The Difference Between Me and You

The time has come again for the Beloit Mindset List. As Tom McBride shares the givens of the class of 2012 he points out their relationship with Harry Potter, Pearl Jam, Haagen-Daz, and Seinfeld. While not technically by dates, but in my experience of the world, I still have a few things in common with this incoming class.

I have always been looking for Carmen Sandiago.
I have felt that some people just don't get it.
Macauly Culkin has always been Home Alone.
The Green Bay Packers had the same starting quarterback for as long as I've been watching. (And now he's come to New York so I can still see him play and cheer for the 'home team.')


Unlike them:
I've seen Pee-Wee's Playhouse.
I remember the Rosanne Barr National Anthem, though I didn't care.
I saw the original The American Gladiators.
The only Iced Tea I had (before moving to Arkansas) was made by my grandmother and we called it Sun Tea.

How do you compare to the class of 2012?

Gotta Love 'Em

I just love hearing about people who care about the same things that I do and are doing an amazing job at what they do. I would like to share with you 826. It is a national organization that I heard about on NPR. The story talks about the The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company in Park Slope that not only offers your everyday crime fighting needs, but also hides the (not-so) secret entrance to 826NYC. Students who make it though the store and through the secret passage are in for a creative writing party. I recommend listening to the NPR story if you can because you'll get to hear the in the middle of developing their stories.

If inspiring creativity wasn't cool enough, I am stalking their events page because I want to be a part of some of their fund raisers. Now that I'm in the neighborhood, I don't plan on missing another game of Scrabble for Cheaters. 826 is in several large cities so keep your eyes open for Greenwood Space Travel Supply Co. in Seattle or The Boring Store (for all you spy needs) while you're in Chicago.

Four Things I Miss About Arkansas

To be fair I don't think these four are really specific to Arkansas, but rather the living situation Arkansas gave me. It would probably be more appropriate to call this the four things I miss most about my old home.

1. People -- Moving away meant leaving behind some incredible people. I have some great friends in Arkansas who don't compare to people that I have met anywhere else in the world. I regret that I didn't spend more time with them this past year, but imagine I'd have that regret no matter how much time we spent together.
I kind of want to make them their own number in this list, but they are people two so I suppose they belong here. I miss the triplets. It is a completely different kind of miss than the friends I left behind. I miss the adults, but I've moved a lot in my life, and experience has shown me that the important ones keep in touch. Friends don't have to disappear when they move away. In fact, last weekend I was in a wedding for a friend that I haven't lived near since high school. These kids are different though. I went to Branson and the zoo with them. We sat around the table and ate dinner together. I read them stories and tucked them in at night. I have a picture of them in my wallet because I talk about them so much I need the visual reference for people. I'm hooked on these kids, and I'm going to miss seeing them grow up. That is a lot harder than leaving a friend I talk to mostly over e-mail anyway.

2. Acquaintances -- This is less about specific people and more about friendships that my living situation allowed. There were people that I "lived with" on campus who I would only see once a month or so in passing. They are great people, and we probably would have been good friends, but we never really spent time together. Living on campus made that ok because we would still see each other and get the updates on one another's lives.

3. Conveniences -- I'll be the first to admit that I am living in a pretty convenient place. Restaurants open past nine, 24 hour pharmacies, cultural experiences at my fingertips, and public transportation to take me to all of it. There are some conveniences that you get only by living on campus. I'm going to miss working in the same building as the library. I am going to miss having the blood-mobile on the walk home every time I am eligible to donate. I am going to miss knowing what "restaurant" all of my friends are going to be eating at, and that I can catchup with them there sometime between 5 and 7. I am going to miss the posters and sidewalk drawings telling me what bands are nearby and who is doing the current food drive. I am going to miss having the ability to live, eat, work, and socialize all in the same place.

4. The Energy -- You could probably call it an aura, or personality, but I fed off of it like energy. Especially these past two years living in a freshman hall it was fantastic. August comes and the students are just bubbling over with the excitement of being there and the potential of the upcoming year. Finals come and the whole campus is calmer yet supportive. Living on a campus and being a student instantly creates a community where we all share stresses and deadlines. You may be working on a film and I may be finishing a research paper, but they all have to be done before the semester is over. We also all share the same new beginnings and renewed excitement. There is a distinct undulation to the amount and types of energy on campus that is fueled by the students and their shared experience. I already miss being a part of that as a student.

