blog.shimer

"Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition. "

While the above is a somewhat pithy quote snatched from the wonder that is the internet, I do remember reading in it my experience with Michel de Montaigne, and it demonstrates to me what brings us all together as human beings.

Two weekends ago, it was Montaigne that brought together nearly sixty potential students in the Shimer spirit of discussion and debate.

I have been at all of the Montaigne scholarship competitions; the first one two years ago was the one I competed in, and I have worked at them ever since. While not all of my memories are crystal-clear, the Montaigne was the main factor in my decision to come to Shimer.

For those of you who don't know, the Montaigne scholarship competition takes place every year, usually on President's Day Weekend, and offers two full-tuition and two half-tuition scholarships for grabs. The first competition attracted possibly 15-20 people. The second had close to 40, and the third two weeks ago had almost 60.

The essay I read by Montaigne was "On the Education of Children."  I received it roughly a month or two before the competition, and so had ample time to read it... twice, I think. I tried taking notes on the essay like they recommended, but I had no idea how to approach the text, or what I was supposed to be thinking, so I imagined asking questions and wrote a few things. The day of the competition came--oh, there's the nervousness I should have felt months ago. Why didn't I read over it more? Too late for that. Those thoughts ran through my head as I exchanged a few words with people I'd never met before upon getting to Shimer, before heading off to the first part of the competition: the written part. The prompt was something along the lines of, "How would Montaigne's idea of education include books and reading? What part do they play in education?" I haven't the faintest clue what I actually wrote about that, but I walked out feeling it had not been my best--I'm horrible with timed writing.  I had a little time to relax then, though, because we were off on a campus tour, and then to lunch. I remember I sat with a girl who wound up not coming here.

Then came the discussion part. We all sat down around a table with facilitator Harold Stone, who was, in my eyes, every inch of what a facilitator should be. He asked a single leading question, and from there on we took it. Gradually we warmed to the text and the discussion, and I could feel my excitement building. Harold only had to ask one more question during the course of the discussion--the rest of the time we held it. I don't recall exactly what we said or what conclusions we drew, but I remember suddenly feeling ecstatic: this was where I belonged! These people, having read the same thing I had, were struggling with the same problems, looking for answers, and just as eager to talk about them as I was. I could feel my excitement building off theirs, as for the first time my mind connected to other people's sitting around this table, a connection I'd never felt anything like before. It was a shared excitement, a shared passion to find out how the world works and why, and a determination to find meaning in the reading, or to argue its lack thereof. It was then that I knew I would have to come to Shimer. If I wanted that feeling back, I had to go.

And so here I am.

Working at the Montaigne is just as much fun as participating in it--perhaps even more so, because you have less to be nervous about, but you can understand a good deal of what others are going through. Each year I've worked at the Montaigne I've met fascinating new people, most of whom wind up coming to Shimer.  I get to see quite a few of them share that same excitement that I found--and there's nothing better.

So while the Montaigne means a good many things to me--I didn't win the grand prize, but I got some compensation--my best memories are of finding Shimer and seeing others find Shimer through it. Shimer is a place where the world comes together for me, and we can each see our own stamps of the human condition. No matter how different we are, there's always that.

Montaigne memories

A year ago today was the first time I saw Shimer. I remember the experience pretty well. My first mistake was taking the Amtrak from New York to Chicago. It was an 18 hour train ride. I spent most of it listening to Dallas Green, which in some way saved me from the exhaustion and irritation that comes from sitting upright for 18 hours. I wanted to listen to that CD on a roadtrip since I first heard it and, all things considered, how much closer can you get than looking out a moving window at places you've never seen and may never stop for? The world looks great at about 60 mph. 

When we got to Chicago, my father and I, the first thing I did was head to the bathroom for a ...makeshift shower. My dad upgraded our tickets for the ride home. It was as cold as a witches teet. Pretty though, the city...The north side of the city. We did a bit of exploring before heading towards the hotel which included a Starbucks and a short walk through the city taking tourist-y pictures and marveling at the city's architecture. I distinctly remember thinking the beggars in Chicago were nicer than the ones in New York. They're more persistent, though. It wasn't long before the cold set in and we called a cab to the hotel.  

There wasn't much to do at the hotel besides read and watch hotel-TV to pass time before dinner so that's exactly what I did. When it started getting dark we wandered a few blocks before choosing to dine at some kind of burger place or restaurant steak house. After dinner we went back to the hotel and passed time before bed. 

