Comments for Chad Orzel

Comment on “Men in Humanities” and “Poetry for Physicists” by thm

thm — Fri, 05 Oct 2018 15:52:26 +0000

In college I remember having a discussion about the “physics for poets” vs “poetry for physicists” dichotomy with an English-major friend of mine. Another way to think about it: all the required humanities classes are “easy,” at least for the serious aspiring humanities scholar. It’d be like making aspiring physicists start with “physics for poets.” So it’s really the serious humanities students who are getting cheated, not the physicists.

Second: the introduction to music class I took to satisfy the arts requirement really was a “physics for poets” equivalent in the humanities. Being a regular classical music listener, and having had a few years of piano lessons, it was completely trivial in a way that “physics for poets” would be trivial to physics majors.

Third: I argue that the contemporary humanities curriculum and focus is largely still a reflection of what upper-class families in the 19th century considered essential to becoming a cultured elite. Most bemoaning of the status of humanities ignores what I think is this elephant in the room. This piece can be read as reinforcing the idea that higher education is primarily about acculturation, with phrases like “their general spectrum of expression and ideas becomes rigid and stunted, thus limiting and endangering society as a whole.”

Fourth: I don’t see how women earning 61% of masters and 54% of doctoral degrees in the humanities supports the argument that there aren’t enough men. And the percentage of female humanities teachers is the same as the overall percentage of female primary and secondary teachers: this isn’t about the humanities, it’s about teachers. And symphony orchestras are (still?) about 2/3 men. And if you consider music more broadly, there is no shortage of men in the music performance careers that don’t need to wend through college first. And I think overall the arts are roughly evenly split, between men and women.

Fifth. to “encourage boys and men to pursue professional careers in the arts and humanities”. What careers? Which is to say, making a living in the arts and humanities is even more a matter of expert performance than the sciences, to make reference to my earlier comments here. Why encourage anyone to try to make a living as a novelist or bassoonist or sculptor, who isn’t obsessed with it to begin with? There are many more aspirants than jobs to begin with.

Sixth. Which brings me back to the (implicit) point about acculturation. Even if they don’t become professional artists, we’re supposed to believe that exposure to the arts and humanities is uniquely suited to making people better. You can look at regrettable decisions by non-humanities leaders and, with enough hindsight bias, decide that more humanities would have led to a better outcome. But this sort of claim really needs more evidence, not just a repackaging of early 20th century educational aspirations.

Comment on “Men in Humanities” and “Poetry for Physicists” by Daryl McCullough

Daryl McCullough — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 14:14:34 +0000

I think there is a difference between STEM classes and humanities classes (regardless of what sex you are), which is: money. Not to be too crass, but a lot of the students who are in STEM majors are there not because they are so tremendously interested in science, but because they have been told that that’s the best way to get a good-paying job.

Comment on #UnionCollegeChallenge and Basque Cinema by Kenneth Thomas

Kenneth Thomas — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 08:31:11 +0000

A brief commentary: it’s not clear to that there are “best” ways of reading / that Occam’s razor applies. But there are better ways of reading, and the above seems reasonable.

As well, there are situations in which the interpretation doesn’t matter, as so much the information carried in the process of reading, interpreting and discussion.

For instance, one might view the above with an interest in terrorism in Europe, or the issues of separatism in Spain and Europe, and be better informed (to some extent) about an ongong process — or use this as a stepping stone to other work (examining the films and their language/rhetoric).

Thanks for stepping over.

Comment on #UnionCollegeChallenge and Uncomfortable Talks by Erika Nelson

Erika Nelson — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 11:59:28 +0000

Chad, such an interesting take on your experience of papers that are read out loud, which is indeed common practice for presentations that include literary and cultural criticism, my primary area of interest. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and in the spirit of Union’s Challenge, I thought I’d offer a short response. Your post made me wonder to what extent we are shaped by the common practices of our disciplines. The very paper presentations you struggle with are the ones I personally prefer — perhaps simply of our sheer habit — as ideas and arguments can be developed more fully and sustained for some 15 to 20 minutes. Then again, I love listening to long podcasts, audio books, and great lectures on literary criticism, for instance, and often for the very same reason.

Stranger to me are poster presentations, which always end up feeling largely inadequate to me — especially if there are other people presenting posters simultaneously. This format often seems to trivialize the work that’s been done. Even if one stands and speaks with the person for 15 to 20 minutes and thoroughly reads through all of the sections, there are typically so many things not explained, so many distractions, a sense of little time, and all too often a presenter who doesn’t take their listener into consideration, and thus I never quite feel that I leave with a full understanding of what the project entails. I do appreciate the visuals and the content, however, and I imagine I’d appreciate poster presentations more if they were presented differently. But typically, I’m just not a fan…

I did however like the panel discussion on “Constructive Engagement,” which was held on Friday evening before the inauguration in the Nott, as it allowed several people to share their ideas on a common topic. In my opinion, there still wasn’t enough time to really discuss things in greater depth, and ideally this type of conversation could be/should be done with fewer participants and with more time so that everyone would be actually able to ask all those questions and make all those comments they desired before the end of the event. I’d love to see more of these types of events on campus.

Comment on College Admissions Could Maybe Use Some Collusion by e

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 12:18:37 +0000

The process, as it is, is essentially a prisoners dilemma situation. Students would all be better served by applying to a few schools they are interested in, select quickly from acceptances, and move on. Efficient, inexpensive, and gamed by the few that are going to take the scattergun approach and apply to 8 ivy’s, 5 top tech (MIT, Caltech etc), 6 other majors (Stanford, and so on)….. I had a student this year that applied to 30+ schools. 1580 SAT score. No acceptances from “top” schools, as he had no significant distinguishing characteristics. Only a few of these skew the pool everywhere.

So, all applicants end up taking the same approach, many get burned, and many schools end up with a less qualified acceptance pool, since the ‘didn’t get in anywhere’ commit to a “lesser” school before the waitlist gets to them. The only ones that like this process are the Harvard’s, where the process boosts the selectivity rating.

Comment on College Admissions Could Maybe Use Some Collusion by Trent Goulding

Trent Goulding — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 17:57:36 +0000

My wife is currently sending me weekly links to discussions on College Confidential (actually, more frequent lately since it’s admit season), and my daughter only turns 13 next month.

So yeah, I’m feeling this issue, for sure. (And I’m relatively calm; both me and daughter have told her she needs to dial the angst down because she’s stressing us out).

Comment on The Impossibility of Response by thm

thm — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 17:14:35 +0000

What I’ve been thinking about recently is the extent to which we should consider physics, or history, or any academic discipline, to be akin to areas widely acknowledged to be the domain of expert performance, such as athletics or music. Things where success usually involves a huge chunk of one’s youth, in an obsessive, immersive environment. Where there are more with aspirations than there are jobs. And where there’s a distribution of talent that spans orders of magnitude from the most talented and famous to vanishingly nothing for those who haven’t studied. In physics, at least, I think of the thousands of physicists who are better than I am, many by orders of magnitude (as in Landau’s scale), but also that I am better at physics than billions of people, also by many orders of magnitude.

As a society, we have do have some sympathy for, say, the minor league ballplayer who never makes it to the majors, or the cellist who never gets a job in an orchestra. But it’s limited sympathy, because everyone knows the odds.

A big categorical difference between academics and athletics or music is that the moment of reckoning comes about a decade later in life.