On Productivity Blogs

Around this time every summer I begin to get excited about school starting again: I put my classes in my calendar, buy a bunch of discount school supplies, and, most of all, fall into the rabbit hole of productivity blogs. For some reason I think that just reading about stuff is going to actually make me more productive: in high school I think I spent more time looking up how to get my work done than actually getting my work done.

To be fair, I've actually started to take some of the tips I've seen in blogs like College Info Geek, one of my favorite sources even though I have literally NOTHING in common with Thomas Frank. I think that's what makes him so marketable, he has very practical tips that apply to pretty much everybody. I also appreciate that he's not always right and often contradicts himself. I've been watching him for four years and he definitely helped my college productivity.

I have loosely developed my own style for academic success though, and I was never really sure what it was so it's not like I could hone in on it and improve it. However, on CIG I ran into Tom Miller's Phyzzle and it clicked. Like, his how-to articles are almost to the T in what I do to pass my courses but he actually put it in a step by step process. It's what I should say when people ask me how I did so well on a test: it's how I can cut out the things that don't work.

These blogs are amazing in contradiction to the person I've stopped listening to -- that is, Cal Newport. I'm not going to sit here and bash him, but I'm just going to say that he needs to get of his soap box and leave room for the productivity bloggers who are more practical and don't infantilize their audiences. I think the newer techniques are more mindful of the modern world and actually, in my experience, work without being so dogmatic. 

Those Who Can, Teach

This past Saturday I attended a funeral for the director of an after school drama program I belonged to while I was in middle school. This was a program near and dear to my heart: a shining beacon in the insecure and closeted time in my life that I tried to block out. At 4 pm every Monday, I got to go to a place where I didn't have to be the smartest, or the most sociable, or even the best singer, dancer, or actor. It was a necessary creative outlet and, to be frank, a safe haven from own head.

This wasn't some exclusive program for serious aspiring actors. It was just recreational, an after school program that met only once a week that was more built like an adult enrichment class where the curriculum was built around our personalities. Even so, we always ended up with a great product at the end of the eight to ten week period.

I can't even imagine how many students she affected in my town since the seventies when she started the program, but the service was one indicator. Older students who were taught directly by her as well as some of us from the younger generations and other teachers gathered to speak and sing. Her friends and family talked about how she never forgot a birthday, brought her students to ice cream after performances, provided them the same outlet.

I didn't feel sad at the end: I felt inspired. I realized that I want to make people feel as special as my drama director made us feel. It confirmed what I've known for a long time -- teaching needs to be a part of my life, whether I am a professor, tutoring math, or helping queer kids find their own outlet through art on the weekends. Even in high school marching band, my favorite part about being section leader (and arguably the only good part) was teaching the incoming freshmen. It's not easy -- as I'm sure it was difficult for the adults in my drama program to wrangle several middle school girls -- but it's a fundamental part of who I am.

So when all is said and done, thanks to the teachers who inspired me. I hope I get the opportunity to tell all of you that.

Mainstream Sustainability

Before I start this post I just want to make a statement that I am not an expert on social issues nor environmental issues. Much of my knowledge comes from simple exposure to discussions held on a college campus in class or with friends. As always, anyone is welcome to provide information that I have missed or an argument that I didn't cover.

My favorite definition of sustainability is the simplest, and it comes from the Brundtland Report of 1987: "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." It's the most literal, and it implies that whether you interpret this as the future of your country, your children, or the state of the Earth, sustainability isn't optional: it's a necessity.

However, the problem with something so flexible is that sometimes instead of interpreting ourselves and collecting information, we take our opinions from the media. The mainstream image of sustainability tends to be well off, and frankly white people, who are vegans and drive electric cars.

Now first of all, I could go off on how veganism isn't actually the most sustainable diet, or how electric cars may contribute to more carbon emissions in their battery life cycle. However there's a deeper issue here that sustainability is being marketed to us at a high price.

I'm white and well off myself, and what I say to my parents and neighbors is hey, if you can afford the products that actually help reduce your carbon footprint, then great, but don't push it on other people.

The cold hard truth is, sustainability is about accessibility. The city my school is in has no bike paths, so I have to drive to the grocery store. It's cheaper and more convenient to go to a supermarket than to go to a local farmers market once a week. People who live in cities are probably living more efficiently than a person in the suburbs with solar panels and an electric car because they're walking to work, and walking to get their necessities, or taking public transit. As smoggy as cities are, urbanization makes everything closer together and easier to get to.

