Knowing, Believing, Understanding

The upcoming election has led me to spend a lot of time thinking about what it means to understand something. When political candidates say that global warming is a myth, for example, I can’t help but wonder what they’re thinking. Do they know it isn’t a myth, but choose to say what they think will get them votes? Or do they genuinely not understand the piles of data that show global temperatures increasing, and so really believe what they say? Either option is equally alarming, so I’ve been trying to come up with a third explanation.

Here is my latest theory.

There are three levels of knowledge acquisition: knowing, believing, and understanding.

To know is simply to be aware of a fact, claim, or opinion. The things that allow us to know are passive forms of learning: reading, hearing, watching, mimicking.

To believe is to assign validity or invalidity to a fact, claim, or opinion. The things that allow us to believe are choices: how we choose to interpret what we know.

To understand is to be aware of the complete context around a fact, claim, or opinion. The things that allow us to understand are experiences: things that happen to us and, in some cases, to those near and dear to us.

My own recent experiences related to a couple of divisive national issues – namely, the stigmas about mental illness and rampant sexism – will help me explain my thoughts on this. Let’s start with mental illness.

I have known for a long time that depression and anxiety disorders existed. I took psychology courses in college, for one thing, and also heard them discussed in other contexts. I never disbelieved in their existence, per se, but did hear plenty of people saying they were sensationalized, and so I didn’t really hold any strong beliefs in either direction.

But then my father got treatment for depression, and he became an entirely different person. Then a close friend suffered through a terrible bout of depression and her whole demeanor spoke of struggle. I saw these things, and I made a decision. I believed in the terrible power of depression and anxiety and stopped being afraid to take a side.

This seems like it could be the end of the story, but it isn’t. Roughly a year ago, I can safely say I knew depression and anxiety were real problems, and believed it, but I did not yet understand it. It was only when I slipped into my own bout of depression that I really began to understand.

When I started to feel the depression coming on, I knew what it was immediately. But despite knowing that treatments existed and believing there was no shame in seeking them, I did not understand how bad it was going to get. I told myself I could power through it. I thought if I just faked it in public, I would be fine. However, I was completely, utterly wrong. I spiraled into a pit of despair. I woke up in the morning saying, “Oh God, it hurts it hurts it hurts” without even knowing what I was talking about. I counted hours and minutes and seconds until I could be back in my apartment, on my couch, which was the only place I felt somewhat safe.

Then I went to the doctor and got a prescription. I started taking it, and things got better. And that was when I got it. Not until I experienced depression did I really understand it – and the understanding definitely strengthened my belief in it.

It was similar with sexism. I’ve been interested in women’s rights for most of my adult life, so I heard all the stories of double standards in the workplace, catcalling on the street, and the like. I knew all of this was happening, and I wanted to believe it. But loathe as I am to admit it, I didn’t believe it right away. All of it seemed a bit exaggerated to me. How could men just be directly repeating what women said in meetings as if they hadn’t heard them say it? How could the same suggestion be lauded when offered by a man and scorned when offered by a woman? I just couldn’t picture these things happening. Certainly people were not this blatant in their sexism.

Then both of the aforementioned things happened to me in the space of a week. It was as if the things coming out of my mouth were being somehow transformed before reaching male ears. I had always pictured men as being deliberately disrespectful when this happened, and I think that fueled my reluctance to believe. I didn’t buy that they could get away with such things. When it happened to me, though, it was clear that my male coworkers had no idea they were doing it. It seemed like an SNL sketch, but it was 100% real. They get away with these things because they don’t realize they are happening. It's just that ingrained in our culture. This does not make it any better – worse, in many ways – but it did change my thinking about it. After I experienced these forms of sexism, I understood the problem. And I believed sexism was a rampant problem.

In short, these experiences showed me that there is are differences between knowing, understanding, and believing. Knowing is easy. Knowing is generally not the problem. Understanding and believing are the critical pieces. It is possible to believe without understanding, I think. After my experiences with unspoken sexism, for example, I wholeheartedly believe that unspoken racism is an equally rampant problem – despite knowing I’ll never experience it and so never fully understand it. (When it came to blatant racism, of course, I never had any doubts about its existence.)  Is it possible to understand without believing? Perhaps, but I think it must be rare. It is hard to deny truths that affect you directly. Experiences are critically important and influential to beliefs.

