to STEM or not to STEM

I am awfully glad that it is Friday night.

One of my facebook friends posted this article a couple of days ago, titled “This is Irrefutable Evidence of the Value of a Humanities Education.”  I do not like this article.

I would like to disclaim, right now, about my dislike.  I am obviously a STEM student (that’s science, technology, engineering, mathematics).  I am sure that there are lots of STEM people who look haughtily down their aquiline noses at humanities peons and laugh about how there aren’t any jobs in their selected fields.

I am not one of these people.  Do what you’re suited for: if you hate math, science, engineering, then don’t do them.  It doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t care much one way or the other.  Although I would like a job, so if chemists could file out and to the left… I’m mostly kidding but let’s be real.  The job market in the hard sciences is often not much more promising than the humanities.  Joke’s on us.

I think there’s very real value in many of the humanities fields, and I would never condemn anyone’s choice to not do science.

But this article starts out with a quote that says “you shouldn’t enter college worried about what you will do when you exit.”  And I just think that’s wrong.  I think that if you’re going to make that substantial financial investment, especially if it’s promising to leave you hopelessly buried in student debt, you should have some sort of exit strategy!  You absolutely should worry about what you will do when you exit.  I suppose you do have four years to figure it out, but I’d think it would be high priority.

And then there’s a list of “10 highly successful people… who prove that humanities majors are anything but useless”, and I’m thinking, hey, great!  We’re going to find logical career trajectories for humanities degrees!  This is nice!

The list comprises a politician, four people in the entertainment industry (two talk show hosts, one writer, one screenwriter), three CEOs, an entrepreneur, and the founder of CNN.

In terms of utility of this list, let’s strike Spielberg, Rowling, Conan and Jon Stewart.  They all made it big.  They made it big with raw talent.  Their degrees probably helped them make it big, but let’s be reasonable: “I’m going to go into the entertainment industry” is just not a recipe for widespread success.  How many liberal arts degrees have failed in the same venture?  (I don’t know, but I’m gonna say a lot – I don’t like those odds).

So we’re down to six.  Well, we can disqualify Romney and Blankfein on the basis of their law degrees, both from Harvard.  Romney also has a business degree from Harvard.  Carly Fiorina has an MBA (UM) and a MS in business (MIT), so we’ll strike her.  Jamie Dimon has an MBA from Harvard, so we’ll strike him.  It’s really not fair to laud the so-called useless degree for these successes.  It is fair and also great to talk about how it sets you up beautifully for the graduate degree, but that’s not what’s happening here…!

And now we’re left with the Flickr co-founder (MPhil), who I would argue definitely counts toward the purpose of the list, and Ted Turner who founded CNN and did it without the graduate degree.

I’m actually not sure what the explicit purpose of the list was.  You can cherry-pick 10 incredibly successful people using any metric you want, probably.  I just don’t think that this was a particularly useful exercise in positive thought for struggling humanities majors.  It would be more reasonable to show some career paths / strategies / trajectories for which the humanities degree is particularly useful and how there’s room to climb the corporate ladder.

At the end of the day, though, there are far too many students majoring in subjects without real future plans or career options, and – this is the kicker – racking up enormous debt to do so.  It seems so futile to me.

And I still don’t think there’s anything wrong with the humanities.  I just think that it, as does anything else, requires some planning in order for it to pay out eventually.  And that you learn some critical skills in humanities classes.

The article still seems really vapid.  When people get defensive about not being in STEM, it makes me feel defensive about being in STEM.  Weird phenomenon.

This has been an exquisitely boring and probably offensive post.

idiomatic

I feel sort of restless today.

I am not entirely sure why I feel restless. I sort of feel like I have a bunch of thread-ends trailing off in various directions, any of which could be tugged on at any moment and I would unravel.

In the somewhat immortal words of Weezer, “if you want to destroy my sweater, hold this thread as I walk away.” Just kidding. Also that’s a funny song when taken at face value. Actually, it’s a totally nonsense song when taken at face value.

