There are days when I get depressed.

I've never been a big social activist. To be fully honest, I spent the first eighteen years of my life oblivious to much around me. Years of childhood hazing combined with an ultimate escape land provided by the millions of books made sure that I spent my days unaware of my surroundings. I don't mean to imply that I didn't care. As a kid, I tutored other, less fortunate, kids in math, and later on, English. But, even as a teenager, I never got involved in the political or social conversations that many people around me debated over. Just like I didn't feel at ease with the lipstick-brand-name-jeans-and-ski-in-Switzerland crowd, I didn't find a home with the people who wanted to save the world. Or at least talk about saving the world.

Back then I knew too little to be disappointed.

During college, I started getting a little more involved with those around me. For the first time in my life, I felt like my surroundings invigorated me. I wanted to suck it all up. After drenching myself in it, I wanted to get others hooked on as well. Thus, I became an Orientation Counselor. I joined the Student Dormitory Counsel and organized part of the on-campus carnival entertainment. I signed up to be a Pre-college counselor. And later, a Resident Assistant. As part of those jobs, I got more involved in community service. I did Habitat for Humanity a few times. I went to a food bank. I became a sexual assault counselor. I moved up to organize school-wide programs like sex week, where we tried to address important issues and raise sexual awareness. I worked for the school newspaper. I taught computer classes. I served on the residence life judicial board. While I wasn't very involved in the city or outside community, I was mad about my school. I knew a lot about it and worked hard to make parts of it better.

At that point I was too intoxicated with the possibilities to get distraught.

Upon graduation, I moved to New York City. I signed on with an investment bank and got to work. In my first year, I became involved with two volunteer programs: Everybody Wins, whose goal was to instill the love of reading in elementary school children and Young Women's Leadership Club, whose goal was to teach high school girls the skills necessary to get accepted to college or to find a job. The work took about six to eight hours a month away from my jam-packed schedule. I became a member of the New York Public Library so I could checkout children's books that my third grader and I read during our lunch hours. My first year, I convinced a bunch of my friends to volunteer for New York Cares Day. By then I had also joined Jake in returning back to City Year for the Serve-a-thon in Boston, each year. My firm started a community service program where they gave each employee a day off, paid, to do community service. I went back to Habitat. I did Junior Achievement. I volunteered at pet shelter dog shows. I still didn't think I was affecting my environment as much as I could have, but I felt good about giving some of the little time that I had.

I think the sorrow might have started when I saw how my third grader couldn't read.

A year and a half ago, I decided I wanted to reduce my hours considerably so I could spend some time volunteering at the New York Society for the Deaf. I'd been taking classes at NYSD and wanted an excuse to improve my sign language. I asked around and found out that almost all the opportunities were during the day, so after a lot of searching, I changed my work to a 3-days-a-week arrangement and started spending one of my other days at NYSD. I didn't care about what I did, I just wanted to be of help. A few months after that, I started spending part of my other day at Housing Works used bookstore, where I help run the register and do other necessary jobs. I'd say I'm still not involved with my environment as much as I want to be. My life is still pretty much the same, except for the wonderful people who've added color and insight into it. The people I've met in my multiple volunteer opportunities.

They're what make me worry.

A few months ago, I decided the few days weren't enough. I wanted to make more of an impact. I wanted to educate myself. I wanted to learn about what makes parts of our society fail. I wanted to make it a better place. I talked to a lot of people. Many told me I was naive. A whole bunch told me that I could do that with my money. Others told me it was a fruitless endeavor. A few encouraged me to give it a try. I looked around a lot and finally settled on Teach For America. I was inspired by what they stood for and figured I'd be proud to be a member of an organization with its goals. I applied. I got accepted. If all goes well, I will be an elementary school teacher by this September.

Now, I'm reading a lot about education and the plethora of the issues faced by educators today. I'm reading about racial bias and gender bias. I'm reading about poverty and parts of United States that would, should, make some people ashamed to call themselves American. I'm seeing that ignorance is bliss for many people. I'm finding out that a lot of people whine about how bad things are but don't do much about it. I'm realizing that there's a lot of work to be done. I'm horrified by the way many children are treated.

And I get depressed.

I see why people tell me I can't change the world. I know many have tried and failed. I know that it feels like an insurmountable undertaking. I get annoyed at the disorganization of some non-profits until I try to remind myself that most of these people are working practically for free in a job that's often under-appreciated and definitely under-employed. Tons of people have told me that it's not my job to fix the world.

But it is.

I live in this society. I reap the benefits of many people's hard work. I take for granted that someone grows the food I eat, that someone collects the garbage I accumulate, someone drives the subway I ride to work. I make money and live in a well-insulated house with doormen and elevators. I'm surrounded by people who make enough money to afford big houses and expensive vacations. It's easy to lose perspective in my environment. And that's exactly what many people do. Yet, if any part of the society decided not to execute its function, my world could crumble. It's my job to make sure that hardworking people get rewarded. It's my job to make sure that we can offer excellent education to everyone so our society as a whole can improve.

Most importantly, I plan to bring children into this society. It's my job to make sure that my kids can grow up in the best society I can provide. I don't want my children to have to worry about racial or gender discrimination. I want high quality education not to be an option that only the rich can exercise but a necessity and a guarantee to all children. I want my kids to be proud to be a part of their society. I want them to grow up secure of their abilities and opportunities. And I don't want all that to be tied to my income.

