Life as an Extreme Sport

Category: Academics

Classes and coursework.

one common refrain

...and everything else, Academics

Aaah, Google. Every year, you remind me why, if I were to ever leave academia, I would run as fast as I could to your hallowed doors. This year’s 1 April joke is another example of the fabulously twisted humour running through the hacker-run domains of the computer industry. The San Jose Mercury News has a good roundup of recent jokes at Google, and they’re so familiar they ache.

I think the best joke I was ever involved in was probably pulled when I was at Microsoft, and we did similar to the Mercury News mentioned sand in an office. When I was at Microsoft, the Core Networking group was in a newer building with cubiffices – cubicle material, but the walls stretch to the ceiling, forming an office. The nice thing about these, at least from a practical joke point of view, is that they were very easy to break into – just get a ladder, punch your way up through the ceiling (typical office drop down ceiling tiles), and drop yourself gently onto the desk – you were good to go.

Of course, in our case, we didn’t actually want in. We just wanted to get the straw in. For long and ultimately irrelevant and long-gone reasons, we filled the assistant director’s office with straw. A lot of straw. So much straw, I’m not actually sure he could open his door. I’m pretty certain, in fact, we closed the blind to his hall window and then stood there in our own offices, discreetly laughing, as he tried to open his door, finally clued in that we’d had some fun while he was on vacation, and reluctantly went to get the ladder to see just what we’d done. Someone had rigged a webcam on the top of the straw, so when he lifted up the ceiling tile, we could all watch exactly what his expression was – and it was, indeed, priceless. And made the two days of work it took to get the straw out of his office more than worth it.

Of course, I can’t tell a Microsoft story without telling an Apple one (must balance out allegiances); many moons ago (very much dating my time at the company), a bunch of us snuck out from Building 2 and 3, over to Building 6, where we promptly stole every Newton we could get our hands on, replacing them all with etch’n’sketches and notes that “these might be less buggy.”

Aah, good times.

The…staidness of academia is probably one of the things that has been most difficult for me to adjust to. I have a rather well-defined sense of humour, and for years I worked in environments that looked more like overgrown toy stores than offices. I come from a long tradition of office nerf wars, water gun fights, and team built spud guns. The shift from that to the hallowed halls has been interesting, and I often have to reel in my impulse for mischief. And it really hasn’t helped that one of my immediate responses to encountering that sort of staidness is to do something, anything that would counter the mood.

Control wasn’t so hard at the University of Washington, in large part because CHID was a bit more software-industry than most departments, and I worked in the UW computer labs as a sysadmin, where many of the people I worked with shared the hacker humour vibe, and we could send each other stupid, geeky email and play pranks with ease. It was a good escape valve. Here, I’m noticing that sans that escape, I’m a touch pent up and a bit more mischievous than is perhaps wise. Hence my serious consideration of going back into improv comedy. I’ve not been able to join up with the class I’d like to take, due to my travel schedule, but when that calms down I’ll likely find myself on the stage again…for the release, if nothing else. If I’m going to open my mouth to find God speaking, I’d rather it be on a stage than in a classroom.

Still, if you occasionally see the corners of my mouth drift up at inappropriate moments, or catch a far-away gaze in my eyes when I should be focusing on whomever’s lecturing, chances are good I’m just containing impulse and dreaming of running away – not to the circus, but the computer.

gather ’round ye olde camp fire

...and everything else, Academics, AMBI, Bioethics

Alright, kids. We need to sit down and have a chat, and rather right quick, apparently.

First, hi! Wow. Rather suddenly there are quite a lot of you reading this, eh? Mostly silent, but you’ve still got a way of making your impact. I especially like the links and trackbacks and such, thanks.

But see, here’s the thing. Y’all are sort of this vague and amorphous mass, and well, we don’t know each other. (At least, the last time I looked, I didn’t know any amorphous masses. There might be one in my fridge by now, I did forget to clean it out before I left.) Maybe more importantly, you don’t know me – not even those of you I talk with in other mediums. (Consider the fact that the vast majority of the people I talk to on a frequent basis, I have known less than a year.) That can make things kind of weird, because you attach more emphasis on things that are just casual toss-off’s on my part, and probably don’t know what to look for in things that are actually serious.

