blog.shimer

Of Orange Horse, Power Outages, and Missing Blog Entries

At Shimer College, we're pretty proud of our community for many reasons, from our self-governance to the unique quality of each person who makes up this community. For me, I was reminded of one of those reasons when I attended Orange Horse. Like the name, the event is rather laid back and unassuming in its atmosphere. The community gathers in the evening and begins with an introduction by the MC's. One by one, people begin to display their talents, passions, and creativity (as well as their humor). From the outside, it may look like just another talent show, but to those of us who value this community it is so much more. For me, it is one of two events that reach into the very essence of our community.

(Photo courtesy of Sofia B.)

This year the performances featured monologues, tap-dancing, short plays, poetry (both serious and humorous), and musical numbers. A few guys have been serenading Cinderella Lounge every Friday afternoon with folk and bluegrass tunes and finally made an official appearance as "The Smelly Hobos". Words can hardly describe the delightful sound as they sang of boxcars, hobos, a somber hereafter, and such. Melanie Decelles performed two slam poetry pieces which she has won awards for in venues around Chicago. 

(Photos courtesy of Sofia B.)

The funny story to this is that just before Orange Horse I had been writing an entry for this blog about seeing my childhood hero, Bill Nye. It was my second attempt at writing it after the first time my browser had crashed. I had just made the final keystrokes when the lights went out. My music stopped, my glowing blue computer was darker than the Mines of Moria, and all was quiet in the building. I threw up my hands in exasperation and went downstairs to discover the power was out across half the campus. I decided that it would be best, given that Orange Horse was about to start, that I should make my way over to the Shimer Floor.

Because I'm pretty proud of my rig, which I put together myself, I'm going to post a picture of it:

I, your semi-humble blogger, read a poem I wrote about Ireland- the home of my ancestors on my mother's side. I joked that, having offered to go first and receiving a warm round of applause for doing so, I should volunteer to go first for everything if it'll get me an applause. When the night was nearly finished, we grabbed our coats, ate the last of the hors d'œuvre, and left for our respective places to enjoy the rest of the evening. My place of choice was a small, quiet gathering with some fellow Shimerians to sit in awe of the sounds of Fu-Schnickens.

Until next time,

James

The Perks of Living with a Tech School (or, BILL NYE!!)

So, I can hardly believe that I am the first to write up a blog post on this, but on 9 November, IIT (the renowned engineering school that hosts Shimer's modest one-storey campus) presented a lecture by William Nye.  As in, the Science Guy.  Really!  (If you have not heard of this man, you have led an eminently deprived childhood and should do your best to remedy this defect by going here.  Enjoy.)  This is one of the two crowning moments of my life (the other having been another lecture by Bill Nye).  I mean, I actually got to stand in the same room as the man who introduced me to magnetism, descent with modification, and the water cycle.

I arrived in Hermann Hall about two and a half hours before the lecture, where the line had already stretched considerably longer than most do that long before an event.  I whiled away the time enjoyably with some engineering students, with whom I speculated as to what Dr. Nye would talk about and rewatched some old episodes of the show.  As we waited, the line grew to encircle the whole of the Hall (no mean feat, if you'll take a look), making me very happy I'd prudently chosen to get there so early.

A half hour before the seven o'clock starting time, the security guards (whom, as one of my engineer co-waiters noted, were probably there mainly to protected Bill Nye from being mobbed) permitted us into the auditorium, where we continued to wait around, talking about xkcd, computer science classes, and the James Webb Space Telescope (you could tell you were having a conversation with engineering students).  Finally, the (enormous) crowd exploded as an overjoyed and very lucky IIT student introduced Bill Nye.  (If it hasn't become apparent, I'm pretty excited that this was Bill Nye.)

Nye's lecture was itself pretty interesting.  His two main points were that a.) we take a lot for granted in our everyday life that depended for its introduction on painstaking scientific research and that b.) as (mostly) future engineers, his audience was in a unique position to change the role of technology in society.  To illustrate the first observation, he used the example of sundials: though we tend not to think about it, we daily use chronological measurements that owe their origins, ultimately, to people doing hard work with sticks, lines, and shadows.  These measurements, as he remarked are probably much more important than the wheel: everyone needs to measure time, but a good supply of tree trunks render wheels redundant, while hilly jungle terrain renders them mostly useless.  To illustrate the second, he gestured to a number of possible avenues for research on reusable, non-fossil-fuel-dependent sources of energy and other means of reducing climate change.

The second point, at least, left me feeling a bit left out, but it points to something really cool and unique about Shimer: being located on a big engineering campus, it offers opportunities simply not available to other, more isolated liberal arts colleges, like, say, St. John's.  You get easy access to STEM classes, mathematics and bio-engineering journals, and a really top-notch range of science-devoted students and faculty.  And Bill Nye.  Bill freaking Nye!

Continuing Madness: Where have you been, Manda???

Hey, all! I know that I haven’t written on this here blog in a while, but oy vey has my life been HECTIC! First of all, I’ve been playing bass pretty frequently at Inter-Varsity, which is basically the Christian Fellowship group on IIT’s campus. I play in the worship band and I sing as well. We also have an all girls Bible study group which I attend, which has been very interesting (For those of you who are confused right about now with the whole “wait...I thought she was Jewish” thing, I’m a Messianic Jew).

    I also decided to get baptised...in October of all months. The morning of my baptism, it was 40 degrees outside, and in my religious tradition, you have to get baptised in Mayim Chayim (living water), which meant I got submerged completely into Lake Michigan! It was a little crazy.
Afterwards, I went to go get Walker Bros (THE BEST pancake house in Chicagoland) with my synagogue friends.


