The View From Kalamazoo
geeky parent stuff
For all those who do occasional gigs in their kids’ classrooms – this looks to be a fun one (be prepared to help small knights make helmet-masks!): The Princess Knight. I’ll have to pick it up!
Just bought Forri the Baker by Edward Myers. Really wonderful – great illustrations (which I do look for. wanted to be a children’s book illustrator once upon a time and still might try it, someday…but I’d write the books, too. medieval-themed, of course).
Books I Want to buy: Sir Cedric by Roy Gerrard, A Medieval Feast by Aliki, The Green Man by Gail E. Haley, and Bestiary : An Illuminated Alphabet of Medieval Beasts
by Jonathan Hunt . I have Illuminations by Hunt and it’s really well done. Knights & Castles: 50 Hands-On Activities to Experience the Middle Ages by Avery Hart looks really good, too.
Of course everyone knows my sinister plot – get kids interested in medieval history before someone tells them it’s boring, get kids intereated in Latin (Harry Potter!) before someone tells them it’s hard and obscure…*muahahahaha* Maybe in 4th grade or something if the teacher wants to cover Harry Potter I can offer to come in and teach them how to write their own spells….*MUAHAHAHAHAHA*
[crossposted to my lj]
varia, ADHD
I wanted to make a few brief comments regarding the recent article on TV “causing” ADHD. Find the study here. A few direct quotes from the study to put things in further perspective:
“… this [measure] cannot be viewed to be equivalent to a diagnosis of ADHD”
“… the measure that we used for attentional problems is not necessarily indicative of clinically diagnosed ADHD.”
“… we have not in fact studied or found an association between television viewing and clinically diagnosed ADHD.”
“…we cannot draw causal inferences from these associations. It could be that attentional problems lead to television viewing rather than vice versa.”
“we had no data on the content of the television being viewed. Some research indicates that educational television (eg, Sesame Street) may in fact promote attention and reading among school-aged children.”
While interesting, I don’t know whether the parents letting their kids watch more TV at a young age are, themselves, ADHD (and therefore possibly more inclined towards immediate stimuli like tv) which brings us back to the hereditary factors. The finding also ignores the high number of people aged in their 50s and 60s, who grew up without television, being diagnosed as ADHD sufferers. I think there needs to be further study – it’s far too easy to blame the spectre of television without being called to consider the other factors involved in this sort of condition since as soon as you mention the evil ‘tube all heads start nodding vigorously like puppets on a string.
Emma, for example, watched no TV at age 1 and almost none (say maybe 1.5 hours a week or so on average) at age 3 because SHE WAS TOO FREAKING HYPER TO SIT DOWN FOR MORE THAN 5 MINTUES AND DO ANYTHING AT ALL. Looking back I can see the ADHD symptoms appearing in her late toddler/preschool years, despite what the experts seem to think, and, in fact, there were things that totally blew my mind in her infancy (sudden extreme movements, almost lurching in a direction, being awake, even as a newborn, all the time and watching everything with almost manic attention) that I can see clearly as the beginnings of later behavior definitively tied to her ADHD at diagnosis. There was no “cause” – she was born this way, she just is. Colin sits and watches no TV, as well, but exhibits none of the behavior that would set off flags of concern and at this point he appears to not have inherited whatever gene(s) will be found connected to ADHD.
Another recent study suggests that ADHD drugs may slow growth. The study is very small – a much larger study should be done considering all variables – but it’s pretty much in line with our experience. Our already very small child really slowed in growth in the last 1.5 years (since medication, roughly) and we’re (her ped. and I) planning on scheduling another bone age soon to see if she’s still at the small end of normal (what a bone age before diagnosis showed) or if she’s slipped out of normal range some time this summer.
after Dread there’s just dreadful
So I met with P, one of my letter-writers (was also a member of my committee), last week to discuss my Unhappy Grad School Situation. I’ll have the opportunity to see G next month at Congress, have already briefly chatted here and there with PESz.
P boiled it down to 3 choices: 1. go to KY (sans funding) this year, find some magical way to pay for it 2. try to defer (hoping for funding next year). go to KY next year. consider looking at other schools as well 3. consider this an opportunity to reconsider my long-made future plans before I’m “trapped” in the system/a program – cited difficulty of Ph.D. process, no guarantee of job after, noted existence of my yet-small progeny If I were to settle on #2, he suggested I work on something towards my goal this year…languages, or take a PTG seminar here (with someone new – which wouldn’t be hard since most of the people I worked with during my degrees are dead, retired, or otherwise gone) or ND that would result in a paper for a new writing sample. I pointed out conference participation, but P said that it’s largely unimportant and while it does no harm on a CV, it does no good, either. (“HHHHMMMmmmm” was my reply to that bit of news)
#1 is damn near impossible. I wish it weren’t, and I do peruse the KY website looking for staff positions for myself or Bri., but I don’t see it happening. I think I could with partial funding (say, a full tuition wavier but no stipend), but even if I only paid in-state rates it would be a no-go.
