Senior Essay Crisis Resolved!

I finally popped the question to Ms. Arsenault last night after preceptorial. She is now officially my advisor, and I am going to write my senior essay about the writings of Jung. Whew...I can't explain what a relief it is to have made this decision and for her to agree to advise me! The only problem is...since Jaime pointed out that Jung looks like Richard Dreyfuss, I hesitate to put my usual charming picture of the author up. Here's to JUNG! Anecdote: When I told Dad that I would be in the Jung preceptorial, his response was, "But he was wrong. Haven't they disproved all that Freud and Jung stuff?" Get with the Great Books, Dad...they're all mostly wrong! Except Jung. Who is deep and insightful and truly understands human nature. He's right. At least I hope he's a little right so I'll have something nice to say about him in my essay.

Adventures!

I've been making plans for next year, and am very excited about the following two applications I'm working on:

1) I'm applying to the JET Programme, which would allow me to spend another wonderful year in Japan, this time trying to cook food for myself instead of relying on Okasan for everything, and still ineptly trying to learn the language and understand this incredibly fascinating, apparently contradictory culture. Kansai, here I come!

2) Yay! Midwives! I'm almost ready to turn in my application for a two-year apprenticeship in beautiful, crazy, Taos, New Mexico. Sometime this week I'll send in my application (which includes three recs but no transcript-isn't that great?!) and then schedule a three-day interview, at which time I'll be expected to jump right in and pretend to be a student. This interview is important because it will allow me to get a better idea of what it would be like to be a student with them, and (more importantly) will give them the chance to see if we all get along. I think getting along is really important for a group of eight women who spend almost all of their time together. I'm pretty excited about it because the three women I've met so far seem really confident, positive, and incredibly intelligent. And grounded. Man, do I want to be grounded.

Taos:




The only real downside of this situation is the location, which is a little more than an hour north of Santa Fe. Although I would be able to go down to St. John's occasionally, for the most part I would be pretty removed from it and all the other ammenities of Santa Fe.

Both of these options are incredibly exciting, but I'm secretly (not so secret now, though!) hoping I get the apprenticeship with the midwives.
Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be writing an essay about translating French.

What Might Have Been

Ben was up last night looking at trivia on IMDB, and he came across this under "more info" for Michael Richards:
"His character in "Seinfeld" (1990) was named Kessler in the original pilot."
Kramer could have been "Kessler"! AAAH!
How different would our lives have been, Kesslers?
Also, updates:
-After waiting on hold once for 45 minutes (after which I hung up) and once for ten, I ended up talking to the nicest guy, who immediately ordered a card to be sent to me. Although, still have not received it, actually.
-I'm making Buckeyes this afternoon!
-I'm very close to deciding whether I want to write my senior essay about Jung or Kierkegaard.

A Bad Afternoon

I turned in my seminar essay today after an epic Monday morning long lab class. No one was awake because everyone had spent the last 24+ hours working on their essays. So, after lunch I went home and took a nap, but it wasn't even a satisfying nap...I woke up and felt groggy and disoriented. Then I remembered that Netflix had warned me my credit card is about to expire, so I made the second mistake of the afternoon: trying to talk to someone who could help me figure out why my credit card wasn't automatically being renewed.

The number on the back of the card offered the typically non-relevant options...and had no option for talking to an operator or for questions regarding credit card renewal. This I could forgive them for. So I went online and searched both the Bank of America and VISA websites for information relating to my question. Nada. So...I called my branch, but the phone number listed for that branch is actually for the motor branch right next door. The lady I talked to there said I should come in to the main branch and talk to a customer service person about my card, "Just to make sure there is no funny business." So, I talked Ben into coming along and we went onto a very busy road to the bank. I talked to a customer service lady there and the first thing she said-cutting me off-was that the bank cannot handle anything relating to credit cards and that I have to call the number on the back of the card and then press -0-.

There was NO ZERO OPTION ON THE 800 # MENU!!!!

So, I am now waiting on hold, having pressed the magical 0 button...and have been on hold for over half an hour. The moral of the story is not to do business with organizations which provide you with NO WAY to talk to an actual person. The second moral is that Bank of America and VISA have a VERY BAD system set up here. There is not nearly enough information online about credit cards, and there is no clearly defined way to access the assistance I need. Both VISA and Bank of America have totally copped out by saying, "Call the number on the back of the card." News flash: the number on the back of the card is not helpful! Anyway...just had a little bit of pent up bank-rage I needed to get off my chest. Sorry. Plus, this muzak is REALLY getting on my nerves.

