boarding school

I was thinking that maybe the best thing for me would be to try to find work as a college/university professor and then run for a school board position or get involved in the politics of education in some other way, since, as important as theory and practice are, I think changes are made primarily through politics (changes which are influenced, hopefully, by theory, and implemented through practice).

But I realized I didn't know how exactly people get on school boards. So I looked up the C-U school boards. People are elected; but no biographies were posted, so I couldn't tell who these people were or how they got elected. (Some more research would help me turn up this information, though.)

Then I looked up the Chicago school board, for K-12 education. They're appointed by the mayor, and they were almost entirely from the world of business. CEOs, bank presidents, etc. Basically no education experience, at any level. This wasn't a surprise, really, but I wouldn't say that I knew it before.

Then I looked up the Illinois Board of Higher Education--I think, in some states, K-12 and higher education are controlled by the same board. It's separate in Illinois. This board is appointed by the governor, and consisted of a mix of business leaders and retired professors and college presidents.

So am I qualified to sit on any of these boards? Well, I could perhaps get elected to the C-U board, or a board like it. However, it seems my best chance at getting appointed to a board like CPS or Illinois Higher Ed would be to become a business leader (which, let's be honest, is unlikely to happen) or to work my way up as a university administrator.

I guess the thing is that I'm actually quite interested in an administrative position that I could combine with teaching. Getting involved in K-12 administration, however, would require (I think) another degree or two, and I don't think I'm ready for that right now. Getting involved in higher education administration would just mean securing a position as a professor and then probably expressing a clear interest in administration--it might help to take some classes in higher education policy and administration in the next year or two. The Ed. Org. and Leadership department even offers a Higher Ed track, so I could shoot for an M.Ed. in Higher Ed in the next couple of years, though I wonder if it'd be smarter to just pick up that stuff on my own while a professor.

I haven't learned anything about policy in my program, in part because I chose not to take these classes, but mostly because these classes weren't part of the program, and I feel like we're not encouraged to take these classes (they mostly fall outside of our department). I might be qualified, at this point, to be a department head, but I don't think I'd be qualified to be, say, a college dean or university president, since I just don't actually know what's going on with higher education. I can learn more about this, of course--it would be many years before I could get into either of those positions (and I'd have to get a job as a professor first, of course, which isn't a certainty)--but I'm sort of wondering whether I should just try to learn it on my own, as I need it, or whether I should take some classes now to prepare myself.

It's odd, I think my program prepares us fairly well to think of education in the abstract, but we get very little acquaintance with how education actually happens. So we learn how to formulate educational ideas and critique educational theories, but I worry that this is usually de-contextualized, so that we don't actually learn how to put ideas into practice or how to use our critiques to influence change.

I could continue to whine about this, as I have for at least a couple of years now, or I could just re-orient my work towards policy. It seems clear now that my dissertation is going to deal with the aims of education, and I think this has obvious policy implications, but I need to learn how to write in such a way as to draw out those implications (perhaps publishing op-ed pieces in newspapers and magazines) and I need to learn how to have an influence on school boards and other groups involved in policy-making. I do think a class or two oriented towards educational politics, policy, economics, finance, etc. (at the K-12 and higher ed levels) would be useful, and I also think it'd be useful to do a better job of keeping up with education news and commentary--find some professors who have some measure of influence on policy and figure out how exactly they do it.

This is all going to have to be self-initiated, I think, since there aren't natural outlets for this in my department. But why not do some reading in educational politics and economics? Why not try to write an op-ed? Even if it's not published, it'd be good practice.

-----

Dissertation:
I. Current American public aims of education--what are they and how were they determined?
II. The History of American Public Aims of Education (and the role of philosophy in this history) (What have they been and how have they been determined?)
III. Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives on Aims
III. Contemporary Alternative Perspective on Aims 1: Bergmann on aims of education
IV. Contemporary Alternative Perspective on Aims 2: Nussbaum/Sen on aims of education
VI. How the contemporary work can help in determining contemporary aims. (In a democracy, who decides aims--how do they decide? What role should various perspectives on aims have on the conversation? What role should educational theorists play? What will aims be and how will they be determined?)

need to do

I know I want to be a professor after I get my PhD, because I love teaching. However, I also know that I need my research/work to involve some kind of application where I get to work directly with people, or else I won't feel like I'm doing anything. So, sometime soon, I think I need to figure out exactly how I want to apply myself and exactly how I can start getting some experience in that area. Based on this, I can try to determine whether it's worth it to continue taking Arabic, or whether my time would be better spent on other pursuits.

time for reflection

It has been over six months since I've written here. Maybe this is long enough where nobody's checking the blog anymore, and nobody will ever read this, but that's fine. I think I've always used this space (and similar spaces) more as a place to think through things for my own sake than as a place to broadcast my thoughts. That's not to say that I'm not interested in what my friends have to say about what I write here--otherwise I'd just write things out in a journal, or type them out in a text file. I wouldn't use a blog that I've told a number of people about.

