Mechanical Bulls and Happy Hours

There's a bar in midtown Manhattan called Johnny Utah's that's known for having a mechanical bull. Some friends of mine chose this particular bar to host a happy hour fundraising event to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. $10 cover to go to the LLS, a few drink specials, and a big group of friends. And a mechanical bull.

I got to the bar around 6:30, had a $4 can of PBR but quickly decided that PBR should never be worth $4. Other than that, though, the whole thing was a lot of fun. Between 40 and 50 people showed up, which means between $400 or $500 went to the LLS.

I saw a lot of familiar faces, mostly people from college who I don't keep in touch with anymore. It was strange to see them all at a "fundraising event" and not in a dingy frat house basement. Whatever friendship we had back then didn't make the transition from beer-soaked kitchen floors to the real world.

And to be honest, I'm not too sad about it. You're friends with people whom you get along with in particular circumstances. When circumstances and/or locations change, you lose some of those friends and you make new ones. The people you keep in touch with despite changing circumstances are your "true" friends. And we all need as many of those as we can get.

Speaking of true friends, my roommate from college, Tom, and his girlfriend Abby (known affectionately in college as Tomabby) are coming down to New York this weekend for a visit. I'm wicked psyched because I haven't seen them in nearly a year.

I'll leave you with this, the aforementioned mechanical bull. Yee hah!

Journalism

Everyone knows that the field of journalism is rapidly changing these days. Everyone also seems to agree that "old" media, like newspapers and print magazines, are going to die and that some as-yet-unknown "new media" platform will emerge triumphant. No one really knows what journalism will look like in the 21st century; just that it will look different than it has in the past.

That being the case, why would a timid 24 year old stuck in an entry-level job consider entering the field when everything is in flux? I don't know. I don't have a vision of what the journalism field should look like; conversely, I don't have a clear sense of how old media might yet be saved.

I'm envious of my peers who truly love their jobs, though if forced I could only name two or three who really do. What about the rest of us?

As a history and english major I've always been fascinated by two things: writing and facts. A straight-up history degree provides plenty of both but I imagine it could easily become too stifling. An english degree...well, there aren't enough facts.

In my fantasy world, journalism provides both writing and facts. In addition, it provides constantly evolving challenges. As a history person, you're dealing with events that have already finished. As a journalist, you're dealing with events that are constantly evolving. In my mind, the latter seems more exciting than the former. Plus, I think switching from journalism to history would be easier than the opposite route. Robert Caro, author of the Lyndon Johnson biographies I like so much, started out as a journalist.

But are all these tiny reasons reason enough for me to really pursue journalism as a career? I have basically no experience. I have few friends in the field. And the more well-established people I've spoken to usually say something like "well...things are different now than they were when I was coming up." Would I be a good journalist?

What next?

Bush's Ignorance

A recently released study found that ideology affected hiring practices at the Justice Department from 2001 -2007. In particular, the study found that a man named Bradley Schlozman, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General, altered the hiring process to weed out candidates with perceived ties to liberal organizations.

I’d be shocked if this came as a big surprise to anyone. The Justice Department’s hiring process caused a scandal a few years ago and led to the resignation of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It was only a matter of time before investigations “proved” what everyone already knew.

If we take away any lessons from the past eight years, it should be that insulating oneself from dissenting opinions is an easy way to screw everything up. Bush, Cheney, and their cronies systematically eliminated dissenting opinions at all levels of government. Their willful ignorance led directly to the disaster in Iraq; to torture; to the failures during Hurricane Katrina, and maybe even to our current economic problems.

The Bush administration is so insulated from dissenting opinion that, even in his last press conference, Bush himself refused to admit that America’s standing in the world had suffered. He’s either lying or completely, blissfully ignorant. I’m not sure which is worse. But I am sure that the way the Bush administration went about governance was disastrous for America and harmful to the world. I hope Obama, and all of our future presidents, can learn from the terrible mistakes.

Japan Labor and US Torture

The Japanese government admitted today that during WWII it used POW’s as forced laborers at a coal mine owned by the current Prime Minister’s family, Taro Aso. According to the report:

“300 British, Dutch and Australian prisoners of war worked at a mine owned by Aso Mining during the last four months of World War II in western Japan.”

