The Journey

The Forgotten Pandemic

2015-01-18T14:41:00.001-08:00

The Spanish Flu in 1918 infected roughly 500 million patients across the globe, killing 50 to 100 million of that number. Unlike most influenza outbreaks, it killed more healthy, juvenile patients than it did the very young or elderly; this is because the robust immune systems of younger people triggered cytokine storms - immune reactions characterized by high fever, swelling and redness, extreme fatigue and nausea. This is the immune system’s attempt to kill the virus and somatic cells infected with the virus: fever denatures viral proteins and renders them inoperable, while swelling and redness are caused by the same chemicals (histamines) that cause allergies. T-cells and macrophages are recruited to the site of infection, attracted to these histamines, and they in turn produce more histamines to enable further recruitment of white blood cells. Children and middle-aged adults had lower mortality rates in the pandemic, because their bodies did not produce cytokine storms.

Patients affected by the pandemic

Unlike recent pandemics such as AIDS, SARS and Ebolavirus, we don’t know the disease’s exact geological origin; did it come from the hot zone in Africa? Was it an import from the Asian or Southeast Asian countries? Or was it European in nature? It was called Spanish Flu because the American press at the time selectively reported the outbreak as being in Spain, whereas state censorship blocked reporting of its existence in Britain, Germany, France and the U.S., giving the illusion to the American Public that Spain was particularly hard-hit. What IS certain is that massive troop movements and deployments in World War I were the vectors responsible for the global spread of this disease. As with all pandemics, it spread as far as the people infected with it could move - which corroborates with scientific consensus that quarantine is the most effective method of containing any outbreak of any disease.

When the bubonic plague, smallpox and syphilis ravaged through Europe, certain countries were notable for having an infection rate of nearly zero. Venice was the first European country to impose a systematic quarantine after the black death in the 14th century depopulated the city, in which incoming ships had to remain anchored in the port for 40 days before making landfall. The Republic of Ragusa, a city-state located in modern-day Dubrovnik, Croatia, required quarantine for a month for ‘purification by sun and wind’ before merchants could enter the city. Both countries were much less affected by subsequent plagues than neighboring countries

The modern city of Dubrovnik, which still retains the fortified walls from its days as a city-state

In 24 weeks, the Spanish Flu killed 3-6% of the global population at the time. Of those infected, however, only 10-20% actually died from the illness. This is startlingly low compared to the more recent Ebola outbreak, whose mortality rate averages at around 50% of infected patients. Clinical symptoms included nasal, gastric and intestinal hemorrhaging, as well as pulmonary edema. These were unusual enough at the time that initial cases were often mistaken for Typhoid Fever, Dengue Fever, or Cholera. Although the American public has largely forgotten about this pandemic, it WAS significant - and the lessons it taught remain applicable today: the best weapon again SARS, Ebola, H1N1 ‘swine flu’, and any other pathogenic virus is still quarantining patients away from those who are not infected. This has been proven by successful efforts in West Africa to contain Ebola outbreaks by mandatory, military-enforced quarantines. It’s remarkable to me that one of the primary vectors for the outbreak was the open-casket funerals held for Ebola victims in these countries, and that those attending these funerals would come into physical contact with the body. Even more incredible is how difficult it was to convince the populace that the virus could spread that way!

Quarantining is what has kept Ebola from spreading here in the U.S. It applies to every single contagious illness, and if there is one take-home message I would impart to my audience, it woudl be to stay home if you are feeling unwell. Don’t go to school, don’t go to work. I recently saw on reddit a claim that Americans who do not get paid sick leave as part of their jobs are responsible for much of the spreading of seasonal flu and other communicable diseases. One can only hope that, if this claim is substantiated, our leaders in D.C. will realize that expanding sick leave is one tangible way to boost economic productivity. Assuming they have the stones to do it.

A Novel Treatment for Depression and Bipolar Disorders: Ketamine??

2015-01-16T08:58:00.002-08:00

I've read some fascinating articles in nature magazine in the past couple of days, which provide evidence for a therapeutic role in the dissociative anesthetic Ketamine in the treatment of depression and bipolar disorder. Not only does ketamine - a widely-used therapeutic agent in veterinary medicine and a favorite club drug under the name 'special K' - alleviate anhedonia in depression and bipolar syndrome, which is something that SSRI's cannot do, but significant relief in patients' symptoms of MDD and BPD are seen in a mere matter of hours. Current antidepressants have an onset of effect in the order of weeks, if they work at all! Moreover, it causes a unilateral reduction in suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts in these patients. It's almost like the fog is lifted from the brains of these patients, which is a godsend for psychiatrists everywhere. The most recent issue of Nature cited a figure in which some 64% of patients with either disorder respond positively to Ketamine injections, which - when compared to only around 28% response rate for any given SSRI.

I think it's too early to say whether or not this is a panacea for depression-spectrum mental disorders - after all, that's what meta-analyses are for - but it is certainly a ray of hope in the ongoing battle against depression. Since the only true 'cure' for depression, Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) has had its reputation shot to pieces by movies like 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', let's hope the general public is more willing to give this party drug a chance to treat them & their loved ones.

Promotional Links

2015-01-15T12:32:00.002-08:00

Marijan Cvjeticanin's youtube channel

And here is his twitter feed.

I'm doing SEO for his media accounts; more topical posts are soon to follow. I apologize for the long absence in posting, but never fear - the Journey is far from over.

New music video by Srdjan Ivkovic

2014-02-25T08:33:00.002-08:00

Great producer from Belgrade has a new spot out; let me know what you all think, either on this blog or on the Youtube page. It's definitely worth checking out the rest of Srdjan's channel when you have the time.

Sponsored by Mr. Marijan Cvjeticanin, Esq. - attorney for matters of immigration, visas, green cards, bankruptcy cases, and general law cases.

An Interview With Santa

2013-12-23T14:51:00.002-08:00

So who makes the presents - really?

We used to have our own workshops and factories in the North Pole, but we've outsourced most of our labor force: the elves mostly handle the gift wrapping and delivery logistics these days.

Have there been any layoffs?

Ho ho ho! No need! The elves don't need wages - they're immortal, and they eat the same diet as my reindeer. They also enjoy working just for the heck of it: we've been in business now for two thousand years, and they don't want to stop.

How, exactly, do you decide who's naughty and who's nice?

I've always crowd-sourced people's opinion of others. If your friends think you're nice, then so do I. If they think you're naughty... watch out.

But nobody gets coal anymore in their stockings, right?

Worse: they get fruit cake gift baskets.

I see. So what country is the most difficult to get presents for?

Right now, I'd say France; whatever I make for the French, their grinch of a president insists on taking 3/4ths of it for himself.

Do you get upset if people forget to leave cookies and milk?

Yes I do! In fact, if they do, I 'forget' to leave one of their presents under their tree.

What if they leave out beer instead of milk?

Then you'll get TWO extra presents that year. Santa likes to get hammered.

Do you ever leave notes for people, if they've been especially good or bad?

Not anymore: otherwise it'd be all over the internet the day after Christmas. Santa prefers to keep his privacy.

What do you do if the kids are awake?

I try to stay hidden as best as possible, or at least blend in with the tree. Mrs. Claus made me a camo suit recently, to help me out in those situations.

What if all else fails and a kid sees you?

That's why Santa keeps a tranquilizer gun in his sleigh.

Surviving the holiday rush (and having fun in the process)

2013-12-09T21:00:00.001-08:00

Growing up, I only rarely went shopping with my parents, and I remember well the reluctance that we (my mother, father, sister and I) felt whenever we drove to malls and outlet stores, because of the hassle. That reluctance I have carried into adulthood, even if I'm shopping for necessities. Now, however, I can enjoy the atmosphere of some stores, and actually enjoy the process of shopping under many conditions. I believe this is because my girlfriend, over the past two years, has shown me that gift giving is a good way to show someone how much you care about them. To her credit, she has also coached me step-by-step on what to look for when shopping, and how to differentiate CLEARLY between one's wants and needs.

We have been extensively Christmas shopping these past few weeks, at many more stores than I could count on my fingers; this has given me a fresh perspective on the similarities and differences between "point-of-sale" stores, and provided me insight as to why some places are a 'hassle' while others are a pleasure to shop at.

The first thing I noticed about these stores is that, for businesses that cater to the same socioeconomic levels, there are general trends in their in-store atmospheres, which play a big role in their sales pitch. In stores that offer cheap, this-season-style clothes like H&M and Forever 21, the muzak they play consists of radio hits played at an ear-splitting volume, and their displays are lit with garish, bright-as-the-sun spotlights, which, together with the muzak, is designed to force you to stop thinking. They want shoppers to make impulse purchases, and to ignore the cost of the item(s) they buy or their dubious quality fabrics. The thrill of the purchases you make wears off the minute you've left the store - especially when, later on, you see ten guys (or girls) on the street wearing the exact same shirt, dress, or skirt as you.

In direct contrast to these low-tier stores, designers like BCBG, Guess, and J. Crew have a smooth yet bouncy ambiance, playing catchy techno music at mid-range volume, and illuminating their displays with subtler spotlights. They do this because they know that you are already looking to buy something when you walk in, and perhaps you are even a return customer. Thus, their stores have no need to scream "buy this now, or you'll miss out!" Instead, the message of their ambiance is; 'take your time to enjoy the displays, browse around, and make a purchase that you will feel good about both now and later.'

High-end retailers, which I've only been in recently, also aim to put you at ease in their stores. Not only do they have even softer ambient lighting and play quieter, more easy-listening mood music, but they also have ample floor space for people to browse their wares without fear of bumping and jostling others. No self-respecting bargain basement store has more than a foot or two of aisle space between the racks; they want to whip people up into a frenzied rush to find something, check out, and leave the store as quickly as possible. This is also why they usually have no places to sit down; they want you in and out ASAP.

Pricier stores are much more accommodating by nature; there are multiple places to sit, whether in the shoe section, the dress section, or by the fitting rooms. Whoever in a party is not actively shopping or trying things on can rest in peace and comfort. I believe this is because, while bargain stores profit by selling cheap things in great quantity, designer stores profit by selling smaller volumes of expensive, yet quality, pieces.

Similar trends exist in department stores, and based on my observations, Bloomingdales appears to be an ideal medium between the frantic atmospheres of Macy's and j. C . Penny and the dignified, sedate, atmospheres of Saks and Neiman Marcus. Although it lacks the finer points of shopping, such as the live DJs, jazz bands and Christmas Carolers found in Saks around the holidays, it does offer quality designer clothes and accessories, not to mention jewelry, handbags and home goods. What's more, it has the floor space, music, and acceptable lighting to make even a reluctant shopper like me enjoy being in their stores.

One big thing I learned about shopping in point-of-sale stores is that much of the hassle of shopping can be avoided simply by having a concrete plan of a) where to shop, b) what items you want to try on (which can be accomplished online) and c) how much you plan to spend. Most stores offer to match their online prices in-store, which means that, for anyone who isn't 100% certain about what they want to buy, it's still worth the schlep.

To everyone gearing up for (or are currently) holiday shopping, don't fret! Just have a plan, and bring plenty of food and drink (read: coffee) with you when you go. These humble tips should save you a lot of headache between now and the 25th.

Happy holidays, ladies and gents.

R.I.P. Lou Reed

2013-11-22T00:19:00.002-08:00

If this is all there is, that wouldn't be so bad; there's so much of it, you can get lost in the mandala-like spiral of love and wonder that comes from being truly connected to the world, to those around you. What I have seen and done the past two years are more than I've experienced in the previous eighteen years combined.

I have learned what it is to love and to be loved. I have learned to be patient with myself, to be kind to others, but also to think and stick up for myself when the situation calls for it. Moreover, I have learned to let go of the anger, the resentment and the frustration I held against certain people, as I discovered that my time and emotions are better invested elsewhere. As a result, I am now content with both myself and my place in the world.

There's so much I have wanted to write here, but held back because it is a public space. I am no longer afraid; I will speak my mind, but I will not be cruel.

Be well, all.

Defining Literacy

2013-05-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

Although it is well established that there is a 'problem' with public education in America, there is no consensus as to what caused it: is a lack of funding for critical academic programs? Or is it because many parents don’t help their children with their schoolwork? Erica Goldson, who graduated Coxsackie-Athens High School in 2010, argues in her valedictorian speech that the root of the problem lies in a current overemphasis on standardized testing. "We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective." (Goldson) To become valedictorian, Ms. Goldson had to give up learning for the sake of her objective; the almighty 'A'. Non-valedictorians must also do 'whatever it takes' if they want to achieve their original objective, which, according to Ms. Goldson, is usually "to get out [of school] as soon as possible." (Goldson). This means that pursuing their passions, whether in the areas of literature, music, technology or the sciences, must take second seat to their schoolwork. For Ms. Goldson, the tragedy in this is that schools are failing to give their students a proper education; by forcing their students to adopt a "whatever it takes" mentality, they suppress their natural propensity towards intellectual inquiry. But the success of Ms. Goldson and others like her seems to contradict this idea; if some students are able to finish public school with an education, why can’t others?

Peg Tyre, author of "The Writing Revolution", argues that public schools fail to educate students by not teaching them how to write analytically. Backing her claim is the success story of New Dorp High School, a formerly failing public school on Long Island that succeeded in improving its graduation rate from 63% to 80% between 2009 and 2011. Observing that its worst students were usually the least adept at expository writing, New Dorp’s principal changed the curriculum to make analytic writing a central component of every subject, from science and mathematics to history and english. Students were taught "how to turn ideas into simple sentences, and how to construct complex sentences from simple ones by supplying the answer to three prompts - but, because and so." (7) Once they had mastered the basics of sentence construction, they were taught "how to recognize sentence fragments, how to pull the main idea from a paragraph, and how to form a main idea on their own." (7) Although the program is ostensibly a "rigid, unswerving, formula", it worked: from 2009 to 2011, New Dorp's passing rates on the English Regents exams jumped from 69% to 80%, and its passing rates on the Global History Regents shot from 64% to 75% (3). These statistics support the idea that analytical writing is a critical skill for any student's education. Although this may be the case, it is certainly not the whole picture. Erica Goldson would argue that, despite an improvement in passing rates on the regents, students were still not really learning, and the unless New Dorp stopped ‘teaching to the test’, it would continue to fail to educate its students.Both authors are trying to answer the question of what, exactly, students need in order to succeed within the education system. But neither Goldson nor Tyre can hope to find the answer without understanding what schools are supposed to be teaching in the first place.

Paolo Freire, a writer best known for his work teaching Brazilian peasants, believes that schools aren't supposed to teach using any form of rote memorization, or lessons that involve a lecture, because these teaching methods create a disconnect between the lesson and the real world; something Freire refers to at “narration sickness” (368). Instead of immersing students in the world they are supposed to be learning about, the imperative of the lecture "leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content." People, places, and events, become discrete facts embedded in the matrix of the test they are taught towards, and students' minds become "receptacles to be "filled" by the teacher." (368) Because of this, public education becomes reduced to a series of business-like transactions:

Education thus becomes an action of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the "banking" concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human.

(368-9)

Like Erica Goldson, Freire believes that the education process provides negative feedback upon a student's willingness and ability to learn, which is inherently dehumanizing; if the best that students can aspire to do with the information they receive is collecting and cataloguing it, they have been gravely underserved. The daily transactions of lessons to be received, memorized, and repeated, serve to wear down the primal urge that all humans share to discover everything they can about the world around them. If Freire’s assertion holds true, then we cannot fix our education system without levelling the playing field; a greater level of communication must be established between teachers and their students, both in and out of the classroom.

There is one instance, in my mind, where such communication has happened, which is between Ian Downing, a high school senior at Humanities Prep, and myself. For the past several weeks, I have tutored Ian on writing his PBAT, an essay that is prerequisite to his graduation, and we have often talked together on Skype before and after our Thursday afternoon tutoring sessions. Halfway through the month of April, Ian had not yet written the introduction to his paper, when the final draft was due the first week of May. When we sat down together that Thursday, I held my breath. How are we going to get this done in time? If we didn't do any writing that day, there would be no way he would finish his work by the deadline. I scribbled down a skeleton outline for the introductory paragraph, before sliding the paper over to him and explaining the process step by step. "Your first sentence is the hook; the statement, as in-your-face and controversial as you can make it, that will get your readers interested. In the second and third sentences, you expand the idea in question and give the readers a taste of why the issue is complicated - opposing sides of the 'debate', and so on. Your last sentence is the 'thesis' - the platform on which the rest of your paper will stand." I looked him in the eye and asked: "Are you up for it?" Ian nodded his head. "Sure, I can do it."

Ten, fifteen, then twenty minutes passed. I kept trying to surreptitiously glance over at his work, but he kept turning the computer screen away from me. When he finally turned the computer around, what I read was even more than I'd dared hope for: he used an analogy to introduce his topic ("Our current economy is like an outfield in baseball. There is such a large area to cover and only three people available to do so.") Building on the analogy, he made the argument that a lack of economic diversity in the U.S. poses a significant risk to the middle and lower classes. He pointed out that the government bailouts of the banking and auto industries were largely ineffective in stimulating economic growth, and argued that greater economic strength would come from the encouragement of small businesses:

Because the government does not prioritize these [small] businesses, they are not only taking a gamble with little industries, but are not motivating small business owners to grow enough to become major sources of income.

