While The Teacher's Absent...

Things a substitute should not do:

1. Use how many years you've been a teacher as a threat or reason why kids should listen to you. Kids don't care how many years you've been a teacher. In fact, it's more fun to terrorize a seasoned teacher who in all her "30 years of teaching has never seen kids so noisy" (which I'm sure is also not at all true, she has definitely seen kids that noisy). What class wouldn't want to be the ones to set the record for noisiest kids in 30 years?

2. Ask the kids what their classroom routine is and then go with your own thing anyway. Kids need routine. In fact, the teachers want them to do the routine. It's part of their education--to learn how to do routines. And kids like routine, as much as they may not think they do. Besides, you don't want to end up having to deal with the kids who can't handle change in routine. But if you're really stuck on doing your own thing, then just do it. Don't dangle the classroom routine in front of the kids and then throw it away.

3. Wear a fanny pack to keep your markers in. Putting on the fanny pack is your first mistake. If you want to bring markers, keep them in your bag. And there are often several markers already by the board. You can use those. There's no need to keep your own personal set of markers out and use them possessively (while making the kids use only the markers on the board since the ones in your hand/fanny pack are only yours). Also, really, ditch the fanny pack.

4. Yell excessively at the kids/be too strict. Lighten up. You're a substitute, for crying out loud. The kids will only be worse if you make them dislike you.

What am I forgetting?

Senses

I'm taking a class this June called Developmental Variations. It's a class in child development for kids who develop atypically - aka kids who have special needs of all various sorts. Yesterday, I was grouped with a few others to do a presentation on hearing loss. While working together, we came across the videos below.

Cochlear implants are actually a very controversial issue for the Deaf Community. Some members are extremely against the idea of getting a cochlear implant or of considering those who have one to be part of the community. Others are more open to the idea.

As someone who is hearing and who has no direct connection to the Deaf Community, it is not my place to weigh in on the issue. However, the videos below moved me enough to make me want to write a post about them.

Thinking about people who cannot hear - and who have to wear devices in order to simulate hearing - makes me really appreciate the fact that I can hear naturally. That I can see naturally. That I can taste and touch and smell. That I don't have to think about my senses because they work and they've always worked. Our senses play such basic, vital roles in our life experience - we may not even notice how much our lives would be different if just one of our senses was not working just a little bit. They are so fragile. Some of us may not have to ever think about our senses because of how basic they are. They are working constantly so they fall below our notice. But imagine how much in the forefront of our attention they would be if one of them wasn't working even a little bit?

Different

For those of you who don't know, I just started graduate school this week. I'm studying Literacy and General Childhood Education.

Didn't know I was interested in teaching?

Funny. I'm not sure how well I knew it either not that long ago.

Tonight was my second class of the semester, and in tonight's class (called Child Development), we each had to talk to the person sitting next to us for five minutes and then introduce that person to the class. I was sitting in a spot where there were three of us, not two, and both women I spoke to for those five minutes are career changers. They both are probably at least ten years older than me (if not more) and have several children. I felt very young talking to them, and in some ways, I didn't feel young at all.

"You know," I said to them. "I'm not a career changer, but I did have a very different idea of what I'd be doing after college not that long ago."

"Really?" one of the women asked.

"Yeah. Ever since I was in high school, really, I applied and applied and applied to internships and jobs in the publishing world. I was sure that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with books. But at a certain point, I just wasn't getting a job in publishing. So after some serious rethinking, I'm here. But imagine if I had gotten a job in publishing. My life already would be so different, and would go in such a different direction."

"Yeah, it's funny, the paths our lives take," said the same woman.

"Yeah..." mused the other.

Sometimes I do wonder if I was never supposed to go into publishing in the first place, if it was sort of on purpose that I never got offered a job in a publishing house. When I attend my graduate school classes, when I sit in the library for three hours straight reading for class...I can't even describe what that feels like. You won't believe me. You'll think I'm over-exaggerating. But...I'm not. I'm really not. Every single second I'm there...I'm filled with this intense feeling of...rightness. I am doing the right thing. I am in the right place. I have set foot on a path where I know I can make a difference in people's lives concerning something I am passionate about. This is where I'm supposed to be. Not behind a desk at a publishing house.

Do I sound completely crazy to you?

But imagine how different things would be if just one place had offered to hire me? Just one? In all those years of applying.

Imagine how different my life would be if Stern had never put on a bizarre student-written play some years ago. Imagine if the Commentator had never written a blasting review of that play. Imagine if I had been too lazy to attend a random meeting of the drama society and heard Chana talk about her blog. Imagine if I had never, on a whim that night, decided to start my own blog.

Imagine if Ezzie had never started talking to me on gchat. Imagine if he had never invited me for Thanksgiving. Imagine if SJ and Fudge had never brought me there. Imagine if I hadn't stayed for Shabbos.

Imagine if SJ and I had not had all the same classes a few years ago in Stern. Imagine if The Apple and I had not been in fencing class together. Imagine if I had not decided to stay in Latin class as an only student. Imagine if I had not been an English Major.

Imagine if I had gone to Queens College.

Imagine how each decision, even small ones, how each chance encounter (if you believe in chance encounters), even seemingly unimportant ones, shape our lives so completely. How they've shaped my life.

Who would I be today if even one of those things was different? Or hadn't happened?

What if I'd never had an utterly boring job two summers ago and hadn't started writing a story and emailing the segments? Would I still be in the middle of a book right now? Would it be this book?

There are so many other factors in my life that could be different if it weren't for small things I decided to do, small risks I decided to take, small encounters I had. It's a crazy thing to think about.

I'm so happy with the way my life is turning out. I love my friends - the ones I didn't even know until a few years ago. I love all my old friends, too. I love what I'm doing. I love where I'm going. I love what I'm writing. I love what I've already written. I love that when I'm not reading or writing or in school, I'm doing things like playing the flute or attempting to illustrate things I've written.

And none of those things would be there if it weren't for the small things that have, in the words of Robert Frost, made all the difference. Really.

Imagine how different all of our lives could be if it were not for the small decisions, the chance encounters, the tiny interactions that begin beautiful friendships and relationships, that start us off on paths not only towards desirable goals, but where the paths themselves are such amazing places to be walking along.

I love life.

