Back in love with reading March 24, 2008
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Life, Reading, Superfluous musings.1 comment so far
I think I must have been in love with reading when I was younger. My early-years memory is always fuzzy, but I know I like to read, just never have the patience for it lately (read: the last 10 years+). But lately, probably thanks to Nate, I have been reading more. He got me over the type-A craziness of always only reading one book at a time and that seemed to unleash an enjoyment in books like I haven’t experienced in a long while. Now I have my lunch time book – I always feel crankier if I don’t get my early afternoon lunch & book fix. I also have my evening book and have a few more started that are waiting their turn. It feel GREAT to be picking a new book so often. It’s hard to pick, but it feels great that I’ve just finished a great one and am trying to decide what to follow it with that will be just as good without overshadowing or less thrilling but going into a different genre. Heh, I made myself sound like a bookworm. I’m no Rory Gilmore, but reading two+ books at a time and finishing one or two per month is a real breakthrough for the me of late years. It’s very pleasant to spend a Saturday and a good deal of Sunday reading at cafes and restaurants and browsing bookstores, walking around with a painfully narrowed selection, only to dismiss all books with the pretext that I’ve got a ton at home I have yet to plow through – and actually be reading those ones at home!
An added bonus is that reading more is one of my resolutions this year. I’ve been doing a-OK on most of them. 
– also a breakthrough, so don’t think I’m tooting my horn, just trying to be happy for myself 
Oh, yes, it’s also making me very happy that I’ve got so many friends who are engaged and it’s wonderful to be happy for them all! Though I do need to get better at this bridesmaid thing.
Speech analysis March 4, 2008
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Elections 2008, Superfluous musings.add a comment
As a Bachelor of Arts in communication and political science holder, I cannot help but check myself when I get drawn into Barack Obama’s rhetoric. I’ve studied speeches of historical figures, explored them in their historical context and I know that they can sway and engulf people emotionally so that only years later from a more objective standpoint many people will see they do not in fact agree with the doctrine they followed.
But even with this critical thinker cap on, I still cannot help but be mesmerized by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s messages. Obama by far has the more inspiring style – I get goosebumps listening to him although I do agree with most of what Clinton says as well. Obama, though, wins me in eloquence and his sensitivity to the international importance of this historic campaign. He is a first generation U.S. citizen, in a way – if you go by his father’s background and I like the sentiment this experience has taught him. I identify with it myself being a U.S. citizen by choice, having spent more than half of my life living abroad and learning first hand about the United State’s image in others’ eyes. He gives me hope that this will change and that is what we need foremost in the global economy world of today.
How green are new energy-efficient fuels? March 2, 2008
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Energy efficiency, Food, Life, Science.add a comment
Recently CNN had a special on green energy and how it wasn’t so green after all – exploring its impact on agriculture and the fact that it exacerbates the worldwide food shortage, burns up coal and oil in the process of its production (for the tractors farmers drive to raise the corn and other crops that make alternative fuels). Can’t find that one but I did read a similar message article in The Economist… it’s interesting and it makes you think. Should we be a little more thoughtful, slower in deploying massive experiments, etc. – i.e. how do we know that the mounds of “alternative” fuels we are coming up with are not in fact worse and less energy-efficient than the very ones we are trying to replace?
The Smurfs are back! March 2, 2008
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Media, Reminiscing, Superfluous musings.add a comment
I heard an NPR story a couple of days ago that featured the Smurfs’ comeback. I vaguely but fondly remember the little blue guys and I kind of miss them, I must admit. Not going to dive into a Smurf-reminiscent rant here, no worries, but I thought it was interesting what one of the interviewees in the story said was the reason the blue creatures are coming back now and are expected to pick up popularity among kids (and possibly grown ups who remember them) – life is too complicated and people crave simplicity, especially when it comes to their entertainment. In the Internet world of today, there may actually be something soothing, peaceful and relaxing about them… Oh, and they’re partnering with UNICEF! Yay! Plus, it’s the Smurfs’ 50th anniversary, hence the return timing. 
