Blogging to My PhD: Information Overload or Peak of Intellectual Power?

I've got to be honest with you. Cicero's On Invention was a rough one for me to get through. I'm a big picture, sweeping ideas, get caught up in the whirlwind kind of thinker, and the endless dissecting, listing, and re-listing of each subsequent and carefully categorized "part" of rhetoric made my mind go a little numb.

There was, though, a very interesting line at the beginning of Book 2. Here, he is explaining his process for creating a book on rhetoric. He explains that the ideas are not his own. Instead, he "excerpted what seemed the most suitable precepts from each, and so culled the flower of many minds." He goes on to explain that more people should follow in his footsteps, for "if men would choose the most appropriate contributions from many sources rather than devote themselves unreservedly to one leader only, they would offed less by arrogance, they would not be so obstinate in wrong courses, and would suffer somewhat less from ignorance." (Ahem. Fox News viewers, I think he's talking to you.)

Finally, he gets to the part that I find most interesting. Here he explains that he is at a peak position because he has "a larger number of models to choose from" than previous writers and was therefore "able to set out before [him] the store of wisdom of all who had written from the very beginning of instruction in rhetoric down to present time, and choose whatever was acceptable."

Dear Lord, what would he say if he saw Tumblr? Or Google Books? Or even Amazon reviews?

I probably have more text to sift through to make an informed movie purchase than Cicero had when he set about to look at what he considered "the store of wisdom of all who had written from the very beginning of instruction in rhetoric down to present time." After all, there are nearly 5000 reviews of Mean Girls on Amazon, and that doesn't even touch on its Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB pages. 

Cicero's claim also touches upon another problem that--even in today's age of seeming information egalitarianism--still exists. What we think is the "wisdom of all" is really only the wisdom of those who have been privileged enough to make it through the crowd. 

It does not seem, for instance, that Cicero's understanding of "all" rhetorical theory has any consideration for ancient Chinese rhetorical practices or the rich African rhetorical traditions in existence during his time. 

See, in Cicero's time there was no Google or Facebook to bring him information he may or may not actually need.

Totally. Necessary. 

Even still, he was able to ignore huge swaths of relevant information while doing what he thought was a comprehensive examination of his subject matter. 

Here's the thing. There is no comprehensive examination of his (or pretty much any other) subject matter. We will constantly be blinded by the privileges that society has bestowed upon certain segments of the population, our own biases in which information we choose to consume, and--perhaps most dauntingly of all--the limited capacities of our own abilities in the face or mortality. 

In theory, we have more information available to us than any other human being has ever had at any point in history. There are millions of pieces of discrete information being created and freely shared around the entire globe on a continuous basis. You could start reading right now and never stop (which, you know, is impossible because you have to sleep and eat and whatnot) and keep going until you die and barely make a dent in the "comprehensive" study of a topic. 

Sure, maybe you study something really rare like, I don't know, the impact of mosquito bites on calico cats named Sven, and maybe you really can read all there is to read on that subject, but you still need to read all there is to read about mosquitos, and bites, and cats, and the calico genes, and the name Sven. No one escapes this trap. 

That. . . that can be overwhelming. It can be particularly overwhelming to someone who read this very book in preparation for her comprehensive PhD exams. 

So I turned to an old (haha, cause in today's world, a year-old article is "old") NPR article about the impossibility of catching up on anything. You should go read it all; it is beautiful. 

After establishing in no uncertain terms that taking in everything worth taking in is an impossibility, author Linda Holmes leaves us with this comforting thought:

If "well-read" means "not missing anything," then nobody has a chance. If "well-read" means "making a genuine effort to explore thoughtfully," then yes, we can all be well-read. But what we've seen is always going to be a very small cup dipped out of a very big ocean, and turning your back on the ocean to stare into the cup can't change that.

So, for a moment, I'm going to stare into my cup with my back to the ocean. But only for a moment. I'll be back, back to take in the immenseness of what I cannot know, back to accept what I can, back to swim. 

Photo: The Shopping Sherpa

Blogging to My PhD: Aristotle and Multiple Intelligences

I know I already wrote something about Aristotle's Politics, but there was one line that just kept sticking with me that I thought deserved its own post. It's this:

"For one ought not to be doing hard work with one's thinking and with the body at the same time, since each of the two kinds of exertion has an opposite effect by its nature; exertion of the body is an impediment to thinking, and exertion of thinking to the body." 

Let me be clear, I'm an Aristotle fan. I think his work is incredibly forward-thinking and universally applicable, and I gain a lot of insight from it. But this? I call B.S.

