My favorite part of being an anthro major is that, in an attempt to make their lectures relevant to students, professors sometimes take things to strange places. The best of these are the ones that give you alarming insights into your professors’ lives and/or American cultural phenomena that you are otherwise unaware of.
Pubic Hair Shaving During Labor: “American hospitals do that? I mean, it’s a head. It’s not like it’s easy to miss.” There were hand gestures.
BDSM: “Some people find some aspects of this arousing in some contexts.” There were pictures.
Groundhog Day: “You mean High Holidays?” (I have a cold. Same professor as the first quote. When it was explained to her that Americans really do look at a small mammal for weather advice, she was somewhat taken aback and apparently delighted.)
May Day: “We build big poles and dance around them. They say it’s a cross, I say it’s a penis.”
Strong candidates that did not make the list this week include foreskins, asexuality, and episiotomies.
Yesterday, my friend Avery and I went flint knapping outside of the anthro building. For those who aren’t anthro majors/hill people, flint (or stone) knapping is the process of taking a large chunk of rock and turning it into a smaller, hopefully tool-like chunk of rock. Hobbyists use it to make arrowheads, which they exchange at “knap ins,” which are a thing that I am not even making up. The video above shows some of the gear required and the general strangeness of the process–if you see a giant chunk of bone on the table when he’s talking, that’s because it’s a moose bone that he makes stone tools with.
The professor above–who was a remarkably good sport about two undergrads showing up and demanding teaching, essentially–was helping us yesterday. He studies stone knapping techniques in the paleolithic era. Human stone tools from digs show an increase in complexity the nearer the dig gets to the present day, from this, to this, to this. The professor’s research (and the reason he was sitting around flint knapping on a Friday to begin with) is on what stone tools show us about the cognative abilities of the people who made them. He does this by scanning folks’ brains as they make stone tools.
It turns out that novices and skilled tool-makers light up different areas of their brains, and that the simpler tool styles (the monofacial ones, which can cut but are not great for chopping) light up older parts of the brain than more complicated tools. The question is whether advances in tool complexity represent the evolution of that more recent brain matter–they couldn’t make the tools until they had the ability to learn, visualize appropriately, and figure out some pretty complicated practical physics.
So Avery and I tried to make something. We tried to teach ourselves to stone knap last year, after seeing a video of Bruce Bradley. The thing that professors don’t tell you as much is that he’s pretty much the best flint knapper in this country, and despite how easy he makes it look it’s really hard. When we tried on our own, we were working with low-quality rock and no clue what we were doing, and wound up using the same technique to make blades as chimps have been shown to: we threw them at the ground until they shattered into smaller pieces. Yesterday, we fared a little better. Here’s what Avery made:
Though it doesn’t look like much, the scraper came from a much larger piece of flint, and is much better than what we got the first time. We’ll be going back next week, so hopefully I can try my hand at sucking a little less at banging rocks together.
“I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take, hours spent in a field where I was not a natural.”
— Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg is a poet, the author of my favorite poem. I’ve been thinking a lot about his quote this past week, which I’ve spent reading through the Zen Valedictorian articles over at Study Hacks. The articles are a better-expressed version of a life outlook that I’ve written about some on HackCollege, and which I espouse to anyone who will stand still in person: at some point, being the over-stressed, over-extended student in an attempt to be Tracy Flick will fail you. More importantly, even if it’s something that you can manage, at least for a little while, it’s still not an efficient use of your time. The students who stand out are the ones who become very good at something they enjoy. Colleges don’t tell their students that, though, and so you get the sort of student that the Zen Valedictorian articles are critiquing–over-worked and not particularly outstanding.
In the last week, I have noticed that I’ve been running into a lot of monkeys in my out-of-school time. In-school, it’s less weird–my adviser literally runs a lab that studies monkey poop–but there’s usually not that much bleed-over into the real world. However, in the past week:
A monkey escaped from my school. The authorities are happy to report that it doesn’t have Herpes B, which can apparently kill people. So that’s exciting.
Monkeys stole some guy’s camera and took possibly-photoshopped pictures of themselves. My favorite part is the Boing Boing commenter discussion. I wrote that sentence before actually going to read the Boing Boing comments, because secret hint: my favorite part is always the Boing Boing comments.
I came across an adorable video of monkeys that appear to have handlebar mustaches. HANDLE BAR MUSTACHES.
I applied for a job at Mail Chimp*, which does not–contrary to what you might think of the name–actually mail chimps. Which is a relief, because chimps can and will rip your face off and/or eat babies.
For the love of Christ, don’t put two condoms on. That is a terrible idea!
I am officially (as of last Saturday) in possession of an Associate of Arts degree from Oxford College of Emory University. It’s not actually in anything, as far as I can tell, but they gave me an inconveniently large piece of parchment with my name in a fancy font on it, so that’s got to be worth something. Thus ends my frequently-emotionally-conflicted tenure at the better of Emory’s two options for starting your degree*.
There was a lot of talk during the commencement speeches about community. That has been my favorite part about Oxford. When my car battery decided to scare me by almost going belly-up before graduation, I knew that there were people at Oxford who would help me tow my car or haul in a replacement battery or generally listen to me freak out. One of my friends helped me jump my car at 10:30 at night in the cold, and there is something–a very real something–to be said for friends who will help you out when they do not have to and when it is inconvenient and cold and late. There is something to be said for that, particularly when those people include not just your peers but your professors, your boss, and your chaplain (doubly so if you, like me, are an atheist–our chaplain’s awesome). That is wonderful. Continue reading →
I’ve been talking a lot lately about essays. This is partly because, as of today, I am done with classes at Oxford College (woo! and also, wah!) and so I and my friends are writing lots and lots of term papers now (including mine on Facebook and death). But mostly, it’s because several of my friends have had some very similar interactions in the last few days. They go like this.
