Life As I See It

I graduated from Ithaca College in 1994 with a BFA in Film, Photography, and Visual Arts. At the time I was totally burned out on academics and swore that I’d never go back to school. For a while that held, I got a job in Newport News and then later moved up to Northern Virginia. I continued my reading habit but drifted mostly into non-fiction works. In addition to my copy of Copi’s into to logic textbook, I also started to read things like The Blue Cliff Record, The Flower Ornament Sutra, Godel, Escher and Bach, Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere, Various histories of mathematics, and Mathematic, it’s Form, content and Meaning.

Those last two were instrumental in my later studies. Studying symbolic logic had gotten rid of a lot of the intimidation I felt towards mathematics. I finally actually understood things like the commutative, associative, and distributive laws in Algebra. The history of mathematics books piqued my interest in numbers and when I read the Form, Content and Meaning, I understood (conceptually) all the math I tried to learn in high school. Shortly after, I enrolled in a pre-calculus class in a community college. I aced it, going over the same tired ground of high school but understanding what it was about this time.

That class was mostly about seeing if I could do it, a theme I would return to later. At the time I didn’t think I’d do much with it. Well, my 30th birthday rolled around and I hated where I had gone professionally and decided to go back to school. Looking around at what was out there as a better career, I decided that architecture would be something that I would love to do and could potentially make a good living out of it. Trouble was, a BFA ill prepared me for that degree. I needed a lot more math and I could never draw… Back to school it was!

I re-enrolled in some classes in community college. Most of these were pretty directed towards my goal, but I managed to work in at least one fun class, creative writing. That was both good and terrible at the some time. I liked flexing my writing muscles, even if I was horrified at the prospect of spending the first part of the class on writing poetry. The bad part was that this was community college. There were a fair number of people that were really pushing themselves in community college. For me, it was a stepping stone. I turned in a 20 page short story for the class to read. One of my classmates told me, “I’m sure it’s a good story, but dude, I’m never going to read anything that long…”

My first semester back to school I took Calc 1, creative writing, and intro to drawing. The thought of doing calculus always intimidated me, I imagined that it was a black art. I was disappointed/relieved to find out that it was mostly algebra. I aced the class. I also had one of my “Doh!” moments in that class. The professor (can’t remember his name) finished explaining what an integral was. He stepped back from the diagram of rectangles under a curve and said, “If you ever want to know what genius looks like, that’s it.” It was the first time I got such a complicated concept boiled down into a diagram. The thought that someone had come up with that blew my mind…

The intro to drawing class was really the one that intimidated me the most. I have never been able to draw, I joke that the reason I went into photography was because I couldn’t draw. I read “Drawing on the Right side of the Brain” before the class started and it helped quite a bit. The teacher cajoled me and I sweated bullets. She eventually convinced me to relax a little and little by little I realized that I could indeed draw with enough practice. I was able to tap into the way of seeing I developed in my photography and really concentrate on putting it down on paper. I never did get a handle on shading though…

Anyway, I realized that with enough time I could learn to draw well. Casual sketching was still beyond me. That, and realizing that a carear in architecture would take 10+ years to get off the ground convinced me to change my direction. Looking in the papers, it looked like a public policy degree could take me places, so I went into that.

That was fortuitous. I never did do anything in the policy realm, but to get ready for that I needed to take some economics courses. Intro to macro economics was incredibly dull, it was truly just a class to get through. The micro class had a bit of a spark for me, but it too was painfully dull. It wasn’t until I took some intermediate (undergrad) economics courses at George Mason that my world turned upside down…

The macro class was interesting, but bewildering. There were all sorts of theories and none of them made a lot of sense. We covered the so-called classical economics and Keynesian economics views of the macro economy. It was all pretty abstract stuff. The micro class blew my mind. Larry Ianaconne is a brilliant man. Micro economics, unlike its macro cousin, made all sorts of sense. It fed into the logical framework that I had developed over the years and it all seemed to fit together nicely. What really made me take notice was Larry’s studies on the economics of religion. Not the dollars and cents part, but the decision making that went into people following religions. It opened my eyes to the possibilities that economics offers. I decided to switch my emphasis to economics.

Of course, that meant I would need far more mathematics. I took two more semesters of calculus, a semester of stats, a semester of econometrics (an applied stats class) and a semester of linear algebra just so I could apply to the doctoral program of economics. I also got a research assistant position with professor Ianaconne. That, along with a good recommendation from him got me into the program. I was a grad student! I was looking forward to a good job and 4 or 5 years of studying interesting things. How’d that turn out? I’ll see you in the next section…

Man, woke up this morning from a dream where my mother had taken me shoe shopping. We were discussing various ergonomic shoe topics and looking at some odd looking shoes (but they were mighty comfy). Granted, I do need new shoes, but what a strange thing to dream about.

