At the EFF party, the friend of a friend made a vivid statement about the value of helping high school and college students figure out what job fits them best. When I asked if I could quote him in my blog, he said he preferred this way of putting it:

I believe a large fraction of people around ages 16-22 are ignorant of what kinds of work environments and activities will make them happy and productive later in life. Current classroom-based training structures do not provide exposure to work environments. The cultural and social pressures from media, family and friends can be overwhelming and can often lead to people being very confused, and hence, making poor choices. I’ve seen that people tend to get very limited and highly biased information that leads to making training choices and work choices early in their life that are often not well matched for the person’s individual genius. By mid 20′s and 30′s, getting out of these poor choices is extremely difficult, as financial requirements as one ages grow and available time to retrain diminishes. Expectations of experience grow as one gets older, and the neural ability to quickly learn and master new skills diminishes, especially much later, after 40 or 50 years. All of these factors point toward a critical need to have experienced, outside input into making early choices about career paths, and what types of experiences individuals would benefit from most. Such advice is available, and can be found – but it is not commonly accepted that expert outside opinion is the best source for career and training choices for young people. Kids get it mostly from their parents and friends – neither of which are consistently accurate, trained in normal psychology, or unbiased in their assessments. While many schools have “guidance counselors”, I have seen most of the service offered as severely lacking (like much of public education) when compared with the needs of students, both in quality and quantity. I think there is are enormous unmet needs in many cultures, the US in particular, to provide more assistance to people in their late teens and college years to deeply explore what career options best fit their personality, and provide assessment and testing with definitive recommendations for majors, mentors, internships, and work choices.

Furthermore, when viewed on the societal level, there is an obvious argument that a society will function better when higher percentage of the population finds work/life situations that leave them happier and more productive. This I feel is even more important than providing education looking out on the 10-20 year technology horizon. In a world where most educational materials and social connections will be portable, open source, and available online – the problem will not be as much about getting information, skills, or training, but in individuals being tracked toward education options, career paths, and work environments that work best for them: a problem not easily solved with mass distribution of content or any technology solution.

This view arises partly from his own experience. He majored in Chemistry and Physics, then got a Ph.D. from Stanford in Biomedical Informatics. After working in that area for several years, he discovered that what he really enjoyed was building communities, and moved in that professional direction. Currently he is building an online community to share digital media content.

From Inside Higher Ed:

T. Hayden Barnes opposed his university’s plan to build two large parking garages with $30 million from students’ mandatory fees. So last spring, he did what any student activist would do: He posted fliers criticizing the plan, wrote mass e-mails to students, sent letters to administrators and wrote a letter to the editor of the campus newspaper. While that kind of campaign might be enough to annoy university officials, Barnes never thought it would get him expelled.

Rather than ignore him or set up a meeting with concerned students, Valdosta State University, in Georgia, informed Barnes, then a sophomore, that he had been “administratively withdrawn” effective May 7, 2007. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university’s president, wrote that he “present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus” and referred to the “attached threatening document,” a printout of an image from an album on Barnes’s Facebook profile. The collage featured a picture of a parking garage, a photo of Zaccari, a bulldozer, the words “No Blood for Oil” and the title “S.A.V.E.-Zaccari Memorial Parking Garage,” a reference to a campus environmental group and Barnes’s contention that the president sought to make the structures part of his legacy at the university.

“The best way to learn is to do,” wrote the late Paul Halmos at the beginning of an article about how to teach college math that inspired me to start self-experimenting. Jonathan Schwarz says something similar:

America is so completely depoliticized that I support people doing pretty much anything (except forming neighborhood fascist gangs, and even that doesn’t worry me too much). Perhaps I’m foolishly optimistic, but I believe people will learn from the horrendous mistakes they’ll surely make. And even if they don’t, giving it a shot is the only way they have even a possibility of doing so.

Well put.

A subtle defense of the Iraq War? If Halmos were alive I like to think he’d agree with this:

Lesson 1: The best way to learn is to do.

Lesson 2: And the best thing to do is something small.

Halmos excerpts.