Everything I would expect of a college-level paper, I found in this first draft of the introduction. It did need editing, but it showed me that my student had a firm grasp on the fundamentals of good writing. Although I would need to continue to push him to write more, and to expand and challenge his ideas, I did not need to pretend that this was a remedial English class. When I recently asked Ian via Skype what he thought the most helpful things I'd done with him in tutoring were, he listed my helping him with his intro as number one; "since I didn't know what to write for it exactly." Moreover, the second most helpful thing was "seeing your reaction to my paper each week, it kept me really motivated to write more." It seems as if what Ian needed from me was not a lesson on how to write a paper, but rather he needed me to teach him specific tools he could use to better express his ideas. As far as I can tell, Humanities Prep does a good job of educating students like Ian who take the time and effort to apply the lessons they learn in school in their everyday lives. However, Humanities prep is a high school that a. uses the New York Regents exam system and b. is a public school whose curriculum appears to match Freire's description of "The Banking Concept of Education." I doubt that Ian was able to Skype with any of his high school teachers, and certainly not on a regular basis. I can also assume that he didn’t have any tutors before me, as all students from humanities prep in this program were graduating seniors. So if Humanities Prep doesn’t emphasize teacher-student communication, as Freire prescribes, then why is its program still effective?

What Freire misses, in his attack on banking education, is that there are some things that have to be learned by rote. Freire assumes that ‘creativity, knowledge, and transformation’ occur spontaneously, which is patently untrue; students cannot learn without the proper intellectual tools. In the context of literacy, those tools include proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar usage. These tools require rote memorization, because they cannot be permanently impressed into a student’s mind after the first exposure. This is why Peg Tyre takes pains to point out that New Dorp’s success came from the fact that it abandoned the predominant theory of teaching literacy, which held that knowledge was “caught, not taught” (Tyre). Schools that subscribed to this theory, which included most public schools throughout the 1900’s, typically gave kids interesting, social, creative-writing assignments where their work would be shared, under the assumption that kids would “catch” what they needed to become successful writers. What this theory forgot, much to the detriment of public school students, was formal instruction in grammar, sentence composition, and essay writing. Although this theory works for some kids, it doesn’t work at all for kids who are unable to catch anything from their home environment, namely, kids who grow up in poverty, or who had weak early instruction, or have learning disabilities. These kids never learn how to write an essay, and New Dorp high school had a lot of students who fell under this category.

To develop students’ analytical skills, New Dorp’s program used classroom discussion to teach the socratic method. When students speak in class, they were required to use specific prompts, "I agree/disagree with ___ because...", "I have a different opinion...", "I have something to add..." and "Can you explain your answer?" (Tyre). This form of structured speaking turned classroom discussions into opportunities for classmates “to listen to each other, to think more carefully, and speak more precisely, in ways they could then echo in persuasive writing.” (Tyre) By doing this, New Dorp’s revamped curriculum was developing its students’ ability to translate lessons learned in the classroom into real-world actions, or what Sylvia Scribner refers to as ‘functional literacy’. According to writer Sylvia Scribner, functional literacy is defined as "the level of proficiency necessary for effective performance in a range of settings and customary activities." (9) By extension, Sylvia argues, functional literacy also applies to the ability to use computers and other now-commonplace technologies, which are forms of "second-order literacy" (11). In other words, literacy is the ability to use tools and concepts that you know to learn something that you don't yet know. This is why Erica Goldson credits her education largely to her 10th-grade English Teacher, Donna Bryan, who taught her how to open her mind and "ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine." (Goldson) Knowing how to ask questions before accepting doctrine is part of learning how to learn, which is exactly what functional literacy entails.

Paolo Freire would be against the concept of functional literacy, because he believes that literacy programs are intended to teach textbook doctrine - not to enable students to question it. If the banking concept of education is true, then the teacher’s role is "to regulate the way the world ‘enters into’ the students", instilling in them a mindset where they must become complacent with the unsavory aspects of the world, rather than attempt to change them. This implies that functional literacy is essentially a brainwashing tool used by those in power to maintain the status quo (373):

The more completely the majority adapt to the purposes which the dominant minority prescribe for them (thereby depriving them of the right to their own purposes), the more easily the minority can continue to prescribe. The theory and practice of banking education serve this end quite efficiently. Verbalistic lessons, reading requirements, the methods for evaluating "knowledge," the distance between the teacher and the taught, the criteria for promotion: everything in this ready-to-wear approach serves to obviate thinking.

Literacy is a notion prescribed by a minority to define what the majority of society should know, and how they should respond behaviorally to given situations. Students themselves are deprived of the right to self-determination in terms of what they learn, and what career choices are made available for their pursuit. Per Freire, this is accomplished by putting up an artificial social barrier between teachers and students, which takes the form of required readings and ultra-specific forms of testing, shoehorning nearly everyone into the same, narrow, education spectrum. This is an accusation that toes the definition of a conspiracy theory; our own government, which is one of the most stable, cohesive forms of government today, is so divided that there are factions within political factions - especially among the wealthy. No real, historical conspiracy has ever been executed as flawlessly as Freire imagines the ‘banking concept.’ Using Occam’s razor, which states that the simplest explanation for a phenomenon is often the one that’s correct, we may assume that any grave errors in our education system are due either to incompetence or to well-intentioned, albeit misguided, initiatives.

It must be conceded that there is a certain ready-to-wear approach that the government has used over the past few decades, which can be seen most recently in the No Child Left Behind Act. That is what (likely) Freire is reacting to in this passage; such top-down education reform acts tend to do more harm than good because they allow no room for flexibility at the level of the school districts. The attitude that ‘what’s good for some is good for all’ fails, because not everyone learns the same way.

One barrier to real education reform is coming up with an operational (read: measurable) definition of functional literacy. Because literacy is a social convention, it may have different connotations in different contexts. For example, although economics is not widely taught as a core subject, compared to history, literature or mathematics, I believe that it should be. During one tutoring session in April, when Ian and I first began to work on the body arguments of his PBAT, I noticed that although he had a cogent argument, there was a major logic gap between his argument that a lack of economic diversity would cause the downfall of the middle class and his main piece of evidence, which was that Apple, Inc. and other major tech companies played too large a role in the U.S. economy. I stopped reading to point out the error. "You've got a great idea, here, Ian, but your discussion about Apple has nothing to do with it... at least nothing your readers will pick up on their own." Ian frowned a little and nodded as he re-read the passage. "Uh-huh." I backtracked in case I had hurt his feelings. "That's not to say you shouldn't talk about Apple at all; just not right here." I explained that he needed to find a numerical way to compare individual companies, as well as their respective industries, to the overall economy. Ian gave me a puzzled look; "And... how do I do that?" Both of us fell silent for a minute. Neither of us had taken any real economics courses, and my only grounding in the subject came from the fact that my mother is a lawyer who represents major firms on Wall Street. After a minute or two,I blurted out "Let's find out how much money Apple and other big companies make in yearly revenues, and then compare that to the U.S.'s GDP. That'll give readers the sense of perspective that you're trying to convey." This ad-hoc solution worked, but it bothered me that we had any difficulty figuring it out. Both of us should have at least had some idea of what numbers to analyze besides GDP and company annual revenues. Knowing how and why you get paid a certain salary, and where that money gets spent - both in retail and on taxes - is as necessary an intellectual tool as writing itself. Thankfully, although I was unable to help Ian produce a paper worthy of Paul Krugman’s critique, we were able to both satisfy the requirements of the paper and learn something new along the way, thanks to adequate research. That tutoring session impressed upon me that, whether or not economics becomes part of the ‘common core’ standards, the ability to effectively research a topic online is a form of functional literacy that everyone should master.

There are too many schools, and too many teachers, for any comprehensive education reform plan to be feasible. The public education system is simply too large for any single curriculum, or any one test, to be applicable to all students; one size simply cannot fit all. But there are guidelines that can help individual teachers and principals decide on what is best for their pupils. Peg Tyre's analytical writing program could help show students how to learn, when they might not otherwise know how to. Paolo Freire's model of liberating education could help give an education to students who may have given up on learning, due to extrinsic factors. Erica Goldson’s speech could help introduce newcomers to the national, and global, education forum. Lastly, Ian Downing’s term paper could help teachers realize that, besides reading ability alone, functional literacy is something that must be taught before anyone can do it themselves. The sheer number of moving parts involved in the education system is staggering, but it should not discourage anyone’s attempts to fix the parts that are broken. Like any organic system, if one teacher comes up with an effective solution for a given problem, other teachers will copy him or her. The same applies at any level, be it the principals of various high schools, or the administrators of different school districts; no one is alone in their attempt to better teach the next generations. But anyone attempting to start their own education crusade would do well to remember that inertia can come from the students themselves, and that one would do well to ask their permission before starting any new kinds of pedagogical movements. Per Erica Goldson; “We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.” (Goldson)

Works Cited

Freire, Paolo. "The “Banking” Concept Of Education." Dwc.edu. Daniel Webster College. 11 May 2013 <http://faculty.dwc.edu/wellman/Friere.htm>.

Goldson, Erica. "Here I Stand." America Via Erica. Blogger.com. 11 May 2013 <http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com/2010/07/coxsackie-athens-valedictorian-speech.html>.

Scribner, Sylvia. "Literacy In Three Metaphors." 11 May 2013 <http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true>.

Tyre, Peg. "The Writing Revolution." The Atlantic. The Atlantic. 11 May 2013 <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/>.

WIC Essay 2 Draft I

2013-05-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

WIC Final Essay D.1

Cameron Beaudreault

4/29/13

Although it is well established that there is a 'problem' with public education in America, there is consensus as to where the root of the problem lies: is it due to a lack of funding for various programs? Is it because American mothers aren't as good as 'tiger mothers'? Or worse; is it because the curriculum itself is either too hard, or too boring, for students to understand? Erica Goldson, who graduated Coxsackie-Athens High School in 2010, argues in her valedictorian speech that the current emphasis on standardized testing effectively discourages learning. "We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective." (cite) To become valedictorian, Ms. Goldson had to give up learning for the sake of her objective; the almighty 'A'. Non-valedictorians must also do 'whatever it takes' if they want to achieve their original objective, which, according to Ms. Goldson, is usually "to get out [of school] as soon as possible." Peg Tyre, author of "The Writing Revolution", argues that the main problem is that students are often unable to write analytically. Backing her claim is the success of New Dorp High School, a former failing public school on Long Island that managed to improve its graduation rate from 63% to 80% between the academic years of 2009 and 2011. Based on the observation that the worst students were usually the least capable of expository writing, New Dorp's program made analytic writing a central component of every academic subject, from science and mathematics to history and english. Children were taught "how to turn ideas into simple sentences, and how to construct complex sentences from simple ones by supplying the answer to three prompts - but, because and so." (cite) Once they had mastered the basic mechanics of sentence construction, they were taught "how to recognize sentence fragments, how to pull the main idea from a paragraph, and how to form a main idea on their own." (cite) Although the program is ostensibly a "rigid, unswerving, formula", it worked: in the same time period between 2009 and 2011, New Dorp's passing rates on the English Regents exams jumped from 69% to 80%, and its passing rates on the Global History Regents shot from 64% to 75% (cite). Although Peg Tyre has statistics to back her claim that poor writing makes for a poor education, Erica Goldson has the personal experience - and her grades - to back her claim that an overemphasis on testing makes for a bad education. Regarding the question of where, exactly, are students disenfranchised from the learning experience, perhaps the answer lies somewhere between the two.

In the great education debate, there is often a common thread of seeking to place the blame of failure upon one party or another, most commonly either on the teachers or the students themselves. Paolo Freire, a writer best known for his work teaching Brazilian peasants how to heighten their critical consciousness, argues that the blame lies with the teacher-student relationship, which suffers from "narration sickness". By fault of its lecture-oriented style, the teacher turns reality into something that is "motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable." (368) Instead of immersing students in the world they are supposed to be learning about, the imperatives of the lecture "leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content." People, places, and events, become discrete facts embedded in the matrix of the test they are taught with in mind, and students' minds become "receptacles to be "filled" by the teacher." (368) Because of this, the very mission statement of public school changes from encouraging intellectual inquiry and self-empowerment (as its creators intended) to reducing education to a series of transactions:

Education thus becomes an action of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the "banking" concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits. They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store. But in the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and reinvention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.

(368-9)

Like Erica Goldson, Freire believes that the education process provides negative feedback upon a student's willingness and ability to learn, which is inherently dehumanizing; if the best that students can aspire to do with the information they receive is collecting and cataloguing it, they have been gravely underserved. The daily transactions of lessons to be received, memorized, and repeated, serve to wear down the primal urge that all humans share to discover everything they can about the world around them. If what Freire asserts holds true, then we cannot fix our education system without levelling the playing field: students must be allowed to be the teachers from time to time, and teachers in turn must become the students. In order for this to take place, it is implied, a greater level of communication must be enabled between the two parties - both in and out of the classroom.

There is one instance, in my mind, where this exact level of communication takes place, which is between Ian Downing, a high school senior at Humanities Prep, and myself. For the past several weeks, I have tutored Ian on writing his PBAT, an essay that is prerequisite to his graduation, and we have often talked together on Skype before and after our Thursday afternoon tutoring sessions. Halfway through the month of April, Ian had not yet written the introduction to his paper, when the final draft was due the first week of May. When we sat down together that Thursday, I held my breath. How are we going to get this done in time? If we didn't do any writing that day, there would be no way he would finish his work by the deadline. I scribbled down a skeleton outline for the introductory paragraph, before sliding the paper over to him and explaining the process step by step. "Your first sentence is the hook; the statement, as outlandish and controversial as you can make it, that will get your readers interested. In the second and third sentences, you expand the idea in question and give the readers a taste of why the issue is complicated - opposing sides of the 'debate', and so on. Your last sentence is the 'thesis' - the platform on which the rest of your paper will stand." I looked him in the eye and asked: "Are you up for it?" Ian nodded his head. "Sure, I can do it."

Ten, fifteen, then twenty minutes passed. I kept trying to surrepititiously glance over at his work, but he kept turning the computer screen away from me. When he finally turned the computer around, what I read was even more than I'd dared hope for: he used analogy to introduce his topic ("Our current economy is like an outfield in baseball. There is such a large area to cover and only three people available to do so.") Building on the analogy, he made the argument that a lack of economic diversity in the U.S. poses a significant risk to the middle and lower classes. He pointed out that the government bailouts of the banking and auto industries were largely ineffective in stimulating economic growth, and argued that greater economic strength would come from the encouragement of small businesses:

"Because the government does not prioritize these [small] businesses, they are not only taking a gamble with little industries, but are not motivating small business owners to grow enough to become major sources of income."

Everything I would expect of a college-level paper, I found in this first draft of the introduction. It did need editing, but it showed me that my student had a firm grasp on the fundamentals of good writing. Although I would need to continue to push him to write more, and to expand and challenge his ideas, I did not need to pretend that this was a remedial English class. When I recently asked Ian via Skype what he thought the most helpful things I'd done with him in tutoring were, he listed my helping him with his intro as number one; "since I didn't know what to write for it exactly." Moreover, the second most helpful thing was "seeing your reaction to my paper each week, it kept me really motivated to write more." It seems to me that, if students and their regular teachers were to use similar routes of communication (either via skype or elsewhere online), the rapport would both help motivate students to do the work assigned them, as it helped Ian, and it would encourage students to take their intellectual inquiry above and beyond the scope of their classes.

Writing In Community Final Essay, Draft 2

2013-05-11T02:50:00.001-07:00

Defining Literacy

Paolo Freire, a writer best known for his work teaching Brazilian peasants how to heighten their critical consciousness, believes that schools aren't supposed to teach using any form of rote memorization, or lessons that involve a lecture, because these teaching methods create a disconnect between the lesson and the real world; something Freire refers to at “narration sickness” (368). Instead of immersing students in the world they are supposed to be learning about, the imperative of the lecture "leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content." People, places, and events, become discrete facts embedded in the matrix of the test they are taught towards, and students' minds become "receptacles to be "filled" by the teacher." (368) Because of this, public education becomes reduced to a series of business-like transactions:

(368-9)

Ten, fifteen, then twenty minutes passed. I kept trying to surrepititiously glance over at his work, but he kept turning the computer screen away from me. When he finally turned the computer around, what I read was even more than I'd dared hope for: he used an analogy to introduce his topic ("Our current economy is like an outfield in baseball. There is such a large area to cover and only three people available to do so.") Building on the analogy, he made the argument that a lack of economic diversity in the U.S. poses a significant risk to the middle and lower classes. He pointed out that the government bailouts of the banking and auto industries were largely ineffective in stimulating economic growth, and argued that greater economic strength would come from the encouragement of small businesses:

Everything I would expect of a college-level paper, I found in this first draft of the introduction. It did need editing, but it showed me that my student had a firm grasp on the fundamentals of good writing. Although I would need to continue to push him to write more, and to expand and challenge his ideas, I did not need to pretend that this was a remedial English class. When I recently asked Ian via Skype what he thought the most helpful things I'd done with him in tutoring were, he listed my helping him with his intro as number one; "since I didn't know what to write for it exactly." Moreover, the second most helpful thing was "seeing your reaction to my paper each week, it kept me really motivated to write more." It seems as if what Ian needed from me was not a lesson on how to write a paper, but rather he needed me to teach him specific tools he could use to better express his ideas. He already knew how to write a paper, and how to both research material for that paper and integrate what he learned into the 'big picture' topic. As far as I can tell, Humanities Prep does a good job ot educating students like Ian who take the time and effort to apply the lessons they learn in school in their everyday lives. However, Humanities prep is a high school that a. uses the New York Regents exam system and b. is a public school whose curriculum appears to match Freire's description of "The Banking Concept of Education." So why is its program still effective?

