infodump
I realize I haven't written anything in here for way too long, given how many interesting things have happened recently. It's not that I don't have things to say, it's just that I haven't had time to say them/am unsure of the appropriateness of saying them/haven't worked out how to say them.
Things I haven't been talking about, but have been thinking about, include:
1) What's been going on in my life since the last time I posted
2) My thoughts and feelings re: visiting Sonya and Pathy in Canada
3) My thoughts and feelings re: visiting Mr. Bradley, Miss Furry, Ms. DiDona, and Mr. Oswald at EHS
4) My thoughts and feelings re: applying to be a 2Seeds Network Program Coordinator
5) How I feel about being back at school
More specifically:
1) Feeling claustrophobically isolated in PA when none of my friends are around! Eating delicious food with old friends! Transportation of many kinds! Learning about sociology! Shopping for weird Canadian things! Dancing! Sculpting! Door-to-door salesmen! Doing massive amounts of reading and writing in the span of a day! Winning at tour-guiding!
2) I really enjoyed it- seeing Toronto, learning how my friends spend their days, hanging out with them separately and together. It was great to see Sonya again and meet her Canadian friends (especially Brandon!), and I actually felt like it's easier for me to relate to Pathy now than it was for me to do so in high school. Pathy's changed more than Sonya has, I think. That, and I can immediately recognize the essential Sonyaness of Sonya, and so it doesn't faze me overmuch when Sonya manifests different philosophies or attitudes or orientations or whatever else.
I think the changes in both of them bear more on their dynamic with each other than on their dynamic with me. Once I realized the extent of the change in their dynamic, I was a little taken aback and upset; but more for their sake than for mine, because again, it didn't really affect my visit. But my visit probably did affect their relationship, and I'm not sure yet if it was for better or for worse, so I feel a little weird about that. I mean, we still had our old dynamic when all together, but maybe that's not worth trying to recapture if I'm the only one who doesn't have to work at it.
3) If you ever wanted to know what your high school teachers do after school, I can tell you: they put up exercise videos on the projector screen in their classrooms and gossip together. Ms. DiDona and Miss Furry asked after my friends, by the way. Not gonna lie, I like that Posfe is remembered as a group. That's one of the themes of this entry, I suppose- contemplating what happens to a group as the members grow and change and become closer to individuals and fall out with individuals.
The other theme in my head right now is education, and what makes a good education, and whether it's different for different people. Mr. Oswald put forth the idea, sparked by having to force GP students through PSSAs and No Child Left Behind, that kids whose career interests and talents lay in more technical vocations should be encouraged in that direction, and not forced to reach the level of critical (literature)-reading proficiency of kids with more academic bents. He argued that future mechanics would be better served by automotive-manual-reading-proficiency tests, the kind that he, as an academic, wouldn't pass.
On the one hand, I suppose this makes sense, and he was brought to this opinion by experience that I haven't had (except in GP Astronomy, I guess, where I was clearly the only person besides the teacher who gave a shit and was therefore way overqualified for the class.) But the good Johnnie in me is outraged at his suggestion, and though I've been trying for almost a week, I haven't been able to articulate why.
Is it because I think that everyone should be able to read enough to get meaning out of literature, because understanding and deriving value from stories is a huge part of being human? But is thinking that one skill we can learn is more important and universal than others just another variation of specialist bias? I like being interdisciplinary here at St. John's, but the disciplines that are being entwined are all academic ones- math, science, literature, languages, philosophy, music. But maybe the point is that we're not being taught for a vocation, not even specifically for an academic vocation, because people go into technical vocations from St. John's, too. The skills taught here are academic, but I have to believe that overall they're just as valuable for a bookbinder as a professor.
What should teaching a future mechanic entail? First, one has to assume that that kid is going to be a mechanic, which I find alarming. Partially because I didn't know what I wanted to do when I entered high school (and still don't now, really, although I have a better idea now) and I don't like the idea of limiting someone who may want to change their mind later. And partially... perhaps I think that being a mechanic is more limiting than being a philosopher? That's ugly of me. I guess I feel that with the academic subjects, you're learning how to learn, and learning is always applicable. Learning THINGS- facts, skills, systems even- is only sometimes applicable. It depends on the situation. I think that high school is too early to focus soley on learning THINGS, and we need to make sure kids have LEARNING itself down. But maybe I just like possibility more than other people do. I think that people should do things they don't want to do, because they might find out that they do want to do them after all. Maybe everything should be mandatory- we should make the academics read technical manuals and the mechanics read literature, and everyone would be the better for it. Or they'd be reaffirmed in their decision to stick to one side of the divide. I don't know how deep that divide really is, or should be, though. Why can't we all be Renaissance people?
Speaking of which: Mr. Oswald thinks that the Tempest is kind of about a Renaissance man realizing that he really doesn't have everything- he's been neglecting his family by focusing on reading his books and developing his magical (perhaps akin to technical?) skills. It's not an interpretation I'd heard before, but it might explain why I dislike the Tempest. :/ I think you can have it all- philosophical and technical knowledge, and both those and a family. That would be living life to the fullest. That has to be possible. I don't want to believe that it's not, that at any given time either rational development or emotional development has to take center stage and shunt the other off.
I'm sorry, this is kind of an incoherent rant now.
4) Uuuuugh I really didn't do as good a job on that application as I could have/should have, which sucks, because I think I could do well in the actual position, but I'm not sure they'll believe that from my application.
5) I love giving tours! And I love the people here. Beth F is delightful and that-sophomore-who-asks-questions-forever-and-goes-to-as-many-senior-orals-as-possible-because-she-genuinely-enjoys-them-and-is-interested-in-everything totally made my day.
