Yesterday my friend was awarded a huge amount of research funding to study the history of alchemy from 1300 to 1700. (Alchemy, the predecessor to modern chemistry, included the study of how to turn cheap metals like tin into gold.) Today we went to the pub to celebrate her recently finished 3-year-long PhD and recently awarded "job"/postdoc funding. She summed up her success of moving from PhD to well-funded postdoc: "Like my alchemists, I somehow turned three years' worth of useless material into gold."
:)
One of my students wrote (inadvertently!) in her essay about the study of electricity in the 18th century: "Alessandro Volta's invention of the voltaic pile gave a spark to the growing interest in electricity."
:)
I hope the language around you today was just as colorful!
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Vignettes of a supervisor
Here are a few memorable moments from this week's round of supervisions. My students' work was mostly characterized by incredibly thoughtful discussions, the self-confidence to talk through tough ideas, shockingly bad written grammar, and a mixture of I'm-too-cool-for-medieval-Europe and this-is-fascinating attitudes. Whatever happened, each hour I spent with each pair of students flew by and launched me on a Teacher's High that sustained me through the next supervision...
-Wide and funny variety of beautiful prose and incomplete sentences, inclusion of language from “just sort of like” to “materialistic philosophy”
-Where are the people?! Students write essays like their science lab reports- without subjects for the verbs! Think "5 grams was measured into the test tube," "the cells were cultured at 100 degrees", etc. Passive voice? WTF. When students did write with subjects, these were rarely HUMAN subjects: “The Black Death caused new ways of thinking about disease,” “medicine didn’t know how to address diseases from the New World”, “New methods in anatomical dissection changed how medicine was studied”… you’d think that Black Death and medicine and dissection methods were in charge! It’s so interesting how the students don’t see the people behind the scientific concepts - duh, because they’re not taught that way in science classes. As one student pointed out, the inventors of new ideas in science are mentioned in science lectures – once – and then the focus is on the ideas themselves and the person who suggested them is forgotten.
-These students are deeply committed to the idea of science as progress and the ancients as unforgivably ignorant because they didn't believe what we believe now... "Harvey discovered that the blood circulates in the body; unfortunately, he thought this was due to the motion of vital forces. What a moron." (last sentence added for dramatic effect... :) )
-They listen to me SO CLOSELY. Yikes! Don't they know I don't write or grade their exam?!
-I brought a copy of a big-deal medical text (Vesalius, On the Fabric of the Human Body, 1543) for the students to see the amazing drawings of dissected bodies. I flipped the several-hundred-page book open randomly... straight to a full-page drawing of a penis. The students got red-faced and giggled, and I authoritatively said something about gender in early modern Europe and they shut up and took notes. When the supervision ended and the students left, I had to lean against the wall and laugh...
-As I was covering undergrad essays in purple-inked comments and writing a methodological critique for my own supervisor (teacher-student split vision!!) in the grad students’ shared office, someone else was PRINTING OUT HER FINISHED PHD THESIS. LIKE ALL 300 PAGES OF IT. LIKE SHE BROUGHT IN AN ENTIRE NEW REAM OF PAPER. And politely asked us if anyone needed the printer for the next hour or so… Wow! What a moment of representation of the entire student succession – from crappy but high-effort undergrad essays to a clueless but dedicated PhD student to the finished thesis of an almost-Doctor.
Wishing you moments of enlightenment and embarrassment!!
Thursday, 29 October 2009
Photos
Photographic evidence of the goofy stuff I've been writing about... Enjoy! Click on photos to enlarge them.
My former preparator boss, friend and key informant at the paleontology conference in Bristol, holding my first published article, which is all about him!
My friend and me at the paleontology conference- note my "Nick Crumpton" nametag. :)
A fellow PhD student on our department's annual Fungus Hunt. Yeah, we nerdy academics actually spent a whole afternoon looking for mushrooms and bringing them proudly to our expert mushroom-identifying professor. Outside. In the woods. No computers or seminars anywhere. We did, however, bring books. :)
This photo shows the 4 categories of natural objects, according to 18th century standards- animal, vegetable, mineral, fungus. My classmate and I thought this was REALLY COOL. Can you identify the four objects?
Me waiting to fill a boat with novices at Clare Hall's Rowing Day, when we trained new rowers for the first time. We had about 40 new people! And I was in charge of their safety, happiness, and rowing ability. It was nuts. Check out my cool Clare Hall rowing "kit" (= clothes!), which I was wearing in full force to make novices think it was cool to join the rowing team... the rain and shitty weather probably counteracted that effort.
My former preparator boss, friend and key informant at the paleontology conference in Bristol, holding my first published article, which is all about him!
My friend and me at the paleontology conference- note my "Nick Crumpton" nametag. :)
A fellow PhD student on our department's annual Fungus Hunt. Yeah, we nerdy academics actually spent a whole afternoon looking for mushrooms and bringing them proudly to our expert mushroom-identifying professor. Outside. In the woods. No computers or seminars anywhere. We did, however, bring books. :)
This photo shows the 4 categories of natural objects, according to 18th century standards- animal, vegetable, mineral, fungus. My classmate and I thought this was REALLY COOL. Can you identify the four objects?
Me waiting to fill a boat with novices at Clare Hall's Rowing Day, when we trained new rowers for the first time. We had about 40 new people! And I was in charge of their safety, happiness, and rowing ability. It was nuts. Check out my cool Clare Hall rowing "kit" (= clothes!), which I was wearing in full force to make novices think it was cool to join the rowing team... the rain and shitty weather probably counteracted that effort.
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
An Epic Day of Teaching... but wait, aren't I a STUDENT?!
Today was great. Truly. It had a rough start, with a sleepless night of worrying about the first early-morning outing for my new rowers. I honestly don't think I slept at all, and was up, dressed, and fed at 5:30, which was 45 min before necessary! WTF.
But after that... I taught. All day. And you'll never believe the subjects!
Today's Timetable
6:15-8:45: How to Cycle to the Boat House, followed by Rowing 101 (taught by me screaming from atop my bike on the riverbank as the novices paddled/flailed by)
8:45-12:45: Introduction to Materials Science for Grade 6, including hands-on identify-this-metal projects. Followed closely by Fun with Liquid Nitrogen, followed closely by Don't Touch the Liquid Nitrogen, Kids. Audience: brilliant kids in a Cambridge school.
1-2: Introduction to the History of Science- a one-hour one-on-one "supervision" session with a 2nd-year undergrad geology major. Her assignment was to debate with me about the validity of the name "Scientific Revolution". She wrote me an email beforehand that said "A debate with a supervisor? That sounds scary." (But I'm not sure who was more scared beforehand, her or me...)
I don't think I've talked this much in one day before. Ever. After the supervision I had to go hide in a coffee shop with a book and not speak for a while... at least until the History of Medicine seminar began. :) But even there I got to listen and learn.
I always thought that teaching was the CULMINATION of being a student. Like you had to stop being a student before you were allowed to lead other students. It feels pretty ridiculous to be instructing people so close to my age. Don't they know that I don't know anything? And if not, isn't that a problem? I felt like an interloper all of last year, just waiting for someone to walk into the History of Science library and drag me out kicking and screaming because they confused my application with someone else's and I was never qualified enough to be here... and now I feel that way during every rowing outing and every seminar I lead and every supervision I give! Yikes. I talked to other grad students and fellow supervisors about it and they all said it's important to maintain confidence and never let students know when you're not sure. Wait- so I'm supposed to be a student, a teacher, AND an actor?! I didn't sign on for this... shouldn't students know when their informant is not reliable? Isn't that the entire thesis of my PhD and of the history of science, that no knowledge is foolproof?!
These humongous contradictions are everywhere, but I so love being a student AND a (pretendingly-confident) teacher. And both those roles are, duh, learners.
I guess I'll just try to fake-it-til-I-make-it, as they say. Maybe along the way I'll somehow figure out what the heck I'm supposed to know?!
But after that... I taught. All day. And you'll never believe the subjects!
Today's Timetable
6:15-8:45: How to Cycle to the Boat House, followed by Rowing 101 (taught by me screaming from atop my bike on the riverbank as the novices paddled/flailed by)
8:45-12:45: Introduction to Materials Science for Grade 6, including hands-on identify-this-metal projects. Followed closely by Fun with Liquid Nitrogen, followed closely by Don't Touch the Liquid Nitrogen, Kids. Audience: brilliant kids in a Cambridge school.
1-2: Introduction to the History of Science- a one-hour one-on-one "supervision" session with a 2nd-year undergrad geology major. Her assignment was to debate with me about the validity of the name "Scientific Revolution". She wrote me an email beforehand that said "A debate with a supervisor? That sounds scary." (But I'm not sure who was more scared beforehand, her or me...)
I don't think I've talked this much in one day before. Ever. After the supervision I had to go hide in a coffee shop with a book and not speak for a while... at least until the History of Medicine seminar began. :) But even there I got to listen and learn.
I always thought that teaching was the CULMINATION of being a student. Like you had to stop being a student before you were allowed to lead other students. It feels pretty ridiculous to be instructing people so close to my age. Don't they know that I don't know anything? And if not, isn't that a problem? I felt like an interloper all of last year, just waiting for someone to walk into the History of Science library and drag me out kicking and screaming because they confused my application with someone else's and I was never qualified enough to be here... and now I feel that way during every rowing outing and every seminar I lead and every supervision I give! Yikes. I talked to other grad students and fellow supervisors about it and they all said it's important to maintain confidence and never let students know when you're not sure. Wait- so I'm supposed to be a student, a teacher, AND an actor?! I didn't sign on for this... shouldn't students know when their informant is not reliable? Isn't that the entire thesis of my PhD and of the history of science, that no knowledge is foolproof?!
These humongous contradictions are everywhere, but I so love being a student AND a (pretendingly-confident) teacher. And both those roles are, duh, learners.
I guess I'll just try to fake-it-til-I-make-it, as they say. Maybe along the way I'll somehow figure out what the heck I'm supposed to know?!
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Caitlin in Charge
Cambridge student turnover rate is really high. Undergrads and PhDs are only here three years, and masters students only 9 months. Probably 90% of my college are new students. So if you were here last year then everyone assumes that you know everything.
WHAT?!?!
It's true that it is really hard to move to a new place and settle into the Cambridge lifestyle, which is complicated and bureaucratic and confusing. I totally feel for the new students. But just because I did it last year does NOT mean that I know the best place to buy a bike, how to write a British "cheque", or why the library doesn't allow you to carry bags inside.
Yet somehow, I keep getting asked to be a leader. WTF. Suddenly I am captain of the Clare Hall Women's Boat Club (and the only eligible person for the job), House Representative of my dorm (and the only eligible person for the job), and giving a talk tomorrow for new students in my department on how to do research on museum objects (and the only eligible person for the job).
Do you see a pattern? Being a leader is not a compliment or a reward here, but rather a reflection of how easily you give in when people beg you to fill the desperate lack of people to lead things. And I am a sucker for people asking for help/offering me responsibility. Somehow that gets me put in positions of power? This doesn't seem right.
Ah well. I knew Cambridge doesn't run like a democracy, or really like a meritocracy either, but a show-up-and-you've-got-the-job-ocracy? Come on, Cam, you can do better than that.
In the meantime, I'm going to scheme up a way to abuse my power. That'll teach them to keep assigning me jobs... :)
WHAT?!?!
It's true that it is really hard to move to a new place and settle into the Cambridge lifestyle, which is complicated and bureaucratic and confusing. I totally feel for the new students. But just because I did it last year does NOT mean that I know the best place to buy a bike, how to write a British "cheque", or why the library doesn't allow you to carry bags inside.
Yet somehow, I keep getting asked to be a leader. WTF. Suddenly I am captain of the Clare Hall Women's Boat Club (and the only eligible person for the job), House Representative of my dorm (and the only eligible person for the job), and giving a talk tomorrow for new students in my department on how to do research on museum objects (and the only eligible person for the job).
Do you see a pattern? Being a leader is not a compliment or a reward here, but rather a reflection of how easily you give in when people beg you to fill the desperate lack of people to lead things. And I am a sucker for people asking for help/offering me responsibility. Somehow that gets me put in positions of power? This doesn't seem right.