One Step Forward

It feels like the end of this year signifies a step forward for most people I know. Of my own peer group, we've graduated college. A close friend of mine just got a job. Another close friend of mine is going to have her first baby. Two good friends are getting married this month. My brother is starting YU in the fall. And my sister graduated high school today.

A huge mazel tov goes to Trademark and my cousins Tree and F1 all on their high school graduations.

Trademark graduated from my old high school and it was kind of funny to notice how not much had changed. The girls were different. Hair styles were different. One of the assistant principals was different. But...that was about it.

When Trademark wanted to take a picture with the principal afterward, the principal asked me to be in the picture, too. She wished me luck in figuring out what my next step in life will be, as though not a day had passed since I had been one of her students.

It seems a lot of people get mazel tovs this summer. So mazel tov to you all.

It also seems as though lots of people are taking one distinctive step forward in life. I wish all of you much hatzlacha in all that you will face and, knowing you guys, I know you'll all handle everything with poise, grace, firmness, seriousness, and humor (yes, all of those together). I believe that if you smile at the world, the world will smile back at you. And yet none of you are too frivolous. You take your lives seriously, but with a smile all the same. Kol hakavod and may you continue to be wonderful people and excel at life.

Starting Out On A Journey

I am officially done with school.

Ever.

(Or maybe not ever, but for now.)

Last night was my last night as the Apple's roommate. In fact, it was my last night as part of TBA (what I nicknamed our apartment on my blog way back in the beginning of the year. I believe it stands for "The Best Apartment" - not very original, I know). But not even, because M.R. had already left.

Last night, the Apple and I talked a bit until we were nearly asleep (that didn't take very long, seeing as we were both exhausted from packing and transporting luggage). When I shut the lamp, I thought to myself, "These last few seconds before I fall asleep are my last few seconds as a member of this apartment. When I wake up in the morning, my time at Stern will really be over." While I was still the Apple's roommate, it was like school was still in session, even though there were no more classes. I was still a part of my Stern experience. Now I'm home for Shabbos and any return to the Stern premises will be as a graduate.

Truthfully, I do have one more night in my apartment at Stern. D2 and I are packing our stuff on motzei Shabbos and leaving Sunday morning. But it will be just us. We will be the last ones to say goodbye to The Apartment.

...And then we, and everyone else, will go on together to the next stage of our lives.

What's both nice and strange at the same time is that we're not saying goodbye to each other. We're going to be seeing each other next year. This is not like the end of the year in Israel when people go off to their respective colleges in various different states or countries or even continents. Those people you really need to say goodbye to. But not my friends now. We're still going to be together in some ways, but...differently. I don't know what it will be like but it doesn't feel lonely.

D2, Chana, SJ, M.R., and the Apple,

This year, there were struggles, triumphs, difficult moments, awesome moments...but you guys have been amazing apartment mates.

At the start of this year, I wrote a post on beginnings. Well, now we're all facing a new kind of beginning. It's the beginning of a path in a completely different walk of life. But I think we're not alone on that path. It's one we don't know well at all, yet we are not walking it in solitude, even as we are also all doing different things next year.

There's a song from the end of the movie Anastasia that I love. It's meant to be a love song really, but I think it can really apply to any sort of close relationship - especially a deep-rooted friendship that will help each of us face whatever journey we have up ahead.



As I step wistfully out of one stage and nervously, but not unhappily, into the next, I take with me everything my time at Stern College for Women has provided me with. In a way, I am the same person I always was, except I'm being that person in a different way. It's slightly confusing. But refreshing, in a way. It's exciting to feel like I can possibly do something important with my life outside of the comfortable school cocoon.

So thank you, Stern College.

This post feels somewhat awkward, but I guess some things are hard to say, let alone say with elegance.

This blog will no longer be the records of a girl in college. Now it will be something else. Perhaps it will be more important to me than ever to write about what happens to me. My life suddenly feels like it's one big surprise.

I suppose we shall see what happens come tomorrow.

Reflections Of An English Major

Some coast through college as though it is just a current tugging them along to graduation and then spitting them out into the "real world."

Others endure college because it is a practical guide for skills they can later use to make money, but they are not interested in wasting their time with studying anything impractical in that venue.

But there are also some who really use college as a time for personal growth. While this is not mutually exclusive from the first two categories, I do believe it deserves its own category anyway.

Someone who takes her English major seriously cannot possibly escape college without reaching a sort of self-knowledge she did not have before. Part of studying literature is studying yourself. A true English major gains an awareness of what she is doing. There is a certain kind of carefulness with which she learns to approach texts and, as an extension of that, the rest of the world.

Not all books are literature. The thing is, many people separate "popular fiction" with "high art literature." But literature is not synonymous with "high art." The way I like to understand it, though this is not my own idea, what makes something literature is its ability to be both good writing and exist on the same plane as its reader. There is not the book that is somehow on a pedestal higher than the reader, but rather the reader is able to take the book and see herself in its writing. That should not be confused with seeing herself in the characters. A real piece of literature is one that lasts through time and exists as its own entity, not dependent on a time period or a piece of background knowledge. You don't have to know anything about the author, about the time period, about the subject matter other than what is written in the book. It is writing that can speak to readers a hundred years ago, today, and a hundred years from now.

As my teacher put it: "It becomes literature the moment you enter the picture."

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a post about calling myself a writer. The crux of the post is that I find it somewhat absurd to go around calling myself a writer when I don't have any spectacular piece of writing to prove I deserve such an identity:

...by speaking the words I am a writer, I am effectively giving myself the title of, well, Writer, and I guess I just feel rather pretentious doing so. Because I'm not really a writer. I have nothing to show for being a writer. Its more like I fancy myself a writer.

But is the identity of "writer" really reserved for those who churn out bestsellers every year? Or is there some other way to be a writer? Is that kind of activity really writing?

I think that true writing requires a kind of consciousness of what you are doing, regardless of whether you get anything published or not. It's not like once you publish something, you are hereafter known as a writer. You can publish twenty books a year and not be truly writing. Or you can publish nothing but spend your energy really concentrating on what you are writing, how you write, and the fact that you are writing at all. Thinking about whether or not you are a true writer is indicative of a certain kind of attention that all true writers require.

After spending so much time and effort on doing this kind of work - four years of it, in fact - it's weird to feel like you are now walking away. Moving on. Enriched, perhaps, but somehow...leaving something behind. I don't even know what it is that I'm leaving behind, but it definitely feels like something.