Perhaps the efficacy of an education program is not measured by what it does wrong, but by what it does right. What Goldson, Freire and Tyre all have in common is that they acknowledge that a school's success can be measured by what students are able to do outside of school. In a word, this can be boiled down to the concept of literacy. According to writer Sylvia Scribner, functional literacy is defined as "the level of proficiency necessary for effective performance in a range of settings and customary activities." (9) By extension, Sylvia argues, functional literacy also applies to the ability to use computers and other now-commonplace technologies, which are forms of "second-order literacy" (11). In other words, literacy is the ability to use tools and concepts that you know to learn something that you don't yet know. This is why Erica Goldson credits her education largely to her 10th-grade English Teacher, Donna Bryan, who taught her how to open her mind and "ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine." (cite) Knowing how to ask questions before accepting doctrine is part of learning how to learn, which is exactly what functional literacy entails.

There is some trouble with quantifying and measuring functional literacy, which makes it difficult to evaluate in a classroom setting. When Ian and I first began to work on the body arguments of his PBAT, he had written his first argument on the economic vulnerabilities caused by government reliance on major corporations for tax revenue. As I read what Ian had wrote, I noticed that although he had a cogent argument, that a large public debt would contribute to the downfall of the middle class, there was a major logic gap between his argument and his main piece of evidence, which was that Apple, Inc. and other related tech companies represented a disproportionately large chunk of the U.S. economy, I stopped reading to point out the error. "You've got a great idea, here, Ian, but your discussion about Apple has nothing to do with it... at least nothing your readers will pick up on their own." Ian frowned a little and nodded as he re-read the passage. "Uh-huh." I backtracked in case I had hurt his feelings. "That's not to say you shouldn't talk about Apple at all; just not right here." Drawing on what I knew, I explained to Ian that he needed to talk about other sectors of the economy, and to find a way to compare them to the economy as a whole. Ian gave me a puzzled look; "And... how do I do that?" Both of us fell silent for a minute. I didn't have the answer off the top of my head; I'm not an economist. Then, I blurted out "Let's find out how much money Apple and other big companies make in yearly revenues, and then compare that to the U.S.'s GDP. That'll give readers the sense of perspective that you're trying to convey." I knew where to look up a company's annual revenues, because I had worked at a hedge fund two summers back as a summer job. Even though that knowledge couldn't be considered a form of functional literacy, at least by societal standards, it was for Ian because his paper revolved around economics. In this instance, it was no big deal because I was able to help Ian find a solution to his problem. However, for other students working on their PBATs, they might not have learned how to find the information they need - or even what sort of information they're looking for. That tutoring session impressed upon me that internet research, in of itself, is a form of functional literacy that any student - any adult - needs to master.

Although functional literacy is, ostensibly, a good and necessary thing for a person to possess, Paolo Freire does not view it as such. According to Freire, the fact that the educator's role is "to regulate the way the world "enters into" the students" is reprehensible, for, following this same thought process:

The educated individual is the adapted person, because she or he is better "fit" for the world. Translated into practice, this concept is well suited to the purposes of the oppressors, whose tranquility rests on how well people fit the world the oppressors have created, and how little they question it. (373)

Cast in this light, the standard of functional literacy is a weapon used by the oppressors - those who maintain the system of Banking Education for their own gain - to keep the status quo. Those who comply by studying under Banking Education are, effectively, allowing themselves to be brainwashed because their mind, the way they interpret the world, is molded to better fit the world they have grown up in. Rather than changing the more unsavory aspects of the world, they are taught to 'just roll with it.' By contrast, liberating education teaches its students that they can change the world, and that - in fact- they are obligated to do so:

Students, as they are increasingly posed with problems relating to themselves in the world and with the world, will feel increasingly challenged and obliged to respond to that challenge. Because they apprehend the challenge as interrelated to other problems within a total context, not as theoretical question, the resulting comprehension tends to be increasingly critical and thus constantly less alienated. Their response to the challenge evokes new challenges, followed by new understandings; and gradually the students come to regard themselves as committed.

Peg Tyre would agree that Freire's concept of education, which promotes critical thinking in all domains of learning, is sound. However, she would disagree emphatically with the idea that functional literacy is a form of oppression used on high school students like those at New Dorp. In fact, one technique used at the school to develop students' analytical skills, developed by Judith Hochman, uses classroom discussion of canonical literature texts (in this case, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman) to teach the socratic method. When students speak in class, they were required to use specific prompts, "I agree/disagree with ___ because...", "I have a different opinion...", "I have something to add..." and "Can you explain your answer?" Students in one particular English class got into a debate about why the protagonist, Willie Loman, was described as being tired in the opening scene. One student proposed that Willie was tired because he was old (63, according to the stage directions), while another student argued that he was tired because his job was very hard and required extensive travelling. A third student spoke out, "I disagree with those conclusions," he said, glancing at the prompts. "The way Willie Loman describes his job suggests that the kind of work he does is making him tired. It is repetitive. It can feel pointless. It can make your feel exhausted."

As Tyre relates, the class was silent for a moment, acknowledging that Robert had analyzed the scene and derived a fresh idea from his own experience. (9) Classroom discussions like these prompt students to continually ask

Sylvia Scribner does not, however, believe that literacy is solely defined as functional literacy. In fact, like Freire, she proposes that literacy is also a form of power; although, historically, literacy has been used as a form of oppression by the ruling elites to maintain their social status, it has also been a powerful agent for societal change (12). Because illiteracy is, in America, largely endemic in marginalized groups such as the urban poor, especially african-americans and latino communities, increasing literacy within these communities could potentially be a catalyst for political and social change (12).

Paolo Freire proposes a method of teaching literacy that, in contrast to The Banking Concept of Education, emphasizes "acts of cognition, not transferrals of information." (372) Dubbed "Liberating Education", this model places teacher-student dialogue as a centerpiece of the learning experience, such that "the students - no longer docile listeners - are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher." (373) This, too, is another critical aspect of literacy; the ability to communicate what you know and what you think with those around you.

ENDING: There are too many schools, and too many teachers, for any comprehensive education reform plan to be feasible. The public education system is simply too large for any single curriculum, or any one test, to be applicable to all students; in this instance, one size does not fit all. But there are guidelines that can help individual teachers and principles decide on what is best for their pupils. Peg Tyre's analytical writing program could help show students how to learn, when they might not otherwise know how to. Paolo Freire's model of liberating education could help give an education to students who may have given up on learning. Sylvia Scribner's metaphors for literacy can help give educators insight on how to gauge a student's progress without resorting to written examination.

1. Propose the concept of asymmetrical testing

2. discuss the idea of allowing teachers to choose their own curricula, within a level of oversight similar to what clinical psychologists & psychiatrists face.

Works Cited

Freire, Paolo. "The “Banking” Concept Of Education." Dwc.edu. Daniel Webster College. 11 May 2013 <http://faculty.dwc.edu/wellman/Friere.htm>.

Goldson, Erica. "Here I Stand." America Via Erica. Blogger.com. 11 May 2013 <http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com/2010/07/coxsackie-athens-valedictorian-speech.html>.

Scribner, Sylvia. "Literacy In Three Metaphors." 11 May 2013 <http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true>.

Tyre, Peg. "The Writing Revolution." The Atlantic. The Atlantic. 11 May 2013 <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-writing-revolution/309090/>.

Psych. Evaluations & Their Treatment Plans

2013-05-08T10:51:00.003-07:00

DIAGNOSTIC PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION

Patient Name:     Macaroni, Ella

Date of Birth:     April 10, 1991

AGE:    16 Years

Date of Evaluation.     June 22, 2007

INFORMANTS:    Patient; and Biological Parents, Greg and Lila Macaroni

REFERRED BY:    Jonathan Abel

Evaluated by:     Jess P. Shatkin, M.D., M.P.H.

PRESENTING PROBLEM:

Chief Complaint:

"We're concerned about her lack of attention, moodiness, depression and lack of motivation. She is disconnected, and there seems to be no sense of presence. She seems like an observer, letting things happen to her. Life seems to act on her, but Ella does not seem to act on life. We also feel there is a disconnect between actions and consequences such that she doesn't seem to understand that not studying now will have a direct impact on her immediate future. She also does not recognize her good fortune and is reluctant to commit to success. Finally, she has a pattern of blaming others."

History of Present Illness:

Ella is 16 years of age female with a longstanding history of poor motivation and what parents describe as “disengagement and passivity.” Her parents wish to have her evaluated because of these concerns in addition to poor academic functioning and what they believe may be depression. Parents note that she is frequently lethargic and does not appear to express any passion for her daily activities. Parents are frustrated with Ella's refusals to complete her school work, to plan effectively and demonstrate executive and organizational skills, and to "engage" in her life. Parents report Ella suffers from poor self-esteem and a fear of success such that if she demonstrates her true ability, she fears she will always be expected to perform well, and life will become increasingly difficult. She seems to look for confrontation, per parents, and will sacrifice herself in order to "win" an argument. Parents report that the primary current stressor is likely to be her boarding school, St. Peter’s Academy. Although Ella has been there for seven months, the adjustment has not been easy for her. Her academic performance is also poor which is troublesome.

Regarding mood, parents report that her mood is "stressed, depressed, moody and desultory." Ella herself reported her mood as "okay" during her interview, but noted that she does often feel sad. Neurovegetatively, she sleeps well, about 6-8 hours during the week nights and 10-12 hours on the weekend. She has generally a poor appetite, although she reports having gained three pounds in the past three months. Both parents and Ella report that she suffers from lethargy and poor energy but has difficulty with attention and concentration. Ella's parents deny that she suffers from frank anhedonia, noting there may be a slight decrease in her enjoyment of every day activities. Ella herself notes slightly more anhedonia, reporting that she is simply not passionate about anything at this point and does not get a great deal of pleasure out of her activities. There is no reported hopelessness nor suicidal ideation. Parents do report that Ella has expressed some passive death wishes in the past when angry. There is no history of psychosis or mania.

Parents do not view Ella as anxious, although on occasion she will become overwhelmed with anxiety. Recently, for example, her mother misplaced her wallet while shopping, and Ella became very anxious and distraught. There is no history of separation anxiety, panic or phobias. Historically, Ella has reacted very strongly to certain foods and become nauseous and suffered from diarrhea at times. Parents have wondered if there is a connection to anxiety. All major medical explanations for the GI upset have been ruled out by the primary care practitioner. No history of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or social anxiety.

Parents identify three symptoms of inattention, including being poorly organized, losing things frequently, and being easily distracted; but no other symptoms of hyperactivity, impulsivity or inattention were noted. Parents endorse all eight of eight oppositional defiant features, such as frequently losing her temper, arguing, being angry frequently, defying parents' requests, blaming others for things that are her doing, purposely annoying others, being touchy or easily bothered, and spiteful and vindictive. No history of conduct or legal difficulties. No history of motor or vocal tics. There is no evidence of pervasive developmental delay and no history of self-injurious behavior. No history of eating disordered behavior. Parents report that she may have been traumatized by a couple of events. She was bitten by a dog at 3 years of age and had to go to the emergency room secondary to an elbow jam at 8 years of age; however, Ella reports no sequelae from these events, and parents are unable to identify any frank reactive symptoms.

PAST MEDICAL HISTORY:

Her primary care practitioner is Ethan Rose at NYU last seen about one year ago. No current treatment. Ella has no history of head trauma, loss of consciousness or seizures. No surgeries or hospitalizations.

PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY:

She has been seeing Jennifer Ree, an M.A. counseling trainee, since late fall. She saw Frank Burges, M.D. once for an evaluation and was diagnosed with depression. She was given medication, Prozac, by Dr. Burges, which she took for about four days but then discontinued. The reasons for the discontinuation were not entirely clear. Parents reported they were under the impression that Ella suffered a stomachache and so discontinued the medication in consultation with the acute care clinic at St. Peter’s. Jennifer Ree reported that starting the Prozac coincided with a surprise visit from her sister, which was very upsetting, made her anxious, and may have promoted in some way the GI distress. Ella herself reports that she discontinued the medication because it was making her feel more angry and irritable. There was no manic agitation reported, no change in sleep, and Ella denied all symptoms of mania experienced when she took the medication. No history of psychiatric hospitalizations.

MEDICATIONS:

None currently.

ALLERGIES:

No known drug allergies.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE:

Parents and patient deny alcohol, tobacco and drug use.

DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY:

Mother is P4, G3. First pregnancy was a miscarriage. The patient is pregnancy #3. No difficulties with conception, gestation or delivery. The patient was born by normal spontaneous vaginal delivery at full-term, six days late. No assist was necessary. Mother did take prenatal vitamins throughout the pregnancy but no other medications. Mother had an occasional glass of wine throughout the pregnancy but reports her use was minimal. No use of tobacco or drugs during the pregnancy. Motor, language, toileting and social milestones were all met within normal limits. No history of enuresis.

PSYCHOSEXUAL HISTORY:

Menarche was initiated at 11 years of age. The last menstrual period was last week. Parents note severe mood changes with Ella's periods such that prior to the onset of menstruation, she will become increasingly moody for a few days and will then continue to be “moody” for days into the menstruation. The patient has never used oral contraception. She denies being sexually active. She had a boyfriend briefly who she kissed. Boys are reportedly interested in her. She had never seen an OB/GYN.

EDUCATIONAL HISTORY:

She is currently at St. Peter’s Academy in the tenth grade. Kindergarten through ninth, she attended the Arrow school where she was an average to above-average student. She was never suspended or expelled. She never skipped or repeated a grade. No learning disability was ever identified, although she was never tested. No history of IEP or 504. Currently her grades are passing, but in a few cases she is being quite academically challenged and is having some significant difficulties. Her parents shared with me a letter written by Clive Owens, her Dean at St. Peter’s. Mr. Owens reports that at the Winter Academic Review Committee, the faculty voted to place Ella on one week of academic restriction because of her grade of a 2 in chemistry and have now placed her on “year-end review” for three unsatisfactory grades. Mr. Owens goes on to note that Ella must demonstrate progress in her attitude, effort, conduct and academic performance in order to remain at Andover next year.

FAMILY HISTORY:

Mother, Lila, is 51 years of age. She denies all medical, psychiatric and substance abuse history. Father, Greg, also 51 years of age, also denies medical, psychiatric and substance abuse history. The oldest child, Norma, is 19 years of age. She suffers from scoliosis. The youngest child, Troy, is 12 years of age. He has no reported difficulties. Mother's mother, 78 years old, is possibly depressed, has a history of polio, alcohol abuse and tobacco abuse. Greg’s mother, 75 years of age, suffers from Alzheimer's. Both parents' fathers are reportedly alive and well. Mother notes that she is the eldest of five children, that her first brother and first sister may both be depressed. Father has one sibling, a brother, with no apparent history.

SOCIAL HISTORY:

The family lives in New York City. Ella's hobbies include art, drawing, playing video games, enjoying being with the family, soccer, and squash. Regarding discipline, parents report that they are not united on their approach, and it is often haphazard. They find Ella difficult to motivate and inspire and note that their anger and threats only escalate her behavior. There is no religious study in the family. Mother is a chief marketing officer for a public relations company. Father is an architect, self-employed.

REVIEW OF SYSTEMS:

Negative.

PHYSICAL/NEUROLOGICAL EXAMINATION:

Not indicated.

Lab work including CBC and thyroid panel were within normal limits. Free T4 was 1.0 and TSH was 2.06. These labs were drawn on March 23rd.