Ah well. I knew Cambridge doesn't run like a democracy, or really like a meritocracy either, but a show-up-and-you've-got-the-job-ocracy? Come on, Cam, you can do better than that.
In the meantime, I'm going to scheme up a way to abuse my power. That'll teach them to keep assigning me jobs... :)
Sunday, 4 October 2009
History of Cambridge drawn by Quentin Blake
Roald Dahl's illustrator! Amazing. Thank you, Zoe, for finding this!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8281204.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8281204.stm
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
It starts...
I’m here! It’s real! My intended “gap” year of 2008-2009 is officially extended… for THREE MORE YEARS!!! Bliss.
I spent last week feeling like a spy, attending a paleontology conference in Bristol more to observe the paleontologists (or more specifically, the people who prepare fossils for the paleontologists to study) than to listen to talks about dinosaur biomechanics. Meta, right? Bristol is a really pretty university town built on one gigantic hill, and woe upon you if your location and your destination are at opposite altitudes. Luckily for my calves, my hostel was at sea level and the conference rooms were at Everest level. Yikes. Nothing like training for rowing early, I guess.
So after each day of fossil talks and schmoozing with fossil celebrities (Jack Horner! Matt Brown! Amy Davidson! “Fossil” celebrities in subject matter only, of course…), I hiked back to my shockingly cheap bedroom, shared with 15 other people (including boys!). I can sleep anywhere, so the noise and bedbugs (theoretical only) were no problem but the hostel did create a bizarre situation when the boy sleeping in his underwear across from me turned out to be a conference attendee too. He thought we were pals, but I had a really hard time talking to him at the conference without imagining him in his knickers. Awkward.
When the analyses of Pleistocene mammal phylogenies got to be too much for me, I took an afternoon off to be a historian instead of a scientist. I visited Bristol Cathedral, which has great tongue-sticking-out gargoyles and an incredible number of monkey statues (Apparently the 13th-century architect put monkeys on everything he built. An evolutionist before his time?). I also visited one of Britain’s first suspension bridges, built over the River Avon just outside Bristol.
The conference wrap party was an ethnographic opportunity in itself. The big cool thing to do was to swap your conference nametag for the nametag of someone “better”, i.e. Jack Horner, or someone with a special ribbon that says “Conference Chair” or “Committee Member” or even “Speaker”. People were adamant about it, and soon no one had their own nametag on, which made for awkward “I know I met you but…” situations. I was totally failing to convince anyone to take my nametag until I met a student from the University of Bristol who was a conference volunteer (i.e. HAD A RIBBON SAYING “VOLUNTEER”- goldmine), and he said, “Wylie?! What a brilliant name! Wanna swap?” So I became nametagged as “Nick Crimpton, Volunteer,” and my night was made.
After one more sweaty traverse of Bristol’s hill (this time dragging my 80 pounds of luggage), I climbed gratefully and with delight onto buses to London and then to Cambridge. I was THRILLED to be finally heading to Cam.
I went to the pub with a bunch of other PhD students and ignored their complaints about how awful it is to do a PhD and reveled in their nerdy jokes. My bike tires were almost totally flat so I had to pay the bike shop 50p for air. Half my room’s balcony is roofed and half is not, so I can sit out there in the rain AND grow plants at the same time. (AWESOME.) I spent a morning teaching 6th graders in a nearby school to build circuits, as part of a student club that does science outreach programs. The kids knew EVERYTHING – We asked, “What do you need to make a circuit?” They answered, “A battery!” “Wires!” “A switch!” “A capacitor?”
Let’s just say I learned a lot more about electricity than they did. No one got electrocuted and my group successfully built a mini burglar alarm, so it was a great day.
New students arrive this weekend. Classes start on Tuesday. Rowing starts Sunday. I’m sleeping in head-to-toe fleece. Papers are scattered all over my floor. I'm heading to the library.
Life is good.
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
I'M BAAAAAAACK!!!!
I’m on my new private balcony, overlooking the Clare Hall courtyard bathed in afternoon sunshine, with a breeze warm enough to make me ditch my scarf and mittens (well, briefly at least... brrrr), my lunch plate smeared with some wayward Marmite, my beloved Cambridge radio station keeping me company, my notes from last week’s Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference perched precariously on my knee while I type them up and try to shape them into a dissertation plan…
This is heaven.
Saturday, 8 August 2009
Caitlin in... Chicago?
Graduation was amazing. Everything was in Latin. We students wore carefully monitored academic robes (with an army of people whose job was to check if our outfits passed the dress code and then fold our hoods appropriately... and btw they don't appreciate it if you giggle while they tug violently at your clothes). We each had to kneel before the Chancellor of the University to receive our degrees "in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" (or at least that's supposedly what they said... anyone know Latin?!). Then we had to stand up, not trip on our ankle-length robes, curtsy, and exit.
No speeches. No music (though my mom may have sung "Pomp and Circumstance" under her breath...). No photography. Just 5 seconds of fame for each of us while the other 60-odd graduates and their guests looked on. Incredible. Unreal. And worth every minute of 10 months of studying.
After a weekend of fun and ceremony, my parents and I returned to Chicago, where I got to catch up with friends, family, the dog, the house, etc. The best reacquaintance with the greatness of American culture was- of course- a camping trip. My best friend Deena and I set off across Illinois in my family's red minivan (an official clunker) for an adventure in nature. The luxury of using up gasoline for a destination-less road trip, as well as the embarrassing amount of cheap wood and newspaper we burned trying to build campfires, was a striking reminder of the excessive and polluting lifestyle we Americans enjoy.
Other American delights that this trip brought me include:
-driving on the right... or, really, driving at all. 10 months' driving hiatus and I can still gun the engine and cut people off like any proud Chicagoan.
-soy "meat" (Delicious, and without the mad-cow worries!)
-cornfields that go without end and are more likely to become ethanol than popcorn (which is, incidentally, Illinois' official snack food! (http://www.illinois.gov/facts/symbolsdesc.cfm#snackfood, courtesy of Deena))
-thunderstorms, and a tent that only leaks in the corners
-the incredible hospitality and friendliness of strangers. Our neighbors at one campsite not only helped us start our fire, but also shared their dinner with us when they saw how pathetic ours was... AND they invited us to eat s'mores and drink Baileys with them! What?! Wonderful. And the next day, while Deena and I were strolling alongside the road heading to a nature trail and an SUV zoomed by and hit a puddle at top speed and splashed water on us just like in the cartoons, the driver stopped, reversed, and apologized! WHAT?! In the UK drivers speed up to drench passersby with puddles.
-open spaces- from fields to tents to car interiors to enormous Porta Potties. Somehow everything takes up more space in America.
-giant superstores like Aldi's and WalMart that echo with space and have every kind of anything you'd ever want (except, of course, healthcare for their employees)
I hope you enjoy the rest of your good ole American summer, complete with gas-guzzling cars, hot BBQs, and ubiquitous air conditioning. I know I will... and feel guilty about it when I leave.
Sunday, 12 July 2009
Omens & T-shirts
I haven't bought a pen in the UK. Really.
This is not a sign of my computer dependence, but rather a reflection of my bank's free pen policy... I just get another one every time I walk by. This may sound cheap and wasteful, but these pens are AWESOME and they never run out of ink... until this week. 9 months of perfect pen performance, and TWO of my beloved Barclays freebies quit working this week.
It must be time to go home.
But first...
Post-deadline, post-exam time at Cambridge is amazing. There are two weeks of city-wide partying, with all-night-long "May Balls" held different colleges every night (with pricey tickets often over £100... wow). Because I'm not a huge fan of ballgowns or spending £100, I went to a May Ball not as a partyer but as a performer!
The Cambridge University Ceilidh Band plays Scottish folk music, but doesn't the stage make us look like a rock band? Our gig was from 2:30-4:30AM, but the sleepy, drunk May Ballers still danced sweaty, spinning ceilidh in their formalwear! It was amazing.
When students aren't sleeping off the previous night's May Ball, the suddenly beautiful summer weather pulls us into the sunshine for lounging and constant picnics, with staples like British strawberries and the traditional summer alcohol, Pimms and lemonade.
Ideally, you also wear a straw boater hat. And you NEVER drink Pimms out of a can... unless you're an ugly American like my friend and me in this picture.
Once I got sick of partying and started to miss learning (which, embarrassingly, didn't take very long), I joined the Cambridge Hands-On Science Roadshow! CHaOS for short, this student group brings interactive science experiments/demonstrations to different UK schools during a month-long summer "tour." Kids love our exploding, sticky, things-they-can-touch science stuff, and the Cambridge students really know their science info and are great explainers. I was a little nervous about spending 4 days with Cambridge science students, and they didn't really know what to make of a historian of science... the first day, we divided up the experiments according to our subjects- so the chemists did electrolysis, the biochemists explained DNA, the medics (= premeds!) showed anatomy models, etc. UK students are very specialized, so they know A LOT about their specific subject area though they don't take classes in other subjects. When it was my turn, the organizers weren't sure what to do with my interdisciplinary broad-but-not-deep education... so they said, "Well, can you build bridges?"
Bridge-building... the liberal arts of science?
CHaOS leaders (in our cool uniforms) designing cantalever bridges... it's harder than it looks!
So I spent my tour days building arch, cantalever, and suspension bridges with 7-14 year olds. And it was SO FUN. And at night we camped. Science, school, goofy and genius companions, and CAMPING?! This was my idea of heaven.
A view from our campsite a few miles from Cambridge, with Kings College Chapel and the University Library visible in the distance!
A week of CHaOS (haha...) was followed by a week of the Darwin Festival, the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birthday. The festival was a conference attended by over 1000 people every day-- a conglomeration of the public, scientists, artists, and just about everyone who does the history of science. From being CHaOS's weird historian outlyer, I was suddenly in my element.
I, along with 150 others, was a conference volunteer. That meant I poured coffee and served lunch for 3 days, in exchange for free entry to some conference talks and events. AND I got a cool uniform... although frankly I'm not a fan of the question mark as a symbol of Darwin.
It was just amazing to be surrounded by people whose books I've read, whose articles I've lost sleep over... they are celebrities in a small pond of history-of-science fans, but it was a jaw-dropping experience for a small fish like me to serve coffee to Dame Gillian Beer, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins... David Attenborough even gave a speech at one event!
On Thursday my parents arrive for graduation. It is unbelievable that my time in Cambridge, my masters degree, and my expat adventure are over. So... thanks to a good grade on my thesis and a pair of generous funders, I've signed on to stay. During the next three years of fun in the history of science, I'll work to become an unemployable PhD but, more immediately, I'll work for academic nirvana.
This is not a sign of my computer dependence, but rather a reflection of my bank's free pen policy... I just get another one every time I walk by. This may sound cheap and wasteful, but these pens are AWESOME and they never run out of ink... until this week. 9 months of perfect pen performance, and TWO of my beloved Barclays freebies quit working this week.
It must be time to go home.
But first...
Post-deadline, post-exam time at Cambridge is amazing. There are two weeks of city-wide partying, with all-night-long "May Balls" held different colleges every night (with pricey tickets often over £100... wow). Because I'm not a huge fan of ballgowns or spending £100, I went to a May Ball not as a partyer but as a performer!
The Cambridge University Ceilidh Band plays Scottish folk music, but doesn't the stage make us look like a rock band? Our gig was from 2:30-4:30AM, but the sleepy, drunk May Ballers still danced sweaty, spinning ceilidh in their formalwear! It was amazing.When students aren't sleeping off the previous night's May Ball, the suddenly beautiful summer weather pulls us into the sunshine for lounging and constant picnics, with staples like British strawberries and the traditional summer alcohol, Pimms and lemonade.
Ideally, you also wear a straw boater hat. And you NEVER drink Pimms out of a can... unless you're an ugly American like my friend and me in this picture.
