civitas

For the past couple months, I have been living in one of the most diverse places on earth: a city.  Of course, some cities are more diverse than others, but I think it a general trend that cities are more diverse than towns or suburbs, especially in "melting pot" places like the US.

This new level of diversity has its ups and downs. I'd like to comment on a few that I have noticed so far.

Behold, an enormous pile of Ethiopian foods.

Benefit: There is a delicious variety of culinary options. I've gotten to eat plenty of foods for the first time, like Ethiopian and Canadian food.  I can easily find food choices from anywhere in the world, either at a restaurant or at a grocery store.  I also have a lot of fun finding a variety of fruits and treats that I don't often find in the suburbs.  Sometimes I go to the store and pick up something that I had no idea even existed (let alone knowing what it actually is) and go home to figure out how to cook it.  Makes for interesting dinners. x) The opportunities to try new things are apparently infinite.

Difficulty: I can't communicate with everyone.  A woman at the store asked me for help the other day in very broken English; mostly pantomime. I think I know what she needed, and I tried to help answer her question.  Because I speak English and Spanish, I'm pretty accustomed to having a way to talk with almost everyone.  I asked if she spoke Spanish and she shook her head and said "Iran".
I thought I would get so much Spanish practice living in a more diverse area, but so far I've instead found more opportunities to speak Hindi, Persian, Tagalog, Mandarin, Korean, Thai, and even German. Unfortunately, I don't know an appreciable amount of any of these languages.

Benefit: There is so much to do here. There are plenty of interesting touristy things that I want to do (but there are too many to do all of them) and then cool places to go that are just part of the normal life. There are tons of big, unique, exciting things to see and do, and I still want to have time to explore the neighborhoods to see the colorful houses and the way people decorate their gardens. I'm caught between trying to experience this place as a tourist and a local! I'm trying to get a good feel of the area, which includes everything from museums and historic sites to hikes and outdoor activities, to amusement parks, to finding a local soccer league, a good jogging route, and the best panadería. I think I'm doing a pretty good job, but there is just so much to explore.

Difficulty: Regardless of the local crime statistics, there is less public trust in cities. If you don't lock your car or home, you are insane. This is generally good practice in the first place, but here, locking the car isn't enough. The standard protocol for leaving the car involves making sure there are no bag-looking or valuable-looking or interesting-looking things in sight at all. If you are leaving anything in your car, move it to the trunk. Then park in a well-lit area. And don't walk around too late at night.
I haven't had any problems with this so far, but I do like being a community where you aren't paranoid about leaving your car for too long and feel like you can trust the universe a little bit more.

Benefit: I'm exposed to a lot of new ideas and perspectives.  Some views that I didn't really understand or appreciate before make more sense as I meet people who hold them and see situations that I hadn't considered before.  In addition to social ideas like why a policy is actually beneficial or getting to know the kinds of people behind a movement, I'm also exposed to all kinds of other ideas: new music, new applications or needs for technology, new languages, new slang, history that I never knew, artwork that I'd never seen, science I hadn't been around before (like why the weather here is the way that it is). I get a better perspective on tons of things and can keep the ideas that I need or like and have a better understanding of ideas that I don't.

Difficulty:  My own ideas get challenged more often.  This isn't inherently a bad thing (indeed, I think it's an important process for everyone to experience as our ideas and values develop) but I'm still testing the waters and learning how to have constructive conversations with people who disagree with me. By simple virtue of living with more people around me, I have to interact with people more often. I've had many exchanges where people are interested and respectful, and I've had some exchanges where that isn't the case.  Being around people who don't understand or challenge my ideas and values gives me more opportunity to consider why I hold those ideas and values in the first place. Sometimes it changes what I think about something, and sometimes it reaffirms it.  These interactions also give me better insight to how to ask about or challenge someone else's ideas respectfully, since I know what it's like to be on the receiving end of an unfriendly challenge.