Let's unpack it a little. First of all, from just that passage, it might seem like Aristotle is simply saying that you shouldn't try to, say, run a marathon while simultaneously reading your calculus book, but this chapter is about the nature of education in general, and the context surrounding this passage make it clear that he doesn't just mean you shouldn't work on both at the same time in a day, but that you shouldn't work on both at the same time in your life.

There's some measure of sense to this, especially since Aristotle is talking about the type of training and diet regimen needed to maintain professional athletics, but I think that claiming physical exertion impedes mental exertion (and vice versa) is wholly untrue for some people, especially people who score high on Howard Gardner's kinesthetic field in the Multiple Intelligences inventory. 

Gardner posited that there was more than one way to be "intelligent," and that traditional tests had been favoring just a couple of them and ignoring the rest. 

His theory has been used by educators to understand that there are multiple ways of learning and that our classrooms need to be spaces that allow for flexibility in how students take in and demonstrate knowledge. (You can take a quick online learning style inventory to get a sense of how you take in information). 

One of these styles is kinesthetic, which shows up in people who have a natural inclination toward athletic ability, but it can also help students who have those inclinations to learn more traditional classroom material as well. Some suggestions for kinesthetic learners are to act out or role play things they need to memorize, to write on big notecards that can be moved around the floor, and to use field trips as learning activities.

In my experience as a writing instructor, telling a kinesthetic learner to take a walk, run, or lift some weights while brainstorming can be a great way to get them to overcome a mental block. 

On a more personal note, I've started training for a 10k while I'm studying for my PhD exam specifically because I feel like I need some balance between my mental exercise and my physical. Going for a run makes me more focused, alert, and centered. A few days (or, let's be honest, weeks) without much physical activity really starts to take a toll on my mental abilities. I start to get grumpy and drowsy. I lose focus more easily. I read the same page over and over again. I feel sluggish. 

Aristotle gets a lot of things right, but I think he got this one wrong. 

What do you think? Are mental work and physical work impediments to each other or complements? What works best for you?

Photo: Jasmine Kaloudis

Feminist Mothering Magazine

As much as I love online texts (and I do!), I still buy and love magazines. That's why I was excited to see this Kickstarter for relaunching Hip Mama. If you want to pre-subscribe, it's only $20.

We Are Educators, Not Prognosticators

If you went by the numbers, you wouldn't bet on me.

I was a child from a home with abuse, divorce, and poverty. Neither of my parents had gone to college. By my eighth grade year, I was drinking alcohol as a coping mechanism for depression. I wore baggy jeans and black t-shirts and my long, stringy hair was in a constant ponytail. I was painfully shy and withdrawn and scared. If you had asked around about me, most of the people in town probably would have told you I was on drugs (I wasn't, but the red flags were there, so you'd probably have believed them). I was getting good grades, but I was getting good grades at a rural public school; it wasn't the kind of situation that would have done enough to outweigh all of the signs that I was headed to societally-defined "failure."

If someone had asked you to pick out the child who was going to go far in the educational system, you wouldn't have bet on me.

And you would have been wrong.

Some time in my junior year I snapped out of it and realized that if I didn't do something different, I was going to be stuck in an endless loop. I stopped drinking, started smiling, and worked on my shyness. I ended up valedictorian of my high school class and went to undergrad with a full ride. By then, you might have started betting on me, but I was still going to a practical state school; there would be no Ivy League for me. Some people would still dismiss my chances.

I graduated with a high GPA and a double major. Still, people scoffed when I told them I was going to graduate school. They said that people like me don't get doctorates. They told me that to my face, so I can only imagine what some people were saying behind my back.

I got my Master's four years ago, and I've been working on my PhD while holding down a full-time job ever since. I don't want to sound too egotistical, but I know that I am nothing if not damned persistent, so--you're a little late to the game--but it might be time to start betting on me.

I tell you this not to brag about what I've done. I honestly don't think it's anything that remarkable. I think that it is the product of dedication, hard work, and having a network of people who believe in and support me.

I believe that there are a lot of people who can make it to where I am and beyond, and I know that there are plenty of them who don't get the chance.

I snapped out of a funk my junior year in high school, but it could have taken me longer. I could have stayed on that path until I was 20, or 30, or 40, or 60. It could have taken some time to realize that I was wasting the chance to do something that I loved and to generate my own happiness.

If it had, I wouldn't have gotten that full ride to school. Maybe my grades in high school would have slipped. Maybe I would have needed a little more help from the beginning.