It's just as much my job to make this world a better place as it is yours. The more I read, the more I see, the more I hear, the more depressed I get. The sadder I get, the angrier I get. The angrier I get, the more determined I get.

My eyes might have been closed before, but they're wide open now. And it's never too late.

Previously? Dumb For Life.

"Intelligence is genetic."

I have had conversations on the nature of intelligence with several people in the last few months. The talks start softly, rise to animated levels and end without a climax. If I've concluded anything it's that people don't know enough to argue one way or another on the subject matter.

The first problem we stumbled upon was the definition of intelligence. What does it mean to be intelligent? Does it mean you can solve mathematical problems easily? Or that you pick up new information quickly? Are you intelligent if you have several college degrees? Or is it related to street-smarts? What about an amazing painter, is he intelligent?

I find intelligence to be extremely difficult to define. Everyone seems to have his or her own mis-definition, misconception, or bias. But no one can give me an all-encompassing definition. And don't even get me started on those so-called intelligence quotient tests.

Even though one cannot talk about how a characteristic is obtained when one cannot even define the attributes of that characteristic, we can move to the next issue of how one becomes intelligent. The idea that intelligence is inherited is too limited for me.

If intelligence is inherited, then why do we bother to push the limits? Why do we go to school and work so hard? It's all a useless endeavor to grow gray cells.

If it's something passed down from your parents, how come the world has intelligent and stupid people? Wouldn't the stupid people be weeded out by now?

The idea that you're locked into an intelligence level at birth is so depressing to me. That means, no matter how hard you try and how much you work, you can never improve your level of intelligence. Doesn't the idea make you want to cry too?

I like to believe that intelligence is a multi-threaded personality trait. It's like an octopus with lots of tentacles, each defining a different aspect of intelligence. I also like to think that we're each born with a capacity of unlimited intelligence, whatever that means, and all we have to do is water the seeds given to us.

I understand that different people have knacks for different things inherently, though even that can possibly be attributed to nurture but that's a side issue. Even if one person is quicker with addition than another, it doesn't mean that person was born more intelligent.

Maybe I'm too optimistic or naive, but I'm going to keep believing that everyone is capable of being extremely intelligent until someone can prove me otherwise. In the meantime I'm hitting the books on this subject matter. Howard Gardner seems to have written a lot on the issue. Do you know of anyone else?

Previously? Special Moments.

"We sometimes ask our students at The American University to list twenty famous women from American history. There are only a few restrictions. They cannot include figures from sports or entertainment. Presidents' wives are not allowed unless they are clearly famous in their own right. Most students cannot do it. The seeds of ignorance were sown in their earliest years of schooling." - Failing at Fairness by Myra & David Sadker

My friend Ashlie used to refuse to read novels written by men. She told me that her high school and college education was male-dominated and she had decided that she needed to compensate by reading many of the women authors that get neglected within our schools.

I can't say she doesn't have a point.

Today, I can name many fantastic authors, but if I look back upon my formal education, with the possible exception of the Bronte sisters and Jane Austin, I don't believe we studied any women writers. Female scientists? Marie Curie. That's the extent of the list I was ever taught. Can't even think of one female mathematician or physician. Historical figures? Short of presidents' wives, I got none. Well, there's Anne Frank, but I'm not sure what category she falls under.

Quite pathetic if you ask me.

I was never explicitly told that just because I am female, I'm not supposed to be good at a certain field. In elementary school, I rocked in math and the teacher never made me feel like that was a bad thing. For middle and high school, I attended an all-girls school so obviously there was no male-female competition there. But I have consistently been interested in the male-dominated fields and I have never felt intimidated by the men around me. So I always thought that maybe I grew up without gender discrimination.

The fact is, gender discrimination is there all the time. I didn't avoid it. Most people aren't even aware that they are biased. I, for the most part, haven't internalized it. ( Though, I did internalize a whole lot of other things.) Just because it didn't destroy my life, or at least not in the ways I'm aware of, doesn't mean the bias isn't out there. Doesn't mean it isn't important. And it surely doesn't mean that it doesn't affect many others.

Can you name twenty women from American history?

Previously? Good Mate.

I'm in the process of watching "Sound and Fury." If you are, or ever have been interested in the deaf culture, I would highly recommend seeing this movie.

It tells the story of two families, one hearing, one deaf, both of which have deaf children. The hearing family decides to get a cochlear implant for their son. And the daughter of the deaf family says she wants an implant as well. She says she wants to hear the sound of babies crying, of cars crashing, talk on the phone, hear alarms.

The little girl's parents do a lot of research, speaking with deaf and hearing families whose children have gotten cochlear implants. The father, of the girl, is against getting the implant cause he's worried that the girl will lose her deaf identity and not be able to grow up with the deaf culture. The mother decides to extend her research and goes to the medical labs to find out if she, for herself, could get the implant. The representative at the lab explains to her that it's much easier if the deaf individual is younger, so her daughter, at five, could get the implant without much adjustment, but for the mother it would be a major life change and it's likely that the mom would keep signing.