Things I haven't been talking about, but have been thinking about, include:
1) What's been going on in my life since the last time I posted
2) My thoughts and feelings re: visiting Sonya and Pathy in Canada
3) My thoughts and feelings re: visiting Mr. Bradley, Miss Furry, Ms. DiDona, and Mr. Oswald at EHS
4) My thoughts and feelings re: applying to be a 2Seeds Network Program Coordinator
5) How I feel about being back at school
More specifically:
1) Feeling claustrophobically isolated in PA when none of my friends are around! Eating delicious food with old friends! Transportation of many kinds! Learning about sociology! Shopping for weird Canadian things! Dancing! Sculpting! Door-to-door salesmen! Doing massive amounts of reading and writing in the span of a day! Winning at tour-guiding!
2) I really enjoyed it- seeing Toronto, learning how my friends spend their days, hanging out with them separately and together. It was great to see Sonya again and meet her Canadian friends (especially Brandon!), and I actually felt like it's easier for me to relate to Pathy now than it was for me to do so in high school. Pathy's changed more than Sonya has, I think. That, and I can immediately recognize the essential Sonyaness of Sonya, and so it doesn't faze me overmuch when Sonya manifests different philosophies or attitudes or orientations or whatever else.
I think the changes in both of them bear more on their dynamic with each other than on their dynamic with me. Once I realized the extent of the change in their dynamic, I was a little taken aback and upset; but more for their sake than for mine, because again, it didn't really affect my visit. But my visit probably did affect their relationship, and I'm not sure yet if it was for better or for worse, so I feel a little weird about that. I mean, we still had our old dynamic when all together, but maybe that's not worth trying to recapture if I'm the only one who doesn't have to work at it.
3) If you ever wanted to know what your high school teachers do after school, I can tell you: they put up exercise videos on the projector screen in their classrooms and gossip together. Ms. DiDona and Miss Furry asked after my friends, by the way. Not gonna lie, I like that Posfe is remembered as a group. That's one of the themes of this entry, I suppose- contemplating what happens to a group as the members grow and change and become closer to individuals and fall out with individuals.
The other theme in my head right now is education, and what makes a good education, and whether it's different for different people. Mr. Oswald put forth the idea, sparked by having to force GP students through PSSAs and No Child Left Behind, that kids whose career interests and talents lay in more technical vocations should be encouraged in that direction, and not forced to reach the level of critical (literature)-reading proficiency of kids with more academic bents. He argued that future mechanics would be better served by automotive-manual-reading-proficiency tests, the kind that he, as an academic, wouldn't pass.
On the one hand, I suppose this makes sense, and he was brought to this opinion by experience that I haven't had (except in GP Astronomy, I guess, where I was clearly the only person besides the teacher who gave a shit and was therefore way overqualified for the class.) But the good Johnnie in me is outraged at his suggestion, and though I've been trying for almost a week, I haven't been able to articulate why.
Is it because I think that everyone should be able to read enough to get meaning out of literature, because understanding and deriving value from stories is a huge part of being human? But is thinking that one skill we can learn is more important and universal than others just another variation of specialist bias? I like being interdisciplinary here at St. John's, but the disciplines that are being entwined are all academic ones- math, science, literature, languages, philosophy, music. But maybe the point is that we're not being taught for a vocation, not even specifically for an academic vocation, because people go into technical vocations from St. John's, too. The skills taught here are academic, but I have to believe that overall they're just as valuable for a bookbinder as a professor.
What should teaching a future mechanic entail? First, one has to assume that that kid is going to be a mechanic, which I find alarming. Partially because I didn't know what I wanted to do when I entered high school (and still don't now, really, although I have a better idea now) and I don't like the idea of limiting someone who may want to change their mind later. And partially... perhaps I think that being a mechanic is more limiting than being a philosopher? That's ugly of me. I guess I feel that with the academic subjects, you're learning how to learn, and learning is always applicable. Learning THINGS- facts, skills, systems even- is only sometimes applicable. It depends on the situation. I think that high school is too early to focus soley on learning THINGS, and we need to make sure kids have LEARNING itself down. But maybe I just like possibility more than other people do. I think that people should do things they don't want to do, because they might find out that they do want to do them after all. Maybe everything should be mandatory- we should make the academics read technical manuals and the mechanics read literature, and everyone would be the better for it. Or they'd be reaffirmed in their decision to stick to one side of the divide. I don't know how deep that divide really is, or should be, though. Why can't we all be Renaissance people?
Speaking of which: Mr. Oswald thinks that the Tempest is kind of about a Renaissance man realizing that he really doesn't have everything- he's been neglecting his family by focusing on reading his books and developing his magical (perhaps akin to technical?) skills. It's not an interpretation I'd heard before, but it might explain why I dislike the Tempest. :/ I think you can have it all- philosophical and technical knowledge, and both those and a family. That would be living life to the fullest. That has to be possible. I don't want to believe that it's not, that at any given time either rational development or emotional development has to take center stage and shunt the other off.
I'm sorry, this is kind of an incoherent rant now.
4) Uuuuugh I really didn't do as good a job on that application as I could have/should have, which sucks, because I think I could do well in the actual position, but I'm not sure they'll believe that from my application.
5) I love giving tours! And I love the people here. Beth F is delightful and that-sophomore-who-asks-questions-forever-and-goes-to-as-many-senior-orals-as-possible-because-she-genuinely-enjoys-them-and-is-interested-in-everything totally made my day.