Post 58: Summer reading, etc., Selections

It's always fun to have a reading list going with a number of books and articles that satisfy the curious drive to learn that many of us in grad school have, though certainly we aren't the only ones with bottomless curiosity.

My Reading List continually morphs with my moods, sense of obligation, curiosity, and interest. A recent pruning deleted Cynthia Flood short stories and replaced it with Paulo Friere "Pedagogy of the Oppressed", and I placed CP Boyko's "Psychology and Other Stories" on the list for a thorough re-read.

I am a fairly panoramic reader, and enjoy creative non-fiction, academic research papers and books, a splash of poetry, all mixed with a good dose of fiction and short stories.

This post is a short selection of passages that have stuck with me from the past few weeks, some for their wisdom, others for their insight, and other for their composition. I'll let them stand against and beside each other as is, and hope that some of them will strike you as interesting enough to follow up on.

Another beautiful evening sunset in Victoria. 

From Neil Smith's (1984) "Uneven development: Nature, capital, and the production of space:"

In the first chapter 'The ideology of nature'

"The subject of nature, real and conceptual, threads through the entire fabric of western thought. If it is a mammoth task to summarize the development of the major concepts of nature up to Kant, it would be a similarly mammoth task to do the same for the last two centuries. For during this time, social relation with nature has undergone an unprecedented transformation. Parallel to this, many old conceptions of nature have been fossilized as museum pieces while other comparatively obscure concepts have risen rapidly to prominence. It is in this short period that the dualism inherent in Kant has crystallized into the backbone of the bourgeois ideology of nature. Given the immensity of the task we cannot trace the detailed historical development of the ideology in this chapter. Instead we will simply illustrate this ideology by examining two particular modes of experiencing and conceptualizing nature: the scientific and what we shall call, for want of a better description, the poetic. No pretence is made to completeness; in each case the treatment is very selective since the point is to illustrate rather than definitely prove the bourgeois ideology of nature. Finally, we shall examine the marxist treatment of nature, the major alternative to the bourgeois conception" (pg. 13).

*****

From Robert Boice's (1990) "Professors as writers: A self-help guide to productive writing:"

Chapter One: Why Professors Don't Write

Perfectionism

"Traditionally, perfectionism stands as a major and separate cause of writing problems. No wonder. All of us, at one time or another, have experience the urge to keep reworking material until it seems perfect. All of us, at some level, would like to be seen as excellent writers.

"Some writers let perfectionism thoroughly block them; their ideas and papers never do reach acceptable levels of perfection, they can never do enough revising or rechecking, they even develop obsessive concerns with detail. At their worst, perfectionists are not only unproductive as writers. They are also elitists and snobs who assume that most published writing lacks merit or quality and that their writing, should they decide to finish and share it, would rise above the commonplace.

"In a way, perfectionism overlaps with fears of failure. Perfectionism practiced pathologically, as a morbid fear of making mistakes and of being exposed as mediocre, is little more than a fear of failure that inhibits writing" (pg. 10).

These have popped up on campus as does and fawns have filled the lawns. :)

*****

From David Sedaris' (2000) book "Me talk pretty one day".

The piece: Nutcracker.com

"It was my father's dream that one day the people of the world would be connected to one another through a network of blocky, refrigerator-size computers, much like those he was helping develop at IBM. He envisioned families of the future gathered around their mammoth terminals, ordering groceries and paying their taxes from the comfort of their own homes. A person could compose music, design a dog-house, and ... something more, something even better. 'A person could... he could...'

"When predicting this utopia, he would eventually reach a point where words failed him. His eyes would widen and sparkle at the thought of this indescribable something more. 'I mean, my God,' he'd say, 'just think about it.'

"My sisters and I preferred not to. I didn't know about them, but I was hoping the people of the world might be united by something more interesting, like drugs or an armed struggle against the undead. Unfortunately, my father's team won, so computers it is. My only regret is that this had to happen during my lifetime" (pgs 142-143).

*****

From Bruno Latour's (2005) "Reassembling the social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory"

From Part 1, First Source of Uncertainty: No Group, Only Group Formation

"If someone pointed out to me that words like 'group', 'grouping', and 'actor' are meaningless, I would answer, "Quite right." The word 'group' is so empty that it sets neither the size nor the content. It could be applied to a planet as well as to an individual; to Microsoft as well as to my family; to plants as well as to baboons. This is exactly why I have chosen it" (pg. 29).

*****

From Joseph Boyden's "The Orenda"

"I stoke the fire with more wood and lift my robe to my shoulders. You would understand, dear one, what I need right now. After all, we made the promise to each other that if one were to die too young, the other, after appropriate mourning, should feel free to take care of physical needs. It's time to pay Gosling a visit.

"No light yet, and the snow blows sideways, building high against the west side of the longhouses, helping to insulate them from the lake's wind. This is the time when our people go to the dream world most deeply, and normally I'd be there too. But I awoke to Gosling's image in my head, and I knew she beckoned me. She lives alone near the southern palisades, and no one dares build a home near her. She is the only one in a community of thousands to live alone" (pg. 25).

This made me double-take: the helicopter seeds of a bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum) look very much like a
 resting moth on the trunk of this tree. 

I am very aware that my current reading selections above contain all male authors; most of the time I make an effort to read literature written from women, too! It does happen that right now I am not in the middle of one of those.

Post 44: Mental Health Awareness at UVic

This lunch hour I attended the first of two round table talks on Mental Health Awareness, put on by UVic's Mental Health Task Force, and it was very, very good. This talk was about Anxiety: When The Worry Won't Stop; the second, on March 18th, from 12:00-1:30, will discuss Living, Learning, and Working with a Mental Health Diagnosis, in MacLaurin Room D 010.

