blog.shimer

Team Shimer at St. Baldrick's

Hola Amigos! How's it going? I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya (cf. Jim Anchower). Well, I thought maybe Sara would beat me to the punch on this, but it looks like I get to tell you about our adventure last week at the St. Baldrick's event at IIT's "Bog." In brief, I, Sara, and alumnus Eric Nicholson got our heads shaved to raise $$ for children with cancer (and me to get a haircut at the same time). We raised more than a thousand dollars, though I am not sure how much exactly. Eric's contribution was by far the most impressive though: he had been growing his hair for more than twenty years, after losing it all when he had chemotherapy in his own bout with cancer. Wow. So, he got the pony tail clipped and bagged as it was long enough to help make a wig for a bald child. Now that's giving. Here's a photo of us all after the clipping:

Last Week/MWA

     It's been almost a week since my last post. I was getting so used to it being a part of my week-daily routine and then my computer went on the fritz. I suppose I could have written my posts in Shimer's computer lab (which, although small, is quite nice), but to write I need my own computer, my own space.

     Last Week's thoughts (condensed):

The Wordiness of Worddom

     Being around words all day can make a person a little flustered. There are just so many to be remembered, thought about, argued over. Pronunciation can get a little confusing when people are from all over these states (and from around the world).
     So, making up words just adds to the confusion.
     As a general rule, certain words, that already have meanings, should not be re-defined. My roommate really hates it when I say 'triangulate' and mean 'a meeting between three people, thus making a triangle'. Seeing as that is not even close to the correct definition, I suppose I can understand her annoyance when I exercise my creative linguistic license.
     However, there are times in class when a well made-up word can really capture the essence of what needs to be said. Like when a certain Shimer student, when speaking of an omelette, says, "The omeletteness of the omelette is what makes it pure." Or, "the chairyness of the chair makes it seem more red."
     We all understand what he means when he says it, he (usually) follows the rules of English grammar. Sometimes it is actually helpful in class because once in a while there really is no one word that captures the meaning of what we are discussing.

Haiti

     The last Community Tuesday we had featured Erik Badger, an alum, who spoke about Haiti. He, along with Professor Steve Werlin, have been working down in Haiti for a while now and are especially busy since the recent devastating earthquake.
     He told us about all of the help Haiti could use right now, not just donations but volunteer work as well. He also filled us in on the current political situation and connected us (via Skype) with Steve Werlin who is still in Haiti.
     To read Steve Werlin's statement about the aftermath of the earthquake go to: http://alumni.shimer.edu/s/1028/index.aspx?sid=1028&gid=1&pgid=252&cid=1154&ecid=1154&crid=0&calpgid=61&calcid=772

Midwest Worker's Association

     Many Shimer students volunteer with the Midwest Worker's Association (MWA) on a weekly basis. "The Midwest Worker's Association's purpose is to provide a wide range of social and health survive-and-get-on-your-feet services and referrals to organize advocacy of working families not covered by traditional labor laws and organizations" (from Loyola University's Website).

     Shimerians help out by distributing food donations, getting in contact with other organizations that can help the people of Chicago and collecting supplies like food.
     People are encouraged to help out in any way they can, like donating clothing or canned goods or participating in drives like the Super Bowl Sunday Tamale Benefit. Students and other volunteers worked many hours to make vegetarian and meat tamales and then sold them around the community to raise money for the people in need of help in Chicago.
     Currently, many people in the dorms here are planning on donating clothing to the MWA to be distributed throughout Chicago.

Playing: Still Mass Effect 2
Classes Today: Nat Sci 2, Soc Sci 2 and Hum 2

From our own correspondent

This being my first blog post, introductions are in order. I happen to be one of the human race’s more fortunate members: I’m on the faculty at Shimer College. I read and discuss “the best that has been thought and said” for work. Go figure. (I also happen to be Shimer’s current Dean of Students, but I’ll leave that for another post.) 

Most of the time, I ply my trade here in Chicago with the folks you already know - Brigid, Kieran, Sara et al and their colleagues in class. But now and then I get to take the show on the road. Last year I was the Director of Shimer’s program in Oxford (and just signed on for another stint there next year; life’s good. Here, by the way, is a link to the blog we did during our stay there last year.). But I write to you today to relate my recent jaunt up and down the coast of California with Cheryl Park, one of our Admission counselors. 

