So, I gotta catch up with this dude to have him sign my POS (graduate plan of study; the one I was "supposed" to fill out about 2 years ago, grin).
Meanwhile, I've been hearing the "usual stories" about his teaching style. I got a bit passionate about it last night, cuz Briankle has been a bit of a puzzle to me all along (of course, he cultivates that, actively!) My current hypothesis is that he's living his theory. Maybe it's just my projection, but here's how it might work:
Bonded w Fernando over chicken. He yanked me around a few times - I think I figured 'em all out by the end� Of course, he HAD to say something about me being serious all the time (!?) and PESSIMISTIC! Can you believe he called me pessimistic? The scoundrel. I said, Everytime "Everytime you try to do something new, you make a mistake." (Maybe that's just me?) :-) But I do Keep Trying. Doesn't that make me ultimately optimistic?
It occurs to me that I have never, ever, really paid attention to gender dynamics very much. Seems like such a het thing. I know I've been paid less than men for some work (asst. mgr. Taco Bell), but the same for other work (cable tv, interpreting, teaching)....and the discrimination that has affected me directly has always been a variant of homophobia. Anyway, I think I'm starting to see more of it around me, and wondering about what my historically subjective disengagement "means" in terms of contributions to its continuation...
I'll present on this for Max's class Monday. It pushes me to get some more serious prep in mind for this spring's small group communication class. James and Vangie have their site up now, for Chaos Management. It might be one of the best resources for group relations type info on the web. I'll check out the AKRice Institute too...undoubtedly, these are the two most significant influences upon me in this area.
Flora was in high spirits performing on her cello while Pine played the accordion and Prem bounced from one stringed instrument to another, with occasional drumming and dance lessons. My favorite was Pine's Beltana piece ~ even if it was out of season. :-)
Speaking of dancing, that "waltz" that Sarbjeet and I did was undoubtedly the highlight of the evening. Probably I "led" and Sarbjeet concentrated very hard to avoid stepping on my toes - we had our closest call when we reversed the direction of our tightly-contained spiral and Sarbjeet had to figure out to go backwards......believe it or not, he - we! - pulled it off! :-)
Sreela accused ME of not returning the Star Wars dvd....how did she know that is one of my favorite flicks? The one I saw more times than any other, ever, in the theatre (six times). However, it WASN'T me that didn't return the dvd and I hope the real culprit will confess and clear my name....
Benjamin sucked me right into that trick question at his presentation today! Of course I *assumed* that if he was showing us a certain example it had to mean something. :-)
A couple of the new cohorters got right in there - but what was up with all y'all marching in late and disrupting the whole show, eh?! And did anyone besides me notice the faculty member dozing off and on throughout?
This was a bad movie about really fascinating stuff! Too evangelistic for my taste, but a useful compendium of cutting edge theory in quantum mechanics, human biology and chemistry, and consciousness studies. I was fascinated by the whole neural net/nerve connection scenario in the brain - where repeated emotional experiences sortof install routine pathways that lead to a kind of "addiction" in which experiences that will stimulate those same pathways are sought....over time the biochemical pathways for other emotional experiences are impaired and eventually cut off. Its reparable - one can shift one's neural nets - but requires concentration, deliberation, time, and repetition.
Despite a few crude metaphors (!) and a gruesome story or two, I had a wonderfully relaxing evening with friends and great comfort food. The setting and company was so mellow and comfy I turned into a bit of a sleep-deprived chatterbox, just on the verge of being downright goofy. I needed that! Conversation was varied, unpressured, spontaneous....lots of laughter. I even got a warm fuzzy hearing about and watching the enactment of a happy relationship. It is possible! I've had a few sturdy pals throughout the ordeal of the last half-year but there was a quality of .... warmth?... that nurtured my soul.
Ummm hmmm! We did end up on the topic of pain....physical, mostly. I think it must have been triggered by the cramp I got in my hamstring. First one ever - am I getting older or what?! Note to self: do not neglect to do post-lifting stretches!
Besdies two entrees, there were three (count 'em, 1, 2 3!) desserts! Of course, I'm not going to divulge any details about the whipped cream...
I have not been having fun. I feel the need to say this right off the bat because I am distressed that others have felt pain due to my actions. I am also worried that my blogging will add insult to injury, and I'm not sure there is anything I can do to prevent or soften that...I hope that you will all respect that I am just trying to hold myself accountable to my own intellectual project. It is not easy.
I am going to write as vaguely as possible so as to protect anonymity, while trying to preserve the details that are salient to me. "Salience" is a judgment I'm making based on the subjective fact that I keep thinking about them.
I'm thinking about the chaos of democracy....and how Stephen continually critiques the Left for "giving credit" to "the other side", of being willing to look at their own faults as perhaps part & parcel of any dynamic, even of keeping things complicated.