From Until Proven Innocent by Stuart Taylor and K. C. Johnson, about the Duke lacrosse case:

The Duke president addressed the [lacrosse] team for the first time since May a few weeks into its fall practice. . . . When Brodhead opened the floor for questions, Read Seligmann’s former roommate, Jay Jennison, spoke up. He said that all of the team had learned much from the case . . . “What have you and the administration learned?” Jennison asked Brodhead. . . . Brodhead responded, “What do you think I should have learned?”

Head of a prestigious institution of higher learning resistant to learning or at least admission of learning. Curious.

Tulane University.

A 1924 magazine article called “ Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men” contains this:

Every year I picked up a half-dozen live young fellows who seemed to have a capacity for hard work, and shoved them in at the bottom of the pile, letting them make their way up to the better air and sunlight at the top — if they had it in them to do it. For a time I tried picking these youngsters out of the colleges. But my experience with college men was not fortunate. If I selected good students, I found too often that their leadership had been won by doing very well what their teachers had laid out for them. They had developed a fine capacity for taking orders, but not much initiative.

The notion of not hiring college grads now seems absurd, perhaps because the fraction of people who go to college has gone way up. But it’s hard to believe that the selection pressures operating within colleges have changed. College professors are still a tiny fraction of the population.

I came across this magazine article randomly browsing but this quote is another way of saying what two of my recent posts — my student’s term project about overcoming stage fright, and about jobbook.org – were about. If most people must spend four years in a place (college) where those in charge (professors) value only a small fraction of their abilities, a lot is lost.

In an upper-division depression seminar I taught in 2002 the term project assignment was to do whatever you want related to depression so long as it does not involve library research and is off campus. Several students decided to give a talk about depression to a high school class, including Cindy Voong. She wrote this about her experience:

Five years ago, I graduated from Oakland High School, a public high school with a dominant African American and Asian population. A little over a week ago, I revisited my old high school as a guest speaker for Mr. Tinloy’s 3rd period psychology class. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. I was quite nervous and terrified of speaking in front of a classroom full of juniors and seniors, but I made it out alive, and it was a good learning experience.

My friend, a former student of Mr. Tinloy, brought me to his classroom during the break between 2nd and 3rd period, and introduced me. I was pretty nervous. Speaking to teachers and professors always makes my heart beat a little bit faster than normal. I spoke to Mr. Tinloy very briefly. I introduced myself, explained why I was there, and asked him if he would be interested in having me speak to his class about depression. He was very nice. He wanted to know what I planned on talking about, so that he could critique it if necessary. I made arrangements to contact one of the students (I actually knew five of his students, much to my surprise) and get his notes on what they have covered in class so far before I decide what I wanted to talk about. We made a date for when I would come in (April 26), and before then, I was to email him an outline of my talk. That was the first step. Whew!

Shortly after my first meeting with Mr. Tinloy, I contacted Simon, one of his students, and got his notes for the class. After reviewing his notes, which covered articles and brief overviews of what depression is, I emailed Mr. Tinloy a tentative outline of what I might talk about. Now that I look back on it, the list was actually quite long. I don’t know what I could have been thinking about. The outline is as follows: different types of depression, symptoms and signs of depression, treatment (both pharmaceutical and therapeutic), theories on why someone might become depressive (maybe including evolutionary viewpoints), depression in childhood and adolescence, suicide, social stigma (political perspective), and what one can do to help a depressed individual.

Before I emailed Mr. Tinloy, I took out all my psychology books and skimmed over the depression sections of the text. They all pretty much went over the same things, so I thought I would give them a review of what I thought they already know. Mr. Tinloy emailed me back that I should plan on about 20 minutes and that I should talk about whatever I felt most comfortable talking about. I was kind of surprised that he did not give me more feedback on what he thought I should cover, because when I spoke to him the first time, it seemed like he would be more critical about what I would talk about, but he was pretty relaxed and carefree about the whole situation.