During WWII the Japanese frequently abused military prisoners and civilians alike. And there are still controversies relating to Japan’s refusal to acknowledge its abuses in parts of China during the 1930s. It’s taken more than 60 years for Japan’s government to admit the abuse of “only” 300 prisoners for a term of four months.

We Americans of the 21st century were taught that Japan’s atrocities at the beginning of the century were reprehensible and unjustifiable. We are perplexed by Japan’s government’s reluctance to admit their own culpability.

So how and what do we think when we are increasingly certain that the uppermost officials in our own government condoned the use of torture against suspected foreign terrorists (and even against American citizens)? I hope for the sake of our country and the world that our government admits its mistakes soon and takes steps to make amends. I hope that in 60 years we as a country are not still struggling to come to terms with our past mistakes and making half-hearted admissions and apologies.

To do that, let’s take a hard look at indicting those responsible for the implementation of torture in US-run interrogation rooms. I’m thinking of you, Cheney, and you, Rumsfeld.

Professional Sports and Race

Over the years I’ve had several conversations with different people about the prevalence of black athletes in professional sports. When Jeremy Wariner won the gold medal in Athens in the 400m, we were amazed that "a skinny white guy" could outrun everyone else. After all, a white man hadn't won the 400m sprints in something like 40 years.

I came across this interesting article in Slate magazine relating to this topic and thought I’d share. The guy acknowledges that, as far as entire populations go, black people are slightly more likely than whites and even more likely than Asians to have genes that indicate an abundance of the “fast twitch” muscles that are necessary in most sports. But that slight genetic predisposition does not explain the overwhelming presence of black athletes in, for example, the NBA, where around 80% of the athletes are black. There are other factors at work.

What those other factors might be is a bit beyond the scope of that article, but the question intrigues me. Certainly there’s the idea in poor, mostly minority cultures that the only way out is through sports. Not only will sports give you riches, but it will also give you fame. How could that not be appealing to a kid who goes to a school where there aren’t enough books in the classroom?

People will often look at the prevalence of minority players in professional sports as a sign that America is becoming increasingly colorblind. But the owners are white and the coaches are white. In fact, I’d bet that minorities are underrepresented in every service market related to the sports industry: agents; hospitality; marketing; vendors. We trip over ourselves to say how wonderful it is that we, a mostly white society, give young black players a chance at money and fame on the sports field, but at the same time the whole show is run almost exclusively by whites.

If a poor young black child has moderate football skills and moderate intelligence, what are his parents, coaches, and teachers going to tell him? “Work your ass off to be a better football player, son! It’s the only way that you’ll ever make it to college and then to the big time.”

What about a young white kid in the suburbs with moderate football skills and moderate intelligence? I guarantee you his parents, coaches, and teachers will say “You can keep playing football but you’d better hit the books hard, son! It’s the only way you’ll ever make it to college and onto a good career.”

Which position would you rather be in? If the black kid gets hurt or just isn’t good enough, what options does he have left? He’s neglected his education and probably can’t afford to go to college without a football scholarship. But if the white kid turns out to be terrible at football, he still might get into an Ivy League school and at the very least he’s got a solid educational background and can probably afford a decent local college.

In the end, who’s going to work harder to be a professional sports player? The young black kid, who has no other options; or the young white kid, who if he’s not quite good enough at football, can always just go to college anyway.

We’ve got to find a way to make the system work better.

Obama's Economic Appointments

A close friend of mine told me this morning that he “wished he had voted for Hillary.” Why Hillary? “At least we would have known what to expect,” was his answer. He was upset at Obama’s recent appointments to high level economic positions within his administration. "Where is Krugman?" my friend wondered. He believes that Bill Clinton bears a portion of the blame for the current economic disaster. After all, his main economic advisor was Alan Greenspan and if we’re going to blame “the last 30 years” of economic policy for our current predicament, we can’t arbitrarily ignore eight of them.

Because Clinton and his faintly neo-liberal economic team bear at least some blame for our current mess, my friend argued, then the last thing we should be doing is putting the same guys back in power to fix the problem that they had a hand in creating.