#2 is the way I think I have to go. I’ll write for reading list suggestions from faculty there, figure out something else in addition to that. I still want to bug PESz more on a part-time teaching position in the fall – I really miss teaching.
#3 is just too depressing. I have been bombarded by (well meaning) people tossing “Maybe this is the way things are supposed to be,” “Maybe someone is trying to tell you ‘something’,” “Do you believe in fate?” platitudes around. If I hadn’t been accepted anywhere I would have to wonder if it’s just me, but that’s not the case.
I have a hard time just rolling over and playing dead on this one – this is something I have worked toward, worked through and past some serious roadblocks for, taken on outstanding amounts of personal debt for, and exercised vast amounts of patience with myself and others just to make it through all of the hoops to reach. Do I give it all up because I’ve bred? It’s would sure be a lot easier and less stressful in the short run to give it up, sure, and maybe Bri. would prefer it. Is that what I use for decision making – what’s easiest? what rocks the family boat least? what requires the least work and stress and money? If these had ever been my dominant methods for life-impacting-decision-making I wouldn’t have left the art program for history, wouldn’t have gone on for an MA, wouldn’t have married…
I realize that P brought this option up in all seriousness (and I can’t help but wonder if this was a way he was trying to tell me he doesn’t think I can hack it, am I paranoid?) because it’s an important internal (and hey, external) dialogue to have and perhaps there are a lot of people who left (or didn’t leave) Ph.D. programs who wished they would have had this dialogue before starting. This isn’t a whim, this isn’t a fly-by-night crackpot idea I just came up with yesterday – I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking (and obsessing) about it for so many years, worked so long and hard that I can’t help but feel a little insulted that it’s even brought up. What am I doing wrong that keeps leaving people with the impression that I’m not serious? Good God Damn – if this is hopeless would someone please tell me to quit wasting my time?!?!!!!! Yeah, some days I just want to give up – but it’s wanting to give up because I get so tired of fighting against that sort of attitude (because I have kids? because I’m female? because I’m in my mid-30s? because I’ve done things on my own time-line and have a “real job”?), it’s not wanting to not do the work, not write the papers, not do the research, not slog my way through the system.
Yeah, it would be easier to just decide to stay here, yoked to my student loan debt, trying to figure out a way to buy a house. Bri. would prefer it, since he’s so attached to his job and hates to move, anyway. Is easier better? You know, the one thing I would really like is to be able to stop worrying about this, to stop planning forward and looking forward and always living for some time in the distant future – I’d like to know where I’ll be living in September (now 2005). I’d like to know what I’ll be doing. I’m so sick of speaking in future tense using hopeful language, I’d like to talk about definites, concrete realities, certainties. I’m sick of, as Emma puts it, “I’m gon’!” I just want to DO, not GON’ DO. As for what may have been wrong with my dossier, other than extremely large (therefore competitive) pools or funding issues…he wasn’t thrilled with my SOP (hey, neither was I, which is why I went to so many people for advice, damnit!), he suggested my interests are easy to perceive as marginal by anyone outside of medieval history (and even some inside), and there’s the big, unspoken issue of whether programs are unwilling to take on students with families (or, as I less delicately but IMO more accurately put it, women with kids).
I don’t know…but have heard from a few of the schools that turned me down regarding my request for feedback from graduate admissions coordinators. Snarky reply from VA (which I rather expected, they do have a reputation for thinking very highly of themselves and very little of anything outside of themselves), replies from ND and SLU citing numbers of applicants and amount of funding available and not offering any sort of negative feedback on my application. I have come to the conclusion that Northwestern is a screaming mess and was a waste of my time and money to even think they wouldn’t somehow screw my file up (note: again). No reply from MI, IN. Don’t expect one from MI…IN I rather did, but whatever. Hey, I think have a right to ask for feedback and they have a right to not offer any. I’d rather get something honest back from a couple of schools than horsepucky from all of them.
I just wish Bri. would stop asking “So now what?” I’m still looking for that big bridge to leap from in tortured glory, ok? I have to write a paper for that June conference. I don’t get to look forward to trips overseas to do research, Leeds, or anything. I should go to Nashville in Nov. to meet my new neice/nephew. It’s too painful to try to plan ahead anymore since nothing I plan for and work towards seems to ever work out. I don’t want to be held accountable for anything beyond next month. (crossposted to my lj)
miscellany
a hahahahahahahaa!
YOU MIGHT BE A MEDIEVALIST IF…
-Your secondary sources are somebody else’s primary sources.
-Everyone else on your conference panel has taken holy orders.
-You have a favorite decree of the fourth lateran council.
-Your particular field of study could be wiped out by a car accident.
-You’ve ever been asked “the truth” about King Arthur.
-You refer to the American Revolution as a “recent development.”
-You add the word “yet” to the statement “I don’t know that language.”
-You specify which level of hell your day has been like.
-You call the renaissance “a dirty lie.”