I noticed a pattern in one of my classes that I thought I recognized from my first AKRICE conference when I completely unwittingly and innocently played into an institutional pattern of racism. It SUCKED! Partly because it just sucks to find yourself someplace where a) you don't want to be and b) goes against your ethics. It also sucked because I had been so convinced I was "doing what I was supposed to do." It was an embarrassing and humbling experience.
"I'm so tired of American parties where everyone comes for dinner, has a few polite drinks, and goes home by 11." I know the author of this statement was one of the two remaining guests when I left Raz and Catalin's party at 3 am this past Saturday night. Too bad Leda wasn't there, then maybe I wouldn't have been the last American...!
Most of the dancing had concluded by the time I arrived after my interpreting gig, and within a half-hour the guests started to leave. (Hmmmm.......!)
I did get several dances in, though, including lessons in....what were those dances again? The Punjabi music was pretty much fun, as was the interethnic (?) squabbling. ;-) I was also severely challenged for not knowing who Dave Chapelle is: "What's wrong with you white people?"
"I don't know, bitch!" (A word Chapelle has - apparently - made famous (?) by imitation. Who actually says it? Does it matter? I don't know who he is either!)
Uh oh. Now there are expectations (fears? hopes? HA! Don't I wish!) that I might blog about folk at any moment. :-) Sut's jam for MoveOn.org at the Media Education Foundation was cool. The Vote for Change finale concert was a blast, although the crowd was too mellow for my tastes. I thought there was potential for rowdiness when folks applauded the first few songs, but that was as much energy as we could collectively muster - no dancing. Wah!
Some good lines:
James Taylor was asked what he tells undecided voters. "Look at the two candidates very carefully, check 'em out. Then vote for the smart one."
He also had one about that saying, "don't switch horses in midstream". "But if your horse doesn't know how to swim and you're in over your head....and you didn't want to cross the stream in the first place....!"
The Dixie Chicks had a good one too - I dunno the lead singer's name, but she said we needed to "get rid of mad cowboy disease."
Some COM folk wandered in, around, and out. Some got pelted with grapes, others were not so fortunate. The flicks were both good, so I heard. I opted for music and inspiration tonight.
"Briankle will be sad." So said one of my colleagues at a party last night. Donna got the news out via email...
Here is a brief announcement.
Hmm, here's another one. They characterize deconstruction quite differently!
This slightly longer piece from The Guardian is better.
We actually had a very focused and serious discussion in DRP last week, reminiscent of a class with Briankle. ;-) However, Joanna was plagued by a fly for most of the session, Donna brough donuts - we agreed to save the only plain one for Bryan - who Stephen surmised did not have a crisis at work but either a) simply didn't want to miss Game 2 (Congrats, by the way, for winning the playoffs!) of b) was afraid of radical feminism. Stephen complained about having to work with "any moron who walks through the door" and Scott played spin-the-bottle to identify the moron in the class. Later, Scott was pegged as "a fertile void." Leda (in all seriousness) confided "the question of [her] life": how one can reconcile the interaction aspect of communication (in making meaning, enacting democracy) with attempts at creativity ~ because when one is creative people often react as if you're a freak. Or, I'd modify, have the plague. Makes me wonder about forms of xenophobia...
Class (as in our group of students and professor, smile) seemed more energetic last night than prevously. We've had good discussions all along, but last nght we got into some moments of...debate...(?)...I'm not sure how to characterize it. Lisa pushed me pretty hard, I guess she thinks I can take it. ;-) Lynn too cautioned about conflation - generalizing statements about one (socioeconomic) class to others. It's definitely an area I need to work on - articulating (verbally) my intuitions about how things "go together" (articulate, smile) in a more precise manner. Lisa thought I was getting too abstract at one point; in my mind, I was trying to pinpoint how an embodied subject (me, or you, grin) might notice - capture? - themselves in a moment of acting out a particular class subjectivity, perpetuating the on-going formation of class in terms of the status quo.
"Teaching people how to create is the antidote to oppression."
After I eavesdropped on a long conversation about knitting (!) I gave my card to these folk because I knew I was going to blog about them. :-)
I attended part of Robyn's workshop on observation supervision, and can see immediately why so many people have told me to check out her work. There are definitely many overlaps. :-)
Demands are, simply, those tasks required of the job itself. Controls are the decisions one takes/makes to manage the delivery of these tasks.
Controls sound a lot like regulation in the Vygotskian sense (see previous post). Robyn described them as "decisions, actions, and attitudes - even recognizing a demand is a control" (not necessarily an exact quote, smile). There seems to be an implication that these controls are conscious? Since I don't know the whole theory, I may be speculating way "out of turn" (surprise!), but it seems like putting the two approaches into dialogue with each other might be really productive. For instance, does demand-control theory itself recognize that some controls are unconscious (meaning habitual or reactive)?