The film shows the devastated deaf grandparents of the boy whose parents decide to get the cochlear implant and the crying grandmother whose deaf son decides not to get the implant for his daughter. I watched the movie, amazed at how similar it was to other common arguments I grew up with. A Jewish family whose daughter wants to marry a non-Jew, interracial couplings, a parent who moves into another country but wants to raise her children immersed in the culture she grew up with. At first look, there appears to be little difference between this argument and one of a French mother trying to send her kids to French-only schools and surrounding them with other French speaking children.

But then deafness is a disability.

Or so people say. And such, the issue becomes one of "if you could convert your child from a disabled one to a 'normal' one, wouldn't you choose to?"

The movie addressed two main issues. One was specific to this girl whose parents were convinced that allowing her to have a cochlear implant would strip all of her deaf culture away. The father, keenly, observes that a girl who grows up with an implant and deaf parents, cannot speak English properly whereas a girl with hearing parents knows nothing about sign language or deafness. Such, they worry that the implant would mean she would end up belonging in neither the deaf nor the speaking world.

On a bigger scale, deaf people are concerned that if cochlear implants take over, every parent will implant one in their deaf baby and deaf culture will eventually disappear. Like Spanish people would cry at the loss of their culture, deaf people were crying at the potential death of theirs.

As a speaking person, it's easy to judge. It's easy to say that deafness is a disability and that if the girl could possibly hear, the parents owe it to the girl to explore that option. It's easy to assume that since we can hear, hearing people must have a better life, more options. After all, I can sign and I can hear, so don't I have the best of both worlds?

And yet, the movie made me think that maybe it's not better. Maybe deafness is a culture just like ethnicity and religion. Maybe this girl will feel a stronger sense of belonging if she grows up deaf in the deaf community of her parents. Maybe much of life is accepting who you are and not forcing to fit in with the norm, assuming we even know what the norm is.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Previously? A Fickle Relationship .

Before you can learn, you have to admit that you don't know.

We live in a society where there are rules about what one is supposed to know by a certain age. Or in a certain environment. If you're an educated individual, there are sets of information you'd better possess. What if you don't know these crucial bits of data? Shame on you.

That's what it's all about: shame.

We, as a society, manage to shame people into hiding their lack of knowledge. If two people are in conversation and one is dropping names of political figures that the other hasn't heard of, would the other person ask the speaker to clarify?

How often have we heard: "You know what that is, right?"

How often have we nodded along when we had no idea but felt too embarrassed to admit it.

The fact is it's not the knowledgeable person's fault, either. How's she or he to know that you don't know? If you act like you know and you act well, the other person will never feel the need to explain and they shouldn't have to.

What we need to do is to remove the pressure of having to know. We need to teach that lack of knowledge is not a bad thing. Lack of willingness to learn, maybe. But not lack of knowledge.

I am often not afraid to admit what I don't know. There are a million things I don't know and I am really dying to learn. If I don't tell people that I don't know, they will never take the time to explain it to me and I will never learn. The fear of not getting the chance to learn is what motivates me to admit my lack of knowledge. Somehow I lack the necessary shame.

I don't know why, but I certainly wish everyone did.

When we're young, we're not expected to know so it's easy to ask. Sometimes people explain even before we ask. But somewhere along the line, we reach a point where expectations rise and we stop asking. Instead we learn to play along. To act like we know.

Which is why we will never actually know.

Previously? Color.

One of the fundamental creeds of writing is telling versus showing.

Imagine you're reading a novel and the writer has the following line:

"She must be out of her mind," said Jennifer. She was angry.

What do you know about the character? Well you take the author's that Jennifer's angry. You don't really have proof, with the possible exception of your added voice to the words. If you read it in an angry manner, you might feel okay about taking the author's word for jennifer's state of mind. But if you read it ironically, you might be surprised when you hit upon the word "angry". Depending on the sentence, you might even have to go back an reread.

Now take this sentence:

Jennifer stormed into the room. "She must be out of her mind," she hollered. She slammed her schoolbag on the table and turned on the TV.

Okay so it's not the most elegant prose you've ever read, but the author didn't come out and say that Jennifer was mad, yet you got the idea. Why? Cause you could see Jennifer "storming" into the room and "hollering" and "slamming her bag" those are all signs of anger. The reader can play it out in his mind and figure out that Jennifer must be mad. You haven't "told" the reader what to feel; you've let him experience it firsthand.

The same strategy can be used in teaching. It's the fundamental difference of being told how things work and seeing how things work. Especially in topics in the sciences, since we have real world examples of how things work, firsthand knowledge can't measure up to a few lines in a textbook. No matter how many times I tell you that a chemical solution is very acidic, as soon as you dip the litmus strip into it and it turns red, it will carve a place in your memory. And it's important that you dipped the strip and not me. You figure it out all by yourself. You deduce. You conclude.

Same idea applies to basic math, instead of saying two plus two equals four, why not line up two balls and then add two more and ask the student count? This way it's not as if you're divine and just imparting knowledge, but you're showing people how they can derive their own, correct, conclusions. I think that we tend to remember firsthand experiences much more vividly than information we're told.

Maybe it's cause we don't inherently like to take other people's word for things. Humans always observe the world around them. It's in our nature. And maybe in the processes of letting the students or readers come to their own conclusions, you elevate them to the same level as yourself. You show them that they're intelligent enough to figure it out.

In the end don't we all like to be treated as equals?

