And then, a reminder

I was, more or less, a fuck-up as an undergrad, trying to manage more than I was capable of: a girlfriend I wasn't happy with, two or three jobs, money home to the family (sometimes from student loans), being young and away from home for the first time, and, oh yea, school.

That I made it out of my undergrad career with a degree is perhaps not a miracle, but certainly a testament to will and patience - some of it, even mine.

One of the good bits, though, was that my undergrad adviser actually saw something in the mess that I was, and pointed it out when he could. I wouldn't have imagined being able to go to grad school - a time I'm not ashamed to admit will probably be the glory days I compare other things to for the rest of my life - without that. And for all the things that keep me up at night - fucked-up family, approaching 40 with the potential of looming genetic time bombs, a mountain of student loan debt - I've got a pretty good life that's come out of it.

I say this because, by happenstance, as I was wandering to get a drink of water between sessions in the conference I'm attending overseas, my undergrad adviser spotted me out of the crowd and came over to say hello.

It was nice to be able to say a quick thank you, and to be reminded of one of the things I have to live up to in my own interactions with students.

"...a lonely island of poverty in a vast sea of material prosperity."

It's an revealing moment to think about Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in light of the disaster of Haiti. It's "I Have a Dream" writ large. For all the progress we've made, there is, of course, progress yet to be made, and it isn't far off our borders.

If you haven't had a chance to make a donation to help out, let me offer you the chance.

And with that, take a moment and enjoy this speech. Take something from it.

"We cannot walk alone."

Origins

As I think I've noted here previously, I'm the first person in my immediate family to have gone to college. One of the areas that affected was my knowledge about what it meant to go to college and how financial aid worked.

At the end of my high school years, I applied to two schools. Only one made me a speedy offer, and because I didn't know better, I assumed that meant only one would. And so it was to that school that I went for what was, largely, a miserable four years as an undergraduate. As I've told many people, if you'd asked me on the day of my undergraduate graduation if I'd ever go back to school, I'd have socked you in the mouth. But eventually I did go back.

Now, the infamous Job 2 is in the same place as the school I applied to but didn't attend way back when. And that place has become, more or less, "the one that got away" which is part of what has made this process so absurdly hard for me to navigate.

A Class Meme

I've seen this around a time or two, most recently at Squadratomagico's, and I've meant to complete it for awhile. Part of what I think is interesting about it is the almost protectionist response (though thankfully not at Squadratomagico's) that it seems to elicit: "Those things may be true about me, but they don't mean I'm a member of a privileged class." Yes, that's true. But they're pretty good indicators of whether you might belong or not.

The idea behind this is not to incite some sort of class warfare, by marking which are true for you (put in bold), but to simply help you think about some things that might be markers of privilege. And in a time where questions of middle class versus wealth are coming to the forefront, not to mention questions of race and ethnicity (and those things are often tied to class, even in "enlightened society, whatever that might be). And part of why I wanted to put it up here is that class is such a sensitive word in American society, and my inclination is always to poke at things that are tender so we can figure out why.

So, here goes.

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college - he got an Associate's degree just after I graduated with my B.S.
3. Mother went to college. - this has been a point of shame for her, to the point that she's been known to tell tales about it
4. Mother finished college.
5. Had any relative growing up who was an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children's books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment.
25. You had your own room as a child.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course..
26. You had routine and consistent medical and dental care.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

Part of what is so fascinating here is that class is such a moving target. If you think about moments where someone has provided a fairly nuanced demographic definition of a class - think Bourdieu's Distinction - the idea of class becomes not only culturally bound (in his example, French) but historically bound as well. What was a mark of distinction at the time of his study doesn't seem likely to be today.

That brings me to what I think is most fascinating about this meme: the things that I'd add to it if I were writing it. It's significant, I think, that for some periods of my childhood we were able to get by on a single income. Those periods weren't long - they mostly happened in my high school years - but they were there. I can't imagine almost any American family today surviving on a single income, let alone what my father made as an NCO in the military (which is also the only reason I had consistent health care as a child). Similarly, I'd ask questions specifically about what one's school did, though I would add that in because I took a very strict interpretation of the questions.

Ultimately, I guess I wonder what other markers of class we should be thinking about. Bourdieu, for example, offered familiarity with particular pieces of classical music as an example of one marker. Maybe that's the still the case if you were to ask someone like Bourdieu. But I can't help but think there's a third limit on the notion of class: where you're looking from. I do wonder what his study would have found the markers of "distinction" were who weren't from whatever privileged class he was imagining. I don't think, however, that I'd get the same answerif I were to ask my students or - even more tellingly, perhaps - their parents.

On some level, this parallax error of class perception I think might account for some of the distress about "Joe Sixpacks" and "hockey moms" in this election. It isn't just that classes live diferent lives. It is that they see them differently as well.

Curmudgeon's Olympics Conundrum

I like the Olympics.

I like watching them. I can remember watching the Olympics when I was four years old; I saw Nadia Comăneci score the perfect 10 in 1976 (fun fact for you kids: that was the first ever; 32 years later, the perfect 10 score is obsolete). I was probably one of four people in the U.S. who was bothered when the split the summer and winter games up. I'd have been more irritated, but they left the Summer Games alone. I mean, really, who cares about the Winter Games?