That’s a fair point, but only if you believe that economic policymakers are the ones who are going to fix the economy by themselves. As my Dad pointed out, one of the primary responsibilities of political leadership in a crisis is to instill confidence, and to banish fear. It was FDR who said in 1933, after all, that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. Even if you have a sound economic framework, it’s not going to be ok unless people are willing to spend and invest their money. And they’re not going to do that unless they’re confident that they’ll be protected.

So Obama has two priorities for the next several months: first, to ease people’s fear; second, to appoint people who are capable of fixing the structural problems.

The calm and deliberate manner in which he’s made his economic appointments will go far in easing people’s fears. When Joe Shmoe turns on the TV and sees that several Clinton advisors are back in power, he’ll think “well I didn’t do so badly during the 90s. Maybe things aren’t as bleak as I had feared.” The hope is that at some point in the not-so-distant future, Joe Shmoe and the rest of us will start investing and spending again.

That being said, my friend’s concerns about the structural changes that will be made to the economy in the next six months are well-founded. As my friend put it, if your drunk friend just drove your car into a wall, you wouldn’t let him drive it again just because he promised he was sober. You’d get the DD.

So is it a good idea to bring in the people who helped screw things up to help fix everything? Obama seems to think so, and from what I’ve read in interviews and short biographies, these guys seem to recognize that times have changed and that their economic ideologies need tweaking. Will it be enough? Or will we shortly revert to free-market ideologies that help the rich and screw everyone else? Who knows, but I’m 100% certain that we have a better chance with Obama than we ever would have had with McCain. Or Hillary for that matter.

At the very least, I hope I persuaded my friend to give Obama a chance to be inaugurated and make policy before he jumps ship. Was I successful? And are there other already-disillusioned Obamacons out there? We’ll see on both counts.

Out With the Old...

How sad and frightening is it that the leader of the free world, the most powerful man on the face of the earth, is totally ignored by the other Most Powerful People in the World. Bush was so incompetant, so bullish, so wrong about everything, that the elected leaders of the world can't even bring themselves to shake his hand.

It makes me doubly glad that we elected Obama. I'm sure that, at the very least, he'll be shaking everyone's hand.

Obama's Victory

Throughout the prolonged primary/presidential contest, Obama’s mantra was that he was going to “change politics.” That message inspired, so it seemed, thousands of new voters, especially young ones and African American ones. Watching Obama’s huge rallies, I was convinced that the political demographics had really changed. I expected a huge turnout on Nov. 4th, and for Obama to be carried to victory on a swell of young/black/new voters.

As it turns out, that’s not quite what happened. Turnout was significantly higher than in 2004, 64% to 55%, but among the young voter demographic turnout wasn’t markedly different than usual. I’ve read reports that even without the overwhelming youth and black vote, Obama would’ve won. What pushed him over the top was that almost no independents voted for McCain, with most of them saying that antipathy towards Palin was what sealed their decision.

That’s disappointing to me in a couple of ways. There was such enthusiasm among my friends and family that I was sure everyone in all parts of the country was feeling. I was sure that people would be drawn to Obama’s decency, intellect, and character and choose to vote for him as opposed to the old fuddy-duddy.

But what really happened was that people hated Palin so much that they decided to vote for Obama. That brings up the scary thought that, had McCain chosen someone else, he might have won. And that’s what disappoints me. To me, Obama had seemed so fresh, new, and perfect for the situation. I wanted the rest of America to believe that along with me. But it turns out that they didn’t, really.

What Obama really succeeded in doing, I guess, was to energize the Democratic base more than we’d been energized before and making sure key constituencies (blacks especially) got out there and voted. I’m not sure how much expanding he did, especially when you consider that he got less votes in Ohio than Kerry did in 2004, and he only won because 300,000 Republican voters who voted for Bush in 2004 stayed home for McCain in 2008. Was that because they just couldn’t quite bring themselves to vote for Obama, and thought that a non-vote for McCain was the same as a vote for Obama, or was it simply because they were uninspired and unorganized this year? Who knows.

Still, Obama’s victory is important because it shows us Democrats that there are a lot of people out there who think like we do, and that the important thing is organizing and building a community. I just hope that the next 4 years justify our faith in him.

Generation We

England, from the Outside Looking In

I was perusing through old emails yesterday at work and came across several of the group emails I had written back in ‘05/’06 while I was abroad in England. What a carefree life I lived! One email dated in early May, immediately after my return from Greece, noted that my next exam was not until early June so I had three full weeks with nothing to do but “read and think.” Sitting here in my cubicle staring at a computer screen, with no windows within 30 feet, that sounds just about like paradise.

