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Do not, repeat, do not attempt to trim your bangs a) with left-handed scissors, b) while premenstrual and c) when you didn’t have bangs before. Doing any of these things, let alone all of them, will require professional intervention.

What else can I share of my life at the moment? I went to a meeting where there were more worksheets, matrices, tables, and numbers since I was in stats class six years ago. By an hour into it, I broke down laughing ’cause I might as well have been reading Greek. I think I’m a little burned out, as evidenced by the fact that I just spent more time on facebook than I have in a month. Maybe it will snow tonight and we can take Willa out for a nice romp tomorrow — that would pretty much make my weekend.

In about 20 minutes, the entire faculty of the college of education is going to a presentation about troubled students — you know, the kind who shoot? I absolutely agree that this is essential  and that every one of us needs to think about the students we teach and the kind of pressures they are under. Yet every year I have taught, there has been some kind of school shooting, large scale (more than five victims): some close (Columbine), some where I have good friends who taught there (Northern Illinois), and some that just plain didn’t make sense (Virginia Tech). I started doing research on the topic last year, into Facebook and the response of students at VT and across the country (you may have remembered some of my posts from then) and I began thinking again about Columbine and even had some bad dreams. It’s still too close to the bone — I may do the unthinkable and skip the meeting, not because it isn’t important, but because I don’t want to lose it in front of my colleagues.

That game was just too tough — too tough to even wrap my mind around. I was stuck in the same place for 2 days, watching the same tutorial on the sphere grid (something about acquiring abilities that was MUCH more complicated than it needed to be) when I realized I had put myself in the learning position where I was overmatched and frustrated more often than I was enjoying it. At which point I happily ejected the Final Fantasy disc and settled down to play Simpsons Hit and Run, which I had only played to the first levels.

And here’s why the Simpsons game is much better for me in terms of learning (and may, even, teach me things I could use to play Final Fantasy some day). First, the Simpsons game is working from a deep base of knowledge that I  have — I love the show and have seen all the episodes (although lately, I have to say I think they jumped the shark. The movie, though, sheer brilliance). The tutorial for the game is embedded all through out the first level and I can toggle it off and on as I complete Homer’s missions. My fiance tells me that in higher levels, I get to be other characters. The game also has hidden aspects and rewards some off the map kind of play, which I really enjoy. And finally, it makes me laugh. The FF game was gorgeous, but made no sense. I’ve been on dates like that, and substance is worth much more than flash.

I’ve always been a kind of big picture person. It’s not that the details don’t interest me, but that I get wrapped up in the larger implications and sometimes forget the smaller steps. So I write articles with big ideas but need to go back and trace out how I got there. In another example, we’re planning our Spring Conference for the department — and I’ve taken the lead on it, calling it Learning 2.0. The gist is about using technologies from “preschool to beyond” — everything from wikis and blogs to digital storytelling, Second Life, gaming, and more. The idea of the conference wasn’t hard, but the details — choice of words for the flier, for the campus email list — finding breakout rooms — figuring out where everyone is going to park — reserving food. There’s so much to this that I need to remember — and I am delegating most of it, don’t you worry. But I have to say that I feel my plate to be very full right now with writing and teaching and now coordinating a program that I am afraid I will forget to do something related to the conference. The more you prove yourself effective at your job, the more you are likely to get to do. I love my job — but I have to remember to protect time for writing, reading, and thinking so I don’t love it any less.

I’ve started to need reading glasses. Actually like the kind that balance on the tip of your nose. I kid you not — I’m only 34, this isn’t fair. So I have reading glasses from the pharmacy to wear with my contacts and will have to get bifocals for my regular glasses (which are in the shop because Willa got a hold of them the other day. In one week she scratched up my glasses and got sick all over my car, which I now have to get detailed. Expensive dog.)

So I wore my reading glasses yesterday for the first time and they helped but I haven’t yet figured out how to look above them. I walked into the wall of my office not once but twice while trying to get out the door — everything was so magnified and I forgot to put my glasses on my head.

Reading glasses, foundation garments, constant sunscreen. Does anything else say middle aged in quite the same way? Dammit.

I want to be very clear that the last post was about getting feedback, important and clear, about an article that I am working on from a colleague. In no way was it a critique of a finished piece. I think that the distinction is an important one. The article was (is) an early draft and I knew I was taking a risk by sending it to someone else because it was not polished (or even done) but at the same time I knew I had written myself in a corner, so to speak, and needed someone else’s help to get out of it. That kind of feedback is like gold — you don’t want to squander someone’s time and energy for no reason, you know?