Wish list

Mandy was getting on my case because I didn't deliver with the Christmas list. Here it is:

For the kitchen:
-NPR Mug
-Wait, Wait Mug
-Large casserole
-1 good knife (unbelievable how difficult life is without this!)
-Salad bowl

For the growing pile of games:
-SET (cannot find in Santa Fe...argh!)
-Settlers of Cataan or similar
-Trivial Pursuit
-Boggle
(Ben and I already have Risk, Scrabble, and Apples to Apples-and despite its popularity, I think Apples to Apples is pretty lame)

For the bookshelf:
-Heart and Hands, by Elizabeth Davis
-Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
-American Gospel, by Jon Meacham
-American Theocracy, by Kevin Phillips
-Static, by Amy Goodman (Yay!!! Amy Goodman! You're awesome!)
-Birthing from Within, by Pam England
-The One Percent Doctrine, by Ron Suskind (Cheney is bad!)

For the superficial:
Comfortable:
-Shoes (size 9.5 or 10)
-Shirts (size S or M)
-Pants (size 4-long)
-Skirts (size 4)
-Earrings (I actually sort of need earrings because I've lost one from each pair that people have given me in the past and I don't like buying them for myself. The drawback of earrings as a gift is that I will inevitably-though sometimes it takes years-lose one...but I always keep the un-lost one in my jewelry box!)

For the imagination:
-A meal with Larry David
-A meal with Carl Kassel
-A four-wheel drive vehicle
-A complete senior essay

I just want to say that watching Curb Your Enthusiasm keeps me from feeling homesick, and that Carl brings great joy to my house chores...some day I hope to have your voice on my answering machine, Carl. This post feels like homage to NPR. Hmm...maybe it should be. Shout outs to Chicago Public Radio, Piano Puzzler, Car Talk, and the Sunday Puzzle as well!

Bad Chinese Food

The single saddest thing about Santa Fe is its lack of a good Chinese restaurant. Now, I know some of you aren't wild about (or have never heard of) my hometown staple: Peking Dynasty. You are missing out. Especially if you live in Santa Fe, because in Santa Fe, Chow's is considered the best Chinese restaurant. Let me enumerate to you the issues I have with Chow's:

1) Service is slow, slow, slow. This is actually a problem in Santa Fe generally, but I mean, don't we expect more from Chinese restaurants? The only experience of good service I had there was with the bus boy, who faithfully refilled the coke that I was drinking at an astonishing pace. I was drinking the coke at an astonishing pace and he refilled it at an astonishing pace...tricky modifiers. Which brings me to...
2) They charged me an extra $2! $2! For my coke after my second refill. I mean, I don't usually drink that much but I was very thirsty, and when Ben and I checked the menu it did not advertise this fact anywhere. How cheap is that!
3) The food tastes weird. I think they are going for some sort of Asian fusion Chinese food, except that the Chinese food all sounds normal on the menu.

Okay, that's it about the Chinese food.

Aaaahhhh!
As you know, senior year has been a real roller-coaster ride so far. I have worked myself up about senior essay and have nothing to show for it. I don't have a close relationship with a tutor in Santa Fe and have had no luck finding an advisor who clicks with me. Either I am too ancient and the tutor is too modern, one of us is socially inept, or I am too passive and the tutor too aggressive. It feels like I am incompatible with the thoughts I encounter, like I am excited only by inferior ideas, and there seems to be some relation between a tutor's fondness for Kant/Hegel/Wagner/literature above all else, and our inability to communicate. So, it has been a very frustrating process and the time to turn in a paper topic proposal looms. Last weekend I figured out that getting myself worked up about it is probably not a good idea, and so I am beginning the process over again. I want to explore a very general question: What does the religious life have to offer that philosophy doesn't? The problem is finding a great place where these ideas intersect. Plato? Kierkegaard? Tolstoy? Dostoevsky? Augustine? I haven't read Brothers Karamazov yet, which is the only one of these ideas I've found a tutor receptive of. So...any advice?

The other movement/struggle of senior year has been planning for next year. The more I think about medicine, the more I am drawn to sides of it that are more intimate, more interpersonal, and less sterile. The three options for next year I am considering seriously are:
1) Apply to the JET program and go back to Japan for a year or two. Make some money and improve my working Japanese. This does not replace options 2 or 3 but does delay them and give me a (much-needed) adventure.
2) Midwifery
3) Pursue a degree that would allow me to be a therapist.

