They moved to the Edge, away from the bright lights and danger. Building walls of concrete to keep out Evil and keep in Good. They raised their children on streets lined with front porches and green lawns. A fortress from the world, from the harsh sun that bears down on those left outside the sidewalks and driveways. Lemonade stands and ice cream trucks deal out their wears, leaving their customers comfortably numb. Locked doors and closed blinds, keeping the shouts and emotions from breaking out into the streets. The padding on the walls, accented with the perfect trim and specifically picked to match the imported apolstry, absorbs any sound from within.
What is to be done when these walls no longer can hold in those they were built to protect? No longer pacified by playdates and Friday night movies. The lemonade leaves a bitter sting in the back of your throat, the football games no longer filling that void. Left blinded by the whiteness of the walls, groping for something to hold on to. No wonder the children, no longer comfortable feeling the stillness those places create, no longer accepting the image of the American Dream so passively eaten by them, yearn to feel. Crashing into each other, into themselves they greedily swallow any pill of emotion or experience, beyond the perfectness of their childhood. Suburbia has fallen, those left, unaware the experiment has collapsed, lumber on into a paralyzing white light. Those who have fled, stumble arms stretched out, unaccustomed to the dim light that was once to bright for their fathers.
I remember writing this in 2008, I was a little drunk and 20. I'm not as bitter as I once was, does that mean I can't write the same as I did?
I got my last rejection letter the other day. No more school for me...for now. And I can't be happier.
If you didn't know, I'm about to graduate next month with a Master of Science in Sociology. I specialized in quantitative research in gender and sexuality, with an emphasis on STDs and HIV. My thesis is on behavioral outcomes and identity conflicts within racial and gender groups. Health research on heterosexual populations isn't always what it appears to be.
While I'm disappointed to be out of school, mostly I'm relieved. I know that sounds like I'm trying to be positive about the whole thing but it's the truth. No more running from work to class or putting in a ten hour day to go home and work on a paper. "Wait, I get to read this book for fun and don't have to cite it in my thesis?" I've been running nonstop for the last few years. It took me about the same amount of time to get two degrees that it is now taking the average student to get one. Plus I have two degrees more than over half the population. Go me!
Hopefully I'll be starting a new career. I'm averaging four to five resumes a week right now, holding all other variables constant (statistical humor). The goal is to have a full time, Monday thru Friday, this time next year. So... shameless plug, anyone hiring in market research or Analytics?
To sum it up. No PhD right now, stop asking. I have no idea what I'm doing with my life, but that's ok. Seriously happy to be done with school and can't wait to start a career. More time to read, write, and paint.
Sent from my iPhone
4/20/12
Been awhile since my last post, I know. I just finished a section of my thesis so I don't feel like I'm cheating on school when I write something not for academia.
I was working on my literature review at Starbucks, going through old articles and books, summing up past arguments and such. I'm specializing in sexuality and gender so my thesis is about sexual behavior across races. Nobody knows what I'm doing there, sipping my wonderful crack in a cup latte. I'm a student that is doing his homework...and getting the third weird look from a mom since I sat down.
Then it hits me. I'm not doing homework, apparently I'm a 20 something year old guy reading bad romance smut he got off of a check out aisle shelf at the Sack-and-Save. And in the middle of Starbucks? The nerve. Let's look at some of the books I'm using. Forbidden Fruit: Teenage Sexuality and Religion, Black Sexual Politics, and (the best title) Sex at Dawn. The covers of all three books are innocent on their own but paired with the titles and in a pile with other books and articles along the same lines...you get the idea.