When I received his email and read 20 minutes, my first thought was, “Yes! Twenty minutes only! I can talk for 20 minutes!” One of my biggest fears is talking in front of a big group. I was afraid that if I were given more time I wouldn’t know what to say. Then I looked at my outline and thought, “Uh oh! Revision!” I knew that I could not possibly fit in everything in 20 minutes. So I looked over my list, and decided to focus on the evolution of depression. That was a topic I did not see in neither my psychology textbooks nor in Simon’s notes, so I thought something different might be more interesting.

I had originally planned on having overheads, so that all the attention would not be on me, but it was just my luck that Mr. Tinloy did not have an overhead projector. This made my talk even more of a challenge. I was terrified of the idea of standing in front of that classroom and talk for 20 whole minutes. I have given five-minute presentations in class before, and even five minutes was too long for me. I thought I was going to go into that classroom and freeze up. My nerves were definitely working against me.

Mr. Tinloy teaches two psychology classes, 2nd and 3rd period. I was supposed to come in at 9:20 am, the last twenty minutes of 2nd period, and stay for the first 20 minutes of 3rd period. I arrived to the class at 9:25 am, five minutes late. The class was watching a video on autism, schizophrenia, and other psychological disorders. When I entered the classroom, my heart was pumping like crazy. I was so nervous I literally forgot my whole talk. I think Mr. Tinloy sensed how nervous I was, because he asked me if I wanted to start with this class, or if I wanted to wait for the next class. It was up to me. I tried really hard to gather my thoughts and settle my nerves, but I could not. I started to worry that 15 minutes would not be enough time for me to get through everything. Then I worried about what I should and should not talk about with my time limit. The thought of turning off the television, which only half the class was paying attention to, and having their attention turned to me frightened me even more. I was not yet comfortable in the classroom. It was extremely intimidating. I was definitely not ready to speak. I would have only succeeded in making a fool of myself if I decided to speak. So I did what I had to do. I told Mr. Tinloy I will wait for the next class. (Yes, I chickened out!) But I am very glad I decided to wait for the next class. For those 15 minutes, I calmed myself down, and made myself more at home in the classroom. I sat on a high chair in front of the class, getting myself accustomed to being in front of a class. I showed Mr. Tinloy my notes, and he thought that the four evolutionary ideas were interesting. He saw that I had questions I wanted to ask the class, and pointed out that it was really important to engage the students in discussion with questions to keep their interest. So I sat there and reviewed my notes.

When the class ended, and students from 2nd period started to file out as 3rd period started to trickle in, I found it less intimidating to be in the classroom as the students one-by-one came into the classroom than to come into a room filled with students already. My friend, who had introduced me to Mr. Tinloy, was also there to give me some moral support. As the students started to come in, I counted five kids whom I actually knew. At first I thought that it was kind of cool to have them there, and that it would make it less scary. But then it made me a little more nervous, because they were people I knew. What if I gave a totally lame lecture? I would never hear the end of it! So I started to have all these mixed anxieties again.

When class began, Mr. Tinloy introduced me to the class, and the stage was all mine. Thirty or so pairs of eyes looked my way. I smiled, and pretended I was extremely confident, and that I gave talks all the time. I gave them a general definition of depression. The first question I asked them was, “Are you guys familiar with the DSM-IV? Do you guys know what it is?” Gosh, those two seconds of silence was deadly. No response at all. The crowd was dead before I even started! Very, very discouraging! Then someone said, “Yeah.” Mr. Tinloy then told me that they kind of went over that. That was my cue to keep going. I read them the DSM-IV criteria for depression to kind of jog their memory a little. I then introduced the topic of my talk… Why depression?

To get them to start thinking about what I meant by “the evolution of depression” and why there is depression in modern society, I posed them with a few questions from Solomon’s evolution chapter. Why would such an obviously unpleasant and essentially unproductive condition occur in so large a part of the population? What advantages could it ever have served? Could it simply be a defect in humanity? Why was it not selected out a long time ago? Why do particular symptoms tend to cluster? What is the relation between social and biological evolution of the disorder? Why do we have moods at all? Why do we have emotions? What exactly caused nature to select for despair and frustration and irritability, and to select for, relatively speaking, so little joy?