I also had a strange dream where I went out to dinner and managed to wrack up a $570 bill just for myself. It was a feast, and it was great food. I knew that I was splurging on the meal, but I almost fell out of my chair when I got the bill. I remember being offended at the $170 in tax (natch) and the several hundred dollars worth of music and Dr. Who shows I got with the meal. Then I realized I still had to add the tip…

It wasn’t that couldn’t pay, but I was really pissed that I had blown my money like that. I woke up, and that disappointment stayed with me for the next half hour or so it took me to wake up. I was going through my Christmas shopping lists and trying to figure out what i could do instead of what I planned. Relief flooded over me when I finally came around and realized I hadn’t been so stupid. Maybe I shouldn’t go to bed hungry…

Wow, this has become a little bit more than I anticipated. Still, it’s good to keep this stuff going while I’m thinking about it. I’m realizing things as I type…

Graduating from high school is still one of the happiest moments of my life. I felt like I was being released from prison. Truth be told, I hadn’t really thought much about what I was going to do in college. I just wanted to do something, something interesting. Somehow high school hadn’t crushed my curiosity or my thirst for knowledge. I was drawn to photography (pardon the pun) and decided on a dual film/photography degree at the last minute. I had been known as the photographer in high school. I was probably the best technician in high school, I had pretensions of expression, but I never really developed my vision enough to do that well. Years later I realized that my photography was really a way for me to try to make sense of what I saw on a really basic level. As in, looking at reality was interesting to me and only seemed to make sense when I made an effort to understand it. Once I figured this out, I was able to pursue this without the camera. Taking pictures, doing things in the darkroom, and cameras are still all fun, but I no longer need them like I once did.

My BFA degree program had over 100 people in it freshman year, 13 of us graduated with the BFA. I’m pretty proud of that. 3/4 of the program was made up of required courses in the photography, film, TV/radio, art history, and art departments. The remaining quarter of credits were left totally open for us. WIthout exception, the courses I got the most out of were the theory classes. The tech classes were fun, but ultimately useless. Most of my technical skills and abilities were made obsolete within 10 or 15 years. The theory classes stuck with me. They taught me how to read images, how first principles shape our expression, and how do deal with things that made you think. I realized about my junior year that these critical insights are far more important than any particular thing that I might “express” in photography. To this day, I feel that an arts education structured around these ideas is a very valuable experience. In this vein, Danny Guthrie was probably the teacher that stood out the most. He wasn’t afraid to engage us in conversations about art, what it meant, what it could mean, and how to integrate it into your life. He is still who I think of when I think of teachers that made a real important contribution to my life. His teaching was more about an approach to life and art than the technical stuff. That has stuck with me and always will.

Equally important, and perhaps what allowed me to learn what I did in my photo/film theory classes was a series of philosophy classes I took. My ratio of fluff to good classes was quite good in college, but some of my philosophy courses were pretty bad. I got a minor in philosophy and religion. At the time, I took a lot of the “applied” philosophy courses like the philosophy of art and the philosophy of lies and self deception. What a waste. I wish that I had taken more of the historical philosophy courses instead. There were three classes that really stood out though, and they were all taught by the same professor. Professor Klee taught both my intro to logic and intro to symbolic logic courses. Wow, those were classes that I could not get enough of. They took me back to the one class in high school that really fired my imagination, Geometry. Studying logic really helps organize your thoughts (duh), and symbolic logic gives you an avenue for expressing arguments that is as clear and concise as possible. My new view blazed in me as only a convert’s faith could. It took years for me to understand the limits of deductive logic. Not coincidently, it took about the same amount of time for me to appreciate my religion classes.

I was an avowed atheist back then, I’m embarrassed to admit that I had socialist leanings, all based on my ever so astute logical approach to the world. Religions were a curiosity, nothing more. I only took classes on Eastern religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zen in particular. All of them helped shape how I thought about ethics and were to play an important role in my later religious life.

The third course taught by Professor Klee is probably the class that has had the deepest effect on me. I originally signed up for his “Philosophy of Science” course because I needed another class to get my minor and I liked the other two classes of his that I took. Turns out following a professor is a good way to get good classes. I expected it to be something to get through, it turned out to be a mind blowing experience. The first lecture started with him throwing an eraser across the room. He then demonstrated how that action could be explained using Aristotelian physics, Newtonian physics, and relativistic physics. So which one was right? That was what we essentially spent the rest of the semester on. The essential gist is that none of them are “right,” or at least none of them are any righter than another. We used Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions to explain how people get caught in world views but don’t have any monopoly on the truth. That insight has continued to inform me on a whole host of other topics and continues to be the most influential paradigm (ahem) in my life.