It's precisely that kind of help that some people don't want to give. Educational pundit Michael Petrilli thinks that students who need developmental coursework shouldn't be eligible for Pell Grants. He said this in an article that enrages me a little more every time I read it:

Yes, there are obvious downsides. Most significant, many students wouldn’t be able to afford remedial education and thus would never go to college in the first place. Millions of potential Pell recipients — many of them minorities — might be discouraged from even entering the higher-education pipeline. Such an outcome seems unfair and cuts against the American tradition of open access, as well as second and third chances.

Then again, it’s not so certain that these individuals are better off trying college in the first place. Most don’t make it to graduation.

He's talking about  my students. I teach "remedial" (I prefer "developmental") English classes at a community college. He seems to have put my students into a neat, pre-packaged box of people who would be better off "in job-training programs that don’t require college-level work."

The point of a Pell Grant is not to reward people for figuring it all out early enough. We are educators, not prognosticators. We cannot tell the future, and we should not be pre-determining who looks successful enough for a chance and who doesn't.

Petrilli talks about my students as if they are cookie-cutter-crafted individuals who are interchangeable. Imagine the 40-year-old man who has suffered with undiagnosed dyslexia, the 50-year-old mother of four who dropped out of high school when she became pregnant and is going back to school, the 23-year-old who took a few years off to work to pay her family's bills and now needs to brush up on the skills she's forgotten since high school, and the 45-year-old who is returning to school after serving 10 years in prison for drug dealing who hadn't been in school since he was 13.

Petrilli looks at all of them and sees one thing: wasted money.

I look at all of them and see something else: myself.

It's true that none of our paths are identical, but that's the point. We all walk paths with our own difficulties, our own obstacles. Who am I to tell someone else that they missed the cutoff date for getting it straightened out? Who am I to say that if you don't have it all worked out by 16, then you might as well hang it up for good?

Petrilli's view is cruel and dangerous. It tells us that the only people worth investing in are the ones who look like sure bets. Here's the thing though, if you think about your own path long enough and hard enough, you'll probably be able to find a time when you didn't look like a sure bet, either. Maybe that time is right now. Petrilli wants to judge your future on your past.

I understand that education costs are soaring and that Pell Grants can't be sustained the way they were in the past. I understand that success rates for students who start in developmental classes need to be much, much higher. I understand the need for tough conversations about how money gets spent and students get taught.

What I don't understand is using this particularly problematic educational landscape as an excuse to make elitist calls for culling the "unsuccessful" from the playing field. Determining people's chances at success based on a snapshot of their lives rather than their own willingness to try does not make fewer problems, it makes more.

You can bet on that.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/12/3389442_p2/pell-grants-shouldnt-pay-for-remedial.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/12/3389442/pell-grants-shouldnt-pay-for-remedial.html#storylink=cpy

Photo: benjamin.lim

The Good, the Bad, and the Curious (Links for the Week)

Here's what I've been reading that's made me happy (The Good), mad/sad (The Bad), and thoughtful (The Curious).

The Good

Pretty All True always manages to make me laugh out loud. This exchange between sisters is great.

I learned that some fonts (like Arial, Trebuchet, and Verdana) are easier for people with dyslexia to read than others.

It's totally possible to have it all and have it all at once! Just follow the simple steps outlined in this article like "be rich," don't take anytime off after having children, and allocate 30 minutes of family time a day and be strict with the schedule. 

This Argentinian resort town was under water for 25 years. These photos show what it looks like now that the water has receded. 

The Bad

There's a lot of poop in pools. 

Sexual assault in the military is very clearly a huge problem. What do we do?

The Curious

This article on xoJane about the importance for women to make substantial, in-person, female friends is great:

For all my lofty ideals, I was still trapped in a decidedly female body, and none of my male friends were ever going to truly understand my fears about pregnancy, my breast cancer scare, my experiences with sexual assault, my struggle to navigate what the word “wife” meant to me -- all that baggage and more.

It's a project that will likely not happen (at least not while these people are alive to participate), but I find it fascinating that nearly 80,000 people have volunteered to go live on Mars and never return.

Annie from PhD in Parenting takes on Similac's new "empowerment" message and asks if we really need corporations to empower us (which is a particularly timely question as Dove's campaign continues to gain popularity).

All of this:

From the first stages of my pregnancy I was alarmed by feelings of dependency on my partner that I had never experienced before. As my pregnancy progressed, my sense of physical vulnerability increased and my capacity to maintain my equality through independence was repeatedly challenged. Finally, when my daughter was born, her utter vulnerability shook me to the core and I realised that I could no longer operate in the world as a wholly autonomous unit. I was encumbered by this incredibly dependent little person who needed me for her very survival. My understanding of myself and of what I needed from the world shifted completely, as did my understanding of the feminist project. I could no longer relate to the ambivalence of liberal feminism to the needs, indeed rights, of dependent women (and children).