I have shifted towards midwifery and therapy as I have become convinced that I want my role to be that of someone who frees people. I want to give the people I encounter more options. I don't want to be part of an institution that imagines it is superior to those it serves. At this point I am absolutely fascinated by both midwifery and therapy... midwifery feels like a true calling, but I'm not sure it's the right time for it. The traits of a successful and helpful midwife are the ability to work very hard, compassion, open-mindedness, ability to work cooperatively and selflessly with a group of various (probably strong) personalities. Doesn't it seem like a psychology or social work degree could be a part of developing those qualities?

There is a really great program in Taos, New Mexico at the Northern New Mexico Midwifery Center. It is a 18-24 month apprenticeship that gives aspiring midwives a lot of experience and support as they prepare to take the NARM exam, which is required to become a CPM (certified professional midwife). One of the scariest things about midwifery is that I want to be a direct-entry midwife, as opposed to a nurse-midwife. Direct-entry midwives have much more freedom and are able to attend home births, but also accept certain risks from which nurse-midwives are better protected. If you are interested in midwifery at all, I recommend the book "Babycatcher", by Peggy Vincent.
I just finished it and couldn't put it down. It is an anecdotal account of being an independent nurse-midwife in the Bay Area during the 80s. If you are interested in the advantages and disadvantages of midwifery from a more statistical or medical perspective, I also read "A Thinking Woman's Guide to Better Birth". I think this would be the book for Dad to read when I finally get him on the phone about all this stuff.

The problem with Taos is that there is very little hope Ben will be able to find anything interesting to do there for two years. It is just a little too far from Santa Fe (1 1/2 hours) for us to commute or stay connected to Santa Fe. So this is a bummer, and I am currently casting about looking for a program like Taos' in California or Washington or New York...or anywhere other than Florida and Texas (which have an overabundance of midwifery schools). So if you happen to know a midwife who wants to be my preceptor, let me know.

Meanwhile, the following states are totally out of the picture if I'm a direct entry midwife. They ban it all together: Alabama, Illinois (sad!) Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, North Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming, and D.C.

Great Quote

Among so many great quotes:

"Precisely because resignation is antecedent, faith is no esthetic emotion but something far higher; it is not the spontaneous inclination of the heart but the paradox of existence. If for example, in the face of every difficulty, a young girl still remains convinced that her desire will be fulfilled, this assurance is by no means the assurance of faith, even though she has been brought up by Christian parents and perhaps has had confirmation instruction from the pastor for a whole year. She is convinced in all her childlike naivete and innocence, and this assurance ennobles her nature and gives her a supranatural magnitude so that like a thaumaturge she can invoke the finite powers of existence and bring the very stones to tears, while on the other hand in her perplexity she can just as well run to Herod as to Pilate and move the whole world with her pleas. Her assurance is most captivating, and one can learn much from her, but there is one thing that cannot be learned from her-how to make movements-for her assurance does not dare, in the pain of resignation, to look the impossibility in the eye."

Explanation: Kierkegaard is talking here about the movement of Abraham's faith. Abraham must be resigned to the impossibility of having Isaac (both before he is born and when asked to sacrifice him) and then at the same moment believe the absurd, that he can have Isaac. This movement between the a) resignation to the impossibility of a desire and the b) belief in the absurd, (belief that for God all things are possible) is Kierkegaard's account of faith. I just thought this was really cool.

Found out that I am in Ms. Arsenault's Jung precept. This is excellent news because Jung sounds cool and I know that Ms. Arsenault is really wonderful. Ben is reading Brothers K for precept with Mr. Thompson. Yay precepts! Also, a thaumaturge is a magician and I still have no idea what to write me senior essay about.

I went over to the College of Santa Fe for an after school session with the Breakthrough kids from this summer, and it was intense. It was so weird to see them again after a couple of months. I think they were excited to see me, but I can already see that their schools have had a negative effect on them. It's hard to see kids swear and fight and act totally out of control. After a half hour they settled down, but they hardly have any homework and the homework they did have was really easy and soooo boring, so it was tought to keep them occupied. Poor, poor, kids.

