Comments on: Freshness. http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2009/01/04/freshness/ I am a mongrel - O ma! A gremlin... Thu, 24 Sep 2009 04:34:17 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: » Notes: Mystery Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2009 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2009/01/04/freshness/comment-page-1/#comment-9767 » Notes: Mystery Yule Heibel’s Post Studio © 2003-2009 Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:23:52 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/?p=1114#comment-9767 [...] I was on a sort of nostalgia rag (see my comments to the Freshness post, for example), I was reminded of a book by Louise Huebner (go ahead, google [...] [...] I was on a sort of nostalgia rag (see my comments to the Freshness post, for example), I was reminded of a book by Louise Huebner (go ahead, google [...]

]]> By: Yule http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2009/01/04/freshness/comment-page-1/#comment-9766 Yule Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:09:14 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/?p=1114#comment-9766 Ok, I'm back (dinner intervened)... . So, @Davin: it would be nice to think I'm further along any road, but, meh, I don't think I am! :-) It's a constant experiment, Summerhill still lives here (alas?). What I like about how you describe your current path is that you're keeping your options open, you're aiming for flexibility. I think that's really important. . In fact, if I had advice to dispense to young people - women in particular (...oh, wait: I do, I have kids, one of whom is female!) - it's to forget any sort of one-track approach and to aim instead for something that allows for flexibility. I mean the flexibility to step up and to step down, as circumstances demand. . Now, taking that aim can be tricky. You'd think that academics have flexibility, but they don't (or at least I don't think so). They are constrained in significant ways by the demands of getting on a tenure track gig, and once they're on it, there's hell to pay until tenure comes along. So it's really important to research the options when considering careers and avocations. . Aside from all of that, work is changing (just as the significance and role of place is changing, as per Boris's comment). The thing that won't change significantly is the importance of where you get your mentoring, and whether you're in a situation where you can find good mentors and be accepting of the idea of mentoring. I think mentorship is the benign version of what in Germany is called "Vitamin B" - where the "B" stands for "Beziehungen," which stands for "Connections." IOW, maybe we should translate it as Vitamin C here? . Take it from me, kids, I am Vitamin B (or Vit. C) deficient - I have <i>never</i> managed to luck in to good mentors. (Remember, there was that 60s legacy at work: the idea of mentors smacked of fuddy-duddies and old guys and old systems and "the establishment," too - so it was in-built to reject it.) . In a way, we focus so much on "the system," but what a focus on mentoring and mentorship again brings into view is that individuals matter, and some individuals matter more than others (sorry if this offends egalitarian sensibilities, but it's true). If you're lucky, you will have the ability to find and to surround yourself with individuals who can be your mentors. If you're not so lucky, you'll isolate yourself and have no mentors (back to "the island" motif here?)... . Re. Davin's question, "How did you end up here?" - see the above response(s) to Maria, with its supplemental personal social history thrown in. I grew up here - 'twas only for 4-5 years, but they were the significant ones (sex and drugs and rock-'n-roll) - and I wanted to come back to the West Coast because I couldn't see myself staying "back East." Why Victoria and not Vancouver (which was an option)? Possibly pure stupidity, I don't know. We thought, researching the options, that Victoria was more affordable (in one sense it was) and that technology would make place matter less. Well, as per my response to Boris, place <i>does</i> matter a little bit less, but it still has its effects, that's for sure. (Aside: I think that we, here in Victoria, need to leverage our proximity to Seattle and stop looking at Vancouver for everything. Vancouver is far away to the north of us, while Seattle is much closer, after all. Too bad national boundaries separate us. ;-)) Ok, I’m back (dinner intervened)…
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So, @Davin: it would be nice to think I’m further along any road, but, meh, I don’t think I am! :-) It’s a constant experiment, Summerhill still lives here (alas?). What I like about how you describe your current path is that you’re keeping your options open, you’re aiming for flexibility. I think that’s really important.
.
In fact, if I had advice to dispense to young people – women in particular (…oh, wait: I do, I have kids, one of whom is female!) – it’s to forget any sort of one-track approach and to aim instead for something that allows for flexibility. I mean the flexibility to step up and to step down, as circumstances demand.
.
Now, taking that aim can be tricky. You’d think that academics have flexibility, but they don’t (or at least I don’t think so). They are constrained in significant ways by the demands of getting on a tenure track gig, and once they’re on it, there’s hell to pay until tenure comes along. So it’s really important to research the options when considering careers and avocations.
.
Aside from all of that, work is changing (just as the significance and role of place is changing, as per Boris’s comment). The thing that won’t change significantly is the importance of where you get your mentoring, and whether you’re in a situation where you can find good mentors and be accepting of the idea of mentoring. I think mentorship is the benign version of what in Germany is called “Vitamin B” – where the “B” stands for “Beziehungen,” which stands for “Connections.” IOW, maybe we should translate it as Vitamin C here?
.
Take it from me, kids, I am Vitamin B (or Vit. C) deficient – I have never managed to luck in to good mentors. (Remember, there was that 60s legacy at work: the idea of mentors smacked of fuddy-duddies and old guys and old systems and “the establishment,” too – so it was in-built to reject it.)
.
In a way, we focus so much on “the system,” but what a focus on mentoring and mentorship again brings into view is that individuals matter, and some individuals matter more than others (sorry if this offends egalitarian sensibilities, but it’s true). If you’re lucky, you will have the ability to find and to surround yourself with individuals who can be your mentors. If you’re not so lucky, you’ll isolate yourself and have no mentors (back to “the island” motif here?)…
.
Re. Davin’s question, “How did you end up here?” – see the above response(s) to Maria, with its supplemental personal social history thrown in. I grew up here – ’twas only for 4-5 years, but they were the significant ones (sex and drugs and rock-’n-roll) – and I wanted to come back to the West Coast because I couldn’t see myself staying “back East.” Why Victoria and not Vancouver (which was an option)? Possibly pure stupidity, I don’t know. We thought, researching the options, that Victoria was more affordable (in one sense it was) and that technology would make place matter less. Well, as per my response to Boris, place does matter a little bit less, but it still has its effects, that’s for sure. (Aside: I think that we, here in Victoria, need to leverage our proximity to Seattle and stop looking at Vancouver for everything. Vancouver is far away to the north of us, while Seattle is much closer, after all. Too bad national boundaries separate us. ;-) )

