Revisited 2: My life in 5 year segments

In the (not so) grand tradition of my own #5yrs life segments review, the time has come for another consideration of a possible legend/guide to find trends/patterns in my mortal experience. Perhaps the 9th addition to this list might allow for some insight into my journey? Let's see then shall we?

Quick recap:

00-05: carefree childhood

05-10: awareness of my Other-ness

10-15: trusting the Closet

15-20: escaping the Closet

20-25: student-/full time LGBTI-rights activist

25-30: print/design entrepreneur

30-35: sober, educator*, consultant, exhibiting photographer, community activist and odd-jobs-guy.

35-40: sober student of Education: Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE 2013) cum laude; B.Ed Honours in Language Education (2014) cum laude; M.Ed on Language Didactics and Digital Pedagogies (2017) cum laude. Lecturer in Higher Education.

40-4(4): still sober (by Grace), lecturer in Higher Education, Academic Head of an HEI (2020...), now studying towards a PhD in Education (2022-2024?)

To be honest, the journey from 35 to today (the day before my 44th birthday) took a wildly different turn than I expected when I enrolled in the PGCE programme at Stellenbosch University. The initial plan was to get in, get teacher certified, and get out to go back to teaching in Taiwan. I still miss my kids from the kindergarten, and wonder who they've grown up to be(come).

That is not to say that teaching in Higher Ed has not been a wild and wonderful adventure in and of itself! I've had the privilege of meeting a wide array of wonderful people, and I'd like to think that I've had at least a small impact on their thinking and careers. The hundreds of PGCE students that swept through my lectures, and the smaller groups of incredible game design and developers I was privileged enough to have in my classes have truly left their mark on my soul. I sincerely hope that they have forgiven me for my sins as an academic assessor, and perhaps even think of me gently on the odd occasion.

Teaching as a profession is not what it should be. There, I've said it. While being guilty of aiding and abetting the corporatisation of education in order to earn a living – I'm not a fan. Perhaps braving the waters of academia as a PhD student, then, might be seen as a counter-intuitive and ironic act of surrender to the Overlords. The covert intent, I feebly hope, is however to try and liberate a smidgeon of thought surrounding learning/mediation of learning from the grip of The Formal and show that we have always been doing it ourselves.

Then again, I might be going soft in the head (as last year's barrage of MRI scans suggest).

I don't really know why I'm blogging again, actually. Most of the people who were on this blog's journey with me have moved on or died. Cancer took my Mom in 2018, and the world caught fire shortly thereafter when COVID-19 hit. I sound callous, or even cruel when I put it like that... and maybe I am a bit. I do hope that I'm not so far gone that I'll disconnect from the joy in the world completely. I'm sure it'll come back.

Then again, I might be insane.

 

*Serious relationship that ended the Christmas eve after I proposed.

Chewing on a testy Tuesday

So there I was thinking that the mini-exams would be on the dreary side, when all of a sudden I encountered a genuine learning opportunity. One of those where real life threw you a practical bone in terms of your theoretical training. It went down as follows:

I was assigned to a Gr. 8 class today, that was writing Life Sciences at the end of the day. The learners were to make use of the preceding periods to study for upcoming papers, and review their work for the day's examination. Simple enough as long as they keep relatively quiet. Not so simple when one of the learners has need branded as probably suffering from ADHD...

Now I don't believe in ADHD, much in the same way as atheists don't believe in God. I might have flashes of despair which seem to confirm the alleged condition – but in my core I don't believe it exists. I'm firmly secured in Sir Ken Robinson's camp on this topic (amongst others). As Sir Ken Robinson suggests, I believe that learners are wrongfully diagnosed with this made-up condition simply so they can be tranquilized with medication, in this way making it so that nobody has to "deal" with them. Adults have grown too distracted and "busy" to have the time (read: desire) to work with these exceptional children.

Yes, I believe them to be exceptional. Be they incredibly gifted, kinesthetic learners, simply blessed with higher levels of energy and curiosity, or all of the above. The point is that these learners are merely bored (out of their skulls) because we do not know how to effectively keep them interested and busy while working with "the rest of the class".

