10,000 hours

I’ve heard, somewhere, that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something.  Have you ever thought about when and at what point you consider yourself an expert at something?  Perhaps you crochet?  Ride endurance?  Skateboard?  Create movies?  Write lyrics?  Scuba dive?  What constitutes you being an expert at whatever it is?  Application of time, according to the 10,000 rule.  I am thinking about this a lot right now for two main reasons.  One, I have to teach my current UCSD students to think about this in terms of how they present themselves as experts in some field, and two, I will be taking my qualification exam on August 5, 2013 at 1pm.  The former is an exercise that is collaborative and the latter, well, feels like it rests entirely on my shoulders. 

10,000 hours. According to a simple Google search 8,760 hours is equal to one year and 10,000 hours is roughly equivalent to 416 ½ days, or approximately a month and 20 extra days beyond a year.  That is a lot of time spent on any one thing.  But when you consider that we spend, on average, a year and half or two in the bathroom by the time we are 75 or that we spend around 540 hours a year in our cars (which works out to be 22 days out of the year) you start to realize that we are “experts” at a lot of day-to-day tasks that amount to a significant portion of what we spend our time doing.  In addition to any number of these banal tasks we are supposed to acquire a kind of niche expertise.  In my students' case this amounts to, for now at least, figuring out what they will market themselves as when they get out into the “real world”.  For me, it is wondering if my 10,000 hours is really what I have under my academic belt.

So, let’s break this down for my five years in grad school.  I spend, on average 40 hours a week working as a TA and as an instructor.  That 40 hours a week of teaching works out to be 2080 hours a year.  This means that in the last five years of grad school I have taught 10,400 hours.  OK, so that means I am an expert at teaching.  Of course transportation is an important part of getting things done and mainly I travel to and from work.  I don’t just use my car however.  I incorporate bus and bicycle travel into my commuting so as to save some money and feel like I can legitimately call myself an environmentalist.  Let’s say my travel time is equivalent to what most folks spend in the car, which as mentioned above, is 540 hours a year.  Ïn five years that is 2,700 hours.  I don’t watch TV, so that’s good, but I do spend a lot of time on the computer between social networking sites, blogging, news reading, writing and research.  If I spend 8 hours a day on the computer that is 2,920 hours a year, or a whopping 14,600 hours in the last 5 years.  I spend about 7 hours a day sleeping, amounting to 2,555 hours a year, 12,775 hours in 5 years.  Honestly it feels like I often get less, but let’s go with this number.  Finally, according to the US Department of Labor I spend a mere two hours a day on household activities, but let’s round that down and say I spend 1.5 hours a day on household activities.  This amounts to 547.5 hours a year, or 2,737.5 hours in the last five years.

How much of this time, 1,824 days (5 years) give or take have I devoted to my actual studies?  Well, without belaboring the point (pun intended) I have apparently spent 8,642.5 hours on activities that just sustain my life, which turns out to be just 122.5 hours shy of the 8765 hours in a year.  So I spend 122.5 hours a year on my studies away from those hours that require the computer.  This includes things like field work, reading, and research at the library.  So lopping off 50% of the time spent on the computer, or 1,460 hours.  Adding the 122.5 to 1,460 I have spent 1,582 hours a year on my studies.  In the last 5 years this amount to 7,912.5 hours.  That is less than 10,000.  I am just shy of being an expert.       

I am not going to lie.  I am terrified.  I feel like I have more expertise on how to saddle a horse then wax theoretical on the material plane of nationalism and Swiss Volk fetish. We know, of course, that according to the theoretical 10,000 hours, many of us graduate students are experts at teaching.  After all, earning a living is time consuming.  In my case this means working for UCSD as well as for Miramar Community College and teaching SAT skills to high schoolers in the summers.  Regardless of the hours under my belt I feel like I am forever adjusting how I teach and what I teach.  So, if being an expert means having arrived at some plane of expertise, I am missing the mark.  It is also important to consider  balance maintaining activities like: hugging my dog, running, having a date on occasion with my sweetheart and staying in contact with my family.  The resources and energy and time required for one little life is quite remarkable.  Time is truly of the essence.  The Western linearity of it all requires that there is a sense of the amount, limits and indefatigable progression.  How we use it is in many senses a measure of the commitment to time as something that is both finite and infinite.  Where does it all go?  Before you know it a day is done, a month is over and a year is up.  And then you are 41, freaking out about a qualification exam while many half your age are already having their first kid and in a lifelong career.   

