Month: January 2012

Do You Have Trouble Saying No to Pushy People?

~ Clarissa ~ 12 Comments

The good news is that you are not alone and you are in good company. The great Russian composer Tchaikovsky (The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Eugene Onegin, etc.) had this problem, too.

An opera singer Korsov kept bugging the great composer to write an aria especially for him. Tchaikovsky was a very sensitive, polite kind of person. He was incapable of refusing anybody directly and decisively. Korsov knew that the composer would never refuse him in strong terms and kept insisting.

Once, he appeared at the composer’s place unannounced. Tchaikovsky’s butler had been instructed to lie to Korsov and tell him that the composer was not at home.

“Never mind, I’ll just wait for him in his study until he comes back,” the insistent opera singer said.

Tchaikovsky heard that from his study and panicked. He didn’t want the obnoxious singer to find him in his study and discover that the butler had lied to him. So he hid under a sofa.

The singer came into the study, sat on the sofa, and remained there waiting for Tchaikovsky for over three hours.

In the meanwhile, the world-famous composer stayed under the sofa, almost suffocating and trying hard not to sneeze.

And after that ordeal, he actually gave up and wrote an aria for the pushy singer.

Not being able to say “no” is not a character flaw. It is actually a sign of sensitivity and tactfulness that pushy people who can’t get a hint often exploit. Don’t let them think that you are the one with a problem. If an adult is incapable of making a request in a way that makes it very easy to refuse and fails to see one’s unwillingness to do what s/he asks, s/he is the one with a flaw. 

It just bugs me how often people who are sensitive, tactful and kind are pathologized. What’s up with all those self-help books that teach people how to stand up for themselves and say “no”? Where are the self-help books for bullies and obnoxious people? Is the solution really for all of us to learn to bully others? Is the ideal society the one where we all turn into the worst stereotype of a used car salesman?

And I bold-typed the preceding two paragraphs because I think that this is a very important point.

Brilliance Is Worthless

~ Clarissa ~ 19 Comments

I have two students. One, let’s call him Darrel, is obviously brilliant and has a natural talent for languages. The other one, let’s call him LeShawn, finds languages to be very hard. Everything comes to him at the cost of a lot of effort.

Darrel relies on his brilliance, never prepares for class, fires off exams and hands them in without going over them, and eventually ends up being the worst student in the class.

LeShawn, however, comes to my office hours twice a week, goes over every single correction I make in his homework, constantly asks questions and participates in class. By the end of the course, his Spanish is phenomenal.

I’ve seen this happen so many times that it isn’t funny any more. Students who rely on their natural gifts and invest no effort into their work end up staring at their failed exams in shock. Plodding hard workers, however, always end up succeeding.

It’s all about hard work and consistent effort, people.

P.S. This post is actually a message to myself because I’m starting an intense research stretch that will last from now until the end of August. I need reminding that brilliance is nothing while perseverance and consistency are everything. I’ll tell you how it goes.

Maybe Possibly Whatever

~ Clarissa ~ 19 Comments

Clarissa: “So if a person maybe possibly decides to attempt to maybe sometime this year to make a decision to possibly start trying to get pregnant, how soon before – if one maybe possibly decides – should one stop taking the contraceptive pills?”

OB-GYN: So is your husband ready?

The words “at least” are floating in the air.

How to Motivate Young Academics

~ Clarissa ~ 7 Comments

I have a genius proposal as to how to promote enthusiasm for teaching among new faculty members and get them to love their students.

The proposal is very simple, it costs nothing to implement, and the results will be spectacular. Freshly minted PhDs who enter colleges as new Assistant Professors should be given only Freshman Seminars to teach for the first two years of their tenure track.

Those young academics who survive this ordeal will never complain about teaching or their students again. Higher-level students they will get to teach after the Freshman Seminars will seem absolutely brilliant to them. And they will feel so grateful to their administrators for getting them out of teaching freshmen that their loyalty to their college will be limitless.

I taught freshmen only once, last semester. As a result, the more advanced students I have now seem almost bizarrely intelligent, hardworking, responsible, mature, and enthusiastic about learning. Imagine, none of them spend half of the class period chanting “I want multiple choice!” And when I come into the classroom and greet them, they greet me, too. They also sign their emails.

“I’m not sure if I ever taught a Freshman Seminar,” a colleague says pensively.

“If you are not sure, then you haven’t taught it,” I say. “This is not an experience one is likely to forget.”

I Need to Move to Norway

~ Clarissa ~ 76 Comments

Because authorities in Norway are not intimidated by the screechings of “But this is my culture! But my religion mandates it!” when it comes to defending the rights of children:

The story of an Indian couple’s children being taken away by Norwegian social services on objections of them being fed by hand and sleeping in their parents’ bed has attracted worldwide attention and the intervention of the Indian government.

In May last year, Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya’s children three-year-old Abhigyan and one-year-old Aishwarya were taken under protective care by Norwegian Child Welfare Services and they have been in foster care since. Norwegian authorities equate being fed by hand as force feeding and deem it inappropriate for parents to sleep with their children, according to a report Monday on IBN-CNN’s website.

Of course, people who don;t like this system, probably should not move to Norway.

Abortion-Promoting Liberals

~ Clarissa ~ 13 Comments

Hatred of progressive values makes some people delusional. Look what I just found:

One is either an abortion-hating, pro-war, pro-market deregulation conservative or a abortion-promoting, anti-war, pro-market regulation liberal.

