i like to see the glass half full

Now I know this NPR article is just telling the facts about jobless rates going up...but, um, a little encouragement and optimism would do us all a lot of good! i can't find a job in Italy so now let's see what happens when i look in the States. I'm keeping an open mind for my job searches in both places.

(My LinkedIn profile explains what I'm looking for if you're curious)

they don't call it the world wide WEB for nothing

I feel like spiderman. I'm spinning webs everyday in the digital world of cyberspace. I have a bazillion links between facebook, linkedin, picasa, blogs, email....everything cross-references everything else, have you noticed that? if you go to your facebook, you list like 10 links or pieces of information that you can ALSO find in five other different profiles. My blog tells you about my LinkedIn profile now (finally updated!) and my LinkedIn tells you about my blog. Don't worry if you don't know about my LinkedIn "professional" network profile, because you could either A.google my name or B. find the link on Facebook! I mean I feel like a real-estate agent just buying up property on the web. I'm getting my name out there which makes me feel some entitlement to all these pages dedicated to me. I've got the social page (facebook), the professional page (linkedin), the artistic page (picasa), the personal page (blogspot), the entrepreneur page (etsy).

Now that everyone else I know directly or indirectly through friends (facebook tells me i have 814 friends*, linkedin tells me i have 11 connections, my email has 234 contacts) has a tangled web of their exponentially growing collection of pages on the world wide WEB, I can't even keep up with friends, family, colleagues...let alone my own pages, me.

*are they all true friends i see and talk to daily? no of course not

see what happens when you google your name

I found my incomplete, outdated LinkedIn profile (which is now been updated) a few cross-country race statistics from my collegiate and highschool races and a link to my Facebook profile....

Good thing that's all that came up. *


*I'm not saying there is more to find, I'm just glad that's the case.
**On facebook someone could tag some horrible unflattering or scandalous pictures to your face. On google you may accidentally find other scandals with your name attached. PHEW so far so good...

thanks tina!

Awww. I googled my name on the Smith College website and found a reference in a Smithie JYA student blog.

but what would Margaret Edson say about Lingueo???

On Sunday May 18th, the day of my commencement from Smith College, Margaret Edson '83 told us what is so valuable about an education as it was originally intended ( in the classroom, as "a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event."). In this days I've been thinking a lot about my four-year undergraduate American liberal arts education. About what it has done to help me grow, about how I should've taken more advantage of it, how I want more of it, about the differences between the benefits of our system and those from an education here in Italy.*

Anyway, Margaret, an award-winning-playwright-turned-Kindergarten-teacher-by-passion gave us her reasons for the valuable, priceless event of classroom learning, saying:

"Classroom teaching is a physical, breath-based, eye-to-eye event.
It is not built on equipment or the past.
It is not concerned about the future.
It is in existence to go out of existence.
It happens and then it vanishes.
Classroom teaching is our gift.
It's us; it's this.

We bring nothing into the classroom -- perhaps a text or a specimen. We carry ourselves, and whatever we have to offer you is stored within our bodies. You bring nothing into the classroom -- some gum, maybe a piece of paper and a pencil: nothing but yourselves, your breath, your bodies.

Classroom teaching produces nothing. At the end of a class, we all get up and walk out. It's as if we were never there. There's nothing to point to, no monument, no document of our existence together.

Classroom teaching expects nothing. There is no pecuniary relationship between teachers and students. Money changes hands, and people work very hard to keep it in circulation, but we have all agreed that it should not happen in the classroom. And there is no financial incentive structure built into classroom teaching because we get paid the same whether you learn anything or not.

Classroom teaching withholds nothing. I say to my young students every year, "I know how to add two numbers, but I'm not going to tell you." And they laugh and shout, "No!" That's so absurd, so unthinkable. What do I have that I would not give to you?"

The point being that I want to go back to classroom, whether to teach or to learn. Basically she got me thinking about the incredible wonders that happen in a classroom (the kind of thing you appreciate and understand once you're out of one) and about the magic of learning (this is not intended to sound corny)...because now I'm thinking about my career and that means thinking about more time in the classroom for a Masters.**

P.S. You can read her speech here.

*(Ask me how many times I've had to defend and explain the liberal arts education while in Italy... Example: "why do you have two majors? you didn't do a thesis undergrad? you took classes of all subjects? you don't already know your career path? YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?" etc. )

*now I have to think WHAT Masters do I want to do...?

why laptops make you lazy (but allow you to be productive)

i guess it would be incorrect to say that laziness is what made me sign up to be a Lingueo language tutor because while it doesn't necessarily mean you need to get off your chair, you do need some motivation (and free time) to register, make a profile then create the video classes for the language you want to teach. it's an online site for students and tutors to give video language lessons. it's relatively new from what i've gathered so there are only about a 100 tutors and 150 students from around the world who have signed up. as a tutor, i make a schedule of my hours in my time zone, my hourly wage linked to a paypal system and a series of video classes. it's sooo 21st century, isn't it?

i mean it's not that i was too lazy to go out and do face to face lessons, because I currently have one student that I meet with in person and on Skype, the problem is our generation has their face to the computer screen all day that Lingueo takes advantage of that. it's a really powerful tool for obvious reasons....now i can learn japanese with someone both from japan and in japan at the same time while I stay comfortably in front of my computer at home (in either of my homes in italy or the states*).

now i just have to figure out how to sign up as a student...and decide which language to take.

I'm thinking Japanese or Finnish....

*yes i do call Italy and the States home

and now we know he was right....

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by

inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will

deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their

fathers conquered."

Thomas Jefferson 1802