The morning of the competition was my first trip to the Shimer building on the IIT campus. At first I was a little downtrodden that we only had claim to one floor on one building on a campus with a lot of floors in a lot of buildings but I soon realized that we really didn't need anymore space, and that the campus is pretty nice anyway and so is our floor in our building. Besides, it turns out that IIT provides a nice large scale backdrop to the small scale dramas that occur at every day Shimer. In fact, of all the classrooms I think I've ever been in, none are as nice as Shimer's. We sit around a round (...octagonal..) table in (moderately, relatively) comfortable chairs, and the classroom content is unmatched. But I digress. Everyone from Shimer was very nice. They still are. I'm pretty sure many of the people I met that day are now my friends. Some people look different. Meg had longer hair. So did Ezra. I sat next to Sara. The competition wasn't so bad. I don't think the school likes it being referred to as a competition because the nature of the discussion and writing isn't competitive. Which is true, it didn't feel like a competition at all. It was quite pleasant, as I recall. It was a pretty good taste of what the classroom actually feels like. Except that in this case four of us were going to be chosen to be given the opportunity to make coming to Shimer worlds easier based on the judgment of our individual caliber. 

We're all winners at heart though. And at Shimer. 

But really, win or lose, the competition is great. In my case...I lost. But we all had fun. I'm off to go see the competition this year in a few minutes. It's kind of like mixing The Dead Poet's Society with You Got Served, throw in a dash of Gladiator and you have an authentic Shimer classroom experience. 

This is Justin Lockwood, signing off.  

The wonders that arose from my Shimer thesis

Hi, I'm Jessa and I graduated last May. I've been doing some pretty cool stuff that has come, in part, out of my thesis work at Shimer. At Shimer, everyone writes a thesis during their senior year. It is a big project, with a lot of writing to do, and you work on it for the entire school year.

I titled my thesis "The parallel universes of mental health care professionals and patients" (you can read it here) and it is about the gap in perspectives on mental health care between professionals and patients. After I graduated, I bound several copies of my thesis, gave them paper covers, and sent them off with letters to several mental health care professionals I have met in the past. Only one of those professionals responded to me, but it was a very positive response, so I was happy with that. I posted my thesis in a few internet communities of professionals. There I got a lot of negative responses from professionals who were offended that I compared historical mental health care to slavery and current mental health care to racism (you'll have to read my thesis if you want that juicy detail).

I also gave my thesis to a few professionals I still see on a regular basis. One of those professionals was my psychiatrist. When I summarized my thesis for her, she told me that there was a Family Patient Advisory Council getting started at the hospital where I met her. I tracked down the person who was organizing this council and now I am a member. We've only had two meetings so far, but I have already been pleasantly surprised at how well my challenges to the norms in mental health care have been received by the professionals in the council. (When I introduced myself and mentioned my thesis and Shimer, someone had actually heard of Shimer! Turns out he is a professor at IIT, though he still calls us Shimmer.)

At the most recent meeting of the council, one of the nurse administrators invited me to give a presentation in a training/continuing education session for the hospital staff on the topic of building rapid rapport with patients. I was so excited for that opportunity that I completely forgot to be scared. (People who know me will know this is highly unusual. For the rest of you: I was, not so very long ago, so shy that I had to be taught how to make eye contact, at this very hospital. I had to be taught that eye contact does not prohibit blinking and that one should not copy the blinks of one's eye contact partner. I was told that is creepy to copy blinks.) In my presentation I talked about the biggest rapport killer I experienced, being invalidated by the professionals, and that invalidation can be mostly eradicated if professionals communicate with their patient in an assertive, direct, and respectful communication style, the same one they teach their patients to engage in within their own social circles. When I finished speaking, I let the professionals ask questions, discuss things with me, and I offered them a few situations that I have experienced, ones that were handled badly when I was involved, so that they could brainstorm ways of handling these situations better. It was a very positive experience; the professionals allowed me to challenge them and they challenged me back, but in a "help us understand you better" way rather than an invalidating way.

When I wrote my thesis, I knew I wanted to write about some of the objections I have to the way mental health care currently works because I knew this was my only chance to do so in an academic setting (I do intend to go to grad school, but for library conservation) which I thought might lend me a little more credibility and which I knew would help me write a better paper. Perhaps I would have done the rest of these things anyway, but I'm definitely glad to have written my thesis and have something to give people that says, "This is what I think of mental health care." I'm ecstatic at the opportunities I've had so far to share my thoughts on mental health care with professionals and I am looking forward to creating more opportunities to do this.

Also, I've since started my own, very little, blog. It is called Made with Awesome and it is mostly on various topics concerning mental health care with a little bit of arts, crafts, and library conservation thrown in for good measure.

