Yesterday I posted a note about scheduling time for reading. I need to also remember to make time for another favorite activity: going to the movies. Before joining the ranks of administration I would go see a movie at least twice a month, and usually weekly during the summer. Now I’m lucky If I can go more than two or three times a semester! Earlier this month I saw Pacific Rim; it was entertaining, but not as fun as the Sweded trailer. I’ll try to go see The Conjuring this weekend. Yesterday I asked folks to wish me luck in creating a schedule to do daily reading; please also send me good vibes about being able to occasionally get out to the movies!
media culture
The TV show Falling Skies depicts a United States of America struggling to fight off an alien invasion. Last night’s episode depicted an alternate reality where several of the main characters were on the faculty at Boston University. The character who actually was a BU professor before the invasion was shown as a department chair who was being considered as the next dean of his college. In several scenes he and the other characters were placed in what appeared to be a faculty lounge, and they engaged in both intellectual discussions as well as gossip. They appeared to be quite the collegial bunch! Maybe I should think about creating a social sciences and professional studies faculty lounge here at the U of Wisconsin-Parkside?
In the Inside Higher Education article “College is Scary” Kevin Kiley reviews the new film Monsters University. He notes, “but more than a comment on college, Monsters University is a film about diversity, the innate differences between individuals, and the institutions and situations that help foster connections and understanding between those individuals.” He adds, “it is in the dynamic between Sulley and Mike [two very different students] that the film comes closest to exploring what college administrators say people actually get out of a residential campus experience. The two challenge each other in ways that an assignment or professor likely couldn’t.” I’m going to check out the film today to see just how the dynamic plays out, which may come in handy as I start working with UW-Parkside students in the Exploration Living-Learning Community.
Today I finished My Freshman Year, a book that recounts anthropology professor Rebekah Nathan’s research project that involved enrolling as a first year undergraduate student and living in a residence hall at her university. Next week I’m moving stuff into the student apartment building at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, and on July 1 I’ll start living there. While I won’t be a “student” who disguised her faculty identity like Nathan, I share her initial excitement to live among students again after a long time as a faculty member (15 years in Nathan’s case; 14 years for me). I’ll also be the “Dean in Residence” in the Exploration Living-Learning Community. Over the summer the Dean of Students, the Director of Residence Life, and I will determine my specific role for a sub-group of students who are interested in social science and education careers. My initial thoughts include: eating dinner once a week with these students, organizing a once a month movie night to discuss films with strong social science themes, and taking the students to once a month department open houses so they can explore specific majors in the social sciences and education. I welcome any additional ideas you have, readers!
I should note that I’ll really be the “Dean in Semi-Residence,” as the students will live in a traditional dormitory while I’ll be in the apartment complex next door. I have no qualms about going back to a dorm — my first year of college (1986-1987) and last year of graduate school (1998-1999) were in this type of building — but my wife vetoed that possibility, as she did not want to be running to a bathroom at the end of a hall in the middle of the night during visits. I guess that I would also get tired of that too. Two units in the apartment building are available for visiting faculty, so I’ll be in one of those.
I was the co-creator of a 2012-2013 University of Minnesota Living-Learning Community (LLC), Huntley House. I’ll miss these guys, but maybe I can call on them in the future to start a similar LLC at UW-P? I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Bring on the Exploration LLC students!
Star Trek: Into Darkness is the new Star Trek movie that is currently playing on thousands of multiplex cinema screens. I saw it last weekend with my 14 year-old niece and 11 year-old nephew. My niece really wanted to see The Great Gatsby, but deferred to her action-loving brother. I was interested in seeing Star Trek: Into Darkness after reading an article that argues that the progressive Star Trek franchise has one glaring omission: it does not depict Lesbian-Bisexual-Gay-Transgender (LBGT) people and perspectives. I wondered if the new movie would include these folks as crew members. The answer: no. In fact, Star Trek: Into Darkness was a pretty typical action movie with little else going on, and it was a much less interesting than the 2009 Star Trek reboot. Hopefully the next installment will present the social commentary that is a hallmark of the franchise.