    I also took my niece trick or treating for Halloween. Beka and I dressed up as matching Pretty Purple Princesses. It was her first year out, and so I had to teach her the ettiquite of Trick or Treating. She was really good and got ALL THE CANDY. I also may have gotten way too much candy as well.


    On top of all of this, I’ve been working my hardest to learn about some pretty difficult topics in my classes. Currently, I’m struggling to grasp the ideas behind two economic standpoints. We read Smith and Marx in my Social Sciences class, and while I still don’t quite understand Marx, I sympathise much more with his ideas of estranged labour. Smith’s idea that the beggar is just as secure as the king kind of alienated me from his main point. Natural Sciences has been difficult as we try to approach the idea of how heat is equivalent to energy (vis viva), and how compounds have electrochemical properties that we can use to describe their base parts (Berzelius).
   
    Hopefully, when I get pass this week (two papers due tomorrow and a show to prepare for this weekend. OH BOY!) I can just relax. My boyfriend has promised me a rib dinner, which sounds like a perfect end to this hectic week. I will also be going to Jacksonville, FL for Thanksgiving to visit my sister on base. It will be the first time I will be flying alone, so I’m excited but also very nervous. I’m also planning my summer trip to Israel to study and work on a possible ministry opportunity, so stay tuned for my next blog post, which will probably be on that subject.

Break for a Semester

David Gasper is a current student who has been working with political campaigns during his time at Shimer. He'll introduce himself in another post, but would like to bring you what he's been working with around this election time of year!

I've thought a lot on my semester off about what Shimer means to me. I could wax poetic for volumes on the quality both of our education and of our community. I could weep a new Great Lake for how much I miss the discussions in and out of the classroom. While all of that is true, what stands out most is what has changed about me as a result of just a year and a half at Shimer.

I've been doing work in the Waukegan area during my semester off. For those unfamiliar with Shimer's history, there was a time when a few buildings in the Waukegan area served as Shimer's physical home. This means that people in the area are at least passingly familiar with Shimer. Let me pause here to tell you a bit about what I've been doing. I came from school busing, and so I have returned part time to that field. The other thing I've started doing is getting involved in politics. I've been working both for a county wide political party and for a state senate race. My instinct is to tell you all about both of those, but what's really amazing is what Shimer has meant in this journey.

In school busing, I have a reputation for being able to do work quickly and under pressure, a skill Shimer has only honed to a razor edge. Things like hell week (the last week of classes before writing week starts) and the Basic Comp (the week-long examination you take after your second or third semester) kept that working under pressure skill sharp and readily available.  While other people found thinking under the harsh reality of 16-hour days, five to six days a week, to be near impossible, I found it to be a blessing I was only solving how to get a student from point A to point B and not attempting to unravel the mysteries Kierkegaard almost teased me with my last semester. I also noticed a huge change, and so did my previous boss, in that I ask A LOT more questions. Sometimes this is a wonderful thing. Upset parents and school administrators have commented to me on how they feel like I really understand their complaints and am working with them to fix their issues. I wasn't bad at this before but Shimer and learning to ask questions in a different way has helped tremendously. Sometimes it's a hindrance that I like to understand a project before I undertake it and sometimes business relationships are about doing work quick not with the deepest understanding of that work.

In the world of politics my Shimer education has been nothing short of magical for me. I'm sure all of you have heard, "Shimer is a place you learn how to think, not what to think." Nothing has made this reality more clear for me than entering into a world I knew very little about. I've learned new skills (whole new areas really) at a pace that is startling for me. I started the season with things like 'script', 'turf', and 'universe' being totally foreign words. I'm now quite comfortable not just with the terminology but the concepts behind them. I've been able to convince people to not just teach me what to do but why they do it that way. I've learned things like when to walk base (friendly voters same party as candidate) and when to walk persuasion (not-so-friendly voters from either party), why we call some universes (consumer-data and voting-data-targeted groups of voters) and walk others. It means that though I started the cycle off knowing nothing about the mechanics of running a campaign or working for a political party, I'm now confident that I'm an asset to the campaigns I work with.

Some things are the intellectual fascination of creating universes harkening back to Durkheim’s love for statistical analysis; others are much simpler. I worked an event where we put up pictures of candidates on a backdrop. For years they've had trouble with getting any adhesive working to keep them up and they spend large amounts of time trying to so. My solution was one that was simple, one that hearkens back to my Nat Sci experience magnets. The front of the backdrop was held to the frame with magnetic strips, so magnets seemed to me to be the simplest solution. It seemed like an incredible solution to them and a simple solution to me. It worked; magnets front and back meant signs held no problem. And that's what I see when we talk about "how to think, not what to think."

What's been most surprising to me is that people DO know the Shimer name. We have a really solid reputation with people who know us. Our exposure isn't as large as I'd like but a good number of lawyers and politicians (even a state senator) have heard of us. An even greater number have heard of a Great Books education. Both Shimer and the Great Books tradition have been greeted with a positive response. Comments about Shimer specifically have been about the small size of our classrooms and the community activism of the community. I didn't have the pleasure of being in Waukegan, but some of you must have caused some ruckus while there because people in politics feel the Shimer name is associated with being active in the community we lived in. I'm proud of that tradition. I'm sure some of the neighbors wouldn't find that tradition so wonderful but the idea of "to serve, not to be served" I believe starts first in our own community and then extends into the communities we live and exist in.

I never expected to be one for calls to action; I certainly didn't sit down to write this to give you one. However, that's the rub... we only affect our world by acting in it. So that's what I'd like to see all of us do more of: talk about Shimer and the Great Books program whenever you can, to whoever you can. But also, do things that make a difference in your community. By doing those things and wearing something from Shimer or by simply having a group of us making positive change in a neighborhood: people will ask, people will talk!