Midwinter Spring... Quite Literally.

February 7th. You would think it would be kinda cold here in Chicago. Would you believe it got to a whopping sixty degrees Fahrenheit? It was like spring... in the middle of winter!

The snow was melting away, leaving mud, mud, and more mud in its wake. The wind, ever-present, had shed its chill, and I contemplated the possibility of pulling out my kite and attempting to fly it. The mud, however, deterred me. So I came up with a different course of action. 

I attempted to read Aristotle's Physics while sitting in a tree. Sitting in the tree was the successful part of that attempt. There's a lovely tree just on the other side of the playground in front of Gunsaulus Hall with a rather horizontal part of a limb at just the right height from the ground to be easily accessible. Sitting there in the warm sunshine with the wind blowing through my hair was a rather pleasant experience. The reading, however, turned out to be just a tad too difficult to concentrate on when several of my darling classmates started a rather entertaining snowball fight on the playground. Yes, I was within firing range, and was the unfortunate victim of flying snowball shrapnel. Very fun. 

It was great to see everyone having so much fun. It was even greater to be able to go outside and not turn into a popsicle. And it's February. 

Of course, I do miss the snow covering the ground. I love snow. 

IIT Idol: Because I'm masochistic enough to attend karaoke

Karaoke. Makes. Me. Crazy.

And yet, somehow, I ended up sitting through a total of 5 1/2 hours of it at the Bog. (It’s a student bar/hangout center with a stage, some ping pong and billiards tables, and both Wii & real bowling. Supposedly called the Bog because it used to be a swamp. Go figure.)

Why? I've started writing for TechNews, and they needed someone to cover it last week. This may be a mistake, considering how my free time’s been pretty booked with reading, working, and Doctor Who, but it’s also kind of fun. And it pays. Somehow my first article––on the first 3 hours of the karaoke competition, “IIT Idol” Round I––made it onto the first page. That was pretty nifty.

But while sitting on the floor on a clot of sound cables during tonight's round, I realized 2 things. First, few people can sing well, and fewer still are gutsy enough to sing on stage; this means a large part of the karaoke-singing population will ALWAYS be lousy, timid, or just astonishingly drunk. (I liked the guy who came on carrying a pitcher of beer and drank out of it in between verses. He filled up the judges' cups on his way off the stage.) Second, I despise most popular music. “All the Single Ladies” makes me want to mime a dramatic death or whine or something, and that's one of the songs the winner, Shauna, sang. The runner-up, Robin/Robert Williams, sang much better songs...but not nearly as well. As he put it, "I think we can all agree I had my *** handed to me." Well, yeah.

How is one expected to choose between good songs sung adequately and piece-o'-crap songs sung admirably? Flip a coin? Argh.

The MC was also amusing. He kept swearing at the crowd to shut up; obviously, drunks aren't nice listeners, which seemed to piss him off more than it did the judges. During last week's round he dashed onto the stage and announced, “Charlie back there says there’s no way he’s getting on stage tonight. Well, I have Charlie’s keys.” There was a loud clank as they hit the hardwood floor. “So that’s how that’s gonna go.” (Charlie’s keys were a little stepped-on before he wandered on-stage to get them back.)

This week, Frank-the-MC had an assistant MC, whose name I don't remember, and who led us all in a Baby Seal-Clubbing Song. Yeah. Then he told a story about how the last time he'd led a crowd in that song he'd promptly been introduced to a pretty girl from PETA. But when he explained that he's from Alaska, and that they need the pelts to trade for gold so they can get food, she very kindly said, "I don't agree with your lifestyle choice, but I understand it."

That was almost as funny watching Frank and Assistant Dude sing "It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls while the votes were being counted. Eh, not quite.

I'm a Tooth Fairy!

It's true!

This semester, Shimer is working with IIT's theater group, 33rd Street Productions. That means that anyone could try out for anything. And so I tried out for a lot of things. I admit, I did not try out for Shakespeare, but that's only because I am just a tad obsessed with Dr. Horrible, and couldn't pass up the chance to perform in the musical. I did get a part in it, by the way, as one of Bad Horse's musical lackeys. Yay me!

The other part I have, however, is in a short skit about two tooth fairies. The first rehearsal for it as tonight, and I got to meet Anna, an IIT student who will be acting alongside me. Rehearsal lasted for an hour, and it was a blast. I mean... we get to be tooth fairies. Funny accents to play around with, a hilarious script, and soon, we'll get to play around with coming up with whimsical costumes. 

