5 Questions
Feb. 13th, 2004 01:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtlefrom Papersky:
>1) How is it that your education managed to evade all mention of European history?
>
>2) Has did you come to be in your particular line of work?
>
>3) If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
>
>4) I'm going to ask you one Debbie asked me -- what is it in a book that attracts you to it and makes you want to buy other books by that author?
>
>5) How do you manage to read walking along without falling over?
Answers below, cut for length.
1. I went to middle school and high school in a public school district with an excellent reputation. (When I finished elementary school, my parents moved about 10 miles, into a smaller house, because they wanted my brother and me to go to better schools.) Because it was 1980, and a liberal area, the schools were starting to be concerned that their curriculum might be considered racist, bigoted, eurocentric, etc. They took comprehensive (mostly European and American) history classes out of the standard curriculum, replacing them with survey classes on what were supposed to be neglected parts of the world and cultural themes (bigotry, colonialism, etc). So they could teach extensively about Spanish colonies in Central America, making Spain look like a vague cartoon villian. Social studies classes focused on Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Middle East was acceptable, when discussing topics between ancient Sumer and the early Caliphates. The Crusades were never mentioned, that being one of the overdone topics they wanted to get away from.
I had a few years of US history, focused on the US Civil War and the conflicts with First Peoples, mentioning European alliances and interactions as little as possible. You could take world history as an elective, if you wanted, and that included Europe as well as Asia and Africa. Most of the kids in IB took that, but I wanted to take more advanced science and there just wasn't time for everything. I did pick up some European history from English class, but "I think you should have some background information, so you'll know what Shakespeare was talking about," is only marginally better than reading historical fiction.
2. I'm currently doing materials science, which is solid-state chemistry with an attitude problem. (Mucking about in laboratories and forgetting to wear lab coats runs in my family. I'm working on that last bit.) Early on, my father pointed out that there were many more public libraries than public laboratories, and advised me that it's much easier to make a career of science and spend the rest of one's time with novels, rather than the other way around. As an undergraduate chemistry student, I was drawn to crystal structures and inorganic materials that hold still while you measure them. I did some interesting research that I believed, at the time, was inorganic chemistry, and went off in search of a PhD.
My first semester of graduate school, I realized that the rest of the world defined "inorganic chemistry" differently than my old undergraduate advisor. (Or my father. Or the handful of people who worked with my undergraduate advisor.) I wanted to study the chemistry of salts, metal oxides, interesting crystals...not big organic molecules with a transition metal ion in the middle. (It just galls me that chlorophyll can be called "inorganic." I dislike that kind of chemistry for the same reasons I dislike organic chemistry.) I went off down the hill to the materials science department in the engineering school, where people were studying ceramics, and physical chemistry that wasn't abstract at all.
When I changed schools in search of a PhD in materials, I needed a new advisor. And grant money. I was changing schools to be with the person I was marrying (foolishly, but that's another story), rather than applying to different schools until I found one that offered me a job or a grant. Thus I had to pay my own way until I found an advisor willing to support me. Instead of starting with the list of professors and their research projects, to look for something interesting, I asked around until I found someone with a reputation for being scrupulously ethical, and a very good teacher. I started doing volunteer work in his lab. 6 weeks later, I was getting part-time wages. The next semester, he found grant money for my tuition and the standard stipend. He was, and remains, a superb teacher. It's my great good fortune that his research turned out to be so interesting - heat transfer and crystal growth, including some experiments that flew on Columbia.
(Wow, this is getting long! I hope nobody is too bored.) I left school without a PhD. My marriage and my health were both falling apart, and I just couldn't manage it. My choice of jobs boiled down to Huntsville, Alabama or Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was an easy choice. Living near Cambridge has been very good for me in lots of ways. I work near the border of product development and quality assurance. Engineers tell me I think like a chemist, chemists tell me I think like an engineer. It used to be remarkable that I could translate between technical and non-technical people, but one of the splendid things about my current job is that almost everyone here is skilled and careful with language.
Finding a job in science without a PhD can be very difficult. I was out of work for a year before finding this position (I started 2/13/2003 -- happy anniversary to me!) and the long search was very frustrating. But rapid prototyping materials are way cool, and so are my colleagues, and I'm happy to be here at last.
3. I would make my hands work properly without hurting all the time. If that counts as one thing. (If not, I would make my right hand stop hurting.)
4. Characters. I want a character I care about, someone written clearly enough that I can identify with him or her. (I don't need to tell you this - you already know. But other people read my journal. "Identify with" does not mean the character and I start in the same place or walk the same path. Connection is not similarity.) I'm impressed by books that have worthy characters on more than one side of a conflict.
5. Good sidewalks help a lot. I hold the book in front of my chest (not in front of my face) so the page and a piece of the sidewalk in front of me are in my field of view at the same time. When I get to a break in the sidewalk, or an intersection, or when traffic noise suddenly gets closer (human, vehicle, dogs, whatever), I look up from the book. My reading slows down quite a bit, my walking slows down only a little, when I do both at once. I think it's largely a practice effect, for me. I never had trouble with tripping over my feet (remarkable, considering how clumsy I am with everything else.) I have had problems keeping track with the reading, remembering where my eyes should return to the page after one of the (many) departures. There are a lot of situations where I read with frequent interruptions, and you probably do too. This is different, because the interruptions are so very frequent, and most of them involve shifting eyes but not really shifting attention.