Andy emailed the three of us (Kate, Denise, and me) last night after we had all returned to our respective homes and/or lives. He basically told us what we already knew – that a move to Boston is more or less imminent, with special emphasis on the less because he seems desperate to not land a solid blow – and asked in an indirect way for our feelings on the matter. By that I mean he didn’t ask at all, just said “would be happy to hear your thoughts, positive or otherwise.”

I have not told him what my feelings on the matter are, in part because I’m still sorting through my own personal feelings, trying desperately to organize them into little piles with headings like ‘rational’, ‘irrational’, and ‘rational but dismissable’, and in part because he seems anxious for affirmation and most of my feelings on the matter are markedly negative.

I suppose the logistics of moving to Boston are really no more unwieldy than any other move, and a move will be inevitable at some point, and this one will probably be financed by his future employers. Also, Boston is kind of a science hotbed, which can only help my future. I just have a(n extremely) hard time thinking about it.

Denise didn’t respond until later today, either, when he had an opening to prompt her because he had another email to send about a meeting that she and he and another professor+student combination needed to have. “I’m on needles waiting for your thoughts,” he said.

She giddily showed the email to Kate and me, because here in the Phillips group, we’re sharers. Oversharers. “Did you get one, Shannon?”

No, but I suspect it’s because he didn’t have a real, organic (heh heh) opening to prompt me. Kind of like sending too many texts to someone who isn’t responding; you don’t want to appear needy or desperate.

“Isn’t the term ‘pins and needles’?” asked Kate.

“Yeah,” I said, “or ‘on tenterhooks.’” No one knew of that idiom, so I started to doubt myself, but a quick google showed me that I was right. Guess I did too much reading as an adolescent. Just kidding. I did a wonderful amount of reading.

We went to Nica’s for lunch today and brought our haul back to CRB to eat. I got a coffee and a chicken pesto panini, and saved half of the sandwich for dinner. I’m looking forward to eating it tonight in a kind of not really excited way. It’s just convenient.

There was another faculty candidate speaker today, and I understood most of what he was talking about because we covered PACE (phage-assisted continuous evolution) in chemical biology when I took that course, and because it wasn’t covered particularly thoroughly, I spent a lot of time exhaustively poring over it. He also talked very, very quickly. It was actually probably my favorite of the talks so far.

Probably because I didn’t feel like the science was beating me over the head.

adventures in Connecticut

Well, it’s halftime.  SU is playing Wake Forest, and it is one ugly game.  I mean, fouls are absolutely rampant and part of that is the refs not letting them play, but part is just that it’s getting physical.  Probably because everyone is totally missing shots and it makes everyone feel frustrated.

I’ve had hiccups like four times today.  I’m thinking of it now because I have hiccups now and it’s very irritating.  I will try to blog through the annoyance.

So anyway, besides the basketball that is sort of on right now, today was a pretty good day.

We did indeed drive to UConn to see Andy speak.  At the time of departure, only Kate, Denise, and I wanted to go.  We thought it was an interesting development, but it’s very easy to fit three comfortably in a car, so no one pushed the issue.

After group meeting, we headed out and hopped into Kate’s car, which we drove to my parking lot and picked up my car.  Kate’s car is old and has about 300,000 miles on it, and it’s on its last legs.  The check engine light is on, and it has some worrying idiosyncrasies, so I told her I’d drive when she told me that she was worried about taking her car on long drives and would I maybe consider taking us?

We left my parking lot around 3:15 pm and Andy was scheduled to speak at 4:30.  The drive to UConn was about an hour, and the day was sunny enough that I pulled my sunglasses from the compartment on the car ceiling.  We played pop songs on the radio and the day was dry, if cold.  Traffic moved smoothly.

The highways were crowded, but efficient, and we sailed along, warm air on our feet.  We sang to the songs we knew, but we sang in that way that seems sort of calm and also bares some self-consciousness, where we sing quietly and the only way you can tell that the people sharing your space are singing is that the consonant sounds don’t match up exactly.  They sound a little staggered, a little separate from the movie.