I learned plenty of other things in my college life outside of classes of course. My first taste of the internet was back in ’91. Back then, it was all command line based, there was no web, no graphical interface. It was all gopher servers, WAIS and the Internic. Even then I was an infovore, I literally gave myself tendonitis the night I discovered the internet. I had trouble opening my dorm room door that night my hands were aching so badly… That’s a habit I’ve kept ever since. Gotta say, the graphical interface is quite a bit better and more entertaining…

There are too many memories and experiences from college that have shaped me to bring up here. I was pretty burned out by the time I graduated and swore that I’d never go back to school. I went into the real world and worked for a number of years. Eventually, I started taking classes again. I’ll do another post about my further education soon…

I got to Gloucester in the 7th grade. 7th and 8th grade were called Intermediate school. What an awful place. It was the old high school, built in the late 50’s/early 60’s if I remember correctly. I have almost zero happy memories of actual school there. Boredom reigned supreme. I met Chuck and Dean, two guys that became good friends there, but I’m having trouble thinking of much else noteworthy. I did take band in the 7th and 8th grades, played alto sax, did pretty well. I coasted through math in the 7th grade. I don’t remember what the circumstances were, but about a month in, it was clear I shouldn’t be in that class, I literally already knew all of it. Most of my new friends were in pre-Algebra, I should have been there too. The next year they put me into Algebra I without the benefit of the pre-Algebra class. I struggled along with Algebra until much later in life… I think this was the first time I started to develop real contempt for some teachers. At best, some were nice, at worst they were actively hampering us and engaging in power games, with kids… Even then I felt like they were pathetic.

High school was mostly more of the same. There were more enjoyable teachers, but mostly boredom and pointless activities. Band was a real let down. Marching band really sucked, I had zero interest in it, probably wouldn’t have signed up for it if I had known what was involved. It was what made me decide to ditch it after freshman year. English class and Biology were real low points for me. Biology I just hated. There was nothing to figure out, it was almost all just memorization. The teacher was hot, but ugh, what a terrible class. English was maddening. I should have taken AP English, instead, I was in the level right below it. I think this was due to my inability to do well on spelling tests back in 7th and 8th grades. Never mind my reading ability and vocabulary was too high for the level, better to put me in a class that I could be bored in. We read 2, or maybe 3 abridged novels. I read the unabridged novels instead, and still beat the class to the end of them. I distinctly remember being appalled at the abridged version of A Tale of Two Cities. I had already read Great Expectations and Oliver Twist before 9th grade and really enjoyed them. The abridged version of A Tale of Two Cities cut out an entire main character!

The high point of freshman year had to be Ms. Windley’s Geometry class. We got an introduction to logic and symbolic logic and I ate it up. This was new information for me, and it had to be taught to me. It was exhilarating to have things explained to me and it just “click” with me. It challenged me and really opened up a part of my brain that had needed some stimulation. Deductive logic was something that made sense to me, and it would show up again later in life…

A couple of other classes stood out. I took two years of chemistry. Once again, I think I liked the aspect of having to figure things out. We were given the rules and some abstract concepts to constrain our view of what was happening and were told to figure it out on tests. Don’t get me wrong, most of my time in those classes was incredibly dull (Ms. Isner’s class was suicidally dull, I think I actually hallucinated in there due to a lack of mental stimulus at times), but it was still stuff that I had to pay attention to and be taught. I had to take notes! That was a sure sign of something that was new to me and required extra concentration. We had some decent books assigned to us in 11th and 12th grade. Standouts include 1984, Steppenwolf, Lord of the Flies, and I’m sure there were others. There were some books that were so awful that I’m still seething with hatred becaue we were made to read them. A Separate Peace, Madame Bovary, and Billy Budd stand out as possibly the worst books I have ever read. Part of the problem I think was that the teachers were so preoccupied with us understanding the books that they never explained why some of them are important even though they have not aged well.

Another important moment for me was in AP government my senior year. Olin Lewis took us up to Richmond so that we could hang out with a state representative for a day. It really was a significant thing for a high schooler to do and I’m glad I got the opportunity to do this. I think it had the opposite effect on me than it was supposed to have though. I followed my representative (a guy representing a district in Richmond if I remember properly) around and was appalled. We spent close to an hour in a ways and means committee meeting where they argued about the placement of commas, wasted time with procedural shenanigans, and generally did a lot of nothing. We then went to a subcommittee meeting so that my guy could plead his case to one of the senior muckty mucks in the house. The old guy essentially asked my guy what he could give him for the vote. It was log rolling at its finest. The old guy was from one of the mountain counties and didn’t give a damn about the traffic bill my guy was pushing. My guy agreed to vote for the old guy’s bill that had no relevance to his Richmond constituents (other than them footing the bill) in exchange for the old guy’s vote. It was remarkable that I was allowed to be there, but I then knew that government work was not my calling…