Today I am thinking about the TV show Breaking Bad. No, not because I am excited about the recently announced August 11, 2013 second half premiere of season 5; I have Ted Beneke on the brain. For readers who are not Breaking Bad watchers (or for those who are, but have forgotten some of the minor characters), Ted Beneke was the president of a family-owned fabricating company that employed Skylar White as the bookkeeper. Skylar White used $600,00 of the proceeds from husband Walter White’s meth manufacturing operation to close an IRS audit of Beneke Fabricators and pay back taxes Ted owed to the IRS. OK, got all of that? There will be a quiz on Tuesday :).
Ted is on my mind today as an example of “conspicuous consumption,” a term coined by sociologist Thorstein Veblen in the 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class, and today defined by Wikipedia as “the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power – either the buyer’s income or the buyer’s accumulated wealth.” In an attempt to save his troubled business Ted sold many of his luxury goods, but after the cash infusion one of his initial purchases was a new Mercedes-Benz car. When confronted by Skylar about why he did not spend the money on seemingly more important items such as re-hiring furloughed employees, Ted responded that he has to look impressive when he meets with business clients.
I bought a “new” car last month, partly because my current car is not a pretty sight, with its peeling paint and cracked windshield. “New” is in quotes because the car is a 2007 model with 67,000 miles on it. That’s an improvement over the current 2000 ride, but it’s the first time since my initial car purchase in 1987 that I have not selected a new car. (The current 2000 Honda Accord was a gift from my mother-in-law to my wife when she went to graduate school in 2010.) The initial 1987 purchase at the beginning of my sophomore year of college was a 1979 Honda Accord with 120,000 miles; it had 190,000 miles when I bought my first new car (a 1992 Acura Integra) in 1991. I subsequently leased three new cars. When the last lease expired in 2010 my wife and I decided to not get another new car in order to save money for her graduate school expenses; I rode the bus to work and used the Zipcar car-sharing service while my wife used her mother’s car in North Carolina.
While I don’t need to be quite as concerned with appearances as businessman Ted Beneke, I don’t want to look shabby as a new Dean! My initial preference was to lease another new car, but I’ll be putting too many miles on a vehicle in the next couple of years to justify leasing, so I decided to investigate used cars. I ended up with a Nissan Murano SL. The “L” in SL is for “luxury,” so I’m happy. A Murano is not a Mercedes by any stretch of the imagination, but it has style, so I don’t have to worry about the negative perceptions of owning a “hooptie,” a car with problems. I suppose, though, that driving a hooptie would invite less scrutiny than if I were rolling around a college campus in a $100,000 car. I won’t have to worry about the latter possibility for many years to come…if ever.
The TV show Falling Skies depicts a United States of America struggling to fight off an alien invasion. Last night’s episode depicted an alternate reality where several of the main characters were on the faculty at Boston University. The character who actually was a BU professor before the invasion was shown as a department chair who was being considered as the next dean of his college. In several scenes he and the other characters were placed in what appeared to be a faculty lounge, and they engaged in both intellectual discussions as well as gossip. They appeared to be quite the collegial bunch! Maybe I should think about creating a social sciences and professional studies faculty lounge here at the U of Wisconsin-Parkside?
In the Inside Higher Education article “College is Scary” Kevin Kiley reviews the new film Monsters University. He notes, “but more than a comment on college, Monsters University is a film about diversity, the innate differences between individuals, and the institutions and situations that help foster connections and understanding between those individuals.” He adds, “it is in the dynamic between Sulley and Mike [two very different students] that the film comes closest to exploring what college administrators say people actually get out of a residential campus experience. The two challenge each other in ways that an assignment or professor likely couldn’t.” I’m going to check out the film today to see just how the dynamic plays out, which may come in handy as I start working with UW-Parkside students in the Exploration Living-Learning Community.
Today I finished My Freshman Year, a book that recounts anthropology professor Rebekah Nathan’s research project that involved enrolling as a first year undergraduate student and living in a residence hall at her university. Next week I’m moving stuff into the student apartment building at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, and on July 1 I’ll start living there. While I won’t be a “student” who disguised her faculty identity like Nathan, I share her initial excitement to live among students again after a long time as a faculty member (15 years in Nathan’s case; 14 years for me). I’ll also be the “Dean in Residence” in the Exploration Living-Learning Community. Over the summer the Dean of Students, the Director of Residence Life, and I will determine my specific role for a sub-group of students who are interested in social science and education careers. My initial thoughts include: eating dinner once a week with these students, organizing a once a month movie night to discuss films with strong social science themes, and taking the students to once a month department open houses so they can explore specific majors in the social sciences and education. I welcome any additional ideas you have, readers!