A Cry for Help

It was in pre-class chat mode in my math tutorial today, that I discovered that my class-buddy, Mr. Tisher, has a blogspot blog. This is good news.
Help, Mr. Tisher!
I don't know how to work this thing. You see, dear family, I would love to have links to your blogs on my blog, but I haven't been able to figure it out. I want to include youtube videos too, but can't manage it. So this is a cry for help. Isn't it Q in a James Bond film who says he can't work the keys to hotel doors? Don't look down on me, just think of what we all have in common with Q: random gaps of knowledge.

Something that's been bothering me recently...the stupidity of television characters. My new obsession with TV on DVD has been very frustrating:
House: All of the characters are stupid except House, who is wonderful and very, very insensitive. Case in point- Dr. Cameron, the goody two-shoes of the bunch who is incessantly raising irritating pseudo-moral questions, sleeps with the hunky Australian doctor and treats patients with kindness or cruel indifference depending on her opinion of the patient's worth. Dr. House, on the other hand, treats everybody like shit all the time. His consistency and honesty makes him the most compelling member of the cast, and Dr. Cameron looks like a confused gerbil.
Even worse, is Grey's Anatomy: I mean, I don't even know where to begin! In an ensemble cast of ten characters, only one, Dr. Bailey, behaves like a real person. The worst are Meredith Grey and Dr. Shepherd, who sleep around and lead everyone on, treat each other like shit, and then sleep with each other at the end of the second season, just when they had each almost managed to work things out with their other partners. My only consolation is that they deserve each other, and that at least Dr. Shepherd's wife, Addison (also Dr. Shepherd) won't have to put up with him anymore.
I feel similarly about the main characters of Lost. I just detest Jack and Kate. The good thing about Lost is that it has characters like John and Hurley et al. to make up for Jack and Kate. In Grey's, though, the people are just all totally crazy. So, what I'm wondering is: why do all the shows make such distasteful lead characters? Am I supposed to be so overcome with lust for McDreamy or Jack that I ignore their ignorant, domineering, self-centered personalities? Am I supposed to cheer on slutty girls like Meredith Grey? No can do, TV people. And if you think that your characters are disturbing because they're "like, so real" I feel sorry for you. People are confused and deceitful at times, but the people I know would not be able to go on their merry way leading happily self-destructive (and just plain-old destructive) unexamined lives.

Ramblings

Senior year...ugggghhh...

I'm supposed to be able to do St. John's stuff AND think about senior essay AND figure out plans for next year? Not happening. For the last month I have been shifting my attention from one of these from the other, but have yet to figure out the balancing act that will help me succeed at all three at once.

Ben and I have been talking about next year, but have nothing approaching a firm idea of what we're doing. Right now all we know is that we probably aren't going to be able to apply anywhere this year. I really really really want to be a midwife, but am not able to cope with the loss of respect I would have endure by entering a marginalized medical profession. Maybe I could become a psychologist and then see later if I want to be a midwife. At least then I'd have a real postgraduate degree. All I know is that I want to help people and get a little respect along the way. How would you, dear family, react to me becoming a midwife?

Meanwhile, I am listening to A LOT of Bach and have been slowly becoming convinced of the following: Just because I don't speak the language of Hegel or Kant or Hume (I'm still hoping I'll understand Kierkegaard) doesn't mean I'm a stupid or antiphilosophical person. Maybe people really do choose their philosophy, and I can choose the philosophy that is best suited to my intuitive, interpersonal way of existing. So maybe religion is emotional and maybe Bach (and most music) is emotional and maybe all the literature I like is emotional. I find meaning in it. I am more intuitive than analytical. I need to quit holding this against myself.

Grandma and Grandpa Callahan called and asked me all sorts of questions about my relationship with Ben. So to set the record straight: We are living together, I really love him, and we're not getting married. After what happened with Laszlo I will be waiting A LONG TIME before promising to marry anyone. I'm happy, so don't judge me, people.

Keirkegaard is supposed to be the most attractive man on the program. I bet Hegel isn't even in the running.

Regional Woes and Hippie Bliss

I am being forced to watch Iowa St. at Texas and USC at Arizona instead of Ohio State's and Notre Dame's games today. Evil regional programming.

On a lighter note, Ben and I went to the Farmer's Market again this week and it was just amazing. I wish everyone from the familiy could see it...roasting chiles, yummy organic meat and vegetables, fresh cider, delicious homemade spicy mustards and jams, rich hippies, cute little kids running around... it kicks North Market's butt. Last week we made a lamb roast (with Sam's advice) with kale and delicious corn, and baked spiced apples for dessert.