And the feedback she gave me is excellent. I was reacting more like I did in high school or college — wanting just to write something once and have it be good. Sometimes even I fight against what I most believe, that writing is something to be worked at throughout your life. To write well is not to have a gift, but to be stubborn enough not to give up.

You know, just ’cause I’m the professor, doesn’t mean I know how to write. Just got back a piece that I had written that I asked a senior colleague to give me feedback on. I knew the structure didn’t work, I knew the argument wasn’t clear, and I needed another set of eyes on it. Just like most of my students, I knew what I wanted to say but not exactly the best way to say it (and yes, this goes back to the theoretical writing post and maybe I should go back to five-paragraph essays). Still, knowing all that, when I got it back and saw her comments — there was this first feeling that I had failed. I didn’t. I get to re-do and re-do this before I send it out to the journal (although I am not sure how to keep working on this and the book at the same time. Do I switch back and forth? Focus only on the article until it is done? Any suggestions).

The moral of the story is that even (or maybe especially) teachers hate getting their work back with lots of comments on it– and we’re the ones who should know better. At least I should. So, for all my students out there reading this — I do not write things in one sitting, I screw up my writing sometimes, and often I am not clear. If there is perfection, I am nowhere near it.

Feel better?

So, for the video games (media, literacy, and learning — evaluation of media) course I am teaching, we have each selected a game to learn. To go with that, we are reading Gee’s book about video games and learning, and a bunch of other things. Now I am not a committed gamer — I will play something for a while (Katamari Damacy) and get frustrated since I keep coming back to the same level and can’t get any farther. So I stop playing. But in this case, I need to really learn the game — which would be fine except the game I chose is Final Fantasy X. It’s gorgeous, the graphics are unreal, the story line really interesting. The problem, you ask? It’s hard as hell. It took a hour for me to even figure out how to save my game because I refused to read any of the enclosed materials. I still have no idea what exactly these figures are doing. It’s fun, but I am in waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over my head. As usual.

Why we believe Americans are Stupid

Just saw this video on YouTube (can you tell it’s Friday?) and while it made me laugh, it also made me shudder. The people who didn’t know what religion a Buddhist monk is. Those who thought we should invade France. The fact that if Australia was labeled Iraq or North Korea, people believed it. And those who didn’t know what or who was the Axis of Evil.

It goes back to a conversation I was having with my READ102 students yesterday. We are taught things (Columbus discovered America, Rosa Parks was just tired and needed to sit down) that must be questioned. There were many people living in America — Columbus just found it. Rosa Parks’ decision to sit down was carefully orchestrated through the local chapter of the NAACP. On the other hand, there are things we absolutely need to know — including the location of foreign countries and our relationship to them. We are waging wars in countries most people can’t find on a map. We have lost thousands of American lives and uncountable Iraqi and Afghani people.

Go home and study a map if you need to (I do, I can never get eastern Europe quite right) and start asking questions before we, as a country, commit to another few years of war and loss. It will take all of us to turn things around and we can’t do it if we don’t even know what our leaders are talking about.

And, since it’s Friday, here’s the most horrific stupid video I found — Kellie Pickler on “Are You Smarter than a Fourth Grader?” 

As an academic (or the word I like better is scholar) I am supposed to be emerged in the world of ideas. In this attention economy, with so many things vying for my attention it both is and isn’t hard to do. And then I am supposed to write about it — but here’s where it gets even trickier. I am an assistant professor of education, which means I need to write to parallel audiences sometimes: teachers, who are interested in ideas and things they can use right away and theorists, who try to make sense of the underlying connections between thinking, literacy, social contexts and identity. I love both worlds, but I write better for teachers and in a straightforward sense than I do in the deeper, more complex ways of academics. During my dissertation defense, one of the critiques was that it was too well written, that it didn’t “read as theoretical enough.” (God knows, I will never forget that phrase).

I can think through the complex ideas and read the deep stuff — even in my own, pleasure reading, I would say my first and deepest love  is for Gothic and Victorian Literature, tangly narratives populated by way too many characters. Vanity Fair, Middlemarch, all of the Austen books, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, you get the gist. But I need to continue to develop my ability to extricate and even complicate the ideas I work with, and to use prose that does service to the complications I can see. I may write things as clearly as I can, but the profession of education (and literacy even moreso) is densely gray.