Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

When I was in high school I found myself feeling strongly about some issues. I grew up near a state mental hospital and I found myself trying to articulate the spectrum of helping folk with mental illness and taking away their sovereignty when they are a threat to themselves and others. This was long before I married a psychologist who works in a (different) state mental hospital but as I type this I realize that they are probably connected in some way. And that there is writing to learn about myself.  In high school I started journaling because trying to articulate non-trivial thoughts in my head wasn't successful, but writing them out helped me to be clearer to myself. As a parent, as a teacher, as a sometime leader, as a sometime ombudsperson, I feel the need to be grounded in what I believe. Not stagnant but neither adrift. Writing to learn about myself has an invaluable tool for me for self-discovery. It has also helped my writing in general and I am immensely grateful for tha...

By and large I am a proponent of free speech; when free speech is not permitted, bad things ensue. There is a correlation there if not a causality. For that reason I am nervous about protesters preventing folk from speaking. Protest is necessary because we live in a world of real evil, for which the status quo is not a defense. That protest does not by and large have to prevent folk from stating their piece; it can ensue, in an asynchronous dialogue. This past week, after the horror of the massacre of school children and teachers in Uvalde, TX, Governor Abbott and Senator Cruz appeared at a press conference. Both of them have taken large amounts of money from the NRA. Both have resisted every effort to stop these massacres from recurring. (Good people can differ on how to prevent them, but doing nothing is evil, pure and simple.) Beto O'Rourke, Governor Abbott's main rival in his reelection campaign, disrupted the press conference.  He called all on the stage out for not doing ...

It's kind of hard to put words together. It hurts so much that elementary school children and their teachers were killed in an act of violence that was totally preventable, and that evil politicians and lobbyists are already working to enable the next mass shooting.  

So many of our transitions are gradual. My hairline has taken years to recede to its current location. I became really good at dicing potatoes after decades of cooking.  Rarely is there a before and after; there is only progression along a timeline. Tomorrow is my university's Commencement, when we pay attention to something that does have a before and after. Before the Commencement, the participants are students at the university, and after they are no longer, at least not in the same degree programs. There is hooplah, speeches, fancy outfits. We do all we can to draw attention to the fact that for this one thing there is a before and after and we want to be able to remember it vividly. I attended Commencements of older students before my own and being in academia I have attended many others since then. I spend time looking at the faces of the students who are the focus of this rite of passage, since however jaded I may be it is new for them. Many students are indifferent to the c...

To be concise:  to permit the sale of weapons of mass slaughter such as was used in Buffalo a couple of days ago, the burden of proof should be on the seller to ensure that the purchaser does not want to kill people with it. The idea that the burden of proof goes the other way, that unless there is evidence that the purchaser will kill with the gun the seller bears no moral or legal responsibility is dangerously stupid.

It is unclear to me why we name buildings, cities, roads, etc. after people. The names persist long after any common knowledge of the people exists.  Inevitably the people that things are named after are flawed. All are human and have fallen short of the glory of God. If the flaws turn out to be egregious, things are sometimes renamed after other people and the process begins anew. Honoring people by perpetuating their names alone and not the qualities that made them worthy of honor seems to miss the point. Completely.

Most of my work for the semester is done. I have one more class to give a final exam to and grade.  My schedule that used to have class meetings every weekday is now free.  My task list has shrunk to one third of what it used to be. I'm going to hold off a bit more before starting summer things (class preparation for the Fall, reading on topics in my field, getting back to a paper I half-started) to try to really unclench. In yoga I was first introduced to the notion of counterpostures, to help maintain flexibility by stretching in ways opposed to the stretches you just did. For me it's important to have mental counterpostures as well. I have a good book on financial mathematics that overlaps with the probability that I teach every other year. I want to spend time on it, work on some exercises, do something different than what I taught this year. COVID permitting I will be going to my first national conference in years this summer. There is as much to do preparing for it as I ...

Our university, like many others, has a Reading Day between the end of classes and the beginning of final exams. It makes sense not to ask students to go straight from classes one day to cumulative final exams the next day. But: many of my colleagues no longer give final exams. Some classes do not naturally lend themselves to exams. I have taught our first-year general studies class a number of times and there is a limit to what can be assessed in that class on exams. Many classes use the time for single- or group-presentations. That leads to brinkmanship when someone is sick and sidelines a whole group, leading to incompletes for students who are ready to complete. Many faculty offer lightweight academic experiences (just get together for a shallow discussion) that are not assessment. I'm older than many of my colleagues, and I'm a bit less flexible about such things. I like the idea of a cumulative final exam as a way of trying to put the entire course in context. In particul...

I met with a student this morning who had to face the fact that she had not passed my class. This was obvious to me as their average for the semester over 15 assessments was below 20%. I had repeatedly asked her/him to meet me in office hours or by appointment to go over the content. They had managed to think that it would all work out without doing so. When working with someone in denial, I always second-guess myself; did I communicate enough, or fervently enough? I have been in denial at times in my life. Most folk have. How do you help someone in denial? Here are some thoughts: 1) There is no approach that will make either of you happy. If that is your metric, all choices are bad. 2) The urge is to run away when someone is not hearing what you are saying about reality. That doesn't solve things and has to be resisted. 3) Bad is bad but few things are as bad as they appear to be when adjusting to reality. Life really does go on. There are options. The problem seems more to be abo...

I have a senior who is failing a class with me that (s)he needs to graduate. Mine is not the only class that will keep her/him from graduating, but it still feels bad. What does it take to fail one of my classes?  Few students do so. I provide weekly feedback as to their progress in the class so a primary filter is the deadline for withdrawing from the class early enough to prevent the F from appearing on their transcript. I typically offer around twenty assignments per term, so failing one of my classes requires consistent failure across a large a number assessments.  It is possible to do poorly on all of my exams (which typically add up to 50% of the term grade) and still pass assuming that there is something on the exams worthy of partial credit. So I'm having a meeting (at the student's request) later this week with a student with a 12% overall average. It's not going to be a happy meeting, and there's nothing I can do in terms of preparation other than make sure I ...