After undergraduate school, I could never understand why so many people had a negative opinion about those who chose academia as their profession. Apparently, some people that I spoke to had experienced a disconnect between themselves and the faculty that I had not. It was graduate school that finally exposed me to the disconnect, but I still held some faith that it was diminished slightly for graduate students because there were only about ten of us and we really only had significant contact with three or four professors at a maximum.
However, a few weeks ago I was fully witness to this disconcerting disconnect and I can now understand why the opinion of university faculty can be so low. But before I tell the story, I must relate a brief history of my undergraduate years to fully explain why I was blind to this phenomenon. As a student of the performing arts, specifically music, I was part of a rather cloistered lot at a small college in Pennsylvania. There were less than 100 students in the music department that were being instructed by a faculty of approximately twenty full and part time professors. With nearly one professor for every five students, it was guaranteed that most of them would remember your name after four, or in some cases, five years.
In addition to those positive statistics, I was also a student of one of the best teachers that I have ever met, Terry Steele. He was really more of a mentor than a teacher to most of his students. Eight years later, he remembers who I am and we still exchange email once in a while. I could go on quite a bit about many of his superlative qualities, but I will save that for another time. Suffice to say, Terry was a unique person and I consider myself lucky to have studied under him.
Returning to the present day, Amy and I stopped at Mt. Everest Restaurant in Evanston for dinner during a weekend toward the end of May. As our meal was served, two men were seated at the table next to us. It didn't take me long to recognize the voice of Gary Kendall coming from the adjacent table. He was with one of the newer doctoral candidates that I did not know. As I looked over at him, I got his attention and said hello. He asked me how and what I was doing and I asked him how he was. After the initial pleasantries, there was a short silence and, not wanting to be rude, I told them to enjoy their dinner, and Amy and I returned to our own conversations. As we left the restaurant, though, Amy brought something to my attention that I hadn't realized. She said, "He didn't remember your name."
"How could you tell?", I replied.
"He never introduced you," she said frankly.
I realized she couldn't have been more correct. It explained the awkward silence certainly. It was at that moment that I could understand why others have had such poor opinions of certain professors. In my attempts to grasp the realities of our brief exchange, I have wrestled with both sides of the argument. On one hand, Northwestern University is a much bigger school than Slippery Rock University and many, many more students enter and exit its revolving doors. I imagine that after twenty years in such a highly populated, high-turnaround environment, some forgetfulness is to be expected. On the other hand, I was one of a very small group of students and have only been away from the program for three years. I even returned in 2004 as a guest speaker, a session which Gary had attended.
In the end, it doesn't really matter. I got what I needed from Northwestern and it certainly got what it needed from me. I may not look back on my time there quite as fondly as I do my undergraduate years (although co-opting a Linux server IP over spring break to play Serious Sam: The Second Encounter only to later discover that one of the doctoral students was trying to access the server without success deserves fond mention) but I did make a couple of new friends and, really, what more could one hope for?
Friday, June 16, 2006
Friday, June 09, 2006
Green Sampler
The cabinets are in place now. The kitchen feels a little smaller than it used to, but we have a lot more storage space. Once the countertop and sink are installed, we'll also have more open countertop space in which to work. Simon and John came over to finish the electrical work on Wednesday so we also have the undercabinet lighting installed. I think it looks really good. Finally, the countertop company sent someone over to measure this morning. According to their estimates, the countertop and sink will be installed sometime during the week of June of 19th-23rd.
Last Sunday, Amy and I went to Oconomowoc, Wisconsin for the Midwest Gaming Classic. They had lots of pinball and arcade machines set up for free play. They also had a room set up where collectors were showing off some of their prized possessions. The one item that brought back memories for me was an Atari 2600 demo station that used to be displayed at Sears. It was bright orange and it had a list of 100 games and there were two small buttons on the bottom right that you used to increment the game number and make your selection. The memories I had of the thing were vague, but I definitely remember seeing one of them when I was kid.