Denise paid my parking in the garage (a whopping $2 for two hours… seriously, Yale should do something like that somewhere), and we headed off down the sidewalk toward the chemistry building.  We knew it was the chemistry building because it said CHEMISTRY on it.  It had a really nice café basically at the entrance, and we remarked that we would like to have one of those.

It was easy to find the auditorium, and we sat ourselves toward the back.  Andy was introduced, and then he began his talk.  During his introduction, he caught sight of us and he just couldn’t help himself.  “And I see some of my co-workers back there – it’s nice that they came to see me.”

He gave his talk, and it was interesting to see how our science fit together in his eyes, because in our little-picture windows we often only see ourselves as disjointed entities, operating mainly by running around in circles and flailing our arms.  When he finished his talk and his acknowledgments, he gave us another call-out: “And to my co-workers back there, you’re also brave people – thanks for coming, it’s always nice to have you in the audience.”

We left when the talk was over, feeling awkward about trying to touch base with him, and as we drove back to New Haven, Kate got a text from Andy, indicating that he didn’t feel great about the way the talk had gone and he was thirsty and also getting sick.  This was kind of cute and also it was funny that he sent a text to Kate.

Dropped Denise off and then went for sushi with Kate.  All-in-all, a good night.

Addendum: SU won, so an even better night.  Also, my back feels much better.

status update

My back still hurts today. It’s difficult to say whether it hurts more or less than it did yesterday, but sitting is kind of painful. I brought my hot pack to work today and microwaved it a few times, and it helped a little bit. I am just fine when I am lying down. I suspect it has to do with the pressure of my body weight not being vertically on my spine. Walking isn’t the greatest, but it’s better than sitting. I took some advil and I think it must have worked because I am in less discomfort.

But really, it’s probably all an elaborate controversy orchestrated by whatever muscles are involved to convince me that what I really should do is just stay home and recuperate. I would like to stay home and recuperate, but I think I would be bored. I guess my hours outside of work are more special because of the hours I spend at work.

Syracuse has a game against Wake Forest tomorrow night, and I am hoping that I can watch it on my computer. Pittsburgh lost to Duke last night. I was hoping that that would not be the case, but alas, it was. It’s all right, though. We have to play a game against Duke on Saturday. At least that game will be a home game.

Andy is out of town today, tomorrow, and Thursday. This means that Newhouse has to cover his class tomorrow morning, which we may or may not attend, depending on how busy we feel, or how powerful inertia’s hold on us happens to be. Apparently Andy is giving a lecture at UConn tomorrow afternoon.

None of us have ever heard him speak. There is a plan developing to drive the 45 minutes to UConn and crash his lecture, just to hear him talk about what we’re doing. Hopefully that doesn’t end up being a scary and/or disheartening thing. I think it could be fun to hear Andy give a talk; it was my understanding that he was going to talk at last year’s Chemical Biology symposium, but that did not end up coming to pass.

So, assuming all goes well, we’ll have a little science talk and then we’ll drive back to New Haven. I haven’t had sushi in a while, and Kate is feeling the sushi bug herself, so we have tentative plans to go out for sushi tomorrow night. You know. Just ‘cause. Sometimes you need a little tuna.

Tuna sashimi is so good that I often wonder why people like canned tuna fish. Convenience, I suppose, and when you don’t know what you’re missing, it seems like a pretty reasonable thing to eat. I really like tuna melts… I haven’t thought about tuna melts in years. But I really like them.

I have lacked for focus pretty seriously today. It is something that happens to me pretty regularly. I wonder if I am entering some elusive second stage of senioritis. The problem is that I don’t know that I want to be done… what comes next?!

Stay tuned for status updates on my back. Ha, ha, ha.

muscles are the worst.

Monday has rolled around again.

When I woke up this morning, I felt a familiar tightness at the base of my spine.  I have occasionally been prone to varying degrees of lower back pain, and this is one that I’ve had maybe two times before.

My walk in was a little bit uncomfortable.  I tried to think about relaxing my muscles.  I swung my arms lightly.   I tried to stand straight up, and when I made it to my desk, I attempted to use my chair as a back-cracking aide.  An adjustment, if you will.  I twisted my body and felt a few unsatisfying little pops.