It's weird to feel like I could have put so much more effort into my major, that I could have grown even more, that I could have achieved so much more. There's so much I was exposed to that I didn't properly soak in. And I know, you're not supposed to live in the past. You have to move forward. And I know you don't stop learning once you leave college.

But that doesn't mean it's hard to feel like I'm graduating a major that I did not take full advantage of.

The world may say that an English major is impractical. It may insist that English majors are wasting their time, ruining the economy, getting a BA in the Useless Members of Society club, and not gaining any real skills that matter outside of book clubs.

All that may be as true or not true as you decide.

But English majors also spend their time gaining an understanding of themselves and of other people. And the more they understand and work on themselves, the more they can understand and have an effect on the world.

I believe there's a R' Salanter quote about that. :)

That is the gift four years of studying literature and writing brings. So, no matter how useless my skills might be upon leaving college, I will never regret having been an English major. No other concentration could have given me a richer education.

It's just odd to think that the struggle in this environment is now over, yet I am not finished growing. I have a better understanding of what makes good writing, but can I do it? Can I take on the mantle of being my own teacher? Or will I slip into the routine of "real life" the way most people do and wake up thirty years from now wondering when I'll have time to start reading, thinking, and writing again the way I did back in my good ol' college days? How do I know I have the strength and determination to take control of my life instead of letting life's pressures and expectations take control of me?

Thoughts and Things I've Learned

More than any other schooling experience, my time at Stern has been a real journey. Through the teachers, the classes, and friends both in and out of school, I have been molded, and perhaps molded myself, into a richer, more mature, more self-assured person.

One of the first things I've had to learn was not to compare myself to anyone else. Someone else's success is not my failure. In fact, it has nothing at all to do with me, even if I did not "get" whatever the other person "got." Regardless of what any other person gets or how far any other person goes in any pursuit, I can only get as far and do as well as my efforts and talents allow.

The more you look at what other people are doing in comparison to what you are doing, the more negative feelings you will conjure up towards that other person. Trust me, it's not at all worth it. Feeling those things won't change anything. All it will do is make you frustrated and annoyed at both the other person and yourself. You'll resent the other person for doing well and you'll resent yourself for not performing to your potential and for feeling resentful towards your friend.

Yeah, it's frustrating not to get as good a grade as you want, especially if a friend does better than you in school. It's disappointing, and even somewhat depressing, to wish to get chosen for something and get passed over in favor of your friend. Such things bring competition into places where there should be none. But when such things happen, instead of looking at yourself and feeling resentful about all you're lacking, it's good to realize that you do have talents and that you have a lot more to go in order to reach your potential.

On that note, you always have the chance to grow more in your talents and stretch out your hand farther towards your potential. A grade is not a brand marking you forever as the limit of your abilities. There is always room and opportunity to strive for higher accomplishments. So you don't succeed today. That's okay. There's always tomorrow. Or next week. Or next year. Or even the next decade. Today might be someone else's moment, but one day it will be yours, too.

Something else I learned is to stand behind my own words. After all, if I don't stand by myself, who will? If I don't feel confident in what I'm saying, why should anyone take me seriously? Or believe in my ability to get anywhere or accomplish anything? If I write disclaimers before all my stories, it means I don't believe in my own writing! Am I going to be afraid of showing myself to the world forever? Or am I going to stand up and be confident that my opinions count, too, and that they're just as valid as anyone else's?

Sometimes people say things about you that aren't necessarily true or super accurate. Sometimes you even say things about yourself that aren't exactly accurate just to please or pacify someone else. But why should you? Why shouldn't you stand true to who you are?

I'm pretty intimidated about leaving the safety of school and stepping out into the "real" world. No matter what anyone says about the difference between the different stages of schooling (elementary, high school, college) or how on your own you are throughout school, there is always, always, always a difference between being in school and not being in school anymore. School is a place we all know by heart. We are all experts on The System. We can hold that system in our hands and mold it like clay to fit our needs. It's a system we've run around in, tripped over, and learned to balance just right. We know where all the lines are and just how far to push them. We know where we stand when we're in school - any school.

But I don't know the system outside of school. I don't know what is expected of me, where the lines are, or if I can even push them a centimeter. School is like a maze that we can feel our way through instinctively until, suddenly, it is not a maze any longer but a series of passages - some that are well known and some that are secret only to ourselves.

The outside world, to me, does not seem like a series of passages at all. From afar, it looks like a vast, seamless ocean of...a lot going on. There are new rules, new lines. It's a totally new game. I feel like I'm being pushed into the middle of a game of capture the flag and I haven't even been told who's on what team.

But the thing is, when you don't know the rules, if you know yourself then that's at least a start. If you don't know yourself or what you're getting into, that's tricky. Then you could be completely molded by whatever choices you make. Of course, you're always going to be somewhat colored by the environment you're in, but having a strong idea of who you are, what you like, what you believe in, what you approve of, what you wish to stay away from...that can help bring some direction, probably. At least - then you won't lose yourself in the vastness of possibilities that are out there. Or, it makes me feel better about it, anyway.

One last thing I'd like to write about here is facing the world with a positive attitude. I have so many friends who either always seem to be in a good mood or who don't let bad things bring them down. I admire them so much for this. Something I'm really working on is not letting things get to me, or get to me enough that it ruins my whole positive perspective on life. I really believe that if you face the world with a smile, the world will smile back. It's just something I have to learn how to do better.

Anyway, I don't mean for this post to hit anyone over the head with lessons. These are merely things that I have found valuable, but of course each person is different and each will find different kinds of inspiration and different ways to bring meaning and purpose into their lives.

And no, that was not a disclaimer. :P

My Own Way

Tonight there was a pre-graduation ceremony at Stern which recognized certain individuals for their achievement and character. One of those people was a teacher who I am taking now for the fourth semester. In fact, I have taken every single one of the classes she teaches at Stern.

What I loved about the way she spoke was how natural it was. She was truly speaking from the heart. I was grinning the entire time she spoke and really felt proud to be her student. I was truly, truly happy for her and could not have felt more strongly that she is one of the best teachers in the school. Nothing was clearer when she spoke than that she genuinely deserves her awards.