Today I had the opportunity to test out this theory, and even though I wasn't exactly prepared for such a situation – I was eager to try and see what could be done to engage such a learner.

I had noticed earlier that he had brought a rubber finger cover in the hope of helping to hand out the exam papers. The teacher in charge had a different approach though (sending the learners out of the classroom in order to place a copy on each desk before letting them back in), meaning he couldn't participate as he had hoped. This gave me an idea:

Once the specific learner had finished writing the paper and reviewing his answers, I asked his assistance in preparing for a project. First, I asked him to count the sheets of writing paper that was lying in a nearby stack. Once counted (I was making this up as I went along) I requested that he divided the paper into stacks of three sheets each. The particular pile of paper rendered eight stacks and two sheets to spare. Having counted the learners in his class before, I requested that he counted out additional sheets from another pile until there were 27 piles. One for each student. I tried to create the impression that this was of great help to me and my work. The kid was happy as anything, and took his task very seriously. Once he had finished, I thanked him for his assistance. The time allocated to the test had run out, so I asked him to walk up each row of desks with a stapler, fixing each learner's answer sheets to the test. He beamed again, and made sure that each set of papers was stapled neatly, quickly and quietly.

I was pleasantly surprised by the change this exercise brought about in his behavior and demeanor! Where he had previously been unruly and a bit of a disruption in class, he had now turned into a model teacher's assistant.

I hope to prepare for such scenarios in future, and to keep testing out theories and finding better ways to engage all my learners in ways that speak to their individual requirements.

(I'd better invest in a few Rubik's cubes in case I can't come up with suitable "projects".)

*wave*

honky crap on a cracker!
who knew postgrad was this hectic?

hope to see you friday!

Revisited: My life in 5 year segments

In March of 2011, I wrote a post on how an old twitter trend (#5yrs) sparked a list. For me, it's turning into a personal meme - looking at my life in 5 year segments, and seeing what pattern/legend hides in the folds of history.

Quick recap:

00-05: carefree childhood

05-10: awareness of my Other-ness

10-15: trusting the Closet

15-20: escaping the Closet

20-25: student-/full time LGBTI-rights activist

25-30: print/design entrepreneur

30-3?: sober, educator and consultant

Little did I know, at the time, that by the end of that year I'd be living in Missouri (USA)! Or that the reasons for me moving to Missouri turned out to be a load of bull. Cost me mega bucks - but I learned a lot in the process.

Similarly, I couldn't have dreamt that 2012 would see me escape from the clutches of evil in the States, and that I'd be back at my Parents' house, where I did everything I could to earn enough money to pay my new debts, and save up for University again.

So here's how the last completed segment looks like:

30-35: sober, educator, consultant, exhibiting photographer, community activist and odd-jobs-guy. 

Things are looking up for the next segment though!

          35-??: Student - Postgraduate Certificate in Education (still sober)

What can we see from this list so far?

Firstly, that 4 out of the first 5 segments of my life revolved around my sexuality, and fighting for acceptance in main stream society.

Secondly, that 3 out of my 4 "adult" segments marked the rise and rise of my alcoholism.

Lastly (for now), that I might very well spend a couple more segments in Education, my dream since the age of 15  

;0)

So what does your life look like in segments of 5 years?

What I learned about...

RAILROAD TRACKS:

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England and English expatriates designed the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways and that's the gauge they used. 

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the
tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels wouldbreak on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

 Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever. 

The next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just
wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' butts.)

Now - the twist to the story:

A Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad has two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.

The SRBs are made by Thiokol at a factory in Utah.

Engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass!

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important!

My life in 5 year segments

how a twitter trend (#5yrs) sparked a list:

what does your life look like, in segments of 5 years?
well, here's mine:

    0-5: carefree childhood

  5-10: awareness of my Other-ness

10-15: trusting the Closet

15-20: escaping the Closet

20-25: student-/full time LGBTI-rights activist

25-30: print/design entrepreneur

30-3?: sober, educator and consultant

it's kind of cool looking at it this way. as well as a little freaky... what's in the cards for 35-40? and how many segments do I have left?