SANE PERSON: Done with my paper!
CRAZY CLASSMATE: How long is it?
SANE PERSON: Fifteen pages. You?
CRAZY PERSON: Oh, 35. I want to get it published.
This has happened with us on papers with 12-page limits, on papers with 20-page limits, and on papers with one-page limits. Someone-typically multiple someones–turns in a paper 10-20 pages longer than the maximum word limit assigned by the professor. This bothers my friends.
It’s offensive to begin with because, if nothing else, turning in final papers twice as long as requested indicates that students do not value a professor’s time. The professor presumably knows how long it takes her to grade 20 five-page papers, and so that is what she has budgeted. When one person (or five) turn in papers of 10 pages, then the professor is put in a bind. Plus, speaking from a purely self-interested standpoint, turning in papers which are longer than requested takes away time from every other student in the class, meaning that their papers (the ones that followed the requirements!) are likely to receive a less thorough evaluation than they might otherwise. It’s not that the people who turn in extra-long papers are bad people, but they are being inconsiderate. There needs to be a reassertion that maximum word limits are there for a reason, not just for shits and giggles. Grading takes time. Turning in unasked-for huge papers wastes that.
More worryingly, approaching papers in this way seems to indicate an underlying problem of a culture which values quantity over quality. Students are encouraged to do more: more clubs, more classes, more honors societies. Little attention is paid–by faculty and staff or by students–to doing better. At best, this leads to substandard work and clubs dominated by the same small group of people who are minimally invested–the samecomplaint that I’ve been making at HackCollege over the last few weeks. At worst, as Lena Chen has been discussing on her blog this week, it leads to a college culture which promotes mental illness and anxiety disorders. Colleges need to look at what they are doing as institutions to encourage this approach to learning.
Last week, I presented at my first conference (like a grown up!). It was Oxford’s Women’s Studies Symposium. The presentation was over a paper I wrote as a culminating project for my Women and Cross Cultural Perspectives class. Here’s the abstract:
This paper explores the evolution of third gender identities in the Navajo, Zuni, and Lakota in North America. Prior to European settlement, each tribe possessed a different term for and conception of third gendered individuals. Though it is tempting to consider Native American tribes as enlightened and accepting of non-binary sexualities, the treatment of third gendered individuals within these groups (and the roles they were expected to fulfill) was as unique as each individual tribal identity prior to European settlement. Though each tribe possessed distinct, defined third-gender identities before European settlement, individuals which identified as third gendered became much less common as a European gender binary was either forced on Native American tribes or accepted as part of an intentional effort to seem more European. However, since the 1970s these identities have reemerged in the form of a pan-Indian two-spirit identity intimately tied to Native American activism surrounding health care, land rights, and the AIDS epidemic. In part, this is the result of LGBT Native American individuals who have been alienated from the Euro-American dominated LGBT movement in the US. This modern two-spirit identity, though outwardly similar to the traditional third genders, is actually quite different for many of the tribes: third gendered people were typically conceived of as engaged in heterogendered sexual partnership; this is not true with the modern two-spirit person. The paper concludes with a summary of the two-spirit movement as it stands, in the words of two-spirit individuals.
If that sounds like your cup of tea, the paper is available here.
On Monday, I stuck a post up on HackCollege the basic premise of which was that I have decided that when I treat college and the work attached to it like my job, and attempt to confine it to a roughly 10-6 schedule, I am a) surprised at how little time it takes to get through my work and b) happier. Then I got to talk about hobbies, and about having them in college in an attempt to retain some semblance of an ability to interact normally with other people. That part of the article is basically just a conversation I had with my friend Bijan over Spring Break, but with me writing it down instead of him figuring it out because he is wonderfully smart. (He is also a tremendously interesting person to talk to.)
The article seemed to be well-received, and some people who I respect tremendously said nice things about it, and I was very happy. External validation is the best, you guys!
But since this is my personal space on the internet, I wanted to address something that’s not looked at in the original piece, which is how I spend my day in terms of work/not work/work-that-I-like-so-it-isn’t-work. I want to know if I spend more or less time doing things now than when I will be employed. So, here’s how my day broke down (for tl;dr scroll down): Continue reading →
Someone please explain to me why I cannot get this song out of my head. I think it has something to do with Matthew Morrison’s dancing. Because, mm.
This is one of those weeks where I step out of my room for lunch and then suddenly I look up and, oh wait, it’s 10pm and I haven’t been back and I have to do homework and look my RA bulletin board is due in an hour.* It’s a great week–I’ve organized two programs and the Vagina Monologues production that I’m directing is this Thursday and Friday and then it’s my birthday and then it’s SXSWi–but it’s also kind of maybe a little insane. I used to think freshman year that I knew what busy was. I did not. I know I did not, because freshman year I had friends I saw outside of Lil’s and went to bed at 11pm. Good memories.
However, freshman year I did not get to make these sorts of things:
I think I was in high school when I learned about the engineer’s/freelancer’s triangle. It’s the old joke about good, fast, and cheap–you can have two of the three but you give up control of the third. It has the distinction of being both funny and true. However, I think there’s an overlooked version of this for professors and their grading: to keep it thematic, I suppose you could call it the professor’s pen point.
You have three options: your grading can be strict, your grading scale can be high, or you can be capricious with what your questions mean. You can be two of the three, but if you pull all three your students will hate you. I know this because a professor who I normally love just managed to move from his typical pairing (strict decisions about what he’ll take and a high grading scale) into the dreaded all-three zone. In a class in which an A is a 94 or above, an A- is a 92-94, and a B+ is an 89-92, he just gave a test where the highest grade in the entire class was a 91. Literally no one got an A. No one got an A-. All of us are annoyed.
Dances With Nerds 