I know this has been The Week of the Mommy, but here’s one more bit to ponder and then I promise to be done. This article lays out nicely how difficult it is to find work-life balance. It’s important for melting down parents to read about how everyone else is having an out-of-control moment/day/week/life. Because when you haven’t slept and your whole day is one peanut butter, cream of wheat or fuse bead disaster after another and you’re wondering how it can be possible to work this hard and to be in such an extreme state of constant motion and still not manage to get anything accomplished in a day, it’s necessary to have solid evidence that other parents are grappling as desperately as you.
Seriously, how hard is it to take a damn shower? There’s water, soap, more water, a towel, done. Not so with children running amok. There is no sneaking off and showering while leaving tiny people unsupervised. Their food-in and food-out needs must be met; all food must then be removed from the table so no one chokes to death while the parental unit is showering; and then–the deep dark secret of parents who claim to loathe television and maintain a high volume of literature input in the house–the television must be turned on so the little hellions won’t harm themselves or the property during the 180 seconds that mommy is in the shower.
And still, still, even with full access to the television crack pipe that my children are whores for, 60 seconds into my frantic Speed Shower of Doom, someone is banging on the bathroom door demanding to know where their mommy is and when she will be returning. This moment has three possible outcomes: (1) I turn on the ceiling fan and drown out their cries (sort of); (2) I yell something no non-parent will ever imagine they will utter some day when they become parents: “Every mommy has the right to shower alone!” or “GO AWAY!” or “You’re making me insane!” or, when I’ve given up, “Whatever, dude. Cry all you want. It’ll just make me shower longer.” and (3) the dumb mommy unlocks the bathroom door and stupidly gives in and lets the two-year-old in to have a shower/bath too. This is immediately regretted when the six-year-old shows up and suddenly mommy is trying to get clean while standing calf-deep in what she’s pretty sure is a kiddie pee party.
Okay, done with the mommy theme. I refuse to become a mommy blogger. As far as I can tell, the blogging populations with the highest numbers are mommies and convention geeks.
For the first few years of my college career, I was a cocky little sucker who was convinced that tutors were for the less-evolved, slower-thinking students on campus. Since I was “gifted” and had always been told that I was in possession of above average intelligence, I would of course be able to learn all college coursework instantly, perfectly, and with no assistance. I know, what a dumb b**ch.
Because I’ve grown as a person, the irony of this is not lost on me: the “average” and “below average” kids showed higher levels of intelligence, common sense and basic survival skills than I had when they all joined study groups and headed to the tutoring center the first week of school.
It took me a few years, but I finally figured out that (a) I was going to actually have to work to learn all the material (sadly, no instantaneous absorption qualities do I possess), and (b) trying to get through college with no assistance just makes you look like a jackass. A jackass with a really expensive, crappy GPA.
The first trip to the tutoring center or to the prof’s office hours were the hardest. Once I got over the hump, I lived there. Later on, during Degree #2 (please see previous post) I was technically in school full-time, but I was creatively spreading my classes out to mostly evening and online courses so I could be home with my infant daughter (only people who can hire drivers and butlers can afford childcare and tuition simultaneously). Which meant I was usually studying at home, halfway across Seattle, not on campus in the library where I could search out a classmate and ask a question about the homework.
I hated so much that feeling of being totally lost or confused by a physics or chem. or calculus problem that I lost any self-consciousness associated with walking into the tutoring center, raising my hand before I even sat down, and asking for help. At some point, when my daughter was old enough to start preschool and I was on campus during the day like a real college student, I had the math tutoring center hours memorized and would just sit in there doing lab write-ups and math homework, raising my hand whenever I encountered a road block.
So the tutors saved my ass (once I managed to yank my own head out of it) and helped me figure out monumental, James Joyce-ian math and physics problems without ever giving me the answers or spoon-feeding me. I needed to understand how to do the problem, I didn’t want the answer. A tutor worth his or her salt never does the work for you. And if you find one who does, pray they’re tiny enough to fit inside your backpack so’s you can bring them along for exams.
Tuesday February 19th 2008, 4:40 pm
Filed under: College, Gender
This past post ties in with the mommy vein as well, but more from a student perspective.
Jon Morrow from On Moneymaking just did a guest post on Brazen Careerist about why he regrets getting straight A’s in college. He lays out pretty clearly what he did, what he got out of it, and why it wasn’t worth it in the end. Some of the comments on the post had a definite pent-up rage undertone—I’m not entirely sure why. Were the commenters feeling threatened by Morrow’s ponderings about his own life and the decisions he’s made (which I’m fairly certain had nothing to do with them)? Who the hell knows.