Afterward, another professor who won an award spoke. This was a professor who actually teaches Speech, yet his own speech was not at all as striking as the first teacher's. He read off a paper and there wasn't very much meaning behind his words. It was almost like he considered such a thing to be routine. I didn't detect real feeling, or even any real thoughts. Anything he said that could have been meaningful came across as flat.

That was one thing I noticed. There is such a thing as being too prepared. This might sound cliche, or cheesy, and I've been told this more than once before, but seeing it in action made me realize how true it is: what comes from the heart, goes to the heart. You can write a speech and memorize it and know it perfectly, and there might even be some really important things in there, but if you don't really feel what you're saying - forget about smiling, forget about posture, forget about projecting or any other tips people give you about speaking - if you don't feel it, no one else will, either. The speech won't seem real. It'll just seem over-rehearsed, or like you don't care. And if you do put all your emotion behind what you're saying - if it really comes from within you - all the other stuff will come naturally. You'll speak up. You'll stand straight. You'll smile. You'll look the audience in the eye because you'll really want to be saying what you're saying. And you'll want them to know it.

The other thing I noticed was that when the second professor was speaking, he spoke about his subject. Speech. Drama. He spoke about his subject and then he applied it to life. God created the world with speech. Through speech, we can grow.

As he was speaking, I thought about how he sees the world through the lens of his subject. Meanwhile, my literature and philosophy teacher sees the world through the lens of her subject. She has been helping me with my thesis, been guiding my mind all year through complex philosophical ideas, and has helped shape the way I see writing and some of the way I approach life. But that doesn't mean her way is the only way. In fact, I don't always agree with her way of seeing things.

But when people are so invested in one idea, that seems to be the only idea they see as truly valid. Oh sure, they'll tell you other people have other ideas that work for them, but they don't really believe those ideas are as good, do they? Otherwise, why would they be so invested in a different idea?

So I thought about the point of being exposed to all these kinds of people. Why be pushed around in various directions? When taking this teacher, I'm told to see the world one way. When taking another, I have to adjust to see the world a different way. And for a third teacher, I have to reorient my ideas yet again. So which way is correct? What am I supposed to be learning? What have I gotten out of my time in college?

And I realized that what I got is the opportunity to do my own thinking. I don't think you realize you're doing your own thinking until after you've thought a lot. Suddenly, you find yourself rejecting certain ideas, latching onto others, and tweaking others to construct your own way of seeing the world.

Just because someone is older than you and knows more than you doesn't mean that person is wiser, or that that person has the only correct way of doing things. There are different kinds of wisdom, too. There is an intellectual sort of wisdom, where you can take ideas and understand their complexities. Teachers who really make you think can have that. But there's also another kind of wisdom. There's the wisdom of knowing yourself, knowing what works for you, knowing yourself in relation to others, knowing others in general, and having a feel for the world around you.

I think being open minded to ideas is a kind of wisdom. It's recognizing the worth in certain ideas, yet not getting pigeonholed into thinking only one way of life really works best.

Yet, even so, you can still have a favorite way of approaching things. And perhaps that's what these teachers have. Maybe it's not that they see their way as best, but just as the way they prefer best. So perhaps I've been wrong all along about that.

As might be apparent, graduating from college does not mean my education is finished. We've always got to be learning and growing or we would all stagnate as productive human beings. I mean that in the sense of both being productive in the world and also being productive for ourselves. We have to be interested in our own self-improvement and self-growth. If not, why be a part of the world?

As R' Yisroel Salanter says, in order for the world to change, you have to first change yourself. If you work on yourself, if you try to become a better person, then your relation to the world will change, too.

If you're not invested in your own self, then in what can you invest? Truly invest, I mean. It's you, not anyone else, who is going to ultimately make you a better person. And it's you who is going to most impact your own world. Everyone else provides guides, hindrances, support, waylays. Some give you great gifts. Some hurt you terribly. But each experience is for you to take from it what you will and use what you take productively towards your personal growth.

I believe that once you start growing and shaping yourself into who you really wish to be, only then can you truly stand up straight and face the world. And when I'm ready to face the world, I don't want to seem over-rehearsed. I want to do it with my whole heart.

Why I Will Not Make A Good Gofer

This morning, I was about to leave for the caf when D2 said to me, "Oh, Erachet, are you going to get breakfast?"

"Yep."

"Do you think you can get me a cup of coffee?"

I hesitated. Coffee was not the sort of thing I was much experienced in. In fact, I had never made a cup of coffee before in my life.

"Sure...but I don't really know how..."

"Oh, it's easy! Okay? I'm going to explain it to you."

"Okay."

"Okay," said D2, and began slowly. "You take a cup. Then you fill it up about this much with coffee. Then you place it under the milk thing and fill it up some more with milk. Then you put two sugars in."

"Okay," I said. "I can probably do that."

So I went to the caf and, before I knew it, there I was standing in front of the coffee counter. I had never paid much attention to it before. I stared at it for a moment, D2's instructions suddenly becoming incredibly complicated.

I couldn't find a place where you get coffee from. There was a big urn that said "Caution: Hot Water" on it. Then there was a machine with three different kinds of milk. Three! Next to that was another machine with spouts for either cappuccino, french vanilla, or hot chocolate.

Okay. First thing first. Take a cup. I can do that, right?

I started to reach for a cup and then hesitated. There were two different kinds. Did D2 want a large cup? Or a small one? I tried to remember if she had specified but, my mind blanking on me, I had to use my own judgment. I figured I'd get her a large.

Large cup in hand, I then tried to decide which of the three flavors on the machine could one possibly mean when asking for "coffee." Clearly, the answer was not hot chocolate. Was it cappuccino? French vanilla? I had absolutely no idea and, after two whole minutes of deliberation, I stuck the cup under the spout labeled "cappuccino" and tried my luck.

After the cup was about 3/4 full, I decided it was full enough and went over to the milk. Here was another complication. Did D2 want whole milk? Skim milk? 1%? At home we get 1% milk so I figured that was safe.

As I was adding the milk, another girl looked at me with keen interest. "Is that good, what you do? Cappuccino and milk?"

I felt a little startled. Was there something wrong?

"I-I have no idea," I stammered, trying to sound like I knew what I was doing. "This is for someone else."