Eking out 10,000 hours. and more to the point, 10,000 consistent hours, is almost like getting downright devotional.  It may be that I have spent too many hours in my life trying to develop expertises that do not inform what I am currently focused on.  Hence my status as a "non-traditional" student.  I have been, at any one point: an actor, an electrician’s apprentice, disaster worker, volunteer director and manager, a Fed Ex truck loader, an educational outreach coordinator for a non-profit before eventually finding myself an academic in Communication Studies.  And this last development was not without a brief, but intense, stint in home improvement retail.  (Side note: Retail should, at some point, be a part of everyone's resume.  It humbles you.)  The point being, my background is diffuse, scattered, and not sanctified by a solidly elite intellectual lineage.  I am not self-made, but I am scholar on a slow burn.  I tremble at the implications.  I mean, how will all this extraneous activity ultimately impact me on August 5^, 2013?  Let’s not think about that for now.  I’m not sure I can handle it.  In the meantime I have 32 days or 768 hours until I am facing the committee.  I will have to hope that it is not just the application of 10,000 hours that matters, but also the intent behind the time spent.  The "directedness" of my attention to my work and my focus when I am working.  Speaking of which, it is time to turn back to writing and studying for now.  Happy fireworks and barbecue madness to all.

Sweet graph on the 10,000 hour rule

Being in the now...managing a full time work status and being a graduate student

I am not sure how to be a working graduate student, but I guess I am doing it.  40 + hours a week actually.  I am working as a TA in a writing program at UCSD, I work as adjunct faculty at Miramar College and, of course,  I am working on my own research in the capacity of a graduate student.  The schedule is mind numbing to say the least, which leaves very little sometimes for my graduate research, let alone any semblance of a social life.  I do have a social life, but mostly it revolves around my family and my partner because to do much more than that, is 1) difficult to sustain, and 2) means sacrificing time from some immediate need.  Relationships after all, just like careers, require attention and maintenance.  In order to not get overwhelmed by the endless pile of work, and the pressure that tells me that no matter what I do, it is never enough, I try and stay in the "now".  Sounds very California-groovy, I know, but it is really the best mode to be in in the circumstances.  Be here.  Do what you have to do now.

To be in the "now" for me means that for whatever activity I am engaged in, I try to be fully engaged.  I avoid thinking about 3 hours ahead of where I am, let alone a week.  If I do, then those added hours or days or weeks come loaded with everything that will need to be accomplished in those hours and I will likely have a minor melt down.  Meeting with students, grading endless 10 page papers, office hours, calling family members so that they know I am not dead, writing/researching, bracketing off quality time for my partner so he knows he is loved and appreciated and so we are connected, looking after the health and well being of my 13 year old dog, meeting with my advisor, taking care of bills, watering the plants, fixing broken cars, agreeing to social engagements when possible, finding sanity/me time (usually gardening), being involved in meaningful community work, staying engaged within my department's intellectual life and, well, the list goes on.  I cannot think about all of it all of the time.  So, I don't.  Usually.  Unless it is 10 o'clock at night and the "get off your ass" fairies have decided to buzz around my head just as I am trying to lay down and get some winks.  I hate those guys.

Being in the now also means little to no drama.  It means assuming that the friends you would love to hang out with, understand, which they usually do.  It means clamping down on the drive to be everything to everybody all of the time.  It means making a phone call instead of making a dinner party.  Being in the now produces some ability to find sanity.  Really it does.  And sanity is no small thing.  Whenever I find myself spinning dangerously on the edge of some freak-out mode, I realize that it is because I have let my brain run away and focus on all that needs to get done instead of what has been done and what is getting done now.  This is not to say that I don't ever think about the future.  That would be stupid.  I do have to, on occasion, look up and take an assessment, make plans and set goals.  I survey my social and work landscape and then return to the now.