(Feel free to ask for clarification as needed.)
>1) How is it that your education managed to evade all mention of European history?
>
>2) Has did you come to be in your particular line of work?
>
>3) If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
>
>4) I'm going to ask you one Debbie asked me -- what is it in a book that attracts you to it and makes you want to buy other books by that author?
>
>5) How do you manage to read walking along without falling over?
Answers below, cut for length.
1. I went to middle school and high school in a public school district with an excellent reputation. (When I finished elementary school, my parents moved about 10 miles, into a smaller house, because they wanted my brother and me to go to better schools.) Because it was 1980, and a liberal area, the schools were starting to be concerned that their curriculum might be considered racist, bigoted, eurocentric, etc. They took comprehensive (mostly European and American) history classes out of the standard curriculum, replacing them with survey classes on what were supposed to be neglected parts of the world and cultural themes (bigotry, colonialism, etc). So they could teach extensively about Spanish colonies in Central America, making Spain look like a vague cartoon villian. Social studies classes focused on Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Middle East was acceptable, when discussing topics between ancient Sumer and the early Caliphates. The Crusades were never mentioned, that being one of the overdone topics they wanted to get away from.
I had a few years of US history, focused on the US Civil War and the conflicts with First Peoples, mentioning European alliances and interactions as little as possible. You could take world history as an elective, if you wanted, and that included Europe as well as Asia and Africa. Most of the kids in IB took that, but I wanted to take more advanced science and there just wasn't time for everything. I did pick up some European history from English class, but "I think you should have some background information, so you'll know what Shakespeare was talking about," is only marginally better than reading historical fiction.
2. I'm currently doing materials science, which is solid-state chemistry with an attitude problem. (Mucking about in laboratories and forgetting to wear lab coats runs in my family. I'm working on that last bit.) Early on, my father pointed out that there were many more public libraries than public laboratories, and advised me that it's much easier to make a career of science and spend the rest of one's time with novels, rather than the other way around. As an undergraduate chemistry student, I was drawn to crystal structures and inorganic materials that hold still while you measure them. I did some interesting research that I believed, at the time, was inorganic chemistry, and went off in search of a PhD.
My first semester of graduate school, I realized that the rest of the world defined "inorganic chemistry" differently than my old undergraduate advisor. (Or my father. Or the handful of people who worked with my undergraduate advisor.) I wanted to study the chemistry of salts, metal oxides, interesting crystals...not big organic molecules with a transition metal ion in the middle. (It just galls me that chlorophyll can be called "inorganic." I dislike that kind of chemistry for the same reasons I dislike organic chemistry.) I went off down the hill to the materials science department in the engineering school, where people were studying ceramics, and physical chemistry that wasn't abstract at all.
When I changed schools in search of a PhD in materials, I needed a new advisor. And grant money. I was changing schools to be with the person I was marrying (foolishly, but that's another story), rather than applying to different schools until I found one that offered me a job or a grant. Thus I had to pay my own way until I found an advisor willing to support me. Instead of starting with the list of professors and their research projects, to look for something interesting, I asked around until I found someone with a reputation for being scrupulously ethical, and a very good teacher. I started doing volunteer work in his lab. 6 weeks later, I was getting part-time wages. The next semester, he found grant money for my tuition and the standard stipend. He was, and remains, a superb teacher. It's my great good fortune that his research turned out to be so interesting - heat transfer and crystal growth, including some experiments that flew on Columbia.
(Wow, this is getting long! I hope nobody is too bored.) I left school without a PhD. My marriage and my health were both falling apart, and I just couldn't manage it. My choice of jobs boiled down to Huntsville, Alabama or Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was an easy choice. Living near Cambridge has been very good for me in lots of ways. I work near the border of product development and quality assurance. Engineers tell me I think like a chemist, chemists tell me I think like an engineer. It used to be remarkable that I could translate between technical and non-technical people, but one of the splendid things about my current job is that almost everyone here is skilled and careful with language.
Finding a job in science without a PhD can be very difficult. I was out of work for a year before finding this position (I started 2/13/2003 -- happy anniversary to me!) and the long search was very frustrating. But rapid prototyping materials are way cool, and so are my colleagues, and I'm happy to be here at last.
3. I would make my hands work properly without hurting all the time. If that counts as one thing. (If not, I would make my right hand stop hurting.)
4. Characters. I want a character I care about, someone written clearly enough that I can identify with him or her. (I don't need to tell you this - you already know. But other people read my journal. "Identify with" does not mean the character and I start in the same place or walk the same path. Connection is not similarity.) I'm impressed by books that have worthy characters on more than one side of a conflict.
5. Good sidewalks help a lot. I hold the book in front of my chest (not in front of my face) so the page and a piece of the sidewalk in front of me are in my field of view at the same time. When I get to a break in the sidewalk, or an intersection, or when traffic noise suddenly gets closer (human, vehicle, dogs, whatever), I look up from the book. My reading slows down quite a bit, my walking slows down only a little, when I do both at once. I think it's largely a practice effect, for me. I never had trouble with tripping over my feet (remarkable, considering how clumsy I am with everything else.) I have had problems keeping track with the reading, remembering where my eyes should return to the page after one of the (many) departures. There are a lot of situations where I read with frequent interruptions, and you probably do too. This is different, because the interruptions are so very frequent, and most of them involve shifting eyes but not really shifting attention.
(Feel free to ask for clarification as needed.)
