Mark Pritchard's Open Salon Blog

Another missed opportunity: To be a grad student

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 16:04:45 -0400

There are two reasons I never went to grad school, both of them good ones, I think. First of all, no one ever explained to me what graduate school was. I went through four years of undergraduate education at the University of Texas, and there were these people called grad students that were Teaching Assistants in some of the classes. But I didn't understand what they were really doing there. From my perspective it seemed like the main reason they were there was to do shit work for the professors and throw their weight around -- not unlike my experience of the Explorer Scouts who were the camp counselors at the Boy Scout camp I went to for a few summers in a row. And my perception of them was true as far as it went; but I did not understand at all that they were there to do anything like scholarship or to establish academic careers of their own. I didn't even know what that meant.

In fact, seven years later, when I got to San Francisco State for the teaching credential, I still didn't know what it meant to go to grad school. Because applying for the credential program had been so easy, and hanging around the college had been so enjoyable, I thought I might want to make it more of a regular part of my life, so I applied (I thought) to be a graduate student in English. Not because I wanted to be a graduate student, really, but because I wanted to take the courses that graduate students could take, courses in literature which I had entirely missed by getting my bachelor's degree in film criticism.

But applying for grad school didn't turn out to be as simple as applying for the teaching credential program. About six weeks after sending in my application and $25 check, instead of a letter granting me permission to sign up for English courses I got back a letter listing all the different pieces of the application I had neglected to send in, such as letters of recommendation and an essay telling why I wanted to be a graduate student. Mystified by these requirements, I let the whole matter drop (and I never got back my $25). Because I didn't want to be a graduate student; I wanted to take literature courses.

The other, and more important, reason why I never became a graduate student lies in my experience of the grad students when I was an undergraduate. Like I said, they liked to throw their weight around. One day early in my senior year, I stuck my head into the office of my favorite professor in the film criticism department, Tom Schatz (who still teaches there) to ask him about something. He also happened to be the graduate student advisor at the time, and he asked, "Mark, did you ever think about becoming a graduate student?"

"No," I said flatly. "No offense, but no way do I want to do that."

Surprised by my response, he asked, "What? Why not?"

"Because all the grad students are jerks," I said. "Louis, Greg -- those guys are assholes. I would never want to be like them." This is the way I thought back then.

He laughed and said, "Look. Come in -- close the door -- come in. Have a seat." And for the next ten minutes he tried to explain that being an asshole was not really what being a grad student was about. But I was unmoved.

Looking back, I can see how immature I was at the time, and how I really wasn't ready to be a graduate student. At the time, and really until I was in my mid-30s, my actual maturity lagged my calendar age by three or four years. Even though I was a good writer and understood a lot about movies -- which I guess are the reasons he graciously asked me -- I was nowhere near ready to be an adult. And I think you have to be somewhat of an adult to be a grad student.

You also have to be an adult to be a high school teacher, and it was only when I got my teaching credential at age 27 that I actually realized I had to stop being quite so much of an adolescent and start thinking of myself as an adult -- at least relative to the students.

So that also might have been the time for me to go to grad school, and why it actually made sense that I actually did apply to do so -- in my adolescent and desultory way. I still had no idea what it meant to be a grad student. It would have helped if someone had explained it to me. And somebody had, several years before, but I was not ready to hear it.

I still haven't taken those courses in literature, and my reading is still spotty. I've read a lot of Hemingway and Henry Miller, a lot of Flannery O'Connor and Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, a lot of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, but no Dickens, Hardy, James or Faulkner, no D.H. Lawrence.

Sometimes I feel embarrassed by the gaps in my education. (Even my stripper girlfriend was shocked that I had not read Dickens. But she had gone to Boston College.) And I know I'd be a better writer if I had read them, or if I'd gotten at least a bachelor's degree in English. But I sure know a lot about Godard!

Can I haz taxi to Morocco plz?