I should note that I’ll really be the “Dean in Semi-Residence,” as the students will live in a traditional dormitory while I’ll be in the apartment complex next door. I have no qualms about going back to a dorm — my first year of college (1986-1987) and last year of graduate school (1998-1999) were in this type of building — but my wife vetoed that possibility, as she did not want to be running to a bathroom at the end of a hall in the middle of the night during visits. I guess that I would also get tired of that too. Two units in the apartment building are available for visiting faculty, so I’ll be in one of those.
I was the co-creator of a 2012-2013 University of Minnesota Living-Learning Community (LLC), Huntley House. I’ll miss these guys, but maybe I can call on them in the future to start a similar LLC at UW-P? I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Bring on the Exploration LLC students!
Star Trek: Into Darkness is the new Star Trek movie that is currently playing on thousands of multiplex cinema screens. I saw it last weekend with my 14 year-old niece and 11 year-old nephew. My niece really wanted to see The Great Gatsby, but deferred to her action-loving brother. I was interested in seeing Star Trek: Into Darkness after reading an article that argues that the progressive Star Trek franchise has one glaring omission: it does not depict Lesbian-Bisexual-Gay-Transgender (LBGT) people and perspectives. I wondered if the new movie would include these folks as crew members. The answer: no. In fact, Star Trek: Into Darkness was a pretty typical action movie with little else going on, and it was a much less interesting than the 2009 Star Trek reboot. Hopefully the next installment will present the social commentary that is a hallmark of the franchise.
Today I am thinking about the TV show Breaking Bad. No, not because I am excited about the recently announced August 11, 2013 second half premiere of season 5; I have Ted Beneke on the brain. For readers who are not Breaking Bad watchers (or for those who are, but have forgotten some of the minor characters), Ted Beneke was the president of a family-owned fabricating company that employed Skylar White as the bookkeeper. Skylar White used $600,00 of the proceeds from husband Walter White’s meth manufacturing operation to close an IRS audit of Beneke Fabricators and pay back taxes Ted owed to the IRS. OK, got all of that? There will be a quiz on Tuesday :).
Ted is on my mind today as an example of “conspicuous consumption,” a term coined by sociologist Thorstein Veblen in the 1899 book The Theory of the Leisure Class, and today defined by Wikipedia as “the spending of money on and the acquiring of luxury goods and services to publicly display economic power – either the buyer’s income or the buyer’s accumulated wealth.” In an attempt to save his troubled business Ted sold many of his luxury goods, but after the cash infusion one of his initial purchases was a new Mercedes-Benz car. When confronted by Skylar about why he did not spend the money on seemingly more important items such as re-hiring furloughed employees, Ted responded that he has to look impressive when he meets with business clients.
I bought a “new” car last month, partly because my current car is not a pretty sight, with its peeling paint and cracked windshield. “New” is in quotes because the car is a 2007 model with 67,000 miles on it. That’s an improvement over the current 2000 ride, but it’s the first time since my initial car purchase in 1987 that I have not selected a new car. (The current 2000 Honda Accord was a gift from my mother-in-law to my wife when she went to graduate school in 2010.) The initial 1987 purchase at the beginning of my sophomore year of college was a 1979 Honda Accord with 120,000 miles; it had 190,000 miles when I bought my first new car (a 1992 Acura Integra) in 1991. I subsequently leased three new cars. When the last lease expired in 2010 my wife and I decided to not get another new car in order to save money for her graduate school expenses; I rode the bus to work and used the Zipcar car-sharing service while my wife used her mother’s car in North Carolina.
While I don’t need to be quite as concerned with appearances as businessman Ted Beneke, I don’t want to look shabby as a new Dean! My initial preference was to lease another new car, but I’ll be putting too many miles on a vehicle in the next couple of years to justify leasing, so I decided to investigate used cars. I ended up with a Nissan Murano SL. The “L” in SL is for “luxury,” so I’m happy. A Murano is not a Mercedes by any stretch of the imagination, but it has style, so I don’t have to worry about the negative perceptions of owning a “hooptie,” a car with problems. I suppose, though, that driving a hooptie would invite less scrutiny than if I were rolling around a college campus in a $100,000 car. I won’t have to worry about the latter possibility for many years to come…if ever.