COLLATERAL CONTACTS:

I spoke to Mr. Owens on March 20th. He indicated that much of Ella's difficulties have to do with procrastination and overcoming a hurdle of perfectionism. He reported, "She critiques herself so severely that she always feels insufficient. Socially, she on the way to becoming comfortable here. Much of the problems she suffered in the fall had to do with social functioning. She is not a social outcast but does not seem to have strong social contacts at this time. In terms of academics, she has produced some high-quality work when pushed, but the difficulty lies more in completing the work. Chemistry was a particular problem with her, perhaps because of a personality conflict with the teacher who is very strict. Generally, I observe her as being hunched over and withdrawn, more than joyful and bubbly. I have heard from her teachers that she can be stubborn, does not listen well and is sometimes quietly resistant." Dr. Burges and I exchanged voice mails on 3/21/07 but were unable to speak. She noted that when she saw Ella for evaluation on February 26, 2007, she found her to be quite depressed. She prescribed Prozac 10mg with instructions to take one for five days and then double the dose; however, Ella went to the St. Peter’s acute care center after 3-4 days and complained of gastrointestinal distress. The Prozac was discontinued. She only had one visit with Dr. Burges. I requested Dr. Burges’ evaluation but never received it. I spoke with Jennifer Ree on March 22nd. She reports seeing Ella since mid October. Ella referred herself for a therapist, and Ms. Ree was assigned. She reported that Ella came into therapy feeling "overwhelmed and upset, complaining mostly about social issues such as wanting to fit in and being preoccupied with how others would perceive her. That has remained the focus of our work together. If I did not have communication with teachers, I would not even know of Ella's academic difficulties." Since mid January, they have been meeting twice a week. They are engaged in open-ended talk therapy, not CBT. No diagnosis has been given. Ms. Ree is a second year counseling student at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard. Finally, I communicated with Rick Tortelio by e-mail on March 23, 2007. He stated in his e-mail, "The thing is that Ella has to do her homework and her assignments on time. Why this is not happening, I guess is the question. She is a valuable student to the class and school, but when the teacher collects homework and papers, she has nothing to give him. It puts a damper on her participation and engagement in the class and seems to start up a negative spin that can last over a few days until eventually she hands in something. Then, the whole process starts over again on the next assignment."

RATING SCALES:

Ella completed a Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) scoring a total of 26 points, placing her at the 76th T-score or 2½ standard deviations above normal.

MENTAL STATUS:

Generally, Ella separated from her mother easily and engaged with me in my office for over an hour. She was pleasant and had no difficulty discussing a full range of topics including school, home, and personal matters. She was not resistant to our conversation and did not appear defended. She maintained good eye contact. She was dressed appropriately for her age. Her hair continued to fall into her face throughout the session for which she apologized and commented on the need for a new haircut. She was otherwise a well-developed, well-nourished, slender 16 years of age Caucasian female who appeared in no apparent distress and appeared her stated age. She wore orthodontic braces. Her behavior was normokinetic. Her speech was of a regular rate, rhythm and normal volume. Her mood she reported as "Okay…sad at times." Her affect was pleasant, generally full, but tearful at times. The topics around which she became tearful were not consistent but had much to do with being away at school or going back to school. No perceptual disturbances were identified. Thought processes were linear and goal directed. Thought content was devoid of delusions and paranoia. No suicidal or homicidal ideation. Sensorium and cognition was grossly intact. Judgment and insight appeared reasonably good. Impulse control and reliability appeared good.

ASSESSMENT:

Ella is a 16 years of age female with a long history of opposionality and defiance at home and more recent negative mood, which seems to have worsened over the past 4-5 months. She has been in therapy, which has made her feel better, but has not improved her symptoms. She has longstanding difficulties with her parents and is the most difficult of the children at home to manage, but she has never engaged in any severely conduct disordered behavior. She has had a difficult time adjusting socially at school and has few friends remaining from her years at Chapin. She prefers to be at home with family and seems to have withdrawn more from friends and hobbies in the past six months. She has received minimal treatment.

Patient: Ella Macaroni

DSM-IV Diagnoses:

Axis 1: Major Depressive Disorder & Oppositional Defiant Disorder; rule out PTSD, rule out Adjustment Disorder

Axis II: Rule out Learning D/O

Axis III: N/A

Axis IV: Ongoing difficulties at new boarding school (St. Peter's Academy)

Avis V: GAF = 55

Ella's two primary diagnoses, Depression and Oppositional Defiant Disorder, are the most pressing and well-established concerns that we will address in this treatment plan. Parents report eight out of eight persistent symptoms of oppositional and defiant behavior, which are corroborated by reports by patient's teachers. Symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder include moodiness (irritability), depression and lack of motivation, anhedonia, poor appetite and slight weight gain, and inattention. Further evaluation is necessary to rule out the possibility of a learning disorder, regarding her poor performance in school, as she has never been tested before. Additional evaluation may be indicated in the future to rule out the possibility of P.T.S.D., as patient's parents report possible traumatization by 'a couple of events' in the patient's past. Although Ella displayed three symptoms of inattention (including poor organization, losing things frequently, and being easily distracted), no other symptoms of hyperactivity, impulsivity, or inattention have been reported. As such, we may confidently rule out any diagnosis of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Ella's depression appears to be moderate in severity, in that she sleeps well (about 6-8 hours on weekdays, and 10-12 hours on the weekend), and that although she has a poor appetite, she has gained three pounds in the last three months.

Treatment for Ella's Depression and Oppositional-Defiant Disorder are to go hand in hand. Jess Shatkin, M.D., writes in "Treating Child & Adolescent Mental Illness" that, regarding O.D.D., "Addressing concurrent problems, such as ADHD, depression, anxiety, and learning disorders, often considerably alleviates many of the disruptive behaviors." Given this, it may be safe to assume that addressing Ella's depression first and foremost will help minimize or even eliminate her oppositional behaviors towards her parents and teachers. It may be that Ella has suffered from depression for some time now (concurrent with the reportedly longstanding oppositional behaviors), which has only recently come to light. Corroboration evidence for this comes from the fact that Ella's maternal grandmother ('possibly depressed') has a history of alcohol and tobacco use, and that the mother's first brother and first sister also 'may both be depressed.' Although no definite diagnoses have been established for any of these family members, it may be inferred that symptoms of depression run in Ella's immediate family. Nonetheless, if treatment of depression does not lead to a remission in oppositionality, then Ella's O.D.D. may be treated as a standalone issue - a plan for which will be discussed later.

Psychotherapy Interventions:

It was noted in the psychiatric eval. that Ella has not received CBT for her depression, making a 12-14 week course of CBT strongly indicated at this time. The TADS study of 2004, funded by the NIMH, indicated that the best treatment response for depressed adolescents came from a combination of medication and behavioral therapy, and is the primary basis of my recommendation that Ella be treated with both a course of CBT and an SSRI other than Prozac.

Psychopharmacological interventions:

Additionally, we may consider attempting the use of a different SSRI, perhaps Sertraline, for short-term management of Ella's depressive symptoms. If Ella is a partial responder to Sertraline, then in the absence of any major negative side effects, augmentation with Buproprion or aripiprazole may be attempted. It should be noted that the combination of Buproprion and sertraline carries major risk of drug interactions, namably, an increase in risk of seizures and an increase in blood levels of sertraline, possibly increasing the risk of side effects. As with any combination of drug prescriptions, Ella should be closely monitored by a physician or psychiatrist during the course of this medication treatment.

Ella's parents are currently employed in stable, high-paying jobs (the mother is the marketing director for a public-relations firm, while the father is a self-employed architect), which indicates ample resources - money and insurance - with which to pay for treatment. Based on Ella's psychiatric evaluation, talk therapy with Jennifer Ree, an M.A. counseling trainee, has made Ella feel better, although it has not improved her symptoms of depression. Additionally, the 10mg Prozac prescription written by Dr. Frank Burges caused adverse mood and G.I. reactions, as self-reported by the patient, which makes it unlikely that either parents or patient will consider another attempt at using Prozac for management of depressive symptoms.

Additional psychopharm. treatments to consider:

Any consideration of 'stronger' treatments for Ella's depression should be viewed with extreme caution. In the course of treatment, if Ella fails to improve with her schoolwork and social functioning, tricyclic antidepressants may be tried, plus augmentation if a partial response is observed. Failing that, an MAOI may be used; if all else fails, electroconvulsive therapy may be used as a last resort. Any of these treatments should only be considered if there is a. no improvement following combined cognitive-behavioral therapy and SSRI medication and b. a lowering in GAF.

If Ella's oppositional-defiant behaviors do not improve despite an improvement in depressive symptoms, then they may be treated as stand-alone issues. Following Shatkin's recommendations in Treating Child and Adolescent Mental Illness, Multisystemic Therapy (MST) may be employed, in addition to the use of an antidepressant such as Abilify. If Ella were younger, Parent Management Training or Parent-Child Interaction Training might be employed, but as the patient is 16 y/o, she falls well outside of the age range where such interventions are indicated. Antipsychotics and other medications for O.D.D. are not indicated at this time, as Ella has no history of legal or disciplinary issues at school.

Educational/Academic interventions:

Academic interventions, such as a 504/IEP plan, may be considered at this time if, following testing, a learning disorder is diagnosed. Receiving extended time on exams, as well as having homework and assigned projects modified to her individual learning needs, could prove quite beneficial to Ella's education. However, it does not seem like this treatment path is likely to be needed; Ella's academic performance at The Arrow School between kindergarden and ninth grade was average to above average, and it is unlikely that any private school would miss any obvious learning disorders in that great span of time. In all likelihood, cognitive-behavioral therapy will help alleviate Ella's tendency towards procrastination and perfectionism, improving her school performance to the level that is expected of her at St. Peter's Academy.

Protective factors:

Ella has a number of protective factors working towards a favorable treatment outcome. Firstly, her family is willing and able to pay for any treatments that are indicated (given their employment). Secondly, she was an average/above average student at her previous school, and is receiving passing grades at her current school. Thirdly, although some of her family members may have had major depressive disorder or dysthymia, none of them were so affected by it as to cause any hospitalizations or suicide attempts. Lastly, Ella has never had legal or disciplinary troubles at school as a result of her oppositionality. All of the above seem to indicate that, given the interventions recommended above, Ella may see a dramatic, sustained improvement in her social and academic functioning.

Timeline of treatment:

1. 10 week course of Sertraline for management of core symptoms of depression, plus augmentation with Buproprion if partial responder.

2. 12- to 14-week course of CBT for long-term management of depression

3. 5-week trial of TCA therapy if GAF continues to decline, with no response from SSRIs

4. Multisystemic therapy for treatment of O.D.D. if behavioral issues do not resolve following an improvement in symptoms of depression.

DIAGNOSTIC PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION

Patient Name:    Lee, Andre

DATE OF BIRTH:    December 19, 1990

AGE:    15 Years

DATE OF EVALUATION:    May 16, 2006

INFORMANTS:    Patient and Biological Parents, Marie & Neil Lee

REFERRED BY:    Rob Canes, M.D.

Evaluated by:    Jess P. Shatkin, M.D., M.P.H.

PRESENTING PROBLEM:

Chief Complaint: Per Patient: "Recently I started dating this girl, and we decided that we love each other and want to get married. In my head, I heard something say, ‘kill her.’ I had just nearly finished this book, House of the Spirits, by Isabel Allende, and after a while, the voice changed to ‘kill Amy,’ my girlfriend's name, not just ‘kill her.’ It hurts to think about it. I have been having images of her dying in my arms. I know that I would never do it because I love her. Another voice says, ‘but you love her, cut it out!’ That is the good voice, and that's my voice".

Per Father, Neil: "I feel guilty because of language that I've used in the past with Marie. I've had problems in the past, and I've started to internalize this stuff." Per Mother, Marie: "I just didn't want to wait to see what is going on. Andre is so in love. He's afraid he's not worthy of his girlfriend. He's always been very sensitive and over the past few years, a lot has happened. For example, we've lost our apartment in Manhattan and moved to Queens. I think that he's tired and depleted."

History of Present Illness: Andre is a 15 years of age white male who has had a recent upsurge in sadness over the last nine days prior to our visit with complaints initially of command auditory hallucinations telling him to kill his girlfriend. He recently finished the book House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende and had not had any of these thoughts or experienced any of these images prior to reading the book. Mother contacted Dr. Rob Canes, MD, a physician, with whom she worked in the past, and he recommended the evaluation here. They requested an urgent evaluation. On evaluation, Andre noted that he has had no symptoms of this sort in the past. He stated that when he was younger, he had recurring dreams about his mother falling into a pit and dying, but no other such fearful images.

He has had no change in his activities of daily living, i.e., his showering, eating, dressing, social activities and schoolwork continue to be coming along nicely. He recently received a report card just a day or two before our appointment indicating some of the best grades he has ever received. Mother reported she feels that Andre is simply exhausted and that this book is too intense for him and should have not been recommended by the school. Although the patient initially reported auditory hallucinations hearing a male's voice and a whisper telling him to "kill her, kill Amy," he reports that he is now able to control the voice and stop thinking about it for extensive periods of time. He reported feeling relieved during our appointment because he had not heard the voice in about half a day. He stated, "I can block it, but I could hear it if I want to." He described the voice as emanating from within inside his head. He denied thought insertions, thought withdrawals, thought broadcasting and ideas of reference. He denied visual, tactile and olfactory hallucinations. He denied paranoia and suicidal & homicidal ideation. Upon further questioning, he described the auditory hallucinations as voices within his head, then his own voice, and then ultimately as we continued to discuss the symptomatology, as his own voice and his own thoughts.

He was quite often tearful during the evaluation. He described that his mood is "guilty about having these thoughts. I want to tell Amy that I love her. I want to be honest with her and tell her that I'm having these thoughts." Neurovegetatively, he has been sleeping about seven hours at night with perhaps more on the weekend. He has had periods of time when he has only slept for about five hours at night, sometimes for weeks on end; but during these days, he stays up awake because he is doing schoolwork, and he will often nap for two hours during the middle of the day. He has no difficulty falling asleep, describes a normal energy level, has a good appetite and good attention and concentration, and parents concur. There is some moderate anhedonia over the past nine days secondary to guilt about his girlfriend, but no hopelessness. He reported, "I don't think I'm depressed. I've been the happiest I've ever been for the past four months since I met Amy." There is no indication of manic symptoms. He is now often staying up late to talk to his girlfriend on the phone and do his studies, but again still sleeping seven hours at least within each 24 hour period (including nighttime sleep and naps). Otherwise, no increase in risk taking behavior, no change in talkativity, distractibility or goal-directed changes.

Regarding anxiety, there is no history of somatic difficulties, phobias or separation anxiety. He has reported one panic attack in the past 10 days, but none prior; and there is no fear of having another panic attack. Regarding possible symptoms of obsessionality, he reports fear of his parents dying and the periodic fear of his mother falling into a pit or getting lost (e.g., his prior recurring dream as a child). He stated with regard to his mother, "I feel I need to protect her. I feel bad for her sometimes and that I'm losing time with her." There were otherwise no ascertainable obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

He denied symptoms of ADHD, oppositional defiant and conduct difficulties, and parents concurred. He did have three episodes of shoplifting as a child, but there have been no sequelae from that. No history of tics or Tourette's. No evidence of pervasive developmental delays, self-injurious behavior, physical, emotional or sexual abuse, or eating disordered difficulties.

PAST MEDICAL HISTORY:

His primary care practitioner is Dr. Schwartz. He last saw him about one year ago. He is not currently receiving any treatment. He had surgery and is status-post tonsil and adenoidectomy and a hernia repair. He did have a febrile seizure at 4 years of age with loss of consciousness. He had an EEG at that time and also six months later, which showed no abnormalities. No history of head trauma.

PSYCHIATRIC HISTORY:

He has never seen a therapist, never been psychiatrically hospitalized, never been seen by a psychiatrist or been on any medication.

CURRENT MEDICATIONS:

Advil 400 mg p.r.n. for headache. He takes Advil about every two weeks. No vitamins or herbal medications or dietary supplements other than Chinese tea he has been drinking with his girlfriend since about January. He says he urinates more when he drinks the tea, but otherwise has no difficulties.

ALLERGIES:

No known drug allergies.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE:

The patient reported that he does not smoke tobacco, that he does not use drugs or alcohol. He has tried alcohol on occasion with friends, but he has never used to any significant degree. There is no history of other drug use or intravenous drug use.

PSYCHOSEXUAL HISTORY:

He has never had sexual intercourse. He has had a few girlfriends prior to Amy. He and Amy have decided they will not have intercourse for at least a few years. They are kissing and doing some petting. No history of pregnancies or sexually transmitted diseases. No reports of sexual malfunction.

DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY:

Mother is P5 G4. The first pregnancy resulted in an abortion. Andre is the fifth pregnancy. He has three male siblings. Mother reported she had gestational diabetes with all pregnancies. She was insulin-dependent with up to 10 injections a day during her pregnancy with Andre. She was not on bed rest, however. She did not otherwise take any medication and did not use tobacco, alcohol or drugs during the pregnancy. Motor, language and toileting milestones were all reportedly within normal limits.

EDUCATIONAL HISTORY:

The patient is a tenth grader at Bates High School. His grades, according to the April 2006 progress report that his mother gave me, range from 87 at a low to 95 at the high end, most grades falling within the 90s. He has no history of repeating or skipping grades, no history of suspensions or expulsions, and no history of Special Education. He has no 504 or IEP plan. He is typically described as an A/B student.