The best part about it all, in my opinion, is that we have free reign to play around with the script as much as we want. If we want to add things, or change something, we can, which will be made even easier since there are only the two of us acting and our very friendly director, Faraz. 

I can tell I'm going to really enjoy this skit. I do hope rehearsals for Dr. Horrible will be just as much fun. 

Adventures in Apartment-Finding

I've loved living in the dorms this year. I've been closer to Shimer events, I've found it much easier to get to know people, and I've enjoyed sleeping in until 9:30 and making it to a 10:00 class! Plus IIT has some cool things I've gotten to take advantage of, like the gym. Apparently there's a pool, too!

That being said, I have no intention of living on-campus next semester. I have several reasons for this. Firstly, it's significantly cheaper. Secondly, I'll be closer to work and church. Thirdly, since I'm working in Chicago over the summer I'll need a place to stay, and I'm probably going to have to sign a year-long lease anyway.

I've visited quite a few apartments and houses in my day, seeing as I'm kind of a nomad, so home-shopping for me is kind of like shoe-shopping for most people. "OOH goody, where am I moving to next?"

And I can get excited about just about any place. I was pretty chipper about this one:

That's the dining room. It's kind of...acceptable.

It's got an octagonal-ish wall! I LOVE octagonal-ish walls! At that point I couldn't see anything other than the gorgeosity of that roundedish room, plus the fact that there was a bitty bedroom right by it with a little not-exactly-porch off it. (You'd have to climb out of a window to get to it, but it was cute.)

It's...approximately the size of a large kitchen table. No, seriously. That's about the size. You could not fit a full-sized bed in here, and the closet was about 1 sq foot. Except triangular. Really.

They put cabinets over the windows. Need I say more? Oh, yeah, I should: By "unfurnished," this landlord means "without stove or refrigerator." You have to buy your own, and then drag them up the RICKETY WOODEN FIRE ESCAPE.

Those are all great examples of What Not To Look For, and also What to Deliberately Avoid.

Then Sara, Erin & I went to visit THIS place:

Pretty, nice paint, octagonal-ish and therefore perfect. Notice the radiator? Free heat. 

Also has pretty paint, and an air conditioner (unlike the dorms), and have you noticed the pretty hardwood floors yet? To the right (not pictured) there's a delightfully large bedroom with yellow textured paint on the walls. Textured yellow paint just sings "someone cares!"

Cheerful, clean, nice. Unlike at the last place, someone actually scrubbed this room before showing it to people. That = landlords who care. (Plus, several of the board members who run the place live there. Several. That's a good sign on so many levels.) Also, one of the landlords goes to my church. Knowing your landlord can be nice, since a non-stranger is somewhat less likely to rip you off. Especially if you can make the priest nag her if she dilly-dallies in fixing a problem with, say, the free, in-building washer & dryer. Free. In-building. ...Aaaaaalleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

And lastly...

What you CAN'T see in this kitchen is that it's been remodeled in the last couple years, beyond that door is a sturdy-looking fire escape that we can use as a porch, there's lots of counter space, there's a PANTRY, and above the back door there's a transom that the second-to-last owners (artists) turned into a shadowbox for displaying art and trinkets. I really, truly did not want to leave.

These two apartments are not far apart in price. Although the first had 4 teeny bedrooms and the second had one large and one itty-bitty (5 by 8, I think!), the second felt much more spacious. I feel as if 3 people will be more comfortable in the second than 4 in the first, especially considering how pleasant and pretty and open it is it is! Plus, the second is in a significantly nicer neighborhood, and not much farther from Shimer.

Thus, with any luck I'll be moving in to the Pretty One-Bedroom of Wondrousness at the end of the school year. *big grin*

Great Books--an update

Before break, I talked about my thoughts on the Great Books program, inspired by the sight of a book on the history of the Great Books. Over break, I actually read A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books. Not only did it prove to be an informative bit of background on the program, it was also entertaining in its own way.

It talks mainly of Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer C. Adler as the masterminds behind the whole idea. Adler was enamored of Plato and the western canon, and Hutchins wanted to revolutionize learning. Hutchins was the charismatic face of the program, president of the University of Chicago and a well-publicized individual; Adler worked hard at putting the enormous selections together. They got together a group of certain prominent educators and friends who were well-versed in the classics, and decided which works should be included (Fourier? Sure. Whitman? Out). Not everything was unanimous, but together they managed to include some 400-odd works in 54 volumes (the second edition has upwards of 500, in 60 volumes), the first being an introduction by Hutchins and the second  an unwieldy Syntopicon that divided certain "universal" themes in the books (among them: Angel, Element, Infinity, Justice, Sin, Theology, and Wisdom; 102 themes total, with an introduction for each!). The Encyclopedia Britannica, its publisher, enlisted many aggressive door-to-door salesmen in order to sell the sets of books (a hefty price tag of $500+ for a hefty set), and from that actually managed to make some revenue--at least for a while.

