We had a few flurries over the weekend

When I got a text from school on Thursday afternoon saying that the college would be closed Friday and Saturday because of the impending blizzard I was a little skeptical. I had seen the weather reports and understood that snow was coming, but it was sunny, clear blue skies, and relatively warm (I think above freezing) at the time and it seemed a little weird to be cancelling my class on Saturday when it hadn't even started snowing yet. And since I didn't have class, I also had no motivation to do any homework over the weekend. Why should I do homework if I don't have classes?? Friday dawned, and while it did start to flurry in the morning I still took the opportunity to run to Target and the library (my neighborhood branch was open for one hour on Friday). And then I settled in for a lazy weekend. or not. I came home and cleaned the bathroom and fridge. (yay, no more fridge-smell!). Friday night I introduced my roommates to the amazingness that is What's Up Doc?. Sadly, they had never seen it before.

Not long after we finished our movie the lights went out. We definitely got the best end of the losing power deal. We lost electricity (but not heat) for only about 2 hours, most of which I spent in bed reading a book by flashlight (and I didn't get in trouble for it!). When I woke up on Saturday this is what greeted me:

Drifts on our back porch

We spent the majority of Saturday digging ourselves out. And I have the sore muscles to prove it. We ended up getting about two feet of snow. So most of our drifts were only about knee deep, but it was windy enough that in places the snow came up to my hips.

Things like blizzards are a funny thing. I felt like somehow our neighborhood came together and bonded a little bit. I saw so many people I had never seen before out shoveling. I can't say that we were all helping each other, but people walking past had encouraging words, and just seeing that that there were people living in all the houses around me was kind of nice. And with the ban on driving it was kind of cool to get to walk down the middle of the roads and have it all to yourself.

The front walk

The snow we had was very light and powdery. I had hoped to build a snowman, but powdery snow just doesn't pack well (though it is certainly better for shoveling). In stead I made a snow angel. Or rather, I tried. When I jumped in the snow I sunk in more than I had planned on, and so I rather ruined the bottom part of my snow angel trying to get up.

Snow Angel

Part of our lengthy sidewalk

Forbes--at it again

You may remember a while ago, I posted an article that Forbes published that said that a degree in librarianship was the biggest waste of everyone's time.

Today in class one of my classmates made a reference to another recent Forbes article that was hating on libraries. Some how I missed it when it came out back in January. This article is a listing of the 10 "least stressful" jobs. Luckily, unlike the last Forbes thing Librarian wasn't number 1, it was number 9. But still. Listen to this: "A peaceful atmosphere and unlimited access to literature makes librarian a welcoming career option for the bookish" (careercast).Umm, I don't know when the last time you walked into my library was, but peaceful isn't a word I'd usually use to describe it. Sure, being a librarian certainly isn't any where near as stressful as being enlisted military personnel, or a police officer, but it's still no walk in the park.

I realize that these lists and studies aren't done by Forbes, but it does make me wonder what Forbes has against libraries (and what the people doing these studies have against libraries). Come on, we provide excellent services for many, many people. I wonder how the librarians at Forbes feel about all this. I don't know for certain that they have their own librarians, but most big corporations do. There's a whole field of corporate librarianship.

Also, just to defend the university professors who apparently have the number one least stressful careers out there. I'm pretty sure they are all extremely stressed out.

Ideas that become mainstream

Back when I read My Ideal Bookshelf last month I came across this quote by Chuck Klosterman:

"If a non-fiction book experienced a massive spike in popularity then the idea behind it becomes mainstream and then the book itself disappears" (p.110).

I can't remember now which book in particular he was talking about, but it was a book written some decades ago that had a revolutionary new idea in it and when he talked about the idea I thought "well, of course, I knew that." I was familiar with the idea, but had definitely never heard of the book (can I be any more vague about this?).

This made me wonder if a book like Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, could be a book like this.  I both hope that it will, but hope that it won't at the same time. I would love for the ideas embodied in this book to become completely mainstream, but at the same time I think I would mourn the loss of the book. It's an excellent book.

Educating our youth

You may remember how my roommate currently takes a subscription to the NY Times and how I enjoy reading it everyday (in fact, today I even did the crossword. It was only the Monday puzzle, but I'm still proud that I nearly finished it--my sports knowledge was less than adequate today).

Yesterday there was a fascinating article about the gender gap in education. For many, many years men have out-shined women in education but in recent years women have not only caught up to men but have surpassed them. According to the article women now account for about 60% of college degrees (excluding PhDs--though they are getting close to out-striping them there too). This is an interesting phenomenon. The author of the article (Christina Sommers) explores one of the contributing factors to why men are no longer top performers.

Sommers looked at test scores from a variety of ages of boys and girls and noted that in elementary school boys and girls test scores are very comparable, but despite that boys often received lower grades overall. What happens is that elementary school teachers (and others) take more than just test scores into account when assigning grades. They also take into account things like behavior. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that boys are typically more rambunctious than girls.

While some would say that it's "too bad for the boys. If they are inattentive, obstreperous and distracting to their teachers and peers, that’s their problem," Sommers suggests that we should make a "concerted effort to give them more support." That's what we did decades ago when girls were languishing in schools and it worked marvelously. She proposes that we follow the example of Canada, Great Britain, and Australia, who have all decided to focus on reigning in boys' "tendency to be inattentive" through more structure in schools and more boy-friendly curricula.