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:10:05 -0400

Far-right cowers in face of #OWS

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 17:10:07 -0400

Everyone has heard the dictum "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged." It means that when crime strikes you personally, you supposedly forget all your liberal pieties about race, gun ownership, non-violence and so on, and instead go out and buy a gun and start voting for Nixon.

How about this one: a real conservative is someone who goes through a natural disaster and, instead of forming compassion for others and realizing we all have to depend on each other in an emergency, comes away with a resolution to hoard, arm himself, and fortify his compound.

During a major disaster, food will quickly disappear. Living for over 3 decades on the Gulf Coast, I can tell you with absolute certainty that whenever disaster strikes (usually an approaching hurricane, for those folks), food and provisions at the store sell completely out in a matter of a few hours. People panic, and within hours, you cannot find food, bottled water, ice, generators, batteries, candles, etc. ... Furthermore, almost all disasters include a complete loss of electricity. The water supply is compromised. Bottled water becomes more valuable than bank accounts. Dehydration becomes a very real and present danger. I remember witnessing a man offer an ice vendor $100 for an extra bag of ice during Hurricane Ivan. My wife and I went 2 weeks (14 days) without electricity in the aftermath of that hurricane. Believe me, I got a taste of just how precious bottled water, ice, batteries, generators, fuel, etc., can become.

-- Far-right preacher-politician Chuck Baldwin

Okay, sure, preparedness. Good idea for everyone. But it's telling that the writer doesn't mention that he helped that man who wanted ice so badly, or his neighbors who were also suffering without electricity or water.

It's also telling that he doesn't mention how the National Guard was there within 48 hours to secure the area and then coordinate either evacuation or helping the survivors, including with water. In his world, the government can never help you, it can only stand in your way at least, or oppress you at worst. (See my previous post on Baldwin, Far-Right Foamer with a Messianic Complex.)

No, in Baldwin's world, there's only you and the free market against the elements and the devil. He probably wishes he was the ice vendor who anticipated there would be desperate people waving Franklins after a hurricane. (As for the man who offered $100 for ice, I have the feeling he needed it to keep his insulin cool, not his gin and tonic.)

Then in my favorite collapsitarian blog, the always-excitable Mac Slavo quotes someone predicting violence, death, dead cops, disaster in NYC.

According to the insider, the Obama White House and partisan organizations that support the President are now actively promoting chaos in New York and other cities as a form of punishment and intimidation against those on Wall Street (and elsewhere) who have spoken out against the administration. The chaos, he says, will lead to elevated levels of anger and the real possibility of nationwide violence and riots...

ZuccottiPark should have been cleared last week. ... Now if there is a move by law enforcement against the protesters, the dangers will be greatly increased than just a week ago. The violence will be much-much worse. Police will be harmed. Citizens will be harmed. Businesses harmed. ... I don't wish to be overly dramatic here -- but violence. Injury. Perhaps death. Most certainly destruction of property. It's getting dangerous. I can sense it. It's palpable. And you feel it too, don’t you? Something terrible is coming just around the turn. So for now, I'm getting out.

Oh well, it's a good thing he doesn't want to be overly dramatic. I guess if he were overly dramatic he would break out the exclamation marks. Then I'd really be terrified.

All supposedly because Obama somehow "promoted" this by not breaking the heads of protesters. I don't know if Occupy Wall Street is making the 1% afraid, but it's certainly successful in exciting the foamers.

Indians imitate San Francisco's favorite real estate scam

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 10:10:11 -0400

In San Francisco, an institution known as the Academy of Art University is highly visible around town. Its advertisements are plastered on Muni buses, its own shuttle buses ferry students around the central city, and its logo appears on numerous buildings devoted to classes, workshops, dorms, or other, more vague purposes.

A tourist or newcomer might be excused for thinking the Academy of Art University is a thriving art institution in a town full of artists. But if you've been in town for a while, you start noticing that the AAU's presence constantly increases. More buildings, more shuttle buses -- impressive! You might wonder how they achieve such success.