I have not always been someone who has known how to be in the now.  As a consumate daydreamer  and high energy individual who doesn't naturally know how to say "no"to demands, this process has been a long time in coming.  I think I've really learned how to be in the "now" through my body.  The body is a great teacher.  Running, soccer, hiking, gardening, surfing, diving, cycling have all served to keep me healthy, release stress and occupy myself with some singular goal and mostly some immediate goal.  When I am doing any one of these things, I have found that there is a tremendous relaxation.  Running relaxing you ask?  Yes!  The stress that running places on my body occupies me in such a way that after the run I feel like my brain has been given space.  This is also true of the other activities I mention.  And since in my current line of work it is the brain that is the culprit of a lot of hijinks, this break is tremendously important.  It focuses my stress elsewhere in other words, and the result is a fitter mind and fitter body.  I feel like I have room to breathe after physical exertion.  Except for gyms...those stress me out...and they immediately have me analyzing the fetishizing of particular bodies through the discipline of standardized workout equipment.  To say nothing of the stress of paying another bill when all I have to do is walk out of my own front door.  But I digress.

I am thinking of the now quite a bit this week because I am at the end of a quarter at one school and the end of a semester at another.  This translates into a lot of grading, much more than usual, on top of the usual demands of meaningful instruction.  I am also on the verge of qualifying and I need to hone my papers and arguments in order to do that successfully.  So, if you are in the same or similar predicament I am in, my advice to you is just put your head down, look up on occasion, and then move forward again.  Sit in front of your desk now.  Pick up that article now.  Reading for 20 minutes comes and goes.  Your back aches so you stand up.  The wind is knocking the bamboo wind chimes together.  Your dog is staring at you so you smile at her.  You look down at the article and read for another 20 minutes.  You feel like having chocolate and walking aimlessly around the backyard.  Your legs ache for a stretch.  You do that, now.  You feel the dirt under your feet, the chocolate on your tongue and your heart expands.  You're done with your chocolate, the phone rings and you answer it.  You talk to your sister for 20 minutes.  You hang up.  You have had a real break, time to get back to work.  The article beckons as does the couch.  You read there.  So nice to read and look out of the window.  Commodity fetish has a lot to offer your details on Volk Fetish.  Your mind flutters and writes as you read.  And so you keep going in the now.

Without staring at all the little details of the "must dos" in the days and weeks and months ahead your capacity to deal with what is in front of you increases, meaning your overall "now" awareness increases. I have found that: you will find time to breathe this way, you will find time to make love, to stop and smell the sage, and to notice that your neighbor smiled at you.  Because when you are in the now, you never know what your heart will latch onto, but trust that it will, and that it will be wonderful and that in another moment you will be back handling life's demands like you always do.  Sometimes things will get to be too much, and you'll need to take it all in to reassess, and after that yucky exercise you might need to say "fuck it" and go to bed early or watch a movie.  And that is OK too.

No is no...mostly

"Excuse me, Professor, um...I didn't sign up for a speech day"

I am not sure what to say.  We are on the second day of speeches, the dates for which are listed in the syllabus.  When date changes occur the students are notified through email.  No emails were sent.  Sign-ups were weeks ago.  They are also allowed to switch speech dates with fellow classmates if they so desire, so long as they notify me of the change.  So nothing set in stone, except that they are responsible for making sure they get their assignments done.  Namely speeches.  This is a public speaking class after all.

I decide to go for deeper questioning so as to hide my desire to say, "And this is my problem why?"  Because, who knows, maybe there is some very good reason.  Reasons that just happen to coincide with the very date chosen for giving their speech, in a class that lasts from 9:35-11:10am.  Maybe they were sick in the hospital with dysentery.  Or perhaps aliens abducted them and wiped their memories of speech class and, in the interim, also made off with their common sense.

"Why?"

"I wasn't there that day I guess"

He lifts a corner of his mouth, dimple showing, shrugs his shoulders and gives me a sideways glance.

Damn.  OK, so here it is.  The syllabus has the dates on it.  I talk about the speeches endlessly in lectures prepared to help them understand what is expected of them.  We workshop some of the ideas for speeches in class.  People sign up for times on specific days set aside for students to do their speeches.  These days are jam packed with students diligently giving speeches, except for a few of them.  The few. The proud.  Some students are genuinely  afraid, and you can usually pick those ones out and wrangle them into both their date and into a semblance of speech giving capability.  But then there are those, not many, who seem to dare you to define their scholastic experience with expectations.

