And I quote the article's caption: "A PowerPoint diagram meant to portray the complexity of American strategy in Afghanistan certainly succeeded in that aim."

Most people pale in comparison. In student presentations, which I sit through a lot, the PowerPoint seems to have replaced the old habit of notecards or outline notes; everything goes into the slides, and so instead of appearing well-informed as a public speaker, you instead look like you’re reading something perhaps copied from the internet or prepared by someone else. It breaks up the audience’s concentration when they must choose between investing their energy reading the slides or listening to the speaker.

And when teachers use them for lectures, students inevitably take fewer notes–if any–and simply rely on the PowerPoint (posted online) as a study aid. Several years ago I had a clear picture of the results of this method, in a Global Political Economy class I took; rarely did any of my classmates take notes, and when the mid-term grades came back, I was disappointed to see that after all my studying, I’d only made an 86. However, everyone else made Ds and low Cs, and a few of them asked me about it directly. Could I help them study next time around? Well, you know how I study? I take out my handwritten notes and type them on the computer, solidifying my grasp on it all, relating each lecture to the others, and fixing the organization in case the class jumped around. Reading things off the PowerPoint rarely invites students to take note of the concept in a way that makes sense to them, and eliminates any possibility of jotting down ideas or questions that may arise throughout a class or lecture. It is the worst way to study, and, for me at least, the worst way to learn. True understanding in a classroom usually comes from active participation–if not through discussion, then at least through reinterpreting the concepts by putting them into words on paper.

My own bias certainly bleeds through here, but I just hate using the clunky program, and find it unfortunate that I’m expected to WOW my listeners with flashy images and lots of text. When I must use it, they’re simple and short, containing mostly photos. I find the program limiting, compared to other programs I’ve used for much nobler endeavors, like creating a newspaper (or, back in the day, a yearbook) via Adobe InDesign. I find the graphics, functions and options in PowerPoint just completely uninspiring.

Of course, it does prove beneficial when your goal is to bore, as reported in the NYT article:

Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting information, as in briefings for reporters.

The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”

See my point? We just shouldn’t limit ourselves to reducing things to bullets; it’s as disconcerting as the concept of good writing in the form of a text message.

A glimmer of hope lies in Brooklyn, NY, though, where over 400 middle-grades students are learning Mandarin Chinese. Ninety percent of Medgar Evers College Preparatory School’s students qualify for subsidized lunches, yet their school is giving them invaluable tools for their future: fostering an interest in Chinese language and culture makes these students more prepared for the multi-ethnic face of the United States they know. Of course, there are also the career and opportunity benefits that accompany knowledge and skills in the Chinese language in today’s global (job) market.

Some sloppy attempts at writing my Chinese name, Yi Jia Xi, which I wouldn't have without my years studying the language.

I know my experience in college would have been vastly different without a Chinese program: two-month study abroad, Asian studies minor, and an intermediate level of language skills. Learning Mandarin brought Chinese history to life. This interest also led me to my senior thesis research topic, missionary Young J. Allen. Amidst the bleak backdrop of every other public education news story, this one proves there is still some hope for U.S. schools. There are still some educators who understand what is important for their students and the future.

When I got home, I took a lovely walk, breathed in the white wonderland, and took a few pictures. We made a snowman when I got home, and frolicked around the backyard a bit more. By Sunday afternoon, most of the snow had already melted, and I must admit I was sad to see it go. My parents moved us from Michigan in 1998, partly due to a search for better weather (read: no snow). I can’t say I’ve missed it this past decade. But this weekend, it was a true snowfall, thick and gorgeous, and I found myself wishing it snowed here more often. (However, I know my Dad is still grateful he lives a few hours south of me, where the snow was melted within a few hours.)

Our full-sized official Georgia Snowman

I was the first one to disturb the snow on this sidewalk.

At the edge of our neighborhood, the forest grows wild, and was a lovely sight.

Look cloesly, and you'll see the camoflauged umbrella strewn into the bushes.