FAMILY HISTORY:

Father, Neil, is 55. He has a history of depression with psychosis approximately seven years ago. He was treated with Wellbutrin, Risperdal, Mellaril and Haldol at various times. He was ill for about three months but has had no difficulty since that time. Mother, Marie, is 54. She continues to have insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. She was depressed subsequent to her husband's depression and was treated with Remeron and Wellbutrin for about six months. Andre has three brothers. Brian is 23 and has no reported difficulties. Eddie, 26, has a seizure disorder, is currently on anticonvulsants, has made one suicide attempt, and was psychiatrically hospitalized as an adult for 7-10 days. James, who is 29 and who has a history of anxiety, has been treated with medication in the past. Both father and mother have first cousins with chronic paranoid schizophrenia; mother's is a first cousin once removed. Mother also has a first maternal cousin with pervasive developmental delay or possibly Asperger's. Father reports that he drinks alcohol off and on and has drunk up to 18 drinks a day. He says he is currently drinking more and more, perhaps even almost every day. He acknowledged trying to cut down. He acknowledged being annoyed by others' comments about his drinking. He denied guilt or ever having used alcohol as an eye opener.

SOCIAL HISTORY:

The family lives in Flushing in Queens. The patient takes an express bus and a train to school daily. They previously lived in Manhattan until one year ago. They lost their apartment because it was lower income housing that was bought and changed ownership. The patient's hobbies include playing on the computer, playing chess, and reading. He has good friends. He has had friends since first grade. Amy is his first real girlfriend. He was raised Jewish and had a Bar Mitzvah. Neil, his father, teaches history at a public school. Mother, Marie, is a nurse and teacher. His social engagements are described as quite healthy.

REVIEW OF SYSTEMS:

Negative.

PHYSICAL EXAMINATION:

Blood pressure 122/70. Pulse of 80 and regular. Height 67". Weight 216 pounds. His head was normocephalic and atraumatic. His neck was supple. No lymph nodes were noted. Chest exam was clear to auscultation. No CVA tenderness. Heart demonstrated SI and S2 auscultated, regular rate and rhythm with no murmurs, gallops or rubs. Abdominal exam was nontender and nondistended. Positive bowel sounds in all quadrants. No hepatosplenomegaly. Extremities showed no clubbing or edema.

NEUROLOGIC EXAM:

Cranial nerves II through VII were intact. Pupils were equally round and reactive to light and accommodation. Extraocular muscles were intact. Motor exam 5/5 bilaterally throughout. Tone was within normal limits. No tremor. Sensory exam was intact to soft touch bilaterally throughout. Deep tendon reflexes were 2+ at the patella and brachium bilaterally. Cerebellar exam was intact to rapid alternating motion and finger-to-thumb. Gait within normal limits. Negative Romberg.

MENTAL STATUS EXAM:

Generally, Andre was cooperative and friendly with the examination. He was appropriately dressed and slightly husky, a bit overweight. Otherwise he appeared healthy. He was pleasant and easy to engage. His behavior was normokinetic, but notable for crying frequently when talking about his symptomatology and demonstrating a great deal of guilt for thinking these thoughts. Speech was of a regular rate, rhythm and normal volume. His mood he described as alternately guilty and sad. Affect: Largely appears guilty and sad, does have numerous moments when he smiled and appeared to have full affect. No perceptual disturbances identified. Thought processes perseverative on his guilty feelings and worries. Thought content: No delusions or paranoia, notable obsessions regarding his girlfriend (worrying about these thoughts of harming his girlfriend) but no other obsessions were identified. No suicidal or homicidal ideation. Sensorium and cognition were grossly intact. Judgment appears good. Insight moderate. Impulse control and reliability appears good by history.

COLLATERAL INFORMATION:

Life History Form completed by mother is consistent with the history reported. Andre has been increasingly anxious and distraught, concerned about thoughts he has had about these feelings with a fear that he cannot control his thoughts or make them go away. Mother notes that he is crying easily and having trouble forgiving himself for these thoughts. He reported to his mother "I know the thoughts are preposterous, but they scared me". Otherwise, the Life History Questionnaire demonstrates no findings of concern.

ASSESSMENT:

Andre is a 15 years of age white male with no known psychiatric history or major medical problems. He presents for this evaluation after nine days of increasingly worrisome thoughts prompted by reading a book for school. He believes that he and his girlfriend will be married in the not too distant future. He is in love with her. They have been dating for four months. These thoughts have scared him so much that he feels depressed at this time, and although not concerned that he will act on these thoughts, he is terribly worried that there is something wrong with him. There appears to be no substance use or abuse and no true psychosis. He is clearly anxious and troubled. He has good social support. He is doing well academically and has a family who clearly loves and supports him.

Patient: Andre Lee

Axis I: Depression with psychosis

Axis II: N/A

Axis III: N/A

Axis IV: command auditory hallucinations instructing patient to kill his girlfriend

Axis V: 85

Andre Lee is a 15 year old Caucasian Male with a family history of depression with psychosis (father), of suicidality (brother), and of paranoid schizophrenia (Mother's and Father's first cousins). As such, his presenting symptoms of extreme sadness and command auditory hallucinations are to be taken into account with full context in mind. That said, Andre has no prior psychiatric history; he has never seen a therapist, never been psychiatrically hospitalized, and has never seen a psychiatrist of been on any medication. Furthermore, during his mental status examination, he had a full affect, and had no delusions, no paranoia, and no suicidal/homicidal ideation. Given that Andre's daily activities, showering, eating, dressing, social activities and schoolwork all remain unchanged over the past nine days - since the beginning of his symptoms - we may assign him a GAF score of 85-90. His social engagements are described as 'quite healthy', and he came to the Child Study Center promptly upon the onset of auditory hallucinations. All of the above are prognostic indicators of a good treatment outcome.

I am hesitant to prescribe any form of treatment for Andre at present, firstly due to the brevity of his symptoms, secondly due to the mildness of his symptoms (they do not, at present, affect his social or academic standing), and thirdly because his parents may not be able to afford costlier forms of treatment; it was reported that they had recently lost their apartment in Manhattan and had to relocate to Queens. Lastly, Andre's symptoms began immediately after reading a novel, "House of the Spirits" by Isabel Allenda, and were unprecedented. As such, no immediate course of treatment seems necessary; if anything, a careful observation of Andre over the next few weeks, with a possible follow-up, would be recommended. If the patient and his parents insist on some form of treatment, a form of psychotherapy (CBT or perhaps DBT) could help Andre better cope with his hallucinations, by improving his reality-testing skills, and help him deal with his feelings of guilt and inferiority. Because no problems were reported with his relationship towards his mother and father, family-based interventions are not indicated. Likewise, because Andre's reality-testing skills appear to be intact, and because no suicidal or homicidal ideation has yet been reported, psychoparm. interventions are unecessary at this time. Similarly unnecessary would be any educational, academic or vocational interventions: Andre's latest grades are some of best he has ever received, and there is nothing to suggest a learning disorder of any kind. If there is a school psychologist that Andre can talk to as needed throughout the school day, I would reccomend that he go see him/her whenever worries about these hallucinations arise. Again, careful, continuing observation of the patient is essential over the next several weeks/months, as his family history casts hallucinations in a particularly worrying light, but that - and CBT/DBT - are the only treatments indicated at this time.

Treatment plan:

1. Observation of Andre by parents & school psychologist (if available), with follow-up calls by psychiatrist at CSC for 3 months

2. 12 week course of CBT if symptoms of psychosis do not improve, plus atypical antipsychotic medication (Risperidone) if suicidal or homicidal ideation presents & persists, or if command auditory hallucinations persist & begin to interfere with patient’s day-to-day functioning

Open Letter To Artem Yevutshenko

2013-04-29T18:44:00.003-07:00

Artem,

It's been awhile since we've last spoken, but I wanted to write to you today to share an idea with you that I've stumbled across after doing some reading for one of my classes at uni. Both you and I have attended public school for much (for you, all) of our primary and secondary education, and we have both acknowledged that we felt short-changed by the system. We attended the same math classes, and yet neither you nor I ever attained a functional grasp of Geometry, Algebra II, or Trigonometry. That isn't to say we didn't try; we studied at each other's houses day after day, and yet we never did much better than a C or a B- on any exam. Although we didn't share any other classes besides math, we also did rather poorly in chemistry, biology, and environmental science.

Somehow, we both managed to make it to university and begin the trek to building our future careers. We are lucky; many of our classmates from New Providence High School are not - as you know, many are gas station attendants, waiters working at Friendly's or the Prestige diner, because somewhere along the line they became disenfranchised with school - with learning. It doesn't take a genius to understand why; after all, our teachers treated us like 5-year-olds, insulting us for doing a problem incorrectly on the whiteboard, and refusing to spend time with us outside of class to help further our understanding of what they were teaching. But that doesn't imply that all public school teachers are like that; nor does it imply that all public schools fail to educate its students. And yet, many schools do fail, so the question i'm trying to answer is, where exactly does public school disenfranchise its students? If we can answer that, then perhaps we can begin to come up with a solution.

Paolo Freire is one author who shared our point of view of the 'f***'ed up system'. He believes that public education has become a transaction-based system, in which teachers are tasked with 'filling' the students with a given amount of information ("four times four is sixteen; the capital of Para is Belem") that loses its meaning because students cannot see where (or if) it applies to the real world. Freire calls it 'The Banking Concept of Education', wherein the best teachers are those who most fully fill the 'containers' that are his/her students' minds, and the best students are those who meekly submit themselves to be filled.

Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and
the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and
makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat… the scope of
action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filling, and storing the deposits.
They do, it is true, have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they
store. But in the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack
of creativity; transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system. For apart from
inquiry… individuals cannot be truly human.
(1-2)
What modern education fails to do, for many - perhaps most - of its students, is encourage academic inquiry. However much information students are required to learn and regurgitate, they are not pushed in any way to go above and beyond the minimal standards that are laid out for them. This is why Freire asserts that, although some students might 'catalogue' the information they receive, they are unlikely to do anything new or creative with it. Furthermore, because inquiry is outright stifled by the 'standard curriculum', students are dehumanized; they are not allowed to express themselves as individuals, rather, their minds are 'manufactured' in an assembly-line style of education, such that every American high school senior learns from the same textbooks, and knows (roughly) the same number of things. I know what you're thinking: "If this guy is writing like a philosopher, then yeah, but it's not as bad as he makes it out to be. We're not robots, we can think for ourselves." I agree; the system is not oppressive in the tangible sense that Freire makes it out to be. The point is that kids do not get enough extrinsic reinforcement for them to see school as worthwhile.

A good example of this lack of reinforcement can be seen in the essay "I Just Wanna be Average", by Mike Rose. The essay describes Mike's experience in vocational school, which is a sort of remedial school for kids who aren't yet "bad" enough to need to get a GED, but are not considered fit for regular school. Mike reports that his approach to Voc. Ed. was that of a "somnambulant problem solver... I fooled around in class and read my books indifferently - the intellectual equivalent of playing with your food. I did what I had to do to get by, and I did it with half a mind." The parallel between his and our experiences is clear; that we half-assed it through high school. What isn't so obvious is why we did this; all three of us are reasonably smart people, with a certain degree of intellectual curiosity, so why not apply that to what we're taught in school? The answer, according to Mike Rose, is that for kids who are not marked as 'special' - the kids in gifted and talented classes, A.P. classes or Honors courses, develop a defense mechanism (a way to accept their average status) of seeing learning as uncool. You're supposed to be average, like the rest of the class, and standing out in any way is pointless. It is not, however, very easy to do:

The tragedy is that you have to twist the knife in your own gray matter to make this defense work. You'll have to shut down, have to reject intellectual stimuli or diffuse them with sarcasm, have to cultivate stupidity, have to convert boredom from a malady into a way of confronting the world. Keep your vocabulary simple, act stoned when you're not or act more stoned than you are, flaunt ignorance, materialize your dreams. It is a powerful and effective defense - it neutralizes the insult and the frustration of being a vocational kid and, when perfected, it drives teachers up the wall, a delightful secondary effect. But like all strong magic, it exacts a price.

In order to get by in public school, you have to pretend to have half of a mind. Jock culture, physical prowess, parties and drugs - the least common denominator - are glorified because everyone has access to it. There are no tests to get in. The problem is, going along with it dulls your mind to a point where you can no longer stand it: either you have to eventually PHYSICALLY dull your mind, and give up intellectualism altogether, or do what you and I have done; move away from the culture, and join a new culture (at uni) that lets you learn what you want.

Even though you and I made it through this system more or less intact, we cannot entrust public schools to educate our kids. If NPHS, and other public schools in America, continue to dissuade kids from pursuing careers in the sciences, mathematics and literature, then our only option is to pay for private school - which, by the way, can be as expensive as college tuition. I don't want to do it, and you probably don't either, but what other choice do we have?

In my Writing In Community class, I've been tutoring a high school kid, helping him write a senior-year paper he needs to graduate. The topic he picked is a big issue (the economy), it's something he really cares about, and he puts a lot of work into it. The irony is that he doesn't really know much about the economy, so my role is to fill in the gaps and explain to him why our economy is the way it is - and teach him the different schools of thought that economists use to try and solve the problem. What has grown out of these tutoring sessions is the idea that maybe, just maybe, we can counteract some of the damage done by public schools if we can get more kids into tutoring programs. It can be once a week, preferably twice to three times a week, with peers who can help each other with difficult subjects. I believe that this may bridge the gap between teachers, who have a certain amount of 'canonical' knowledge,- and gifted students, who may be more up-to-date on the latest discoveries in a given field. If tutoring were made to be an integral, MANDATORY part of all public school curricula, maybe we can reverse some of the damage done by 'The Banking Concept of Education.'

Let me know what you think of this idea; I'm going to research it further, develop it further, but here's the initial proposal. And let me know how things are going in Japan! I hope I can visit you in Kyoto sometime later this year.

Best,

Cameron Beaudreault

The Paradox of Teaching

2013-04-18T10:31:00.002-07:00

On the one hand, memorization and procedural mastery of 'the basics' of writing and mathematics are crucial to a student's educational development. That's why the Common Core Standards are being adopted by nearly every state in the union. On the other hand, you have countless numbers of students from THIS generation, including my student and his classmates at humanities prep, who neither know 'the basics', nor will they have the opportunity to learn them once they've graduated high school. What's worse, they may not have the opportunity to learn these skills at higher-learning institutions (especially community colleges), either due to prohibitive costs or lack of an appropriate curriculum.

So what, if anything, do we do for public high school students, current juniors and seniors, who are entering the job market without the skills they need to succeed?

This question matters because EVEN WITH the corrections being undertaken by state boards of education, there are a number of students who risk falling through the cracks, and because they fall outside of public school 'jurisdiction' (because of their age), they may be written off by educators and employers alike as lost causes. This puts the future of these students - economically, politically and socially - at stake, and puts the U.S. economy in greater danger than it already is in. If we don't address this question AS WELL AS the question of our younger students, then we risk facing a greater economic crisis than what we weathered in 2008. Without enough workers to meet demand in the job market, companies will continue to outsource jobs, further sapping the economic health of this country.

To try to tackle this issue, I want to understand how bad the situation is: how bad is the disparity between supply and demand for skilled labor in this country, how many universities/community colleges offer meaningful remedial education programs, and what are the components of the common core; i.e. can the common core help students in the final year(s) of secondary school?

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/why-kids-should-grade-teachers/309088/?single_page=true

This article from The Atlantic details how Robert Ferguson, an economist at Harvard, has been working to develop a reliable metric for evaluating teachers. His research has found that student feedback about teacher quality is one of the best predictors for year-over-year academic progress. Better yet, the surveys he has helped develop are less controversial than other methods - such as releasing deindividuated student standardized test scores for parents to see - for teacher evaluation. The difficulty, Ferguson has found, is getting teachers unions to allow these surveys to have weight on teacher evaluations- even if they have less than 30% of the overall weight of an eval. That said, this data has proven time and time again to point out which teachers are doing their job right, which teachers need continuing education, and which teachers need to be let go.

If I can get my hands on this data, I can look at the issue from the perspective of the students; how many public school students have 'good' teachers, how many have 'bad' teachers?

I have been looking at the common core standards website, but the details are very hard to delve into without massive time expenditure; I will look into it more later this week.

http://www.npr.org/2013/04/08/176570802/even-highly-motivated-students-arent-ready-for-college

This NPR article suggests, among other things, that 1 in 4 high school students are unprepared for college in the most basic academic domains, and that of all students who enter community colleges, 40% of them immediately enroll in remedial classes. THIS gives me some idea of just how bad things are.