It gets you wondering: will I ever be as happy as I was in England? Maybe it’s just the passage of time and the older version of myself romanticizing a time that must have felt at least a little uncertain. I know I wasn’t content in England. I was restless and worried that I was missing out on something, though I wasn’t sure what it was. I missed my friends and family from home and was upset over a past relationship.

But still, I know that for a great deal of time I was consciously happy, even exuberant. I read a ton, wandered a ton, traveled a ton, partied a ton. Even as I was living it, I knew that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. I’m still young and only have light responsibilities, but my experiences in England seem very remote to my life here in NYC. From here on, things only get more rigid as I add more and more responsibilities.

And even though, given the opportunity, I probably wouldn’t want to have a repeat of junior year in college again, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever feel as happy as I did then, whether what I’m experiencing will ever fit so perfectly with my desires and expectations.

Could it be that the best years of a person’s life are when they’re in college? Doesn’t that seem just a little bit unfair?

Patrick's Memorial

Last weekend I attended Patrick’s memorial service in Bethesda, MD. There was quite a crowd there. Maybe 300-400 people packed into a local high school theater. I spotted quite a few people from Dickinson whom I haven’t seen in years because they had graduated earlier than I did.

I had run track with many of them. At one point, we stood together and talked and laughed about Patrick’s antics at track practice. We all had the same memories and laughed at the same stories. Seeing the others gave me a sense of togetherness, that we were all connected in this particular way, through track and through Patrick. We had come together again, maybe for the last time, but in a way it felt good to know that my memories of Patrick and of track were shared by others.

I guess that’s the silver lining at funerals. That people separated by distance, age, and experience can share a connection that impels them to come together at the end of things.

Another silver lining, for me anyway, was that I was able to pay a visit to my friend Julia, who lives in the DC area and whom I hadn’t seen in long time. We went to dinner at a nice burger joint in DC, sat by a fountain drinking coffee and catching up, and then at night walked the length of the National Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.

From directly beneath the Washington Monument, on one side you can see the WWII and Lincoln Memorials, far off to your left you can see the dome of the Capitol, and across the water you can just glimpse the Jefferson Memorial.

Let me tell you: it was great. Washington is a majestic city, especially when compared with NYC. There are lots of marble and granite building, and the whole place just emanates feelings of power, history, and importance. This, I suppose, is why you find so many power-hungry blood sucking politicians in the area.

It was a day of conflicting feelings. I said goodbye to Patrick, but reaffirmed connections with many other people. As bad as this might be to say, I felt lucky that I hadn’t been extremely close to Pat. I can’t imagine the devastation of his parents, of his brothers, and of his close friends. The whole day made me feel very mortal, but contentedly so.

The End of Things

A college friend of mine died over the weekend after falling off the roof of his apartment building in New York. We heard from his parents that he “slipped while climbing to his favorite spot.” I don’t fault him his affection for the rooftop view. The Manhattan skyline is spectacular at night.

I ran track with Pat for either one or two years, I can’t remember exactly. He was incredibly outgoing and pretty wild. I know that he left school for a couple of semesters to deal with depression, so I’m sure that the wildness helped deflect attention from the sadness.

I’m not used to people from my age group dying. I’ve never been to a friend’s funeral. It feels like there’s a big difference between the death of a young person and the death of an older person. When we young people go to an older relatives’ funeral, it seems to make more sense. A life has ended, but at least a life has been fully lived.

When our friends die, we are not comforted by the ordered nature of everything: the funeral, the burial, the grieving process. Everything is new, nothing is familiar, and the finality of it haunts us. There is so much left undone. You just can’t get your head around it.

The Morality of Power

I remember having an intense debate senior year in high school during English class with a friend of mine, whom I’ll refer to as C, concerning the idea that “might makes right.” I don’t remember in what context the debate took place. We read E.M. Forster’s Passage to India that year, so it’s possible we were debating the merits of imperialism.