But something about her question made me think I had made a mistake. When she then took a small cup, put it under the "Caution: Hot Water" urn, and brown liquid came out, I knew I had completely messed up.

I decided to skip the two packets of sugar and instead covered the cup and brought it back to my apartment.

After having gotten wrong the size of the cup, the milk, and the coffee, D2 later told me she'd give me coffee-making lessons.

Thesis Poetry

This is sort of like Finals Poetry, only slightly different. I'm going to write it on behalf of nearly everyone in my apartment who is writing a thesis. (Although I had a post some time ago saying I was done, I merely meant "with a complete draft." It is still being edited and all that.)

Ahem.

I do not like my thesis-
Though it seems to like me.
I really need to finish it--
It will not let me be!

It bugs me when I'm eating
And when I'm sleeping, too.
It prods me when I'm reading
Or even at the zoo.

This stupid thing won't go away.
It's hateful and annoying.
Its unrequited love for me
Is burdensome and cloying.

Do not believe I get this way
With all who come to court.
It's just this thesis I can't stand--
I wish it would abort!

I've started writing now and, well,
The topic's quite appealing.
But I still hate my thesis so,
'Cause all my time it's stealing.

The only way to make it stop
Is facing it like rivals.
And then as rivals we shall join
Towards both of our survivals.

For if I end up well and sane,
Then so will what I'm writing.
So I guess I should get to work,
So we can stop this fighting.

P.S. To my dear thesis, I aver--
I'll always think of you as GRRR.
But in a loving sort of way,
Okay? :)

Ahem

I have finished my senior thesis.

(!!!!!!!!!)

Regrouping

You know when you feel like you've had a stressful week and then you realize it's only Tuesday?

I started this week off on the wrong foot. I was ill and up all night Saturday night/Sunday morning, grumpy and tired all day Sunday, had a stressful meeting with a professor on Monday, was up all night Monday working, and then tired, grumpy, and stressed out on Tuesday.

Today is Tuesday.

Today my thesis was due.

I did not hand it in today.

Sometimes, after a few days like that, you just need to crash. You need to not do any more schoolwork and just chill out for a little while. All day today I felt like I couldn't take a break because I had to finish my thesis by 4:40. At 4:40, I figured I still had until five (this was when my Senior Thesis class usually met). At 6:30, I felt like the whole thing was sort of a lost cause. And now, at 9:30, I decided I need to just forget about my thesis for the rest of the night. I need to ease my mind and go to bed early. I need to smile about things and feel good and not let anything get to me.

Sometimes you work really hard on something and, when you're done, you still know it's not your best work. It's despairing because after all that hard effort, something ought to be your best, oughtn't it? But yet you read it and feel that it's not very good, and then you feel bad about yourself because you put your all into it and yet, somehow, that wasn't really your all. Either that or your all isn't really very good.

But now is not the time to think of those things. Now is the time to chill out and thank God for giving you wonderful friends (both those who cheer you up and those who help you out), funny blogs, and mindless youtube videos.

What Happens When...

You have two midterms the day after you get back from Israel?

...Ouch.

There is this odd thrill in going in to take a test without preparing for it. Sure, sure, I've tried to study. I can't focus. My head is too foggy. It's too foggy for me to feel properly stressed, too, which is a good thing. Part of me is still in Israel, part of me is still stuck on an airplane (when you've got two big airplane trips in such close proximity to each other, you just sort of always think you're on an airplane. I thought I was still on the plane today while in the caf. I didn't want to eat anything because I felt too claustrophobic from the plane), and part of me is back in school wondering why I feel so confused and disoriented.

It's sort of like I stepped out of the world for a few days and now I'm back.

Hello everyone!

Freilichen Purim And Happy Birthday (Again)!

A few weeks ago, I wished a happy birthday to my little brother Mavis. The thing is...it's his birthday again!

Mavis, as I mentioned in the earlier post, was born on Purim. I already wrote about what it was like the day he was born. But I didn't go into much detail about his bar mitzvah, which we celebrated on his actual birthday - Purim.

He read megillah that morning in shul (and was amazing. I'm not just saying that because I'm his sister. People came up to us afterward and asked why my brother wasn't in the Yeshiva Boys Choir) and afterward he was having a party (costumes optional) about two minutes away. Various boys (Straight Man's friends mostly) were driving Mavis's friends from shul to the party. In fact, everyone was so concerned about getting all the guests there...we all sort of forgot that Mavis needed a ride, as well. I guess everyone assumed he'd be getting there somehow - that it wasn't up to them to figure out how. After all, he was the bar mitzvah boy, right?

Mavis ended up having to go over to another one of the guests who hadn't left shul yet and asking if he could please have a ride to his bar mitzvah.

The party itself was majorly fun, especially since my family was all dressed up in period costumess (colonial and stuff).

The chagiga tonight was also really fun. Highlights were:

• A girl wearing a sign that said, "Bernie Madoff stole my costume."
• A girl dressed up as a michlala girl - humongous poof and all.
• Zimri and Kozbi (that one was a little bit gross).

I sort of love it when people dress up as random things from Tanach. I think it's hilarious and so clever.

On the bus ride back, I discovered that I do have the abilitiy to sit next to a random person and talk. So I am not hopeless in social situations, after all! How relieving. (Joke.)

Also - I'm going to Israel tomorrow (what?!). For a wedding. I know, it's random and kinda weird and I'm missing two days of school and coming back to two midterms and a senior thesis, but what can you do? When a best friend from childhood gets married, everything else seems to get put on hold. Sort of. Not as much when it's in a different country across the ocean and you sort of aren't really sure that it's actually happening and won't be sure until after it's over when you say to yourself, "...Whoa. Was I just in Israel?" And even then, you're still not sure. Best to take pictures so you can prove it to yourself.

This post is random enough, I might as well end it with a Purim Torah joke. I used to know lots of these because the Rabbi of my fourth grade class gave us a whole sheet of them, but I only remember a few and only one of those that I remember is actually funny (in my opinion. Not laugh out loud funny. Just cute. They're all rather groan-worthy, really).

How do you know that Vashti was fat?*

In sixth grade, I remember we made fun of the Purim tape by going around saying in squeaky, whiny voices, "Vashtiiii...bring me a cup of caw-fee...!!!"