Overall, one of the biggest things I have noticed from my time living in a city is that it teaches you to learn how to live with other people.  I had figured I was already pretty knowledgeable in this, since I come from a big family and I've been to college and had the gamut of experiences with roommates and neighbors.  I've spent a lot of time living with other people around me. But there's a lot to learn when you go somewhere where there are suddenly more people around you...more weird people, more grumpy people, more kind people, more people whom you can help, more busy people, more noisy people, more happy people, more friendly people...  You're no longer in situations where maybe most of the people had similar values or similar goals as yours, and working together or understanding each other wasn't that hard. But suddenly that isn't there anymore, and you still need to work together to create a good community.

I think one of the big ideas that we really need to grasp for the future is figuring out what kinds of laws and resources and schools and responsibilities and rights and technology we will need so that we can learn to live with more and more people, even people who aren't necessarily like us. In an increasingly globalizing world, this is becoming more and more vital. But more than figuring out the tools we will need to make that happen, we need to figure out what kind of people we should be to make that happen. We need to decide how we're going to treat people, even if they disagree with us or don't speak our language well or even if they offend us.  We need to learn how to listen to people and understand their points of view, and recognize that their perspectives are just as valid as our own.  Turns out people are complex enough that we may never have stuff like this completely figured out, but in the meantime we can always open our hearts and minds a little more to move everyone forward together.

ineptus

Get ready for a couple of posts all in a row about education.  That's what's on my mind right now because that's pretty much all I do!  When they say "full-time college student" they secretly meant "all-the-time college student". There is no 40-hour deal here.  And no paid overtime.

I've been playing this college game for a while now.  I am on the latter-half of things, now with fewer semesters between me and graduation than the semesters I have behind me.  I've been taking the real-deal classes now (no more prerequisites) and I started feeling like I really know what I'm doing here.  I know how to study and test and do homework and I am far enough into my program that I'm pretty familiar with whatever they will throw at me.

Or so I thought.

Turns out, this semester has been full of surprises.  And not the kinds of surprises I was even expecting. (...That's what makes them surprises.)

I cannot even count the number of times I have used the word "inept" or "ineptitude" to describe my new-found feelings for this term.

See, after thinking that I knew what to expect and I was far enough into things that everything would look like a more specialized extension of what I had studied last semester, I have been humbled exceedingly by the actual content of classes this term.

The first is from a course I am taking as part of my general education.  I like being well-rounded and well-read, so I like the idea of general education.  Narrowing choices down as to which upper-level psychology or philosophy or Spanish class I could take was a difficult choice.  This semester, I ended up in a sociology class, which I figured would be a welcome change from all the calculations and formulas I'm usually dealing with.  I had taken a demographic sociology course before and felt decent that I had retained the most important concepts, so this class couldn't be too surprising, while still allowing me to stretch my limits and expand a little into another subject.

Turns out there is no end to the number of sociological things that I do not know, or even have the slightest idea about.
So I get to read.

This phenomena of ineptitude could be expected when you take a class so unrelated to your chosen field of study.  But it has also started happening in my engineering classes.

Some of the concepts and material we learned as freshmen and then never spoke of again have miraculously resurfaced.  And they are in every single class.  After three or four years. Gaaahhhh.  The sudden realization that I in fact, do need to remember all of my past education is a little bit alarming because my brain has been trying not to be a pack rat and get rid of some of the unused stuff up there.
I really hope we kept it instead of donating it to Goodwill.

I thought I was so good at this.  I have never felt so inept at school before.

But this feeling of ineptitude, unqualification, and belittlement is not inherently a bad thing, albeit uncomfortable.  It's probably one of the biggest learning opportunities I'll have all year.  Not only to learn about the electronics I have forgotten and the ins and outs of sociology, but also to learn about myself and how to do things such as handle stress, read my eyes out, study way too many subjects at once, and hopefully figure out a more specific direction for what I am even planning to do with all of this.

