an instantaneous process.  The way it worked for me was that the first names I'd learn would be those of students who had some distinguishing feature.  For instance, if there was, say, one student with red hair in the class, his or her name would be easier for me to remember.  All of my professors seemed to learn my name quickly...which leads me to believe that I perhaps have a distinguishing feature of my own.  I'm willing to bet that that distinguishing feature is my age, as I have at least ten years on all of my classmates (more in many cases!).  It's also very possible that I'm older than one of my profs.

The good thing is that people routinely get through these programs, so it should all be okay in the end.  This will, however, almost certainly be my last degree-seeking program.

Things That Will Make Next Week Easier

One week of graduate school is down!  Yay!  I'm not going to count how many weeks are left in a five-semester program.

Just like every new experience, the first week seemed pretty rough.  There are a lot of new skills I'll need to acquire.  There is a lot of class work to do.  And because of the nature of this program, I'll have responsibilities in the onsite clinic. 

It has also been somewhat rough emotionally.  I'm thrilled to have such a good opportunity to break into another field, but I'm also in my late thirties and have been working for years.  Leaving the workforce for two years to do something new is scary. I've thought a few times that it would have been nice if I had thought I could have the sort of life I wanted without retraining, if I had felt like I had a secure future at the job I just left.

But!  I have at least two reasons why this week will almost have to be easier than last week, and that is something to celebrate.

1.  I broke down and bought a tablet.  When I was working full-time and taking night classes, I carried an ancient--but fairly lightweight--laptop with me.  Its battery didn't stay charged for long, but hey, I didn't need it to because I had one class per day.  With much longer class days, I spent last week toting my newer--but extremely heavy--laptop with me.  I could tell after about the first day that two years of lugging that thing along with my lunch and even one of my textbooks every day was going to do serious damage to my back and shoulders.  I had been curious about tablets for years but had never purchased one because I wasn't sure I would use one enough to justify the cost.  After a few days of agonizing over how much money I had already spent on textbooks, I decided to bite the bullet and order a tablet.  It arrived today, and so far, I'm very pleased with it.  I think there will be occasions when I have to drag the laptop to campus with me, but those will be few and far between, and will likely remind me to appreciate my tablet.

2.  Metro will be restored to its usual level of functionality tomorrow.  Two metro stations that lie between me and my campus have been closed since late July(!).  I've been fortunate that this particular phase in Metro's improvement plan didn't inconvenience me much until last week, but I will say that I found it quite inconvenient over a short span of time.  I'm lucky in that I have a commuter train option where I live.  However, the trains don't run frequently on the line closest to me.  Twice last week I found myself running for the train because I knew I would have a long wait for the next one (or in one case, it was the last train of the evening).  I am not a graceful runner, and I had that abovementioned laptop on my back.  I won't miss the joint pain that resulted.

Wishing everyone a great week, even better than last week!