This week we're making chicken with tomatoes and honey, corn, and rolls (hopefully I'll be able to get ahold of Jennie before dinner tonight and can use her recipe). It's so satisfying to buy food from the families that grow it and to eat seasonal foods. I can't deny that I'm becoming a hippie...I've almost convinced myself to become a midwife and live on a farm and live all of my days in hippie bliss. There's something about living where there's too much sunshine that makes solar power and biking everywhere seem like viable options. Of course, I don't have solar power and I don't have a bike, so I'm just a hypocrite... I guess all I'm saying is that there's really something inspiring and beautiful about Santa Fe.

Senior Essay Topics II

I have been meeting with tutors, trying to figure out what I want to write my essay about and who I could ask to my advisor. I met with a tutor who is really into literature and was all about getting me to write about Tolstoy, then I met with a tutor who was clearly so laid back that he wasn't really into the conversation at all, and today I met with a tutor who is just right. I'm going to write about the St. Mathew Passion, and I will most probably ask Mr. Cornell, whom Ben assists in music class, to advise me.



So now I am procrastinating and listening to the Passion, because Hegel is "mad hard" and because (thanks to good old J.C. Maxwell and Einstein) I've already had a day full of imaginary steam engines and clocks moving at the speed of light. Senior year is the year of choices: you get to choose a subject to write an essay about AND you get to choose a preceptorial to take. I write down my top four choices and get assigned to one. Sadly, there are no music or art precepts being offered this year, and I am WAY over philosophy, so I'm debating between the following appealing options:
-Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
-Works of Love, Kierkegaard
-One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez
-Essays, Montaigne




-Heat and Heat Engines, with works by Carnot, Maxwell, and Morton Mott-Smith
-Ecological Readings, with works by Thoreau, James Lovelock, and papers on urban and conservation ecology
-Civil Rights Movement, with works by Douglass, B.T. Washington, du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcom X, and two Supreme Court Decisions.
-Collected Works, Jung



In other news, I was very sad to hear that Mandy lost her suitcase, incredibly excited to see Jaime and Mandy's posts about Jesus Camp (Jaime, you and Ben totally make me feel better about Christianity) and am starting voice lessons.

Jesus Camp

Ben and I saw a preview for Jesus Camp, which looks like one of those movies that sets out to reveal a strange but powerful American sub-culture...opening our sheltered eyes to what the "other side" of American society/politics looks like. The thing is, lately I've been obsessed with non-fiction. If I have a free moment, out comes a book about science or words or medicine or naturalism or less happy things (like Jonathon Kozol's books about inner-city miseducation or Fauziya Kassindja's Do They Hear You When You Cry). This obsession has been slowly overtaking my movie preferences as well. I loved Spellbound, Wordplay, An Inconvenient Truth, the movie about the dead grizzly bear guy, and Super Size Me...I'm a pretty easy mark as far as documentaries go. The point is, that as easy a mark as I am, I was conflicted about the preview for Jesus Camp. But I guess first you should go to jesuscampthemovie.com, if you can, and watch the preview so we're on the same page. My discomfort was caused by my familiarity with the kinds of messages the adults were feeding to children in bible camp. Here are some of the things the adults said,
"There are two kinds of people in the world...those who love Jesus and those who don't."
"How many of you would like to be those who would give up their lives for Jesus?"
"Are you a part of it or not?"
"I want to see young people...as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those places because we have, excuse me, but we have the truth."
"How long have you been a Christian?"

These quotes are extreme, but they sound familiar to me. Well, except the one about Pakistan. That one is clearly a reaction to things that have happened since 2001. I hate that these things sound familiar. They conjure up feelings of extreme guilt that I still feel to some extent. It's weird right, because my Mom was about the least pressuring mom a girl could have about Christianity, but I still have these feelings. They are left over from not fitting in as a child at East Side Grace Brethren or at Jersey Baptist and feeling like a bad, bad kid because of it. I tried really, really hard at Jersey, too. Still, I felt like a bad, bad kid.

The only (really Christian) place I really fit in was at Faith Ranch, which I just LOVED. It might, just might, have had something to do with the fact that every bit of fellowship was squeezed in between camping, horseback riding, and singing (which I was good at and so not a social outcast). Even at Faith Ranch, though, I have some difficult memories. The worst was from my last summer there, when I was thirteen or fourteen. I was going on a week long camping trip with a few other girls, and before we left I told on one of the girls for smoking. The assistant director came up to me later and commended me for doing what I was supposed to and for what "couldn't have been an easy decision." It was a damned easy decision, because I had been raised to do exactly what I did. I knew that smoking was bad and had never been friends with kids who smoked. What could have been easier? I didn't do what I did out of goodness.