Why am I writing now, then, after six months? I think I've been inspired by the fact that it's the end of the year, and this has always been a time when I (and others, I'm sure) have reflected on where things stand in my life. To be honest with you--to be honest with myself--I haven't had much cause to reflect over these past six months, probably because things have been going so well. Typically, I'm inspired to write when something is wrong, when there's some life issue I'm trying to work through. And I haven't had too many of these issues lately. Since the end of May, I've been in a relationship that is still going strong, so I haven't had the relationship concerns that used to plague me. From around mid-June to early August, I took a seven-week intensive Arabic course that covered the first year of college Arabic. I was in class 4-5 hours a day during the week, and then in the afternoon, for about 3-4 hours a day during the week, I'd have homework. Some nights, I'd have TA work for an online class. In mid-August, I came home for a week, and then the semester started up. By this time, I was set on a totally different schedule than I'd had before the end of May. Basically, during the week, I'd work during the day, have a few free hours to myself in the early evening (during which I'd sometimes workout, sometimes just sit around and relax, and always make dinner), and then I'd see my girlfriend at night. Saturdays, I'd spend with my girlfriend. And Sundays, I'd run errands, do laundry, and get some work done. With minor variation, this was my schedule for the fall semester. I almost never went out to the bars (which was almost all I did pre-June), I almost never stayed up really late, I almost never drank--and I loved it. I realized that, while the bars were fun in the moment, they weren't satisfying for me, and I think they ultimately made me feel worse, because I wouldn't sleep well and I'd wake up late, still tired, and I wouldn't feel with it all day. I'm far more satisfied with how things are set up now--I get work done during the day, I have time to myself, and I have time with my girlfriend--I seem to have all the elements in place that I need to be satisfied. It probably wouldn't satisfy everybody, but it works for me.

This has all come with some cost, of course, and at this time of reflection, I recognize that there are things I might change, largely dealing with the way I structure/prioritize my time. One cost: I really only hang out with my roommate and my girlfriend. I love my roommate and my girlfriend, and I enjoy spending time with them, of course. The cost is that I've drifted from some friends in Urbana and I rarely get on the phone with friends in other places. My schedule doesn't seem to allow for it--when would I call? This is something I need to work on.

I have come to understand that there are a limited number of hours every day, every week, every month, and I want to spend those hours balancing the elements of life that bring me (and not necessarily others) fulfillment. My balance seems to involve: keeping up with the news, teaching, conversation, time with friends, reading for fun, reading for work, writing for fun, writing for work, language work, exercise, movies, and time with my girlfriend. Is there time for all of these things, every day? No, I don't think so. I think there's time for most of it, however, but only if I compartmentalize my time well. If I'm going to work during the day, then I need to actually work during the day, leaving the evenings free for exercise/phone calls/etc.

At this point, I know what I need to do, though. I don't question my basic priorities and I don't question the things that bring me fulfillment. I have learned to avoid the inessential things that actively drag me down. I am quite content--as content as I could expect to be right now, I think. And my academic work is going well--last semester, I defended my general field exam, and finished my special field exam. This coming semester, I should be able to defend my dissertation proposal, meaning that I should be writing my dissertation sometime this coming semester, meaning that I should be able to finish a draft by the end of the summer or early in the fall. I'm on track, I think, to finish the PhD by May 09.

There are two questions that require reflection right now, though. First: What kind of job do I want? Second: What causes do I want to embrace? I have realized that part of what brings me contentment is participating in something that I feel is actively helping people. Some kind of project. Teaching brings me this feeling of helpfulness, to an extent, but I also think I need to figure out what issues are important to me, where I can start working for change. I am past the point where I feel I need to change the world, but I know that I need to feel that I am changing something--helping someone--to feel content. As for the first question, about the job, I do want to be a professor, because I want teaching to be part of my life, but I have recently been considering whether it would be beneficial to get some actual public school teaching experience first (many jobs prefer this, some require it) or to try to get a policy degree so that I'd be better suited to influence educational policy (technically, I'm in an educational policy studies department, but I haven't had to take a single policy class, and it strikes me that most of the policy-related work probably happens in educational organization and leadership--for administrators--or public policy programs).