I pretty much read off these questions, and did not realize that I was reading them off too fast to actually allow them time to think about one before I rambled on to the next question. Mr. Tinloy helped me out a bit, and asked that I repeat the first question. So I reread the questions, one at a time, slowly, to allow for discussion if any one questions struck the students at all. Unfortunately, the students were pretty reluctant in participating in discussion. Mr. Tinloy seemed to be the only person interested in what I had to say, and he tried to answer some of the questions I posed, which in itself led me into the next portion of my talk… the four proposed answers to all those questions.

Even though the students were not very responsive, I found myself getting more comfortable talking. Mr. Tinloy was asking questions, and I actually knew the answers! I was so proud of myself for being able to answer his questions with confidence, which made me more confident. I knew more than I thought I knew!

So I went into each of the “proposed answers to the ‘why’”. I would read off one proposal (e.g. Depression served a purpose in evolution’s prehuman times that it no longer serves.), and explain to them what it basically meant, and where such a proposal came from. One thing I feared going into the lecture was that I would be reading off my notes the whole time, and not look at the class, so I decided to go into the classroom with just my outline. I was also afraid that I would freeze up and have nothing to go on if I just had my notes. But I am extremely glad I didn’t have everything all typed up, because it allowed me to talk more freely. It also made me seem like I know my stuff. =)

So after each explanation, I would allow for any questions anybody might have. Mr. Tinloy kept asking me question after question, and I kept answering all his questions. I was really enjoying the talk. It was as if we were having a private intellectual conversation. We touched on a lot of interesting things that I had not intended to talk about, so I was extremely glad I had read all those chapters closely! We talked about things from why more females are depressed than males to medication to positive illusion. It was also during this portion of the talk that a couple of the students were starting to participate, so I was really excited. One of the students asked about medication, and getting off medication, so I was really excited to inform them that the myth that getting better meant getting off medication is not true, and that for most people, staying better meant staying on the medication.

For the last portion of my talk, I had four passages from [Andrew] Solomon’s hope chapter [in The Noonday Demon] that I wanted to read to them, that I thought were very powerful. I wanted to end the lecture on a good note, something they could go home and think about. When I looked at the time, I realized that I had talked too long, and resorted to only reading two of the passages. This portion of the talk seemed to get the most response from the class. I started off asking them what comes to mind when they think about a depressed person. They pretty much gave a similar answer to how Solomon had described it. So I went on to read the first passage:

Psychiatric illness often reveals the dreadful side of someone. It doesn’t really make a whole new person. Sometimes the dreadful side is pathetic and needy and hungry, qualities that are sad but touching; sometimes the dreadful side is brutal and cruel. Illness brings to light the painful realities most people shroud in perfect darkness. Depression exaggerates character. In the long run, I think, it makes good people better; it makes bad people worse. It can destroy one’s sense of proportion and give one paranoid fantasies and a sense of helplessness; but it is also a window into truth.

I was pleased to find that half the class is no longer falling asleep. They were giving what I said some thought. Some actually responded!

The first passage I skipped was about the interaction between illness and personality, and that a sense of humor and love gives hope. The second passage I skipped was the part about how you are your choices.

I ended the lecture with one last passage from Solomon’s hope chapter:

Depression in its worst is the most horrifying loneliness, and from it I learned… So many people have asked what to do for depressed friends and relatives, and my answer is actually simple: blunt their isolation. Do it with cups of tea or with long talks or by sitting in a room nearby and staying silent or in whatever way suits the circumstances, but do that. And do it willingly.

After that, the class clapped, and Mr. Tinloy asked the class if there were any more questions for me. There were a few questions like “What year are you?” and “Are you going to be a psychologist?” but that was it. I was pretty surprised that nobody had any questions about Cal, but I guess those who planned to go to college already know where they are going, and have pretty much become familiar with all the info. When all was done, Mr. Tinloy thanked me for coming, and told me that I did a very good job and that I should come back to visit anytime I wanted.