Sent from my iP

School 'Reform': A Failing Grade

2013-04-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

The article School ‘Reform’: A Failing Grade, by Diane Ravitch, describes the debate surrounding public school education, and how two competing interests – those of prominent politicians and businessmen versus those of most teachers and parents – have drawn their battle lines. The author acknowledges that public schools in America are performing poorly, but argues that the problem is caused by a combination of misguided federal laws and inadequate state funding for schools, which hamstrings the ability of teachers to properly educate their students. Diane Ravitch does not take political sides, instead blaming both George W. Bush (for signing the NCLB act) and Barack Obama (for granting waivers to NCLB under onerous conditions) for overemphasizing standardized testing as a form of teacher evaluation. Time and time again, Ravich declares that poverty – not malicious teachers or teachers’ unions - is the root of our education problem, and asserts that the current reliance on standardizes tests puts already disadvantaged children at risk of being left behind. Her solution to America’s education problem is fourfold: pregnant women should be given “proper nutrition and medical care”, children in poor communities should be provided “high-quality education from an early age”, teachers should be trained to support children’s “social, emotional and intellectual development”, and national policies should be adopted that expand economic opportunity for the lower class [8]. This essay cites statistics, but uses them as peripheral support the main argument, rather than using them to back a more analytical paper. The key idea in this paper is the existence of two version of school reform; one that believes in “rigidly defined numerical goals and return on investment”, and another that focuses on compassion; rather than blaming teachers, unions or students, it focuses on a society that “refuses to take responsibility for the conditions in which its children live and learn [8].”

Diane Ravitch may not claim affiliation to an existing political party in America, but in this article she defines her ‘platform’ as one that is based on communities, rather than top-down administration. This can be seen in her introductory paragraphs, which frame the current education “crisis” as being a creation of politicians who believe that greater accountability, i.e. more government oversight, is the solution. Ravitch deconstructs this idea by targeting a contemporary author, Steven Brill, and highlighting his fixation on wealthy, upper-class socialites who believe that education outcomes can be measured and quantified like a stock chart. “School reform is their favorite cause, and they like to think of themselves as leaders in the civil rights movement of their day, something unusual for men of their wealth and social status.” Ravitch contrasts this type of reform with an approach that favors “changes based on improving curriculum, facilities, and materials, improving teacher recruitment and preparation, and attending to the cognitive, social, and emotional development of children.” Her portrayal of these two schools of thought is rather binary; her side is right, and the other is wrong, and only her side truly ‘cares’ about the fate of America’s children. However, her style of delivery does not attack the other side of the debate categorically; she does not believe that Steven Brill’s crowd is wrong because they are rich, rather, it is because their focus is too dependent on quantifiable aspects of education. Ravich knows that her solutions cannot succeed without the support of this group, however, so her closing paragraphs are framed (implicitly) as a request to the powers that be: ‘Stop trying to punish teachers and administrators who want to help kids; give them the funds and programs they need to do their jobs, and you will be able to see the outcomes without needing to test for them.’

Cultural questions that this essay (potentially) tries to answer:

1. Is our public school system inherently broken, or are environmental factors to blame?

2. What are the factors that cause inner-city schools to fail?

3. What prevents people from seeing eye-to-eye in this debate, and is there any solution that can cross party lines?

Final Draft of my Writing in Community Essay

2013-04-01T11:07:00.001-07:00

Learning to love art

How often do you visit art galleries and museums? Unless you study studio art or art history, it is quite likely that your answer will be either 'not often' or 'almost never.' My answer is the same; unless I have been told to visit the Met or the MoMa as part of a school assignment, I almost never go. The major reasons why this is the case are twofold: first, neither you nor I have the time to spare, and second, we don't consider ourselves 'art people.' Because we don't know the language of paintings very well, we feel that there is little benefit for us to be hanging around art galleries. But the fact is, there is no such thing as an art person; we are all 'art people.' Whether or not we know the various languages of art, we resonate emotionally with certain songs, photos and movies. We share a common desire to both appreciate and to create art, but we often have difficulty seeing the visions offered by paintings. We must learn how to train our eyes to see the paintings, and to train our brains to make sense of them.

I was recently given the opportunity to train my eyes and brain, thanks to a school assignment asking me to fall in love with a painting, and then describe it to someone who had never seen it before. I had already fallen in love with a certain painting, The Harbor of Dieppe by J.M.W. Turner, but I needed to take a second, long, look at it in order to describe it properly. The fleet of merchant ships is majestic; tall sails, large hulls, and cargo from faraway lands.The paints are extremely bright; lead white, yellows, mediterranean blues, with a smattering of blacks and browns. There is activity everywhere you look, with lots of people coming and going, but one is never quite able to make out their facial expressions. At the end of this assignment, I had to ask myself "Why do I like this?" I knew I liked that painting more than any others I'd seen at the Frick collection, but even a second, long, look was not enough for me to find any drama in the scene, and I'd been lead to believe that all paintings have to tell a story. It took me awhile to realize that, in fact, there was no drama at all.

Any work of art is a form of communication, wherein the viewer attempts to unpack the art itself, so that he might see it as its creator saw it. This can be a difficult task, especially when it is not immediately apparent what the point of the painting is. Mark Doty, writing in Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, contemplates the raison d'etre of still life paintings. Although he acknowledges that they contain neither drama nor subjects that convey meaning, Doty still finds meaning within still lives, for he believes that they portray a particular vision.

First, a principle of attention, simply that. A faith that if we look and look we will be

surprised and we will be rewarded.

Then, a faith in the capacity of the object to carry meaning, to serve as a vessel. For

what? Ourselves, of course. I mean that the objects depicted are, ultimately, soulful, are

anything but lifeless. Of course they have lost their particular contexts, all the stuff of narrative, the attached human stories that would have placed them in some specific relation to a life, but they are nonetheless full of that life, suffused with intimacy (48).

Still lives are paintings that lack everything we normally associate with paintings; context, narrative, and story. Yet, according to Doty, they are anything but lifeless; their vision is one of attention, or said another way, of contemplation. It is this vision of contemplation that gives these paintings both life and intimacy to their viewers. Still lives are a way in which one may project his or her thoughts and emotions onto the painting, without being interrupted by a story or a subject of the painter's choosing. Because there is no context or narrative, they reflect only the consciousness of the viewer by using mundane objects as a focal point for meditation. If one can meditate using still life, why can't the same be said for other paintings? They, too, were painted out of a belief that they could carry meaning, and operate on a 'principle of attention.' Artists are separated from their viewers by factors of time, space and cultural differences, but their creations are built to withstand these factors. If viewers can see a painting's vision as its artist intended, then they can use the unique qualities of that vision to better understand other works by the same artist. Once viewers can identify one artist's vision, then they will have a point of reference when looking at the works of his contemporaries.

For me, “The Harbor of Dieppe” was both a focal point for meditation, and an exercise in vision. The memories and feelings it evokes are powerful, from my senior trip to Paris, where I finally returned to the birthplace of my ancestors, to my second date with my girlfriend, where we went to the Frick collection and I first saw “Dieppe”. Remembering these events helped put the last two years of my life in context, as I had previously been struggling with making sense of it all. Turner’s vision in this work is similar to that of his contemporaries, including Gustave Courbet’s “The Stone breakers” and Theodore Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa,” in that they all use brighter palates than one sees in Baroque paintings. However, Turner’s painting differs in that it is almost unnaturally bright in comparison to the others, and, because it uses less lines and shadows, is more ‘fluid’ than both Courbet’s and Gericault’s works.

The ability to identify commonalities and differences between artists is an essential skill that, like a muscle, must be trained in order to work properly. Categorization is a fundamental aspect of humanity, and once you perfect it in one discipline, you can learn more quickly how to do it in others. But If staring at paintings can aid this process, why don’t more people do it? Perhaps they feel that they do not know enough about the medium, and at the risk of not understanding a work, of not 'getting' it, they prefer to stick to the films and photos they are familiar/comfortable with. Jeannette Winterson, a journalist and science fiction writer, was an example of someone with this mindset; she had little interest in the visual arts because of her background in literature. This changed when she stumbled across an oil painting in Amsterdam that so moved her that she fled to a nearby bookshop, sat down, and wept. When she realized that her distress was due to ignorance, Winterson resolved to educate herself, reading every art critic from John Ruskin to Michael Levey, and focusing her visual education on modern painters. Although this did not turn her into an art expert, she succeeded in her goal to change her emotional connection to art. She writes:

I still know far far less about pictures than I do about books and this will not change. What has changed is my way of seeing I am learning how to look atpictures. What has changed is my capacity of feeling. Art opens the heart.

(46-7)

Winterson’s area of expertise was always books, and she knew that. Her aim was not to gain encyclopedic knowledge of famous paintings, but rather to change how she looked at pictures - any and all pictures - to better ‘open the heart.’ But surely her heart was as open as anyone else’s. It can’t be that ignorance of art could actually hurt us in any way... could it? Winterson affirms that, in fact, it does:

In the west, we avoid painful encounters with art by trivialising it, or by familiarising it. Our present obsession with the past has the double advantage of making new work seem raw and rough compared to the cosy patina of tradition, whilst refusing tradition its vital connection to what is happening now. By making islands of separation out of the unbreakable chain of human creativity, we are able to set up false comparisons, false expectations, all the while lamenting that the music, poetry, painting, prose, performance art of Now, fails to live up to the art of Then, which is why, we say, it does not affect us. In fact, we are no more moved by a past we are busy inventing, than by a present we are busy denying. If you love a Cezanne, you can love a Hockney, can love a Boyd, can love a Rao. If you love a Cezanne rather than lip-service it.

(51)

Comparing works of the past with works of the present is not a valid reason not to explore modern art. If one truly loves impressionist painters, who are currently the gold standard for Canon art, one has the capacity to love modern painters like Pollock or Warhol. This is not to say that one has to force themselves to like a specific painting or artist, but to understand the present, one must attune themselves to the art that is being made now. The problem is that much of the difficulty of getting people to like art, any art, is because most people have had little to no prior exposure. Given that Winterson’s case is the exception, rather than the rule, how might we lure the layman into art galleries and museums?

Perhaps the key lies in showing people that appreciating art is a matter of attention, rather than formal education. The commonality between Winterson (pre- 'awakening') and others who are apprehensive about art is the knowledge that, like any form of love, falling in love with art takes time. This is why people will often say they 'have no time for art'; the time commitment prevents novices from fully appreciating a Titian, a Rembrandt, or a Van Gogh. Even those who take the time to visit an art gallery or a museum feel that they don't spend enough time to justify the excursion. As Winterson explains, it is not entirely their fault.

Art takes time. To spend an hour looking at a painting is difficult. The public gallery experience is one that encourages art at a trot. There are the paintings, the marvellous speaking works, definite, independent, each with a Self it would be impossible to ignore, if... if... it were possible to see it. I do not only mean the crowds and guards and the low lights and the ropes, which make me think of freak shows, I mean the thick curtain of irrelevancies that screens the painting from the viewer... Is the painting authority? Does the guide-book tell us that it is part of The Canon? If Yes, then half of the viewers will admire it on principle, while the other half will dismiss it on principle (47)."

It is an endless barrage of distractions, says Winterson, that keeps us from truly seeing a painting, from knowledge of its purchase price to whether or not it is part of The Canon. If we are going to spend any time at all looking at paintings, we had better be prepared to focus on the images that catch our eye. All of the background noise, the curators, the other viewers, and the guide books, must be tuned out so that our paintings may be the sole recipient of our attention. But to spend time with an artwork does not imply that you have to pursue a Ph.D in studio art or art criticism. Quite the opposite, in fact: it means that to approach art, as a novice, requires self-education outside of any classroom. Looking at different paintings, and learning how to see them, is a good place to start. Reading about different art movements and the artists that contributed to them is another. The extent to which one will pursue this education is up to the individual, but to those who complain that they don’t have time to pursue it, “the time, like the money, can be found (48).” If one is serious about learning how to appreciate art, they will make time for it and come up with the money to pay for it.

The only prerequisite to learning is approaching the material with an open mind. But Going about anything with an open mind is easier said than done. Art can often appear to require an expert's knowledge to understand, and although asking an expert about an artist or an art movement may yield the desired information, it does little to further one’s understanding of the big picture. The dilemma shared by consumers, tourists, and sightseers is that they all use - are exposed to things - without understanding them. Walker Percy explores this theme in his essay “The Loss of the Creature”, arguing that there are two broadly-defined types of people; experts, who reign sovereign over a particular realm of knowledge, and consumers, who have no access to that knowledge other than through use, and the use of a thing does not equal ownership. Experts can be scientists, literary or art critics, engineers or businessmen; they all enjoy exclusivity by merit of the specialization of their trade. According to Percy, the result of this specialization is the total, voluntary, surrender of sovereignty over everything but one’s own domain of knowledge.

This loss of sovereignty is not a marginal process, as might appear from my example of estranged sightseers. It is a generalized surrender of the horizon to those experts within whose competence a particular segment of the horizon is thought to lie (5).

According to Percy, specialization causes people to have the incorrect mindset that they should, or perhaps even must, surrender their sovereignty over parts of their lives. This means that, for many people, the effort of exposing oneself to art and trying to appreciate it is futile; they believe that the major ‘questions’ posed by art have already been answered, and that the unresolved questions are the sole responsibility of people within the ‘art world.’ Again, we come back to this notion that there is such a thing as an ‘art world’, or a ‘science world’, or a ‘literature world.’ Specialization is important, yes, and it is often necessary to advance further discoveries in fields, such as biology and chemistry, that have reached maturation. However, the fact that experts exist does not exclude the layman from participating; if anything, the layman who delves into an unfamiliar topic may gain a new perspective on what he already knows. Like Jeannette Winterson, the layman who does this will then be able to create something entirely new.

Walker Percy offers a solution to the issue of people surrendering their sovereignty, as a way of enabling them to regain control of their lives. He calls the solution ‘recovery’, and it applies whenever someone is forced to approach something completely unfamiliar to them. According to Percy, recovery is necessary in education because the nature of formal learning causes most students to passively absorb their lessons, rather than actively engaging with them. By doing so, these students have surrendered their sovereignty over their education. Percy outlines three general avenues to recovery; first by ordeal, wherein a student seizes the lesson by force, second by learning from a “great man” who can make even the most uninterested student passionate about their field, and third by catastrophe - by exploding a bomb, which will make a student truly ‘see’ their lesson for the first time.

But since neither of these methods of recovering... is pedagogically feasible-perhaps the great man even less so than the Bomb-I wish to propose the following educational technique which should prove equally effective for Harvard and Shreveport High School. I propose that English poetry and biology should be taught as usual, but that at irregular intervals, poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards (7).

The great man is an expert within his field, so willing and able to teach others that whomever he shares his knowledge with, he also imparts his passion for the subject to them. The Bomb is an accidental recovery; when a bomb goes off in the biology laboratory, then the student may see the dogfish in its entirety for the first time. The dogfish is no longer a specimen, but an individual being, belonging in its own unique habitat rather than on the dissecting tray in a lab. Because the bomb and the great man are both (usually) impractical, the alternative is a different type of ‘shock’; having students walk into their classes expecting one thing, and experiencing another. By doing so, the lesson is taken out of its package; learning about the anatomy of a dogfish is no longer confined to the domain of “science”, and Shakespeare’s sonnets are no longer relegated to the realm of “literature.”

This may be feasible in the context of art education. Rather than being placed in its usual ‘packaging’ (to use a term of Percy’s) of an art history classroom, a museum or a gallery, a painting may be displayed in a mathematics class as a study in geometry, or perhaps fractals or integration. It may also be displayed in a history class, as an illustration of the zeitgeist of the era being taught, or even in a chemistry class - with the focus of the lesson being on the chemical composition of the various paints and varnishes used. Presenting a painting out of context is perhaps the best way to show an otherwise uninterested student - or layman - how to fall in love with it. If the layman experiences the painting in a language he understands, he will be encouraged to investigate it further.

This proposal, to encourage an intellectual awakening in the masses, would be a massive project indeed. However, the project is necessary; many of us, due to the consumer culture we live in, have been lead to believe that satisfaction comes from what we consume. These people can be controlled by their spending habits, from what they eat to what they wear, and even to whom they vote for. This is the warning given by Walker Percy in the last paragraphs of “The Loss of the Creature”; that refusing to educate oneself leads to mental enslavement.

The layman will be seduced as long as he regards beings as consumer items to be experienced rather than prizes to be won, and as long as he waives his sovereign rights as a person and accepts his role of consumer as the highest estate to which the layman can aspire

… the person is not something one can study and provide for; he is something one struggles for. But unless he also struggles for himself, unless he knows that there is a struggle, he is going to be just what the planners think he is (cite).

One’s humanity comes from his mastery, his sovereignty, over his domain. Therefore, anything that removes his sovereignty also removes his humanity. This is why consumerism is so dangerous; it takes away the personhood, the uniqueness, inherent in all people, and homogenizes them. Intellectualism, over multiple disciplines, is the only way to combat this force. If this is the case, how can one turn the layman into an intellectual? One approach is through art; art is accessible to anyone and everyone, regardless of culture, religion, ethnicity or personal history. The desire to create and experience art is a drive that exists in all humans, and by encouraging it, one may help others to recover their individuality. Their individuality is expressed not only in how they approach art (from the perspectives of sculpture, painting, literature or music, to name a few), but also in what their approach entails. There is a niche for everyone within the domain of art, and it begs to be filled.