I understood where he was coming from, even if the cranky commenters didn’t. And I can back him up in saying that being obsessed with your college GPA to the detriment of your actual life is unnecessary. As he points out and as I’ve said before: unless you’re applying to some highly competitive grad school program, an exquisite grade point average isn’t something anyone important will ever give a rat’s ass about.
I did the same thing Morrow did: I studied all the damn time and was focused to my very core on getting the highest score on every lab write-up, assignment, quiz and exam. I had an amazing physics instructor once who was smart, tough, unsmiling, and told us on the first day of class that she didn’t believe in extra credit so we shouldn’t waste her time asking for it. She expected us to learn the material well and to do the work she assigned, end of story.
And then she handed back our first set of lab reports and told the class that one student had gone above and beyond what even she expected and she had therefore gone against her twenty-year no extra credit policy and had given this particular student several extra points. This turn of events did not amuse her, and she stood over me and stared me down while announcing this in front of my glaring classmates. The grade-obsessed perfectionist half of me was supremely proud and was jumping up and down (on the inside) with delirious joy, thinking “Oh, hell YES! I kick ASS!” The normal half of me thought, “Crap. Now they all hate me and think I’m a freak.”
Which I was. Physics Class Me occured when I was working on degree # 2 and was ditching my infant daughter, my husband, my friends and any semblance of my life in order to devote every waking moment (of which there were quite a number as I rarely slept) to achieving academic success. Necessary? Yes, if I wanted to get into the program I was so focused on. No, if I had taken a step back and gotten my priorities straight. Unconsciounable? Absolutely. I ditched my child for about the first three years of her life because I couldn’t just let go a little (unclench) and get a few B’s.
Lest you think the perfection obsession was limited only to the New-Mommy-Staggering- Under-the-Weight-of-Parental-Responsibility Me, I have another sparkling example of School Obsessed Alexa. I had two weeks left of my senior year at Evergreen. There are two important bits in that last sentence: (1) normal people, if they are capable of unclenching, can usually find it within themselves to do so during the last two weeks of senior year; (2) I was at Evergreen, where obsessing about academic perfection is dumb because there are no grades.
Anyway, I had just returned from a photography road trip and had a lot of printing to do in the darkroom before my final project was due to be shown. My then-boyfriend, now-husband asked me to go away with him for the weekend to the San Juan Islands. His friend is a pilot and had offered to fly us there. How romantic. I knew that what my boy really had planned was to propose to me. He had set up this whole thing, his friend was willing to fly us, he had a ring, etc. I played dumb, pretended I just thought he wanted to go waste a weekend of printing time at a bed-and-breakfast, and told him I loved him very much and it was a very sweet gesture but I needed to stay home and rack up as many printing hours as possible in the darkroom before my project was due. I’m usually a very forthright and honest girl (I have no filter between my brain and my mouth, so I tend to say everything the moment I think it), so it’s fortunate I held back and didn’t say, “I’m too busy with school to get engaged to you this weekend. Better luck next time, pal.”
Isn’t that awful? I’m such a bi*ch. I cringe when I recall that stunning moment. For the record, he proposed after I turned in my project and hung my show. We’re living happily ever after and I’ve since learned my lessons regarding life vs. school and I’m a much better mom, wife and friend because of all the learning I’ve done (read: cringe-worthy moments have carved me into a real person).
Anyway, school is good and working hard is commendable. But the pursuit of perfection to the detriment of your real life is usually not worth it. Find some sort of balance. Minus the crystals and granola. Unless that’s your thing.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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I’m re-posting this as it goes along nicely with my previous article regarding moms and career decisions.
Examining the Trend of College-Educated Women Leaving the Workforce
I love research done by people who’ve heard a general, society-wide rumor and just have to know whether or not it’s based in fact. Sylvia Ann Hewlett (author of the 2002 book, Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children) recently researched just how many college-educated women are ditching their careers to be at-home moms for a while. I’m a science girl at heart, so I’m always down with anyone who backs their thoughts up with cold, hard numbers.
Off-Ramping and On-Ramping
Hewlett refers to the leaving and the subsequent return to their careers as “off-ramping” and “on-ramping.” The main issues it brought up in my mind were the still-around, can’t-get-away-from-them discrepancies between what’s expected from a working mom vs. what’s expected from a working dad. Working moms are expected to make money and be stellar in their careers, then come home and be perfect, nurturing mommies with lots of time and energy left at the end of the day for their little ones. Working dads are expected to go to work and make money. Done.