I slid down in my chair, inching my hips forward, and felt some pretty incredible pain.  I couldn’t get that magical crack at the bottom of my spine, and what’s more, I was in some considerable pain.  When 11:30 rolled around, I headed down to Andy’s class with my compatriots, because he was scheduled to cover protecting groups today.

He did cover protecting groups, and the class was more or less unremarkable.  But my walk to class was exquisitely painful as I fought to stand upright and relax my muscles, feeling like my spine was bound up in muscles that just didn’t want to quit.  Everything seemed like it was squeezing painfully, and standing upright made me feel like I had a pronounced arch to my back, like my shoulders were way out in front of my feet.

They weren’t, but it sure felt that way.

I sat uncomfortably in class for the 90 minutes that it took, and then I walked with Denise to the food carts, straight from class.  I picked up tacos over rice and black beans, and we walked back up.  The walk itself seemed to do me a little bit of good, but I still couldn’t get my muscles to relax.  I am wondering if the muscles that I have desperately been trying to speak with today are not muscles that I normally speak to.  Maybe they’re muscles that are just there, maintaining things involuntarily until suddenly they’re not, and I don’t know how or why it went wrong!

I didn’t do anything particularly strenuous over the weekend, nothing that would have let the muscles exit the matrix, so to speak.

When I got back to the office, I asked Kate if I could borrow her massage chair.  She has one of those chairs that you set on another chair and then it just absolutely destroys all of your muscles when you turn it on, with that rotating motion and unforgiving bearings.  It also has a heat function, so that’s nice.

I set it on the lower back setting and turned the heat on, and while it was mostly a little bit too high, it seemed to have helped.  I could stand and walk with slightly less difficulty.

There was another faculty candidate giving seminar today, and I sat through that, feeling the heat seep back out of my muscles and having a fairly discomfort-free (can’t call it comfortable) position.  I managed the walk back to my office, still feeling like I was walking terribly oddly (I wasn’t), and sat back down.

Turned the massage chair back on.

Ow, man.  I think a few hours of massage action may have bruised some things.  My back seems terribly offended.

Maybe I’ll see if Yale insurance covers chiropractics.

school of management

Today was another unremarkable day.

We did have some momentary excitement today, as the new school of management building is up and the general Yale public was permitted to tour it.  It's been under construction since I arrived - and since the fourth years arrived, too.  So around 3:45, we started getting a little angsty, our curiosity tugging at our wanderer's hearts.

The tours were from 3 to 5 or so, and we decided to head down around 4:00 to accommodate Denise's schedule.  At 3:50, Ben looked down at his phone and had just received the dreaded email from Andy.  "Come find me," it said.  He sighed.

"I'll try to keep it as short as possible," he said, and headed out while we set our coats back down and waited.  It was actually only about 25 minutes later that Ben returned, having had a discussion with Andy about computers (he's the resident IT guy, given that we don't actually have an IT guy, and he's more than passably good at it).

We put our scarves and coats and gloves back on and made the short trip across Whitney to see the finally completed school of management.  It's really a gigantic building, probably 80-90% glass, and it's quite striking.  Puffing and red-cheeked from the cold, we trotted ourselves through the doors and came face-to-face with a sort of panel of official-looking people and neon-clad security.

There were several awkward moments while we stood there and didn't quite make eye contact with the people hanging around at the table at the entrance.  It's the kind of situation that makes me feel exceptionally uncomfortable, where none of us are quite sure whether or not we're actually allowed to be there.

When no one made any attempt to greet us or send us away, we moved uncomfortably toward the openness of the building.

It's hard to explain how much glass there is in this building.  There's a courtyard (called the "dining terrace" on a placard) that is pretty huge - takes a big old chunk out of what would belong to the building, and we walked around it, basically seeing the perimeter of the building.