This realization helped me make sense of (though not approve of!) so much of what goes on in our political process. Suddenly I could explain to myself how so many educated politicians could be faced with so much data pointing to global warming and still assert that it is a myth. They see the data. Plenty of people force the data in front of their faces, and so these politicians know that global warming is happening. But because they were not the ones to collect the data, because they weren’t the ones to discover the temperatures climbing and the ice melting, because they weren’t the ones to experience that – these politicians do not understand it and have chosen not to believe it.

It’s the same with women’s rights. At the first republican debate earlier this month, several of the candidates said that they supported the idea of making abortion illegal, talking at length about the unborn child’s right to protection under the law. What struck me the most was not their assertion that a fertilized egg is a life that needs protecting. Rather, it was the fact that not once did any of the candidates acknowledge that the woman carrying the egg was a life worth protecting. The only mention of women at all was when the moderator pressed the candidates into saying whether they thought abortion should be illegal even when the life of the mother is at stake. Some of them said yes, repeating again that the fetus is a life that needs to be protected, without even mentioning the life of the woman.

The politicians know there are a myriad of circumstances that can lead to an unplanned pregnancy that extend far beyond unprotected casual sex. But they will never be a woman facing such a pregnancy, and so they don’t understand what it is like to make the choice to abort, or to not have that choice. For that reason, they continue to believe that the circumstances of the pregnancy don’t matter, and that the life of the unborn child should always trump a woman’s right to choose. The fact that a woman’s life may hang in the balance – the pregnancy may physically kill her, affect her psychologically for the rest of her life, or destroy a livelihood she’s worked her whole life to build – just does not matter.

So this is the state of things. There are things that the people in power do not understand, and so despite what they know, they believe things that are to the contrary to what they know. Those beliefs will always guide their decisions.

How do we fix this? If experiences are the key to understanding and the safest pathway to belief, then it seems that pressing those in power to experience the things they are discussing would solve many of our problems. Unfortunately, it's not that simple, as no one can experience everything. Sometimes there is simply a lack of opportunity. Other times, forcing a particular experience on someone is unethical. Still other times, it is a physical impossibility. For the most part, a man will never be a woman, and a white person will never be of color. No one can experience what it’s like to be everyone, and so there are a great many things that many people will never fully understand. That’s just the way it is.

The situation seemed quite bleak to me when my thought process got this far. Is there nothing we can do about this? Will nothing ever change?

As I was considering this question, a seemingly unrelated memory came back to me. Several years ago, my colleagues and I spent many hours discussing the most productive and helpful changes that should be made to our curricular materials for the next edition. A particularly iconic piece of the curriculum, a multiplication algorithm that appeared in our materials and almost nowhere else, was on the table as a potential cut. One of my committees had written the recommendation to cut it, and I had many solid arguments against it. It was a black box; kids didn’t really understand how it worked. It takes up a lot of paper and it takes some visual and motor coordination to keep the work straight. Parents and teachers issue a lot of complaints about it. And so on.

Despite what I thought was a solid case, several of my colleagues fought to keep the algorithm. This was utterly bewildering to me for a long stretch of time, and then suddenly one coworker said something that I’ll never forget.

“You don’t understand what it’s like to watch a kid struggle and struggle and struggle with multiplication and then finally be successful!” she said. “You don’t understand what a difference it makes to have this one as an option. You don’t understand how joyful and proud they are when they find a way to get the right answer!”

I stopped arguing immediately, because she was right. I didn’t understand it. I have never experienced being in a classroom when a struggling student suddenly found that this algorithm was their path to success. I didn’t understand the importance of the algorithm – but at that moment, I believed it. I shut up, and I let the former teachers in my midst make the call about the fate of the algorithm. I knew I wasn’t the right person to make the call.

Here is the point I’d like to direct at today’s politicians: It may be impossible for you to understand some things, because some experiences aren’t accessible to you. And often, it is understanding that leads to belief. But it’s important to remember that beliefs are choices, and you can choose to believe something even when you don’t understand it. Equally important, when choosing to believe something you don’t fully understand, is acknowledging that you don’t understand it. And finally, perhaps most important, is recognizing the truth of this statement:

If you do not understand something, you have no business being the one to make decisions about it – particularly if you are refusing to thoughtfully and fully consider the advice of the people who do understand.

The older I get, the more I believe that the way to accomplish the most is not to gain more expertise, but to know the limits of your own expertise and seek out the help and advice of others when you need it. This is what gains the respect of intelligent people. This is what leads to real progress and change.