 Photo: J. Gabas Esteban 

Blogging to My PhD: Aristotle's Politics

I don’t believe in race. I believe there are people who will shoot me or hang me or cheat me and try to stop me because they do believe in race, because of my brown skin, curly hair, wide nose and slave ancestors. But that’s just the way it is. -Percival Everett Erasure

With this line, Everett gets to the heart of the problem when discussing inequality. I cannot even count the number of times I've seen people say in an argument that I or someone else who shares my perspective is being "racist" for seeing race. The line of reasoning goes "it's people like you talking about race all the time that make it exist. If you'd just shut up, everything would be fine."

A similar thing happens when talking about sexism. If you'd just stop seeing it, they tell me, it wouldn't be there anymore.

Poof. Like magic. 

Here's the thing. Race doesn't exist. At least, it doesn't exist in any scientific way. There are more variances between two people of the same race than there often are between two people of different races, and even though the concept of race exists in cultures all over the world, the way that they apply it is very, very different. (Consider, for example, how relatives could be classified as different "races" during the Rwandan genocide or how brother and sister can be different "races" in Brazil based on skin tone.) Still, as the Everett quote above captures, knowing that race does not have any logical or biological basis, that it is entirely a social construct, makes very little difference when you are faced with someone who is using that social construct against you. 

Aristotle makes a similar point in Politics. There is a confusing passage about whether men and women are equal as he is discussing the optimal way to share resources and sort out who gets to rule in a political city. He makes some similar comments about slaves and their masters. 

It seems clear that Aristotle is struggling with the tension between believing that people are inherently equal and noting that those equalities do not always play out in our lived experiences. 

He has this to say about slaves and masters: "But to others it seems contrary to nature to be a master of slaves (since it is by convention that the one is a slave and the other free, while they are no different by nature), and that it is consequently not just either, since it is by force" (Book I: 3). 

He makes some further distinctions about the power dynamics at play in some different relationships. He sees a free master's power over his slave, a man's power over his wife, and a parent's power of his child as having some similar qualities, but that they are different in key ways:

"while the parts of the soul are present in them all, they are present in differing ways. For the slave wholly lacks the deliberative capacity, while the female has it, but without authority, the child has it, but incomplete" (Book I: 13). 

What does it mean for a woman to be "without authority"? 

It seems to me that it goes back to those "conventions" Aristotle spoke of earlier when discussing forced (and thus unjust) power dynamics. Authority is not a wholly internal act. While authority often requires a certain level of confidence, expertise, and skill on the part of the person commanding it, those qualities alone do not guarantee that a person will actually get it. The problem with authority is that it is beyond any individual's control, and is essentially a status granted by the members of the community to which that person belongs. 

It can be terrifying to be at the whim of a community who has the power to determine your ability to speak or rule. Those "conventions" may not be based in anything real. Race does not exist. The stated differences between the men and women used to construct gender roles are largely arbitrary and remain only because they are reinforced through social pressure and stereotype. 

And yet . . . 

Just because they are not real, just because they do not have a basis in anything logical, just because they are constructed by something like a mass delusion: none of that breaks them of their power when they are being wielded over an individual attempting to claim authority. 

So when someone tells says you are "racist" for seeing race or "sexist" for seeing sexism, what s/he is really saying is that you are calling attention to the constructed nature of the systems with which authority is maintained and controlled. You are pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes, and you will be silenced if at all possible lest you rock the boat a smidge too far and it all comes crashing down. 

So rock away. 

Photo: Mariana Wagner, anyjazz65

Blogging to My PhD: For Real This Time

Remember how I said I was going to blog about each of the texts on my exam list as I prepared for my comprehensive PhD exam? Then do you remember how I did it for about two weeks and stopped?

Yeah. Things got a little hectic. Then things got a lot hectic. I realized I was not going to be able to take exams this summer like I had hoped, so now I am taking them at the end of Christmas break. That makes it sound like I have a lot of time, but there are about 80 texts on my list, and in the fall I will be teaching four classes (on top of, you know, raising a family and whatnot). That means that this summer has to be reading-intensive.

So, I'm renewing my efforts, and I'm writing this to explain all of the random posts about ancient rhetoric (which will soon be followed by random posts about less-ancient rhetoric. Promise.)

Here're some of my books. Aren't they beautiful!?

So, if you've been through/are currently going through studying for comprehensive exams, what are your tips?