Previously? The Obvious.

Can you light a bulb with a battery and a wire?

Really? How?

It's amazing how little attention we pay to things that are part of our day to day experience. We often focus on the task at hand and pay little attention to the peripherals in our world.

For example, let's take this question: "If you wanted to see more of yourself in a mirror, do you move backwards of forward?"

Go ahead, think, I'll be here.

You thought it through? You sure? What's the answer?

Nope. It's not "you have to move back."

The fact is no matter how far back you move, you still see the same amount of yourself in the mirror. Trust me, you can test it out.

Isn't it amazing that we use mirrors every single day, but we never really notice that? When we look in the mirror, we're busy concentrating on our task: brushing our teeth, combing our hair, etc. But we don't wonder much about how the mirror works.

Mostly because we don't have to. If it's not broke, don't fix it, right?

I think we could all benefit from looking harder at the world around us. Maybe I feel that way cause I'm surprised when a basic assumption I make turns out to be wrong. At the age of twenty-six, I believe I should know about fundamentals of how the world works or at least how things I interact with on a daily basis work. I don't mean that you should know how each chip of a computer works, but how does electricity work, or mirrors, or cameras. Those are pretty fundamental.

Here's another question for you: if by some way we were able to create a room that was completely dark, could you see an apple that was in that room? What about after ten minutes?

Let me know what you think, you might be amazed at the answer.

Most of us take these fundamentals for granted. Most of us are never taught these core functions well. Most of us never had to light a bulb with a battery and wire or sit in a completely dark room. Most of us never cared to look at a mirror just to see how the reflection is affected by the change in the distance of the source. Most of us either don't care or work off of some, and often incorrect, assumptions.

Buy maybe you're much more observant than I am and have learned all the basics. In that case I look up to you and think you're amazing.

Because you've conquered the ideal of looking beyond the obvious.

Previously? Categorical Imperative.

The night before her philosophy paper was due, my college roommate swallowed the two Vivarins that came in her Freshman box.

In our first week in college, we each got a box with the 'essentials'. A small box of shaving cream, a razor, a pack of advil, tampons, tooth paste and a toothbrush, deodorant and a pack of Vivarin. Two years later when I became a Resident Assistant, I tried to get the Vivarins removed from the package but I lost. Well, that's another story for another time.

My roommate ended up pulling an all-nighter but her brain was completely asleep yet the chemicals wouldn't let her body cooperate. So she couldn't write her paper and she got no sleep. The next morning, she felt like shit. And she still had a paper to write.

My first all-nighter was to guard the fence. At CMU, we have a tiny fence that's outside one of the main buildings. Much of the campus-event advertising is done through painting this fence. The rules are that you need to guard it all night, before you can paint it. So my organization got a tent and we spent the night by the fence. A perfect college experience.

All-nighters are exactly what college is about.

Thanks to a full load of classes, real good friends, several jobs, and unquenchable energy, I spent many all-nighters in my four years. To be fully honest, most of them had nothing to do with homework. I was having too much fun, I enjoyed being around the people and sleep seemed to be a waste of time.

Since graduation, I have pulled one, a single, all-nighter. It was during my very first year in New York, when I was chatting with friends on the computer and working on my 3-D trumpet. I modeled and rendered it all that night. I'd been working on it on and off for a long time but I kept getting it wrong. The energy I got at three in the morning and the excitement of talking to my friend, allowed me the concentration to actually get it right.

I can't seem to stay up all night any more. By the time my watch says eleven, my eyelids are heavy and I struggle to make it to bed. It might have something to do with getting up at seven, or that I'm six years older now, but I think it's just that I'm lacking the environment.

The enticing setting.

I miss school. I miss the friendship, the chatting about everything, even the work. But most of all, I miss the all-nighters. The wee hours when your body is tired but getting its second wind. When you're giddy and laugh at everything. When you don't care that you'll be dead tired tomorrow.

When you just do it cause it's fun.

Do you remember your first all-nighter?

Previously? Reality.

A random stranger walking up to me and handing me his number while my dad and I are opening a bank account.

A phone conversation where he keeps saying "cool" which simply means between cold and warm to me.

Buying a football game magazine which cost five dollars for ten.

Watching my best friend kiss the freshman picture book.

Bouncing my first check ever. Groveling to the bank to not charge me.

The tray of constipation.

Having my portrait drawn by an art student.

A terrible eighteenth birthday where I find out my crush has a crush on my roommate. And then ten people spending the night in our room.

First time I earn money.

My roommate hollering to me that my alarm is going off.

Our first answering machine recording, made up from parts of songs.

Dammit! I will fuck you!

Painting the fence. Movie nights in DH2210.

Dropping out of sorority rush on day two.

First time I kiss a boy whom I'm not dating and don't get called the next day.

My first Halloween.

Waking my friend up at three A.M. to start studying for our history final. And non-stop studying for the next two days.

A summer living in Theta Xi.

A night spent sleeping in the hospital's waiting room.

All nighters. Mountain Dew. Diet Coke.

Spending ten hours in the cafeteria talking. Yuk yuk.

Talking someone out of a depressed suicidal mood.

Taking more than twice as many classes as acceptable. A dean, offering to pay for my class, if only I agree to drop one.

Getting drunk and discovering that I take off my clothes when I get drunk. Never getting drunk again.