You won’t win my vote by telling me about your long political record. You won’t win my vote by telling me you’re not a politician at all. You won’t win my vote by spouting off a bunch of disconnected facts. You’ll win my respect, and my vote, by demonstrating that you are aware of what you don’t understand and who the people are that understand what you don’t.

No one understands everything, but everyone can understand the fact that they don’t understand everything.  

July

12 Books

This month I read three books! First was Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. I decided to read it because it was the book of the month designated by a book club I thought I might join. As it turns out, I can’t attend the discussion of this book. I’m rather glad, because I didn’t enjoy it. It centers on a woman who can connect with the future but is in a mental institution in current times. It vacillates between the settings without much forward direction in plot. I just didn’t get it.

I also read the last two books in Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas series, Deeply Odd and Saint Odd. I absolutely loved the first few books in this series, and enjoyed the ones in the middle. These last two left me a bit unsettled, but I was satisfied with the end of the series as a whole. 

12 Recipes

For July, I made taco pie. Tacos are one of my favorite meals, but they’re kind of a pain as leftovers because they take so much assembly and separate heating each time. This allowed me to skip the shells (biscuit mix instead) and heat the meat, beans, biscuit, and cheese all at once before adding the toppings. Much easier than typical tacos, and better reheated too.

12 Blog Posts

Click here to read a bit about my high school experience and the good and not-so-good aspects that endure for kids in high school today.

12 Ways to Meet People

In an effort to follow up on some of the other ways I’ve already tried to meet some people, I went to another Speakeasy talk at the Geek Bar. This time it was about how scientists at IIT are emulating animal characteristics to make climbing and perching robots. I arrived earlier than last time and talked to more people. I also am already signed up for the next one, hoping that if I keep returning I’ll see some of the same people.

12 Small Steps Forward in my Career

Earlier this month I attended a small, local ed tech conference, and I was really proud of myself for making a few connections that I think will lead to productive partnerships for my projects.

12 Fun Events in Chicagoland

My sister and I did something we haven’t done in far too long: went to Broadway show! This time, it was Kinky Boots. We were in agreement that it was cute and worth seeing, but won’t be on our lists of favorites. Regardless, I enjoyed being back in a theater.

12 Crafts and Creations

I used some scrap yarn to create this starscarf! Pretty, right?

12 Pretty Things for My Apartment

I hung memorabilia of my travels above my scrapbooks to create the beginnings of a travel wall. I love this and can’t wait to add to it.

12 Things that Help Me Feel Good about My Appearance

While home for a week in Michigan, I took advantage of the lower sales tax and bought some new clothes. I was really surprised at how good it felt to get rid of some of my old stuff and wear the new things. The right clothes can really make me stand up taller.

12 Grown-Up Things

This month, I reported to jury duty for the very first time. I was placed on a jury for a case that, thankfully, was settled before proceedings officially began, and I was released to my real life after only two days. Granted, I had no choice in any of this, but I’m still counting it as my grown-up experience – if for no other reason, because talking to some of the younger jurors made me feel very grown up indeed.

 
 

Recognition

A few weeks ago, my mother tasked me with sorting through a rubber tub full of memorabilia from my childhood. I’d sorted through many such tubs over the years, and I never really knew what I’d find inside. This one turned out to be full of all the stuff that was laid out on display tables at my high school graduation party. Photos, newspaper articles, trophies, medals, ribbons, certificates … even a 5-pound solid marble obelisk.

It was bewildering to look through all of it. No one was around besides my mom, who had obviously seen all of it before, but somehow it was still embarrassing. Piles and piles of honors and accolades, many of which I did not remember. Even among the awards I remembered, I was left with the uncomfortable knowledge that I didn’t work for most of them. Mostly, they just appeared on my desk or in the mail.

Take, for example, a phenomenon that my high school called the 4.0 Club. As you likely inferred from the name, one became a member of the 4.0 Club by achieving a 4.0 GPA. I came across a 4.0 Club award as I paged through a binder of certificates, deciding what to keep and what to toss. I tossed it without hesitation. Did I remember the 4.0 Club after I saw the certificate? Sure. Did I have to work to achieve a 4.0 GPA? In many cases, yes. I had some classes that were easy for me, but also AP level mathematics and sciences classes that gave me a run for my money. It’s not that I didn’t work for my 4.0. It’s just that the 4.0 was what I wanted – not a certificate. I didn’t give a hoot about the 4.0 Club.