Does this mean we should be complacent? No. We need to tell our officials to enact policies that make being sustainable more accessible to the average citizen, and hold corporations responsible for the emissions they're producing. Stop yelling at each other.

As always, if you see any inconsistencies in this post or want to contribute your own ideas, feel free to comment.

On Not Coming Out to my Great Grandmother

Nobody ever really had a eulogy or made an obituary about my great grandmother, who her grandkids and great grandkids called Gran. She passed away last September, about a week into my second year of college at 96 and I haven't really processed it properly. Maybe, since she lived so long, nobody had really processed it. I like to write poetry in my free time and have started and scrapped numerous pieces about my relationship with her, which only grew complicated in the last couple of years when I came out as gay.

When I came out to my my mom, the news traveled through the grapevine to the rest of my family. They disagree whether it ever got to Gran. My brother says he recalls having a conversation with her and my grandmother about it, and yet the Christmas before she passed she asked me if I'd met any boys. It didn't bother me too much until the grapevine extended to my more distant family.

It's not like Gran, our stubborn, silver-tongued matriarch wanted us to all stay in line: she'd be a hypocrite and she knew it. She'd been through too many crazy things.

When she was five, she was kidnapped by her kindergarten teacher and forced to join the Evangelical church, where she dressed as an angel, 'flew' on wires, and spoke in tongues. Her own mother, my great great grandmother, had to convert just to get her back.

She pretended to be sixteen, two years older than she was, when she met my great grandfather on a blind date. She married him at sixteen and had her first and only child when she was seventeen. She wanted many more but her heart condition prevented that. She was supposed to die in her forties but almost lived a hundred years.

She and my grandmother went to Russia with one of the first American tourist groups that were allowed. While there, she saw a child being abused and went to tell the person off, which got her thrown in jail. My grandmother had to flirt with the police to get her out.

Those are just a few tidbits of my favorite stories about Gran, who was the epitome of "tiny and mighty." This wasn't to say that the time she grew up, and her link to Catholicism, didn't make her traditional: she and my Aunt didn't talk for an extended period of time after she lived with a man before getting married, and she was utterly shocked when my mother got pregnant with my brother before marriage. She grew to overcome it, though, and while deep down I knew she'd overcome my queerness I wasn't sure I'd be able to deal with the initial reaction.

After I'd made it official with my girlfriend I brought her to meet Gran and introduced her as my significant other. Granted, I guess I'll never know if she thought I meant "girlfriend" in the romantic sense: my timing was impeccable because several of her neighbors came to visit, who DID know what I meant by "girlfriend," and outed myself to about five more people than I really wanted to. Her lack of reaction only gave me temporary relief.

She passed away a month after that. A few days before I sat next to her bed and all I wanted to do was leave. I couldn't stand the fact that my great grandmother, who loved the beach, and life, was spending her last hours in pain in the desert. At one point she looked at me and winked, probably thinking "why the hell did your mother bring you here?" She'd seen me almost pass out just walking into a hospital.

Upon telling her I was at school to become a civil engineer, the nurse said "she must be very proud." I sure hope so.

When my mom, brother and I each saw one in different locations on the same day, we decided that Gran was now a praying mantis. 

Intern Journal: Thoughts from the Copy Room

Last month I started my first internship at a huge international consulting firm. I'm in the infrastructure line and technically am supposed to be working under a construction manager, but since it's the middle of the day and I'm typing up this blog post from an office computer, it's obvious this isn't really the case.

I'm a rising third year Civil Engineering major, out of what will probably be five years as is the norm in my program, so I've barely scratched the surface of my core classes. Maybe I don't have the transferable skills yet, and it's possible nobody really has time to train me, but I've been disappointed to find that there hasn't been much for me to do.

In the meantime, I've been humoring myself on personal projects, like reviving the Out in STEM at my school, and falling into the rabbit hole of the internet in researching graduate programs and companies, trying to figure out what I want to do for the rest of my life. Civil engineering is so broad, and sometimes it feels like whenever I get closer to deciding what I want to focus on, the more information comes in and the less sure I am. I've even been thinking about ditching the professional engineer path and doing sustainable research in a university setting (which I may do a post about later).

I'm starting this blog for something to do, but also as a personal outlet and a place for me to write about things I find interesting. I hope to write some articles more targeted on the technical side, some about LGBTQ+ issues, and some about my experiences combining the two. This will be a personal project to utilize my extensive downtime in the office... but hopefully I get more work soon. I did spend the whole morning gaining my intern credentials in the copy room.