The Serious and the Ridiculous. And Running, which is Both.

Ultra Delusions
Just under one week from now I am supposed to lace up the shoes and set out for 31+ miles of light exercise in the Chuckanut 50k. I have the mileage and training in for sure (thanks to some serious mileage on the very serious trails in New Zealand) but it's starting to feel like my Achilles Tendons are going to get in the way of this one. My typical self-diagnosis suggests tendonitis, but who knows. One thing is for sure, if my lower legs don't feel better in a week, there will be no 50k for me...


The Learning Factory. Now With More Cogs.
I admit to not always paying complete attention in faculty meetings, so it is partly my fault, but I tried for 45 minutes the other day to remember what the various initiatives and projects are that us Teaching Drones are responsible for this year. Connecting the project to the acronym is great sport. But I couldn't tell you what they all are.

What I do know is that about half of the faculty in my division are "reassigned" from teaching to working on these initiatives, most of which are ostensibly about quality in teaching. How many students are not served by those faculty so they can work on projects to improve teaching and learning for those students who are not being served? Students at the Learning Factory already have about a 75% chance that their teachers will be adjuncts who work for less pay with fewer benefits and with no obligation to consult with students outside of class. Then we take more full time faculty out of the classroom to do administrative work related to initiatives funded with soft money and that require more time out of the classroom for additional training? What? How top heavy can this thing get before it tumbles down into the parking lot?

I am deeply cynical of these things, especially those without a research base behind them, and I still marvel at how much of our teaching jobs have absolutely nothing to do with actually teaching students.

Which is why I wrote this while I as scheduled to serve as academic advisor to drop-in students (only about 25% of whom "dropped in"). The Learning Factory "lets" us cancel classes with our own students to help other students pick which math class they should take next term. What?


Adventures in TeenagerLand
I am not yet to the point of wanting to apologize to my parents for being between the ages of 15-18, but it's getting close.


If It Weren't So Sad, It Would be Hilarious
For the short term, I am really getting a kick out of watching the GOP "hopefuls" drift farther and farther to the right, pandering to a smaller and smaller group of primary voters who are really, really a-scared of that black guy running the country. Then it hits me that these people have about a 50/50 shot of becoming president and I wake up with my passport in my hand and my laptop open to Expedia, looking for cheap flights to Europe.


A Little Something Serious
Not to bring the real world into this fiction I have created, but allow me to use social media to make a comment about social media. (Somewhere in that last sentence is the start of a master's thesis someone will start but never finish.)

As I write this the name Joseph Kony has gone from almost complete western obscurity to household name, thanks to this video on YouTube. Viral status on YouTube is generally reserved for cats who play pianos or white trash girls being thrown from the back of motorcycles. But this time, not only was the video more than 68 seconds long, it was about something that matters.

So the video starts getting linked to Facebook pages and blogs all around the west. My 14 year old niece shared it on her Facebook page, and I guarantee you she had no idea who Kony was before this. The last time America was reminded that Uganda existed was when we all learned that Idi Amin was actually Forrest Whitaker. And even after that film, I doubt most Americas could find Uganda on a map (hint: it's in East Africa). But once something gets traction, there is internet traffic to be had in criticizing it and poking holes in it.

Invisible Children, the organization that produced the 20 minute YouTube video on Kony, deserves scrutiny and attention. Most organizations do. And I strongly believe that non-profits asking for money from the public need to be as open and transparent as possible (which is why I think The Colleague/My Personal Rock Star is doing such great work at Cura). Bloggers and other media outlets have criticized Invisible Children for being overly simple about a complex issue, for their expenditures, for their fundraising, and even for potentially interfering with the mission to capture Kony.

Questions abound. Is Invisible Children over-simplifying the issue? Well, yeah. You can't exactly distill decades of post-colonial chaos into one 30 minute video. Is the portrayal of Kony incomplete and perhaps factually challenge? Probably. Are there flaws? Yes.

But so what? The entire point of the video is to raise awareness. Does it do that? It does. Very well. There are people on Twitter with literally millions of followers who are clicking that link and learning about the Lord's Resistance Army. There are people in the west who are becoming more aware of one of the many issues in sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. How can that be a bad thing? It's complicated, for sure, but we live in the age of social media, and this is an example of how it can be used to educate and mobilize rather than just entertain.