A Response to my Last Post

I had already planned to revisit my last post because while I wasn’t quite satisfied with it, I also didn’t want to lose the moment by endlessly tweaking it.  Commenter, Una, however, responded to a different point in the post, and gave me an even better cause and topic: when and how to admit you don’t know something.

My first response to Una’s post was to write the reply I posted. My second response was ‘people will think I’m an idiot!’ My third response is this: one of the things I am proudest of learning from my mentor is to freely admit when I don’t know something. I, and she, do this for a variety of reasons, but I think the most important is that feigning knowledge interferes with the learning and slows the working process down. Learning something to the point of becoming truly knowledgeable takes time, and that learning is delayed or hampered when one pretends to already understand.  Moreover, when some knowledge is assumed, it is often thus never covered. I have no patience for repeating information already discussed, but equally I hate not knowing everything that I want to know about a topic. Admitting what I don’t know from the outset eliminates the need for any dance of inquiry.

Having defended starting out as a novice, I take and agree with Una’s point that it is disingenous (and, as so often happens is IR, outright harmful) to represent oneself as an expert on one subject based on knowledge of another. For a few of my friends, this is a well-known trope, but one that unfortunately continues to be ring true. This is in fact another reason why I feel so strongly about admitting ignorance: because while I do have substantial knowledge verging on expertise in some areas, I don’t and can’t know everything about every relevant topic. I need to fill in the gaps, and that begins with acknowledging that, in this example, I know nothing about Bosnia, but I want to.

This is also why I am so thankful to have commentors; not only do I know that I am not simply writing to myself, but because I hope to find others who will help me learn. In that vein, any recommendations on post-conflict Bosnia and the peace and/or democracy process are very much appreciated.

Today Is the Day My Specialization in Sub-Saharan Africa Died

I have been avoiding this reality for some time, taking on an African country whenever a project demanded such a case study, ignoring the fact that many of my friends and colleagues are now more knowledgable about substantial parts of the continent than I am (even excepting that I haven’t managed to read more than the headlines in months).  I’m currently working on a project for my Democracy, Governance, Stabilization and Post-Conflict Reconstruction class in which I have to choose a problem of democracy, governance and/or stabilization in a post-conflict country and, of all the countries available, I picked Bosnia.  And I love it.  I can’t pronounce or even spell any of the names that I am reading about, but Bosnia is suddenly fascinating to me, because it is an excellent case study for what is now really driving me: the problem of de-normalizing and de-norming violence as a means of conflict resolution and normalizing trust relationships across lines of fractionalization.

I still wake up every spring wishing I was in South Africa, and I know I’ll continue to choose case studies from the continent (I’m already considering  Somalia, South Africa and Sudan as case studies for the normalization project), but my head just isn’t in it anymore.  I began studying IR and anthropology in order to study Sub-Saharan Africa, but as I’ve progressed thru my studies, I’ve discovered so many questions that can’t be answered in Africa alone.  In this point in my life, I would rather focus my energies on them, rather than limit myself to a single geographic area, however vast and diverse.

Why Quantitative Analysis Papers Bore Me

From Schrodt’s “Seven Deadly Sins of Contemporary Quantitative Political Analysis”:

The typical paper I receive has some subset – and often as not, the population – of the following irritating characteristics:

• A dozen or so correlated independent variables in a linear model;
• A new whiz-bang and massively complex statistical technique (conveniently available in Stata or R) that is at best completely unnecessary for the problem at hand, since a simple t-test or ANOVA would be quite adequate to extract the few believable results in the data, and not infrequently the technique is completely inappropriate given the characteristics of the data and/or theory;
• Analyzes a data set that has been analyzed a thousand or more times before;
• Is 35 or minus 5 pages in length, despite producing results that could easily be conveyed in ten or fewer pages (as one finds in the natural sciences)

At least now, having taken a quantitative methods course, I now understand why the analysis is useless, where as before I would just skip it to read the conclusions.  Actually, I still do this, because as he states, the paper is usually 15+ pages too long.  However, I don’t understand what his problem is with Stata.

Being a rabbi’s partner is much like being that of a therapist AND politician’s partner, and not in the best ways of either. Therapists’ spouses can’t know anything about the patients and thus no notion of what secrets their partner is carrying; then again, their privacy is gloriously intact. Politicians’ spouses do know their partners’ secrets, if only because the entire world is ruthlessly discovering and intently sharing them, and there are also the endless public appearances and spearheading good causes. But at least there are also the money and book deals.

I love the rabbi’s community, but his life – our future life – inexplicably belongs to them. He is a pulpit rabbi, by necessity a public figure, a model of Judaism (fine) and good living (who needs to know?). This invites public scrutiny into our private lives at a level that I, having forsworn a career in politics, had not expected (he argues I do the same w this blog, but at least I haven’t invited any of you over dinner. As an additional distinction, as an introvert, I prefer online communication to dinner party small talk, because I can ignore everyone as needed). Perhaps one day this blog, or something else, will land me a book deal, but until that time, I often feel like we are consigning ourselves to a life of suffering in silence – he because he can’t tell me about the trials he helps congregants face, me because mouthing off to the shul president is rarely good form. I am being flippant; we have an exceptional (and I am beginning to realize, unfortunately rare) degree of communication and brutal honesty in our relationship, and both of us are CHOOSING this life, realizing that we must make our own path, both in rabbi/rebbetzin/shul relationships and extrovert/introvert compatibility (I am NOT being flippant when I say the latter is by far the more difficult). Still, overall, I have wonder: what was God smoking when he made this match?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I’d love to say it was daring and adventurous, but other than a whole lot of

 

 

and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and a little bit of

 

it was rather typical. I spent last semester getting an A in my crime/corruption class. Yes, I’ve heard all the jokes, and yes, my parents are quite proud. And yes, I have been tempted to call the rabbi Pinky on occasion. However, despite all of this, I may have to consider my time at GU wasted because try as I might, I still can’t get my maniacal laugh quite right. Disappointing, I know.