Classic case of not judging a book by its cover. I can see it. I'm chasing some poor mom out of the shop as she panics to ushers her small children into the family minivan, rear window plastered with soccer team and school spirit stickers. Arms stretched out in front of me, holding the pages open in desperation, "No, no. This isn't a bad erotic romance novel. It's full of charts and graphs. Look! An extremely boring nonlinear regression model! (Well that's a bad example, that equation is kind of sexy.) But the charts are boring!" I press the pages against her window as she fumbles for her keys. The children, in their car seats, crying behind her. They have nightmares about sampling bias and non significant findings for years to come. (sounds a lot like graduate school actually)
After the third look of judgment I received I decided to put a few books away. In hind sight it really is a shame people have such reactions to my area of study. The research is actually rather interesting and informative. Forbidden Fruit might be of particular interest to those concerned parents. You'd be surprised what kind of affect all those Bible classes and Sunday church brunches are having on your child's sexual biography.
Sent from my iPhone
2/11/12
I got called out the other day in a health class for being what the kid called "too skinny". I want to believe that he didn't mean any harm by that statement. I'm sure he didn't choose his words very carefully, he never does. But the statement kind of follows along the same line a lot of people say. "Have another piece of cake, you can stand it," "Why are you worried about what you eat" "You can skip the run, it's not going to hurt you."
As anyone in my family can tell you, I'm not naturally small. Wasn't always a normal weight. Simply put, "fat kid likes cookies." I work at it everyday. I think about what I eat (sometimes knowingly make the wrong choice), skip the sweets for the most part, and try to get in a couple of work outs every week. Nothing huge, but when people assume it comes without thinking, they ignore traits I'm most proud of, self control and discipline.
The comment he made also brings up another point. "Too skinny?" yeah people can be too skinny but medically I'm where I should be for my height and age. With a growin number of Americans gaining weight and talks about raising the healthy weight benchmark, have we started to "normalize" an unhealthy lifestyle? Diversity? All for it. Healthy self image? You go girl! You are who you are? Damn straight. But ignoring a health condition for the sake of feelings or basing health on what is average? Iffy at best.
I'm gay. (shocker right?) And although it's not politically correct to say, that's not normal. Under 7% of the population? Yup not the norm. And a fact that I've had to tell a few parents is that te gay population has to deal with certain health risks most people outside the population don't think that much about. It's a fact, and to ignore that fact in order to make some people feel better is wrong and irresponsible.
Yeah I know not exactly the same things, gay an overweight. But the point is certain characteristics come with specific issues and health concerns. To ignore these issues or differences, in order to make everyone feel equal or the same is idiotic. The same people that shout Diversity shush you when you mention the differences that diversity brings.
So while doctors may have a set number for overweight or ill health, people base their judgments on what they see. Fill a room with blue skinned people and the "normal" pigment is going to start to look awfully close to cyan #3. Just a parting thought, when's the last time we treated or discouraged an average condition or something that's normal in a population?
Sent from my iPhone
11/1/11
Mickey Weems, a columnist, had an interesting thing to say a few weeks ago. He was listing wins and fails of the last year in LGBT issues. It's Pride month if you didn't know. His last fail? "It Get Better". I had to read it twice. Yup. Fail.
I've been saying the whole project/movement is misguided, for awhile now. I don't agree with the idea that it is a total fail but agree with his argument. When kids are dying, something needs to be done. "It Gets Better" is a temporary bandage but not a solution. As Weems puts it, when the house is on fire you don't tell the kids inside that it will get better, just sit and wait.
"Your Child is a Killer" seems more effective to me. The problem isn't the queer kids. The problem is the students, parents, facility, and society that allows bullying to continue and treats a portion of the population as less than the rest. Queer youths are killing themselves because they feel helpless and ashamed. Those feelings do not come from within the kids, they are products of being targeted and isolated. These suicides are the bullies' fault. They are the parents' fault. They are the result of a community that tries to fix the effects of a problem but not the cause.
Sent from my iPhone
6/8/11
I made a website for a client not too long ago. It was real simple and nothing special. They just wanted a few pages on the site. Easy right? It was until I told the client the site was ready and live. "Go check it out and see if you want anything changed." I get a text a few minutes later. "No website?!?" I pull up the website, yup it's there. Call the client:
Me: "It's up. I'm looking at it"
Client: "My computer says it can't find it"
Me: "Let me pull it up on my phone. Yup still comes up. Is your Internet on?"
