Academic Quotes

From doing my Master's, I've come to discover that academia is a weird and puzzling world, with at least one bizarre paradox: On the one hand the business of creating knowledge is deadly serious and more formal than a tailcoat tuxedo. At the same time, because the work in question is specific and extremely specialized, the communities of scholars in any given area are small, intimate, and, oddly enough, pretty casual. So eavesdropping on or participating in academic endeavours yields some amusing tidbits of conversation...

Prof: If we get through the first part of this course and still believe in the reality of what we're doing, then in the second half we're going to...

And from a workshop I attended some time ago...

"It's amazing to me how much we lie to students when we're teaching them"

"You shouldn't have titled your paper that"
"If I hadn't given it that title, no one would've read it"

"I’m not going to get rich in [this discipline]. I don’t even make my living in [this discipline].”

“Yes, I demonstrated this point in a paper I wrote in the Journal of [This Discipline] in 2004… but no one read that paper, not even I read it”

If I could give any advice to anyone interested in working in academia, it would be to go to a small conference - people are relaxed and open, and it'll give you a good idea of the nitty-gritty nuts and bolts of your discipline. It's really where all the action happens, even though it may not seem momentous from the outside.

Personal Photoblogging

A picture is worth a thousand words, so this post is really about 3000 words. Ahhhh, sooo much easier than writing end of term papers, and it even has a structured progression of ideas.

La Pocatiere

It is such a blessing to travel throughout Canada and discover little corners of the country. This summer I spent some time in La Pocatiere, Quebec, a 5000-person town on the south bank of the St. Lawrence.

It was all good times. Despite its comparatively tiny population, La Poc is actually quite spread out, and one definitely needs a car to get around. Unless of course you're a single person who doesn't have heavy loads and only lives there in the summer, in which case you can probably get away with a bike.

This entry's going to be basically another installement in my "travel blog", so if it smacks of "come, sit through my vacation photos!"...well, that's exactly what it is.

• One thing that confused me for a while when I first got there were the names of the meals. In Quebec, breakfast is dejeuner, lunch is diner, and dinner is souper. I was used to the France model, where breakfast is petit dejeuner, lunch is dejeuner, and dinner is diner.
• I lived in residence with about 150 anglophones of varying French fluency levels. I was quite amused that there was created in that speech community a dialect specific to the French learners. That is, people made mistakes, but they tended to make the same kinds of mistakes, and after a while some of these mistakes even got entrenched as the norm (that's not to say that people weren't good or didn't try - it was just a normal part of the second language acquisition process). One example of this that readily comes to mind is when people would say c'est d'accord, intended with the meaning of This phrase would never be uttered by a Francophone, even if their French did contain a large number of borrowings from English. The reason is that d'accord, in French, is used to mean ok, but only with the meaning of I agree, not with the meaning of I excuse you. And d'accord would never take the subject it (c', from c'est), but only ever I, you, she, we, etc.
  

Quotes and advice

The weather's awesome, school has almost restarted, but today is one of the last remaining vestiges of freedom...

• Someone's a little too obsessed with their image...

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
P J O'Rourke

• This one speaks for itself:

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
Anonymous

Lastly, some excellent advice dispensed by my brother, but never actually practiced by him (or by me, really):

Sebi: Go to sleep early. Wake up early, and give yourself half an hour to do nothing in the morning. Then maybe you'll start doing stretches and other exercises.

This actually reminds me of a fitness instructor early riser that I knew. One day she brought in a pan of baklava that she had made because she had some extra time in the morning. Imagine that; I don't even have time to feed myself, some mornings.

It also reminds me of Seraphim, a 6 year old boy whose family visited our parish this week. His question left me impressed with his understanding of God, and wishing that if I have kids, they will say stuff like this too.

Seraphim: Do you know how my daddy serves God? [or the Church, I forget which]
Me: How?
Him: He gets up at 5 am, and gathers all the ingredients, and makes the prosphora.

Tuning your voice

Years ago I asked a music student what instrument she played, and the response I got was,

"My voice is my instrument".

I nodded politely, but had a curious and bemused feeling inside me. At first sight I thought it sounded quite pretentious, but now I see that she was completely right. *

We think that because singing is such a natural thing, and because some people are good at it that it's basically a quality that some people just have, sort of like blonde hair. This leads to laziness and people saying "I can't sing" and leaving it at that. Not true. You can sing. You have a voice, and with patience and hard work you can learn to master it and sound just as good as the best of 'em - and a thousand times better than you thought you could. No one is born knowing how to sing. You have to find your voice, and the more you engage in singing, the more likely you are to stumble across it.