Once I got sick of partying and started to miss learning (which, embarrassingly, didn't take very long), I joined the Cambridge Hands-On Science Roadshow! CHaOS for short, this student group brings interactive science experiments/demonstrations to different UK schools during a month-long summer "tour." Kids love our exploding, sticky, things-they-can-touch science stuff, and the Cambridge students really know their science info and are great explainers. I was a little nervous about spending 4 days with Cambridge science students, and they didn't really know what to make of a historian of science... the first day, we divided up the experiments according to our subjects- so the chemists did electrolysis, the biochemists explained DNA, the medics (= premeds!) showed anatomy models, etc. UK students are very specialized, so they know A LOT about their specific subject area though they don't take classes in other subjects. When it was my turn, the organizers weren't sure what to do with my interdisciplinary broad-but-not-deep education... so they said, "Well, can you build bridges?"
Bridge-building... the liberal arts of science?
CHaOS leaders (in our cool uniforms) designing cantalever bridges... it's harder than it looks!So I spent my tour days building arch, cantalever, and suspension bridges with 7-14 year olds. And it was SO FUN. And at night we camped. Science, school, goofy and genius companions, and CAMPING?! This was my idea of heaven.
A view from our campsite a few miles from Cambridge, with Kings College Chapel and the University Library visible in the distance!A week of CHaOS (haha...) was followed by a week of the Darwin Festival, the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birthday. The festival was a conference attended by over 1000 people every day-- a conglomeration of the public, scientists, artists, and just about everyone who does the history of science. From being CHaOS's weird historian outlyer, I was suddenly in my element.
I, along with 150 others, was a conference volunteer. That meant I poured coffee and served lunch for 3 days, in exchange for free entry to some conference talks and events. AND I got a cool uniform... although frankly I'm not a fan of the question mark as a symbol of Darwin.It was just amazing to be surrounded by people whose books I've read, whose articles I've lost sleep over... they are celebrities in a small pond of history-of-science fans, but it was a jaw-dropping experience for a small fish like me to serve coffee to Dame Gillian Beer, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins... David Attenborough even gave a speech at one event!
On Thursday my parents arrive for graduation. It is unbelievable that my time in Cambridge, my masters degree, and my expat adventure are over. So... thanks to a good grade on my thesis and a pair of generous funders, I've signed on to stay. During the next three years of fun in the history of science, I'll work to become an unemployable PhD but, more immediately, I'll work for academic nirvana.
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Libraries, late nights, and LOTS OF FUN
On Tuesday morning, roughly 20 hours after I handed in my masters thesis, one of my 8-year-old math students looked at me thoughtfully and said, "Are you wearing make-up?"
Me, baffled and feeling like a post-deadline zombie: "No."
Child: "Really? Because your eyes are purple."
Sigh. The brutal honesty of childhood. But I'm proud of my eyes' purple bags (especially if an 8-year-old fashionista thought I'd made them on purpose!) because they represent a long-lasting, challenging, and super-fun engagement with a stack of teaching manuals about how to teach science on the blackboard, written in the 1900s. These dusty books kindly let me massage them into a 14,871-word thesis over the course of four months, culminating in a goofy collection of blackboard-related quotes from the late 19th century and 15 pages of sample blackboard drawings from the teaching manuals.
But of course, as for any long-term endeavor, the journey matters more than the destination, and my four months (really only two, since the term break happened in the middle and I did more traveling than typing...) of research, reading, writing, and re-writing were an absolute joy. My great friend Rike (Ree-ka. German.) was working on her thesis too, and we holed up in the tiny Clare Hall library for days on end, wrapped in wool blankets (Clare Hall turns off its heat in April. Seriously.) and surrounded by books and papers and random friends we managed to convince to join us in scholarly silence. Rike and I really moved in, bringing tons of (forbidden) food and coffee into the library and stacking sweaters and scarves on the table. We commiserated about low word counts, distracted supervisors, confusing books, and the inadequacies of the English language (Rike more than me on that one. Can you imagine writing a thesis in your second language?!). We took breaks to watch EuroVision and Britain's Got Talent. It was SO FUN to share that intense focus, regardless of the fact that she was studying the linguistics of second language acquistion and I was studying hundred-year-old blackboard manuals.
When I couldn't take our little library anymore, or when Rike had something to do and couldn't come, or when I had a meeting with my supervisor, my laptop and I would trek to my department's library. There I shared the same commiserations with my coursemates, who were studying everything from Darwin's religious beliefs to the history of back pain to the history of counting to the ethics of recruiting women as egg donors. No matter the topic, we all needed support, sympathy, coffee breaks, and advice (e.g. "What's another word for 'therefore'? I've used it four times in this sentence..."), and doing seemingly solitary work in a social (though silent) environment makes it so much fun. We even took over a seminar room in the department, so that when the library closed at 5:30PM we all trooped down to the seminar room, waved at the professors as they left for the day, and hunkered down to write until the wee hours. The spooky feeling of being in an ancient building at night bound us together and heightened our sense of community as a class (although honestly I'm not sure that staying late heightened our word counts... we did a fair amount of goofing off too.).
Now comes a week of rowing (May Bumps (which happens in June...) continues one race per day til Saturday), followed by a week of partying (May Balls (which happen in June...) are humongus end-of-the-year parties held by each college, with formalwear and fireworks and lots of alcohol). Cambridge seems to follow a "work hard, play hard" lifestyle, and I feel so lucky to get to share both work and play with the amazing people here.
Me, baffled and feeling like a post-deadline zombie: "No."
Child: "Really? Because your eyes are purple."
Sigh. The brutal honesty of childhood. But I'm proud of my eyes' purple bags (especially if an 8-year-old fashionista thought I'd made them on purpose!) because they represent a long-lasting, challenging, and super-fun engagement with a stack of teaching manuals about how to teach science on the blackboard, written in the 1900s. These dusty books kindly let me massage them into a 14,871-word thesis over the course of four months, culminating in a goofy collection of blackboard-related quotes from the late 19th century and 15 pages of sample blackboard drawings from the teaching manuals.
But of course, as for any long-term endeavor, the journey matters more than the destination, and my four months (really only two, since the term break happened in the middle and I did more traveling than typing...) of research, reading, writing, and re-writing were an absolute joy. My great friend Rike (Ree-ka. German.) was working on her thesis too, and we holed up in the tiny Clare Hall library for days on end, wrapped in wool blankets (Clare Hall turns off its heat in April. Seriously.) and surrounded by books and papers and random friends we managed to convince to join us in scholarly silence. Rike and I really moved in, bringing tons of (forbidden) food and coffee into the library and stacking sweaters and scarves on the table. We commiserated about low word counts, distracted supervisors, confusing books, and the inadequacies of the English language (Rike more than me on that one. Can you imagine writing a thesis in your second language?!). We took breaks to watch EuroVision and Britain's Got Talent. It was SO FUN to share that intense focus, regardless of the fact that she was studying the linguistics of second language acquistion and I was studying hundred-year-old blackboard manuals.
When I couldn't take our little library anymore, or when Rike had something to do and couldn't come, or when I had a meeting with my supervisor, my laptop and I would trek to my department's library. There I shared the same commiserations with my coursemates, who were studying everything from Darwin's religious beliefs to the history of back pain to the history of counting to the ethics of recruiting women as egg donors. No matter the topic, we all needed support, sympathy, coffee breaks, and advice (e.g. "What's another word for 'therefore'? I've used it four times in this sentence..."), and doing seemingly solitary work in a social (though silent) environment makes it so much fun. We even took over a seminar room in the department, so that when the library closed at 5:30PM we all trooped down to the seminar room, waved at the professors as they left for the day, and hunkered down to write until the wee hours. The spooky feeling of being in an ancient building at night bound us together and heightened our sense of community as a class (although honestly I'm not sure that staying late heightened our word counts... we did a fair amount of goofing off too.).
Now comes a week of rowing (May Bumps (which happens in June...) continues one race per day til Saturday), followed by a week of partying (May Balls (which happen in June...) are humongus end-of-the-year parties held by each college, with formalwear and fireworks and lots of alcohol). Cambridge seems to follow a "work hard, play hard" lifestyle, and I feel so lucky to get to share both work and play with the amazing people here.
More adventures in rowing... (sorry!)
Today, in 55ºF rain that soaked us then stopped just long enough for our race then poured down again, Clare Hall bumped Queens College.
(See my post about Lent Bumps this winter... the same race happens again in June!)
Our cox's caption for this photo from after our race (the teams who bump put leaves in their hair to tell the crowd that they bumped so the spectators can cheer...): "Even fixing the greenery goes in synchrony! Well done, girls."
I'm #3 from the front of the boat/back of the picture.
At one of our training races a few weeks ago, the wind was UNBELIEVABLE and it felt like we were rowing against a hurricane. Our captain's description of this photo: "The windiest race ever...We make some rather funny faces, only Caitlin seems to be very happy :-)"
Oops. I guess my face gave it away that I was enjoying the experience and maybe not working very hard... :)
For a good time (or to make fun of me for thinking something as boring as rowing can be a good time), listen to the Cambridge radio station reporting on today's race. HILARIOUS.
http://bumps.cur1350.co.uk/podcasts/2009mays/Day%201%20W4.mp3
In other news, the past few weeks have been academic nirvana leading up to my thesis deadline on Monday. End-of-the-year/finals season was my favorite time in college, and this year was no different.
And, like previous years, I'm still recovering and will have to postpone writing about it til after my nap. :)
Happy summer!!!
(See my post about Lent Bumps this winter... the same race happens again in June!)
Our cox's caption for this photo from after our race (the teams who bump put leaves in their hair to tell the crowd that they bumped so the spectators can cheer...): "Even fixing the greenery goes in synchrony! Well done, girls."I'm #3 from the front of the boat/back of the picture.
At one of our training races a few weeks ago, the wind was UNBELIEVABLE and it felt like we were rowing against a hurricane. Our captain's description of this photo: "The windiest race ever...We make some rather funny faces, only Caitlin seems to be very happy :-)"Oops. I guess my face gave it away that I was enjoying the experience and maybe not working very hard... :)
For a good time (or to make fun of me for thinking something as boring as rowing can be a good time), listen to the Cambridge radio station reporting on today's race. HILARIOUS.
http://bumps.cur1350.co.uk/podcasts/2009mays/Day%201%20W4.mp3
In other news, the past few weeks have been academic nirvana leading up to my thesis deadline on Monday. End-of-the-year/finals season was my favorite time in college, and this year was no different.
And, like previous years, I'm still recovering and will have to postpone writing about it til after my nap. :)
Happy summer!!!
Friday, 15 May 2009
Yet another unreal day
Today was so awesome that it needs a play-by-play.
-Woke up to an international text message that my best friend got her dream job. (Go Deena!!) Great start to a day for both of us.
-Jogged in the misty rain through a field of baby rabbits, past physics students in neon-colored raincoats cycling to the Cavendish Physics Laboratory (which is surrounded by bunny-filled fields in case of explosion... seriously!)
-Strolled through the misty, flower-blooming, sun-just-peeking-out fields of Cambridge to my department, listening to the soundtrack to the musical I saw in London a few weeks ago on my iPod (I never use my iPod, but I'm addicted to the soundtrack of Spring Awakening and today I was sick of listening to my own thoughts)
-Spent a sun- and fun-filled hour outside in my department's courtyard reading about the use of microscopes in 19th century biology classes (bliss)
-Went to a seminar called "How to Publish an Article," led by a professor who edits two major history of science journals and is a genius and HILARIOUS. He counseled "thick skins" to get over "venomous" peer review results and journal rejections, and told unbelievable stories about academic back-stabbing and horror stories of how he misspelled "putrefying" in an article, only to find out that "putrefying" is not actually a verb... you can only imagine how much my classmates and I enjoyed that seminar! My stomach literally hurt from laughing/trying not to laugh.
-Strolled through town to the second-floor window seat of a little cafe, where I savored tea and cake and a few blessed hours of reorganizing my argument about the role of blackboards in British school science in the early 20th century. I also eavesdropped on some fantastic conversations about ball gowns and types of cell phone.