As I continued paging through the binder, I came across another 4.0 Club certificate. And then another. And then another and another and another. “Good God,” I said to my mom. “Did they give me one of these every semester?” It seemed so. I tossed them all, incredulous at the uselessness of it.

To top it all off, after lifting a few more things out of the rubber tub, I discovered something else. “Well, Mom, I guess they didn’t give me a 4.0 Club certificate every semester,” I said.

“No?” she answered.

“No,” I said, blowing the dust of a piece of beveled wood. “The first time, they gave me a plaque!” Mom looked at the plaque for a moment, then back at me. I shook my head and added it to the toss pile without another word.

I have no regrets about tossing the certificates and plaque, but I thought about the 4.0 Club a lot in the subsequent weeks. Don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t dwelling on my own experience. It’s not that recalling the 4.0 Club caused resentment or longing for my own high school days. It was just that, as an educator, something about the idea of it really got to me.

At its very core, my job is about creating better educational experiences for kids. I write things and I edit things and I test things and my day to day work can seem a long way from classrooms, but the experience I imagine for students using materials I create has a huge effect on what I do. Classrooms of kids live in my head. Those kids represent the kids who use my materials. And all I could think was, “I knew very well some computer was spitting out those certificates. I didn’t feel recognized at all, just slotted into a category. My experience with 4.0 Club is not something I’d want for my kids.”

A few days after returning to Chicago, I related the 4.0 Club episode to my sister. “Can you believe they gave out those things every semester?” I asked.

“You know,” she answered, “not everyone got one of those semester after semester after semester. For some people, it was a big deal.”

She made a valid point. I tried to imagine the experiences of different students for whom a 4.0 was not a recurring event. I could imagine several scenarios. Maybe a student sees that all it takes to get a certificate is getting a 4.0 – regardless of which classes he takes. He misses the 4.0 his first semester, and decides to take less challenging things in the future.

Or maybe a student continually tries to achieve the 4.0, falling a little short sometimes, missing by miles other times, but always really trying for it. Finally, she gets its, and gets that plaque -- and then watches half a dozen others get the same thing, and feels lost in the crowd.

And then there is the scenario I find most likely. A student sees other people getting 4.0 Club plaques and certificates, notes to himself that he’s just not someone who gets 4.0s, figures everyone else thinks the same of him,and never expects or aspires for it in the first place.

My sister was right that my experience was not every student’s experience. But none of those experiences are things I’d want for my kids.

Something about the 4.0 Club just doesn’t work. By this point, I was sure of that much. But what is its fatal flaw? I couldn’t put my finger on it.

It all became clear to me last week, when I attended a panel discussion with some middle and high school kids. The panel was focused on educational technology, but at some point the moderator asked what kinds of things motivated the students.

“Well,” one of them said, “I really don’t need another certificate.” (I know, right? I thought, wishing I could talk to her.) “It’d be nice if I got something related to what I was doing. Like how about a scholarship related to something I like?”

That’s when it hit me. I realized that the biggest flaw of the 4.0 Club is the same as the biggest flaw of our whole assessment-driven education culture: It sets up sameness as the standard to achieve. It sets a bar at some arbitrary place, and boldly states that the bar marks the spot that everyone needs to reach. No personal characteristics, no specific subject matter, no starting point is taken into account. “Here’s the ideal,” it says. “Your goal is to fit into this mold.”

The saddest and strangest thing about this is that sameness does not serve anyone well in college or in the workforce. When students get to college, they’re suddenly asked to pick something they like or excel at, something that makes them unique – right after spending years being told they must excel at everything like everyone. They go to job interviews and are asked what sets them apart, when they’ve been trying for years to achieve sameness.

What a mess.

All of these realizations hit me rapidly. I was still working my way through them, wondering if this would ever get better for kids, when another student spoke up. What he said simultaneously broke my heart and gave me some hope. “I’m a very self-sufficient person,” he said. “I don’t really need any incentive to keep track of my own schedule and do my homework and all that.”

“But now and again,” he said, “I would like someone to tell me that I’m doing a good job.”

“Yes, me too,” said another. “I don’t need a certificate. And yeah, a scholarship would be nice, but even just someone saying, ‘Hey, I’ve really seen you improve on this’ would really go a long way.”

Here is a lesson I learn over and over and over again in my career: Kids aren’t stupid. We tell them that sameness is the standard, and many of them will diligently try to achieve that, but that doesn’t mean they like it. It doesn’t mean they don’t realize that they are unique individuals with strengths and weaknesses. What it does mean is that they often think that we, the adults involved in their education, forget that. And they now and again, they just want some small indication that someone notices their unique efforts.