My dear friend Michael summed it up quite well when I was laughing to him about this earlier tonight.

That’s the problem with blogs. They’re so public and wide audienced that people assume anything posted in them is of critical import, when the purpose of them has simply been to chronicle life, something everyone knows about their own blog but never remember when reading others’.

This, of course, doesn’t mean we can’t and won’t get to know one another… it just means that maybe y’all need to take a couple deep breaths and not worry so much when I post about having emotions.

This post, this one right here, is my 721st post on this blog – I’ve been doing this for a while now, probably longer than most of you, and over the years, a lot of emotion has been captured. This is a chronicle of life. My life. My misadventures, as it was so aptly and recently named. For the last couple of years, that focus has been on academia and my journey through it. But I’ve made the conscious choice that I’m not going to hide in that ivory tower. I don’t want to be your stereotype of an academic, detached from the world and busy with abstracts. Let’s face it – academics, especially those who can put PhD after their name, don’t have the best reputation for being down to earth, or in touch with anything other than their work. Forgive me if I’m trying to avoid that.

Yes, I write about life in all its adventures, mis or otherwise. Sometimes it’s about school, sometimes about my family, cancer, life – even work. But give me some credit, people. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and everything you read is quite carefully filtered. I’m not going to say things that I wouldn’t feel comfortable saying to anyone over coffee and a danish. I’m not going to violate confidences, I’m not going to say something and regret it later – half the time, you read something hours, if not days, after I’ve written it.

I have a silver cuff bracelet. I wear it every day, for reasons I’ll explain some other time. On the front, facing me, stamped in quirky lettering, it says “breathe”. A reminder, to myself, to stop when stress overwhelms me, to pause even when life is good, and center, be. Breathe.

It’s good advice. I heartily recommend you adopt it, especially as it seems to be needed. Just breathe, people. Just breathe.

outed

...and everything else, AMBI, Bioethics

I’ve been outed, the rumours are true, I write for more than just you,… whoa, apparently Joss Whedon invaded my thoughts, as I was about to bust out in some Once More, With Feeling-style lyrical shenanigans.

But yes, for those of you reading the editors blog of the American Journal of Bioethics, that would indeed be me that the lead editor just introduced. For those keeping track, that means I write here, there, at the Women’s Bioethics Blog, and the Medical Humanities blog. That’s a lot of blogging.

In actuality, though, I find it pretty easy to figure out what goes where – I just start writing, and the content directs me with where to post. The closest overlap tends to come on issues for the Women’s Bioethics Blog and the AJOBlog, and in that case, the tone (or “voice” for those of you plagued by a theory-heavy humanities background like myself) tends to tell me where to go.

…does this make me a blogaddict?

I’m Being Followed

Academics, Bioethics

Apparently I just can’t get away from the boss. This should not necessarily be construed as a bad thing, given that I actually really like my boss, but it’s one of those things where I was sitting on the couch thinking that maybe it would be nice to relax my brain and read something cushy and comfortable, something from CHID. I’ve been thinking a lot about DIYBiotech lately, Natalie and Katz, Eugene, etc, and that, combined with a conversation on transhumanism this morning made me think about this book I picked up last year, on the ethics of the body. Thesis, DIYBiotech, CHID – comfort food.

I flip open the book, and it lands on the series forward page. I see an editorial board and smile and familiar names, and then look up – to see the introduction written by said boss.

Two steps back, this is part of that series?

Oh. Of course it is. Of course it is.

trust bound

2005, Academics, blog as therapy, Summer 05, Summer Institute, University of Washington

Sunday night, sitting here along with my beer and thoughts, wind howling outside, occasionally gusting snow against the window with some vengeance. Light comedy on the television, but I wonder if something more sober, or at least darker, might not be more appropriate. It’s not that I’m feeling particularly bad, or even dark and twisty, but I am feeling introspective. It’s been a very long week, a week of chaos, and mistakes on my part. I knew the chaos was coming, and mistakes were inevitable, but I still don’t like either…well, the mistakes, anyhow. I suspect I actually might thrive on chaos.