Interviewing.

Bell Labs. First real job.

Email. Tons and tons of email.

Friends. Lots and lots of friends.

Teaching. Learning. Crying. Laughing. Growing.

I loved college.

Previously? Happie News.

It's amazing to me how many people use words without really thinking about what they're trying to say. Especially adjectives and adverbs, we're so fast to pile them up. One of the guys I work with always utters the word "interesting" which makes my skin crawl.

It's not that I don't like the word interesting, it's just that it means nothing whatsoever in the context in which he uses it. I say, "One of the reasons we want to split up these services is to ensure we can have deals where each tranche can offer a different product."

He goes, "Hmm, that's interesting."

Huh?

Recently, especially during this seemingly unending design phase, interesting has become my least favorite reply. "Strangle" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind. (that's what I get for reading Choke in one sitting.)

I've also been thinking about the use of "intelligent" a lot lately. What do you think qualifies someone as intelligent?

Since I am a programmer and grew up with a strong math background, I've always heard people tell me that my ability to add up two numbers in my head quickly makes me intelligent. Or the fact that I scored high on the Math SATs and GMATs. I must be intelligent if I know how to code or if I did well at school. If I can speak several foreign languages. For some reason, people surrounding me have always associated intelligence with either math or sciences.

What about people who are extremely good with history or geography? Are they not intelligent?

How about artists and musicians? Poets?

People at the top of an artistic field are often referred to as geniuses. Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius. But then again, so was Albert Einstein and I don't think his artistic skills were well developed ( though I could be wrong about this as it's just a guess). So genius, I think, is used for people whom we consider at the very top of their field. Someone at an extraordinary level. Which gives me the warm fuzzies cause it doesn't seem to discriminate on topic.

Intelligence, however, doesn't work that way. At least not in my experience. You're a genetic engineer? You must be intelligent. You wrote an award-winning fiction novel. Well, you're great but not necessarily intelligent. It just doesn't seem all that fair.

I must say that I have the highest respect for people who know the words that show up in the GREs. I've been trying to memorize some of those words and my brain simply refuses to cooperate. The math and analytical sections are no problem at all but as soon as I hit the antonyms, I'm ready to give it all up. I don't need a PhD that bad. Really.

If intelligence was all about math and analysis and GREs were supposed to test your level of intelligence, why have those stupid words at all?

Now I know you're telling yourself that I have two flaws in my logic. One being that I assume the GREs are worth anything. And you're right. I don't think they are and I think that's pretty common knowledge. But I was just using it as an example and not as a basis for my argument on why non-math and science oriented topics should also be included in measuring someone's level of intelligence.

The other flaw you might want to point out is that I assumed that a strong vocabulary isn't a sign of intelligence. And that's exactly my point. What is intelligence? What makes you define someone as an intelligent person?

I guess I define it as someone with strong deduction skills, a solid and well-rounded set of knowledge and an ability to apply the knowledge to their life and work.

What do you think? Tell me.

Addendum on june 24: this article seemed to be adressing exactly the issues I was trying to raise, so I thought you might find it interesting.

Previously? Alone.

How common is common sense?

I've always thought that the idea behind common sense is that there is a well of information out there somewhere that all humans are somehow tapped into. Or even something genetically transmitted from parents to children.

At least that's how we behave when we run into someone who we think lacks in that department. We wonder, 'where was this person raised, in outer space?'

So I've been thinking about what goes into what we consider common sense. I tried to think of examples of what I consider common sense and see how and where I learned them.

The first one that sprung to my mind was the 'make sure to be aware of your surroundings when you walk' idea. Anyone who's been raised in a city knows that it's crucial for your personal safety to know this bit of common sense. It's extremely common, however, for a small town person to not have this bit of information, which is something they quickly learn once they've been in the city for a few days and are mugged. (Okay, so I'm exaggerating a bit.) It looks like we pick up some amount of common sense from the environment in which we're raised.

On a similar topic, I've worked with a girl who never notices subtle hints. If I'm upset and ask a friend to go for a walk, she'd jump in and say "Can I come along, too?" Not that we didn't like her or enjoy her company, but she didn't seem to realize when it wasn't really appropriate for her to invite herself. I kept wondering how she'd managed to make it through her teenage years without having been totally burnt. Learning when to talk and how to act is a series of common sense tricks we pickup from our family and surroundings. These bits of information sometimes sting so hard that we never forget how we developed this piece of "common sense." (And we rarely forget the "friends" who taught us this lesson first hand.)

Another example I came up with was building common sense through education. As I learned American Sign Language, many of the signs seemed common sense to me and so I'd retain them easily. Same for Japanese grammar. Even math felt like common sense to me. It seemed the more I learned, the more stuff appeared to be common sense.

Here's what I think it all comes down to: common sense is a combination of what you learn from your environment, family, friends, books, school and all your deductions from this knowledge.

Next time you meet someone who seems to lack what you consider common sense, remember that it's not a centralized resource pool in which we can all tap.

Just like most anything else in life, it stems from personal experience.

Previously? The Itch.

One of the biggest drawbacks of my architecture teacher, and believe me she has many, is her lack of knowledge in any areas besides her own.