Some refreshment tables were set up, but there wasn't much of interest on them.  Kate, Diane and I mixed raspberry water and pineapple water, which was kind of nice.  Ben and Denise made tea (the coffee was temporarily out) and Ben took a few minutes insisting that he had to steep it while standing at the table.

It's an interesting building.  Acoustically, it seems like it's going to be very loud in general, but we walked around talking in hushed tones, feeling like we were tiptoeing through a library.  There's a huge auditorium with Yale-blue chairs, very steeply inclined.  There are many meeting rooms, all with at least one glass wall.

The classroom were, to me, the weirdest part of all.  They are detached cylinders, these bizarre circular rooms that you can walk all the way around on the outside.  I think there were 12 total, 6 on each of the upper floors.  Their outsides were blanketed in these sort of waxy blue panels, and the insides were all different, but quite attractive.  They had microphones at all of the student desks.  Myself, I figure learning how to project builds character.

And after we were done, we just walked back to our lab space, sat down, and I personally felt more comfortable here at "home".  It was a mildly interesting adventure, though!  I'm just sad to have lost the post office that was in the old school of management, a five minute walk from my workplace.

grr. argh.

Been thinking for a while about what to post.  Mostly because the vast majority of today was just mind-numbingly boring.  I suppose I can cast about for a couple of minor things that have been happening.

Michal has a gum-chewing habit.  It’s bad enough that she runs out and comes looking for gum in other bays.  In the past I’ve had some gum, and I don’t mind sharing it with her.  When I have gum, it’s usually the product of a moment of weakness and/or a moment of madness, and I thought it would be a good idea.

I mean, it’s nice and all, to be able to chew gum and keep your breath smelling fresh and minty, but I drink enough water that I’m usually completely unconcerned with the fragrance of my breath.  Chewing gum makes my jaw ache, sometimes makes my teeth feel shifty, and it often seems to culminate in a headache.  So I don’t mind getting rid of it when the opportunity arises.

I didn’t have any the other day, though, and Michal looked equal parts sheepish and crestfallen.  “Oh, okay,” she said, sadly, but then perked up: “if I brought some gum in, would you keep it for me?”

“Uhhh,” I said.

“I’ll eat it slower because I’ll be too embarrassed to come here for it more than once or twice a day!” she insisted.  So I agreed, and she has since brought some gum in that we keep on my desk.  I dated it today, so that we’d know how long it lasted, and she showed up three times.  The third time, she looked terribly sheepish and said, “today’s an exception!  I’m having a hard day!”  Of course I didn’t mind – it wasn’t my gum.

Today there was also a speaker, another faculty candidate who hailed from Boston.  He is and has been affiliated with the top tier institutions, but one never knows how that will manifest itself in the talk.  We filed in with our cookies and coffee, and he began.

Now that, my friends, was a fantastic talk.  Almost exactly 50 minutes long, no irritating nervous ticks, clearly impeccably prepared, clear speaking voice, impressive science.  I figure if Yale doesn’t give him an offer, they’re crazy.  I also figure he’s interviewing at all the top tier institutions, so it’s hard to say where he’ll end up.  But he gave a great talk and handled questions beautifully.  I suspect he was the candidate who had a recommendation from Andy.

We got back to the office after the talk, and I was still feeling really impressed.  I had focused almost the entire time, even though I didn’t understand a lot of it.  Sometimes seminar is like sitting on the beach and letting the tide come in.  You just get absolutely bashed upside the head with waves of SCIENCE.

Denise turned around and looked at me.  “I did not like that guy,” she said.

WHAT.  “Really?” I asked.  “I thought he was great.”

She wrinkled her nose and said, “I don’t think he’d be a good fit here.  He seemed too snobbish to me.”

I basically let the conversation drop there, not wanting to tell her that I thought that she was conflating snobbery with access to tons of jaw-dropping scientific institutions, instruments and technology and that the fact that he gave a professional-level talk that didn’t sound at all like a job talk didn’t make him uppity.

What’s the point arguing, though, really.  So I just told Kate how I’d felt (she didn’t go).  I hope Denise doesn’t mention her feelings to Andy.  Ha ha.