Bzzzz...

Here are the results of my cake decorating class today.  

Not half bad for a first timer, huh?

On Reading

I am the slowest reader I know (outside of a few elementary school kids), yet again and again I've found that my slow reading speed allows me to pick up on details that my peers who read the same passages in as little as half the time often miss until they have re-read the passage two or three times.  Why is this?  Is the speed that I read at the key?

I've often wondered why professors do little but review the text in so many classes and why students seem to find the minor leaps in information, that could be easily obtained through a few moments' analysis, so surprising.  Perhaps this fault of analytical review lies not with students as much as it may be blamed on the way they were trained.

As students we have been told to complete our work quickly.  From the SAT to the Georgia High School Graduation Test to college testing, the speed at which a student is capable of reading and "analyzing" a block of text is made central to today's learning environment.  But how much analysis can be done when a student is allotted less then a minute to read a page if he wishes to have any time to work on the questions?

Richard Restak, M.D. attempted to explain how reading and analysis has changed over the years in a passage from his book Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot where he describes the affect of the transition from reading aloud to silently as a societal norm:

While this transformation brought obvious advantages, it also resulted  in people's employing different speeds and rhythms for thinking, reading, and writing.  While this isn't always a bad thing[...] it can lead to stressful feelings and loss of focus.  At times, thoughts come faster than the thinker can put into words.  The manic patient's tortured complaint of a "racing mind" represents the extreme of this tendency.

Perhaps the reason why so few students comprehend what they have read in depth is because of this habit of reading passages faster then they can actually comprehend them.  Maybe the problem also branches from a simple misunderstanding of what it means to  truly read.  

According to dictionary.com, "read" is a verb that means "to look at carefully so as to understand the meaning of" or "to make out the significance of by scrutiny or observation."

What many of us find ourselves doing, and are all too often encouraged to do, is skim passages which is defined as "to read, study, consider, treat, etc., in a superficial or cursory manner."

So, the big question is this:  Are you reading or are you skimming?  Maybe we should all try reading a little more and skimming a little less.  Now I'm not saying that you can't skim over the directions on how to turn on your iPod, but maybe give the classics a real chance, read them.

Good luck and happy reading.

Proposals Gone Wrong

Well, I've been having some kind of iffy days lately, so I thought I'd share a little schadenfreude with y'all.

Enjoy not being these guys.  

Proposals Gone Wrong

Only the Good Die Young

In the midst of so many celebrity deaths (Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays, etc.) a new study has come out to refute what parents have been lecturing on for so many years.  

As it turns out, according to this study the reason why many teens take part in risky behaviors is not because they think they are invincible.  According to this study's findings the reason why many teens take life threatening risks is because they are convinced that they will die young anyway.

This bit of news seems to goes heavily against common knowledge in many ways, but also seems to make more sense then the old idea.  

Personally when I heard this my thoughts went to something that my younger brother had said to this affect a few weeks back as we sat on the porch at 12 am trying to hash out what we are going to do in this next year.  He said that he doesn't expect to live to see a ripe old age.  Funny, I can't either.  Maybe its just the chronic nightmare.  I dunno...

My brother was the one who usually ignored whatever it was that "good boys" his age were supposed to be doing until I announced that I was "taking some time off from college."  Now he is doing what he is "supposed to" and applying for junior college.  An ironic choice of paths for someone with ADHD and authority issues.  I'm sure he can pull it off, but at what cost to his character?  He was considering the military before, but with me "misbehaving" I guess he decided to go for the path mom and dad have been pushing for.

I guess the study is a reflection of what happens to people at this age between 17 and 22.  We feel pressured to conform, and we either submit ourselves to the accepted path or say to hell with it and do our own thing.

I'm glad I opted out of what I'm supposed to be doing though.  While taking the path of least residence I got to feeling like Bilbo Baggins when his journeying days were coming to an end:

"I'm old, Gandalf. I know I don't look it, but I'm beginning to feel it in my heart. I feel... thin. Sort of stretched, like... butter scraped over too much bread. I need a holiday. A very long holiday. And I don't expect I shall return. In fact I mean not to."

On the other hand, now that I am attempting, though with no great success thus far, to do my own thing Thoreau comes to mind more often.

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." 

Maybe I'll succeed, maybe I'll fail, but at least no one will be able to say that I haven't tried.

Click here for Billy Joel.

Will Work for Peanuts

I look up and watch the green sun drenched leaves stir slightly with the warm summer breeze.  I don't know where I'm going.  Then again, who does.  The "plan" for the moment is to try to kick butt at the job interview I have lined up for Tuesday.  

If I get the job, I'll be working with food again which can be super fun if the people in charge are even mildly intelligent or endlessly frustrating if they are convinced of any one of the hundred fallacies that come with the business.  I like working with food though, so maybe it'll work out.

The food thing works well with my "starving artist" results on so many career tests too because it is one of the few "art" careers where I probably wouldn't actually starve.  Ha ha.

I guess the point of this whole thing is that...  I don't know the point of this whole thing.  I want a job where I can be creative and have fun every now and then.  

It feels like senior year of high school all over again:  I want to cook and I want to write, but you can't major in both and it's pretty damn hard to do both considering neither one pays even decent unless you're hard core awesome.  

If I take this path toward cooking and writing then best case scenario I'll end out being awesome like Emeril, Rachel Ray, Guy Ferrari, etc.  Worst case scenario, I'll go broke and have to get an office job.  Sounds like a risk worth taking.

So raise your glasses, here's a toast to doing what you love even if it only pays peanuts.