-Met up with my department's Latin translation group, who had kindly invited me on their trip to St John's College's library, founded in 1624. I don't know Latin, but boy, do I know libraries and I knew I wanted to see this one. It was UNREAL in every sense. The front door was a massive wooden slab that only opens if you push on a certain spot, I guess to keep the riffraff/uninitiated/non-St-Johns students out. The library overlooks the Cam (literally! Like you can't see the ground from the windows because the building is ON the riverbank without somehow being IN the river.) and has stained glass windows with coats of arms of library benefactors from the 1600s. The books are so old their sheepskin pages sort of stink, and the librarian pointed out one shelf of texts that hadn't been touched, let alone checked out, in over 300 years. The shelves themselves are enormous and wooden and intricately carved, and so old that they've turned almost black. People in the group had requested certain books to look at, so the librarian showed us an edition of Euclid's geometry textbook, in Latin, published in 1422 (I think?), complete with a picture of the same proof of the Pythagorean theorem that all of us did in high school. (AMAZING. And we think what we do is innovative?! It's ANCIENT!) We also saw some astronomy books, including a notebook of careful observations of Uranus made by a Cambridge student in the 1840s who would later discover Neptune (I think?? I should have been taking notes.). There was also a personal calculation notebook full of algorithms and incomprehensible math symbols, belonging to a prominent nuclear physicist from the 1940s, who switched to astrophysics because he didn't want to be assigned to nuclear weapon projects. Members of the group explained each of these texts and their significance, which was absolutely priceless to hear. THEN, after admiring the Cam, the library's wooden ceiling and collection of bizarre books on display (including a gigantic book, maybe 4 by 4 ft, of music and lyrics, meant to be propped up for a whole choir to see while singing!), we went to see medieval Anglo-Saxon manuscripts which the Latin group's leader read from, pointing out the different scripts from different centuries included in the same book, which was about how to determine the date of Easter by counting on your fingers. Another manuscript gave recipes for herbal drugs, i.e. to make pregnant women give birth faster. WHAT?!
-After 2 hours of dusty heaven, we emerged into the sunlit grounds of St Johns, with the Latin speakers going off to the pub and me joyfully skipping across the perfect grass (which usually everyone but professors are absolutely forbidden to walk on, but it's open for general use ONLY during this term, exam term, to let undergrads let off steam by playing frisbee on the lawns) towards Clare Hall, where I jumped into formalwear and flats, packed my heels and a friend's borrowed Cambridge gown, and headed off to a dinner meeting of the Grown-Up Students' Network, a club started by my friend for the many adults who pursue degrees at Cambridge, undergrads and grads.
-SUPER FUN formal dinner, my first wearing a real Cambridge gown (= a U.S. graduation gown + Harry Potter's but even more ridiculous-looking) because it was at a college that requires gowns at dinner. The other "grown-up students" were just so fun, and all very interesting people who chose to leave their real world jobs, homes, etc to come back to school. Four types of wine later (red, white, port, dessert... ) we were jolly friends. :)
-Walked home (in my flats...) with a few "grown-ups", ran into a bunch of stragglers from a lecture and dinner held at Clare Hall tonight, including people from my department. Chatted about the proper way to do oral history.
Books, writing, community. Is this really my life? Pinch me.
-Woke up to an international text message that my best friend got her dream job. (Go Deena!!) Great start to a day for both of us.
-Jogged in the misty rain through a field of baby rabbits, past physics students in neon-colored raincoats cycling to the Cavendish Physics Laboratory (which is surrounded by bunny-filled fields in case of explosion... seriously!)
-Strolled through the misty, flower-blooming, sun-just-peeking-out fields of Cambridge to my department, listening to the soundtrack to the musical I saw in London a few weeks ago on my iPod (I never use my iPod, but I'm addicted to the soundtrack of Spring Awakening and today I was sick of listening to my own thoughts)
-Spent a sun- and fun-filled hour outside in my department's courtyard reading about the use of microscopes in 19th century biology classes (bliss)
-Went to a seminar called "How to Publish an Article," led by a professor who edits two major history of science journals and is a genius and HILARIOUS. He counseled "thick skins" to get over "venomous" peer review results and journal rejections, and told unbelievable stories about academic back-stabbing and horror stories of how he misspelled "putrefying" in an article, only to find out that "putrefying" is not actually a verb... you can only imagine how much my classmates and I enjoyed that seminar! My stomach literally hurt from laughing/trying not to laugh.
-Strolled through town to the second-floor window seat of a little cafe, where I savored tea and cake and a few blessed hours of reorganizing my argument about the role of blackboards in British school science in the early 20th century. I also eavesdropped on some fantastic conversations about ball gowns and types of cell phone.
-Met up with my department's Latin translation group, who had kindly invited me on their trip to St John's College's library, founded in 1624. I don't know Latin, but boy, do I know libraries and I knew I wanted to see this one. It was UNREAL in every sense. The front door was a massive wooden slab that only opens if you push on a certain spot, I guess to keep the riffraff/uninitiated/non-St-Johns students out. The library overlooks the Cam (literally! Like you can't see the ground from the windows because the building is ON the riverbank without somehow being IN the river.) and has stained glass windows with coats of arms of library benefactors from the 1600s. The books are so old their sheepskin pages sort of stink, and the librarian pointed out one shelf of texts that hadn't been touched, let alone checked out, in over 300 years. The shelves themselves are enormous and wooden and intricately carved, and so old that they've turned almost black. People in the group had requested certain books to look at, so the librarian showed us an edition of Euclid's geometry textbook, in Latin, published in 1422 (I think?), complete with a picture of the same proof of the Pythagorean theorem that all of us did in high school. (AMAZING. And we think what we do is innovative?! It's ANCIENT!) We also saw some astronomy books, including a notebook of careful observations of Uranus made by a Cambridge student in the 1840s who would later discover Neptune (I think?? I should have been taking notes.). There was also a personal calculation notebook full of algorithms and incomprehensible math symbols, belonging to a prominent nuclear physicist from the 1940s, who switched to astrophysics because he didn't want to be assigned to nuclear weapon projects. Members of the group explained each of these texts and their significance, which was absolutely priceless to hear. THEN, after admiring the Cam, the library's wooden ceiling and collection of bizarre books on display (including a gigantic book, maybe 4 by 4 ft, of music and lyrics, meant to be propped up for a whole choir to see while singing!), we went to see medieval Anglo-Saxon manuscripts which the Latin group's leader read from, pointing out the different scripts from different centuries included in the same book, which was about how to determine the date of Easter by counting on your fingers. Another manuscript gave recipes for herbal drugs, i.e. to make pregnant women give birth faster. WHAT?!
-After 2 hours of dusty heaven, we emerged into the sunlit grounds of St Johns, with the Latin speakers going off to the pub and me joyfully skipping across the perfect grass (which usually everyone but professors are absolutely forbidden to walk on, but it's open for general use ONLY during this term, exam term, to let undergrads let off steam by playing frisbee on the lawns) towards Clare Hall, where I jumped into formalwear and flats, packed my heels and a friend's borrowed Cambridge gown, and headed off to a dinner meeting of the Grown-Up Students' Network, a club started by my friend for the many adults who pursue degrees at Cambridge, undergrads and grads.
-SUPER FUN formal dinner, my first wearing a real Cambridge gown (= a U.S. graduation gown + Harry Potter's but even more ridiculous-looking) because it was at a college that requires gowns at dinner. The other "grown-up students" were just so fun, and all very interesting people who chose to leave their real world jobs, homes, etc to come back to school. Four types of wine later (red, white, port, dessert... ) we were jolly friends. :)
-Walked home (in my flats...) with a few "grown-ups", ran into a bunch of stragglers from a lecture and dinner held at Clare Hall tonight, including people from my department. Chatted about the proper way to do oral history.
Books, writing, community. Is this really my life? Pinch me.
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Obamalysis
Tonight Clare Hall held an informal lecture called "President Barack Obama: Politics, Poetry and Prose," advertised as a textual analysis of Obama's speeches and books in the context of "American political rhetoric" in general. Intrigued by a scholarly "Obamalysis" (my pun :) ) when Obama hasn't even really had time to do anything analyzable yet, I left my study buddies in the library and went to the lecture.
It was PACKED. Maybe 40 people in our little common room. No seats left. Remember that Clare Hall is a tiny community of overworked graduate students and professors with small children- we are notorious for not showing up to events. Someone teased the speaker by saying "Well, Mike, it couldn't have been you who brought the crowds... it must have been Obama."
Perched on a squeaky bar stool in the sweaty room full of people dying for the speech to end so they could discuss international politics, I was swept away by the speech. The speaker read lines from famous American presidential speeches to help define the genre and the "American dream" and our "recurring values" for the very international audience. He read from Obama's major speeches, identifying "Obama themes" of hope and modest background and hard work and equality.
And the speaker, a white-haired British scholar of "American studies" in a 3-piece khaki suit surrounded by a crowded and fidgety audience, got choked up. Reading the words of presidents of a country and eras that are not his, from Washington to Lincoln to Monroe to Kennedy to Clinton to Obama, he had to pause to keep his voice from breaking.
And I got why. I almost lost it myself when he spoke of "a frosty morning, on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, Obama compared himself with another 'young, skinny lawyer from Illinois' and announced his candidacy for the presidential nomination."
Sean and me on that frosty morning in Springfield
I miss Obama. After months of the pre- and post-nomination debates, his face and voice on the news every hour, his future plans discussed from November to January, his inauduration, his 100 Days... I miss the guy. Yeah, he's all over the news websites, but I still actively look forward to his Sunday podcasts. They are only 5 minutes long, about whatever topic is big in the news that week, but his soaring rhetoric and emphatic voice transport me back to a country that he and I have great hopes for.
Earlier today, my British friend was complaining about the current well-publicized fraud among British politicians who are spending taxpayers' money on personal expenses (sound familiar?), and she was disgusted and frustrated and embarrassed for her government (sound familiar??), and she said, "We need an Obama."
Right on.
It was PACKED. Maybe 40 people in our little common room. No seats left. Remember that Clare Hall is a tiny community of overworked graduate students and professors with small children- we are notorious for not showing up to events. Someone teased the speaker by saying "Well, Mike, it couldn't have been you who brought the crowds... it must have been Obama."
Perched on a squeaky bar stool in the sweaty room full of people dying for the speech to end so they could discuss international politics, I was swept away by the speech. The speaker read lines from famous American presidential speeches to help define the genre and the "American dream" and our "recurring values" for the very international audience. He read from Obama's major speeches, identifying "Obama themes" of hope and modest background and hard work and equality.
And the speaker, a white-haired British scholar of "American studies" in a 3-piece khaki suit surrounded by a crowded and fidgety audience, got choked up. Reading the words of presidents of a country and eras that are not his, from Washington to Lincoln to Monroe to Kennedy to Clinton to Obama, he had to pause to keep his voice from breaking.
And I got why. I almost lost it myself when he spoke of "a frosty morning, on the steps of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, Obama compared himself with another 'young, skinny lawyer from Illinois' and announced his candidacy for the presidential nomination."
Sean and me on that frosty morning in SpringfieldI miss Obama. After months of the pre- and post-nomination debates, his face and voice on the news every hour, his future plans discussed from November to January, his inauduration, his 100 Days... I miss the guy. Yeah, he's all over the news websites, but I still actively look forward to his Sunday podcasts. They are only 5 minutes long, about whatever topic is big in the news that week, but his soaring rhetoric and emphatic voice transport me back to a country that he and I have great hopes for.
Earlier today, my British friend was complaining about the current well-publicized fraud among British politicians who are spending taxpayers' money on personal expenses (sound familiar?), and she was disgusted and frustrated and embarrassed for her government (sound familiar??), and she said, "We need an Obama."
Right on.
Monday, 4 May 2009
CycleBridge. CamBike.
Cycles are a way of life in Cambridge. (Not "bikes," which are motorcycles!) Everyone rides them everywhere. Really.
28% of Cantabridgians (why they are not "Cambridgians" is a question for Latin speakers, I'm told) cycle to work, and it sure feels like way more than that ride to the grocery store on weekends, when the street actually gets blocked by all the parked cycles.
Old women in wool skirts with heels and giant wooden handlebar baskets, kids in school uniforms with violins slung over their shoulders, parents with several children attached in various ways to one cycle, professors with their baskets piled full of laptop and books, undergrads with six-packs of beer balanced precariously on their laps, people in tuxes and evening gowns and academic robes complete with mortarboards, all these people and more astride cycles of various sizes, shapes, and rustiness are common sights on Cambridge streets, in rain, shine, snow, and tourist season.