In fact, the AAU is well known to San Franciscans as little more than a real estate scam. Yes, there are classes and workshops and dorms, and the shuttle buses ferry registered "students." But the quality of the art education offered by the institution is well known to be mediocre. How, then, is the organization apparently growing by leaps and bounds? Basically it works like this:

Government grants you status as non-profit educational institution. Under this status, you pay no real estate taxes.
Sign up students and help them get gobs of student loan money. The money goes straight to the institution for "tuition."
Hire mediocre instructors at low pay.
Use the extra money to buy San Francsico real estate. Pay no taxes on it.
Real estate appreciates, now worth 2x, 3x or more what you paid for it. Your "educational institution" now owns hundreds of millions of dollars worth of prime real estate in a world city. Happy!
Award "graduating" students worthless degrees, which they don't care much about, because many of them are foreign students here on a lark. They go home, resume their lives, having had a year or two jaunt as "art students" in San Francisco. Happy!
Many students default on student loans -- government and lenders unhappy.
City of SF loses ability to collect tax on dozens of buildings. Recipients of city services unhappy.

It works like a charm, and now they're imitating it in India:

... Several new private "universities" have also opened up recently in Himachal. According to a local daily, the Tribune, one of these institutions enrolled students and started offering courses even before it came into legal existence. You might put down this haste to the high demand for quality education among India's overwhelmingly youthful population. But as the Tribune described in a series of reports, the universities not only lack faculties, laboratories and libraries; a few do not meet the criteria for acquiring property in the state.

In other words, private universities have become a pretext for real estate speculators to acquire expensive land from the government: another example of the collusion between state and private business manifested recently in some of India's biggest corruption scandals. These sweetheart deals would be somewhat excusable if, unlike most Indian institutions of learning, the private universities offered an education rather than degrees. But they are only interested in extracting steep tuition fees from parents anxious for their children to join India's new economy. Not surprisingly, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, 75% of technical graduates and more than 85% of general graduates in India are unemployable.

Dramatic Conflict, with Cats

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 18:09:49 -0400

Hanging out with Cris in the morning while she makes a cheesecake to take to a dinner she's invited to. She was talking about her aunt, who lives in the city and whom we used to take to Golden Gate Park every Sunday to feed the feral cats. (I was thinking about that period of our lives the other day. The period of taking Aunt Dora to the park lasted several years, and while it was going on it seemed as if it would never end. But it did end, when the feral cat population dropped below that which required a Sunday evening visit [though Dora still went in the mornings], and now I can't even remember when it ended -- at least two years ago.)

Cris began talking about the other cat ladies who also went to the park to feed the feral population. The cat ladies of the park don't form as close an alliance as you'd think. It takes a certain kind of person to be so invested in the welfare of feral cats that they go every day to the park and into the bushes to the protected places, behind fallen logs and such, where the cats like to be fed. Such a person is likely to be more comfortable around cats than people, and each has her own ideas about what each cat wants or needs, whether it is a candidate for adoption, and so on. Thus the relationship between the cat ladies is more like a détente than a friendship. They help each other sometimes, but other times have a beef with one another over territorial or tactical issues. One woman, whom I'll call Penny, befriended Dora for several years, but now they're on the outs.

Cris went on to tell me that Penny had a husband who hated cats. "Not allergic to cats, or indifferent to them, but someone who thinks that cats are a curse, are vermin. How could someone who loves cats marry someone like that?"

I said it was an interesting dramatic conflict, to marry someone who hates what you love. Is there some condition, I said, where music actually causes physical pain -- like something Oliver Sacks might write about. What if that person were to fall in love with a musician? That could make an interesting story.

Unless you're Patricia Highsmith, who published a whole book of short stories centering around pets (which sounds horrible unless you know that Highsmith never wrote sentimentally). Then you would definitely make it about cats.