Heartbreaking, right? But hopeful, too. Because as an industry, education has lost its ability to give students the kind of recognition they want and deserve.

But good teachers? They’ve had that in the bag for years.

June

12 Books

In June I once again read two books. The first was a young adult novel called Looking for Alaska by John Green. It was a short, easy read, and I loved it. It’s the story of some high schoolers dealing with the sudden death of their friend in a car accident – something I can really relate to. It was beautifully written.

The second book was 11/22/63 by Stephen King. It is about a man who goes back in time to try to stop the assassination of JFK. I could not put this one down. It was fabulous. It has its gory scenes but it’s not a horror novel. I really recommend it.

12 Recipes

I made chicken enchiladas, which I totally loved. 

12 Blog Posts

Click here to read about some secrets!

12 Ways to Meet People

I took a one-night writing seminar at Story Studio Chicago. It was a good experience. I didn’t meet anyone I plan to see again, but I did get a sense of the studio, and I really liked it. I am planning to take a longer term class there in the fall or winter, and hopefully I’ll meet some people that way.

12 Small Steps Forward in my Career

I did two things this month that will be good resume builders. First, I negotiated to spend part of my time working on a grant project that has been funded by NSF. Having a funded project on my CV should help with future funding. I also took responsibility for filling out the HSIRB forms for another project, allowing me to list myself as the lead contact and learn a new, valuable skill.

12 Fun Events in Chicagoland

To celebrate my 10^th anniversary of moving to Chicago, I went with my friend and my goddaughter to Rainbow Cone. It’s an ice cream parlor on the south side that serves cones with five layers of ice cream in rainbow colors. My goddaughter proclaimed the Rainbow Cone to be “deeeeelicious.”

I also returned as a volunteer leader to the Chicago Cares Serve-a-thon. I led a group of volunteers to paint four murals on the walls of a deserving school. It was a fun day! I was a leader for several years and then took a long hiatus. It was good to be back.

12 Crafts and Creations

I made this iPad holder for my dad for Father’s Day. It was fun to cut the copper pipe! It was a lot different from the things I usually make. I made a few modifications to the design so that it’d work to hold the iPad portrait or landscape. Only a suped up version would be worthy of my dad.

I also finished another sleeping mat! I love this one.

12 Pretty Things for My Apartment

I mounted my mosaics in these pretty shadow boxes.

12 Things that Help Me Feel Good about My Appearance

I did two things in this category. First, I changed my workout plan to include three 5-mile runs and four strength workouts for my arms and abs. I’m hoping this will kick up my metabolism and help me cut a couple inches off my waist. I’ve got a bigger gut these days than I’ve had in a while, and I’d like to lose it.

I also got rid of three dresses that I had to reluctantly admit are too young for me.

12 Grown-Up Things

I did a number of things that I’ve been putting off for a long time. I took my dry cleaning in. I washed a big pile of bedding that’s been on my floor for a month. I took some extra plastic bags to be recycled. It’s sad that these things are a big deal to me, but they are. They are normal grown-up chores that I stopped avoiding.

Secret secrets

A few weeks ago, I was listening to This American Life. The theme of the show was “Game Face,” and Act Four was about people who have an anti-game face. They are chronic blushers, and get red blotches on their chests and faces whenever they are nervous or anxious. As they described the symptoms and treatments of chronic blushing, I came to a slow, but certain realization that I am a chronic blusher.

Well, I knew before this. Sort of. I knew that my chest breaks out in large, bright red splotches all the time, and that the splotches are at their worst when I’m talking in front of people. I knew that this is not something that happens to everyone. People point it out to me a lot, and the fact that it’s worth pointing out means that it’s at least a little uncommon.

What I didn’t know was that it was a thing. I didn’t know it was a condition that I should pay attention to and potentially treat. I didn’t know I was supposed to care.

The This American Life story included interviews with a number of chronic blushers, and all of them were very self-conscious about it. They were willing to medicate or even have side-effect-laden surgery to make the blushing stop. I’m willing to bet that my blushing is mild in comparison to those interviewed for the podcast, but it was still strange to me that they were willing to go to great lengths whereas it never occurred to me to research options.

It was like they all knew something I didn’t know. Like it was a secret that no one thought to tell me, because they assumed I already knew.