Mathematics was a real struggle for me after geometry. I loved geometry, and then I went into two algebra courses where I simply tried to keep up. Nothing  made any sense to me, I just went through the formulas as best I could. It all fell apart my junior year and was asked “You’re not going to take calculus are you?” by the teacher at the end of year. No, I wasn’t. I had been interested in math and that was totally driven out of me by my junior year. They wouldn’t be the last awful teachers I had in math, but they certainly had a long lasting impact on me. It wasn’t until I read a 30 page chapter in a book 10 or 12 years later did any of that stuff make sense to me. I read 30 effing pages and it explained all of my high school mathematics, why couldn’t they have presented that info in high school? Yes, I am bitter…

Umm, that’s about it for high school really. I enjoyed my time on the Tidewater Challenge team. Adam and Wade were the real stars there, but showing off my knowledge of trivia was fun. There were good times to be had in the art room, tech theatre, and a few fluff courses that were given social science titles like psychology and sociology. They mostly revolved around us talking about different things. All those things were at least fun, but I don’t think I actually learned much. What strikes me about my pre-college education is how much I ended up learning on my own and in my free time, mostly by reading stuff. It seems to me that there must have been a lot of stuff absorbed over the years I spent in school before college but I’ll be damned if I can think of much. I still have awful memories of high school, only my friends made it worth going at all. I’m so happy I hung out with you guys, I could have just as easily hung out with the “wrong crowd” and things could have been so much worse for me. Thanks to you I did OK and went on to a place where real learning took place…

I’ve been reading about how degrees are being pushed too much these days. Too many people get degrees for the sake of having one and then can’t find a job because they just don’t have anything to offer. I also just read an article talking about how half of Yemen’s college grads are unemployed. I don’t remember the exact figures, but I remember a stunning number of Yemeni college students majoring in Arabic, something around 40%. Keep in mind that unlike a typical English major, a lot of an Arabic degree involves advanced grammar. In other words, it’s a course of study that will help very few folks once they get out of college. I haven’t heard any talk in these articles about what else people might have gotten out of their education other than a job, seems to be there should be a bunch.

Along those lines, I started to think about all of my years in school. What did I actually learn there? What proved to be useful or important to me in my life? Thinking back to my elementary days… well, I can’t remember much. I do remember moving in the 1st grade and it messing with my development. I went from copying my name off of a piece of paper in one school to being expected to take dictation at the next. I was actually put into a remedial ed group for a while. It seems to me that once they figured out that I didn’t actually have a learning disability I was placed back into the regular classes. Most of my memories involve not being able to spell and having terrible handwriting, things which I have never really gotten very good at. I remember my 4th grade science book talking about how “One day man will go to the moon,” which I thought was hilarious. We had new books the next year, they spent a chapter talking about the upcoming ice age…

I guess the thing that stands out to me the most from back then was how much I read. I read both of those textbooks even though we only used parts of them in school. I read Lord of the Rings in 3d grade and I think I read the Foundation Trilogy in 4th although I don’t remember a thing about that. I had read the entire history textbook in 4th grade within the first month or so of school. I ended up spending a lot of time bored in class. I spent a lot of time factoring big numbers in math class in the 6th grade just to kill time. I deemed homework boring and pointless. My grades started to tank and hit a low point in the 6th grade.

Interestingly enough, one class in 6th grade stands out to me. We had an “elective” course that was actually split between… 3 classes? We had  home economics, art, and music classes split evenly across a school year. I must have learned something in the home ec. class cause I’ve never been shy about working in the kitchen. The art class was a total waste of time. We were expected to draw stuff and I was hopeless at it. Advice to “just draw what I saw” wasn’t very helpful. The music course, now that was the real deal. We didn’t play anything, but I learned how to read music, tap out time to sheet music, and what different instruments sounded like. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that class changed my life. It was what, 9 weeks long? By the end I could tell my musical IQ had gone way up. I could hear much more when I listened to music and i could start to appreciate the layers and complexity as well. It was probably the first time I came into contact with actual expression.

Like I said, by 6th grade, I was bored beyond belief and was skating by with mostly D’s if I remember correctly.Then we moved. I had been living in what turned out to be a rather tony suburb of Richmond Virginia and we moved to the sticks, Gloucester, VA. Luckily for me, one of the first people I met there, and my first friend was Todd Shelton. He went on to become the Valedictorian of our graduating class. From the time I moved to Gloucester till I went to college, my friends were a much bigger influence on me than any teacher. Todd, William, Dean, and many others really pushed me, expected me to be smart and I felt like I had to live up to that expectation. All of us were in the same classes from the 7th grade through high school and their influence was the only thing that drove my grades to a respectable level.

This is getting long, so I’ll continue in the next post…