So I say it.

"So, what am I suppose to do about that?"

His eyes widen and he seems stunned and a little unprepared for my blunt questioning.  I feel a momentary weakness.  I want to cave.  To say, "No worries, go ahead and sign up for next class."  He's a nice kid overall.  But then I look out at the rest of the class.  There they are, so many of them pulling their share of the load.  Come hell or high water, they are there, doing what needs to get done.  My student with schizophrenia, who so bravely battles not only the usual work load of many students, but also his inner demons that can on a moments notice wreak havoc with his emotional stability.  Another student with a husband who accosted her last week and is now living in a location out of harms way, but a location that is temporary and transitional.  Her life in shambles.  So damn brave.  And then this one.  "I wasn't there that day I guess".

You can't walk through life saying well, I know I was supposed to do this thing, but now I am going to shove that off on you and make you answer for me.  That is lower than low.  I accept, "I'm terrified" or "I'm lazy and irresponsible but I'll do anything to make it right" or "Can I have a do-over...my first try sucked."  I know this is just speech class.  This isn't brain surgery.  But these kinds of ethical lessons need to start, or be reinforced, somewhere.  And I guess I've decided that if there is a poverty of accountability, that this will be addressed here, in how I handle this class.  Whether it is being responsible for the language we use or the work we do.  So this is the moment, that ubiquitous "teaching moment".

The class floods out of the room as people head off to their next destinations and he stands before me, mute.  Suspended.  Everything is moving except us.

Finally he manages to utter

"I don't know...I uh just uh thought I would tell you."

"OK, thanks.  Try and kick ass on the persuasive speech and on your final paper."

As he turns and leaves I wonder if I should call him back and relent.  I wonder if I am being too hard on him.  But his arrogance or rather the easiness of his approach in telling me that he needs to sign up for speeches, on days that we all understand are too short and overcrowded as it is, stops me.  He expected me to relent.  There was a privilege there in his approach that checked my generosity.  I don't think he explicitly contemplates, "I am better then the rest of those people.  She'll let ME squeeze in on a non-speech day so I can get my speech done", but the effect is the same.

The next class rushes in, bumping into chairs and desks, laughing and talking.  I am offered coconut bread by a student who, though not doing exceptionally well in my class, never gives up.  Another student asks if she can time speeches for that day.  My spirits are lifted.  We contemplate a class fishing trip to to a local lake in order to fix my inability to catch trout.  For right now I am happy catching smiles.

The minutes before you arrive...

Before you enter the class, I sit here in anticipation, wondering what new lesson you will have to teach me.  It happens every class.  Some of the lessons are small and some of the lessons are a little more obvious in there profundity and immediacy.  Some of the lessons you teach me frankly hit me across the head like a 2x4.  For now the classroom lies in beautiful stillness before erupting into the chaos that is undergraduate energy.  In that stillness I remember.  I think about my student this quarter who shared with me that she crossed the border, undocumented, at the age of three with parents determined to give her an education.  She is now in a graduate program, the first in her family to attend college, let alone get an upper level university degree.  I think about my student at the community college who suffers through an illness that daily affects his life and yet he perseveres and moves us all through his thoughtful prose and surprising humor, never missing a class.  I think about the students who take on the task of timing speeches for me and taking on extra projects though they are not actually in my class or getting any credit for it, just because they like to think and work.  I think about that girl, semesters ago now, who came out to me and then shyly, yet proudly, introduced me to her girlfriend.  Your smile was priceless. The endless bravery that marches through these classrooms, that sits at these desks and that leaves one in awe.  So many of you holding down not one, but often two or three jobs while attending school and sometimes even raising families.  Some of you, years older than many of the other students, re-committing to an education that years ago you had to let go of because of family obligations, illness or simply life diversions.  Dreams resurrected.  Bravery of the kind that humbles a person, brings her to her knees, grateful that the world has such folks in it.  It is the bravery of such students that helps ease the pain of the ones that are more careless or even thoughtless, sometimes cruel.  One young man, two semesters ago, fresh out of gang life, struggling with emotional demons both in and out of class, completed my class with a passing grade because he made a commitment to himself.  He wasn't a star speaker but he was a star in my eyes, even after his outbursts.  You will likely never know how much you restored in me the commitment to fight what is cruel outside and inside all of us.  To never give up the rush of an afternoon workout session just because you can, because you've made the space in your life for new experiences and new ways of doing things.  Your struggle I hope to always honor.  