As an adult, I still feel like the bad, bad, kid. I feel it around Christians (and especially around my family) constantly. I cannot enunciate an absolute to you. That doesn't mean that I don't believe in absolutes, or in an absolute power. It also doesn't mean that I don't strive to be a follower of Christ. I don't hate or look down on people who believe in saints, in transubstantiation, in consubstantiation, in miracles, in speaking in tongues (although I find this difficult to relate to), but I do look down on people who look down on, or hate, others. I also have a BIG problem understanding most of what Paul says. But I firmly believe that that's my fault. I don't understand much of what Plato says, either.

Back to the preview. On the website there's an interview with Victoria, the cute little ten-year-old blonde Christian heavy metal enthusiast dances for God and doesn't care about Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears (thank God for that at least!). She says, "When I dance I really have to be sure that that's God because people will notice when I'm just dancing for the flesh."

So my question is, why would parents and other adults hound kids about giving up their lives for Christ or the perils of "dancing for the flesh"? I have never (and certainly not when I was ten) understood the battle lines Christians draw between themselves and others, and I will never understand or condone teaching that to children. I want feedback from those of you with kids who do church stuff with your kids. How do you feel about pledging allegiance to the Christian flag (something we did in Sunday school when I was little) or drawing lines between Christian and non-Christian children?
It seems like there ought to a way of addressing children which will teach them what they need to learn in order to grow into spiritual (and in this case, Christian) men and women, without burdening their little (potentially very joyful) souls with worries about dancing for the flesh or not saying the Christian pledge appropriately or not being on the right side of the Christian/non-Christian divide.

I guess all I'm saying is this: Christian adults, think twice before you put a piece of red duct tape with LIFE written on it over your little kid's mouth at a rally. She probably doesn't get it, which means it's doing more harm than good. Two more things: First, I don't at all blame my parents for the guilt I feel. Second, I apologize for the length and poor organization of this post. It's something I'm working on.

Teeny, tiny oil drops

Where to begin? So, the idea behind lab at St. John's is that we not only read the books great scientists wrote and figure them out, we also perform the experiments they did to the best of our ability so that the process of discovery is more active than it would be if we were only sitting around a table talking. Now, for those of you who think that St. John's is outdated and about "old stuff" (which is probably no one reading this, but that's ok) how about THIS: we're discovering the electron! Wow! How modern!

Faraday and Thomson figured out that all matter has some sort of definite quantity of electricity in it, and that it takes the same quantity of electricity to chemically decompose a substance as it does to keep it together. Then came Millikan, who is super-cool. I found a quote on wikipedia that shows just how super-cool:

"At the close of my sophomore year [...] my Greek professor [...] asked me to teach the course in elementary physics in the preparatory department during the next year. To my reply that I did not know any physics at all, his answer was, “Anyone who can do well in my Greek can teach physics.” “All right,” said I, “you will have to take the consequences, but I will try and see what I can do with it.” I at once purchased an Avery’s Elements of Physics, and spent the greater part of my summer vacation of 1889 at home … trying to master the subject. [...] I doubt if I have ever taught better in my life than in my first course in physics in 1889. I was so intensely interested in keeping my knowledge ahead of that of the class that they may have caught some of my own interest and enthusiasm."







How St. John's is THAT!? And although 1889 may seem like a while ago, he didn't die until 1953. Super modern. So, the reason I'm writing about Millikan and oil drops and electrons is because this experiment is worth writing about. The experiment is designed to find the absolute charge of electricity (i.e. the charge of a single electron) as well as to find the mass of the electron. Doing this requires a lot of math which I find pretty boring, but the apparatus and the concept behind it are very comprehensible. Here is a drawing of the apparatus. Sadly we didn't get to use thousands of volts yesterday...only a few hundred.