This isn’t the first time I felt this way. There are a number of things that it seems like everyone else knows but no one has ever told me.

Take cleaning, for example. I am really, really bad at it. I don’t mean I hate doing it or procrastinate from doing it all the time (though that’s true, too). I mean that even when I take the time to clean, I am incapable of doing it very well. It does not matter how many times I run my broom across the floor or how many times I move the dustpan. I can’t get all the dirt up. It doesn’t matter how carefully I scrub the colander after draining the grease off meat. I can’t clean that thing by hand – thank goodness for my dishwasher. While other people might agree these things are a pain in the rear, I have watched many people complete these tasks successfully. They have the secret, but they don’t seem to realize it. When I ask, they just tell me the things I already know, not the things I’m missing.

There is also the issue of shaving. It’s kind of weird that I am bringing this up again after it was already mentioned in my May post, but there it is. I am really bad at shaving my legs. I blame a lot of it on my bad eyesight, but even when I wear contacts and take my time, it is pretty much inevitable that I’ll find places I missed. And even if I manage to get my legs completely smooth, the lower half of my legs are all spotty, showing exactly where the hair follicles are. Yet pretty much any other woman of any age I see anywhere does not have this problem. Their legs are smooth and practically glowing, and they accomplish this in less time that it takes me to do my mediocre job of it. It’s like they all know something that I don’t know. What is the big secret?

And then there is the matter of dating. Heaven knows I must be missing some key piece of information on that front. Yes, I know plenty of people struggle with this, but I don’t know of another person who has the same track record of non-starts as me. There’s nothing to talk about. Nothing to analyze. My dating history is essentially one long blank slate. Yes, many people have trouble making relationships work. But I don’t know anyone who has trouble beginning them. Not at the level I do. There has to be something I do, or don’t do, that explains that. Everyone else seems to know a secret that I don’t know, and I’ve spent ages trying to figure out what that is. No one has been able to tell me. Not even a therapist.

It’s not that I think people are intentionally keeping things from me. I think it’s more of an awareness issue. Whatever these pieces of information are, people don’t realize that they are secrets. Maybe people don’t have awareness of what they know and so don’t share the secrets with me. Or maybe people can tell that I do in fact know the secrets, and I’m not aware of what I know. My point is not to place blame anywhere or dodge responsibility. My point is just to describe how I feel.

All this ran through my mind as I listened to the rest of the This American Life podcast. At the end of the blushing story, one of the interviewers asked a doctor about how the symptoms of chronic blushing might be controlled without treatment. What affects the severity of the symptoms? What do people with mild symptoms have in common?

The doctor’s response, in a nutshell, was that they symptoms are less severe when the patients care less about them. Stop being bothered by the blushing, he said, and you’ll stop blushing. Well, that certainly explains my mild symptoms, I thought. I am self-conscious about a great many things both physical and social, but it just never occurred to me to care about the red splotches that appear on my chest. Even after learning it was a medical condition, I couldn’t get myself worked up about it. I was much more bothered by the idea that my lack of caring was uncommon.

The interviewer shared the doctor’s answer with a chronic blusher. Stop caring, and you’ll stop blushing. Her response was simple: That’s all well and good, but can you tell me how to stop caring?

I thought about it for a minute. How would I explain to her how I manage to not care that I blush? It didn’t take long for me to realize that I couldn’t explain it do her.

I smiled inwardly at this. It seems that I, too, have a secret or two that I don’t know how to tell.

May

12 Books

This month I read two books, and both of them were memoirs. The first was Wild by Cheryl Strayed. (It was recently made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon.) Cheryl Strayed lost her mother to cancer, and in the subsequent years she got divorced, got addicted to drugs, and went through a number of other unsavory things. She decides to walk the Pacific Coast Trail to find herself again, and Wild is the story of her time on the trail. It was beautifully written. I loved it.

The second memoir was Gang Leader for a Day by Sudhir Venkatesh. He’s a sociologist who spent several years studying life in the Chicago Projects. He was the first to spend time with the people living there and attempt to understand what life was like for them. As a book, it was not my favorite, but I am still glad I read it for the learning experience.

12 Recipes

Early in the month I made this quinoa salad to eat for lunch. It was very good and a nice change of pace. I actually made more of it just today!

12 Blog Posts

Click here to read a memory from each year during my decade in Chicago.