]]> By: Yule http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2009/01/04/freshness/comment-page-1/#comment-9764 Yule Tue, 13 Jan 2009 02:43:23 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/?p=1114#comment-9764 As per my comment on the other post on <a href="http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2009/01/07/notes-housing-20/" rel="nofollow">housing (Jan.7/09)</a>, apologies for not getting back to comments sooner... . @Boris: It's true that place isn't significant in the <i>same</i> way anymore, but it's still a factor. There's the "culture of a place" aspect for one thing - islanders always joke about "island time," except it's not a joke! Scale also really still matters: it's sometimes incredibly difficult to get something going in places where the critical mass or scale is not what a project requires (IOW, pick your projects carefully, I guess!). Finally: money (there's <i>always</i> that, eh?). If you don't live on an island, it's cheaper to get to somewhere else (although I have to admit that the vast distances on the West Coast make everything look trickier, as opposed to the density / closeness of the East Coast - but the island factor intensifies separation). If you have the resources to get on and off, if not at will at least relatively frequently, island life is less isolating (same root word: island/ isolation). That said, it is easier today to make headway because you can overcome so many limitations (and "isolations") of space with technology. (Yay, technology! Yay, the interwebs!) . @Maria: Yep, we have many aspects of trajectory and personal choice(s) in common. I can't help but think that this is also because of the era we matured in, plus the shared European background (which possibly influenced gender-related choices?). On Saturday night I went to a local jazz club to hear "Gail Harris and the Lowriders" (who were marvellous, btw). Gail and I went to high school together, right here at Vic High. I left Vic High in the middle of gr.11 to switch to Oak Bay High (from which I graduated in Jan.'74 - exactly 35 years ago, 2 weeks after my 17th birthday). I hadn't seen Gail since we were 15 or 16, but at Vic High, she was the shy poet (she's still a poet, but hardly shy, good for her).She was a gifted kid, but do you know what she told me on Saturday? She dropped out of school in gr.11 (probably right around the time I left Vic High to go to Oak Bay) and got married <i>because she was bored, bored, bored</i> at school. . That, to me, is also indicative of a cultural epoch. We came out of a North American post-sixties-influenced pedagogical culture that modeled itself on <a href="http://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">Summerhill</a>, but didn't have the ability to pull it off. When I came to Victoria at age 12, it was 1969. By 1970, I was in a junior high program called "Viability Unlimited," a high-falutin' name for a local Summerhill (we even viewed a film about that school, to let us know what the ideal was). It was essentially a gifted program - except that we were bored by it. No classes to speak of, skeletal structure, a one-year try at it. What did we do? We skipped out and went to Beacon Hill Park, ostensibly to write poetry (by we, I mean my friends Grace and Amber, and often Fiona). We'd smoke some pot, for "inspiration." We were 13 and 14 years old. We were under-challenged, under-utilized, under-mentored. While "Viability Unlimited" got axed after only a year or two, that same impulse toward pedagogical experimentation continued at high school (except there the fight was often on between the old teachers - often intellectual dinosaurs - and the new/ younger ones, heirs to 60s "enthusiasms"). . I still approve of Summerhill and its intentions in principle, but boy, was it ever a failed experiment on lower middle class kids such as I and my cohorts. Whatever <i>gifts</i> we had were left unchallenged and unmined. There's a fine line between rejecting the damnable "work-makes-you-free" ethic favored by Nazis everywhere, and the "let-it-all-hang-out, it's-all-cool" attitude of the counter-culturalists. We got the latter in spades, not too much education in productivity, though. . So there's another example of the effects of a culture and an epoch. . Gotta run, more later. As per my comment on the other post on housing (Jan.7/09), apologies for not getting back to comments sooner…
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@Boris: It’s true that place isn’t significant in the same way anymore, but it’s still a factor. There’s the “culture of a place” aspect for one thing – islanders always joke about “island time,” except it’s not a joke! Scale also really still matters: it’s sometimes incredibly difficult to get something going in places where the critical mass or scale is not what a project requires (IOW, pick your projects carefully, I guess!). Finally: money (there’s always that, eh?). If you don’t live on an island, it’s cheaper to get to somewhere else (although I have to admit that the vast distances on the West Coast make everything look trickier, as opposed to the density / closeness of the East Coast – but the island factor intensifies separation). If you have the resources to get on and off, if not at will at least relatively frequently, island life is less isolating (same root word: island/ isolation). That said, it is easier today to make headway because you can overcome so many limitations (and “isolations”) of space with technology. (Yay, technology! Yay, the interwebs!)
.
@Maria: Yep, we have many aspects of trajectory and personal choice(s) in common. I can’t help but think that this is also because of the era we matured in, plus the shared European background (which possibly influenced gender-related choices?). On Saturday night I went to a local jazz club to hear “Gail Harris and the Lowriders” (who were marvellous, btw). Gail and I went to high school together, right here at Vic High. I left Vic High in the middle of gr.11 to switch to Oak Bay High (from which I graduated in Jan.’74 – exactly 35 years ago, 2 weeks after my 17th birthday). I hadn’t seen Gail since we were 15 or 16, but at Vic High, she was the shy poet (she’s still a poet, but hardly shy, good for her).She was a gifted kid, but do you know what she told me on Saturday? She dropped out of school in gr.11 (probably right around the time I left Vic High to go to Oak Bay) and got married because she was bored, bored, bored at school.
.
That, to me, is also indicative of a cultural epoch. We came out of a North American post-sixties-influenced pedagogical culture that modeled itself on Summerhill, but didn’t have the ability to pull it off. When I came to Victoria at age 12, it was 1969. By 1970, I was in a junior high program called “Viability Unlimited,” a high-falutin’ name for a local Summerhill (we even viewed a film about that school, to let us know what the ideal was). It was essentially a gifted program – except that we were bored by it. No classes to speak of, skeletal structure, a one-year try at it. What did we do? We skipped out and went to Beacon Hill Park, ostensibly to write poetry (by we, I mean my friends Grace and Amber, and often Fiona). We’d smoke some pot, for “inspiration.” We were 13 and 14 years old. We were under-challenged, under-utilized, under-mentored. While “Viability Unlimited” got axed after only a year or two, that same impulse toward pedagogical experimentation continued at high school (except there the fight was often on between the old teachers – often intellectual dinosaurs – and the new/ younger ones, heirs to 60s “enthusiasms”).
.
I still approve of Summerhill and its intentions in principle, but boy, was it ever a failed experiment on lower middle class kids such as I and my cohorts. Whatever gifts we had were left unchallenged and unmined. There’s a fine line between rejecting the damnable “work-makes-you-free” ethic favored by Nazis everywhere, and the “let-it-all-hang-out, it’s-all-cool” attitude of the counter-culturalists. We got the latter in spades, not too much education in productivity, though.
.
So there’s another example of the effects of a culture and an epoch.
.
Gotta run, more later.