Other aspects of myself that I hope to learn about include:

•  how I can actually make a difference in the world, 
• why specializing in something and knowing way too much about it (for example, the many failure modes of steel) is worthwhile, 
• what my priorities are, 
• what I can an cannot live without, and 
• how to simultaneously kick butt at school while not becoming a homework-doing robot, void of fun or emotion.

Something valuable happens when education belittles you and you realize just how big the world is.  Having your eyes opened to the vastness of how much you really don't know is a beautiful experience in a way.  The funny thing is that as we find more answers, those answers spark new questions.  As the expanse of knowledge we have--both as a collective community of humans, but also as individual minds--continues to grow, somehow the realm of what is beyond our knowledge, and therefore what is possible to be discovered and achieved, expands as well.

dimensio

I've been somewhat inundated with thoughts lately and don't even know where to begin.

I suppose it all started when I realized just how much school had taken over my life, to the extent that I didn't have time anymore to do 'normal human' things.  Read: I didn't have time to do the things I love.
Granted, I had realized this stuff for a while or so before I ended up doing anything to fix the problem.  I've since been much better at writing a little bit every day, playing soccer when I can, and even having friends. :D
It helps, of course, that the homework is over.  And that I would go insane from studying for finals if I didn't take those breaks.

But one of the things that I have noticed in this shift in my life is just how different a person I am based on the things I'm doing in and with my life.

A quick Venn diagram, if you will:



Gotta love those Venn diagrams.

So basically, when I allow school to consume me and fail to make time for other people...I feel like a robot that does homework all day, rather than a human being.  And it takes a huge toll.
I will not deny that a large part of the paucity of posts lately is due to this robot's failure to have ideas worth writing and expanding and sharing.

So I was talking with the Dean of my college recently and one of the things she said about the intent of our education is for us to become three-dimensional people.  Colleges are really good at spitting out one-dimensional people, who know their stuff and can do a great job at engineering or math or teaching literature or singing...whatever it is that they've been studying now for years.  But a large part of our education should be to enhance that dimension of ourselves with other dimensions.  To learn how to communicate across other disciplines and to see how our area of focus can help other areas or can be developed by other areas.  To have experience in differing fields, and that even though you've dedicated all you are to this one great discipline (in my case, engineering), you should still be able to say that you make time for hobbies and you like to find new interests.  You have a grab-bag of skill sets because of all the volunteer projects you've helped with, and you're able to understand more of the world because you've taken the time to see it from more than just one angle or dimension.

Not to mention that three-dimensional people just stand out. ;)

So I've been having greater success at that lately, and it's true; it makes you feel more real.

diversas

So, in the past week or so, the internet world has seen quite a lot of commotion about this particular piece of apparel...

Yes.  The infamous dress.

Now, most of us understand why the color-changing phenomenon happened (thanks to the ever-useful input of the scientists.  We love our scientists!) and this post is certainly not to bandwagon about the mystifying dress. Hopefully the hype is dying down and it's a little late for that. Instead, I want to examine a few lessons we might have learned from this whole fiasco:

First, it takes very little to set the internet in an uproar.  I think we all knew that already though.  But this uproar was built off the same thing that breeds any controversy: groups of people seeing things differently.  Normally we have some degree of understanding when we take to controversial grounds because things like politics and religion and our other favorite controversial conversations aren't really that concrete.  We tend to understand that other people have other interests and situations and that explains their differing views.  So there's a bit more tolerance there on the whole (although not always).  There often exists a concession that it's okay to disagree on such topics.

For the dress, though, people started freaking out.  Because this controversy was rooted in something that we all rely on so thoroughly--our own eyesight-- many people became quite passionate about something really quite trivial.  As far as controversies on the internet go, this dress is probably of the least consequence.  But because we assume that our visual sight is a pretty sure foundation, we feel pretty justified in arguing the point past its pertinence.  We've been seeing the same colors as other people for so long that when things suddenly change, we freak out.  People were getting in arguments with friends and family and strangers alike, some wondering what was wrong with everyone else and some wondering what was wrong with themselves, fearing an onset of colorblindness or worse, without stopping to consider that the other points of view might indeed be valid.