For some people it comes easier than others, but ultimately it comes down to concentration and practice. Of course you need a qualified teacher to guide you, but even then you'll mostly end up doing a lot of plain (and even boring and tedious) voice exercises to improve - the equivalent of dribbling for 15 minutes around a gym, or spending two hours just taking shots, so that you can learn to be a good basketball player.

To master an instrument takes book learning of music theory, training at mechanical techniques, practice of the techniques, and of the songs, and especially, unending hard work in the form of practice, practice, practice. The voice is exactly the same. To be a successful singer, such that people will enjoy listening to, you have to first settle down and get the nitty-gritty:

• How to breath properly.
  
• What position to hold your body in.
  
• How to tell if you're singing the right note.
  
• How to sing the right note.
  
• How to get a clear sound.
  
• Etc, etc, etc...

And at the end, you have to keep all these in mind at the same time. I even think that in some ways it's harder to sing than to play an instrument - I mean, when your voice is your instrument, unlike with all other instruments, you cannot peer into your vocal folds while you're singing and check out what's happening.

As daunting as I think I've made this sound right now, I feel I have to point out that it's TOTALLY doable, and completely worth it. Singing is so much fun, and (this may surprise some people) highly therapeutic. After you've been in choir practice you are left with a feeling of headiness and wellbeing. Then you want to do it more and more. It's like an addictive drug, but with positive side effects instead of detrimental ones.

Hmm, I guess I'll end this with a song I like, which may or may not lead you to want to sing:

* As an aside, I distinctly remember this conversation happening, but have no idea anymore who the girl was or when or where I met her.

In Communion

I really like the site In Communion, the journal of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship, whose advisory board contains such well-known and wonderfully canonical members as the Archbishop of Albania, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, Fr. Thomas Hopko, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Mother Raphaela Wilkinson, and others with whom I'm not familiar. As a sample of their content, here's a nice story from the Spring 2008 issue (and, since Pascha was on April 27th, my post is only two months too late!):

Nicholas Arseniev recounts an event that occurred in Russia, one that is quite characteristic of the faith of the Russian people.

During a public conference held in Moscow at the Polytechnic Museum during the fierce repression of believers, a Bolshevik commissioner in charge of education violently attacked the “out-dated faith” of the people, crying out that it bore the mark of capitalism and was not believable.

At the conclusion of his presentation, the orator invited his hearers to engage in a brief dialogue. No one was to speak for more than five minutes and, of course, only after having properly identified himself.

A priest from a rural background timidly stepped forward and was greeted by the orator with obvious contempt.

“Remember, no more than five minutes.”

“Yes, very well. I’ll be brief,” the priest replied.

Climbing toward the podium, the priest turned toward the audience and declared:
“Brothers and sisters, Christos voskresse!” [Christ is risen!]

They all answered with one voice, “Voistinu voskresse!” [Truly he is risen!]

“I’m done,” added the priest. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

— from Michael Quenot’s book, The Resurrection and the Icon St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997

From the Pascha / Spring 2008 issue of In Communion / IC 49

You know you're in BC when...

Many people are under the impression that all of North America is one big uniform culture, and all cities are carbon copies of the same consumerist, car-oriented prototype. But not so! There is lots of regional variation, and I love BC's local environmentally-friendly culture. Here are some of the things I saw in my short 4-day trip in May/June:

• A guy rode a unicycle and walked his dog at the same time! Awesome!
• There's tons of those old Volkswagon Scooby Doo vans from the 70s.
• My cabbie took less tip than I actually gave him. (I'm told this isn't a general thing, but it was really cool)
• People are so environmentally conscious that they try out diaper-free parenting. (I've had some interesting heated conversations with friends about this topic - they all seem to think it an impossible absurdity - but really, when you think about it, what did people do before the invention of diapers, even before cloth diapers? And what do poor people worldwide do with their babies?)
  
• At least in Victoria, people are just as likely to ride their bikes or take the bus somewhere as they are to drive.
• Cooperative food boxes for low-income people emphasize locally-grown, organic fruits and vegetables.
• Many stores and businesses put out dishes of water for dogs passing by.
• Everywhere is filled with beautiful flowers.
• The mountains and the beach. That's all.
• People randomly do cool stuff, like play haki sak.
  
• The escalators at Vancouver airport slow down when noone is using them, to conserve energy.

The West Coast is pretty cool. In another life I so would've lived there and been a part of All Saints of Alaska Orthodox Church. For now though, I'm happy to just visit whenever possible.