I do think I'm on the right track, but I think I can make some decisions right now, about my dissertation, and about how I spend my non-dissertation time in the next couple of years, that could greatly affect what kind of positions I seem most qualified for.

I hope to write more in the next week or two.

rejuvenation

Home has been rejuvenating. It is bittersweet, to be sure--I get to see my friends once, twice if I'm lucky, and I'm reminded of how wonderful it would be if I could see them more often, see them regularly, feel like we have all the time in the world to hang out, because nobody's going anywhere. But it is also inspiring. I have had conversations with people that have enlarged my perspective on relationships (as I may be entering into one myself) and have given me a renewed sense of purpose and a renewed sense of hope that we might be able to shift the primary aim of human culture to one of fulfillment, if we work together and come to embrace the realization of this shift as our calling--as a necessity. It will take some effort, I think, to be sure that the rejuvenation sustains when I return to C-U, but I can do it, with help from my friends here, my friends there, my friends around the country, and friends yet to be met.

I am ready to stand for something.

punctuation

Things have taken a wonderfully unexpected turn over the past few days. I often marvel at how seemingly small turns of events--meeting a new person, for instance, or a few days rest from your normal routine--can make your life seem quite different. I don't think everyone sees their lives this way, but I tend to see mine as stretches of time (sometimes days, sometimes weeks, etc.) punctuated by events that send me on different courses. I can tell these punctuating events from everyday events because it's hard to imagine what my life was like before a punctuating event. For instance, it's hard to imagine what life was like before my father passed away. I can't connect well to the Jeff before that time. It's also hard to imagine what life was like before I came to U of I. I live differently now than I did then.

At any rate, it was a great weekend, from Friday to today, and I'm looking forward to the week. I've got a decent amount of work to do, but nothing major--just things to check off the list. Then Friday a concert in Madison and Saturday I head to Tampa for nearly a week. Then I come back here and head to St. Louis to visit a dear friend and then I come back here and another dear friend will be passing through town. My roommate said tonight that, just based on the events of the past few days, he can say he had a good summer. If summer ended right now, he'd be satisfied. I agree, but I'm glad there are still almost 3 months left.

projects

Does the way a person looks give any indication of his or her personality? Some people just look kind, or grouchy, or bitter...but does this mean anything?

It's an odd balance, between living each day to the fullest and setting yourself up for the future. Why don't I spend the day outside, exploring, drinking wine, swimming, etc.? Because I have projects that mean something to me. Living life to the fullest isn't just having as much fun as possible--I think sometimes it means fulfilling some grand project. Does everyone want a project, though? And what if your project is to have as much fun as possible?

for sure

I wish I could write about other people, about the world, as readily as I can write about myself. Maybe if I tried...? Part of what keeps me from doing it, I think, is the fear that I don't know enough to speak intelligently about world events, about works of art, about society. Of course, you might say that not knowing enough doesn't stop other people from speaking about these things. I sometimes think part of being an academic is acting as if you know everything, even when you know you don't. I do wonder, though--not just in academia, but among pundits, in conversations and debates people have with one another--how often people just don't actually know what they're talking about. Yet they act like they do, so you're inclined to believe them, because you don't know enough yourself to challenge what they have to say.

Anyway, what all of this means for me is that I rarely participate in 'debates' among my friends, because I often feel that none of us really know enough to have a debate of any relevance. In these situations, if I do speak up, it's usually when I'm able to cut through the arguments and get to the core point of disagreement. I have this idea (which may or may not be right) that most debates, most controversies, stem from fundamentally different assumptions. You can argue as much as you want, but the arguments don't actually matter, because the real disagreement is rooted in a different way of seeing things that no amount of argument is going to change. I think of this with the argument about abortion, for instance, where I think the fundamental disagreement is about when the zygote/embryo/fetus becomes a human being. Because, obviously, once the thing is human, it shouldn't be aborted, since that's killing a defenseless human being, which is murder, which most people would maintain is wrong. The thing is, some people think life starts at conception, while some think life starts after the first trimester, while some think...you get the idea. Religious arguments against abortion (at any stage) are not irrational--they're just rooted in a view that human life begins at a certain point. Under this view, the argument makes total sense. So you can argue pro-life, pro-choice, all you want, but I think the key is the assumption about when human life begins, which is something we are likely to disagree about 'forever.'