Ashley and I have found a place to live. This is relieving and exciting; the downside is that now I must wait two more months until I can mount this huge item on the “to do” list. I am itching to start packing boxes. At the same time, I’m not quite ready to enter that phase of interminable chaos yet. Once I start, it will be messy and unorganized, and I like that even less. So, it remains on the list.

Got a new phone! My sleek, shiny, skinny new Nokia Intrigue is like a new friend that I like immediately.

Reading now: Who Owns History, but Eric Foner, for my Themes in History class. The whole subject of the book is interesting to me, and is something I’ve talked about before– historical context. The book deals with questions about whose histories are included in “history,” and how the groups being included has been so fundamentally rearranged in the last half century. “Historical interpretation both reflects and helps to shape current politics,” the author says. Perspective can largely change the entire story. He discusses the vast span separating how academics approach history versus the public, and the relationship between them. This will be a feast for me, as context is possibly my favorite debate within historical theory, and history as a practice. Good stuff.

Hosted my first baby shower. Almost one month ago, I played co-hostess for my friend Brandie’s baby shower. Brandie has been my roommate for the last three years, and this will mark a new era in our life. But simply said, the baby shower was a lot of work and even more fun, when it was all said and done. It felt nice at the end of the day to think of what we accomplished, pulling it off. I’m not naturally attracted to the idea of  hosting events, so I was surprised how much I really did enjoy the experience. Considering it was on a college budget, it came out lovely and ran smoothly. It is a small something that is part of a much larger ordeal, but I was honored to participate in one little piece.

MAKING MY FIRST QUILT! I will have to post pictures later on this summer, but I am making my first large-size quilt as a Christmas present for Ben. The design is pretty advanced, and I had to create the pattern myself, based on a picture of the quilt in one of my Mom’s Masterclass quilting books. Ben picked out the design, and it is modern and graphic. It is an excellent learning experience, as each square seems to bring new quilting techniques my way. My Mom is my mentor and helper, really giving me the confidence to see it come to fruition– it would have already been a scrapped project were it not for her.

Summer classes have begun. Ben is feeling really good about his, and I am very much going to enjoy mine. My professor is funny and a new perspective to learn from, and my classmates and the material we will be covering are going to provide thought-provoking classes (not to mention more blogs on history and new discoveries I make).

Don’t forget, I want thoughts and questions about Guo Jingming, the young Chinese author who is the subject of my previous blog. What do you make of him?

A great summer is abreast. Hehe.

The last two weeks I’ve learned some random interesting things about Wikipedia. While the English Wikipedia has over 2.8 million entries, the next-largest is the German Wiki, which lags far behind that in size. However, host Patrick Cox points out that it is no less thorough in its encyclopedic knowledge. What the German version is lacking that accounts for the massive size difference is the thousands upon thousands of “stubs” and entries explaining very tiny elements of American or English pop culture. Stubs themselves are incomplete articles that might eventually be deleted, defining very trivial parts of culture. And the other, more extensive but equally as trivial entries might be credited to people who are experts on very specific things– say, for instance, if I wrote a whole huge entry on every detail of the Home Alone movie series. The distinction between German-language Wiki and English-language Wiki is this stringent weeding out of trivial knowledge. The German focus is to make Wikipedia the same caliber as any printed, published academia-based encyclopedia. The English-language one is, therefore, much larger, and filled with much more specific detail. This is not a bad thing– plenty of times I have needed a random factoid answered that has been a bother in my head, and have eased my mind with Wiki. It’s just quite an interesting cultural thing to consider.

It also baffled me to learn of the barriers that some language systems have overcome to streamline their own Wikipedias. Chinese language, for example, has two writing systems– traditional characters and simplified characters (the latter has been pushed and taught since the mid-20th century). Some articles were being written in simplified, some in traditional, and the characters are different enough to cause a problem for readers who can’t read both systems. Chinese programmers hastily developed a way to duplicate the articles into both, solving the issue. The predicament only gets tougher for Kazakh speakers, though: they have three writing systems. This is an element of global language barriers that I have never thought of before– that one language when spoken could have three possible translations into writing. The language in Kazakhstan can be written in the Cyrillic alphabet (like Russian), the Roman/Latin alphabet (like English), and in the Arabic right-to-left format. Adapting a system this complicated to modern world is breathtaking.