It's amazing how riled up we can become over little things when we think that we are invariably right.

It took a long time for people to understand that both could be right.  It would appear that when arguing over the color of a dress, it would be a concrete enough discussion to settle unanimously one just one solution, but oftentimes multiple correct answers are available to questions, and we don't always recognize that.  As fallible humans, we often get into thinking ruts that dictate our perceptions of things--there is only one solution; I can trust my eyes and no one else's; people who disagree with me must be delusional or lying.  But usually the truth requires opening our minds to realize that the opposite is the case.  There are many solutions.  Many opinions and views can be trusted.  People's differing opinions are sincere and they don't want to be difficult.

Finally, I hope we're able to look at what's gone on here and better appreciate the importance of context.  The ambiguity of the color of the dress comes from its lack of background information in the picture, which can help our eyes decide what kind of filter to process it under.  Is it in the shadows? Is it in broad daylight? Things would be much clearer if we had more information there.  Likewise, the dress can look different based on the context of the viewer's surroundings.  Many people reported seeing the dress in one color set at first, and then in a very different way not long afterwards.  Their viewing environment put context to the ambiguity of the dress color and changed how they saw things.

For our daily lives, we should make our best effort to make sure that we can gather as much information as possible to give context to our problems and the situations that life presents us.  Of course, this context isn't always available, and that's why our personal context plays such a role, too.  The mindset that you're in when you approach a person or see a problem will often dictate your perception of it, and therefore your reaction.  If we can do more to make sure that our interactions come from a place of understanding and love, we will be able to avoid much of the heartache or anguish that controversy and differences can cause.

So, for all of you who have lost hope in humanity for everyone's great obsession and distraction over such an insignificant trifle, nothing is lost if we can learn something about ourselves in the process.

spes [hope]

Welcome to the last day of 2014!

Did y'all realize that today is the last day?  Like...after this there is no more 2014.  All gone.

So, hopefully we can all look back on that over-optimistic list of new year's resolutions we made last year and say that we satisfactorily accomplished all of them.
I hope that that's most of what happens to people, rather than just completely forgetting about them.
Either way, there is a surprising lack of people spending their last hours of the year hurriedly losing weight, reading things, being kinder to others, and achieving their dreams.
Seriously, I do wonder why new year's eve is a "drop everything an celebrate" experience rather than a "hurry and cram, finals-style".  After all, it is the last day of 2014...
We're either too irresponsible for that, or too hopeful for the future, choosing to look forward to the dawn of a second chance, rather than mourn over the missed opportunities and forgotten intentions of the past.  With our sincere desire to change, the wasted time and mistakes of the past seem to erase themselves.

So kudos to the humans for maintaining a hope for the future and for working to continually improve themselves.

And while you're out there partying tonight and neglecting your unfinished business from 2014, do it in a hopeful rather than irresponsible manner, and be grateful for the second chance you are given with the great dawn of a new year.

problemata

Lately I have been aware of a lot of problems here in life that don't really have answers.

"Why does it have to be so hard all the time?"

"My roommate drives me crazy."      

"Is there something wrong with me?"

"My best friend is too busy to talk to me anymore."

"I hate it when class gets out late."    

"I'm always so angry at my parents."

             "I feel like I'm just a burden to my friends."
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO.

What are you supposed to do? All of these problems are so complex and each situation is so personal and unique that there really aren't answers.  There's no one-size-fits-all solution.  If there was, I would hope that humanity would have found it after so many millenia of existence...But we have to face our problems and our lives on our own. We can't rely on the past, and there aren't any answers in the back of the book.  Alas.  This isn't math.

But there has to be some way to fix stuff like this, otherwise the world would be a terribly oppressive and miserable place. And I've found that for the most part, it isn't...so what's the answer we're missing?