What do you love about where you live?

More Fours

Four things I have done since my last post:
1. I graduated from UCA with a Masters in CSPA.
2. I attended my first Virtual Symposium in Second Life.
3. I moved to New York City.4. I stood up in a wedding for the most beautiful bride I have ever seen (and I looked pretty darn good at my own wedding.)
Four things I have not done since my last post:
1. I have not finished unpacking.
2. I have not found a job.
3. I have not caught up on the internet (20 e-mails, 451 in my Google Reader, and 103 Podcasts).
4. I have not gotten caught up on Battlestar Galactica or Lost.

One of the Four

Jenn tagged me with a four meme. My understanding is that I should be sharing four lists of four with you. I think I am going to shoot for multiple posts with this one, so I'm taking a packing break to share the first one with you.

Four reasons (other than Sesame Workshop) why I am excited about moving to New York:

1. Public Transportation -- "With 714 miles of track, 469 stations, and 6,089 subway cars, NYC's subway system is the largest in the world. The subways run 24 hours a day and carry 1.2 billion passengers a year, while the City's public bus system consists of 300 routes and carries 600 million people a year (by far the most in the nation) on 4,200 buses." *

I seem to be missing a sense of direction. My friends call it a disability. What it means is, I can get lost anywhere. Even on my campus where I've lived for 7 years, if I find myself between two buildings that I don't regularly frequent, I can get turned around. Because of it, I hate driving and I rarely go to new cities on my own. While we were in NYC, all of that discomfort was gone. I happily walked all over the city knowing that no matter how lost I got, I would be a couple blocks from a subway stop and it will take me home. That is just in and around the city. There will be trains waiting to Boston, D.C., or Atlantic City for the weekend. I'm so excited, I am selling my car.

2. Theaters -- I've always been a fan of stage performances, so how could I not be excited about moving to the home of Broadway. Of course there is also Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway, local theaters, community troupes, and the constant live entertainment on the streets of the city. I've already prepped my hubby by telling him that if he is in a bind and doesn't what to do for an upcoming birthday or anniversary, he just needs to organize dinner and a show and he'll be golden.

3. Cultures -- We expected to hear a lot of people with New York accents when we visited over spring break. We didn't hear many at all. Instead we heard everyone talking in different languages. I didn't understand a thing any one was saying, but I really liked it. I guess part of me expected to see the machine at work in the heart of the city. People acting as cogs, going to and from work to fulfill the needs of 'the man.' Why I had expectations of mindless drones is beyond me, but I am happy to say it wasn't like that at all. Everyone was colorful and individual and I felt like I was in a place where everyone is so different that there is no normal. It was welcoming.

4. It just felt right -- I I wish there were some way to easily explain or quantify this, but it felt really good to be in the city. I felt more at home walking around in Brooklyn than I ever have in Arkansas. Don't get me wrong, Arkansas tried and took good care of me, but we weren't meant for each other. I'm already attached. I feel a sense of pride when I hear about new green initiatives that are going on. I cheered for the Giants this Super Bowl. In emotional ways that I can't really explain, I am ready.

As a sub reason under that one, I am moving closer to my little brother. I would really prefer it be a reason of its own, but it is a conditional closer. My brother is stationed in Albany with the Army so we will be a lot closer and we should get to spend some time exploring the city together, but since it is the army, they could ship him out at any point so we might not be close for long. I do have the secret motives of getting him to fall in love with upstate New York and trying to talk him in to settling down there after he gets done with the military and school.

Now, I should head back to my packing, but you can look forward to what I am going to miss about Arkansas next time.

*Ellen R. Shapiro in Relocating to New York City and Surrounding Areas (yes, I am the type of person would would buy a book about NYC)

Inevitable

My husband and I are in the same Master's program. In fact, we are in the same cohort so we take the same classes and use the same books. I've been told that it is so cute it is almost sickening. After spending any time with us, it is easy to see that despite our similar interests we both have different strengths and backgrounds. We find ourselves passionate about some of the same problems, but we approach them differently and use different tools to solve them.