The Olympics are, generally, more interesting to me than Presidential elections, so you can see where my attention goes in these years. And this is from someone who isn't particularly interested in most sports.

I hope you can see why there's a little bit of personal conflict for me over these games. I know about the human rights violations; I'm bothered by the creepy nationalism (really, did I need a scoreboard of how many medals the U.S. won starting yesterday?). It is one of the things I sometimes talk about with students. And I do believe that individual choice is the start of social change. So I could put my money where my political mouth is, right? Still, I'm still pretty compelled to watch, and I think I probably will see a lot of these games because I think the moment is more complex.

Part of it is clearly the history of the games for me. It isn't just that I've watched the games every chance I've had since I was old enough hold my own head up, though that in itself might be significant: I mean how many of you can't leave the house when your team is playing or "Desperate Housewives" or whatever is coming on? My father, who'd been overseas in the military, had part of the summer games off, and I remember watching some of them from the excellent vantage point of his lap way back in '76. So memory, too, plays a big role in this. But I think there's more than that.

More and more, I'm realizing that I was blessed with great teachers (in school and out) as I grew up, and one of the places that this was seen was in how they talked about ideals in relation to things like the Olympics. They did a nice job of cutting through the nationalism, even back in the '70's and '80's (again, for any younguns, that was when the U.S. was squaring off against its former arch-enemy, the U.S.S.R.). The way they talked about the games cut past those things, to talk about moments where group-think politics could be set aside and individuals could compete - and could express their own views. Before the 1980 games, I remember one of my Social Studies teachers making a point of talking about Jesse Owens and the political role he played (and what his presence dared, considering the life he lived when he was back in the States). And then, as well as you could with kids that age, we talked about the ironies of it in relation to the American Civil Rights movement's biggest successes coming significantly later.

And I know it smacks of Protestant work ethic/American "up by the boot straps" ideology of the self-made success, but I do like hearing about individuals who manage to do something out of whatever their national circumstances might be. Granted, the NBC dramatizations of the last few games were too much, but there's something to be said for the individual as narrative, don't you think?

And I liked that in those heady anti-Soviet years that sometimes we lost, though maybe I only like that in retrospect. If you want to make it a nationalist moment, to each their own, but please do be sure to note that the "us" you're subscribing sure does lose a lot. There's a lesson in that worth considering.

Maybe that's part of what I love: the Olympics often serve - and can, if talked about - serve as an interesting educational tool. And while I certainly hope that there will be boycotts, I also hope that people take a moment during them to see something "not us" and to think about it. That's part of why I'll be watching.

Everything in Moderation

Recently our school put on a conference highlighting our undergraduate's research. It's a nice affair that probably says as much about what the interests of professors are here as anything. My department usually puts up a pretty good showing, though this year we've tried taking students out of the barnyard a bit.

As part of all of this, I was asked to moderate a panel of, shall we say, eclectic papers (including one by my Honors student). Glad to do it. But it seems I might've stepped on a toe in the midst of it.

There are different schools of thought to moderating panels, even when undergraduates aren't involved. Under normal circumstances - when the panel is one composed of seasoned academics or graduate students - I see the job as having the following responsibilities:

• introducing folks and setting expectations
• keeping time and attempting - but only attempting - to ensure that time expectations are kept
• drawing parallels/themes/etc between presentations
  
• throwing out a question or two - sometimes the first question - to make sure there's some discussion

In a situation where the job is expressly about moderating student presentations, I'd say there's an additional duty

• to offer instruction along the way (gently, of course)

In exchange for these duties, I think the moderator gets some small right of editorial comment - if only to generate thought and conversation (unless there's a specifically named respondent, I suppose).

In the panel I was moderating, one of the papers was from history, and in the midst of it, a couple of things happened that I felt needed comment. First, the student referenced doing a Google search for a historical figure who interacted with the focus of their study (say, around 1917). The student said, and I quote, "According to Google, he was also a hockey player in the 1960s, which is pretty cool." Now simple math will tell you this is an embarrassing mistake for a historian to make, but it seemed like one that I could mention after in a more lighthearted manner.

But the other thing that the student said was essentially "It seems like there could be some parallels between my event and current events. But I don't want to make them."

This seemed a much bigger issue to me, and worth a comment because it was a research conference. And when there was a moment for me to speak after the presentations, I said, "I'd hope that if there are parallels between history and today that we'd point them out - isn't that a goal of history, after all? We want to hear your thoughts."

To my way of thinking, a college history paper that doesn't analyze and suggest isn't really a college level work. If you're just going to describe when events happened and who was involved, then you're doing the sort of work I did in fifth grade social studies. It'd be like being asked to look at a text and merely summarizing the plot. It's shallow. And maybe it's even fin for some classes, but for a conference about research, it's shallow.

So imagine my surprise when the student's sponsoring professor from the history department pulled me aside at the end to tell me in a tone that didn't seem happy to me that - and I'm paraphrasing - he didn't understand or appreciate my comment to his student.

And so now I'm in my office, doing a little of this and a little of that, wondering if my question was somehow unfair. Did I torpedo a student presentation? I don't think I did. And yet I can't help thinking maybe I've just made some bad blood.