C asserted that if a country is powerful enough to dictate its will upon a weaker country, then it is morally acceptable to do so. C also tried to sign up for the Navy on September 12, 2001, and I’m sure had well-worn copies of Nietzsche in his bedroom. Me being who I am, and my high school classmates being who they were, tried to refute C’s position by informing him that morality is separate from strength and power. He didn’t agree with us, and I guess the matter was dropped.

I was reminded of this mini debate while watching the miniseries Generation Kill on HBO the other day. The show centers on a Marine unit participating in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The series is fictional, but it was written by a Rolling Stone journalist who was embedded with this Marine unit back in 2003. One Marine, named Trombley, is particularly anxious to find and fight the Iraqis. Once, after exposing himself to enemy fire, he explains that he “gets more nervous watching a game show on the couch at home” than he does in Iraq, under fire. He says that “deep down,” he wants to know what it’s like to be shot.

The other Marines are incredulous. They’re all eager to fight, but Trombley displays something different. One Marine, talking with a comrade, concludes by saying that “he’s a psycho. But at least he’s our psycho.”

At least he’s our psycho. Might makes right. Aren’t those two statements related? We’d rather have Trombley on our side than on the enemy’s, and we definitely don’t want to be on the wrong side of the Strong vs. Weak equation. The world is a violent place, so even though we liberals might talk about a morality divorced from power, isn’t it still coldly comforting to have the psychos making sure we’re strong?

Omnivore's Dilemma

I read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma last week, and thought I’d write down some of the things that were particularly striking to me:

--At least a quarter of the food we eat is based on corn

--Most of the corn that’s grown in this country isn’t really edible in its “natural” form. It has to be heavily processed and broken down before we’ll eat it

--About half of the average corn farmer’s income comes in the form of government subsidies. This is because so much corn is grown that the price has fallen to a point where it’s impossible for farmers to make a profit. However, instead of restricting the amount of acreage dedicated to corn and thereby increasing its price, the government encourages farmers to devote more and more acreage to corn. The low cost of corn benefits the big food processing companies, who take the cheap corn and turn it into a million different things that we consumers buy.

The farmer is the one who loses in this deal. He loses money on the only product that food processing plants will buy. As a result, the government pays the farmer to produce a crop whose price is so low that without the payment, the farmer would go broke.

And who ends up footing the bill that pays farmers to sell corn cheaply to the food processors? The taxpayers. So even though we get cheap food on the shelves, we pay for it by financing the farmers’ subsidies. The only entity in this equation that benefits is the food processing plant.

--One popular argument that Pollan seeks to undermine is the one that goes something like “well, cheap food is in the best interests of everyone!” His counter is that while the up front cost of processed foods is definitely pretty low, there are tons of hidden costs that we’re paying for even if we don’t realize it.

It costs a TON of energy to produce food these days. For every one calorie of beef that we eat, for example, it takes 8 calories of energy (i.e. oil, water, natural gas). That’s just not a sustainable equation in the long run!

And, of course, the processed food that we’re eating is pretty unhealthy. A lot of those ingredients with weird names on the food labels are refined petroleum. We’re eating refined petroleum! The nation’s obesity epidemic began in the 70s, which is just about the time that the government really started funding big agribusiness and subsidizing farmers.

Food is the only major item that most Americans buy simply based on price. We refuse to pay $3.99 for a dozen eggs when we can get it for 99 cents. There are two reasons, Pollan says, that this is not such a good idea. First: we’ll pay $50,000 for a BMW when we can get a Focus for $17,000. The justification for the expensive car is that it’s a better product, and therefore we’re willing to pay more. But we don’t use that type of logic when buying food. We blindly assume that the 99 cent eggs are the exact same as the $3.99 eggs and therefore why would we want to pay four times as much? That would make sense if the eggs were of the same quality. But in study after study, time after time, Pollan demonstrates that processed food is of a decidedly lower grade than natural food. Shouldn’t that make us think twice about instinctively reaching for the cheaper eggs?

And secondly, the costs of the “cheaper” food are hidden, back end costs. Those costs include the energy requirements necessary to sustain our current food chain; the large costs to the environment; the costs to our own health, not to mention the questionable ethics of mass-produced and slaughtered animals. All of these things aren’t easily quantifiable, so they’re easier to ignore. But don’t they have real value nonetheless?