So those two plates, one above and the other below the field marked "uniform electric field" are electrically charged plates. Say the top one is charged positively and the bottom negatively. We spray teeny, tiny, oil drops into the large cannister on top and some of them float down through a hole and end up between the two charged plates. We can turn off the plates and the oil drops will float down really really slowly (about 15 seconds/2mm) because of the viscosity of the air, and then we can give the plates charge and the oil drops, depending on whether they were charged negatively or positively, will go up really fast or down really fast. If you measure the speed of the oil drops as they float down (at a constant rate) and as they shoot up (with one that is positively charged) you will notice that every once in a while they will change the speed at which they shoot up. This is evidence that the oil drop has "captured" an ion and picked up extra negative electric charge. The intervals between the speeds at which they shoot up provides evidence that electricity comes in discreet packets, electrons, and we can use our measurements to determine their charge and mass.

Anyway, this experiment means squinting into a microscope for hours on end flipping switches to make the oil drop go up and down while remaining in sight and timing with a stopwatch the times they take to go up and down. Sounds boring but is actually pretty exciting, especially since I got to use one of the set-ups that had a very small tv and camera instead of a microscope. I worked with Sarah Bern, a really nice Toronto-an I've just met (it's always exciting to make new friends at St. John's-one would think I would know everyone already) who was really fun to work with. After we collected all of our data we were supposed to begin doing the math to get the numbers we need for our lab report, but instead we just talked. It was a really nice college moment.

Senior Essay Topics

Possible Senior Essay subjects:

The Iliad
Plato's Republic
The Five Books of Moses
Job
The gospels written by Paul
Augustine's Confessions
Kepler: The Harmonies of the World
Catullus
Tolstoy: War and Peace
The writings of Konrad Lorenz, naturalist
Bach: St. Mathew Passion

A City They've Written AT LEAST One Song About

"All the buildings are brown...but it's so beautiful!"



For all of you who are considering a trip to Santa Fe on May 19th (that is, for my graduation), I thought I would do a little promotional thing to show you just how fun a weekend in Santa Fe can be! A sample weekend (inspired by this weekend):




Friday:
-Eat at the Thai Cafe. Yum
-Go to Ten Thousand Waves for a private bath.


-Watch House late into the night.


Saturday:
-Walk down Canyon Road and have brunch at the Tea House


-Go to the Humane Society and play with the animals. This is an especially important pastime for those of us who have a bird, when what we really want is a dog or cat.
Lucy:


(They also have rabbits):


-Go to a party at St. John's which features an excellent two-man eighties pop cover band.


Sunday:
-Go to the super-cool Orthodox Church.



-Make delicious home-made minestrone and hope it will last until Wednesday.
-Knit.
-Do homework.

And you wouldn't have to do any of the homework OR go to a college party!

Breakthrough

I thought I should say something about my summer working as an 8th grade teacher with the Breakthrough Collaborative, especially since I know no one in my family has any idea what I was really doing this summer. The Breakthrough Collaborative is a national organization (originally Summerbridge in San Francisco) which aims to give motivated sixth graders the support they will need to get to college. So, these kids, smart or not so smart, tragically poor or borderline middle class, English-speaking or Spanish-speaking, Native, Mexican, and White all apply as sixth graders to the Breakthrough Program. The program is a six year commitment and includes the following components:
Before 7th grade: Summer school
During 7th grade: Mentoring and tutoring after school
Before 8th grade: Summer school
During 8th grade: Mentoring and tutoring after school
During 9th-12th grade: Students can apply to be Breakthrough interns and during their junior and senior years to be teachers. The students are given college counseling through the program, including SAT prep and additional tutoring.

The only part I was involved with was the summer school aspect, although now that school has started I am going to meet some of the kids after school once a week to help them with homework and help keep them on track in the program.
My experience this summer was exhausting physically and emotionally. There are 50 kids in Breakthough Santa Fe. I taught four classes of science a day, was an advisory to two eighth grade girls and one seventh grade girl, was the head of a committee that organized the program's Friday afternoon events (career day, art walk, camping trip, etc.), and made lesson plans and did miscellaneous paperwork every night.


Fun with Mentos and Coke during a science Tuesday

The kids' home problems, their romantic hopes, their academic successes and failures, all of this was made my concern as many of them opened up to me about their experiences. There were several kids I feel very close to and truly love. There are others who never opened up to me, never bought into the idea that a lame college student who was trying to teach science (of all things, this definitely made it harder to connect to the girls who liked English and History) could understand what composes their existence. I love them too, but they didn't buy into the relationship, and I think that that's fair, because although I came a lot closer to understanding the importance of one girl's older brother's tricked-out car or another girl's hair extensions, ultimately, I don't really care about that stuff the way they do.