I think a number of ethical/political/religious conflicts boil down to differing fundamental worldview assumptions, but this is often lost under a mass of propaganda and bluster. I think, therefore, that if you want to change someone's mind about a conflict, you have to somehow change their assumptions, which is more often a matter of rhetoric than rational argument. People tend to 'feel' a side in a conflict, rather than rationally embrace a side. So persuasion is key, especially when there are few things we can universally know 'for sure.'

wouldn't it be nice

Now, I don't think I'm ugly, but I often wish I was more attractive, so people would be more interested in me, and so I'd feel more confident about talking to strangers. (Or maybe it'd be more realistic to wish that I was more self-assured about myself as a person, regardless of how I looked.)

I have a fear of good-looking people, because I can never really imagine that they'd want to talk to me. This likely stems from teasing when I was younger--nerd, dork, some humiliating incidents that I haven't told many people about but affected me deeply--that sort of crippled my self-esteem. When it comes right down to it, I have never seen myself as that great of a person on my own, which is probably why I depend so much on loving, supportive friends, and why it's incredibly difficult for me to feel confident in friendships with people who are not (outwardly) very loving and/or supportive. I draw strength and confidence (and sometimes my personality) from others, because I am weak, lack confidence, and fundamentally don't like who I am. I have been like this for so long that it's hard for me to imagine that I could change. How do you work on liking yourself more? How do you work on confidence? How do you work on constantly comparing yourself (often unfavorably) to the people around you? How do you work on these things, when you've been like this for 15 years? How do you fight the urge to make yourself an island, to isolate yourself, to feel like you're always going to be alone?

These feelings aren't there all the time, but they tend to arise if I feel even the least bit lonely. Maybe the answer is just to keep myself busy, surround myself with people, so that I don't give the feelings a chance to emerge; but wouldn't it be nice if I could just love myself, value myself, and not constantly be questioning who I am and what I'm doing?

infusion

This is my 90th post. 100 is right around the corner. We'll have to celebrate.

I'm in a wistful mood right now. It's partially the music I'm listening to (Wilco), the setting (I'm sitting in Kopi, a downtown coffeeshop, by the big front windows, watching the people of C-U head out for the night), and my thoughts (I'm missing my friends, as I watch these people who are out in groups of four or five, conversing over a beer, seeming to enjoy one another's company). As I'm sure I've written before, I've found individual people here with whom I feel that sort of comfort, that ease, but I have not found a group like that. This makes me wistful, though, rather than sad, probably because I've accepted it, just as I've come to accept much of who I am.

As I laid in bed last night, waiting for sleep to drift over me, I was thinking about what I'd written, and thought that perhaps it sounded a little bitter. Maybe it was. What's important for me, though, as I move into the summer, as I move into the rest of my life, is the realization that I need to be loved. I have no doubt about that. I'm not an independent person, in many ways. I thrive when I have supportive, loving friends around me. The few people I know here who I can call real friends ("tier one" friends, the deepest, closest, likely to be lifelong friends) have come to mean so much to me and have been (I think sometimes) the only positive aspect of being here. This environment just hasn't been good for me, but at least I've met a few wonderful people.

That's one realization: I need a loving, supportive community of friends to thrive. The other is that I already know plenty of loving, supportive people; but the majority of them are not here. They are in Tampa, Gainesville, Ft. Lauderdale, Tucson, New York, California, DC, Chicago, Madison, Texas, Arkansas, Australia...I have more than enough tier one friends in my life. Maybe too many--I can't keep up with everyone as well as I'd like. But, rather than get overwhelmed and give up, I need to try to keep up with everyone. An hour on the phone with friends every day or two will probably make the other hours of my day that much better. A letter sent, an email written--these kinds of things keep connections alive, help me remember that I've got the loving, supportive community of friends I want--I've had it all along--it's just spread out. This is not ideal. Not for me. I wish I had it here. But. I don't. I haven't put myself in situations to meet the kind of people that could form that community for me. But I suppose the one advantage is that it leaves me more time to maintain my connections with the friends that are spread out everywhere.