I experienced this encouragement when I was asked to research my painting. I had been given a chance to answer some lingering questions, among them being the origins of Turner's unique painting style (it is rather unlike Gericault, eschewing lines, forms and chiaroscuro), and the reason(s) why "Dieppe" was painted. I learned that Turner was not just an oil painter; his main artistic focus was watercolors, and he painted four times as many watercolor paintings than oil paintings. I also learned where Turner learned how to make daylight shine on the water in a photorealistic manner; he borrowed the technique from 17th-century painter Claude Lorrain, whom he emulated in his early career. Although my research did not fully explain the painting, it did give me a better sense of the continuity between past and present in paintings.

Just as I have hobbies and interests in video games, music, and reading scientific journals, I can take time to find a few more paintings like Dieppe. I can visit them wherever they are housed, spend the afternoon with them, and have a silent conversation with them whenever time permits. I may look them up on Wikipedia, or look in Modern Painters to see if Ruskin has anything to say about them, but I do not need formal classes - much less a career in art - in order to appreciate them. As to how one may best learn about art, to quote Winterson's ex-boyfriend, it is the same as learning about wine:

"Drink it (56)."

Works Cited:

Doty, Mark. Still life with oysters and lemon. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001. Print.

Percy, Walker. "The Loss of the Creature." www.udel.edu. University of Delaware , n.d. Web. 5 Mar. 2013. <www.udel.edu/anthro/ackerman/loss_creature.pdf>.

Winterson, Jeanette. Art objects: essays on ecstasy and effrontery. New York: Alfred A. Knopf :, 1996. Print.

Read it and comment: I NEED FEEDBACK, PEOPLE!!!

2013-03-11T22:39:00.000-07:00

If someone asked you to spend an hour staring at a particular photograph, a painting or a sculpture, and then report back what you saw, how well would you be able to describe it to them? Some people would refuse, giving excuses to the effect of "I'm not really an art person." The fact is, there is no such thing as an art person, because we are all 'art people.' Whether or not we have had much exposure to the visual arts, there are certain images that resonate deeply with us. Unfortunately, in this day and age there is so much media available to us that we often narrow our focus to a select few genres that we are comfortable with, and only rarely stray outside of our marked territory. If we were to approach art with a truly open mind, not only would we be able to appreciate what we saw, but we would also come to better understand our own emotions and communicate more effectively with the people in our lives.
Any work of art is an act of communication, and the task of the observer is to decipher the artist's message. Mark Doty, writing in Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, contemplates what the intended messages within still life paintings could be. Acknowledging that these paintings contain neither drama nor subjects that convey meaning, Doty still finds meaning within them, for he believes that they (in general) portray a particular vision.
First, a principle of attention, simply that. A faith that if we look and look we will be
surprised and we will be rewarded.

Then, a faith in the capacity of the object to carry meaning, to serve as a vessel. For
what? Ourselves, of course. I mean that the objects depicted are, ultimately, soulful, are

anything but lifeless. Of course they have lost their particular contexts, all the stuff of narrative, the attached human stories that would have placed them in some specific relation to a life, but they are nonetheless full of that life, suffused with intimacy (48).
Still lives are a way in which one may project his or her thoughts and emotions onto the painting, without being interrupted by a story or a subject of the painter's choosing. Because there is no context or narrative, they reflect only the consciousness of the viewer by using mundane objects as a focal point for meditation. If one can meditate using still life, why can't the same be said for other paintings? They, too, were painted out of a belief that they could carry meaning, and operate on a 'principle of attention.' Artists are separated from their viewers by factors of time, space and cultural differences, but their creations are built to withstand these factors. If viewers can decipher the message, then a link between them and the artist will be established, fostering better communication in the future. Every time one looks intently at a painting, they are strengthening their ability to perceive the world around them.
If staring at paintings is so good for the mind, why don’t more people do it? Perhaps they feel that they do not know enough about the medium, and at the risk of not understanding a work, of not 'getting' it, they prefer to stick to the films and photos they are familiar/comfortable with. Jeannette Winterson, a journalist and science fiction writer, was an example of someone with this mindset; she had little interest in the visual arts because of her background in literature. This changed when she stumbled across an oil painting in Amsterdam that so moved her that she fled to a nearby bookshop, sat down, and wept. When she realized that her distress was due to ignorance, Winterson resolved to educate herself, reading every art critic from John Ruskin to Michael Levey, and focusing her visual education on modern painters. Although this did not turn her into an art expert, she succeeded in her goal to change her emotional connection to art.
I still know far far less about pictures than I do about books and this will not
change. What has changed is my way of seeing I am learning how to look at
pictures. What has changed is my capacity of feeling. Art opens the heart.

Art is one of many avenues by which one may feel and understanding the emotions of others; a way of channeling empathy. Like many people, Winterson had primarily knew about feelings through books and through face-to-face contact with people. When she opened her mind to the visual arts, she found that art was another avenue of understanding people, and learned that art criticism was another method by which she could express herself. The same can be said of anyone who explores art in any medium. Whether one is a collector, a critic, or themselves an artist, art opens the heart. The trouble is, it is still difficult to get people into art if they’ve had little to no prior exposure, and Winterson’s case is the exception rather than the rule. Because of this; how might we lure the layman into art galleries and museums?
Perhaps the key to popularizing art lays in convincing people that appreciating art doesn’t take as much effort as they might think. The commonality between Winterson (pre- 'awakening') and others who are apprehensive about art is the knowledge that, like any form of love, falling in love with art takes time. This is why people will often say they 'have no time for art'; the time commitment prevents novices from fully appreciating a Titian, a Rembrandt, or a Van Gogh. Even those who take the time to visit an art gallery or a museum feel that they don't spend enough time to justify the excursion. As Winterson explains, it is not entirely their fault.

Art takes time. To spend an hour looking at a painting is difficult. The public gallery experience is one that encourages art at a trot. There are the paintings, the marvellous speaking works, definite, independent, each with a Self it would be impossible to ignore, if... if... it were possible to see it. I do not only mean the crowds and guards and the low lights and the ropes, which make me think of freak shows, I mean the thick curtain of irrelevancies that screens the painting from the viewer... Is the painting authority? Does the guide-book tell us that it is part of The Canon? If Yes, then half of the viewers will admire it on principle, while the other half will dismiss it on principle (47)."
It is an endless barrage of distractions, says Winterson, that keeps us from truly seeing a painting, from knowledge of its purchase price to whether or not it is part of The Canon. If we are going to spend any time at all looking at paintings, we had better be prepared to focus on the images that catch our eye. All of the background noise, the curators, the other viewers, and the guide books, must be tuned out so that our paintings may be the sole recipient of our attention.
To spend time with an artwork does not imply that you have to pursue a Ph.D in studio art or art criticism. Quite the opposite, in fact: it means that to approach art, as a novice, requires a self-education outside of any classroom. Looking at different paintings, and attempting to suss out what they mean, is a good place to start. Reading about different art movements and the artists that contributed to them is another. The extent to which one will pursue this education is up to the individual; the only prerequisite to learning is approaching the material with an open mind.
Going about anything with an open mind is easier said than done. Art can often appear to require an expert's knowledge to understand, and although asking an expert about an artist or an art movement may yield the desired information, it does little to further one’s understanding of the big picture. The dilemma shared by consumers, tourists, and sightseers is that they all use - are exposed to things - without understanding them. Walker Percy explores this theme in his essay The Loss of the Creature, arguing that there are two broadly-defined types of people; experts, who reign sovereign over a particular realm of knowledge, and consumers, who have no access to that knowledge other than through use, and the use of a thing does not equal ownership. Experts can be scientists, literary or art critics, engineers or businessmen; they all enjoy exclusivity by merit of the specialization of their trade. According to Percy, the result of this specialization is the total, voluntary, surrender of sovereignty over everything but one’s own domain of knowledge.
"This loss of sovereignty is not a marginal process, as might appear from my example of estranged sightseers. It is a generalized surrender of the horizon to those experts within whose competence a particular segment of the horizon is thought to lie (cite)”
According to Percy, specialization causes people to have the incorrect mindset that they should, or perhaps even must, surrender their sovereignty over parts of their lives. This means that, for many people, the effort of exposing oneself to art and trying to appreciate it is futile; they believe that the major ‘questions’ posed by art have already been answered, and that the unresolved questions are the sole responsibility of people within the ‘art world.’ Again, we come back to this notion that there is such a thing as an ‘art world’, or a ‘science world’, or a ‘literature world.’ Specialization is important, yes, and it is often necessary to advance further discoveries in fields, such as biology and chemistry, that have reached maturation. However, the fact that experts exist does not exclude the layman from participating; if anything, the layman who delves into an unfamiliar topic may gain a new perspective on what he already knows. Like Jeannette Winterson, the layman who does this will then be able to create something entirely new.
Walker Percy offers a solution to the issue of people surrendering their sovereignty, as a way of enabling them to regain control of their lives. He calls the solution ‘recovery’, and it applies whenever someone is forced to approach something completely unfamiliar to them. This can happen either by accident or design, but in schools, recovery may be implemented as part of the curriculum.
But since neither of these methods of recovering the dogfish is pedagogically feasible-perhaps the great man even less so than the Bomb-I wish to propose the following educational technique which should prove equally effective for Harvard and Shreveport High School. I propose that English poetry and biology should be taught as usual, but that at irregular intervals, poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards (cite).
The great man is an expert within his field, so willing and able to teach others that whomever he shares his knowledge with, he also imparts his passion for the subject to them. As such, it is a form of ‘planned’ recovery. The Bomb is an accidental recovery; when a bomb goes off in the biology laboratory, then the student may see the dogfish in its entirety for the first time. The dogfish is no longer a specimen, but an individual being, belonging in its own unique habitat rather than on the dissecting tray in a lab. Because the bomb and the great man are both (usually) impractical, the alternative is a different type of ‘shock’; having students walk into their classes expecting one thing, and experiencing another.
This may be feasible in the context of art education. Rather than being placed in its usual ‘packaging’ (to use a term of Percy’s) of an art history classroom, a museum or a gallery, a painting may be displayed in a mathematics class as a study in geometry, or perhaps fractals or integration. It may also be displayed in a history class, as an illustration of the zeitgeist of the era being taught, or even in a chemistry class - with the focus of the lesson being on the chemical composition of the various paints and varnishes used. Presenting a painting out of context is perhaps the best way to show an otherwise uninterested student - or layman - how to fall in love with it. If the layman experiences the painting in a language he understands, he will be encouraged to investigate it further.
This proposal, to encourage an intellectual awakening in the masses, would be a massive project indeed. However, the project is necessary; many of us, due to the consumer culture we live in, have been lead to believe that satisfaction comes from what we consume. These people can be controlled by their spending habits, from what they eat to what they wear, and even to whom they vote for. This is the warning given by Walker Percy in the last paragraphs of The Loss of the Creature; that refusing to educate oneself leads to mental enslavement.
The layman will be seduced as long as he regards beings as consumer items to be experienced rather than prizes to be won, and as long as he waives his sovereign rights as a person and accepts his role of consumer as the highest estate to which the layman can aspire

… the person is not something one can study and provide for; he is something one struggles for. But unless he also struggles for himself, unless he knows that there is a struggle, he is going to be just what the planners think he is (cite).

One’s humanity comes from his mastery, his sovereignty, over his domain. Therefore, anything that removes his sovereignty also removes his humanity. This is why consumerism is so dangerous; it takes away the personhood, the uniqueness, inherent in all people, and homogenizes them. Intellectualism, over multiple disciplines, is the only way to combat this force. If this is the case, how can one turn the layman into an intellectual? One approach is through art; art is accessible to anyone and everyone, regardless of culture, religion, ethnicity or personal history. The desire to create and experience art is a drive that exists in all humans, and by encouraging it, one may help others to recover their individuality. Their individuality is expressed not only in how they approach art (from the perspectives of sculpture, painting, literature or music, to name a few), but also in what their approach entails. There is a niche for everyone within the domain of art, and it begs to be filled.

Works Cited:
Doty, Mark. Still life with oysters and lemon. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001. Print.

Percy, Walker. "The Loss of the Creature." www.udel.edu. University of Delaware , n.d. Web. 5 Mar. 2013. <www.udel.edu/anthro/ackerman/loss_creature.pdf>.

Winterson, Jeanette. Art objects: essays on ecstasy and effrontery. New York: Alfred A. Knopf :, 1996. Print.

Research on The Harbor of Dieppe

2013-02-20T17:46:00.002-08:00

One of the first things I learned about JMW Turner is that he was not principally an oil painter; his medium of preference was watercolors, of which he produced over two thousand works, whereas he created all of five hundred and fifty oil paintings in his lifetime (“Turner Society Homepage”. Retrieved 16 February 2013). The painting itself was derived from a sketch made by Turner on a trip to France in 1821, and was a work in progress until its initial exhibition in 1825.

As i’d suspected, the colors used to paint Dieppe were, usually, recent inventions; cobalt blue, which was available as a pigment from 1802 onwards, was first found in oils by Turner as early as 1806-7. Chrome yellow, which was available in 1814, was adopted by Turner in 1814. Other pigments he used included pale lemon chrome, chrome orange, and white lead (Townsend, 41) All of these pigments, with the exception of white lead, were initially viewed with suspicion by more traditionalist painters at the Royal Academy in Britain, as there were doubts that these pigments could stand up to the effects of time and associated oxidation (Townsend, 35).

More importantly, though, Turner’s initial exhibit of The Harbor of Dieppe received mixed praise and criticism. The Literary Magnet, a popular outlet for art criticism at the time, called it “Mr. Turner’s brilliant experiment upon colours, which displays all the magic of skill at the expense of all the magic of nature (Butlin, 127).” The New Monthly Magazine (15, 1825, p. 300) called it “...perhaps the most splendid piece of falsehood that ever proceeded from the pencil of its author” and continued:

it should be seen from the colouring of the picture, as if, after the artist had finished it according to the best lights that Nature had chosen to furnish him with, he had felt totally dissatisfied with his work, and had determined to heighten it up to his own ideas of what Nature might have done for it if she had chosen!

(Butlin, 127)

Both pieces of criticism are essentially correct; the colors used in Dieppe are unnaturally bright, and do not accurately reflect the type of sunlight that would shine on a port town in northern France. However, these critics are missing the forest for the trees; the light is the subject matter of the painting! This is not an objective rendering of the port, rather, it is Turner’s objective experience of Dieppe, which was colored by his earlier trips to Italy (esp. Venice) and other sun-bathed parts of the mediterranean.

I, who have feasted on a steady diet of dramatic television shows and thriller movies, believed that this painting had a hidden message or story to tell, hiding perhaps in the face of one of the characters. My leading question in this research was; “What is the subject?” What I didn’t realize, though it was in front of me the whole time, was that Turner’s subject was sunlight. The town and its inhabitants are merely the supporting cast of Turner’s long-running study on the effects of light and the elements on civilization.

Works Cited:

Butlin, Martin, J. M. W. Turner, and Evelyn Joll. The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner. pp. 126-7. New Haven: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Tate Gallery by Yale UP, 1977. Print.

Townsend, Joyce, and J. M. W. Turner. "Turner The Colourist." Turner's Painting Techniques. London: Tate Gallery, 1993. N. pag. Print.

Pt. 2

The first thrust of my research was a multi-pronged question; why was Dieppe painted in its peculiar way, and what techniques did Turner use to render it that way? At first I thought the answer would lay in biographical information, as any artist has presumably suffered some drama in his life, so I pored over multiple biographies at Bobst. What I found, though, was no starving artist; the man came from a middle-class family in London, and by the time he died, the proceeds from his paintings had netted him the modern equivalent of £14,000,000. The only noted ‘tragedies’ in his life were that his mother died in a mental asylum when he was in his mid-twenties, and that he never married (though he fathered two children by a long-term mistress). He was a noted recluse for much of his life, and his only true friend was his father, who served as his studio assistant for thirty years. This information, though interesting, explained nothing.

What helped more was the discovery that Turner had mastered traditional forms of painting (historical and mythological scenes) by emulating the 17th-century masters by the time he was twenty, and that during his mid-to-late career, “He anticipated the French Impressionists in breaking down conventional formulas of representation; but, unlike them, he believed that his works should always express significant historical, mythological, literary, or other narrative themes.” (from Britannica online) In other words, he felt like his paintings should mean something, both to himself and to his audience.

I did find a few snippets of information about Turner’s trip to Dieppe, which showed that he did not spend much time or effort in sketching the town. However, other than looking at biographies, scanning assorted The life and works of.... -type books did not help me glean any information about my painting in question; there was no mention of the piece except in the two books listed above. Much more attention was paid to works such as Dido Building Carthage, which uses a similar light-scheme, and Dordrecht the Dort Packet-boat From Rotterdam Becalmed, the sketch for which was created in the same era of his life. From these, I had to conclude that any further research on the topic would have to be indirect.