And one more trivial bit of knowledge lies in the Spanish-language Wiki. Drama erupted in 2002 after a mere mention of putting advertising on Wiki article pages enraged a group of contributors; they split from Wiki and began their own user-written encyclopedia Web site, Enciclopedia Libre. Eventually things were mended (because it had been literally just an online conversation that contained the thought of advertising), but the remarkable thing is the power of the individual in something as big as Wiki, on something so big as the Internet.

I am, after all, just one person, putting my thoughts here.

I can picture Mr. Coyote vividly in my head, legs still moving to propel him further, but hovering dangerously in the air, until, in seemingly slow motion, he looks down and realizes he’s in for an inevitable plunge.

Anderson points out that just like the Road Runner, we’ll get scuffed up but make it through (however, more chastised).

I look at this era and see both a truly new path before me. A retracted world, bruised and still not over the bout (not even close, really), is staring me in the face. In a way, this is the most frightening of worlds to step into, after four years in college living off student loans and working for minimum wage, hovering between dependency and full responsibility. A brutal employment arena awaits, every company and non-profit retracting spending and freezing their hiring, and get-rich-fast plans nonexistent. I have spent years accumulating a base of knowledge and experience so that I could face the real world with confidence. I’m still confident, knowledgeable, and capable—but the world I am going to enter next May looks very different.

I never wanted to be rich though, really. And reminding a new generation where the definition of “needs” distinguishes itself from “wants” is really the only thing that could happen—the Dow Jones’ seemingly endless climb upward was a false reassurance for nearly three decades. Did we really think it could never end?

For my lifestyle, I embrace this shift gladly. I already rather like having less, and I’m making it my personal goal to really, really, cut my belongings down by a large chunk this summer. (Bless moving to a new place for keeping us real like that.) Thinking on a smaller scale is more appealing to me in terms of belongings, living space, clothing, and even beauty care (painting your own nails in the front yard, how lovely).

The disconcerting thing is who will hire me, and how I will afford health care. I’ve recently been looking deeper at the inefficiencies of health care systems (U.S. and others, too), and the whole thing is a huge cumbersome mess. That topic is for another blog, that I’m mulling over right now. But the thought of embracing any clunky system that exists currently is frightening. We are scared stiff about the calamitous costs that can get dumped on us without medical coverage. It is real, and it is scary. Not to get too far off topic though, the best I can do is equip myself with all the things I know, love, and have seen, and keep in mind all the things I will continue to add to my arsenal over time, and hope for the best. I will always work hard. I will always keep learning. And in tough times, I think the ones who most eagerly embrace the new, redefined world are the ones who can best lead it towards its more sustainable future.

Anderson provided another gem of an illustration of this uncertain, but certainly global, situation that we face, one that I find perfectly juxtaposes the excitement and fear of those huge seismic shifts that come our way sometimes. He says: “The meltdown amounts to a spectacular moment of global consciousness, this generation’s version of the Apollo astronauts’ iconic 1968 photograph of the earth from the moon—an unforgettable reminder that all 6.7 billion of us are in this together, profoundly and inextricably interdependent. (The sublime always had a bit of terror mixed in.)”

Now, what kind of immense picture does that conjure up, of this great, big planet? I can see billions of faces, mine included, staring boldly towards the future.

But for me, this spring, learning Mandarin has been a thrill. It is such a rush to be able to read a page in my textbook. I love knowing how to write the characters in their correct stroke order, and for that matter, I love knowing the strokes and how they fit together. I like learning the radicals, and cracking the mysterious code of each new word.

By no means is it easy, but it is a pleasure seeing results, seeing myself absorb the words. I am more receptive to this language than I ever was to high school French or Spanish once I got to college. That moment of realization, comprehending a foreign language and understanding what kind of door that opens for you is quite indescribable. I am beginning to widen my discussion opportunities in the world– there is a new, HUGE population for me to chat with, over in China. So I’ll keep studying!