For the first time in many years, I'm questioning whether to become a professor when I leave here. I think if I wasn't so far into graduate school, I'd probably leave. As a whole, it's unsatisfying, though I've found pockets of satisfaction to keep me going. I'll finish, though...but then what? I want to teach, but I don't want to be a scholar in the standard sense. I want to work with people--I don't want most of my work to be solitary. I want to effect change--I want to contribute to something--I want to be able to stand back, look at my work, and see that I've produced (or helped to produce) something lasting. Perhaps just focusing on teaching would be best for me--try to get a job at a liberal arts college, maybe. Perhaps I should aim to found a charter school. Perhaps I should find a NGO that deals with interreligious dialogue, religious education, or peacemaking--perhaps I should start my own, try to get my friends involved. Perhaps I can do all of that. But I know that we have limited time. I have limited time. And the best I can do is try to live my life in fulfilling a way as possible, which (for me) means doing what I can to help others live their lives in fulfilling a way as possible. So I just need to find a way to feel that I am actively contributing to that goal, in any way, small or large. The specifics can sort of work themselves out, I think--it'll depend partially on opportunities that arise, people I meet. But I want a general destination.

I think it comes down to this:

I want a life that is infused with what I find lovely, that is infused with what I find beautiful.
Beautiful friendships.
Beautiful relationships.
Beautiful music, beautiful art, beautiful movies.
Beautiful ideas.
Beautiful emotions--hope, joy, bliss, love.

I've got this already, to a great extent. I have been able to surround myself with beautiful people, things, ideas. I am learning to cast away the not-so-beautiful. But my life--what I am doing with myself--has not yet fallen in line. I do not feel like I am DOING beautiful things, everyone. My actions are not yet beautiful. Grad school has not been beautiful for me...but maybe it will lead me to something beautiful, and I can finally lead a life that harmonizes with the beauty and love I see around me.

respite

I am exhausted. The past 24 hours or so were wonderful, but active; unproductive, but relaxing. I kept on having to remind myself that today was a Tuesday. My roommate said it well, I thought: "I feel like I've been through a long weekend." I will get back on track tomorrow, but perhaps I needed these past 24 hours (and, in fact, the 72 before them) to help me deal with some recent events.

I won't get into the whole story of why I didn't go to DC here, but the end of the story is that I changed my plane ticket so that I could go home for a week in early June (June 2-8 now, actually, not 2-9 like I said before), which is something I'd been hoping to do anyway. I didn't even lose any money on the flight, because Southwest doesn't make you pay a change fee--just the difference in price.

I spent much of the day today roaming around campus and U with my roommate. We had destinations, but weren't in a hurry, so we enjoyed the day, stopping to play catch, stopping to talk, sometimes just stopping to enjoy the view. This was all a follow-up to a house party I went to last night, which is sort of like going to the bars, but you're drinking in a house and a yard rather than in a bar.

Over these past five days or so, as I've been processing the recent events I mentioned above, I have realized that I have a tendency, in certain situations, to see people for who I want them to be, and not necessarily for who they are. I had thought that my intuitions about people were pretty reliable--in other words, that the initial intuitions I have about someone usually match up with who they turn out to be, after I've known them for a while--but this isn't true. My intuition is sometimes clouded by what I want to see and it's sometimes clouded because people don't always act genuinely. Of course, sometimes my intuition is correct, but the point, I think, is that you don't fully know someone until you've spent quite a bit of time with him/her; until you've seen that person in different situations, dealing with a variety of issues; until you get to know that person's story.

I have also taken a firmer stand on the fact that I don't need people in my life who make me feel small, judged, patronized, stupid, and so forth, for being who I am. The fact is that I have a number of dear friends, from the various stages of my life, who have shown me what real friendship is. I hope that, occasionally, I have been able to show it back to them. These are people who clearly love me--even if they never say it, their actions reveal it. I don't think I can expend energy on people who make me feel unloved when I have plenty of people who make me feel loved. This is not to say, of course, that I'm looking for adoration or that I only consider people my friends who think that everything I do is beyond criticism--on the contrary, a friend is a great critic, because s/he sometimes sees things about you that you can't see about yourself. However, the friend can critique because the critique is always rooted in love--the friend wants the best for you, because the friend loves you.

In the past weeks, months, I have disappointed some people, and some people have disappointed me. I have become acutely aware of how relationships can change, and I have learned to be more honest with myself, both about other people and about my own values. Because of this honesty, my life has gained a direction, a focus, that it didn't have before. I'm still not entirely sure how the focus will be realized, in terms of a job once I get done with my PhD, but I have my passions in sight, I have a dissertation topic in mind, and I have a much stronger sense of who I am now than I did in January.

The summer stretches ahead.