We started off with a really refreshing and brief meditation session, where the fellow that led the session got us all to ground ourselves, and focus our attention to breathing. For some people, it was the first time they had ever done something like that, and it was great to hear how much of a difference it made to them! I don't usually like the sitting/standing still and meditating practices; I am a meditate-in-motion kind of person, and find a lot of calm when I exercise. This is also one of the main reasons why I prefer really active yoga like flow, or ashtanga, as opposed to the slower ones like yin or meditation yoga. But for the start of the workshop, I thought this was great!

Another wonderful evening on campus! My skyline, just before catching the bus home at the end the day. 

Reflecting on the talk, this post will highlight the people and resources that I am able to recall, as well as briefly discuss a couple of the themes that arose. I was amazed by how diverse a crowd the talk drew: there were a variety of resource folks present, and it was a nice mix of internal and external resources I didn't know UVic or the wider community had. The introductions went quite quickly, so I didn't manage to remember any names, but here are the resources that I remember.

UVic Counselling Services: they run a number of workshops on stress and anxiety and managing panic, through a variety of techniques, including cognitive behavioural therapy, ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy), and mindfulness practices. Here's a link for those workshops.  A number of their counsellors can also be visited with individual appointments as well.

UVic Human Resources also had a staff person there, one of their Work Life Consultants; he expressed that if you're someone who is dealing with a mental health illness, then HR can work with that individual to sort out adjustments that can be made so their work relationship at the University can still be a positive and productive one.

Dr. Lara Robinson, a professor from the Psychology department was there, and offered a number of important advice points, and shared that she takes on a couple of clients each semester at a reduced rate, addressing anxiety mental health issues. She also mentioned that the Psychology department has ongoing studies and research relating to wellness and anxiety, so send her an email if that sounds interesting at all. From what I remember, she mentioned that you could pair up with graduate student at a very reduced rate ($10 per session) to address ongoing problems.

Darryl (sp?) who works with/at the Anxiety Clinic in Victoria also had a very strong presence during the discussion, and it was very clear that he was well versed in the science of treating anxiety disorders and issues. He described anxiety issues as "bad mental habits," which is, I think, a very good way to think about anxiety.

Lovely bouquet i put together last year; my partner loves lilies, and I loved the bright colour contrast. :) 

One of the Residence Life student coordinators was there to share his perspective on both living with and dealing with anxiety himself, and training his crew of residence advisors to help provide resources and support to students. ResLife comes into contact with about 60-70% of the first year student population at UVic, so they have an immense impact with students. I spoke with him right after the talk and it sounds like ResLife is making a big effort to make sure students are aware of their resources when it comes to dealing with mental health, and that was really great to hear. Here's a link to some of the activities they put on in residence.

There was also a lovely gal from the Meditation Club on campus there! They put on regular meditation sessions to encourage and support students with decompressing from the stress of academia. And that is probably one of the main themes that arose during the session: the importance of grounding exercises, meditation, and bringing awareness to simple things like breathing. Darryl from the Anxiety Clinic mentioned that a panic attack can be triggered by shallow breathing, which we do when we're really stressed out. So the square breathing technique can be really helpful: breathing in for 4 seconds, holding the breath for 4 seconds, breathing out for 4 seconds, and holding the breath for another 4 seconds before inhaling again.

There were a number of people from different places across campus in the crowd, some faculty, some students, some grad students like myself, as well as parents that deal with anxiety, and parents with children who deal with anxiety. I was also very pleased to see great representation from Campus Security there! One of them mentioned that they are increasingly getting calls from students, faculty, and staff that deal with anxiety and mental health issues across campus. This reminds me that I recently read about the Nelson police chief wanting to establish a Mental Health Car like the one that Vancouver has, to better address the increasing calls they see there, which I think is a phenomenal idea!

Grumpy cat pal that I encountered on one of my evening walks in Oak Bay! :)

One of the most important themes of the discussion was around normalizing these kinds of mental health issues. A lot of people deal with them, and universities breed anxiety, even for people who don't otherwise have full blown disorders or may only have one panic attack, or deal with low-level anxiety that doesn't regularly interfere with their work or daily life. So when encountering someone who's dealing with anxiety, listening to them, admitting when we don't know much about what their experience is, or being authentic and sincere when empathizing with them, and referring them to places where they do have resources is probably one of the best things we can do.

As educators, I think one of the main things we can do to reduce the stigma of mental health issues is to encourage transparency around these issues. I know in one or two of my tutorials this semester I mentioned that if students are struggling with anything (mental health, personal life challenges, other health issues, or just bad scheduling, such as 3 assignments in 2 days), they can let me know and I will do my best to accommodate their need. I've had a couple students contact me with such requests, and it seems to have made a really big difference for them.

Talking about, acknowledging, and accepting in a non-judgmental way that people can suffer from and with these often invisible issues was another of the main themes that came from the discussion, whether it was a comment from a student who has been dealing with anxiety for years, or one of the resource people acknowledging that people build these behavioural habits, which become messy when avoidance and poor relationships and communication enter the mix, too.

Whew! This post has already become a lot longer than I'd thought, so I'll end it here! I'm glad I went to this workshop, and I now know a lot more about some of the anxiety resources we have across campus and from without, and I hope that should I be in a teaching position in the future, I'll remember to at least at one point during the semester (preferably at the beginning), mention to my students that if they're dealing with a mental health issue or other issues, they can let me know and I can try to accommodate the unexpected challenges that life throws our way sometimes.