She spends the entire class reading to us about the lives and works of architects whom she considers most influential in the evolution of modern architecture. She does seem to be knowledgeable in that specific area, but if you dare ask anything about Eastern architecture she's clueless. Same goes for programs relating to architecture. Not to discredit her completely, she does read and bring to class stories relating to architecture from papers or magazines. But overall, she seems to be totally focused on her own little world.

My Florence teacher, on the other hand, is the total opposite. He teaches us literature, history, arts, music, religion and everything else relating to the subject of the course. You can tell he's so fascinated by his subject matter that he explores all facets of the field. He knows the symbols in Dante's work, the inside stories between Dante and some of the mentioned characters, the works of art relating to Dante's stories, the mythological stories mentioned in the poem, the operas based on those stories and the music people played at the time. Talk about well rounded. He doesn't just tell you the stories. He tells you the different conflicting stories and gives us his opinion on which one might be true.

Compare that to my architecture teacher who has never heard of some of the most famous Eastern architects. Can you truly say that she's interested in her subject?

I have the same pleasure with my Human Brain teacher. He is almost equally well versed in physics as he is in biology and psychology and paleontology. His anecdotes add color and dimension to the lectures, making the subject matter so much more fascinating. He also is aware of all recently published information on any of his topics, which for a class on the human brain is crucial.

One of the biggest disadvantages to getting a doctorate is that is makes you concentrate on one teeny tiny issue for several years. It's about depth, about specializing. I think the future of the world is in interdisciplinary connections.

Learning one field without having any knowledge of the other gives us such a limited and skewed opinion. The world is an amalgamation of all these topics. Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Math, Politics, Law, Literature, Languages, Geography, History, and many others all exist in the world simultaneously. What's the point of knowing one in a secluded way?

Especially since they're merged in nature and in society.

Previously? Humility.

Today was the last day of my sign language class. The classes at my school go until level eight and I just finished level seven.

At this high level, most of the grammar and basic concepts are long covered. We spend the class time on vocabulary and deaf culture. One of the reasons sign language vocabulary is harder to learn than most other languages is cause it has only one-way lookup. A dictionary can only tell you the sign for a specific word. If you watch two people signing, you can't take note of the sign one made and look it up in the dictionary. The only way to learn the meaning of that sign is by asking that deaf person. If you make a note of the sign and ask another deaf person, you're likely to have missed a subtlety of the sign or the context, which would change the potential meaning of the sign immensely.

Even more frustrating than acquiring vocabulary is understanding deaf culture. There are so many aspects to a hearing person's life that we take for granted. One of the discussions we had last week in class was about a deaf person going to the emergency room. Imagine your friend bleeding and you're both deaf and you need help. Trust me when I say that it's overwhelmingly frustrating. Or imagine being mugged and you approach a police officer. The possibility of getting immediate help is completely nonexistent for deaf people in a hearing world.

My firm hired its first deaf employee a few weeks ago. She is a network specialist. When you enter my firm, there is a four-month training program that is organized to prepare you for your job. After she was given interpreters, the girl insisted that she needed note-takers as well. I know that, initially, the coordinator thought that the girl was being picky and greedy. The fact is we take for granted that we hear with our ears and write using our eyes. We don't need to look at something to be able to write it down. Deaf people hear with their eyes. If she's watching the interpreter, she can't take notes. Any second she takes her eye off the interpreter to write, she'll be missing words.

Tonight, our teacher took my class to a restaurant after class. She told us that we're not allowed to speak, so we can have a better understanding of what the world is for her, as she's deaf. The six of us walked into the restaurant, signing and laughing and we were lucky to have a waitress who had a deaf mother so even though she knew Polish Sign Language, she knew enough to help us out.

The little trip made me realize more and more about what I take for granted. Sitting there, I knew that at any moment, I could speak if I got frustrated enough. I could explain what I really wanted to say with one word. Instead of having to use paper or mime. No matter how hard I try, I will never truly be able to live in the shoes of a deaf person, cause deep down I'll always know that I have the choice to opt out while real deaf people don't.

Previously? Intentions and Expectations.

I don't believe in the idea that there are a few peculiar people capable of understanding math, and the rest of the world is normal. Richard Feynman at an interview with Omni magazine

I've always believed in the theory of "there is no such thing as can't." Each time someone claimed I couldn't do something, I'd work incessantly and accomplish it, just to prove them wrong. I never liked the idea of others claiming they could judge the range of my capacity.

Any human's capacity.

I've often wondered if there is such a thing as human capacity. Are we all born with a set of abilities or do all babies come to the world with the same set of competences and somehow, some people learn to tap into this well of knowledge better than others?

I guess like most nature vs. nurture questions, the answer lies somewhere in between. It's highly likely, to me, that there is some kind of genetic wiring that allows for one baby to be more artistically inclined than the other. It's also plausible, even probable, that two babies with equal capacity in this area might not grow up to have the equal artistic ability in practice. One baby might have parents who recognize this inherent talent early on and they may hire the best tutors for the child early on, expanding and honing this skill while the other kid's parents are oblivious. Therefore, in my mind, it makes perfect sense to say that both nature and nurture have an effect in the resulting genius.

The fascinating question, however, is whether such a genius can be the result of mostly nurture. What if I don't have these special genes that make me an amazing artist? (Let's call these the Leonardo genes.) Can I still be a master painter without the Leonardo genes? What if I worked with people who had these genes and I practiced night and day? Are you saying that even if I made it my sole purpose in life, I couldn't become a Leonardo without his genes?