I love having this time, pre-class, in the solitariness of a room waiting, expectant for more of you to rush in to teach me.  I love having this time to contemplate the honor of working with you.  Please keep going, don't give up because I know I haven't.  I may seem short with you some days or not as appreciative as I should be, but I do notice and, in quiet moments such as I have right now, I remember. 

What You Should Know About a Syllabus

Some of the faces are bored, some attentive and a number of them appear to be creased with what I call "oh shit what did I get myself into"anxiety lines, as I review the tome that is my syllabus.  I have diligently prepared every aspect of this 8 page document so that everything necessary for a student's successful foray into my public speaking class appears: from the course number, my contact information, to assignment due dates and my policy on plagiarism...it is all there.  I remind them, "Do NOT forget to bring your syllabus to class and do NOT forget to look it over for when assignments are due.  If you lose it you need to request another one so that you are up to speed on what is happening in class.  If you ask me when something is due, I will surmise that you are not following these instructions".  Eyes blink at me, hands shuffle through the pages and then I tell them, "Now I will go over the syllabus with you, but hereafter, unless there are changes, you will be responsible for what is contained therein." (OK, I don't say "therein" but you get the idea).

What you need to know about a syllabus.  You need to know that it is a document that has been developed over the course of several hours, several days and, in some cases, even years.  It is a labor of love and necessity.  It is your guide.  It is the holy grail of a school semester that should lead you to the land of A's and excellence or at least give you an idea why you didn't end up there.  I don't fill it with any pictures or fancy fonts or silly side notes, because I want you to see it as important.  It is evidence that I take you seriously.  That I value you and your time and your money.  It is evidence that I have done my job in preparing for your journey with me through the horrors of public speaking.  It is the product of numerous edits, rearrangements, and a number of glasses of wine.  I ponder the best and worst practices of last year and agonize over what stays, what goes and where/what new material comes in.  Frankly, it is like giving birth, or so I assume.  There is a gestation period and a birthing period and then there is the pain in delivering it to you, the student, and hoping you will see in the syllabus all that I see: the hope of a productive semester filled with the opportunity to overcome some issues in self confidence that seem to weigh many of us down when it comes to delivering speeches or believing we can write or do anything "smart".  I give you this syllabus.  Put it somewhere safe.  Treat it with some measure of respect.  I have given you my best effort within its pages and trees have suffered as a result.

When the school year ends, by all means throw this mother of all syllabi in the recycling bin.  Part ways when the time comes.  Maybe take one brief glance through it before it leaves your fingertips for the last time, and remember how far you've come.  You were given this syllabus not to burden you for life, but to guide you for a semester.  You were given this syllabus not as punishment but as a testament to my respect for you.

Why I Teach

I think my entry into teaching was a foregone conclusion.  Really, I have tried just about everything else...everything from construction to acting to working for non-profits.  I have been a laborer and an office lackey.  Hell, I've even been in office management.  I am not a traditional academic in terms of my educational trajectory, but if you look into my family history, there is my Dad who was a professor of Biology, Botany and Zoology on any given semester at the Sacramento Community College in Sacramento, California.  I grew up playing teacher and even had the ubiquitous red pencil within early reach so that there was a flair of realism to the "corrections" I liberally handed out to neighborhood kids playing my students.  My mother always declared, "Barbara will teach."  Oh how I hated her easy proclamation of my future career.  It was if I had no choice in the matter, as if I was somehow fated to stand in front of the classroom and teach because I was unable do do anything else.  I had often heard my professor father say, "Those who cannot do, teach" in mild remonstration of his failure (or so I perceived) of not making it in med school and becoming a doctor.  I suspected she sensed in me the same kind of person, a person without the tools for a career but the tools to facilitate other careers.  I did not want to be somebody else's stepping stone.