What I care the most about is that the kids succeed at what they love. The program is about going to college and raising these kids from their lower class backgrounds into an educated class. I don't buy into this 100% because I don't appreciate the program's emphasis on class change and making money, but I do want the kids to be life-long learners and to have the confidence they need to help them succeed in an America that is too white, too rich, and too Anglo-centric linguistically and culturally.

Here are some of Breakthrough's students:



Lynette Domiguez, a beautiful, strong, and extremely dedicated young woman. I had her in planetary science, which was definitely not her favorite subject, but which she succeeded in by the end of the summer because she knows how to ask questions and work hard.



Ari Morris and Leon Padilla were two awesome boys. Ari was one of four or five white kids in the program and was a sponge for information. He loved science (as well as all his other subjects, most likely) and was really a joy to teach. He is a very serious skateboarder. Cool. Leon is one of those kids with those disarming smiles who drove me nuts by being distracted in class and then turned around and smiled and...all my anger melted away. He wants to be a doctor.



This is Anthony Aragon, aka "Triple A" which is his DJ name. He always carried speakers around in his backpack (which I wasn't supposed to know about) and had the most personality of any of the kids at Breakthrough. Yeah, Triple A!

Well, this is already too long of a post, and Ben wants to fool around with the computer to set up our new Airport Express (yay!), so I'll quit writing. If any Breakthrough kids read this, you're awesome.

Faust

I just finished my first Faust reading, and it is crazy. The prologue in Heaven is like the beginning of Job. Mephistopheles is a poodle who follows Faust home one night. Every once in a while a chorus of spirits (Good spirits? Bad spirits? Who knows!) is heard offstage singing songs giving Faust advice and reflecting on the state of Earth. It's incredibly strange. Oh well. Anyway, here is a picture of the guy who the character of Faust was based on:



Today in math the following problem was posed to me:
If Stan is on the shore watching a boat go by to the right at the speed of light, c, and Wendy is running at 1/2c on the boat aksi to the right (relative to Stan), and she is carrying a flashlight which she switches on- what happens? Does she outrun the light from her flashlight?

Jaime let people know that I was posting again and then wrote: "Like I care", or some other such phrase underneath it. Puzzling, Jaime, because I know you do care. Also, I want to apologize for spelling coeur incorrectly before. My bad.

SENIOR!!!

I was talking to Grandma Callahan this weekend, and she seemed shocked that I am already a senior, so I thought I would just make an announcement. I am a senior. I will (insha'Allah) graduate on May 19th, 2007 in sunny Santa Fe. As I am discovering, there are factors that serve to complicate my enjoyment of senior year. They are as follows:

1. St. John's is so small that, despite being a Febbie and transfering to Santa Fe, now that I've been here four years I know some people really well...and know that I don't want to have classes with them. But I do have classes with them.
2. I have to find an advisor and write a senior essay by February 10th. This is a big deal. Have I made any progress even remotely in the realm of senior essay? Ummm...No.
3. When I graduate, I have to do something else.

All this aside, the first three days of class have been very exciting. In language, we are reading Flaubert's Un Couer Simple and talking about language, something I am always up for. In science we are finishing up our Faraday stuff with an experiment about the electrical properties of molecules and are then moving on to Thomson's experiments with the deflection of cathode rays (now I understand how tvs work). In seminar we just finished with War and Peace and are starting Goethe's Faust tomorrow.

The only class I'm not sure about is math. My math class is headed up by my tutor, Mr. Franks. He's a talker, and has (in our one meeting, granted) totally dominated the discussion. Some students really like this kind of tutor, but I need to work through the math (which this year is Einstein) step by step in an active way. Math tutorial needs to include a way to work through my questions, because I never come to class understanding an argument all the way through.

French sentence of the day: Elle avait eu, comme une autre, son histoire d'amour.

Parakeets (Part Two)

Seven or so months later... Birdie is completely neurotic, but in perfect health. I want to get him a friend who will fulfill his flock instincts, but I am hesitant to risk increasing the noise level in this apartment. Ben and I live in constant fear of becoming bird neglectors... have we crossed the line? Do we give Birdie enough attention? On the other hand, is it our fault he doesn't seem to like any sort of food or treat other than birdseed? How are we supposed to trick him into becoming tame if he won't even give us a chance? If you have any insights into these questions, or live in Santa Fe and feel you would do a better job with this bird, let me know.