The new trend seemed to be a mass exodus of college-educated, successful women ditching their careers, so they could be home and do the family thing for a while. It’s interesting that not as many women are “off-ramping” as everyone (society in general) had previously thought. (As a funny side note: it’s also hilarious that the career women who were staying in the rat race were irate at the bad rep these off-ramping bi***es were giving career women everywhere.)
Hewlett’s data showed that only 37% of career women are bailing out of the rat race, and then only for a short period of time. The bailing out isn’t ‘cause these ladies can’t hack it. The reasons listed include having kids, caring for aging parents, and “taking care of other life needs.” (Do you think potentially life-threatening illnesses fall into that category? I was just wondering.)
I’m guessing that these women were doing fine and kicking some corporate booty in their fields, obviously able to handle all of the thinking and the work load, the deadlines and the pressure of career plus normal life on top of that. Add in something life-altering, like, say, giving birth or having a new kid to care for 24/7 or perhaps an aging parent around who needs your help, or even maybe battling cancer, might throw a wrench in the ass-kicking works and could conceivably throw the perfectly balanced career / life juggling act off. Something has to give, and apparently 37% of those career gals are willing to give up the careers you know they busted their asses to succeed in. (more…)
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Wednesday February 13th 2008, 12:36 pm
Filed under: Work, Gender, Career
Possibly it’s just the negative effects of the Seattle winter doldrums, but I’ve noticed a large number of female parental units freaking out about careers lately. The at-home moms think they should be working, and the career-having moms think they should be home making play dough from scratch. It seems as though no mom is content where she is and all moms feel like they could be doing more and doing it better.
Here’s my dime of advice: the health and well-being of the kiddos should be the top priority. The health, well-being and sanity of the parental units is an overlapping second on the list. And money-making is a farther-away third on the list. Screw the career and the money if the kids are being raised by preschool teachers and the whole family is stressed-out and miserable. Screw the perfect circle-shaped PB&Js with raisin smiley faces and volunteering in the classroom if mommy is one potty-training mishap away from shaving her head, taping down her rack and trying to join a monastery.
Everyone is impressed by tight-rope walkers because the ability to find balance and walk that fine line is effing hard to do gracefully. That being said, finding the middle ground and doing some variation of mommy-ness and career could be a viable compromise. Part-time doesn’t mean flipping burgers. And thanks to the Almighty Internet, working from home doesn’t mean telemarketing. Easy never works out, but aiming for simplification and sanity probably will.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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Wednesday February 06th 2008, 4:16 pm
Filed under: College
I like to think of myself as an open-minded girl. I embrace non-traditional teaching methods (not literally, duh). But I have pondered the following Guardian UK article to death (pun lacking tact) and I just can’t find even a smidgen of a golden educational thread in what appears to be a gigantic vat of WTF?!
I was hoping for maybe a deeply hidden “wax on, wax off” lesson. Perhaps something about coming to a greater understanding of human pain and suffering because the student has designed a pain-inflicting device. But I just can’t get past the part about how architecture and design (and education in general) should, at its very basic levels, be about lifting up and strengthening the mind if not the spirit. If the assigning instructor does have a deeply meaningful higher purpose in mind, it might be in his best interest to spew that info sooner rather than later.
“And For Your Homework, Please Design a Torture Device”
An architectural school was at the centre of a row last night after it emerged that students were required to design a fully operational torture device.
The project, part of a masters course aimed at first-year students of the University of Kent’s School of Architecture, was described as “sick”. One student has lodged a complaint on the grounds that he was uncomfortable about carrying out the brief. Illustrated by a skull and a view of a Gestapo electric torture chamber, the brief handed to a class of students at the school was to “design, construct and draw a fully operational prototype torture device based on ergonomic principles”.
They were encouraged to “be original” and instructed: “You may use a historical precedent as a point of departure or attempt to develop something completely without precedent. Through design development we hope you may advance your understanding of ergonomics as it pertains to torture.”
Paul Hyett, a former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) responsible for the Treatment Centre for Torture Victims in London, said the school was dabbling in “dangerous territory” and called for the project to be stopped.
Hyett said: “It’s sick. Architecture should be about enriching our lives culturally and lifting the spirits of the people who live or work in the buildings we create. There is absolutely no circumstance where any piece of equipment for torture has any positive use in our lives or our society. This is monstrously complicated territory and I don’t think that amateurs should mess around in it. I’m appalled.”
George Ferguson, also a past RIBA president, said: “Architecture isn’t practised in some Britart external gallery. What we should be teaching students is about people-friendly buildings and it is obtuse to start with extreme discomfort as a way of teaching it. I would understand it in a philosophic course but I do not begin to understand it in a serious architecture course.”