Well, amid all the suggestions from religion, philosophy, science, politics, and so many other views or schools of thought, I've realized that the way I must answer the question is the way an engineer would.

Problem: half the volume of a glass contains water.
Optimist's solution: "yes! I have half a cup of water!"
Pessimist's solution: "curses.  I don't have half a cup of water."
Engineer's solution: "This cup has twice the necessary volume."

(hopefully this is not the first time you have heard that lame joke...XP)

Anyway, the lame joke was demonstrating an engineering approach, which I will now apply to the life problems.
Rather than fixing the problem, sometimes you just need to view the problem differently and redefine it.
So instead of wondering what to do and where to go and why things suck...realize that none of these things are problems.
Your problem is this:

YOU HAVE PROBLEMS.

So in order to fix this, just stop having problems.

"Gee thanks", you say.

No really.  If you can change your perspective and thoughts on life such that you no longer perceive these things as tragedies and problems, then it doesn't matter who your roommate is or how busy your best friend is or how hard life is right now, because you don't think it's a problem anymore.

Your problems don't have to have answers to go away.

It's a hard thing to do.  I am certainly not telling you that this is easy. I'm still not there all the way.  But maybe it's something to consider trying.

Best of luck. :)

genius verus

Aaaand...it's Pi day. :D

Hopefully the majority of my readership is well acquainted with pi, though.  So I thought it might be important to celebrate another event in conjunction with pi day.

Don't worry, fellow nerds...pi is not being abandoned, nor is nerd-dom.  

It's time for a birthday party :D

Today in 1879 in Germany, Alberto Einstein was born.  Being German, his parents opted to call him "Albert" for short.  Born on pi day.  He was destined for greatness.

young Albert quickly outgrew the awkward baby stage

and became a dapper young lad.

Most people know the standard Einstein trivia: he was a theoretical physicist, he was a pioneer of the Manhattan project shortly after becoming a US citizen, is one of the more prominent geniuses of history...

I mean, you really cannot dispute the genius of a man whose brain has its own wikipedia article.

By the way, all of the silliness saying that Albert Einstein's brain was significantly smaller than the average man's is...partially true.  We'll have to discuss this fascinating neuroscience later.

(Just don't believe everything you hear about brain sizes; you might begin to believe that women are stupider than men because their brains are smaller.)

So.  Einstein was all about mathematics and physics and the universe and complex stuff like that, right?  Well the funny thing about being human is that you must also dabble in things like religion and arts and other aspects of life.  Man cannot exist on math alone.  Albert Einstein did many things throughout his lifetime.  He learned to play the violin as a child and continued his beloved hobby passionately, perhaps to get his mind off math once in a while.  He went through three marriages and had three children and learned a thing or two about love in the process.  He offered a fair amount of political and theological commentary, as well as physical theories.  His ideas in physics were met with much higher regard, however, leading to a Nobel Prize in physics.

Einstein would often hang out with Niels Bohr (Sorry, that's not a creation of Bram Stoker...it's a scientist) and discuss quantum mechanics.  You know, the way that buddies do. 

Despite being so heavily involved in math and physics, Albert Einstein is quite quotable. Many people seem to think that people who are crazy with the hard sciences are difficult people to understand and are probably too smart to talk to, but I believe that a conversation with Einstein would be fulfilling, enlightening, and enjoyable no matter what your IQ was or where you were in life.

Here are a few quotes of his.  He had many, and it's difficult to choose a favorite. (If you have a favorite, mention it in the commentary of this post!)

• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
• Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
• The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
• Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

I'm often inclined to list Albert Einstein as a personal hero or inspiring example in my life, and I think the vibe that people get from that is "Oh, look who's the physics hotshot now" which is really not what I'm aiming for.  He was a lot more than just a high-functioning brain somewhere in the universe.  Some science, some philosophy, some music, some religion, some math,  some politics, some love, some humor...

And a whole lot of life.