35-40
40-45
50-55
55-60
65-70
70-75
75-80: the "segment" when my maternal grandfather passed away
80-85:
85-90:
90-95: the "segment" when my paternal grandfather passed away
95-100: ??

have a look, let's see what your life looks like in segments of 5 years ;0)

headspace

redrawing,
revisiting,
rethinking,
reviewing,
re-evaluating and
redesigning...

I love my life right now!

(digging the doodle? pen on paper, snapped with iPhone, modified in PS Mobile and Polarize App)

slowly

i've recently come to realize that my mini bio on twitter: "living it up slowly", resonates happily with some other ideas and movements raising their heads around the globe:

the first, and most obvious, is the slow movement.
i'm completely enamored with this approach to living, working, eating - and especially learning! where do i sign up to be part of a "slow school"? (giggle if you must.)

being part of the fast-food-style education system, yet striving to remain human and sane (and to teach my students how to be human and sane), has opened my eyes to a number of changes that are necessary. much can be gleamed from this excerpt taken from the "slow education" page of the slow movement website:

The process [of education] is about things like how are ideas conceptualised, how can we support learning and the knowing of how to learn, as well as the love of learning and investigating. 

Slow education is also about connection to knowledge and to learning – real learning. It is about leading a skilful life – doing no harm – and having respect for all living and non-living things.

 this connects nicely to the next idea that keeps popping up:
our current systems, curricula and approaches to education (life) are outdated and failing our children.

A new favorite of mine, Sir Ken Robinson, has quite a few things to say about this. I stumbled onto his genius on TED.com - check him out if you get a chance. for those in a rush, here's a cool glimpse of what he suggests:

makes you think ;0)

sometimes you just have to love

this old life's a great, big game
or, at times, a dirty, rotten shame
but through the bickering and bantering
som bric-a-brac and slandering
one thing stands above
sometimes, you just have to love

when your lover breaks your heart
by acting like a tart
or silence builds a prison
you didn't want to be in
there's not much use for sunscreen
or being a royal Prejean
maybe, you just have to love

and if, perhaps, one random morning
when trying to sleep gets kinda boring
after all your plans have gone belly-up
and you're just so close to giving up
get up and rouge it
you gotta live through it
and yeah, you just have to love

reset

it's not a particularly well kept secret that November was a terribly trying month here at the café. my new job upped my stress-levels a touch; Peter joining his parents in opening a new noodle shop has eaten into our precious free time; old man Winter's SAD-influence on my internal processes were left unchecked and, the proverbial straw: an intensely personal trial very nearly pushed me off the roof of a building.

it all boiled to a climax about two weeks ago. after trying to cope with my illusions unceremoniously shattering around me, i reached bursting point. the cacophony in my head and heart had me bouncing off the walls... and i snapped. Peter rushed home just in time to stop me from going overboard. both our wounds were opened again and we've since started the process of healing.

my physiology finally got a chance to catch up this week: in that faint-and-shake kind of way i've managed to avoid for so long. this morning's epileptic fit in the shower, however, was by far the best thing that could've happened to me. you see, this time there was a measure of lucidity to it. what i mean by that is, this time i can remember seeing something. almost like a flickering stream of a thousand polaroids flying past me. i remember seeing my sister, pink flowers, and Peter. i remember a sense of peace. i also remember hearing Peter's voice fading in from somewhere. he was calling my name - and when i started to come around, his face materialized in a flickering,white haze - which later became the bathroom ceiling.

he got me to our bed where i lay still confused and panting, trying to pull myself towards myself. i knew that Fear was going to grip me any second and was trying to prepare myself for the onslaught. what followed, though, was quite different than usual. in the past, i would be flooded with feelings of terrible fear, horror, loneliness and regrets of all shapes and sizes... but today only one Visitor had come to present itself to me. only one, ice-cold and crystal clear fear: not the fear of not waking up, but the fear of dying and leaving Peter without him knowing how much i love him.

it was at once a crippling curse and a liberating blessing. i managed to see the blessing and chose to take that as my cue. i got up, got dressed and went to lie next to him on the couch. my "reset button" was pushed and i found myself in a place where Love again took centre stage. i've been asking for help to let go of the past - and i'm choosing to see today's events as just that.

maktub.