Some of you have already talked or written with Cheryl, I’m guessing. If you have you know how smart and nice she is in her unassuming way (and if you haven’t yet, tell her I sent you). I’ve known that since I met her, but what I didn’t know is that she’s a filmmaker. I found that out as we shot the breeze driving up and down the left coast between engagements to spread the word about Shimer. She makes documentaries mostly (or, that’s what I’ve been able to get out of her about herself so far), but she’s also an expert on experimental film. And she is the first person ever to get me to do karaoke. In short, the talent is deep here. 

Cheryl’s been out in Cali for going on three weeks now. I’ve been out twice myself during her tour, once a couple weeks ago to the LA area and Santa Barbara, and then just this last weekend to Monterey. On the first trip, I got to dine at the Jonathan Club on the beachfront in Santa Monica with Andrea and Rhos Dyke, the parents of Lance, who graduated last year (and, among other things, fenced for the University of Oxford and studied Lute last year on the program abroad). With us on that evening was Ruth Grubb, a College Counselor at Pacific Palisades High School. We talked a lot about the woes Californians are having with their state school system with the recent budget cuts. And we talked about more ways to get the word out about Shimer.

The next day, Cheryl and I went up the coast to Santa Barbara City College, a two-year college that sends many of its graduates on to four-year programs (most of them into the California State University and University of California system). Our host there was Professor Celeste Barber of the College’s English Department. Celeste helped design and now teaches in the SBCC Great Books program, and hosted a reception with students from the school interested in possibly attending Shimer. We went to lunch down in the harbor district with a student and Manoutchehr M. Eskandari-Qajar, a historian of Persia and political scientist who leads the Middle Eastern Studies club at SBCC. It was a filling and stimulating lunch. 

To finish off the weekend, Cheryl and I had a series of meetings with individual students around the area who had expressed interest in Shimer. That’s the thing about our Admission department - they give as personalized treatment as one gets all the way through the program at Shimer, where I know every student by name (and in most cases more than that). All told, Cheryl seemed to think the trip had gone well, and I had to agree.

Two weeks later - that is, just this past weekend - I went back out and met Cheryl up in the Bay area. This time, we were off to Monterey Peninsula College. We were joined on the visit by Ken Knabb, an alumnus of Shimer in 1964, back when the school was in Mount Carroll, Illinois. (If you’re not up on that history, it’s what I’d call a long story, but a good one. You can find more about the school’s storied past here.) 

Ken is a fascinating person. He came to Shimer in 1961 from the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, matriculating when he was just 16, an early entrant of the kind that Shimer’s welcomed since it adopted the Hutchins Program from the University of Chicago. When he graduated (in 3 years!) he moved out to Berkeley and has lived there since, in the same small cottage, lined floor to ceiling with his books. Ken’s a student of anarchism and especially the Situationists, whose writings he has translated and published, including here on his website. I’ve had the occasion to use his Situationist Anthology in a class and can tell you it’s an invaluable addition to any library of political thought. 

Cheryl, Ken and I made it to Monterey by about 12:30 last Friday and set up shop in a conference room in the Humanities building dedicated to Monterey Peninsula College’s Great Books Club. Our host in Monterey was Professor David Clemens, who is the Coordinator of the school’s Great Books program, with a significant interest in how technology interfaces with education. We also met a few other faculty in the Great Books Program, and two students, Joshua Converse and Jaclyn Carpenter. 

We had a great chat about the whole “great books idea,” which is the title of David’s introductory course to a curriculum of great books courses that Monterey Peninsula College hosts not only in its classrooms but also online. Beyond the ins and outs of doing great books education on the internet, our conversation ranged from the structure of Shimer classes and the curriculum to changes in American writing for the stage and beyond that to the evolving character of American heroic figures (from cowboys to private detectives to spacemen, e.g.). And we ate cookies. All in all, for a literate crowd, it was a total blast. 

More later, and very nice to meet you.

You can read more about Stuart on Shimer's Website.

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.