Have you met an “abortion-promoting Liberal”? I can just imagine Liberals being shipped on buses into an area to hand out leaflets saying, “Abortion is good! Have abortions now and be saved!” There must also be Liberals who stand in front of OB-GYN offices hounding pregnant women into aborting and screaming insults in their faces. And the most progressive Liberals must certainly be known for shooting to death midwives and doctors who deliver babies.

On the weird planet this blogger lives, such Liberals probably exist. In real world, Liberals promote rights, not actual abortions.

The rest of the post is as egregious. It goes as far as suggesting that being Liberal somehow translates into being 100% anti-Israel. Of course, if you try very hard, you can ensure that you never see any reasonable Liberals with a nuanced point of view. Who needs nuance, though, if you can just oversimplify, generalize and congratulate yourself for making the world so easy to understand?

This is not the first time I’m catching the quoted blogger in intellectual dishonesty (this is a polite term for nasty lies.)

Why can’t some people promote their political agendas without turning into outright liars? Might that be because their position is completely untenable and they need lies to bolster it?

Children of Single Mothers

~ Clarissa ~ 35 Comments

What do people mean by this weird expression “children of single mothers”? That their fathers are all married? Or that they were conceived by the Holy Spirit?

See this article, for example. It talks about “the percentage of children born to unmarried women.” OK, the article in itself is beyond silly but forget about that for the moment. How come these children are born just to women? Aren’t they supposed to be born to women and men, married or unmarried? Or does a father only count if he is officially married to the child’s mother? That can’t make sense.

The only child that we know of who was born to a woman with no male participation was Jesus. And even he had two fathers.

And then we start asking ourselves why men are less involved in parenting than women. Might that be because they are constantly and stubbornly erased from their children’s existence?

On Joe Paterno and the Wisdom of My Blogroll

~ Clarissa ~ 5 Comments

Every single blog post and article I have ever read about Joe Paterno was unapologetically critical of his failure to take action and stop a pedophile. I read in those article that some people still defend him and that accolades are heaped on him by fans. I, however, haven’t seen a single piece of writing, tweet or comment trying to excuse him.

This tells us that it’s crucial to pay attention to the quality of sources one adds to one’s blogroll and the kind of people one follows on Twitter. It seems like my blogroll and my Twitter account are populated by people who don’t think that child abuse is an insignificant matter.

And that is very good.

And For the Especially Clueless: Ron Paul Is NOT a Libertarian

~ Clarissa ~ 39 Comments

He is a fake Libertarian who is supported by Fundamentalist Evangelicals and is interested in nothing but promoting their savage and barbaric beliefs:

When GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul was asked today about Tuesday’s federal court ruling upholding an aggressive new sonogram law in his home state of Texas, the congressman said the requirement that women seeking an abortion first get a sonogram “should always have been a Texas state position.’’

What are the chances that the guy who supports the governmental intrusion into your body will be opposed to the governmental intrusion into your bed, your bank account, your smoking, drinking and reading matter, etc.? Seriously, how clueless do you have to be not to notice that this Ron Paul character supports an extremely powerful state apparatus that will police your body parts like there is no tomorrow?

Yes, he pretends he will legalize pot. And that makes him yet another candidate who lies through his teeth to get elected. Just think about it: how likely are his Fundamentalist backers to allow him to move even an inch in that direction? And if he is in favor of the government controlling what happens inside of your body, how can he possibly be against, say, mandatory drug tests? It isn’t logical, folks. You want to mandate sonograms, you can’t oppose mandating drug tests. Nobody would be able to make an argument supporting the former but opposing the latter.

It is so annoying to see smart, well-read, politically conscious people swallow Ron Paul’s lies and not see that he is in no way different from the fanatical Huckabee, to give just one example.

So whenever you are tempted to take this Evangelical clown seriously, ask yourself the following: Ron Paul wants the government to rummage in women’s vaginas. What does this tell us about his general attitude to an extremely powerful and intrusive government?

Don’t start typing out a response immediately. Just think about it for a moment. And now consider the following question:

Brian Williams should ask him tonight at the debate whether he would agree that a state government has the right to demand pat-downs at its airports. I’d be curious to hear the answer.

If Ron Paul says no, he is a hypocrite of enormous proportions. If he says yes, then he recognizes he favors an all-powerful government whose right to police your body is inviolate.

It makes a lot more sense to support a candidate who is both pro-sonogram and pro-drug tests because such a candidate is at least trying to be consistent.

I just had a grad student offer me a long rant on how Ron Paul is a good candidate because he supports withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. I agree that Ron Paul may attempt to stop waging a war in Afghanistan. (And we all know that he will fail completely in that effort, don’t we?) I also know, however, that he will wage a war against his own people. Women, you know, are people, too. And I consider invading women’s uteri an act of aggression.

Truck Nutz

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

I will never become truly American, I’m afraid. I’ve been living on this continent since 1998, and yet, there are realities that I am completely unaware of. Blogger P. rhoeas acquainted me with the phenomenon of truck nutz today.

Here is what they look like:

I don’t know what it says about me, but I’m totally into the pink ones. And to the professor who ridiculed me when I said, “In American roadtrip literature a car symbolizes a penis,” what can you say now?

From the following comment on Amazon, I discovered that the truck nutz are supposed to bring good luck:

These balls are a bit large when hung from the rearview mirror of my Prius. They obstruct vision a bit when they swing back and forth. Otherwise they work great. I’ve had quite a bit of luck since I swapped out the ole lucky rabbits foot.

You can find a great selection of them here.