At church one day (*sigh*, okay, one Sunday…), Alexis and I noticed that there were little notepads in the slotted holders in the back of the pews. The notepads looked like they were there for congregants to write down prayer requests or something like that.

Anyway, the notepads in OUR pew had far more juicy things written on them than mere prayers Read on…

(more…)

http://www.xkcd.com/451/

About a year ago, when I was trespassing on a Communication Theory class, my current advisor posed this question to a group of incoming graduate students. The ensuing discussion was a bit too scatter-brained, but the question remained with me for a long time. I’ve been thinking about it since then, and recently I started writing down what I think.

[Of course, at the time, my first reaction was: "What an artsy-fartsy idealistic question?! What a ridiculous waste of time! And THIS is where my taxpayer money is going??"]

However, over the past year I’ve begun to see just how complex this question is, and as I’ve thought through the question it has also spawned a bunch of other equally idiotic questions in my own head. Working through each of those led to quite a lot of interesting discussions (yes, in my own head…)

I am writing up a lot of the resulting thoughts and ideas, but, in the meantime, I want to pose the original question here, and also pose the questions that it spawned. Please think and respond! Here they are:

(more…)

So, the other day I was working from home, but had run into a bizarre policy issue that got me tangled up in a whole buncha interpersonal conflict mess. I decided to take a break and go to Noho to get me some pipe tobacco.

On the way I saw that my car was running on fumes, so I pulled into a gas station to fill up. It was a beautiful day, and as I was leaning against the car I happened to glance up - and who should I see but my friend Steph pulling in to the same station. She was headed out to the beach, for a day of surfing and camping, and had cycles dangling off the back of her car and stepped out in cool shades, ready to relax.

(more…)

On July 23rd I will be retiring from engineering.

The term is a bit dramatic, to be sure, but I love using it because it does convey the sense of finality that I want associated with my leaving - I am well and truly determined never to do any “engineering” again, even on a contract basis.

Depending on how you want to define it, I began my engineering “career” at 16 when I graduated from high school and went to engineering school (out in Prescott, Arizona, to study aerospace engineering). Or, job-wise, I graduated in 2000 with a Master’s degree in engineering and began working at 24.

Either way, at 32 I find myself leaving the only professional career I have known and trained for, and a career in which I have been very successful. Instead, I begin a new career in a completely different field - “Communication” - focusing on critical cultural studies, rhetoric, folklore, and the artful performance of everyday life.

And so, as I tell people that I am “retiring,” and especially as I tell them what I intend to study, every now and then I hear someone joke that I am leaving engineering to go hide “from the real world” in academia.

Admittedly I probably provoke those statements with my own dramatism about “retiring” at merely 32. Or, those may also stem from the popular perception or stereotype of “academics” in their ivory towers, especially given the passivity and elitism of terms like “cultural studies” or “folklore.” However, the question remains: why AM I retiring?

(more…)