So I flailed about for a good decade before I could no longer resist the siren song of the classroom.  It happened during my Master's program at Sac State.  In order to avoid paying tuition, there was a graduate assistant program which allowed Master's students to teach the lab sections of the Public Speaking class offered there.  I signed up, made the cut and was off to the races.  I think what had me from the very beginning is that teaching afforded me the ability to be on stage again while also being able to engage with others, focus on others really.  One of many reasons (aside from the deplorable and constant attending poverty) as to why I had quit the acting business is that I was tired of thinking about myself.  Teaching allowed me to focus on others.  And, like I said, it was like being on stage again and, I'm not going to lie, I love that.  For better or for worse, I am a performer.  And teaching was acting, directing and, to some degree, writing my own script.  The absolute best part however was realizing how much I was learning while I was teaching!  When you teach you are forced to "own" the material you present.  There is something about getting up there and having an audience keep you honest about what you know.  Teaching is "doing", in this sense, because the in classroom honesty and engagement provides fodder for work outside of the classroom.  Creative and academic work.  This blog is a result of teaching because what happens in the classroom and with students inspires me to add to the blog.

I love teaching.  I love my students.  I even love grading, in some kind of sick way.  I love the hours.  I love the dress code because there isn't really one.  I love the intellectual freedom.  I am even learning to love writing.  Teaching allows me to give vent to my passions, requires it really so that I can more effectively engage my students.  Teaching is a lot of work and I won't become rich doing it, but it gives me the quality of life factor and the students keep me engaged.  Guess I'm glad Mom wasn't wrong.

Frank Bush teaching circa 1986:

Plagiarizing and "ratemyprofessor"

And so the holiday season is well underway.  We have passed Christmas and are but a mere day away from New Year's Eve.  Yet, here I am still grading.  Life could be worse, after all, I am accompanied by a dog sleeping in her bed, a roaring fire and a nicely spiked eggnog.  It is the occasion for the grading that has me miffed, a converging of events that has resulted in leniency and an extended work schedule.  The occasion for such holiday cheer is plagiarizing.  Normally I would have sent the student away with a semester/quarter grade of an "F" and would be done with it.  Stealing, in any form, makes me grumpy.  So, how did I get suckered into a "second chance"?  I read my "ratemyprofessor" review and got spooked.  In 3 posts I have acquired it was mentioned that I am "strict", but in less flattering elaborations than I will give vent here.  Needless to say, in a fit of insecurity about my policies in general, and on plagiarizing in particular, I caved.  The student in question also happened to do quite well in all the other assignments and seems to be a damn nice human, so that didn't hurt.  The combination of the student being quite nice and overall attentive on other assignments, as well as in class, the "ratemyprofessor" commentary and my fear of being unnecessarily punitive has resulted in the holiday grading vortex.

Why, however, do students plagiarize?  I catch them every year.  They do not seem to take the beginning of the year warning about plagiarizing seriously or they don't believe their papers will be read, or they think that somehow what they steal is undetectable.  Just as it is easy to find essays online from which to pilfer, it is just as easy to find the offending passages or sentences and search them in the ubiquitous "Google" search engine.  In fear of sounding overly parental I don't ask the obvious, but I truly am left to wonder if there is no sense of shame?  Fear?  I mean, an "F" for the term is no small result, especially if the rest of the assignments were completed and done with some rigor.  At the base of it I think there seems to be a lack of connection between the word "plagiarize" and "theft", or a lack of connection between what is understood to be "my work" and "somebody else's work".  Beyond this wonderment at word theft, I am left to mince about regarding my policy on plagiarizing.  I don't want to be draconian in my measures, after all we all make grave judgments of error at some point in our lives, and yet I do not want this to be taken lightly.

The rain beats down on the roof, the fire roars and my dog snuggles down oblivious to my deliberations.  The planet turns, and I still have a job.  In the end I realize I gave this student a break based on the contingencies...I waffle on the correctness of my decision, but I feel fairly certain that ethically I have handled it as well as can be expected.  Once this paper is finished I will commence re-visiting the plagiarizing policy on my syllabus and revise it to fit the exact expectations I go over in class.  Ambiguity be gone and "ratemyprofessor" be damned!