Because cycles are the only real transportation option around this flat, congested little city of tiny streets, people are very skilled at riding them. I've seen people eating, reading, talking on their phones, and even texting while cycling. Cambridge childhood is measured based on a kid's growth from the handlebar seat to the rear seat to the tag-along attached cycle to their own small two-wheeler, creating 7-year-olds who are adept and fearless cyclers. Today was the 808th annual fair in a tiny village called Reach, and some friends and I joined a free organized cycle ride to visit the fair. It's 12 miles each way, and little kids constantly whizzed by, leaving us three strong adult rowers in their dust. I rode my bike a LOT as a kid and in college (or so I thought), and I'm still way slower than any Cambridge cycle commuter. Part of that slowness, though, may be part of the minor drive-on-the-left issue here. (My cycling mantra? "SLOW. ON LEFT." The initials for that reminder felt meaningful in my first few months here but are now purely coincidental...)
No wonder Europeans are skinnier, stronger, and pollute less than Americans. Let's start a cycle revolution!
"Staff Cycles Only." Only Cambridge would manage to make even bike parking hierarchical.
28% of Cantabridgians (why they are not "Cambridgians" is a question for Latin speakers, I'm told) cycle to work, and it sure feels like way more than that ride to the grocery store on weekends, when the street actually gets blocked by all the parked cycles.
Old women in wool skirts with heels and giant wooden handlebar baskets, kids in school uniforms with violins slung over their shoulders, parents with several children attached in various ways to one cycle, professors with their baskets piled full of laptop and books, undergrads with six-packs of beer balanced precariously on their laps, people in tuxes and evening gowns and academic robes complete with mortarboards, all these people and more astride cycles of various sizes, shapes, and rustiness are common sights on Cambridge streets, in rain, shine, snow, and tourist season.
Because cycles are the only real transportation option around this flat, congested little city of tiny streets, people are very skilled at riding them. I've seen people eating, reading, talking on their phones, and even texting while cycling. Cambridge childhood is measured based on a kid's growth from the handlebar seat to the rear seat to the tag-along attached cycle to their own small two-wheeler, creating 7-year-olds who are adept and fearless cyclers. Today was the 808th annual fair in a tiny village called Reach, and some friends and I joined a free organized cycle ride to visit the fair. It's 12 miles each way, and little kids constantly whizzed by, leaving us three strong adult rowers in their dust. I rode my bike a LOT as a kid and in college (or so I thought), and I'm still way slower than any Cambridge cycle commuter. Part of that slowness, though, may be part of the minor drive-on-the-left issue here. (My cycling mantra? "SLOW. ON LEFT." The initials for that reminder felt meaningful in my first few months here but are now purely coincidental...)
No wonder Europeans are skinnier, stronger, and pollute less than Americans. Let's start a cycle revolution!
"Staff Cycles Only." Only Cambridge would manage to make even bike parking hierarchical.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
We learn something new every day...
Two 8-year-old students and a 23-year-old student learned a bit about the world from each other this morning.
8-year-old: "Guess what... in France, people don't say £1.64 as 'one pound sixty-four', they say 'one EURO sixty-four'!"
Me: "Cool! Do you know what they say in America?"
8-year-old: "I don't know America yet."
I love the expectancy- "yet". Like, ask me tomorrow, I might know then. No hurry. I've figured out France, so America will come soon enough.
Knowledge, one country at a time.
*********************
8-year-old: "What language do you speak?"
Me: "Uh, English."
8-year-old: "But I thought you were American!"
That is the most confusing thing... even as I assured her that Americans speak English, I realized what a crazy idea that is. Why don't we speak American? She was clearly baffled and tried to say something about me not talking like her, and I said something about how I have an accent but I speak the same language, but THAT'S totally baffling too, since lots of people around her speak English with accents because they speak other languages at home. Why wouldn't she assume that the lack of a Cambridge accent implied multilingualism? Who would guess that my German friends who speak perfect British English learned it as teenagers, and that my New Zealander friends speak incredibly thickly accented English as their mother tongue?
We just can't rely on anything these days- not money, not language, not logic! Thank goodness we can still learn from each other, right?
8-year-old: "Guess what... in France, people don't say £1.64 as 'one pound sixty-four', they say 'one EURO sixty-four'!"
Me: "Cool! Do you know what they say in America?"
8-year-old: "I don't know America yet."
I love the expectancy- "yet". Like, ask me tomorrow, I might know then. No hurry. I've figured out France, so America will come soon enough.
Knowledge, one country at a time.
*********************
8-year-old: "What language do you speak?"
Me: "Uh, English."
8-year-old: "But I thought you were American!"
That is the most confusing thing... even as I assured her that Americans speak English, I realized what a crazy idea that is. Why don't we speak American? She was clearly baffled and tried to say something about me not talking like her, and I said something about how I have an accent but I speak the same language, but THAT'S totally baffling too, since lots of people around her speak English with accents because they speak other languages at home. Why wouldn't she assume that the lack of a Cambridge accent implied multilingualism? Who would guess that my German friends who speak perfect British English learned it as teenagers, and that my New Zealander friends speak incredibly thickly accented English as their mother tongue?
We just can't rely on anything these days- not money, not language, not logic! Thank goodness we can still learn from each other, right?
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Diversity rocks.
A friend who grew up in Oak Park and went to high school with me visited Cambridge on Sunday. Andrew went to college in Scotland and now is taking a masters degree there, making this his 5th year in the UK. We laughed about language barriers and culture shock and the British degrees that we are working for but don't understand (What the hell is an MLitt? an MPhil?!) and the pub culture that is now our second nature. We discussed Obama's image abroad and how he has made both of us less likely to claim Canadian citizenship in polite conversation. It was a joy to share such common opinions and experiences, ESPECIALLY when he said, "You know, it really takes someone from Oak Park to know what I mean when I say I miss black people, Jews, and Mexicans."
BAM.
THAT IS SO TRUE and so hard to admit in a politically-correct way. I'm surrounded by diversity, in that yesterday I rowed in a boat with 8 people of 6 nationalities and my dorm of 15 people comprises 13 countries of origin. The school I volunteer at has 440 students who speak 52 languages, and there are number charts on the walls labeled in French and Urdu. But Cambridge at a glance is very white, and is in a Christian country. I had to learn to recognize and appreciate a different kind of diversity from Chicago's, in that two white people here might speak different languages, come from different cultures, and hold very different beliefs, not to mention pursue a variety of academic interests.
Sounds obvious, but I was used to diversity meaning multicolored. I look forward to going to London where there are black people (although they most likely have British accents and not the South-Side-of-Chicago speech that I so miss) and people in Islamic dress, and my head turns when a rare conversation in the street is about bar mitzvahs, and I sadly try (and fail) to make my own guacamole.
I love my global community, though I wish it had some more Northern hemisphere minorities in it, and I am for the first time aware of how lucky I was to grow up in a place with racial, cultural, and religious diversity. Missing ethnic groups still seems not PC to me since of course no two Mexicans are the same, etc, but recognizing the value and fun of knowing people from very different backgrounds may be the most important lesson I'm learning in this little town of people who look the same but have wonderfully different life stories.
BAM.
THAT IS SO TRUE and so hard to admit in a politically-correct way. I'm surrounded by diversity, in that yesterday I rowed in a boat with 8 people of 6 nationalities and my dorm of 15 people comprises 13 countries of origin. The school I volunteer at has 440 students who speak 52 languages, and there are number charts on the walls labeled in French and Urdu. But Cambridge at a glance is very white, and is in a Christian country. I had to learn to recognize and appreciate a different kind of diversity from Chicago's, in that two white people here might speak different languages, come from different cultures, and hold very different beliefs, not to mention pursue a variety of academic interests.
Sounds obvious, but I was used to diversity meaning multicolored. I look forward to going to London where there are black people (although they most likely have British accents and not the South-Side-of-Chicago speech that I so miss) and people in Islamic dress, and my head turns when a rare conversation in the street is about bar mitzvahs, and I sadly try (and fail) to make my own guacamole.
I love my global community, though I wish it had some more Northern hemisphere minorities in it, and I am for the first time aware of how lucky I was to grow up in a place with racial, cultural, and religious diversity. Missing ethnic groups still seems not PC to me since of course no two Mexicans are the same, etc, but recognizing the value and fun of knowing people from very different backgrounds may be the most important lesson I'm learning in this little town of people who look the same but have wonderfully different life stories.
Monday, 6 April 2009
Spring!
Cambridge has a magical way of organizing classes: 3 8-week terms, separated by 5-week vacations. Technically graduate students are supposed to continue their research during "interterm time." As a good rule-follower, I'm spending this interterm time diligently researching European travel.
Here's a photo summary (click on the photos to make them bigger) of my past few weeks spent witnessing the arrival of springtime in three countries. My apologies to those in the Midwest who are still snowbound!
Clare Hall celebrated the End of Term with a concert by college members- 8 performers from 8 countries! I played 5 minutes' worth of jazz and Mozart (badly). Luckily it was a laid-back crowd and inexpert musicians... there were a lot of false starts and some cursing (Really! A professor stopped in the middle of his piano performance and said "bollocks"! HILARIOUS.). Note my music thrown on the floor. Classy.
The River Cam with WILDFLOWERS EVERYWHERE. In an institution where it is forbidden to walk on the grass unless you are a professor (really!), the uncontrollable growth of wildflowers all over the perfect college lawns must be so irritating. Serves Cambridge right for restricting grass access!
More wildflowers and a sleeping pair of duck-mates. It is that season, you know.
My parents and I spent a fantastic weekend appreciating the springtime beauty of the Acropolis in Athens. The place is SO GREEN. Even the ancient columns had plants growing on them!
My mom being a professor in the birthplace of modern education- the ancient marketplace where Socrates taught! The original "spring" of the Socratic Method?
My mom and me with the founder of modern biology- Darwin! This new statue is in honor of Darwin's 200th birthday this year. Isn't he cute?
A budding tree branch in front of the Charles Bridge (on the left) over the Vltava River in Prague. This beautiful city in my first post-Communism country has an amazing history going all the way back to 200 BC, which includes 2 castles, 2 ancient cemeteries, and countless governments. Also, "Prague Spring", funny enough, was a brief reform movement calling for better civil rights under communism in 1968, which the Soviet Union squashed by invading Prague.
This is my childhood friend and Prague host, Sonja, a Czech-American who is going to film school and plays ice hockey for the Czech national team. WOW. She is also a fantastic tour guide, and while strolling around Prague we went to castles, churches, cemeteries, old buildings, new buildings, cafes (one where Einstein hung out!), jazz clubs, museums, AND a free concert held in "garaz" which we assumed was a club but was literally a parking garage!! (See red road sign in Czech.) The garage was TRICKED OUT with a beer tent, hookah area, fantastic lights and sound system, and lots of people who looked much less surprised than we did to be partying four stories underground!
Another (more airy) music location- on the Charles Bridge! These musicians played fantastic jazz to an audience of passerbys. Notice the violin player's homemade "amplifier" (giant gold horn!), the banjo's broken strings, and the two rockin' clarinetists! All performing on Prague's most pictoresque bridge! I would have happily paid a lot more than my donation of 20 Czech crowns ($1) for the fun of that concert.
And to think- only 2 more weeks til term starts!! I have so much to learn before then...
Enjoy your own springs, wherever you see them!
Here's a photo summary (click on the photos to make them bigger) of my past few weeks spent witnessing the arrival of springtime in three countries. My apologies to those in the Midwest who are still snowbound!
Clare Hall celebrated the End of Term with a concert by college members- 8 performers from 8 countries! I played 5 minutes' worth of jazz and Mozart (badly). Luckily it was a laid-back crowd and inexpert musicians... there were a lot of false starts and some cursing (Really! A professor stopped in the middle of his piano performance and said "bollocks"! HILARIOUS.). Note my music thrown on the floor. Classy.