Project 10^100

Project 10ˆ100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible.

submission deadline in 10 days - so click on through, baby!

bullet list madness

it's one of those saturdays: my brain is running spirals through 4 dimensions and neither of my twins - nor my subconscious archer - have anything remotely resembling a grasp on the horse's reins...

just a taste of what's buzzing upstairs:

tiramisu requires:

• Mascarpone cheese
• raw eggs
• sugar
• espresso coffee
• ladyfingers
• liquor (substitute)
  
• cocoa
• heavy cream (should never be merely optional).

5 experiences i'd like:

• lunch @ El Bulli, Spain
• dinner @ Bukhara, India
• breakfast in Australia
• living in France
• the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain
  

stages of learning:

• acquisition
• fluency
• generalizaton
• adaptation

or:

• unconscious incompetence
• conscious incompetence
• conscious competence
• unconscious competence

for apartment:

• mirrors
• crockery
• frames for art
• art
• comfortable couch
• heaps of old books (hardcover-ish)
  
• mop (cleaning service?)
• fix the washing machine
• drawing board
• magnets (idea board, fridge etc)
  
• lighting solutions
• air conditioner
• sound system (O.Cat speakers?)

check the lease - maybe a smaller apartment is the answer?

freelance income supplements:

• copy writing
  
• magazine work
• apparel design (graphic tee trend set to grow before it finally blows over)
  
• creative studio (too soon)
• resurrect life-stylist concept

aaaaaarrrgghhh - go to sleep!

... a job that lets me travel

last night's 8th graders' conversation class got me thinking (again).

the topic of our class was: "I want a job that lets me travel". i asked each student to name the top 3 identifiers of their dream jobs, which i listed on the white-board. afterwards, we discussed each student's answers, their personalities and what we know of them and "chose" their ideal occupation. it looked pretty much as follows:

Andy:
1) help people
2) lets me play
3) not 9 to 5

Peter:
1) easy
2) lots of money
3) nice office

Tom:
1) work from home
2) lots of free time
3) creative

i was astounded - as by the end of the evening i realized that i had:
1 philanthropic, professional basketball player,
1 writer and
1 arms dealer in my class!

it got me thinking though... i'm probably not going to be TEFL for the rest of my life - so what would my list look like?

i've come up with the following identifiers (in no particular order) - what would you suggest?

• work at my own pace
• creative in various disciplines
• mix with people
• non-prescriptive client base (minimal stressful interaction)
• lets me travel
• lets me breathe
• conceptualization (start projects rather than finish them)
• social impact
  
• financial freedom
• celebrity

i'm such a gemini, aren't i.

bonfire of the vanities

let me see if i can get some reaction out of the 'sphere today. can you think of a plot?
here's a list for you to ponder:

dramatis pesonae:
the hairdresser: Maurice
the pianist/interiors dealer: Miguel (Maurice's life-partner)
the art dealer: Cobis
the clinic's pre-admissions clerk: Jean (Cobis' life partner)
the clinic's liaison officer: Jobe
the printer/writer: Guillermo

ingredients:
3 course dinner
Liza with a "Z" (dvd)
Barbara Streisand CD collection

Scene:
Cobis & Jean's house with a view of the bay.
saturday
fall 2008

Clockwise or Anti-clockwise?

If the lady isn't spinning, click on her and try again.
(And no, I don't mean anything else by it. Naughty!)

You can actually see her spinning in either direction. Something to do with shifting dominance of brain hemispheres.


If initially she spins clockwise, you're a left-brainer.
Anti-clockwise makes you a right-brainer.
Shifting between the two hemispheres makes her do a "matrix"-like glitch/switch.

I tried it with Nakkie and me watching at the same time - it's not the gif that changes. We saw her spinning in different directions - and switching at different times.

very cool.