I’ve been called out on some personality traits, and it was a fair calling out, but it’s still an uncomfortable thing. I realized, talking to Jen earlier today, that it’s been a while since anyone has gotten in my face (nicely or otherwise) and thrown me back at myself, or was so pointed in challenging what I say and why I do/say certain things. I guess…I was the golden child who could do no wrong for a while, and this was an important thing for me to hold on to. It gave a lot of validity to what I did, and helped me get over things, the hurtful things, that came part and parcel with my divorce. And, that’s not here now – which is okay, but it’s going to take a bit of adjustment on my part. It’s not that I’m a prima donna, by any means, but it catches you a bit short when you’ve become accustomed to being treated a certain way, and suddenly that way is gone and you’re getting blunt analysis of your character.

Another part and parcel of that divorce is my utter terror of two words, two words I did my best to avoid in my years at UW, where I did as much as I could alone, by myself, relying on no one, stubbornly insisting I would do it, could do it, alone. Those words? “Trust me.” I don’t do well with trust, something I’m realizing as I sit here with my barely touched beer. I realize that a lot of the issues that have caused me so much stress in the last week soundly rest with that issue, that freaking out and panic in the face of having to simply trust someone.

I did trust someone, and I got my heart and life handed back to me post-paper shredder. I pulled myself back together with a lot of effort and duct tape, and learned that trusting other people is bad. Of course, I also spent a lot of time arguing that trust is good, and can happen again after it’s been broken – have marveled that we can pull ourselves back together and make ourselves vulnerable again. And that’s sort of the whole thing with trust – in opening yourself to trust, you also open yourself to what happens when trust is broken. Alfonso Lingis, in his book Trust, says this so beautifully:

In trust one adheres to something one sees only partially or unclearly or understands only vaguely or ambiguously. One attaches to someone whose words or whose movements one does not understand, whose reasons or motives one does not see.

Is it all the things that are known that encourage the leap, in this one instance, to adhere to something unknown as though it were known? Is it not because of a long past tried and true that someone becomes a trusted adviser? Is it all that one knows about laws, the institutions, the policing, and all that one knows about the values, the education, the peer pressure of individuals in a society that induce one to trust this individual met at random on a jungle path? But the more one knows about a tried and true adviser, the more clearly one sees that every act of loyalty opened an opportunity for disloyalty.

This was part of that summer institute I did, and so I have actually thought a lot about this – and I appear to have regressed a bit from the point I was at to where I am now. Perhaps that’s just a result of new environment, change,..and fear. If I screwed up in the past, no huge deal – just my pride. If I screw up now, I feel like we’re talking career bites dust sort of huge deals.

I pulled out my paper from the Institute – the project that came of it is sitting about 5 feet away, but it’s easier to just read what I wrote. And if I isolate out what I wrote on trust alone, of forming and losing and trying again, it still rings very true – almost insightful.

trust and time are intimately linked. one cannot exist without the other. time is a construct. all that exists is now, the present. we are always in the present, passing through it. we never reach the future, and the past is always behind us. we build trust, and make the decision to trust, based on experiences – events – from our past. these singular events allow us to look at the seemingly endless options in front of us and narrow them down; trust becomes a filter that allows us to make decisions. in the network of life, trust gives us a way of managing what would be incomprehensible.

when trust is broken, our options become limitless, and we are paralized, not in fear, but in choice. we have no way of narrowing down the potentiality of an event or situation without the ability to trust. but we trust – or not – based on prior events, and it is difficult to override those prior events that taught us that we cannot believe ourselves. without the ability to trust, we are everpresent in the now, unable to pass through the present. we become stuck.

to free ourselves from being stuck, we have to take a risk. we have to look at the future potentialities and guess, choose blindly, choose based on what other people offer you. trust is a multiperson experience, and if someone extends you their trust, they do so on the basis of their experience, and what they think of you. what they think you will do. the options become filtered through the actions of another. it is up to us, whether or not we accept that external filter. it is up to us to make the decision that a single anomalic event does not mean we always have bad judgment.

to become unstuck, you must trust.

the only thing that means anything is what we do.

I realize I have the choice to stand where I am, and have the future so open I am paralyzed, missing the trust I need in order to act decisively, to have futures narrowed to manageable potentiality. Or, I just…do what loyalty wants, and acknowledge that with an act of trust comes the potential for hurt, and the beauty of hope.