12 Ways to Meet People

In addition to my regular bimonthly husbandry shift, I volunteered for a Shedd event where teams of middle and high schoolers built UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and brought them to Lincoln Park. They tried out the UAVs on ecological missions. I met some different volunteers, so that was nice. I don’t know that I’ll ever see them again, but at least I spent the day with some new people.

 

12 Small Steps Forward in my Career

This month I traveled to Toronto to lead a session at the Ontario Association of Mathematics Educators (OAME) annual conference. This was my first time presenting on my own, so it was a really nice addition for my CV, even though I only had 6 attendees. 

 

12 Fun Events in Chicagoland

This month was one of my favorite events of all time: DASH! It stands for Different Area, Same Hunt. It’s a puzzle hunt that takes place in a bunch of cities around the world on the same day. This year’s theme was Harry Potter, so naturally I was extra excited. Here I am in my Ravenclaw garb. The weather was awful and the puzzles were hard, but we had a lot of fun anyway.

12 Crafts and Creations

This month I made this baby blanket for my friends Meg and Dave, who are expecting a baby any day now.

I also made another sleeping mat from plastic bags. I like this one.

  

12 Pretty Things for My Apartment

Two small things this month. First, I bought stands for my four most recent scrapbooks. I love seeing them out.

I also hung my painting from last month’s paint and pour. It helps ties the bedspread into the rest of the room.

12 Things that Help Me Feel Good about My Appearance

Over the last five years or so, I’ve been struggling to control issues with dandruff. Over-the-counter shampoo was doing next-to-nothing. I finally got up the courage to ask my dermatologist for prescription shampoo. (Why I was so afraid to do this before, I don’t know, but I was.) It hasn’t 100% eliminated the problem but it is vastly improved and I’m less self-conscious about it.

12 Grown-Up Things

Uber (a taxi-like ride service) sponsored a Goodwill Drive this month. Uber drivers came to pick up any bagged clothing donations for free. I took the opportunity to go carefully through my closet and drawers and get rid of anything that (1) I hadn’t worn for a year or (2) I had worn but didn’t really like. I’m really trying to get to a place where I have a wardrobe that consists exclusively of things I genuinely like and enjoy wearing. This purge had the added benefit of reducing the amount of stuff I have to a size that actually fits in the space I have. I had several drawers that were always bulging, which meant that my clothes were consistently smushed and wrinkled. Now my clothes fit in my drawers, like most grown-ups’ do.

Ten Memories for Ten Years in Chicago

Year 1: I was sitting at the computer desk in my bedroom in my first Chicago apartment, which was the bottom floor of a two-story house in Lakeview. Earlier that day I had stepped on three spring-loaded mousetraps—thankfully with my shoes on—that lined our laundry closet. The traps were the most recent in a long line of attempts by our landlord to handle a mouse infestation on his own, without calling an exterminator. I turned around to see a mouse calmly wandering around the floor of my bedroom. It was the middle of the day and broad daylight. The mouse stopped to look at me briefly, and then unabashedly continued his explorations with no evidence of fear or trepidation. I thought glumly that I was certain I’d be living with mice for the next few months, but at least they’d likely be less disruptive than my human roommates.

Year 2: I was paging through the thick packet of materials sent to me by the U.S. Peace Corps. I had been invited to teach for 27 months in a rural area in Kenya. I read all the information and testimonials. I looked at all the amazing photos. I told myself over and over and over again that I could do it. I could. I could. I could. But all the while I knew, deep down, that badly as I wanted to want to go, I did not really want to go, and ultimately I wouldn’t. And I hated myself for that.

Year 3: I was sitting at a large table in a conference-turned-lunch room at my first post-graduate-school job. I was eating hummus, crackers, and an apple. A colleague looked at me and said, “I stopped eating Triscuits when I saw how many calories are in them.” I tried to laugh the comment off, but she continued, “Seriously. Have you ever looked? You should look.” This conversation made me irrationally angry. I left the lunch table and went immediately to rant about the incident to another female coworker. She looked at me bewilderedly and nodded through the story, not sure how to react. Later she told me that was the first time I had ever spoken to her directly. Now she’s one of my closest friends. Somehow, through a calorie-shaming incident, a friendship was born. Will wonders never cease?

