LIFE
My man leaves for an academic conference in Paris today. F(r)ancy :0)
This morning, the first thing I said to him was, “what is the evolutionary reason men have beards and women don’t?”
I played with his beard. He paused.
“I think it has something to do with testosterone,” he answered.
Then he said, “But some women do have beards.”
“True,” I said. (I thought about the hair I found on the left side of my chin and wondered what the evolutionary purpose for that could be…)
“To be sure, though, you should ask an evolutionary biologist,” was his conclusion.
I love that he didn’t say I should google it.
Something I really respect about my man is the desire for the ultimate accurate information. As annoying as I have found it sometimes, I’ve discovered a new angle of appreciation for his automatic deep thinking about every. Single. Subject. Nothing is trivial, dismissive, worth flippancy. Everything is a learning opportunity.
We then talk for a little while about his students and the grading system I deem the least oppressive grading protocol I’ve heard a teacher share. He grades his community college students with their input. He asks them to bring in all of their notes and talks with them about their participation and attendance. He doesn’t make assumptions about who they are or what they’re capable of because he’s known part of them for 3 hours over 12 weeks. He helps them learn to evaluate themselves and therefore, feel in control of their own destiny.
I was thinking about what a difference that would’ve made to me at any point in my education: to have a teacher sit down with me and reveal their evaluating process and ask me to start forming my own, might’ve saved me years of undoing the unconscious striving for the “A” that doesn’t exist.
Photo by Bella Zhornist. Hat: Wilson’s Leather, Coat: Cole Haan, Scarf: Black Brown, Gloves: Wilson’s Leather, Lips: M.A.C. Ruby Woo.
At a party last night, I was talking to an undergraduate student at Columbia about how bad the “stress culture” is on campus.
“If I hadn’t found my group of friends,” she said with a deep exhalation, “I honestly don’t think I would’ve made it.”
…
I told her it was the same in the grad programs. There’s way more work than one human is capable of producing—performing. And stress, whether or not anyone wants to admit it, is encouraged by the structure of learning.
We are trained as young people to aim for the perfect, for the “A,” encouraged to sacrifice our sleep, our bodies, our unique minds to get it.
Because, we’re told, it will be worth it after it’s over.
What no one tells you when you’re that young person is that there is no “over.”
The “A” just moves. It burrows deeply into your consciousness and lives there until you get tired of being tired, stressed, overworked and marginally happy, so you dig it out and squish it under your toes.