The head of the University’s architecture department, Professor Don Gray, confirmed that one of the 12 students had complained. He said: “The only person who has raised any objection has been given the opportunity to address the project from a different angle. I agree that it is a slightly shocking introduction to a very serious long-term design project. I’m neither justifying it or defending it but that is how we are going about it.”
The two-week project was designed by course tutor Mike Richards, in advance of a project to design a new headquarters for Amnesty International.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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UCLA does an annual survey of incoming American undergrads.
The CIRP Freshman Survey is part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) and is administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. The 2007 freshman norms are based on the responses of 272,036 first-time, full-time students at 356 of the nation’s baccalaureate colleges and universities. The data have been statistically adjusted to reflect the responses of the 1.4 million first-time, full-time students entering four-year colleges and universities as freshmen in 2007.
The 2007 results came out recently and the info on helicopter parenting has me concerned. Either we’ve all been wrong about helicopter parents and their over-involvement in their kids’ education, or the young’uns in question like being helicoptered. Here’s what the survey found out about
Parental Involvement:
While college officials nationwide say they have seen an increase in parents who are heavily involved in the college experiences of their children, a strong majority of today’s college freshmen believe their parents are involved the “right amount,” according to UCLA’s annual survey of the nation’s entering undergraduates.
The report suggests freshmen show a dependency on parents when making college-related decisions.
“When parents intervene in their children’s college life and decision-making, students may not necessarily develop their own problem-solving skills, which may limit developmental gains in their learning experiences,” said John H. Pryor, a co-author of the report and director of CIRP.
A majority of freshmen considered their parents’ participation in their college careers to be the “right amount,” with 84 percent reporting the “right amount” of parental involvement in their decision to go to college, 80.5 percent in their decision to attend the college at which they enrolled and 77.5 percent in dealing with college officials.
Conversely, nearly one in four freshmen (24 percent) report that their parents displayed “too little” involvement in helping them select college courses, and 22.5 percent say their parents were not involved enough in helping choose college activities.
Along with parental involvement, the survey also covered:
“Habits of Mind” for Learning:
The report identifies a troubling pattern in students’ study habits for lifelong learning. While a large majority of freshmen report that they use the Internet on a daily basis to seek information, only a few within the classroom are cultivating the essential “habit of mind” of checking the accuracy and reliability of the information they receive.
“Students’ frequent use of the Internet shows a preference for information that is easily accessible, but that information is not necessarily reliable and accurate,” Hurtado said. “Learning how to evaluate knowledge claims is an essential part of a liberal education, and we expect that colleges will have to be more intentional about integrating information literacy in the education of college students today.”
Impact of Social Networking Sites:
While the popularity of social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace runs high — 86.3 percent of incoming freshmen report that during the last year of high school they spent at least some time on such sites each week — students still spend relatively more time in an average week studying, working and “live” socializing.
Time spent on social networking sites appears, however, to be related not to less “live” socializing but to more time spent in other social activities. Students who used social networking Web sites more often were also more likely to socialize with friends and attend parties. This did not seem to have any significant impact on the number of hours a week students spent studying.
Diversity-Related Issues:
Attitudes about diversity continue to change among incoming first-year students: 36.7 percent of students expressed the personal goal of helping to promote racial understanding, a 2.7 percentage-point increase from 2006 and the highest this figure has been since 1994. Not surprisingly, the figure escalates among students at black colleges and universities, where 64 percent see this as an essential or very important personal goal.
Interest in the global community is advancing as well. When this item was first placed on the questionnaire in 2002, following the attacks of Sept. 11, 43.2 percent of students reported that they had an interest in improving their understanding of other countries and cultures; in 2007 that proportion became a majority, at 52.3 percent.
Freshman support for same-sex marriages has expanded steadily, from 50.9 percent 1997 to 63.5 percent in 2007. The issue, however, reveals a wide gender gap: 55.3 percent of male freshmen report that same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status, compared with 70.3 percent of female students. Gender differences appear on other issues, as well: More than half of all males (53.7 percent) agree with the statement that undocumented immigrants should be denied access to public education, compared with 43.5 percent of all female students; 43.3 percent of males and 39.2 percent of females at black colleges agreed.
Reasons to Attend College:
Academic quality remained the top reason for choosing a college, cited by 63 percent of students — a 5.6 percentage-point jump from 2006 and the highest this figure has been in 35 years. And college affordability is now more than ever a priority for students, with the importance of being awarded financial assistance increasing 5.1 percentage points from 2006 to 39.4 percent in 2007, also the highest this figure has been in 35 years.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
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