What a depressing thought.

I often suffer from lack of perspective. When I see something amazing, I get overcome with despair that I am incapable of producing such a thing. I'm not talking about achieving an outcome at the level of a Leonardo or a Nobel Prize winning physicist. Some amazing drawing someone my age did. Some program a fellow teammate wrote. Some idea a teenager had that's truly unique and clever. I see all these as achievements within my reach and I feel depressed that I am incapable of producing such outcomes. I don't mean to say that I feel animosity or jealousy towards the originator of it. On the contrary, I have huge respect and admiration towards them. I just feel bad that I couldn't be such a person, too.

Therefore the idea that genius cannot be learned is upsetting to me and I refuse to believe it. If I can't hope that by hard work and determination, I can reach just about any goal, I might as well lose hope.

And I don't ever want to lose hope.

Previously? Taboos.

Would you think it's possible to learn all about life in one afternoon? Not even an afternoon, just two hours or so.

My three-hour labyrinth class taught me all that I need to know.

The first thing we did as the class started was to go to another room and walk a labyrinth the teacher had laid in yarn. The instructions were to keep quiet, take our shoes off, and write our reactions as soon as we completed the walk to the middle of the labyrinth and back.

The first picture below is the shape of the rope we walked. It's a seven-ring labyrinth. The image next to it is the eleven-ring one found in many cathedrals.

Here's what I wrote after I finished my walk:

- It's best to keep your eye in the present instead of worrying about the future.

- Try not to worry about your sense of direction so much as it can shift.

- When you think you're done, you're not.

I swear these are the exact sentences I wrote as soon as I sat back down at my desk. As I stared at my writing, I noticed how similar that experience was to life itself.

A forty-dollar two-hour class taught me more about life than anything else.

Previously? Camera Fun.

My friend Natalia is applying to Business Schools. As with collegeapplications, these schools have a variety of utterly boring and annoying essay questions.

Anyhow, Natalia wants to get in and she's doing all the filling out the forms, taking the exams, getting therecommendations bit on her own. But I get to help out with the essays.

I can't remember any of my college essay topics besides two. One wasabout "three major events in my life" and another was "why Swarthmore"(which I did quite badly on since, back then, I didn't even know whereSwarthmore was).

We've been working on Natalia's essays for three months now. Amidst thereally boring and common questions, I've recently come across one thatreally got me thinking. One of the essay topics for Chicago Business Schoolis:

"If you were a character in a book, who would it be and why? What do youadmire most about this character?" (the question also asks how you relate to this character but we'll ignore that part)

You might have a totally different answer if you were writing an essayfor college, but the question of what character you would like to be isreally interesting, if you ask me. After hearing the topic, I spent daysthinking about what character I would have chosen and why.

Assuming they meant a "fiction" book, here are a bunch of myfavorites:

Little Prince: cause he is always curious, looks at things from adifferent perspective, is honest and kind, is fascinated with the world andis open-hearted.

Winnie the Pooh: cause he's nice to everyone, is always in a goodmood, is curious and loving.

Atticus: Cause he fought for what he believed in, had integrityand was kind.

I love many of Anne Tyler and Jane Smiley's characters. I wouldn't wantto be a Stephen King or Anthony Burgess character. I'm on the fence aboutJohn Irving and Salinger's characters. And I hope I never come close to aHemingway one.

Ok so I can't think of good examples. I'll add to this list as I think ofsome. In the meantime, tell me, whowould you want to be? Feel free topicka movie character if you want.

Previously? CanDo.

For the longest time, I've struggled with having too many areas of interest. I've always felt like I don’t know enough about anything. While most people have a specific area of passion, I want to know it all.

This might seem like a neat flaw on the surface, but the lack of depth in my knowledge base depresses me. Is it better to know a lot about one thing or a little about many things? I love the idea of being a practical expert on an issue, but I don't want to sacrifice the time that would take away from learning millions of other things.

I know that I prefer speaking seven languages half-assed to speaking one amazingly well and I think most people would agree with that preference. At the same time, I think I should master at least one language. Just like how I should master programming since it's the profession of my choice. I spend hours and hours wondering about this dichotomy in my personality.

Today, my Italian literature teacher talked about the "Renaissance Man" analogy that people like Leonardo DaVinci symbolized. He talked about how Dante sort of started that era by being a political figure as well as a poet. He mentioned that these people were into experiencing the totality of life.

Experiencing the totality of life. That's exactly what I want to do!

I want to play musical instruments. I want to draw and paint and sculpt. I want to speak nine languages. I want to study literature. I want to study Math and Physics and Biology. History and Politics. I truly can't think of subjects where I have no interest at all.

Leonardo and Dante were both amazing at everything they did, which is why they are the quintessential Renaissance men. I don't share that quality, but at least I share the drive. And that can't be bad, right?

Totality of Life. Doesn't it sound so wonderful?

Previously? Tunes and Memories.

I do the same thing. When Jake tells me about someone new he met at work, the first thing I ask is, “Is he nice?” I don’t care if the guy is a billionaire, drop dead gorgeous or triple Ph.D. candidate. I just want him to be nice. We’re talking real nice, not the fake kind I mentioned a few days ago, the kind that smiles to your face while stabbing you on the back.