--Pollan describes certain types of farms that erase all of the back end costs. These types of farms are a combination of old fashioned and cutting edge farming techniques. They’re really cool to read about. The food is more expensive, $3.99 for a dozen eggs instead of $.99, but at least we pay everything up front. The animals are treated ethically, the environment isn’t harmed, and we’re eating better food. And there are lots of them around!

Anyway, the point is, read the book. If it doesn’t totally change your mind about our current processed food chain, it’ll at least make you think differently about what you put in your stomach.

Demolition of the post-college Europe Fantasy

I’ve known Dave since I was 1 or 2, and have always stayed in touch with him. He spent this past year in Germany doing research/taking classes in pursuit of his engineering career. He’s home for 6 weeks, and then heads back to Germany for a 3-year PhD program.

His coming-home party had been scheduled for this past Saturday, but on Wednesday I received a surprise phone call from him saying that he had just flown into JFK, and that he wanted to meet for a drink. We met at a place on the Lower East Side a block away from St. Mark’s. I forget the name, but if you’ve ever gone out on the LES you’ve probably been there: really cheap drinks (drafts for $3-5), an outdoor courtyard decorated with vines and strings of white lights, and two disgusting co-ed bathrooms. You know the place.

Anyway I was surprised at a couple of things: one, that Dave was still lucid after having been awake for nearly 24 hours (and by the time we parted ways that night, he’d been awake for more than 26); and two, that he was so happy to be home.

I remember when I came back to the US after my year-long excursion to the UK that my first feeling was sadness, which was only gradually replaced by a growing sense of a return to normalcy. For Dave, the relief was immediately palpable. Every so often, no matter the topic, he would turn to me, or lean back and look towards the sky, and say how glad he was to be back.

Those feelings stood in contrast to what I remembered of the time he returned from Switzerland a couple of years ago after a 6 month study abroad experience. That experience had been his first European excursion, and he had been bitten by the travel bug. Ever since, he would tell everyone who was willing to listen how much he wanted to travel, and how many countries he wanted to visit.

He had signed up for the German exchange program as a result of the newly acquired travel bug, and many of his friends back home thought that he might settle over there permanently. Even more, he told everyone a couple of months ago that he had decided to pursue his PhD in Germany in a 3 year course, rather than the longer American version.

The Dave that returned from Germany last week, though, was very different than the Dave that had returned from Switzerland two years earlier. He was relieved and happy to be home, as opposed to being immediately eager to go back. I think that his relief can be partially explained by the fact that he had not come back to the US at all since he left last July. He missed Thanksgiving, his birthday, Christmas, and New Years.

But I think the most important difference between post-German Dave and post-Switzerland Dave has more to do with the difference between studying abroad during college and working abroad, post-college. My roommate from college moved to Spain for a year immediately following graduation and his experience there was, at best, mixed. I’ve heard of another college acquaintance who worked in France for the year, and was similarly disappointed.

For me, studying abroad in college was something akin to paradise. Not only do you get all the perks of being an undergraduate student (small workload, huge amounts of free time, immediate access to similarly unburdened peers), you also find yourself in Europe, home of budget airlines and 1000 year old ruins. There is a feeling of incredible freedom as you jet-set across the continent, taking in all the famous sites you’ve read about but never seen. It’s only natural, once that year or semester is over, to want to go back.

Although I initially thought that Dave's decision to go to Germany, and to stay there, was a desire to replicate his study abroad experience, Dave himself told me otherwise. He said his decision to do his PhD in Germany had as much to do with pragmatism as with a love of Europe. It was faster in Germany, easier to get research funds, and he could hone his German language skills. Of course, he said, there are wonderful things about Europe: the travel, the efficiency, the proximity to everywhere else. But, contrary to popular opinion, Europe is a real place and not a fantasy world. There are things you love, and things you hate.

On the one hand, that’s disappointing to a lot of people (including me). Even a year-long jaunt to Europe can’t save me from reality! On the other hand, though, maybe the underlying message isn’t so depressing: in the end, home is always home.

Law vs. History Pros and Cons

Law
Pros:
-Challenging work
-High compensation
-Geographic flexibility (can live basically anywhere)
-Respectable
-High-pressure, high-responsibility
-You can easily see the end results of your work (contracts, deals, laws, etc.)

