After a Long Break

I believe that this is the longest break from blogging I have ever taken. For the first time in several years, I've had nothing to share with the world. We're already a few weeks into it (and it's early for the lunar version), but happy new year!

When I last posted in December, I was painting. I painted the bedroom my housemate vacated, and while I was at it, the main bathroom. Both rooms were in dire need of love. I'm eying the kitchen now, although that really needs much more than just paint.

The room, painted and ready for an occupant 

My grandfather planted the Meyer lemons outside the window nearly 60 years ago

I have been hoping to find a new housemate through friends, but no one wants to live in the boring 'burbs! I'm contemplating craigslist, although I have bad luck with craigslist, so I'm putting that off for as long as possible.

Fresh paint in the bathroom, too.

Yes, that's doggie shampoo, it's too cold this time of year to bathe Piglet outside!

I'm still technically jobless, but I had a few interviews, which is an improvement over the big, fat nothing I was getting before. I picked up some part-time temporary admin work just to get by for the next few months, while giving me time to keep searching for something longer-term. I still dream of turning ideas into things that work, and for the right idea, I'd go just about anywhere.

In my spare time, I've become more active with the grassroots animal welfare group I've volunteered with since 2003. Instead of volunteering at the program level, I am now helping with their first-ever formal Development plan. Given my work experience, the fact that I have done some nonprofit development work, and the fact that it can be difficult to find volunteers for the less-fun background work (most volunteers want, understandably, to be hands-on with the animals) I think that is where my efforts will make the biggest difference.

Somewhere in the fray, I was asked to sit on the Board. I wasn't thrilled about taking on that responsibility, particularly since fundraising is already demanding, especially at the volunteer level. But I am not good at saying no, so I was voted on last week. I am already preparing my letter that states my intention to step down at the end of my term.

Confession: philanthropically speaking, education is my true passion. While I support animal welfare, environmental and social justice causes, I truly believe that education is the key, that an educated population is aware of its faults and has the tools to fix them. I hope one day to devote time to educational issues, but I haven't yet found where someone with my skill set can work most effectively in that arena. If anyone has ideas on that front, I'm all ears (or eyes, in this case).

February

My mom's tree, San Mateo, CA

4 Feb 2010

Two weeks ago, Piglet and I visited the flowering cherry my family planted at the local park in memory of my mother.  It was a chilly day (for the Bay Area) and overcast, but the tree was just pushing out its first buds of the season (top photo). On Monday, I went hiking on Mount Tamalpais in Marin with a few friends.  It is an ideal time of the year to see waterfalls along the trails, and we were also lucky enough to see the first flowers of spring in bloom, white lilies (bottom photo).

During a particularly bleak year, when the humbling and numbing experience of searching for work in a market where there is seemingly none leaves in its wake the hopeless feeling of being unproductive, unneeded, even unwanted, the first signs of renewal are especially comforting.  Perhaps there is some glimmer of hope for the future. 

During my search for employment or some untapped niche to fill, I am also taking time to pay attention to my long-neglected household duties (repairs I can't really afford now that I'm not working, grossly overgrown garden), and contemplating finding some good cause to support.  I'd thought about going to battle with the health care industry and Congress over the insurance industry's death grip on what is a failing system, at least from the consumer point of view, but that is a war I can't win and could possibly work against me in ways I can't even imagine at this point.  If anyone has a good idea, let me know...

The first lilies of the year on Mt Tamalpais

15 Feb 2010

Once in a Blue Moon

New Year's Eve Blue Moon

31 December 2009

2009 ended in the Bay Area with a blue moon obscured by clouds.  After sitting in the cold for a half hour waiting for a chance to capture the moon in all its glory, I gave up, shot what you see here, went inside to warm up, and rang in the new year quietly with traditional noodles, the dog, the cats, Iron Man, and my phone vibrating with a happy new year email from my friend.

My first thoughts of the new year were relatively frivolous.  I contemplated the advantage of being compared with Pepper Potts, rather than the Eve Teschmacher (from Superman) moniker bestowed on me by my boss (he gets to be called Doctor Evil).  First, I love alliteration!  Second, as a villain, Teschmacher is restricted to life underground, while Potts enjoys a relatively normal life. And of course, given that I am the most poorly paid person in comparison to others who do what I do (in his defense, he gave me a chance to manipulate numbers because he could see I was good with them when no one else would hire me because I had no finance/accounting background other than a few classes), I am envious that Tony pays Pepper well enough that she can afford to drive one of those sexy little Audi TT roadsters and well, I really love sexy little roadsters, although I'm more of a Porsche fan.  Yes, my midlife crisis is still in full swing.

Education

One of my students (I'll call her Rachel) told me of a friend of hers with whom she took a class. Although her friend understood the subject matter, English was not her first language, and her work was consistently downgraded for spelling and grammatical errors. Rachel helped her friend by proofreading and correcting those errors and her friend's grades and English skills improved. Rachel mentioned how she felt downgrading those errors was unfair, since her friend knew the material. I felt otherwise, though. Her friend was not failing the course, her work just wasn't receiving outstanding marks. I think that is fair.

I think too many people these days blur the lines between passable and outstanding work. For whatever reason, people feel entitled to be credited with outstanding work when the work they're doing is really just satisfactory. Maybe I'm contributing to that by adding the "just" to satisfactory. Most people are "average." There is nothing wrong with that, but for whatever reason, it's seen as substandard when it really is the standard.

Rachel's friend's work was good, but not outstanding, because she couldn't communicate well in the language in which the course was taught. She wasn't failing, she just didn't receive superior marks. There is nothing wrong with that! If anything, we need to see this not as a barrier to a degree, but as an opportunity to learn and improve in the language of choice. People have a better chance of excelling professionally and socially if they know how to communicate effectively with those around them. Schools should enforce that.

...By the way, if there are any current students who happen by this posting, I highly recommend having friends and family proofread your work before submitting it, and try NOT to have the same proofreader every time. Sometimes it's easier for others to catch small errors, and sometimes others can give you a perspective you may not have thought of...

Within the educational system, the value of the degrees we confer is lessened when we pass people just for enrolling in our classes. I admit, this is a blurry line, and some happy medium between one extreme of teaching to overly rigid standards to the detriment of all else and the other of not having a consistent set of criteria to judge progress has yet to be found. But it seems as though the value of our degrees is already compromised. I taught a computer skills course a few years back, and when we covered formulas in Excel, I had to give a basic Algebra lesson for the younger students. The older students may have been a bit rusty, but it came back to them much more quickly when I said "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally."

In terms of the individual, when we award students grades they haven't earned, we do them no favors. In a sense, we are setting them up for failure at the next step or perhaps beyond. I would rather have someone have the opportunity to work on their weak points than send them on ill-equipped for what comes next by ignoring them.

All this said, I don't know what the solution is. I know a lot of primary and secondary level teachers who are dedicated professionals saddled with overly crowded classrooms and not enough resources to do even small things like make photocopies for their students. The masses want to place all the blame for the system's shortcomings onto them. Yes, there are a few bad eggs, but those exist in pretty much all professions. A lot of the problems lie in the dense and inefficient administrative/bureaucratic structures created by a bunch of separate laws implemented by tacking their requirements on wherever they may sort of fit, rather than something created as an integrated system.