What do you do with a B. A. in English?

I've seen Avenue Q last Saturday, and although this isn't a review let me just say that it was fun and entertaining and totally worth seeing. After the opening number the lead character Princeton sings the song "What do you do with a B. A. in English?" and it's hard not to be affected, ten years after graduation...

Technically my degree is a Bachelor of Arts Majoring in Literature, as world lit and Philippine lit is well covered (that's a good thing). Nonetheless, it's the same degree as Princeton's. Here's the lyrics:


What do you do with a B.A. in English,
What is my life going to be?
Four years of college and plenty of knowledge,
Have earned me this useless degree.

I can't pay the bills yet,
'Cause I have no skills yet,
The world is a big scary place.

But somehow I can't shake,
The feeling I might make,
A difference,
To the human race.

Immediately after graduation I became an Assistant Lecturer at De La Salle University. I was going to be an academician and literary scholar in addition to my grandiose dreams of literary success. After two years of teaching, here are the jobs I've had:

• real estate salesman (I didn't close a single sale)
• advertising copywriter
• insurance salesman (I didn't get my license)
• news writer, broadcast producer, director, anchor (all for AM radio)
• production assistant (for film, all for commercial advertising)
• home security system salesman (I didn't close a single sale)
• healthcare salesman/sales trainer
• freelance consultant (training and human resources)
• process security officer (MIS)
• finance officer
• paralegal (I wrote house bills for congress, those are would-be laws baby)
• call center agent (only for training purposes)
• human resources manager (organization development)
• business development manager

That's quite a lot for ten years work experience. No, I don't put all of them in my CV. How did my degree directly contribute to landing these jobs, much less making me competent in any of them? No way. A B. A. in English did nothing for me. All my skills I learned on the job. As for smarts and talent, that could have been trained better in a more useful degree.

Having said all that, I love that I studied literature. I'm not exactly well off, but I'm a man with a plan and I'm executing. I feel like I've gotten away with having a useless degree. But did I get what I want (my aspirations while I was in college)? No. Everything changed.

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Communication Twilight Zone

I was in a weird moment with my friend Ming from Laos. I saw her online at ym and decided to bug her about setting up Skype.

I had set up Skype but I haven't had a single conversation save for the test message. Neither of us had headsets with microphones, my laptop had a built-in mic, and she could hear audio just fine. So I rang her!


It was pretty strange because I knew I was in a conversation because I could read her responses on ym. She told me there was about a 20 second lag for her messages to reach me, but hey! She could hear me loud and clear after not speaking to each other for months and months.

At some point she thought the connection got cut because I got silent. It was because I was sending replies over ym as well and I thought it would be pretty dumb to say what I was already typing.

In any case the conversation continued, going over mostly what I've been up to here at home. At some point, I started thinking about what was going on, and I'll do my best here to say it concisely.

I said, "It's pretty weird that I feel like I'm talking to myself, only that I'm getting responses from a computer screen window."

"It feels like, I'm praying... like talking to God or something."


Only that I did not hear a disembodied voice, but messages on my screen.

Also, I had thought since there was no voice on the other line to interrupt me, and given the 20 second delay on ym, that I'd go on and on talking unstoppably. During phone conversations, especially over long distances we sort of rush each other to finish so that we can talk again. We even do that face-to-face (as human beings). Instead, I was stammering in places. I didn't know where to start and where to take my monologue.

I don't know if I'm going to have another conversation like that in my life. It did have a singular experience kind of feeling. I definitely am getting myself a headset with mic, and maybe even a webcam. Definitely the world just got smaller in that conversation.

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Facebook

I've gone active on Facebook, and I'm very impressed.

My first social network was Friendster, signing up on November 2003. It was real cool because I got my future wife's phone number within two weeks of joining. How about that? I also joined MySpace, but I never got into it because the UI was and is far too ghastly. Also, I wasn't into the US independent music scene where MySpace really excels at.


I started using Friendster less and less when I got quite disappointed with their blogging utility. After I migrated That's the Game! on Blogspot it was pretty much downhill for me and Friendster. That said, most Filipinos favored it, perhaps ignorant or too lazy to explore other networks. This meant any instance where I met a new set of contacts, they would invariably become my contacts on Friendster.

Over the past year I've been active on Multiply, because of the ease of use and the quality of the contacts I have there. By quality I mean these contacts actually post good stuff on their blogs and I don't mind participating in the conversations at all. A lot of them maintain their blogs on Friendster as well, but like I said, blogging there is teh suxx0rz.