The little book titled “Turner the Colourist”, wedged between much larger tomes, yielded the exact sort of information I needed; details about the pigments the artist used! With this, I came to see Turner as something of an innovator - an early adaptor, so to speak, in the art world of his time. This also helped to explain why contemporary art critics were so harsh about his color scheme in Dieppe and in his watercolor paintings; they had never seen canvases that bright before.

My research was very methodical, in that I pored through a few dozen books, scanned through JSTOR hits for “JMW Turner” and “The Harbor of Dieppe”, but any mention of Dieppe was in relation to the WWII battle fought over that town - not about the iconic painting. I believe that I was researching the wrong question; it should not have been a simple “Why was Dieppe painted?” Instead, I should have been asking “What themes and elements was Turner trying to paint at that point (1821-6) in his career?”

Although I’ve realized this only after conducting my initial research, Goulish’s essay on criticism applies to this endeavor in that it advocates taking one singular approach to the painting. I cannot hope to understand everything about it, therefore I must focus on one aspect of the painting in order to better appreciate the whole. My focus, then, will be on examining this piece as part of Turner’s transition from romanticism to proto-impressionism, and perhaps looking post-mortem to see if his works had any influence on the likes of Monet and Gaugin.

New Hobby: Captioning Designer Ads & Runway Shows

2013-02-16T09:23:00.002-08:00

Now, I'm not really trying to be mean-spirited towards the designers or the models, but some of these photos are just priceless. If I could mine comedy gold, like these pictures below, I'd be front-row at every fashion week from now on. GIVE ME MORE, PUCCI!

"No... I'm fine, really... but I think there's something in your nose."

"Guess which animal I've draped around my neck. C'mon, just take a guess."

It's casual friday at fashion week. Problem is, this model looks scared someone's about to tell her she's TOO casual.

Emilio Pucci was having a... moment when he came up with this.

Happy Valentine's day to you, too!

"I am the hero Gotham deserves."

What would you do if someone walked into the same elevator you were taking, wearing this? Stare? Look away? WHAT DOES SOCIAL ETIQUETTE DICTATE YOU DO WHEN SOMEONE LOOKS LIKE THE SUN??

Opportunity Never Knocks Twice

2013-02-06T04:39:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I got a call from Donna Watts, Manager of the Child Study Center's summer program, asking me to come in for an interview next friday. If I am selected, I will become a camp counselor this summer for children with behavioral disorders such as ADHD, depression, and bipolar syndrome. I am nervous; I do not know what the credentials are of the other kids applying for this job, and I don't know how my resume and college transcript compare to theirs. What I do know is, I have a shot at this.

I have been praying for an opportunity like this for weeks, now. After so many attempts to make it somewhere in the world - from competing in the math Olympics in 6th grade to spelling bees and writing contests for B'nai B'rith, I've always received a "runner-up" or "honorable mention." This interview is like one of those competitions, except it takes place in the real world. If I make it, a letter of recc from this job will put me one step closer to medical school. If I don't, it's back to the drawing board.

There's plenty of other jobs out there, available at NYU's career placement website - Wasserman - and elsewhere, but here I feel like I could do the most good. Here I could actually help kids with pressing, persistent problems in their lives, and push them to rise above their circumstances.

It seems as if every time I apply for a job, the sum of myself - what makes me valuable to society - is being appraised. That's what makes it so stressful; the question of "Am I good enough?" always lurks in the background.

We press on. Even of I don't get this job, there's school to focus on, and summer jobs come second-place on my to-do list.

UPDATE: I GOT THE JOB!

I can only hope that what I learn, and what I do with that knowledge, will help the kids I work with socialize better with their peers and navigate more effectively in a world that does not run on the same track they do. It's not about the money, and it has never been about the money. It's about the chance to make a difference in the lives of kids who are at high risk of addiction, delinquency, and suicide.

Now that I've got the job, I must prepare myself for the challenge of actually DOING it.

The Harbor of Dieppe

2013-02-04T17:13:00.002-08:00

To love a work of art, you must also love the place where you first experienced the work. The Frick Collection, a private art gallery inside a sumptuous mansion, is a place that encourages you to fall in love with everything you see in its rooms.Gilt clocks and porcelains, marble fixtures and velvet-cushioned armchairs, and paintings from wall to wall are interrupted only by a grand staircase that houses a grand organ fit for Westminster Cathedral. Enter the west gallery, by far the largest room in the mansion, and your eyes are drawn to the left wall, where, sandwiched between two portraits of bygone dignitaries, sits a majestic, brightly-colored oil painting, “The Harbor of Dieppe”, created in 1825 by Joseph Mallord William Turner, clothed by a massive frame gilt with gold leaf.

The scene that unfolds is of a bustling port town at midday, where you, the viewer, are on a ship entering the harbor, surrounded by dozens of ships, some carrying passengers, most of them carrying cargo from faraway lands. In the background, the bell tower of a cathedral looms over the city, challenged only by the dome that crowns city hall. Surrounding these structures are banks, warehouses, stock exchanges and mansions with balconies and silk drapes covering the windows. Everywhere there are people moving to and fro - some unloading the ships, some embarking or disembarking from vessels, some driving down the streets in carriages - and on the right side of the painting, two men and two women watch the activity from their ship, as if they are fellow spectators.

Although Turner’s palette is bright, it is also so bold as to make every other painting in the room appear drab. It is the universally bright colors of the Harbor, the bronze of the wooden trading ships and their weightless, golden sails, the shining white paint on the impressive banks, the packed stock exchanges and the bustling warehouses, and the copper-red roofs that make the painting so happy and full of life, such that it almost appears to laugh with joy and declare “Here am I, the handiwork of man.” Whether or not one is a purveyor of history, one appreciates the sheer business of the scene, with the only sections of canvas not occupied by humans are the blue-and-white sky and the channel of water that leads in and out of the harbor.

Why does it look so happy?

If you look closer at the painting; leaning in as far as you can without upsetting the guards, you will notice that almost none of the characters in this painting are smiling. Not the workers, not the traders nor the travellers coming and going from the harbor; most of them don’t have faces, and those that do bear either a frown, or a grimace, or a look of surprise. The ‘happiest’ faces are the spectators on the boat to your right, who appear alternately serene and pensive. Beyond their boat lies a number of docks in severe disrepair, and the land adjoining them is dotted with shacks and grimy-looking apartment buildings - all of which is easy to miss, because the sun’s light is cast entirely on the left side of the canvas. The right side of the canvas is opaque, obscured by a thick mist that also casts itself over the background, including the cathedral and city hall.

What, or who, is the focus of the scene? Is it the spectators to your right, or is it the women unloading a boat laden with baskets of food, bottles of wine, paintings, velvet-covered armchairs and stools - a rich man’s household furnishings? Is it the woman sitting by herself on a rowboat, with her legs in the water, watching a group of ducks swim past with a forlorn expression on her face? You, the viewer, can’t be sure with one look; you must either examine the painting with a Gestalt sensibility, or examine each sub-scene to find the subject.

More importantly, what is Turner trying to tell his viewers?

"Why I Write" Exercise

2013-02-04T17:11:00.000-08:00

I write out of habit. I write because, if I don’t, eventually the urge to express myself on paper consumes me to the point of ‘ink-lust.’ It is a form of narcissism, I suppose, to assume that people will read your creation, but not when one writes with the intent to help someone, to improve their knowledge, or to challenge their beliefs. I write because I am often tongue-tied, and scared to say out loud what I say on paper. I write to improve my writing; like any skill, it is a muscle that must either be flexed and built, or let wither from disuse.

I write when I am unhappy. When one is happy, when one is perfectly content with the state of their world, they are often in no mood to write. Why reflect on the past, why contemplate the present or predict the future, when one has a full belly, a wallet full of cash, and a girlfriend on the arm? There is no point in writing then. One writes in search of hope, in anticipation that maybe, just maybe, one’s suffering may be alleviated, if not permanently then at least through the opportunity to share their feelings with others. I write because it’s the cheapest, most effective form of therapy I have ever undergone, next to running and other forms of physical exercise. I write in hopes of connecting with others, of seeing my own experiences reflected in theirs, and finding common ground to talk about, to laugh about, to commiserate about.

I write to reflect on what I have learned, to explore a subject, and to share that knowledge with others. Whether that knowledge is academic or general, layman’s information, If it is interesting or useful I desire to write about it. I write to acknowledge when I have attained a goal I set for myself. I write to chastise myself for my failures, and to plan my next course of action.

I write to protest against the injustices in society, to communicate to as many people as possible that there is, in fact, a better way of doing things. That there is a solution to a given problem, and to announce that, even if I don’t have the solution, I am working on one - to invite others to join my quest. I write to clarify, and to make permanent, my thoughts. I write so that future generations - or perhaps only future me - can look upon my mistakes and avoid them. I write so that my children, and my children’s children, will have something of a guidebook to help them through this thing we call ‘life.’

I write to justify that that my life has meaning, so that there are records of my existence long after my body has decomposed. I write in hopes of making the Beaudreault family proud. I write so that when I finally say something to them, I mean what I say, and so that I don’t say anything out of malice. I write to acknowledge that I have limits, but that those limits can be challenged, reshaped, or pushed back several paces If I invest the time and energy necessary. That’s what university is for, anyhow. I write to prove to myself that I’m not crazy, or that at least - If I am - that it’s a benign form of crazy.

Every act of writing I perform is an attempt, a ‘try’, to uncover some meaning from the trillions of terabytes of information that exist in our world. I write to sift through the data, to find order in what appears to be chaos. I write in order to marry the worlds of science and art, to show the artist that science, too, is beautiful, and to show the scientist that art is not trivial. I write in an effort to make things less ambiguous - the show people that there are, in fact, more certain things besides death and taxes. I write because I am an optimist, and I think that everyone has potential, no matter their current state.

I write because I am still recovering from addiction.

A Long Journey Ahead

2013-01-07T22:16:00.000-08:00

I owed y'all this pic from a post three days ago; those are the puppies on my grandparents' farm. Great Pyrnees is the breed, if interested.

Tomorrow I'm going out to get my learner's permit, to submit a job application for the summer, and to get ready to go to Croatia. I just got back from Texas, and have travelled more than a day just to get back to New Jersey. I'm tired, i'm jet-lagged, but I'm still posting in hopes of finding inspiration.

That inspiration comes from the thought of seeing Iva again in three days time. For ten days, we'll be partying, carousing, and acting like general fools until it's time to go back to school. I've never really done something like that, you know. Acted carefree. I care, I worry, about so many things on a daily basis, that I rarely let myself enjoy the blissful moments in life. I'm glad I get the chance to do it now, before my teenage years are completely gone. Below is an image of one of the wind farms I passed on the way to Wellington. These wind mills are absolutely massive, and they provide power to many, many homes in Texas, but they can only operate in the wind.

Right now, I act like a windmill. When the wind is blowing, I can work like a madman, and attack the day with a fervor. When the wind is gone, so too is my energy. It is my intent to become more like a nuclear power plant; providing a continuous source of energy and productivity for years to come. In other words, it's high time I grew up.

Django Unchained - a review

2013-01-06T20:34:00.001-08:00

Call me late to the ball game, but Django Unchained was an absolutely stunning film. It's got lots of guns, lots of blood, just a hint of sex, and lots of good old-fashioned cussing and Mexican standoffs. It's about a black man circa 1858 who gets revenge on the white men who oversaw him as a slave, and on the white men who bought and owned his wife. This black man, in the course of one winter, learns to read, ride a horse, and shoot pistols and rifles better than U.S. Marshals of his time - ALL in the name of him becoming a bounty hunter. It's a fantastic film, but it definitely hinges on the implausible. I will not call this "Quentin Tarantino's best movie ever"; Pulp Fiction claims that title.

I heard tell of certain Hollywood types, nameably Spike Lee, boycotting Django because it's 'Disrespectful' to those who suffered under American Chattel slavery. Quote:

"It'd be disrespectful to my ancestors to see that film. That's the only thing I'm going to say. I can't disrespect my ancestors," Lee told VibeTV in a recent interview.

Lighten UP, Spike Lee! Django was not created to 'Disrespect' anybody other than slave owners and those who profited from slavery. This movie was made to make people laugh, and to get their blood pumping - which It accomplishes in equal measures. You'd know that if you bothered to see the movie, rather than just reading the blurb of a movie critic's review.

That goes for every one of you who decides to get 'offended' by a Hollywood film, or by a video game. Lighten up! This stuff is entertainment - no more, no less. I'll admit, some movies, like Sam Bacile's "Innocence of Muslims", are created to offend. They are few in number, easy to spot, and rarely commercially successful because they are blatantly racist, sexist, or classist.

Most grown-up movies are going to make fun of a group of people. At some point in your life, you will be a target, either because of your gender, your race, or where you live. LAUGH IT OFF. If you can't laugh at yourself, no one wants to be around you. If Django was good enough of a movie for Samuel L Jackson, one of the most successful black actors of all time, to act in it, it should be good enough for Spike Lee to watch it.

I swear, if people keep walking around with a stick up their ass, getting offended about the least bit of political incorrectness, I will personally write and direct a film so offensive it'll make "Springtime for Hitler" look tame.

Things get broken... and then fixed.

2013-01-05T19:56:00.003-08:00

Let's say you are a very religious person, whose beliefs are centered around the idea that doing good gets you into heaven, and doing bad gets you sent to hell. Let's also say that your notions of right and wrong ARE, in fact, the higher power's definition of right and wrong. This implies that anyone, friends, family or perfect strangers, who doesn't behave 'right' will get sent to hell. Your imperative, then, would be to teach everyone you know the difference between the two, and to make sure that people are behaving properly.

The problem with undertaking this mission is that people are going to question you; "By what authority are you saying these things?" In this day and age, no one's going to take you seriously if you say "It says so in the (insert religious text here)." They want to see your BADGE. Your physical, of-this-world proof that you are telling the truth, and that your message will help them. People will also ask "But what happens to people who never heard your message?" You will need more of an answer than "It sucks to be them; they'll go to hell." Your audience is human, and you must treat them as such.

One of the biggest problems with this mission is that, if you claim that you answer to an all-powerful God, you will inevitably be asked about where God is during disasters. Some modern-day examples; "Where was God during the shooting in Newtown?" or "Where was God in the Aurora theater shooting?" You'll lose your audience if you give a standard answer. I hear this one all the time; "We live in a fallen world. God allows bad things to happen because people sin."

I still don't have an answer to the last question, but I can say that God was with the victims and their families in these disasters. I read in the New York Times about the massive amounts of relief and emotional /financial charity given to those affected, and that donations came from all across America - and even internationally. God was there to comfort the suffering.

I believe that God also has a plan for the world, and that everything that happens works in some way to fulfill that plan. Whether the event is as big as the recession of '08 or as small as an individual getting a haircut, it is all woven into a mind-bogglingly complex plan. Small things can have big consequences, as I'm sure you all are aware. As for what happened in Newtown, I believe that good things CAN come from this tragedy. If it leads to better security for our children in schools, or (more importantly) greater providing of mental health services in schools, then so be it. If it leads to families in Newtown, Connecticut coming together and having closer connections, then so be it.

If one tragedy could cause American families to stop in their tracks, look at their children, and hug them tight. If one tragedy could make parents realize that their children are not to be taken for granted, and make them spend more time with their children at the expense of a few lost hours at work.

So be it.

You must be water

2013-01-04T19:23:00.003-08:00

I just helped my grandparents set up Skype so that they could talk to my sister and I. We have not often talked on the phone, so this is a real step up in terms of meaningful contact. I also just showed my grandmother how to search for & watch my sister’s youtube videos. It felt good inside, to open this avenue of communication for them, since they’re not as up-to-date with technology, but it’s frustrating that there is so much separating us. We live more than five hundred miles away from them, and the fastest way to travel to them takes more than ten hours and several hundred dollars each way.

What’s more, there’s a cold war going on in my family, and the belligerents are my mother and her parents, who have not spoken since my mum’s divorce.

The end result is, I cannot escape my mother’s specter whenever I visit or speak with my grandmother and grandfather. There’s always an unspoken question; “Who do I love more?”

The answer is, I love both. I will not cut one part of my family off in favor of another, no matter what they do. Yes, there are things that my grandparents and I do not see eye to eye on, such as

1. (REDACTED)

2. (REDACTED)

3. (REDACTED)

But that does not mean that I cannot love them, or spend time with them. All it means is that I must watch my tongue and be sensitive to their beliefs, just as you’d do with a friend or family member with different politics. There may never be reconciliation between my mother and her parents, and I have come to accept that. Whether or not they do, I am still my mother's son, and Oma and Opa's grandson, and I will fulfill both roles as best I can.

You can‘t fix everything, and whatever you can’t fix, you must live with. That does not imply that you can (or should) ignore the problem; it means that if you can’t fix a problem, you must be adaptable. That is a sign of emotional/intellectual health.