I walked out of the class with a huge sigh of relief. I was so glad that it was over with. The one thing that surprised me the most was that I kept talking, quite freely, without relying on my notes too much, and for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES! I was also very thankful that Mr. Tinloy was there to guide me through the whole process, and was there to keep the lecture going. I was even more thankful that I was able to answer all the questions he fired at me, because I was afraid I would be unable to answer a question, and the students would look at me and think that I was a flake.

Overall, this was a very difficult, but rewarding experience. I was able to overcome my many fears, and talk! It feels very different being in front of a class, and not in the class, hiding in the crowd, like I tend to do. It did not surprise me much that I got the response I got from the class. Five years ago, I was in their shoes. Guest speakers meant a break from the regular class work, nothing more. Most of them have senioritis, and do not want to do anything anyways. Nevertheless, I went in there hoping for the best. It was very nerve-wracking and intimidating at first, but it was not too bad. I was disappointed that I bored most of them to death, but very glad that I held the interest of Mr. Tinloy and at least two students the whole time. I was also very surprised that the students’ interest rose toward the end of the talk. It actually turned out much better than I thought it would, at least on my part.

I later on asked my friend for her honest opinion about my talk. She said that my presentation was good, and that I didn’t look nervous at all, and that I knew my stuff, but she was fighting to stay awake, because the topic did not interest her one bit. She is a business major, and had no idea what I was talking about. She thought I did a better job that she expected.

I also asked one of the students I knew from the class what she thought. She said pretty much the same thing, that I did a good job, but that it was boring because she wasn’t all that interested in what I was talking about, but it got more interesting toward the end when other students started to talk. “Nobody likes guest speakers, so it’s okay.” I don’t know what to make of that. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I have always found high school students a very intimidating group to work with, because they are on the verge of adulthood, yet not quite mature enough. I don’t know if it is because of the high school that I went to, but I find that high school students think they are on top of the world, and that they know everything, so they tend not to listen to adults as much as kids or even other adults would. Students in high school are there because they have to be, so not everyone is there because they want to learn. That is why I have to agree with Solomon when he said that it is easier to talk to a room full of psychologists than it is to talk to a room full of high school kids. With a room full of psychologists, you at least know that they will be interested in hearing what you have to say. This whole experience reconfirms my decision to stick to teaching grade school kids after graduation. Third and fourth graders are more likely to listen to what I have to say, and they are shorter than me. However, seeing Mr. Tinloy interact with his students make it a little less scary to teach in a high school setting. Mr. Tinloy seems to have a very comfortable and close relationship with all his students. It is that bond that he developed with his students that made them respect and listen to him. If ever I was to teach at a high school, I think I would definitely have to adapt Mr. Tinloy’s style of teaching.

Have I changed as a result of this class project? In a way, I have. I learned that if I really wanted to, I could conquer my fear, and do what I have to do. Speaking in front of any kind of crowd has always made my heart pump like there is no tomorrow. Forcing myself to speak in front of a high school class made me realize it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. As long as I can put my fear aside, and carry some confidence, I can talk forever! (Well, you know what I mean.) And the most important part of having that confidence is knowing your stuff! Being able to answer questions is the biggest confidence booster there is. I think I will use this as an example for future reference. I know that this will not be the last time I have to give some sort of presentation in front of a group, and it won’t be the last time that my heart starts racing when I get in front of a crowd, but I will be able to remember this experience, and tell myself, “It’s not that bad.”

I was enormously impressed by this paper. Not only by the pragmatism and courage she had shown, but also by the realization that conventional college assignments, including mine, would never have revealed she had these strengths.

A nice essay by Paul Graham about the effects of making start-ups easier says that one effect will be changes in our education system:

Performance is always the ultimate test, but there are so many kinks in the plumbing now that most people are insulated from it most of the time. So you end up with a world in which high school students think they need to get good grades to get into elite colleges, and college students think [correctly] they need to get good grades to impress employers.

A world in which lawyers are forever judged by the law school they attended, which greatly surprised a lawyer friend of mine. If you can leave college to start a company, your professors have less power over you. One more way the Web is like the printing press, which led to a vast reduction in the power of the Catholic Church. The printing press made it much easier to start new religions.

For whom do colleges exist?