As I told Natalia my preferences, she said, “Yes, I like nice people, too, but imagine a real sweet person that’s not interesting at all. Even if she’s the sweetest, that won’t be enough for me.” Word.

The thing is if I had to pick between a totally boring but kind person and a really interesting cocky prick, I must say I’d easily choose the sweet person. I don’t think I could move past the fact that the guy is a jerk to even notice that he’s fascinating.

A look at my past would easily justify my obsession with kindness. Let’s just say I’ve had my share of mean and uncaring people. Enough of them to conclude that all that matters to me is a genuine kind soul.

At the same time, I can totally see Natalia’s point of view. Everyone has different priorities. If I had had another past, I might even feel similarly.

I have a wide variety of friends. At a glance they seem to have nothing in common. But if you looked closer, you’d notice the pattern.

Previously? Sick, Sick, Sick.

Since graduation, I took classes in Italian, French, Sign Language, Yoga, 3-D graphics, Art History, Novel Writing, Alexander Technique, and Japanese. At least six of those were subjects I'd never previously been exposed to. The neat thing is that the more classes I took, the more I got inspired to take. Next semester, I want to start learning how to play the saxophone, and take cooking and ballroom dancing classes. A few years ago, all of these would have sounded implausible to me. I have no ear, I am extremely clumsy, and I definitely can't cook. The difference is that less than a year ago I felt equally hopeless about Japanese. When I got the offer to go to Tokyo, Jake and I opened the language portion of Encarta and listened to a voice pronouncing the first ten digits and I told him, "There's absolutely no way I'm gonna learn that language." Today, numbers are the least of my problem.

The more I learn, the less I fear learning. I feel powerful and invincible. I feel like the only difference between me and a doctor is that he chose to go to medical school and I didn't. I feel that these options are available to me. If I wanted, I could be a lawyer or a doctor or a pilot. With the right amount of time and practice, I could be whatever my heart desires. Anything.

Isn't that a neat feeling?

Before?

Here's today's: "I just don't understand how you can smile with all those tears in your eyes"

Have suggestions?

Goody Links
If you're into words like I am, checkout a collection of word oddities and trivia. It has a page of names that became words, commonly misspelled words and much more. Thanks Cheryl, for the link.

If you have science questions, you should checkout Mad Sci Network. As they put it, it's a "collective cranium of scientists providing answers to your questions. For good measure we provide a variety of oddities and other ends as well."

Thoughts
The interesting thing about a sign language class is that you can have several in the same area. Where I take my classes, we have two different levels being taught in the same room. Since the students are not allowed to speak during class, the two classes don't interfere with each other. Kinda neat, eh?

I think we should try to teach as much as possible to kids at a young age. I wonder what slows down our capacity to take in and adapt to new information as we get older. Anyone will tell you that learning a new language is much easier if you're young. I wonder why?

Going hiking in New Hampshire today. Happie!

Slashdot discusses the NYTimes article about teenager programmers who'd rather take a high paying job than go to college. For me, college was so much more than classes. The slashdotters make some great points about the computer science information you learn in college that you really wouldn't learn anywhere else. But on an even higher level, college is the only time in your life that you get to be away from home and make your own decisions. Yet you don't have to work all day long, you don't have to pay rent and you are in an environment where you're surrounded by other people your age. People in college spend hours philosophizing and talking about nothing. I just think that if you skip college, you miss out on a lot of great memories and lifelong friends. While making money is nice and makes you feel like a grownup, you have the rest of your life to do that. What's the rush?

If you're into programming, I think you'd find the interview informative. Even if you don't care about programming, I think it's fascinating to hear what he has to say. When asked about teaching programming classes he comments on how schools should not be teaching things people can learn in trade schools and goes on to say, "That's not what universities should be doing; universities should be teaching things which are likely to last, for a lifetime if you're lucky, but at least 5 or 10 or 20 years, and that means principles and ideas. At the same time, they should be illustrating them with the best possible examples taken from current practice."

Another interesting point is when the interviewer asks him what areas a student who's interested in computers should enter, amongst other things, he says, "I think unfortunately the best advice you can give somebody is ``do what you think is interesting, do something that you think is fun and worthwhile, because otherwise you won't do it well anyway''. But that's not any real help."

As I said, it's an interesting interview.

Man, Japanese is hard. I have to learn around 100 kanji for the exam in December on top of all the grammar and vocabulary. In fact, the language is so hard that many native speakers cannot read the newspaper. The kids in Japan go to school six days a week. What's the point of making your language so hard that even the native speakers cannot fully learn it? It just makes so little sense to me. But I do find it fascinating and really fun to learn. I like the way they put meaningful symbols together to form words. For example the two symbols which make up the word telephone (denwa) are the symbol for electricity and the symbol for speaking. The symbols for electricity and car make up the word for train (densha). Neat isn't it?

When I switched from a full-time job to a part-time one, giving up quite a sum of money, to spend a bit more time volunteering and learning, people looked at me like I was insane. There are two kinds of people in the world, it seems; those who want to help the world and those who wish to climb the corporate ladder. These two don't mix. Except in my case, where they do. I wish more people did both because sometimes the connections in the corporate world have the monetary power to make things happen.

When was the last time you volunteered?