]]> By: Davin Greenwell http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2009/01/04/freshness/comment-page-1/#comment-9706 Davin Greenwell Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:49:20 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/?p=1114#comment-9706 Very interesting post - you are significantly further along a road that I have one foot in on. I am working on a business degree, am going to work on a masters and eventually a PHD on something - likely business. As you mentioned, my academic context will make a difference on what exactly that will be on, and it's somewhat far off in the future. Often times I think about the different spheres of lifestyle offered to me professionally and academically - business owner, employee of a private sector company, student, and/or employee of a public sector organization. Each ones make me feel distinctively different about my interaction with society and I like that variety a fair bit. I don't currently work in the public sector, but have in the past and enjoyed it. I am a student, I do own two businesses, and I do work in the private sector for another company as well right now. I like going to class, but I don't think that being a student exclusively would be a good thing for me, nor do I think being an employee exclusively would be good either. I like to hash out things in an academic way, but I also enjoy the speed and vigor of a privately run business. Sometimes I think my get-things-done approach to class and academic approach to problem solving at work clash with those environments, but I enjoy the juxtaposition of angles. Someone asked me very recently what I want to eventually end up as. I could not answer - the thought of statically being one thing is not appealing to me. I have interest for many things and that's not limited to my current study. Sometimes I enjoy not knowing. Like yourself, I am not certain Victoria is the right place for me, but I am here for now so I am making the most of it. How did you end up here? Very interesting post – you are significantly further along a road that I have one foot in on. I am working on a business degree, am going to work on a masters and eventually a PHD on something – likely business. As you mentioned, my academic context will make a difference on what exactly that will be on, and it’s somewhat far off in the future. Often times I think about the different spheres of lifestyle offered to me professionally and academically – business owner, employee of a private sector company, student, and/or employee of a public sector organization. Each ones make me feel distinctively different about my interaction with society and I like that variety a fair bit. I don’t currently work in the public sector, but have in the past and enjoyed it. I am a student, I do own two businesses, and I do work in the private sector for another company as well right now. I like going to class, but I don’t think that being a student exclusively would be a good thing for me, nor do I think being an employee exclusively would be good either. I like to hash out things in an academic way, but I also enjoy the speed and vigor of a privately run business.