From this canon Hutchins and Adler taught classes at the University of Chicago, mostly geared towards businessmen. They envisioned students who would question and grow from learning the books, having their worldview expanded by the wisdom of the ancients. For a while, their idea was an educational craze, spawning book clubs and discussion groups across the country. Then as the decades rolled on and the post-WWII prosperity of the 50s gave way to the 60s and 70s and the opening of the cultural mindset, the heavily DWM (dead white male) representation fell under criticism, as well as their methods in selecting the books: What kind of good does it do to read 200-year-old outdated science books? Where are the history books? Where are the women/blacks/hispanics/asians/etc? Why do the translations suck and come without annotation? Although they tried to stage a revival to answer some of the criticism by releasing an expanded edition in 1990,  the expensively-produced books never made a good kickoff and crashed into the red for the Encyclopedia Britannica. Hutchins died dissatisfied with his life's work, as did Adler, who to the bitter end remained a DWM advocate, arguing, he said, their proof through the trial of time. The more recent works of the 20th century (mostly the more diverse works) had not been around long enough to prove their worth.

There lie many a 54- or 60-book collection, some opened, some not, in several thousand homes in America today. Some people really did have their lives changed by what they read. Others found them unapproachable, irrelevant, a waste of time/money, or filled with errors and DWM supremacy.

Regardless of their criticism, the Great Books are not dead today--they live on in places like The Great Books Foundation, in certain universities with Great Books courses, and even some colleges dedicated to the Great Books--like Shimer. (Sadly, the book devoted an entire chapter to St. John's, but one sentence to Shimer. I think I'm going to write the author.)

It is a curious history indeed. And the book is well worth reading.

Produce Adventures

Just last week, Brigid and I decided to go to the Egg Store, on 31st and Halsted, to purchase some cheap produce of good quality. Normally I just walk straight down 31st to get there, but a quick pit stop at the bank had us starting off walking down 35th instead. And this is where a pleasant adventure began.

Due to construction or something depriving us of a sidewalk, we started on our way to 33rd, and found someone's keys lying on the ground. No one was around, and we couldn't just leave the keys there. So we started trying to find the car that the keys belonged to, in the hopes that we could just leave them for their owner to find later on. They did not go to a single car on the street we were on. So we checked a parking lot. It makes me laugh to think what we looked like, wandering the parking lot with a set of keys and tryng to open cars with them. 

But with no luck, we continued on our journey, with the addition of "Find a CVS or Barnes & Noble so they can use the keyring card to find the owner" added to our to-do list. 

We finished the walk to Halsted by going down 33rd. Appearance-wise, it was a really nice neighborhood. There was a small park with actual swings (which I intend to visit for the purpose of swinging), the buildings were pretty, and, best of all in my opinion, there were stop signs! Coming from a place without many traffic lights, I enjoyed the stop signs at the intersections. I also felt much safer crossing streets than I do elsewhere in Chicago, the big chicken I am when it comes to that. 

Along our way through this pleasant little neighborhood, we stumbled upon a small store. There were all sorts of neat things for sale for relatively cheap inside, like the gaudy clock that tempted me inside. I feel like this shop embraces the whole "One man's trash is another's treasure" thing, because a lot of what was for sale could be considered junk by some, but would readily be purchased by someone else. I definitely want to visit again and rummage around. 

We also found a bakery. I have only ever been inside of one bakery, which was in Chinatown. And so this bakery, which was not in Chinatown, made me happy. You could look in the window and  see the pastries and breads lined up on the shelves, and they all looked so good. We didn't go inside, because we wanted to get our produce shopping done soon, but it would be fun to go back and buy something yummy.

Upon reaching Halsted, we made out way to 31st, passing small restaurants and shops along the way that were interesting in their own right. We managed to find a CVS, where we turned in the keys so they could call the owner and make sure they were returned, and went on our way to the Egg Store, with a small detour into a Chinese grocery next to our destination. 

It was the first of many adventures I expect to have this semester, and made for a wonderful day. Until then, I didn't know it could be fun to take detours, or even just wander around for a while just to see what you could find. The little discoveries you make are always the best.