 

 

Pictures from me (using Skitch), http://www.thepulsemag.com/wordpress/2008/09/0908-college-town and the rabbi, respectively.

This Is Why I’m Going to Marry Him

The rabbi, to me, after Shabbat when I inform him that the head cold-from-hell that he gave me is now the sore throat-from-hell (worst engagement present ever):  ‘You’re not supposed to be sick when I can’t be there to take care of you!’

Wherein I Declare, Take Pity on the Jews, for I Shall Be a Rabbi’s Wife!

Yes, that’s right, to answer GeorgeE’s question, I said yes to the rabbi, who asked me to marry him right before he gave me a cold and left the county.  Except for the head cold from hell part and the different time zones and countries part, we’re ridiculously happy.  So thank you, GeorgeE, for giving me the excuse to tell even more people (potentially) and also for still checking this site even tho I’d abandoned it in favor of redesigning D&S in order to pay my rent.

In the interim, a lot of things have happened besides the engagement, very little of which I’ll discuss here for privacy reasons (except, woo! One year of grad school down!). Almost all of it is good, but it has kept me pretty occupied, even when I’m not planning overly ambitious CSS rewrites (if you’re wondering why D&S doesn’t look any different, its because I haven’t yet mastered the coding necessary to meet my insanely high standards).  This is great, but it’s also made it hard for me to update, or even figure out what exactly I’m doing here.

I chose the name the Everyday Idealist because at the time I was still in the it-wont-be-that-hard-to-change-the-world-if-everybody-pitches-in-and-boy-I’ll-be-the-one-to-show-them-how stage that mercifully most people grow out of by college graduation (mine lasted until I started my master’s program last year, so about 5 years too long. How I still have any friends, I don’t know).  Luckily, a year of Barak Hoffman, reading political theory more recently than 5 years ago and the wonderful Wronging Rights, Texas in Africa, Blood and Milk and Aid Watch have cured that.  They’ve also put a huge damper on the whole development/aid blogging thing for me tho, 1 because I know nothing by comparison and 2 I’m not even in a developing country so that I can at least write posts complaining about power outages.  Yes, I realize that their blogs do not preclude me from writing on the same topic, such is the joy of the internet, but I am pathologically resistant to going where others have before, especially when they do it far better than I can.  I still plan to do some writing for D&S, but that is not the same as devoting this site here.

As the year progressed, I started writing more about religion, mostly because I cared about it for the first time in my life. I’ve always been interested academically, but beginning about 3 years ago I started heading down the path that led to my conversion to Judaism.  That I also started dating the rabbi has only deepened my desire and need to talk and think about spirituality and organized religion.  That being said, this has not been an easy change for me, as religion was, for most of my life, something to not be discussed, or if so, only with trusted confidantes while drinking.  To say anything about religion publicly is a terrifying step for me, especially now that my views will inevitably reflect on the man I love.

Which, of course, brings me to the rabbi.  Writing about him began as a joke between friends and grew into something I’m not sure we were prepared for: the occasional airing of our private life (entirely my fault) as well as a source of interest and support from the internet.  He is understandably wary of the attention, and my desire to protect him helps make it much harder to know what to write about.  Neither of us has any desire to be as open about our lives as Heather Armstrong (especially when there will be congregants! (Incidentally a fantastic post title and yes I realize I use ‘especially’ too much, and also parentheses)) but he has been and will continual to be a huge element of my religious life, as well as everything else (because we’re engaged! And yes this has become a repeated part of conversation with me lately, and simply be grateful I haven’t yet inserted ‘fiance’ into the mix) and if I keep writing about religion, where do I draw the line?  Should I even bother?  I do have loads to write about, mostly on religion and ethics, but what havoc will I wreak in his (and later, our) community if I express them?  The pressure by such considerations is writers’ block-inducing, but I also know that bottling up my brain is a recipe for relationship disaster.  I also love that people are reading what I write, even when the feedback isn’t positive, because any writer or other artist who says they do it for themselves is lying. Yes, we do need to express ourselves and do so best through our chosen medium, but we want that expression to be understood and recognized, and that requires an audience, and when you find a way to connect with someone, you want to do it again and again and better and better.  And that’s been my struggle; how to be true to myself, fulfill my needs and those of my family, and still reach back to those of you who have for some reason made me a part of your lives.  I’d say I’d write about a combination of the topics I’ve mentioned here, plus others, and I likely will, but I am way too anal to be thoroughly comfortable with that. So I’d like to ask, any preferences?