The Novice Boxer

In one of the classes I’m teaching this semester, I have several students who ask question after question after question. Ordinarily, this is a good thing – teachers thrive off of commitment and engagement with students. That most of these students comprehend the material adds fuel to their questions. They are speaking as if the text is a springboard, and the content of their questions reflects oftentimes their grasp of the concept and movement into analysis. Under other circumstances, this situation would be joyful and exciting, but mostly it feels like the teaching equivalent of the speed bag – and I’m the bag.

Last week some strange behaviors showed themselves during a particularly heated discussion about religious belief. I was barking at my students – nearly arguing with one student in particular – and talking over them. A couple of the students reciprocated, and so it became a mess. Instead of hearing students and their views out, I supplied answers or “solutions” to their comments immediately, because Lord knows I already knew what they were going to say (which, by the way, I didn’t). The image of a boxing match is apt, particularly if you think of novice boxers whose stances are off, their punches wild and their footwork undeveloped and messy.

Oddly enough, I recalled today that the novice boxer problem is one I worked with when  I was first studying philosophy. In my Honors Intro to Philosophy class, I made the habit of speaking in class – often over my classmates and/or taking the conversation in a different direction of interest to me. A close friend of mine and classmate said, “Becky, it’s like you don’t even listen to people.” Once, with a high degree of impatience during a senior-level seminar on Phenomenology and Existentialism, I replied to my professor’s question of another student, just so we could move on.

My intro students are genuine novices trying to cope with unfamiliar ideas and concepts, but what’s most troubling is that all of the sudden I’m showing so sloppily in the classroom that I’m bordering on being a bully.

I know exactly why this is happening. The graduate application process, for which I had so much hope, is proving disastrous on all fronts. I’ve had several moments where my weaknesses as a scholar have been exposed, and the constant refrain of “We just had so many qualified applicants …” (while likely true) feels like getting dumped every time it appears. I really thought I had it this time, and so being reminded that my work wasn’t substantial enough or impressive enough is like a punch to the gut every time. I don’t know if it’s emotional immaturity or what, but I can’t help but take it personally.

As a result, I have this unrelenting urge to demonstrate what I know and how sophisticated my knowledge is. I have to prove myself somehow, and the only way that is happening is by being a bully. That’s what happens when one’s insecure, really. We hang on to what we know for dear life and defend it at all costs. And in my case, nine years of discipline and attention to bad habits is undone in a few months.

Six Months – Highlights for the Hiatus

While flipthepig is on hiatus, here are some nice posts that I’ve run across from the last year.

There are two posts marking our purchase of a home and transformation into eastenders: here, and here.

Read our dispatches from Toronto: June 9, 2008; June 10, 2008; June 11, 2008; June 13, 2008; the rehash in New York. That was a crush of posting.

Here’s a particularly curmudgeonly entry about high fructose corn syrup.

AV’s heroics when my wallet fell down a storm drain and the beginning of our dog adventure.

Welcoming Lilly C (C is now for Claa2, thanks to my brother) in July, and Lilly’s fabulous eating habits. We thought Lilly was a basenji, but she’s not. Not even close.

The beginning of the latest Ph.D adventure. Yesterday (15 January) I mailed applications 8 and 9.

The discovery of “Gitmo on the Platte” in our backyard. Classic Becky vitriol. Starting in August, the blog took a decidedly political bent, with occasional mentions of teaching and philosophy. Here’s the post I wrote following the election. I can feel the heaviness of cynicism setting back in.

New Project, Blog Pause

I’ve recently abandoned this blog for a new project over at this blog: http://weareexploring.wordpress.com. Some friends of mine and I are working with a book that asks us to do a lot of noticing and exploring. I’m thinking through the philosophy part, and they’re all noticing. The project has been up and running for about three weeks and some interesting results are arriving. Check it out!

In the meantime, you can respond to the following survey in the comments – this is part of my current project.

What fictional character do you think is most like you?

What new thing would you most like to try?

What is relaxing to you?

What is frustrating?

What is funny?

fyi

365 project has been shifted to my flickr page and is only sporadically updated there as well.  So much for every day.

a little late

Took it yesterday.

365 Project

I just read about a project in which a fellow captured and posted a single photo every day for a year.  It reminded me of Jonas Mekas’s 365 Films and has inspired me to try it out.  So, here’s the first one – each picture will be posted just about every day (if I miss, I’ll make it up when I can).  All photos will be cropped to a square format (in the spirit of the snapshot), labelled with the date and minimally processed.  I may stray from these rules on occasion, but will return.