Cons:
-Ridiculously long hours (at least at first)
-Drudgery
-Lack of creativity
-People don’t like you
-Deal with inept people in positions of power
-Not necessarily “worthwhile”
-Sit in an office your entire career
-High-pressure, high-responsibility

History
Pros:
-More interesting material
-Around young people
-Live on college campus (cultural events, etc.)
-Teaching/influencing people
-More diverse crowd
-Chance for work to evolve over time
-Write books
-Very respectable
-More “worthwhile”
-Summers off
-Low-pressure, moderate-responsibility

Cons:
-Lower pay
-Really hard to get a good job – might have to relocate, might never find one
-Office politics (publish or perish, tenure, etc.)
-Might have to work on subjects/methods that you don’t enjoy
-Writing tons of lesson plans/grading tons of papers
-Harder to see concrete results of your work
-Low-pressure, moderate-responsibility

Thinking about Grad School

I'm still in the same job, as a paralegal with Scholastic, that I started back in December of 2007. The problem with being a paralegal is that there's no clear-cut route to advancement. And there's the rub: I don't like my job very much, nor do any of my friends' jobs seem appealing, nor does any other job that I've come across.

And so the idea of grad school pops back into my mind. Many people have told me that I should take time before I make a decision regarding grad school. Well, it's been one full year so far, and the fact is that by the time I would end up matriculating it will have been two years. Applying to schools takes a lot of time and effort, and I'm afraid that if I don't really start thinking about it now, I'd have to wait at least another two years before getting out of my entry-level rut (the economic downturn isn't helping me here).

I've thought a lot about taking the LSAT's and going to law school, but I realized that at this point I'm not willing to sell myself out yet, if you know what I mean. My dad's a lawyer so I've had long talks with him about it, and it has never really struck my interest the way that normal graduate school has. I know it would be interesting intellectually and very profitable...but I just don't get a good feeling about doing that right now.

I'm also not totally sure about going into academia. Though my undergraduate interests were initially focused on literature, I found that as time went on my focus naturally shifted towards the historical side of things. That means, I think, that if I were to go into graduate school, I'd do it in history. But then I think about other, more classic history types (i.e. the Rachel McCool's of the world, who write 100 page senior theses and go to Cambridge) and I wonder if my interests would even lead to a job. And of course, seeing young professors’ difficulties finding good jobs makes me pause and consider the practicalities of academia.

But even so, being a professor still strikes me in a way that no other job/profession has thus far. I generally feel that I would be undercutting myself if I didn't at least make the attempt to pursue a graduate degree.

Either way, I've contacted the Dickinson career center to help me start the process of researching graduate programs. We'll see what happens.

If we only believe in 'Change'

This is an article that I wrote a couple months ago that was published on http://SpliceToday.com. My friend John Lingan is the managing editor there, so check it out if you've got time. I've posted the link to the article at the end:

Andrew Carnegie had only recently immigrated from Scotland when he wrote that the “‘doing of a thing’ because our grandfathers did it … is not an ‘American Institution.’” No one can doubt that Americans’ love of progress has led to many social achievements, Carnegie’s among them, and that each new generation has added its own technological, medical, and social advances. But as time has passed and the rate of new discoveries has increased exponentially, the divide between generations has also widened proportionally. Because of these changes, living conditions have changed far more dramatically in the past 50 years than they did in the 50 years prior to that.

Our desire to break with the past is reflected in some of the generationally oriented rhetoric of the current presidential campaign, where “old” means “bad” and “new” means “good.” The message of change has been so readily adopted by the country’s youth, myself included, that I’m afraid we might not fully realize the ideological implications of living in a culture in which change always trumps experience.

This year’s presidential candidates are pandering to the MySpace/Facebook generation with a message of change, but we understand better than anyone that societal “progression” is not always an unambiguous triumph. We’ve grown up knowing that the same airplanes used to ferry food into Africa also allow children to leave parents behind as they seek their fortunes elsewhere, or for terrorists to use as weapons of mass destruction. Advances in nuclear physics have allowed us to understand our universe better than ever before, while also injecting our lives with a constant, low-level dose of “what if?” fear.