Anyway, I must go to sleep now, but happy birthday (again) to Mavis and a Purim Sameach to all my readers!!! That includes the lurkers, too! :)

*'Cause Vashti astah mishteh nashim! (Vashti was made of two women! [the real translation is Vashti made a feast for women])

Whose Life Is It Anyway?

I don't know how many of you recognize the name Malcolm Gladwell, but he has written some pretty popular books lately. If you've heard of The Tipping Point - that was his. One of his books, which people say is not as amazing as The Tipping Point, is called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. When I first read it, I liked the ideas but I wasn't particularly impressed by them. I thought, "this is natural. Why is he telling me about something I already do naturally? What new thing have I learned?"

What I didn't realize was that I was learning without even knowing it.

One of the stories in Blink is about a mock-war the United States government had once in order to test out some strategies before going into real war. They split themselves up into the blue team and the red team - the red team being the enemy (I think). The blue team - run by the government - used all its technology to discover everything about the red team so it could predict just what the red team would do in a given situation. The red team - run by an old war general - decided not to figure out anything about the blue team but worked on using initiative and innovation to approach situations as they arose. In this way, they created a gap in which to be creative rather than applying pre-planned strategies onto anything they might face. The problem with pre-planned strategies is that they don't take into account every circumstance in a situation, and even if they do, they don't give you room to think on your own. In order to use your own, best judgment, you have to approach a situation without any extra knowledge. Sometimes knowing a lot is knowing too much and that can hold you back. You have to see each thing as the thing itself, not as everything else about it that is irrelevent to the specific situation at hand. You can use what you know, but if you know too much, all that information gets in the way of dealing with what is actually happening before you.

Consequently, even though the blue team knew everything about the red team, the red team was able to use its judgment, creativity, and improvisation to win.

If you've ever read the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, it deals with the same concept. Ender is a young, inexperienced leader of an army in battle school, yet he manages to win all of his battles against the older, more experienced teams because he realizes this very thing. He understands that getting stuck in strategy and formation every time you approach a battle restricts your ability to think on your feet. You're so busy thinking about which strategy to apply, you don't see that none of your strategies really fit the given situation and that you actually have to try something new - and what's more, you have to try something new now, in the moment. You come in knowing too much. You come in with this idea that if they try formation A, we'll do plan B, and if they try formation E, we'll try plan A. That works very well in simulated practice conditions, but in real battle, or in real life, situations and strategies don't match up exactly. You have to improvise. You have to be creative. You have to approach every situation as its own event, not as a kind of event. Because if you say, "I know what this is, it is this sort of event where these things happen in this way," you're imposing knowledge onto something that doesn't have to follow your rules. You won't be ready for it when it decides to do something completely different because you're still stuck in your own ideas of what it is and which strategy to approach it with. You are blinding yourself to actually seeing the thing itself for what it really is - as its own individual, unique situation.

Today in class, we were discussing the difference between something being strategic versus something being tactical. Something strategic, we said, creates a plan in advance in which it is going to approach an entire story, or even life as a whole. Something tactical, however, approaches each situation within the story, or within life, as its own thing. Being tactical means being improvisational. You use tactics in order to do something creative and new, adjusting yourself to each situation you come across.

When I was talking about this idea in class, I had this moment where I realized, "this is exactly what it talks about in Blink." Instead of talking about the piece we were reading, I started talking about Blink and that made it all so much clearer to me. Everything seemed to connect.

In a conversation I was having last night, we were talking about how a person can convince herself things are a certain way when in reality they're not, and that this mental block is completely self-built. That it is you who is blocking yourself off, not anyone else. This fits exactly with an idea in The Book of Think by Marilyn Burns. The first section of the book is called, "Getting Out of Your Own Way." The first piece of advice the book offers is, "thinking hard doesn't always work." Sometimes you find yourself in difficult situations and you feel like if you think hard enough, you'll get to the bottom of things. But often "getting to the bottom of things" is not at all helpful in actually dealing with the problem. You don't really have to know background to a problem or even why the problem arose in order to solve it. You might want to know what caused a problem so you can avoid it in the future, but that is something else. Often, like in Blink and in Ender's Game, knowing too much can get in the way of concentrating on what you actually need to know in order to deal with a situation.

Here are some more pieces of advice from The Book of Think:

1. "Sometimes you get in the way of your own brain. Your thinking gets stuck. Sometimes you build your own mental walls. Then you keep bumping into them."

This is just like when you pre-plan a strategy before actually facing a situation. You predict and assume and try to fit each situation into a box you already know how to deal with instead of actually looking at the situation. It's a good thing to demolish the walls and limitations you set on yourself by all that pre-strategizing and just trusting yourself that you can be creative and innovative in dealing with something new and unexpected. Most situations are going to have elements that are new and unexpected and you have to be able to deal with them.

2. "Keep looking at ordinary things. Look at them as if you're seeing them for the first time. You'll see lots of new things you've never looked at before."

So many things in this world are ordinary. Because of that, people easily dismiss them. People don't look at something ordinary because, according to them, there is nothing to see. They know what the ordinary thing is already. After all, it's ordinary. They've seen it before in a million forms but it's all the same thing. And because of that, they don't bother really looking at it as its own thing.

There is often - or even all the time - something extraordinary in the ordinary, and you don't even have to look deeper, past the thing itself, in order to find it. But you do have to look.

3. "Watch out for mental blinders. They'll get in the way of the problem solver every time. They often stop you from seeing out of the corner of your brain and solving the problem."

We set up these mental blinders. They come in the form of assumptions. We assume we know everything about a situation. We assume we know all about a person. We don't allow that gap of doubt to exist, and without that space in which there is room to doubt our assumptions, we don't allow ourselves to see past what we have already decided about something. That means we can never see anything new and that means we won't be able to approach something as what it really is - only as what we already decided it is.

This holds true for labeling people, for dealing with problems as they arise in life, or even for getting through a Literature class.

There is so much out there in the world that we're blinding ourselves to. There is so much that we block ourselves from seeing or achieving because we decided we can't do it. "I'm not the type who will succeed at that." "I can't do it, I'm only twenty-two and there's no way I have enough talent." "I'm not smart enough." Etc. etc. etc.