It's a very fascinating article. One thing in particular that stunned me was a quote from Judith Kleinfeld a professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks who said that "almost one in four boys who have college-educated parents cannot read a newspaper with understanding." The boys she is talking about here are high school graduates. I definitely think that these kinds of issues in our education system need to be addressed. It seems like there are many solutions out there that can help close the gender gap. I agree with what Sommers said at the end that "the rise of women, however long overdue, does not require the fall of men." It is fabulous that women are performing to their full potential, but that shouldn't be any reason for men not to reach their full potential too.

Passions or stability?

A couple days ago my good friend posted a blog post about following your dreams. It is a thought-provoking post. I think many of us are torn in the desire to "pursue our passion" (perhaps not-lucrative ones) and the desire to lead a stable life, with a steady income. I feel like society sends us a lot of mixed messages. Like "Pursue your passion!!!", but at the same time, societal norms dictate that the American Dream includes a mortgage (and recently it seems that it demands a mortgage on a house that is really too big). With so many mixed messages being sent it's hard to know what to think.

I have found it a challenge to reconcile my passions and the desire to live a lifestyle where I can afford the things I need, and live within my means, all while not living in a box under a bridge. At the same time I also struggle with the idea of finding a "passion" that I can pursue as a career, that I'm both passionate enough about to do 40 hours a week, and yet not so passionate about that I'd hate spending 40 hours a week doing it. I'll admit that I also never really imagined myself as having a career. I'm not sure what I imagined, because I've known for sometime that I will most likely need to work the majority of my adult life, but I've just never envisioned a career. That's kind of a big scary word. Career. It sounds so final, and so irreversible. Even though I know that's not true. I remember hearing a statistic once when I was a freshman in college that for people my age they were likely to have approximately 8-10 major career changes in their life. That news stunned me. I had never imagined changing careers every 4 of 5 years. I still have a hard time imagining that. I mean, after you look at the nearly 20 years I've put in to educating myself for this one career, I really hope it sticks. But at the same time it seems a little ludicrous to ask a bunch of twenty year olds to know themselves enough for them to pick a career they're going to be happy in for 35 or 40 years. Things change. When I was 18, I wanted to be a high school band director. Then I wanted to be a museum curator (actually I still think that'd be cool). And then I moved on to other things... Even in the one year that I've been in library school (which has a fairly obvious career destination--librarian) I've changed what I want to be several times (did you know that there are about a million different kinds of librarians?). I'm still not sure what I'll end up as when I rejoin the world of gainfully-employed people.

I think pursuing your passion perhaps has more to do with creating a lifestyle that allows you to have all your priorities in balance and that gives you opportunities to be your best self, than about choosing between a single passion and some kind of stability.

I've been thinking a lot about lifestyles lately as I'm getting to a point where I think that the light I see ahead is actually the end of the tunnel, not just an oncoming train. Before I started grad school I worked professionally for a year, and the lifestyle I led then would never have been sustainable in the long term.  And so I'm trying now to develop a lifestyle that is sustainable--and it's hard. But I think that when you hit the right balance of work/life/hobbies/etc, then you can find fulfillment and both be following your passion and leading a life with the stability you want.

The New York Times

This semester one of my roommates has a class that requires that she read the New York Times everyday. So she dutifully took out a subscription last week. I'm not sure how much enjoyment she has derived from it, but I definitely am benefiting. this morning I sat down and at breakfast over my morning paper. It was delightful. I already feel more informed about world affairs and I've only read the paper two days out of the last four. It made me feel good that when one of my patrons mentioned how the fire in Brazil a few days ago reminded him about another fire some years back that I actually knew what he was talking about.

It feels good to be even a little bit more informed. I recommend reading a paper for everyone--in print or online, whichever you prefer.

To multi-task or not to multi-task?

I read  this article last week for one of my classes. It is an interesting article about multi-tasking. I can't say that it revealed anything I didn't already know (i.e. that people are bad at multi-tasking), but the author did express some interesting "side-effects" of his experiment to stop multi-tasking--things like having less stress.It sounds like an interesting experiment. I may have to try it someday. I thought it was a good read. I particularly liked one part at the end where he says that "giving yourself less time to do things could make you more productive." I know that for myself I am most definitely more productive when I am busier. It seems a little counter-intuitive, but I find that if I just have loads and loads of time to get something done in then I have no motivation to do anything.

I've been trying to be more aware of when I try to multi-task and to not do it so much, but I know that I still have a long ways to go.

When does a pizza stop being a pizza?

yep, that's lettuce on there.

As you are well aware, I love pizza. As I was eating my pizza today I wondered at what point something stops being pizza and it becomes something else. I don't know. I think that as long as it is on a crust I will consider it pizza, though I admit that the one I had today was pretty far removed from traditional pepperoni pizza.

Today I decided that an excellent pizza topping would be sweet potatoes. Because, really, sweet potatoes are delicious and why wouldn't they be delicious on a crust? So I chopped up a couple small ones and roasted them on the stove till they were nice and soft and then threw them on a crust with some cheese. So good. Granted, my crust had been in the freezer a little too long so it ended up being a very thin crust pizza, but that's ok too. I also thought that it would be nice to have something with the sweet potatoes, but I didn't have a lot of other things, so I threw on some romaine lettuce. I figure, people cooks lots of other kinds of leafy greens, why not lettuce? But, I was a little bit wary, so I only put it on part of the pizza.

It turned out pretty good. The lettuce gives it just a little different texture, but it doesn't really change the flavor a lot. I think next time I'll put lettuce on the whole thing. And the sweet potatoes were just as delicious as I figured they would be. They are such a versatile root. I am grateful for them.