The River Cam with WILDFLOWERS EVERYWHERE. In an institution where it is forbidden to walk on the grass unless you are a professor (really!), the uncontrollable growth of wildflowers all over the perfect college lawns must be so irritating. Serves Cambridge right for restricting grass access!
More wildflowers and a sleeping pair of duck-mates. It is that season, you know.
My parents and I spent a fantastic weekend appreciating the springtime beauty of the Acropolis in Athens. The place is SO GREEN. Even the ancient columns had plants growing on them!
My mom being a professor in the birthplace of modern education- the ancient marketplace where Socrates taught! The original "spring" of the Socratic Method?
My mom and me with the founder of modern biology- Darwin! This new statue is in honor of Darwin's 200th birthday this year. Isn't he cute?
A budding tree branch in front of the Charles Bridge (on the left) over the Vltava River in Prague. This beautiful city in my first post-Communism country has an amazing history going all the way back to 200 BC, which includes 2 castles, 2 ancient cemeteries, and countless governments. Also, "Prague Spring", funny enough, was a brief reform movement calling for better civil rights under communism in 1968, which the Soviet Union squashed by invading Prague.
This is my childhood friend and Prague host, Sonja, a Czech-American who is going to film school and plays ice hockey for the Czech national team. WOW. She is also a fantastic tour guide, and while strolling around Prague we went to castles, churches, cemeteries, old buildings, new buildings, cafes (one where Einstein hung out!), jazz clubs, museums, AND a free concert held in "garaz" which we assumed was a club but was literally a parking garage!! (See red road sign in Czech.) The garage was TRICKED OUT with a beer tent, hookah area, fantastic lights and sound system, and lots of people who looked much less surprised than we did to be partying four stories underground!
Another (more airy) music location- on the Charles Bridge! These musicians played fantastic jazz to an audience of passerbys. Notice the violin player's homemade "amplifier" (giant gold horn!), the banjo's broken strings, and the two rockin' clarinetists! All performing on Prague's most pictoresque bridge! I would have happily paid a lot more than my donation of 20 Czech crowns ($1) for the fun of that concert.And to think- only 2 more weeks til term starts!! I have so much to learn before then...
Enjoy your own springs, wherever you see them!
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Espanol en Inglaterra
Today was the reading comprehension exam for my Beginning Spanish class. I walked into the Large Examination Hall (its official name!) with a classmate. I said, "Soy preocupada."
He said, "Soy dormido."
I said, "What's that mean?"
He said, "I'm trying to say 'I'm tired'. What did you say?"
"I'm trying to say 'I'm worried.'"
"Oh."
That conversation pretty much set the tone for the exam. I had a moment of surreality as I was trying to translate a text about medieval pilgrimages in northern Spain... who the hell knows the word for "pilgrimage" in Spanish?! Well, I do, or at least I hope that's what that word meant...
The best part was that afterwards I was loitering in Market Square, which is always a madhouse of tourists on Saturdays and great for people-watching, and a group of Spanish-speaking people walked by! They were nonchalantly comparing our market to a market in Valencia, and noted that we sell more t-shirts here.
Hooray for instant gratification and for learning things that are useful!!
He said, "Soy dormido."
I said, "What's that mean?"
He said, "I'm trying to say 'I'm tired'. What did you say?"
"I'm trying to say 'I'm worried.'"
"Oh."
That conversation pretty much set the tone for the exam. I had a moment of surreality as I was trying to translate a text about medieval pilgrimages in northern Spain... who the hell knows the word for "pilgrimage" in Spanish?! Well, I do, or at least I hope that's what that word meant...
The best part was that afterwards I was loitering in Market Square, which is always a madhouse of tourists on Saturdays and great for people-watching, and a group of Spanish-speaking people walked by! They were nonchalantly comparing our market to a market in Valencia, and noted that we sell more t-shirts here.
Hooray for instant gratification and for learning things that are useful!!
Friday, 6 March 2009
Intelligence
I just left the medical library.
Here's what inside my bag right now: 4 textbooks on osteoporosis, a book on Making Sense of Illness, £3-worth of photocopied articles from journals like Calcified Tissue International, along with Social and Cultural Histories of Norms and Normativity, Objectivity, Mozart for Clarinet, and the Cambridge student newspaper. These altogether weigh A TON, or in any case more than my cheapo bag could take and the strap was on the verge of ripping, so I carried it in my arms... and walked home for the last 54 minutes. Oof.
How can I be smart enough to have a use for these books yet dumb enough to miss my bus stop?!
Here's what inside my bag right now: 4 textbooks on osteoporosis, a book on Making Sense of Illness, £3-worth of photocopied articles from journals like Calcified Tissue International, along with Social and Cultural Histories of Norms and Normativity, Objectivity, Mozart for Clarinet, and the Cambridge student newspaper. These altogether weigh A TON, or in any case more than my cheapo bag could take and the strap was on the verge of ripping, so I carried it in my arms... and walked home for the last 54 minutes. Oof.
How can I be smart enough to have a use for these books yet dumb enough to miss my bus stop?!
Monday, 2 March 2009
“Come Forward to Row”
These words made no sense to me only a few short months ago, but this week they had the power to stop my breathe and spark terror in the pit of my soul as my 7 fellow rowers and I rolled forward on our slides, buried our blades in the water, stared straight ahead, and tried to look calm as we waited for the cannon blast to sound and chaos to unleash.
This is a little dramatic, but last week was Lent Bumps, one of two 4-day-long races that every Cambridge rower dreams of, obsesses about, plans for, and discusses for months… so drama is in the air. Bumps also marks an unusual instance of my feeling like a complete stranger in this place. Several times during this emotion-charged week, in which college pride and athletic competition and the excitement of the start of springtime merged into just a few minutes’ worth of adrenaline rush and make-or-break rowing each day, I suddenly understood how anthropologists feel when observing a society that makes no sense to them and is fascinating for its seeming lack of explanation. Experienced rowers on my team have been trying since October to explain this Cambridge/Oxford-specific type of racing where 11-15 boats line up one in front of the other along the narrow River Cam, each 1.5 boat lengths apart from each other, then they all start at the same time and try to catch or “bump” (which usually means “pass” but can also mean “RUN INTO”) the boat in front of them while avoiding being “bumped” by the boat chasing them. When a boat bumps or is bumped, both boats involved pull off to the side of the river immediately to allow the boats just behind them to continue racing. Imagine… 1.5 boat lengths is really not very much (maybe 75 feet? I actually have no idea) and these boats move FAST, even in the lowest division of women’s teams! So basically, our narrow little Cam becomes a swirling mass of flying boats very close together with people screaming from either bank, with the ducks and swans looking on in mild interest.
WHAT?!?!?
What is this barbaric idea?! The confusion of Bumps is described literally as “carnage”, and there are uncountable Bumps war stories of people being propelled out of their boats by misplaced strokes, boats crashing into each other (our Clare Hall boat was hit by another boat at last year’s Bumps and literally had a hole punched through the side!), boats crashing into the banks, boats crashing into the houseboats parked along the banks… carnage.
But people love Bumps, and it is a cherished tradition with lots of history and competition and energy behind it. So, as the weakest, most inconsistent, and most inexperienced rower in the Clare Hall boat, I was also the most terrified.
Anyway, to save you guys the life-shortening terror that I felt at the starting line the 2 days I rowed in Bumps (and to save me having to live through it again!), I’ll try to keep this short…
Tuesday: I wasn’t rowing, so I was part of the “bank party” which is the team’s support crew from the riverbank. The 4 of us rode our bikes down to the starting point, helped pull the boat to the bank to get ready for the start, kept track of how long until the start, carried rowers’ water bottles and jackets in our backpacks, and cheered like mad. I had the special job of “whistler”, which meant I was supposed to ride my bike along the riverbank during the race and blow a whistle in a certain pattern of blasts to tell the rowers (who row backwards) how far they are from the boat they are trying to bump. I tried to talk my way out of this job because I broke my arm in a bike fall this summer and I was not confident about riding at breakneck speed alongside a racing boat on a riverside path full of every other team’s bank parties doing the exact same thing… but somehow I ended up astride my bike next to the boat, whistle in mouth, waiting for the starting cannon and shaking like a leaf. It turned out to be fantastic fun, and a total rush because we started out really fast and right away were close to bumping the boat in front of us! Then somehow the 6 other people biking next to me on the 3-foot-wide dirt path got to be too much and I was suddenly in the mud inches from the river, still somehow blowing my whistle in the right pattern! Then just as suddenly I was back on my bike, back on the path, next to my boat, still whistling. ?!?! Adrenaline does amazing things! But not amazing enough that day, as one of our oars popped out of its holder and one of our seats came off the slide… so two of our rowers had major technical difficulties and basically couldn’t row… so we got bumped. Darn.
Wednesday: I had class… but the team apparently was really nervous and had trouble rowing together, so we got bumped again. Heartbreak.
Thursday: Day off.
Friday: I was rowing for the first time and was a bundle of nerves. In 4 years of high school cross country races, I have never been so scared. Rowing involves trusting other people and most of all being trusted to not screw up, and there’s also a lot of metal around and a lot of water and not much control and you’re moving REALLY FAST. As the rower most likely to make a mistake, I was just terrified. Amazingly, the team in front of us “caught a crab” which means one of their rowers stuck their oar in the river at the wrong angle and got so twisted around that the boat had to stop and regroup. Of course we weren’t far behind and caught up and BUMPED!! Joy! Our bank party brought us “greenery”, or leafy branches from the bank that you have to stick in your hair so that people will know that you bumped as you row back to your boathouse in triumph after the race. (It must come from Olympic laurel wreaths, right? See photo!) So we did that. And our cox gave us a stern talking-to about the bad luck that would come our way if we left the boat while still wearing greenery… (You have to drop it in the river, and THEN get out of the boat.)
Saturday: We had bumped on Thursday and thus avoided getting “Spoons”, which is the designation you get when your team gets bumped every day and that is the worst most embarrassing stick-your-head-in-the-sand insult a team can get. (Spoons are the kind of oars that beginning rowers learn on, apparently. The opposite, “Blades” (the name of the expert type of oars), are the ultimate glory, earned if you bump every day.) So the pressure was off… and I still sweated out about a gallon of nerves before the race. I just wanted to not screw up, and live to tell about it. In the end, we were bumped. We all survived. We had a really fun, though greenery-less, row home that felt panic-free and celebratory for the end of such a crazy week, despite being bumped 3 days and bumping 1 ( not the greatest results, but not the worst either!). Later, as we compared blisters in the pub, we rehashed the week’s events and emotions and excitement, and established our oral history of Lent Bumps 2009.
I’m sorry this is such a long, drawn-out story, but I’m trying to show how this world of Cambridge rowing is like how entering the Amazon must have been for 19th century European explorers. Being confused and disoriented and wanting desperately for someone to take you aside and just tell you what the hell is going on is an important aspect of being in a new place and in a new community. I learned a lot of new things this week, not just the word “bung line” (the metal chain each cox has to hold just before the race starts, to connect the boat to the bank and prevent any boats from getting headstarts) or the traditions about being a good sport after the race (like yelling “hip hip hooray” 3 times for the team you were racing, and yelling “well done” to any team that is wearing greenery) or the incredibly loud sound of a real live start cannon (seriously!! And it was an ornate metal tube maybe a foot long that looked like it belonged on the side of a pirate ship!), but also that rowers pass a chocolate bar back along the boat so everyone gets a piece just before a race starts and that horses and dogs live in the fields alongside the Cam and that it is really fun to be part of a team doing something that might seem ridiculous but is invested with meaning and that’s why it’s important and why it doesn’t really matter why things are done the way they are…
Rowing has always felt incomprehensible to me, from its completely foreign vocabulary to the bizarre way you’re supposed to move your body to its required connection with being outside in the very early and cold morning. But I think that’s why I like it so much. How can something this weird be so important to so many people? It definitely requires further study… and there’s only 3 more months until May Bumps!! Yay!