But we can do all these things. I don't think the American Dream is this ridiculous nonsense of, "if you try for your dreams, you will reach them and become rich." It's so much more than that. I think the real American Dream is the idea that possibilities are open to anyone, as long as you allow yourself to see those possibilities as applying to you. The only person who, in this country, decides you can't do something is you. You might not succeed, or you might not succeed by following the strategy you think is necessary in order to achieve your goals, but that doesn't mean there isn't a way at all. You just have to be creative. You can make that way for yourself.

Even if you don't live in America - this idea is not American. It's human. Every situation can be dealt with. There is always a way. Nothing is hopeless. It's only hopeless if you've convinced yourself that it is. "If you will it, it is no dream." - Theodor Herzl. And he wasn't American.

You can do anything. We can do anything. We just have to stop telling ourselves we can't based on our preconceived notions of what people can and cannot do or the way things can and cannot be.

Anything is possible. Be ready for it.

Snow Day?

Dear Stern College for Women,

I would like to bring to your attention the icy white fluffy things falling from the sky outside. If you look out your window, you will see what I mean. Lots of it has also piled up on the ground. This icy white fluffy stuff is called snow. For your convenience, I have provided in this letter the dictionary.com definition:

snow

–noun

1.	Meteorology. a precipitation in the form of ice crystals, mainly of intricately branched, hexagonal form and often agglomerated into snowflakes, formed directly from the freezing of the water vapor in the air. Compare ice crystals, snow grains, snow pellets.

2.	these flakes as forming a layer on the ground or other surface.

3.	the fall of these flakes or a storm during which these flakes fall.

It is general practice, when such white fluffiness descends from the heavens, to cancel school so we may enjoy these crystal-lattice precipitations, and so you may, too. This is especially the case when the rest of New York State is on holiday. There are certain customs one must perform when this amount of snow has fallen, including the crafting of snow men, the building of snow forts, and the throwing of snow balls - usually culminating in a snow fight. I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that you were unaware of such procedures and I have seen it as my duty to inform you of them. I hope we have no such trouble in the future - the future being this moment and onward. So I trust we won't have school the rest of the day?

Sincerely,
A Snow Day Deprived Student

A Different Kind Of IQ

(You may print this out to take or use a separate sheet of paper)

1. Read everything before doing anything.

2. Put your name in the upper right hand corner.

3. Circle the word “name” in sentence 12.

4. Write the date in all capital letters in the upper left corner of this page.

5. Draw five small squares under your name.

6. Put an X in each square you drew.

7. Put a circle around each square.

8. Put a circle around all of sentence 7.

9. Put an X under your last name.

10. On the back of this paper multiply 733 by 419.

11. Draw a rectangle around the larger of the two numbers in sentence 10.

12. Loudly call out your first name when you read this so your teacher can see who got this far.

13. If you think you have followed directions carefully up to this point, call out, “I have!”

14. On the back of this page, add 109.34, 1984 and 8965.

15. Put a circle around your answer, then a square.

16. Count from one to ten backward in a normal speaking voice.

17. Punch three small holes in the top of this page with your pencil point.

18. If you are the first person to get this far, call out, “I am number one!”

19. Write the numbers from 1 to 10 on the line. Underline all even numbers.

20. Say aloud, “I am almost finished.”

21. Now that you have finished reading carefully, do only sentences 1 and 2.


...If you have failed this test, I highly recommend you try paying more attention to directions. :)

The Problem With Math

The problem with math begins as soon as you decide you are an English person. All of a sudden, you find yourself aligned with the English/History/Humanities group and anything number-related, by default, has now become your arch-nemesis.

"I hate math!" I remember declaring to myself and to anyone who would listen. At one point, I had read a book in which the main character, upon starting middle school, hated both math and her math teacher. I figured that was what one was supposed to do when starting middle school, so my entrance to seventh grade was also the beginning of my real math aversion. I don't remember having real difficulties with math before, but suddenly math was most definitely not my thing. I would argue every little point with my teacher, trying to prove how it just didn't make sense. The truth was, some of this was genuine math/english friction. It wasn't that I couldn't do math, it was that I didn't like not understanding what I was doing. I didn't like meaningless formulas. And my teacher never sufficiently explained what things meant. I kept asking her how it was possible to multiply something by a negative number - especially multiplying two negative numbers and coming out with a positive. It didn't make sense to me to have negative five and then multiply that not ten times and come out with fifty! Huh?!*

In eighth grade, the girl who sat behind me asked if she could cheat off of me during a test. I remember being incredibly baffled. Cheat off of me? But I hate math! Math is not my thing. Do I have to make it any clearer? You will not get the right answers if you cheat off of me. Aside from the fact that I'm vehemently against cheating, the idea of cheating off of me in math seemed like sheer idiocy!**

I have no idea how well I actually did in math. I just know that I hated it.

...Except I didn't really hate it. I didn't have any particular issues with it. In tenth grade, I even allowed myself to like logic proofs. I loved logic. It was my favorite part of math.

In eleventh grade, I actually did hate math. For real this time. We were doing trig and for those of you who suffered through trig as I did, you'll probably know what I mean when I say that it frustrated me to not be able to understand what a sine, cosine, or tangent was. And when I asked, I didn't want some equation thrown at me. I wanted a real answer. I did not like having to use some button on a calculator I did not at all understand in order to figure out things I didn't even care about. Who cared about any of that stuff anyway? Certainly not me. When would I ever need to figure out the sine of something in real life? What the heck does a sine even mean?

That is why I loathed trig.

This past summer, I went to visit D2 in the city and we got into a whole long discussion about infinity. I found it all fascinating. I even remember saying it would make such a great blog post. To that, D2 replied, "it's all calculus."

...What?!

That confused me. Here was an English major who hated math her whole life (with the exception of logic proofs, of course) and now she was involved in an extremely fascinating discussion about calculus. How?!?!

You know, I think a lot of things we think we don't like are things that we possibly just don't understand. Either we had a bad teacher or we weren't ready to learn something yet or we went in with a prejudice that we weren't supposed to like something. You ever have that? You go into a class where most people don't like the teacher and you find yourself kind of liking her but you keep it to yourself because, I mean, no one likes her, why on earth do you? Or how about, for the English people out there, if you've ever read a book when you were younger, hated it, read it again in college and loved it? I know that's happened to me more than once. Just because you have the capabilities to read more mature books at a young age doesn't mean you have the maturity to properly approach the issues it deals with. That's why it's good sometimes to shed your prejudices from when you were younger and come at something old with new eyes. You'll be surprised how your understanding and opinions might change.