Year 4: I was reluctantly dialing my apartment building’s maintenance manager to tell him my toilet was clogged. AGAIN. I’d had many, many problems with the appliances and plumbing in my 18 months of living in the apartment. As if that wasn’t annoying enough, every call and visit from the maintenance guy felt like a nightmare. He was condescending and rude. He treated any request, no matter how legitimate, as a huge inconvenience. I steeled myself as the phone rang, wondering what his reaction would be this time. “Damnit,” he said. “I am on my way to Indiana.” I said I was sorry, hating myself for apologizing but not knowing what else to say. He stormed in 30 minutes later. “It’s always the girls,” he growled at me. “You’re always dropping your lotion caps in the damn toilet.” I narrowed my eyes. “I keep the lid closed when I’m not using it, actually,” I said. “My cat likes to sit there while I brush my teeth and get ready in the morning.” He rolled his eyes and tossed down the industrial plunger he was using. “Next time, fix it yourself,” he said, and left, slamming the door behind him.

Year 5: I had just moved in to my new downtown apartment, feeling outrageously happy to be living in such a nice building. A friend and I were kneeling on the living room floor, assembling an end table, when we heard a booming sound. I looked out the window and my eyes got as big as saucers. “Oh my gosh!” I said. “What? What is it?” my friend replied, slightly concerned. “I can see the fireworks from my window!” I exclaimed. She turned around to look out the window and smiled ruefully. She was a teacher at a Chicago public school at the time, and said, “Sad, really, how when we hear booming, you think of fireworks but I think of gunfire.”

Year 6: Three days after learning that my friend had been suddenly killed in a car accident, I arrived back at my apartment. It was December 27. My Christmas tree was still up, and I stared at it, wondering why it hadn’t fallen apart at the moment when Stephen died. “Eat,” I thought. “I should eat something.” I pulled an apple out of the refrigerator, but I just stared at that, too. Why hadn’t it instantly gone rotten when Stephen died? Why was everything so whole, so unaffected, so normal? Why wasn’t everything in the world collapsing in on itself the way that I was?

Year 7: I stood in the start corral for the Chicago Half Marathon, my first long-distance race after limping through my first marathon the year before. It was 9/11/11, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, and the field was awash with red, white, and blue. I was full of trepidation until the moment my corral started its slow shuffle to the start line. Then, it felt like I was in a scene in a movie where the superhero shows up just in time to defeat the villain. You know the scene, right? The slow-motion walk with some threatening-yet-inspiring music playing in the background? I was the superhero, and I was coming to kick that race’s ass.

Year 8: I was sitting in a first grade classroom, watching a 6-year-old use counters to figure out different combinations of 10 apples, some red and some green. She was placing the counters, which were red on one side and green on the other, onto a grid with 10 spaces on it. After she filled up the grid, she counted the number of counters with green facing up and the number of counters with red facing up, and quickly realized that she had already found that combination. She looked at her grid for a moment, and then grinned as she flipped one counter over, giving her a new combination. I was excited as I watched this, sure that she had just made a breakthrough and would quickly and systematically find all the possibilities by flipping over one counter at a time. However, her next move was to start removing all the counters from her grid. “Wait!” I said. “You know how you just flipped one over? Do you think you could do that again to find another combination?” She looked at me witheringly and shook her head. “No,” she said flatly, removing all the counters from her grid with one swipe of her hand.

Year 9: I was struggling through an 18-mile training run. I was all alone because I had a sinus infection that was bad enough for me to skip the group training run the day before. The infection was certainly still raging as of when I woke up that morning, but slightly better than the day before, so I had decided to give it a shot. The drainage from my sinuses was making me outrageously nauseated, and I was rationing the few tissues I had brought with me. It was abject misery. I don’t remember big sections of the run, or even the moment I finished. I only remember the misery, and the hour or two afterward when I confusedly tried to convince myself that I had actually completed the run. “I did that?” I thought. “Me? Who runs 18 miles with a sinus infection?” I was running the marathon that year in honor of Stephen. I wish I could tell you I felt him that day, but truthfully I didn’t. I wonder now if it was just that I was too was too focused on my own misery, or whether he bailed because it was stupid of me to even attempt it. Both seem equally likely.

Year 10: At 9pm on a Wednesday evening, I walked into a familiar bar. The hostess waved me back to the table where my friends sat. Just as I sat down, the waiter came to deliver a giant BLT that my friends had preordered for me. They cheered at my arrival, immediately enlisting my help to answer the trivia questions they were working on. Earlier that day, I had left a close friend’s house in Florida, having spent a few days helping her out after back surgery. She made no secret of how grateful she was that I came and how sad she was to see me go. As I sat at that table, I thought about how lucky I was to spend time with, in one day, a friend who was so sorry to see me leave and friends who were so happy to see me arrive.