Another upshot of this widening cultural gap, especially for those of us who have never really known life without the Internet, is that we find it more difficult than ever to connect with older generations—our parents, and to a greater extent, our grandparents. Our elders do not need, nor have they ever needed, the type of constant technological upgrading that we have come to view as necessary. Who hasn’t paused before buying an iPhone, Xbox, or similar device, knowing that a newer model would arrive in months? Our grandparents did not abandon products so easily in favor of the new trendy item. They spent most of their lives without the commodities we young adults have come to view as staples. Their generation is simply not geared, as we are, for instant everything—instant information, communication and gratification.

But there are undoubtedly certain benefits to simplification and slowness. A hike through the woods is not enhanced by speed walking, nor do we make a canoe trip better by putting an engine on the back. And there is something quite different, and ultimately more pleasant, about camping in the quiet woods than driving on the interstate in an RV.

In our mad rush to embrace every new technology, we sometimes forget these non-technological pleasures. And by forgetting much of what previous generations enjoyed, we lose an important link between us and our past. This is consequential: what, after all, happens to a society that is so ready, even eager, to dismiss its past?

All of this illuminates an age-old conundrum, but one that our society faces in a much more direct manner: how to bridge the gap between the old and the young without alienating either. The answer isn’t to cleave ourselves completely from the sentiments and rituals of the past and view all innovation as universally beneficial social progress. And it’s not to bind ourselves so tightly to the past that we are unable to step forward into the future.

We must not let the growing technological gap alienate us from the older generations—discarding technologies is quite different from discarding people. After all, the Information Revolution will only grow faster, and before too long we will find ourselves on the wrong end of the generational divide. We must find ways to link ourselves to what has come before, and use that link to guide us as we move forward.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a member of the Reagan Revolution who yearns for the “good old days.” I think that life is better now for more people than it was 50 years ago, but it is also somewhat more complicated. Many of the rules, traditions and rituals that were accepted in the mid-20th century—even in to the 1980s—don’t necessarily apply today. For that reason, it is imperative that we keep moving forward, but not so quickly as to disregard recent history.

Recognizing that stability is an attribute that all societies should share, we must be careful in embracing a political message of Change, Above All Else. Perhaps a more appropriate message, especially in the current political and social climate, would be Change, Based on Experience.

http://splicetoday.com/politics/change-the-only-thing-we-believe-in

21st century president

Perhaps the most indelible impression one is left with after reading Edmund Morris’s two-volume (so far) biography of Teddy Roosevelt is that in many respects TR was the first “20th Century President.” This is the case not simply because he became President in 1901, succeeding the assassinated McKinley, but because he was the first president to embody 20th century American values.

Born into an aristocratic class that valued breeding and propriety above nearly everything else, Teddy was often un-proper. He was fond of taking nude swims in the East River during his tenure as President, and he once killed a cougar with a hunting knife. As TR grew in political prominence, many of his upper-class peers as well as many members of his own family despised him. As a matter of principle, they believed politics was an undignified position for a well-born man. They could not believe it when, over and over again, Teddy fought against corrupt political machines and greedy businessmen, using the government as his weapon.

In addition to his populist tendencies, he was the first president who believed that it was important to translate America’s economic dynamism into an international presence; he was the first to effectively use the press to further his agenda; he played peacemaker between warring nations, winning himself a Nobel Prize. He was an aristocrat-turned-cowboy-turned-populist. Above all else, Teddy was a man of action, and in the following 100 years America has often followed that pattern. We are, for better and for worse, people of action.

Still, I wonder how much of an influence TR had in shaping America during the early parts of the 20th century. He certainly shaped the political scene: he was president until 1908; his hand-picked successor, William Taft, was president until 1912; and TR, feeling betrayed by Taft and running against him in 1912, split the Republican vote and led directly to the election of Woodrow Wilson.

But how much can one man and his political vision shape the course of an entire country? Perhaps Roosevelt’s most important attribute was his ability to personify the already-changing perception Americans had towards their country. He was the America that people wanted to become.

All of this makes me wonder who will be the first officially “21st century president.” Who is the person that Americans see ourselves becoming? It certainly isn’t George W., and I can’t imagine that McCain fits the bill, either. He’s a relic of the 20th century. I wonder if Obama’s popular appeal is based on people’s hopes that we as a country can become more like him – strong in our diversity.

Certainly one era is ending, but it remains to be seen what shape the new era will take.