I'm not saying I all of a sudden like math. I'm just saying that teachers, circumstance, and maturity have a lot to do with what we like and don't like as a kid. And sometimes that can change when we're older. Sometimes we think we don't like something because we've convinced ourselves we don't, but we haven't really given it a chance, in truth. As our understandings of the world change, I think it's good to give old things a new try. In general. (No, I don't want to start doing math. I'm just using it to make a point.)

*Actually, now I think I get it. If you owe five dollars, that's -5, so if you don't owe five dollars ten times, you end up with fifty dollars more than if you had owed five dollars ten times. Yeah?

**Also, if a person was going to cheat off of me, I would not want to know about it. I hate cheating, and what's more, there's nothing in it for me to move my paper on a desk so the girl behind me can see it except the possibility of getting caught. But I think cheating is absolutely vile and I don't understand how a person could live with herself if she hasn't really achieved by her own merit the grades and accomplishments people judge her by. It's good for your self-worth not to cheat, not to think you have to use someone else as a crutch in order to achieve. You can do it on your own if you put in the effort. Really.

Misrepresented

I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday about geneivas daas. We got to talking about the rather dishonest feeling you can have as a student when you know you didn't complete all the work for a class and yet you still get an A. Now, granted, you don't always know what you're getting an A for - maybe the teacher was grading you more on your paper writing skills than on whether or not you actually completed all the reading for class. Either way, though, it still feels wrong to get a grade you don't think you deserve (although, of course, most students wouldn't go up to a teacher and say, "Um, I actually didn't complete all the work for the class so can you please lower my grade?) - though is that on the student or on the teacher? Teachers claim they aren't stupid - that they're aware of everything that goes on in the classroom.

So what we talked about next was - what if a teacher is a very easy grader? I've gotten A's on essays before where I felt it wasn't deserved. Does that mean I'm a harsher grader than my own teachers? What if I would not have given myself an A? The grade seems cheap, unearned, misrepresentative of my capabilities. It makes me feel like either the teacher has very low expectations or she doesn't think I can do any better but is too nice and wants me to do well in the class. Or perhaps I just have extremely high expectations of myself?

But then that affects my GPA. So now I have A's in classes where I would not necessarily have given myself an A. Sure, I was able to play the system and do the minimal amount of work possible while still doing well. But, deep down, I don't feel I deserved such grades. (By the way, I'm not talking about every class - I'm not that bad a student! Just a few here and there.) So if I apply somewhere and they see a transcript that I don't feel is a fair representation of me...is that geneivas daas on the teacher's part? To raise my overall GPA by giving out easy A's? Some teacher do that for the whole class - they can't bear to give anyone too low of a grade.

I will say this, to all the many teachers out there reading my blog (...joke), you're only hurting your students by giving away A's so freely. In the classes where I know I can get away with doing almost nothing and still do well, I'm not motivated to do very much. It's the tough classes, the ones that really push me, that I actually learn in. Though I suppose that's a different point.

My point is - it's geneivas daas on the student to pretend she did the work when she didn't. But is it geneivas daas on the teacher to give out A's so easily? Isn't that how grade inflation came about, anyway?

A Thirst Unquenched

Have you ever had it happen to you that you just wished you knew more? That you felt it was futile to express opinions about something because you were so acutely aware of how little you knew and you just weren't in the mood to be shot down by those who knew more than you?

I've always had this insurmountable desire to know everything. I would walk into a library and be overcome by all the books I still haven't read. How could I possibly read anything twice? How was there time when there were so many things I hadn't yet read once? And what about Torah? There is so much I never formally learned in school. There is so much more to know. How can I ever learn it all? How can I ever prioritize what I want to know? I can step inside the Beit Midrash at Stern and feel the weight of all that I don't yet know and ought to know pressing down - so much so that I just don't learn any of it. And Torah, more than literature, is something I feel I must know, and I am so self-conscious of all that I don't.

There was a point in time during my early semesters at Stern where I thought I was going to minor in History. I've always found History fascinating and I immensely enjoy listening to a professor teach it. The problem is that I also never did well in history. I was bad at memorizing all the names and dates, especially so many at once. I'm quite good at remembering history in the context of literature, when you get to really learn and understand a time period, its politics, and the people involved through the telling of a story.* I'm not good at memorizing lists of facts, or events, or people who I don't really get a sense of more than just their names and a resume of their accomplishments.

So after sitting through (and loving but not doing particularly well in) APUS History in 12th grade, and then Western Civ., French Revolution, and some others (I think) at Stern, I ended up smack against a brick wall. I was taking a class on the Middle East. Though I've never felt the same sort of romanticism in Arabic history that I've felt in American or European, I was drawn to the class because of its rather timely subject. I wanted to truly understand the issues in the Middle East. I wanted to be one of those people who could defend Israel properly and intelligently, being well-versed in everything going on in connection with the Arab-Israeli conflict. The same way that I always wanted to be able to participate in a discussion about American politics and actually sound like I know what I'm talking about. But that semester I was taking a bunch of English classes and another History and the work became too much. I couldn't handle two classed that I both loved but couldn't do well in at once, so on the day of our first test, when I'd had way too much other work to properly study, I dropped the class, and along with it, my History minor.

So I did not end up spending a semester studying the history behind the issues in the Middle East. And I do not know enough about American politics to speak in the presence of anyone who knows more than just a little about it. And I have not read some of the major classic works of literature that are out there. And I have not learned many practical halachos inside in order to really understand what I'm doing and why, or to even know what I really should be doing in certain circumstances. And I do not know many random obscure bekius in Tanach. And I do not know about a lot of major Rabbis that people talk about - even ones at YU.

And...there is so much that I don't know. How can I ever learn it all? And when? How can I consider myself an intelligent person when there is so much I feel I don't know? When I am ashamed of what I don't know? When I don't feel comfortable asking sometimes because that means admitting to someone that I just don't know? And, more overarchingly, how can I ever quench this thirst for knowledge? I want to know and understand so much. I just can't imagine how I'll ever be able to.

*I've read a little bit of Historical Fiction, but not a lot of it, but I'm pretty sure I'd love it, so if anyone would like to recommend anything good, please do!