This is a little dramatic, but last week was Lent Bumps, one of two 4-day-long races that every Cambridge rower dreams of, obsesses about, plans for, and discusses for months… so drama is in the air. Bumps also marks an unusual instance of my feeling like a complete stranger in this place. Several times during this emotion-charged week, in which college pride and athletic competition and the excitement of the start of springtime merged into just a few minutes’ worth of adrenaline rush and make-or-break rowing each day, I suddenly understood how anthropologists feel when observing a society that makes no sense to them and is fascinating for its seeming lack of explanation. Experienced rowers on my team have been trying since October to explain this Cambridge/Oxford-specific type of racing where 11-15 boats line up one in front of the other along the narrow River Cam, each 1.5 boat lengths apart from each other, then they all start at the same time and try to catch or “bump” (which usually means “pass” but can also mean “RUN INTO”) the boat in front of them while avoiding being “bumped” by the boat chasing them. When a boat bumps or is bumped, both boats involved pull off to the side of the river immediately to allow the boats just behind them to continue racing. Imagine… 1.5 boat lengths is really not very much (maybe 75 feet? I actually have no idea) and these boats move FAST, even in the lowest division of women’s teams! So basically, our narrow little Cam becomes a swirling mass of flying boats very close together with people screaming from either bank, with the ducks and swans looking on in mild interest.
WHAT?!?!?
What is this barbaric idea?! The confusion of Bumps is described literally as “carnage”, and there are uncountable Bumps war stories of people being propelled out of their boats by misplaced strokes, boats crashing into each other (our Clare Hall boat was hit by another boat at last year’s Bumps and literally had a hole punched through the side!), boats crashing into the banks, boats crashing into the houseboats parked along the banks… carnage.
But people love Bumps, and it is a cherished tradition with lots of history and competition and energy behind it. So, as the weakest, most inconsistent, and most inexperienced rower in the Clare Hall boat, I was also the most terrified.
Anyway, to save you guys the life-shortening terror that I felt at the starting line the 2 days I rowed in Bumps (and to save me having to live through it again!), I’ll try to keep this short…
Tuesday: I wasn’t rowing, so I was part of the “bank party” which is the team’s support crew from the riverbank. The 4 of us rode our bikes down to the starting point, helped pull the boat to the bank to get ready for the start, kept track of how long until the start, carried rowers’ water bottles and jackets in our backpacks, and cheered like mad. I had the special job of “whistler”, which meant I was supposed to ride my bike along the riverbank during the race and blow a whistle in a certain pattern of blasts to tell the rowers (who row backwards) how far they are from the boat they are trying to bump. I tried to talk my way out of this job because I broke my arm in a bike fall this summer and I was not confident about riding at breakneck speed alongside a racing boat on a riverside path full of every other team’s bank parties doing the exact same thing… but somehow I ended up astride my bike next to the boat, whistle in mouth, waiting for the starting cannon and shaking like a leaf. It turned out to be fantastic fun, and a total rush because we started out really fast and right away were close to bumping the boat in front of us! Then somehow the 6 other people biking next to me on the 3-foot-wide dirt path got to be too much and I was suddenly in the mud inches from the river, still somehow blowing my whistle in the right pattern! Then just as suddenly I was back on my bike, back on the path, next to my boat, still whistling. ?!?! Adrenaline does amazing things! But not amazing enough that day, as one of our oars popped out of its holder and one of our seats came off the slide… so two of our rowers had major technical difficulties and basically couldn’t row… so we got bumped. Darn.
Wednesday: I had class… but the team apparently was really nervous and had trouble rowing together, so we got bumped again. Heartbreak.
Thursday: Day off.
Friday: I was rowing for the first time and was a bundle of nerves. In 4 years of high school cross country races, I have never been so scared. Rowing involves trusting other people and most of all being trusted to not screw up, and there’s also a lot of metal around and a lot of water and not much control and you’re moving REALLY FAST. As the rower most likely to make a mistake, I was just terrified. Amazingly, the team in front of us “caught a crab” which means one of their rowers stuck their oar in the river at the wrong angle and got so twisted around that the boat had to stop and regroup. Of course we weren’t far behind and caught up and BUMPED!! Joy! Our bank party brought us “greenery”, or leafy branches from the bank that you have to stick in your hair so that people will know that you bumped as you row back to your boathouse in triumph after the race. (It must come from Olympic laurel wreaths, right? See photo!) So we did that. And our cox gave us a stern talking-to about the bad luck that would come our way if we left the boat while still wearing greenery… (You have to drop it in the river, and THEN get out of the boat.)
Saturday: We had bumped on Thursday and thus avoided getting “Spoons”, which is the designation you get when your team gets bumped every day and that is the worst most embarrassing stick-your-head-in-the-sand insult a team can get. (Spoons are the kind of oars that beginning rowers learn on, apparently. The opposite, “Blades” (the name of the expert type of oars), are the ultimate glory, earned if you bump every day.) So the pressure was off… and I still sweated out about a gallon of nerves before the race. I just wanted to not screw up, and live to tell about it. In the end, we were bumped. We all survived. We had a really fun, though greenery-less, row home that felt panic-free and celebratory for the end of such a crazy week, despite being bumped 3 days and bumping 1 ( not the greatest results, but not the worst either!). Later, as we compared blisters in the pub, we rehashed the week’s events and emotions and excitement, and established our oral history of Lent Bumps 2009.
I’m sorry this is such a long, drawn-out story, but I’m trying to show how this world of Cambridge rowing is like how entering the Amazon must have been for 19th century European explorers. Being confused and disoriented and wanting desperately for someone to take you aside and just tell you what the hell is going on is an important aspect of being in a new place and in a new community. I learned a lot of new things this week, not just the word “bung line” (the metal chain each cox has to hold just before the race starts, to connect the boat to the bank and prevent any boats from getting headstarts) or the traditions about being a good sport after the race (like yelling “hip hip hooray” 3 times for the team you were racing, and yelling “well done” to any team that is wearing greenery) or the incredibly loud sound of a real live start cannon (seriously!! And it was an ornate metal tube maybe a foot long that looked like it belonged on the side of a pirate ship!), but also that rowers pass a chocolate bar back along the boat so everyone gets a piece just before a race starts and that horses and dogs live in the fields alongside the Cam and that it is really fun to be part of a team doing something that might seem ridiculous but is invested with meaning and that’s why it’s important and why it doesn’t really matter why things are done the way they are…
Rowing has always felt incomprehensible to me, from its completely foreign vocabulary to the bizarre way you’re supposed to move your body to its required connection with being outside in the very early and cold morning. But I think that’s why I like it so much. How can something this weird be so important to so many people? It definitely requires further study… and there’s only 3 more months until May Bumps!! Yay!
Monday, 16 February 2009
A Poem. Or, Why I'm Not Doing A Masters in Creative Writing.
Conversation had,
Coffee drunk,
Collegial goodbyes said.
Papers arranged,
Diary checked...
Now it can begin.
Freshly printed article smiling up at me with patient anticipation.
The bright clear bold type of knowledge
encoded
waiting for my - or someone's- attention.
Oh how I am grateful!
It is anxious to expand its
very narrow
readership
which I am eager to join
though nervous of being found out
revealed
as a mere grad student.
Shhh, don't tell the article that I'm an amateur.
This way we can be partners.
Its solid printed "facts" and my open, uninitiated
but not blank
mind can together make beautiful things
and maybe even another of its kind
to be devoured by a
future
coffee-shop loiterer trying to make something of herself.
Coffee drunk,
Collegial goodbyes said.
Papers arranged,
Diary checked...
Now it can begin.
Freshly printed article smiling up at me with patient anticipation.
The bright clear bold type of knowledge
encoded
waiting for my - or someone's- attention.
Oh how I am grateful!
It is anxious to expand its
very narrow
readership
which I am eager to join
though nervous of being found out
revealed
as a mere grad student.
Shhh, don't tell the article that I'm an amateur.
This way we can be partners.
Its solid printed "facts" and my open, uninitiated
but not blank
mind can together make beautiful things
and maybe even another of its kind
to be devoured by a
future
coffee-shop loiterer trying to make something of herself.
Friday, 6 February 2009
How I (Almost) Went to Morocco
Who knew 12 hours could be so jam-packed with adventure? Let me fill you in on my day.
First, 4 friends and I were on the 3:10AM bus to Luton Airport, where we sat (slept...) on the plane for 2 hours in the snow, then got off the plane after Ryanair (the cheapest an airline can be while still following most safety requirements...) flight attendants had shoveled a path back to the terminal for us (really! in their uniforms and high heels and everything! awww, they are NOT paid enough), then we waited for Ryanair to cancel the flight, then we sat in the terminal for 5 hours waiting for the bus service to start up again (it was completely shut down), then finally we bit the bullet and took a 2-hour taxi ride back to Cambridge. We arrived at Clare Hall at exactly 2:45 PM. We left Clare Hall at exactly 2:45 AM. Poetic, right?
Top left: The snowy wing of our Ryanair plane, taken during my 2 hours sitting in the plane on the runway.
Top right: The airport's flight notice board... guess what RED flights mean?
Bottom: Sleeping, reading, caffeine-ing at our coffee shop hangout. We were there a long time. Don't judge.
Sigh. I knew Morocco was too far away and foreign for me to actually get to go there.
The frustrating thing is that the weather is really not that bad. It's barely below freezing, so most of the snow melts anyway and it wasn't too windy and honestly there was never more than a few inches on the ground. Basically, Chicago would not have even THOUGHT about closing its airport in conditions like this. But England just doesn't get snow, so plowing doesn't happen and I heard a story that the entire country is running short of "grit" (road salt? I think). It also means
people don't know how to drive in the snow, so lots of trucks and buses couldn't get up the hills around Luton (= why the bus service stopped running) which caused massive traffic jams. It was a little intense to realize that we could NOT leave the airport by plane, train, or automobile. The coffee shop we camped out at actually ran out of milk! Desperate times...
Me playing in the reason for me not being in Morocco
Overall I had a really good time. We goofed off and read trash magazines and took pictures of snowy Ryanair planes and laughed at people who were carrying skis around and clearly hadn't been able to fly to their skiing destination (which could have been right outside the airport...). We ate junk food and took turns wandering around the (very small) airport checking if the bus service was running. I also skimmed an entire book and wrote half a letter. Not an unproductive
day, if you ask me! AND I got home in time to make it to a 5PM lecture on Darwin in Literature (which was AWESOME). :)
I must say, I was very proud of Chicago/American weather-handling infrastructure today.
with love from England and not Africa :(,
C
First, 4 friends and I were on the 3:10AM bus to Luton Airport, where we sat (slept...) on the plane for 2 hours in the snow, then got off the plane after Ryanair (the cheapest an airline can be while still following most safety requirements...) flight attendants had shoveled a path back to the terminal for us (really! in their uniforms and high heels and everything! awww, they are NOT paid enough), then we waited for Ryanair to cancel the flight, then we sat in the terminal for 5 hours waiting for the bus service to start up again (it was completely shut down), then finally we bit the bullet and took a 2-hour taxi ride back to Cambridge. We arrived at Clare Hall at exactly 2:45 PM. We left Clare Hall at exactly 2:45 AM. Poetic, right?
Top left: The snowy wing of our Ryanair plane, taken during my 2 hours sitting in the plane on the runway.
Top right: The airport's flight notice board... guess what RED flights mean?
Bottom: Sleeping, reading, caffeine-ing at our coffee shop hangout. We were there a long time. Don't judge.
Sigh. I knew Morocco was too far away and foreign for me to actually get to go there.
The frustrating thing is that the weather is really not that bad. It's barely below freezing, so most of the snow melts anyway and it wasn't too windy and honestly there was never more than a few inches on the ground. Basically, Chicago would not have even THOUGHT about closing its airport in conditions like this. But England just doesn't get snow, so plowing doesn't happen and I heard a story that the entire country is running short of "grit" (road salt? I think). It also means
people don't know how to drive in the snow, so lots of trucks and buses couldn't get up the hills around Luton (= why the bus service stopped running) which caused massive traffic jams. It was a little intense to realize that we could NOT leave the airport by plane, train, or automobile. The coffee shop we camped out at actually ran out of milk! Desperate times...