C: "Yes! Do you know what you're doing?" (Yes. Do you?)
M: "I have the site up on my desktop, phone, and laptop now. Can you get to google.com?"
They get pretty mad at this time
C: "YES! I type it into my homepage and it says it can't find it!"
M: "Wait, where are you typing the address? Does it say Bing or Google next to the field?"
C: "What's a field?"
M: "The little white bar you type into."
C: "Yeah that's where I type everything."
M: "No, go higher up"
C: "Where it says msn?...oh there it is. How is anyone supposed to know that!? Nobody is going to know that!!"
M: "Umm that's where you type the address..."
C: "That's stupid. I don't like that. Nobody knows that. Fix that."
M: "Learn to use the Internet" <click>
Yeah I hung up on them. Wonderful customer service I know. I spent probably ten minutes on the phone with them trying to trouble shoot. Not thinking they didn't know how to use their own computer or the Internet. The site isn't even 30 minutes old and they want it at the top of every search engine? Technology will only speed up. When all the old people who don't know how to use the tools we have now, die off and the rest of us won't have to slow down to explain everything so much and we will be more productive for it.
Here's the street address. How am I supposed to find that house? First find the street, then the houses go in numerical order. That's stupid, who knows that?! (Same idea)
Sent from my iPhone
6/2/11
I know it's been a long tine since I last posted. I just got done with my first year of graduate school an have been real busy with papers. All done for the summer though. Wrote three of my best papers this semester. All were done early I'll add.
First one was on feminist theory and rape statistics. A lot of feminist theory proponents theorize that as equality increases, rape rates will increase as well. Think of rape as a product of devaluing women. A backlash feminist perspective predicts the opposite. Rape is a tool to suppress women. So as women gain social status, some men will react to this advancement with sexual violence. This second, backlash theory is supported by the data but isn't as popular amount researchers and pop culture science. It's a hard sell, convincing people that reducing inequality within a society will "cost" women in the short run.
Also did a paper on education and gender inequality. Most of my class mates know that I'm a hard core social constructionist. Boys an girls aren't different at birth, they are made that way. Education is a big part of that process. Education has also been credited for reducing gender inequality and racial prejudice. Again, a popular idea that makes sense, but has no scientific backing. If you look at people's attitudes towards segregation an gender stereotypes, you'll see a change in what people say as they gain education. The more education a person receives the less likely they will support general inequalities. What you would expect right? A better question to ask though is how much support they give to specific policies that would reduce inequality. These policies would change the current power balance, reducing the dominance some groups have (educated white males) and empowering other groups. Education has no affect on these opinions. So in other words, education just makes us better at hiding our prejudices and appearing supportive of change without actually costing us power through actual change.
One study looked at racial segregation of neighborhoods. While those whites with higher education showed very low levels of support for segregation, when compared to their less educated white cohorts, they drew the line at any actual change in power. The less educated and college graduates showed no difference in their lack of support for living in a neighborhood that was 50/50 between Blacks and whites. So while education taught them to be supportive of equality, they were well aware of their social position and did not change their desire to maintain the majority position in their neighborhood.
I'm not saying whites are intentionally racist or even unintentionally racist. Hell, I'm white and educated. I'm just pointing out that whites hold a position of power still and have interest in maintaining that privilege. This is true for anyone in a privileged place. They want to keep that spot. It's foolish to think any group would be willing to concede power. Individuals will definitely be able to act against their self interest, and for a greater good, but on a group level a collection of people can't be expected to exhibit the same level of altruistic behavior. Education just enables the group to conceal their position and maintain it better.
I go into a lot more on both papers, than I did above, but I just typed this all on my iPhone and so I cut a bunch out. I welcome any comments or questions. I think this stuff is so fun, but I'm a dork with Sociology. Excuse any typos by the way. Each paper was roughly 25 pages. And all three were A's. Woot woot. I promise to crank out more posts this summer.
Sent from my iPhone
5/19/11
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