I've been listening to a lot of music lately thanks to one of Amy's birthday gifts to me. I feel a little bit like I'm 15 again. I remember sitting in my bedroom as a teenager listening to CDs and cassettes when I should have doing my homework. Back then, it seemed as though I knew every note on every track. I listened to music constantly and I think it was good training that I didn't know I was getting. It didn't help me with my trigonometry, but it did help me develop an ear for melodies, rhythms, and chord progressions that helped me through my music theory courses. As for what I am listening to, here's the list titles this week:
Last Sunday, Amy and I went to Oconomowoc, Wisconsin for the Midwest Gaming Classic. They had lots of pinball and arcade machines set up for free play. They also had a room set up where collectors were showing off some of their prized possessions. The one item that brought back memories for me was an Atari 2600 demo station that used to be displayed at Sears. It was bright orange and it had a list of 100 games and there were two small buttons on the bottom right that you used to increment the game number and make your selection. The memories I had of the thing were vague, but I definitely remember seeing one of them when I was kid.
I've been listening to a lot of music lately thanks to one of Amy's birthday gifts to me. I feel a little bit like I'm 15 again. I remember sitting in my bedroom as a teenager listening to CDs and cassettes when I should have doing my homework. Back then, it seemed as though I knew every note on every track. I listened to music constantly and I think it was good training that I didn't know I was getting. It didn't help me with my trigonometry, but it did help me develop an ear for melodies, rhythms, and chord progressions that helped me through my music theory courses. As for what I am listening to, here's the list titles this week:
Friday, June 02, 2006
Little Dutch Boy
When it rains, it pours. Indeed, it pours right into our house apparently. Yesterday, I was in the laundry room and storage area of our basement in order to retrieve some long buried item and while I was looking for it, I noticed water on the floor. I moved the items that were nearest the water trying to determine its source. After moving nearly everything nearby, the source was still not clear, but as I was on my hands and knees drying the water with a rag, my hand rested on one particular tile. A couple of air bubbles rose up around the corner through the water. So, obviously, there's some ground water that's either not making it to our secondary sump tank or the pump on that tank has failed. At least that's the best I can deduce. I'm crossing my fingers for the latter. We're hoping to have someone out to the house to look at things on Monday to give us a better diagnosis of the problem. Now all we need are some hefty hospital bills to top off the spending spree and the cycle will be complete.
The kitchen is coming along, although not exactly as we had expected, which I am told is to be expected. (Meta-expectations.) The electricians arrived as planned on Wednesday afternoon. Surprisingly, they were able to complete everything they could have possibly done in one evening. They pulled five new circuits, installed whips for the undercabinet lighting, and installed a new thirty switch panel all before 10pm. They had originally estimated that they would be done sometime today. As events unfolded, I'm glad that we had the extra couple of days to play with because what Amy and I didn't realize was that they were going to be running hard conduit, not just the flexible whips, from the new panel. That made for much larger holes in the walls than I expected.
Since the electricians aren't able to put the walls back together for us, we've had to hire someone quickly to come in today and Monday to patch everything back up. We'll have to wait to paint it, though, because I'd rather stick to the schedule and have the cabinets installed so we don't have to push absolutely everything back, such as the countertop measure and installation, because that alone will take a couple of weeks. We may be able to paint it before the cabinets are mounted, but we would have to do it on Monday. Also, as a reminder to myself, we have to purchase the undercabinet lighting units this weekend. Fun.
The kitchen is coming along, although not exactly as we had expected, which I am told is to be expected. (Meta-expectations.) The electricians arrived as planned on Wednesday afternoon. Surprisingly, they were able to complete everything they could have possibly done in one evening. They pulled five new circuits, installed whips for the undercabinet lighting, and installed a new thirty switch panel all before 10pm. They had originally estimated that they would be done sometime today. As events unfolded, I'm glad that we had the extra couple of days to play with because what Amy and I didn't realize was that they were going to be running hard conduit, not just the flexible whips, from the new panel. That made for much larger holes in the walls than I expected.
Since the electricians aren't able to put the walls back together for us, we've had to hire someone quickly to come in today and Monday to patch everything back up. We'll have to wait to paint it, though, because I'd rather stick to the schedule and have the cabinets installed so we don't have to push absolutely everything back, such as the countertop measure and installation, because that alone will take a couple of weeks. We may be able to paint it before the cabinets are mounted, but we would have to do it on Monday. Also, as a reminder to myself, we have to purchase the undercabinet lighting units this weekend. Fun.
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