Me playing in the reason for me not being in MoroccoOverall I had a really good time. We goofed off and read trash magazines and took pictures of snowy Ryanair planes and laughed at people who were carrying skis around and clearly hadn't been able to fly to their skiing destination (which could have been right outside the airport...). We ate junk food and took turns wandering around the (very small) airport checking if the bus service was running. I also skimmed an entire book and wrote half a letter. Not an unproductive
day, if you ask me! AND I got home in time to make it to a 5PM lecture on Darwin in Literature (which was AWESOME). :)
I must say, I was very proud of Chicago/American weather-handling infrastructure today.
with love from England and not Africa :(,
C
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
P.S.
There was ice on my oar after rowing today. Whoa.
There was not, however, ice on my hands, so that combined with the incredibly beautiful frosty sunrise, the steaming river, the sleepy swans ignoring our oars coming down on either side of them, and the smiles of my teammates as two boats crashed into each other and it wasn't our fault... this is a great start to a day.
:)
There was not, however, ice on my hands, so that combined with the incredibly beautiful frosty sunrise, the steaming river, the sleepy swans ignoring our oars coming down on either side of them, and the smiles of my teammates as two boats crashed into each other and it wasn't our fault... this is a great start to a day.
:)
Saturday, 31 January 2009
"Keel to Cambridge"
(Clare Hall Boat Club. I'm #2 from the end of the boat/the top of the photo.)
Everyone in Cambridge rows. It's a cult. And it's fantastic.
Below are the results of our race today- 1.6km, along the part of the river with "corners" (curves! ugh. = bigger chance of hitting the bank). I think this email from our cox (who sits in the boat and doesn't row but tells the other 8 of us what to do) is hilarious...
Honestly though, what kind of smart Cambridge students willingly sit in a cramped boat on a Saturday for hours on end (literally) in the cold for 8:38 minutes of adrenaline?!
Even though it sounds awful, somehow this sport is AMAZING and addictive and oh so much fun, especially when we finish 14th out of 20 teams... I like low-pressure sports situations. :)
* "Keel to Cambridge" is a command the cox gives when we are carrying our boat out of the boathouse. It means "flip the boat sideways with the bottom pointing west," back towards the town. I had a great fundraising idea- that our team could pose naked while holding our boat "keel to Cambridge"! I think the boat is just wide enough to make this photo G-rated...
"Hi Ladies
as promised here are the results of today's race
We didn't quite finished in the time we aimed for
Yet, 8:38mins is a decent time which you can be proud of!!!
With this time we finished 14th out of 20 in our division.
The boat felt pretty stable and well balanced and technically you did a big step forward and improved a lot! :o)
So Ladies, let's get on to the ergs [rowing machines] and SQUEEEEEZE those legs
Task for this week: 30mins at a stroke rate of 20 but with a split time 4 seconds faster than last week!!!
I know you can do it!
What you need is POWER from your legs
GOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooo Ladies
your happy and proud but frosted and tired,
Jenny"
Speak Hogwarts?
Today I rode my bike past the Cambridge linguistics professor who supposedly helped create Parseltongue for JK Rowling.
WHOA!!
He was cycling too, and my friend who studies linguistics pointed him out. He's ancient, cool enough to ride a bike, and an expert in phonetics. I couldn't find out anything about him or Parseltongue online, but I trust my friend, as his student, to be a reliable source.
Next time I'll ask for his autograph... in Parseltongue, of course.
WHOA!!
He was cycling too, and my friend who studies linguistics pointed him out. He's ancient, cool enough to ride a bike, and an expert in phonetics. I couldn't find out anything about him or Parseltongue online, but I trust my friend, as his student, to be a reliable source.
Next time I'll ask for his autograph... in Parseltongue, of course.
Tuesday, 27 January 2009
Swingin' UK-style
I turned 23.5 today.
(Those of you with summer birthdays appreciate the significance of half-birthdays, which allow you to not miss out on bringing cupcakes to school...)
In other news, on Monday I went to the Cambridge Swing Dance Society's weekly Speakeasy! Amazing and appropriate name, I guess, considering it happens in a pub (which is called The Man on the Moon and has a giant mural of a guy in a spacesuit playing the saxophone!). It was SO FUN and felt exactly like the swing dance at U of C, where I spent basically every Friday of the past four years... except that the Speakeasy has alcohol, a 5 pound entry fee (yikes), and boys who say "bollocks" when they step on your feet. Otherwise, exactly the same. :)
They played songs about Chicago and jazz and "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing"... songs that transport me back to the sweaty attic of U of C's old student center where we lindy-hopped in Hyde Park. The class before the Speakeasy was taught by two people in ass-hugging wide-leg jeans (the uniform of every swing dancer- so you have lots of room at the knees to Charleston but you also get to show off the big butt you've earned from all the jump steps!) and they taught the steps in the exact same way as every Chicago dancer, even with the same names for the steps! I <3 global culture.
One funny difference was when one of the teachers (who was German! Swing dance is everywhere!) said "You have to dance two songs with each partner and then change partners- it's tradition." I'd never heard of that, and I asked the guy I was dancing with about it and he said, "Yeah, well, this is Cambridge. They have their own traditions." Ha! Cambridge has 800 years' worth of traditions of its own, yet it insists on also having a tradition about an American dance?! I love that!
Wishing you a night of fun and familiarity in a new place!
(Those of you with summer birthdays appreciate the significance of half-birthdays, which allow you to not miss out on bringing cupcakes to school...)
In other news, on Monday I went to the Cambridge Swing Dance Society's weekly Speakeasy! Amazing and appropriate name, I guess, considering it happens in a pub (which is called The Man on the Moon and has a giant mural of a guy in a spacesuit playing the saxophone!). It was SO FUN and felt exactly like the swing dance at U of C, where I spent basically every Friday of the past four years... except that the Speakeasy has alcohol, a 5 pound entry fee (yikes), and boys who say "bollocks" when they step on your feet. Otherwise, exactly the same. :)
They played songs about Chicago and jazz and "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing"... songs that transport me back to the sweaty attic of U of C's old student center where we lindy-hopped in Hyde Park. The class before the Speakeasy was taught by two people in ass-hugging wide-leg jeans (the uniform of every swing dancer- so you have lots of room at the knees to Charleston but you also get to show off the big butt you've earned from all the jump steps!) and they taught the steps in the exact same way as every Chicago dancer, even with the same names for the steps! I <3 global culture.
One funny difference was when one of the teachers (who was German! Swing dance is everywhere!) said "You have to dance two songs with each partner and then change partners- it's tradition." I'd never heard of that, and I asked the guy I was dancing with about it and he said, "Yeah, well, this is Cambridge. They have their own traditions." Ha! Cambridge has 800 years' worth of traditions of its own, yet it insists on also having a tradition about an American dance?! I love that!
Wishing you a night of fun and familiarity in a new place!
Wednesday, 21 January 2009
Obama and Robert Burns
Once again, a major U.S. political event is followed by a goofy, purely British holiday.
Yesterday's earth-shattering inauguration, which was in every news headline and even appeared in one of my lectures today because Obama mentioned the need for more science research, was followed today by my college's celebration of Burns Night, a Scottish holiday in honor of, well, Scotland and named after the Scots' favorite 18th century poet, Robert Burns, who wrote Auld Lang Syne (the New Years Eve song). (And you thought there'd be bonfires, right? Sadly, unlike Guy Fawkes Day (which was the night after Obama's election), Burns Night has nothing to do with burning... except maybe as the effects of Scottish whisky.)
Sometimes it takes bagpipes and incomprehensible traditions to shock me into remembering that I'm not in Kansas (Chicago?) anymore, and that's what I got tonight. First a bagpiper played in the Clare Hall lounge, surrounded by people in tuxedos and formal dresses. The piper had a kilt and a huge furry hat and enormous lungs, and was so cool to hear! Then we sat down in the dining hall and a cook came out carrying The Haggis (sheep's stomach stuffed with its lungs, liver, heart, etc, then baked... looks a lot like a football) on a silver tray, and then paraded it around the whole room with the piper following him. Seriously! The piper was playing in honor of the haggis, a traditional dish that the Scots are very proud of, and to which Robert Burns wrote a poem. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself....
So we all sat and watched the haggis get paraded around with its musical fanfare, reminding me of the part during bar/bat mitzvahs when the kid carries the Torah around the room and everyone oohs and ahhs with reverence, though there is probably much less salivating in the synagogue than there was at Clare Hall tonight.
Then the haggis was placed on a table and a guy stood up with a big knife and recited Burns' poem, Address to the Haggis. He was amazing- very expressive and emotional and passionate, though I have no idea what he said. (Apparently he was actually Scottish, and he said Burns' poem with an authentic Scottish brogue!) At the climax of the poem, he plunged his knife into the haggis! Whoa.
Then the haggis (still with its piper piping!) disappeared into the kitchen, where it was cut up so we could eat it. I looked around my table, checking to see if anyone else's chin was on the floor or just mine. Wow. People think Britain and the rest of Europe have been Americanized into Starbucks that serve tea, and they have, but there are still pockets of foreign culture that we know nothing about and that are an absolute joy to encounter.
After haggis (which is served with nips and tatties- turnips and potatoes!) and steak and Scottish cheese, we had a ceilidh- a dance! An accordion player taught us square-dancing-type steps and then played traditional Scottish folk songs while we hopped around and laughed like maniacs. Imagine- people of all ages, in formalwear, full of food and whisky, clutching each other's arms and spinning to Scottish Reel #4! What fun!!
Thanks for a great time, Robert Burns.
For more info on Burns Night:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/news_and_events/events_burnsnight.shtml
Yesterday's earth-shattering inauguration, which was in every news headline and even appeared in one of my lectures today because Obama mentioned the need for more science research, was followed today by my college's celebration of Burns Night, a Scottish holiday in honor of, well, Scotland and named after the Scots' favorite 18th century poet, Robert Burns, who wrote Auld Lang Syne (the New Years Eve song). (And you thought there'd be bonfires, right? Sadly, unlike Guy Fawkes Day (which was the night after Obama's election), Burns Night has nothing to do with burning... except maybe as the effects of Scottish whisky.)
Sometimes it takes bagpipes and incomprehensible traditions to shock me into remembering that I'm not in Kansas (Chicago?) anymore, and that's what I got tonight. First a bagpiper played in the Clare Hall lounge, surrounded by people in tuxedos and formal dresses. The piper had a kilt and a huge furry hat and enormous lungs, and was so cool to hear! Then we sat down in the dining hall and a cook came out carrying The Haggis (sheep's stomach stuffed with its lungs, liver, heart, etc, then baked... looks a lot like a football) on a silver tray, and then paraded it around the whole room with the piper following him. Seriously! The piper was playing in honor of the haggis, a traditional dish that the Scots are very proud of, and to which Robert Burns wrote a poem. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself....
So we all sat and watched the haggis get paraded around with its musical fanfare, reminding me of the part during bar/bat mitzvahs when the kid carries the Torah around the room and everyone oohs and ahhs with reverence, though there is probably much less salivating in the synagogue than there was at Clare Hall tonight.
Then the haggis was placed on a table and a guy stood up with a big knife and recited Burns' poem, Address to the Haggis. He was amazing- very expressive and emotional and passionate, though I have no idea what he said. (Apparently he was actually Scottish, and he said Burns' poem with an authentic Scottish brogue!) At the climax of the poem, he plunged his knife into the haggis! Whoa.
Then the haggis (still with its piper piping!) disappeared into the kitchen, where it was cut up so we could eat it. I looked around my table, checking to see if anyone else's chin was on the floor or just mine. Wow. People think Britain and the rest of Europe have been Americanized into Starbucks that serve tea, and they have, but there are still pockets of foreign culture that we know nothing about and that are an absolute joy to encounter.
After haggis (which is served with nips and tatties- turnips and potatoes!) and steak and Scottish cheese, we had a ceilidh- a dance! An accordion player taught us square-dancing-type steps and then played traditional Scottish folk songs while we hopped around and laughed like maniacs. Imagine- people of all ages, in formalwear, full of food and whisky, clutching each other's arms and spinning to Scottish Reel #4! What fun!!
Thanks for a great time, Robert Burns.
For more info on Burns Night:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/news_and_events/events_burnsnight.shtml
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