Sometimes I think my get-things-done approach to class and academic approach to problem solving at work clash with those environments, but I enjoy the juxtaposition of angles.

Someone asked me very recently what I want to eventually end up as. I could not answer – the thought of statically being one thing is not appealing to me. I have interest for many things and that’s not limited to my current study. Sometimes I enjoy not knowing. Like yourself, I am not certain Victoria is the right place for me, but I am here for now so I am making the most of it.

How did you end up here?

]]> By: maria http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/2009/01/04/freshness/comment-page-1/#comment-9698 maria Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:52:36 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yulelog/?p=1114#comment-9698 Oh boy, does all this sound familiar, except that I never finished (or even started!!!) that PhD. But I do have to M.A.s, one in a program that was considered revolutionary back in the late '70s and early '80s, and since we were the first crop of grad students, some of our theses ended up being close to 300 pages (like mine!!!!). I did teach in community colleges, and the stage fright is familiar. I don't mind performing in front of a crowd, provided I have a script -- so yes, I, too wrote out my lectures.... But, since I also was contemplating having children around the time of contemplating doing a PhD at Berkeley, I clearly saw the problem with the one-trick pony -- not to mention the ways in which that impacted my health -- so having kids won the day, so to speak. You are very good at "freshness" -- and that is not meant to say it is your one-trick pony to ride. Fortunately and probably unfortunately as well, the Internet can help make "place" irrelevant. But that is in terms of ideas. as for the hear, for what makes space the place of lives, that is a serious question. I wish for the best for you this year in finding the answer! Oh boy, does all this sound familiar, except that I never finished (or even started!!!) that PhD. But I do have to M.A.s, one in a program that was considered revolutionary back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and since we were the first crop of grad students, some of our theses ended up being close to 300 pages (like mine!!!!). I did teach in community colleges, and the stage fright is familiar. I don’t mind performing in front of a crowd, provided I have a script — so yes, I, too wrote out my lectures….

But, since I also was contemplating having children around the time of contemplating doing a PhD at Berkeley, I clearly saw the problem with the one-trick pony — not to mention the ways in which that impacted my health — so having kids won the day, so to speak.

You are very good at “freshness” — and that is not meant to say it is your one-trick pony to ride. Fortunately and probably unfortunately as well, the Internet can help make “place” irrelevant. But that is in terms of ideas. as for the hear, for what makes space the place of lives, that is a serious question.

I wish for the best for you this year in finding the answer!

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