Two-in-one: Vocabulary builder and philanthropy vehicle March 2, 2008
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Food, Grad school, Life.add a comment
This is fun, great for wanna-be GRE test takers (or SAT or TOEFL or… take your pick of a vocabulary-demanding, future-determining test). Obviously I have a dire need for this exercise, plus it has a very intriguing bonus – rice donations to poor corners of the world via the UN World Food Programme. Check it out!
Girls vs. Boys March 2, 2008
Posted by midnightzimadreams in Education, Grad school, Life, Superfluous musings.1 comment so far
Why is it usually we say “boys vs. girls”? It comes natural, like man and woman, husband and wife, brother and sister. But that’s all a tangent … heh, I’m starting this entry with a tangent to the actual entry.
I’ll admit, I didn’t read the full article yet, but I have to put my thoughts down before I finish or else my mind will wander into so many different facets of the issue, I will forget some of my original reactions or get discouraged by realizing just how many arguments I would like to bring into my writing…
One of the things I’ve thought about studying in grad school is education – comparing education practices and results from different cultures, different nations, different continents. I was very curious in the motivation for a certain school district superintendent (I covered the education beat at a community newspaper for about a year) required all of his administrative staff, including all principals at all schools – elementary-through-secondary level – read Thomas L. Friedman’s “The World Is Flat.” I read it sometime after I left my newspaper job, and I took up his enthusiasm. I loved that a U.S. superintendent was inspired, motivated, and ambition-driven thanks to a parallel of education elsewhere…
But this New York Times article really did take me by surprise. I am certain there is research supporting what is commonly known already – that girls and boys, in the context of a gross generalization, learn differently. After all, they are socialized differently (and arguably hardwired differently). Makes sense. But separating them in classrooms by gender?!
When I was growing up in Bulgaria I was always in the most competitive schools, in the most competitive class in my grade (in great part owing to a stubborn and relentless mother). And in many ways I was a typical girl, I suppose. I was shy around boys, painfully so in parts of my childhood (~5-7 grade… with few exceptions and a bit less so in the first two years in high school – prep year when we studied only a foreign language and few other subjects, and 8th grade). Girls, I believe one of the arguments goes, are less likely to be vocal in class and are called on less frequently. Well, the school system I was brought up in is based not only on tests (not multiple choice, mind you!) and essays you write either at home or in the classroom as a sort of test, plus consistent homework that is corrected and graded, but also at least one, sometimes more of your several grades per class per term are based on oral examination. If you are being examined (oh, such a dreaded thing, but inevitable), you and maybe one or two more students, are on the spot all day in that class. The teacher drills you with questions on back lessons as well as the most recent one; lectures on the new one, and still might throw a few questions your way just to keep you unnerved. All the while you’re standing up while the rest of the class is sitting – or, if it’s a math, chemistry or physics class, you are on the board solving a problem in front of everyone and answering questions on theorems and formulas (or showing the path of such and such khan on an ancient map that doesn’t look anything like the country you’re familiar with (history) or pointing out different locations and talking about their climate, etc. on a current map (geography). Such an experience was dreaded by everyone, but it meant that it put everyone on the spot at some time or another and there was a lot of shared sympathy and no one was ever mean to anyone who did poorly on an oral exam.
The system meant girls got to talk in class and it really did break us into the bravery of raising our hands even when we weren’t examined. I thought back to those trying years and I don’t want to imaging what it would have been like if girls and boys were separated. I liked having an equal number of both in class – it taught me how boys reason by listening to their answers, it created lasting bonds and friendships with both girls and boys, for this shy girl. Overall, I think it was a rounding experience and I wouldn’t trade it in. Being in co-ed classrooms with boys also taught me how mean some of them can be and I am glad I learned a lesson like that as well, which gradually dissipated as I got into the higher high school grades and college.
However, that is my singular experience. And perhaps it skews my point of view much too much. Of course I also haven’t really studied the issues enough, and am not a trained educator myself. It just seems that if one of the arguments for separating girls and boys at school is that they have different social experiences, I have to wonder why that isn’t a reason for keeping them in the same classroom – to learn from each other and about each other as well as from their teachers.