29 On The Way

Read about 27 here, 28 here. I’ll be in the car to Chicago on my birthday, so I thought I’d get this out of the way today.

I was joking with a good friend a couple of weeks ago about how the even years are less good than the odd years, but who am I kidding? Two days after I turned 28, I flew to Los Angeles to tape an episode of Jeopardy! Then, while I was still 28, we bought a house and got a dog. Having a house is nice, but anywhere AV is, that’s home. Besides being flat-out the best gift ever, these eight years together have been interesting (as in compelling). Times just keep getting interestinger, too.

As always, it remains friends and family who provide the getalong to, well, get along. I’m thankful for good, meaningful friendships and close family ties.

I am extraordinarily grateful for professional and personal encouragement I’ve received this year from my advisor/friend, Maria Talero. My life and its possiblities are different because of her influence and care for my work and the future in my chosen discipline. I think a lot lately about the investment teachers/professors/mentors make in our lives, and while I’m motivated by the satisfaction of my personal and professional goals I’m also motivated by the need to “prove out” an investment on their behalf. I sense that my future success is not for me only, but a way of vindicating the time and cultivation that Maria, Karen, and Kent have spent. I hope that when I’m 29 I’ll be able to confirm their efforts somehow.

Those are all good developments. My “even-years” theorem has lost its theorem-status. Although, next year I turn 30 on Thanksgiving. That’s something, right?

MP on OI

Our relationship to the world, as it is untiringly enunciated within us, is not a thing which can be further clarified by analysis; philosophy can only place it once more before our eyes and present it for our ratification.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, xx.

Assorted – the Presidency

I’m having some trouble writing professionally, which is always a good sign that it’s time for a blog break to observe my natural register.

When I was filling my ballot out the other night, I connected the arrow next to Barack Obama’s name. This was the end of a long and agonizing process, and I was one among many that swelled with pride when it was announced that Obama would be our next president. I thought his acceptance speech was excellent and suitably inspirational. Like others, I thought John McCain’s concession was graceful and finally – after a very long stretch since just before Labor Day – I heard the *real* John McCain.

Part of what made my decision to vote for Obama so difficult is the fact that I really like McCain. He has an excellent sense of humor, and as a guest on the Daily Show is one of the few regular guests who Jon Stewart takes to task but doesn’t belittle. I always appreciated McCain as someone who spoke his mind and took the alternative route, symbolized by the McCain-Feingold act. I know McCain-Feingold isn’t perfect, but as a promise of what John McCain was about, I think it stands pretty clearly. I only occasionally bought into the rousing rhetoric and – what I perceived as – total hype surrounding Obama, and while I was moved at the content of his speech during the DNC, I was not sold. The disjunction was still unresolved – even after the convention I saw it as a clear either/or choice, with little guidance to decide one way or another.

When McCain announced his running mate, it seemed to me so out of step with the McCain I had observed and grown very much to like. At that moment, John McCain stopped being a maverick and began being someone who bent to the party demands. I feel like my faith and some of my values were hijacked by faux folksiness and a power-play to get the girls and the God types. Even worse, what might have been an interesting and exciting campaign became a cannon for slinging the shit. The phrases “reform” and “maverick” seem hollow when the way the McCain campaign was prosecuted looked quite a lot like business-as-usual.

What frustrates me to no end is that the John McCain of the 2000 campaign, the McCain we like in our house could never win in a Presidential race. This sad fact was part of the long road to my voting the way I did.

It’s not that I don’t think Obama isn’t capable – in fact, there are several things he said through the course of the campaign that resonate pretty deeply with my own points of view. I agree with him that the abortion question isn’t one that can – or should – be settled by our continued arguing from entrenched positions. I don’t understand why his view that we ought to work to reduce the number of and need for abortion is so outrageous. This seems like a necessary position if the goal of our government is problem-solving. I also agree that our present energy crisis is one that must be solved by innovation and not necessarily drilling, especially if that innovation benefits Americans by way of job creation and economic growth in unusual centers.

Whether Barack Obama can deliver on the promises he’s made may end up being one of the greatest gambles made in American politics. I willingly went in with him, though, and I must say he’s inspired me to recover my inner policy wonk, dormant since college.