A small example of how we work differently is the job search. I regularly check job listings on The Chronicle, HigherEdJobs.com, and Inside Higher Ed. When I find a job that interests me, I start researching the university and building up excitement. My husband learns about a university, decides if he wants to work there, and begins looking at the job openings they have.

Right after the December vacation, I saw a job listing on The Chronicle website for a First Year Counselor. I loved the time I spent advising Freshmen this summer, and living in the freshman dorm the past two years has really given me an appreciation for how influential this year can be. I moved on to looking at the university and was impressed with what I saw. According to the website they shared some of my values in education, and it was in a place that I would like to live. So I applied.

A couple nights ago my husband finished scouring the university he was currently working on and decided to start looking at the one I have been talking about so much lately. For the past two years he has been coordinating a large part of the living learning community that our honors freshman go though. Every time our Honors College has an Interview/Inform day, he comes home energized and excited about everything those incoming students are about to become a part of. So when he came across a job posting for a First Year Counselor, he thought about how much he would like to continue working with Freshman. He wants to apply.

This was inevitable. We knew it would happen. We just never thought about the possibility that we wouldn't realize we both wanted the job at the same time. We had already worked out a plan of talking it though and deciding which one of us should apply based on our strengths and the job description, but I jumped the gun because a couple months ago I thought he wasn't interested. Now we have to decide if he should apply. He is really excited about it, and he would do a great job. Technically, we'd be competing for the position, but we would both benefit if either was hired. Will it make him look bad that I applied over a month earlier? Is there any chance we would both look bad? What really could he/we loose? Would they throw both of our applications out? Tell me what you would think if you received an application and then a month and a half later received an application from that candidate's spouse.

Then and Now

In December I read Sesame Street and the Reform of Children's Television by Robert Morrow. It was a great book that talked about the beginnings of the beloved show and how they've been working to improve children's programming ever since. The other night, I started Getting to Sesame Street: Origins of the Children's Television Workshop by Richard Polsky. I am barely a dozen pages in, so I can't tell you much about it yet, but there is something that I've already noticed. So far, they both paint a drastically different picture of Joan Ganz Cooney.

It wasn't until I read the Morrow book that I really understood who Cooney was and what role she played in the Workshop. She is one of the original creators of Sesame Street and founders of the Children's Television Workshop. (She wasn't alone in doing either of these two things, but I am going to talk about how these two books have conveyed her so I'll be focusing on her involvement.) I really liked the Morrow book because he explained the setting that Cooney was working in and the research she did to justify her decisions. I wish I had the book here so I could find some quotes for you, but it has disappeared back into the interlibrary loan system. My impression and what I remember from the book is that Cooney was working against a lot of nay-sayers. People were criticizing head-start programs so the education purposes she wanted were under scrutiny. Parents were up in arms about what the television was doing to their families and the violence it was bringing into their homes. This meant that she was under attack for her choice in medium. Despite that, she wrote grants that funded research that ultimately shaped and justified Sesame Street.

The Polsky book is a little different. Let me share with you a paragraph from the second page.

One evening in February or March 1966 in New York, at a dinner party given by Mr. and Mrs. Cooney, the conversation turned to television. Among the guests that night were Lloyd Morrisett, vice-president of Carnegie Corporation and log associated with the foundation's activities in early childhood education and its more recent interest in television, and Lewis Freeman, director of programming at WNDT. As. Mrs. Cooney recalled that evening, Freedman said he felt television was going to be the great educator of the future. Morrisett then became intrigued with designing a TV series for educating young children and suggested that Carnegie representatives soon meet with Freeman and Mrs. Cooney to discuss in detail television for preschoolers.

That difference has really struck me. In one book she is a heroine standing against criticism and fighting for low-income children. In the other a television show was seemingly handed to her on a sliver platter (or her own china). I don't want to be overly critical of Polsky or call him sexist. I've just started the book, and it was published in 1971. I am just fascinated by my own reaction. I had to actually set the book aside because I was put off by my hero being described as a housewife. I am going to be working woman who also has a husband, children, and dinner parties. In fact, I've thought a lot about how much time I want to take off of work when my children are born. I am not at all put off by the idea of staying home with them while they are babies. If my perception of her is changed this drastically just by reading a second book, won't it be great to actually meet her and see how she conveys herself instead of how other people present her.