I am fine with learning this history, since I have to; but if I am going to put the time and effort into this class, I want to learn. Brooking has taken half the semester (yes, it’s already half-way over) to cover five chapters. Five out of fourteen is not an efficient pace, especially since his goal is to reach the Civil War, which is that very last fateful Chapter 14. It makes me angry when any professor stands up in front of his or her class and goes on tangents, again and again neglecting to cover all the information that was allotted for that day, and leaving gaping holes in the class content. I do the reading assignments, yes, but that is not the same kind of experience as a lecture. (And at least three times now, he has just put on a documentary for us to watch, instead of lecturing.) And not that I don’t have days of feeling icky, but he’s canceled class twice so far, leaving us even farther behind.

Yet, his first test had very specific information in the questions, and according to him, essays on the test were graded “nicely.” Today was the low point. After a quiz on the CONTINENTS AND OCEANS (because we are in middle school), he had a fit about how “concerned” he is over our “lack of caring” about the research paper that is due Friday, March 6. He was upset that only ten people submitted rough drafts (roughly 60 people in the class), and that those drafts that he read were not up to par for him. He informed us that he would be grading ver-wy strict-wy. Note my child-sounding voice there, used to emphasize how condescending this guy is. He called out efforts “half-assed.”

This type of talk upsets me. I am an adult, I do my work and take pride in the job that I do. I finished his blasted research paper over 10 days ago, and submitted my FINAL copy to him already (it’s submitted online). I wanted to raise my hand and say, “Sir, I resent those statements. I am not in kindergarten, or even high school, and I know how to write history papers. Believe it or not, this is not my first one.” Instead, I ignored him and considered myself exempt from his “worries.”

I even resent the fact that he treats us like children. A few weeks ago when we had our first test, he sat silently until someone in the class took a hint that he might be waiting for us to quiet ourselves down (from the rush of last-minute review that comes before exams are distributed). Once she “shhh”-ed everyone, he stood up and smugly said “Did we get that out of us, now?” Seriously, dude? Just because you have a degree, you have no right to talk down to me.

This upsetting manner of teaching reaffirms my vow to never, should I become a professor in my life, mismanage my use of time in class or treat my students like anything less than adults.

U.S. history turns out to be mildly interesting. I even found a topic that intrigued me enough to make my paper fun to research.

But, condescension + tangents + U.S. history = pure loathing.

The issue has been my hesitation to write something about my life, that, to me, seems ordinary.

Recently though, I started reading my friend Stacey’s blog. She is chronicling her year studying Mandarin Chinese in Beijing, and her stories of everyday life and building her own little world in the Chinese capital are entertaining and hopeful. Stacey was my roommate for one of the two months I spent there (2007), and so some of her irritations and joys I completely understand. Others, I hope to experience for myself one day. Her writing is also a huge collection of her thoughts on her life, and I realize that I can do that right here, about my life in Kennesaw, Georgia.

Today, for instance, I went stroller shopping with my roommate Brandie and her boyfriend Kyle. They are expecting a baby at the end of July, and with every passing day, I learn more about pregnancy and what grows out of it. I see Brandie, and while inside she is nurturing a baby, outside, I see her growing into a lovely adult. Her and Kyle are facing realities I have never had to face, and while not always easy, they have embraced the challenge. There are so many things to learn about babies, which up until this point have been things I dismissed for a “later” period in life. From conversations I have had with her recently, Brandie sees her pregnancy as a very spiritual experience, changing her perspective in far more ways than just the reality of no loner worrying about herself. And while not planned, she has pretty incredible circumstances, a lot of support, and an amazing partner for the journey. It was so great learning about the strollers with them today, and seeing them walk it around the house.

This is just one change that accompanies the new year, a year which, in only a few months, has already been another huge step further into life. I see wonderful things unfolding before my eyes. So much makes me think, makes me thankful, and keeps me smiling every day. So  many things inspire me. Writing it all down is essential.