On to Facebook. The blog function on Facebook is simply posting on the Notes function. It's not special in any way. It's similar to Multiply that it can import posts from Blogspot, so I'm happy with that at least. The cool thing about Facebook is that there's so many applications that can be added, modified, and removed with total ease. These range from way to interact, like poking and sending virtual gifts to friends, to displaying identity information like places I've traveled, sports-related and pop-culture related applications like Harry Potter magic spells, up to nonsense weird fun like turning your friends to zombies and raising an undead army to fight werewolves and vampires who are all my contacts.
Right now I've just resisted the urge to join the war between ninjas vs. pirates, but I have succumbed to the Dark Side and became a Sith reclaiming dominance of the Force against the Jedis. I have a virtual aquarium populated by fish sent by friends. All this done in the space of a week.

Sure there's lots of spamming due to the number of applications people add and they invite their friends to, but that's not so bad because it's so much fun.

I'll keep my Friendster account and my Multiply account, but to all my contacts: Facebook is where it's at.

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It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We Filipinos start hyping Christmas in August.


Every year I hear someone comment on how early we start playing Christmas songs on the radio compared to the previous year. It's accepted custom to start the Christmas season in September (the "ber" months), but this year I've heard Christmas songs as early as July, but played in earnest in late August.

This is my theory: August begins the pre-season hype. It picks up in September, when some buildings start displaying Christmas decor. In some cases, they just start turning on the lights they never bothered to take down from the past season. There will be some booths in supermarkets and department stores with Christmas-themed products. It dies down a bit in October, but October presents what I think is the eeriest juxtaposition: Snowmen and Santa Clause side-by-side with jack o' lanterns and ghosts. Halloween and Christmas together, nobody even notices how weird it gets in the city.


After All Soul's day the holiday festiveness picks up, leading to the month-long happy mess that is December. The seasonal celebrations continue through January (Three Kings' Day), and just kind of drifts away - because of the laziness in taking down decorations. My neighbor never bothered to take down the Santa's sled and reindeer lights at the side of their house just across ours.

What does this all mean? I love Christmas. I can't remember a single Christmas season when I wasn't happy or I didn't enjoy myself. Although every year there's less of us relatives due to the diaspora to Canada, just being together is good. Also, I have a new and much bigger family to celebrate with so it's not so bad.


Earlier we had a staff meeting planning our Christmas party. It's so much less about Jesus, but more of just the general fun and good cheer that the season brings. Soon the ads will come laying the guilt thick on how we all forget what Christmas is really about. I think the guilt is pointless. Nobody forgets Jesus on his birthday anyway. But from the tail end of August until then, we can all just have fun looking forward to having fun.

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The lunar eclipse that I didn't see

I know I've seen at least two total lunar eclipses in my lifetime, and at least two complete solar eclipses. It just bugs me that I can't remember exactly when those happened.

It's just so good there's such a thing as the internets and now I can find images like this (even though I missed out on last night's eclipse).



I've always been an astronomy fan, having known the names of the major stars by age 10. I was one of the few people who didn't mind so much when the blackouts came during the Ramos administration in the early-mid 90's. I just didn't have the resources nor the talent to pursue astronomy, or any degree in science for that matter.

In any case, I always enjoy a clear night sky. Too bad last night was a cloudy drizzle-blanket.

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How to think

In high school and throughout university, I've always been confounded by word problems (mathematics and science). Instinctively I thought that there was always a better way to solve the particular problem only that the instructions and givens did not allow for it.





Then I found this story here.

..."Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected. I read the examination question:

"SHOW HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE THE HEIGHT OF A TALL BUILDING WITH THE AID OF A BAROMETER."

The student had answered, "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring the rope up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building."

The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.

I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on.

In the next minute, he dashed off his answer which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^^2, calculate the height of the building."

At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit. While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were.

"Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building."

"Fine," I said, "and others?"

"Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units."

"A very direct method."

"Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated."

"On this same tact, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession".

"Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem.

Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."

At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.

The student was Niels Bohr and the arbiter was Ernest Rutherford.

Now I'm not estimating myself the equal of these people. Only that whenever I was involved in student government and especially when I became a teacher I felt that there was always a better way for learning to happen.

I felt that students were being trained to excel in exams, and not necessarily become thinkers. Thinkers inevitably question and criticize the status quo, and it was very easy for me to villify the practice of education using this idea.



In any case, I really am in awe of talent. When I am in the presence of it, I'm just nuts about it. The story demonstrated talent to a superlative degree. I want people like that to work with.

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