UCLA Squirrel EXTREME CLOSE-UP

My very first upload. Aww, isn't it cute...

A haiku of equivocation*

*Inspired by a pedagogy workshop.

I hope this helps you.
Does this answer your question?
Yes and no. Maybe.

As the World Worlds

This week in our Comp Lit class on the German philosophers, we're covering Heidegger's "Origin of the Work of Art."

There are moments when I feel guilty about all the studying I do, and I'm certain this contributes to my procrastination (yeah, I get housewife hangover after all these years). The only way I seem to be able to allay this anxiety is by showing Matt (el esposo) just what I have to deal with.

Reading random passages from Heidegger usually does the trick.

"Matt! Listen to this… Heidegger's talking about… here… the `thingly character of the thing, the equipmental character of equipment, and the workly character of the work.' But there's more. A little further on - this is even better - 'the world worlds.' You see what I have to put up with??"

Matt's eyes widen incredulously and he slowly shakes his head.

Am I grossly oversimplifying? Sure. Am I being dramatic? Of course.

Am I gloating? Hee-hee. Vindication!

I can now go back to my homework. A little less guilty about not doing the dishes at the moment. And eventually, a little less guilty about being behind on all the stuff I'm setting aside to attend to Heidegger's prose.

This is My Brain on Deadline

I'm in the zone... I'm just not sure which zone I'm in.

Now You See Me, Now You Don't

The late morning ritual of rolling over and turning on the news radio is supposed to be mundane. It's supposed to be my one opportunity to lie in a state of relative quiescence and listen to snarled traffic, box scores and stock market averages while I pull together something resembling consciousness.

I'm not supposed to be disturbed by direct threats to my identity.

So I get to wake up in a bad mood and march over to my computer to check for that e-mail from acting Chancellor Abrams (yep, it's there) and go to the official UCLA "We Got Hacked and This Really Sucks" site. Look up some suggestions for additional action. Call a credit reporting agency and put (yet more in a long line of) fraud alerts on my reports.

KFWB offered up a sound bite from a "professor who seems blasé" about the whole thing. Darn, wouldn't you know, it's a voice I recognize, and a voice I have quietly disagreed with so many times before. Regardless of this person's opinion, unless you're a completely naïve mouth-breather who gives out personal information like candy, not every bit of information is equally accessible to everyone. Even someone like me, whose name and picture appear to reveal so much here, takes serious precautions. After all, I know what it's like to experience ID theft. I escaped serious harm, but I'm disappointed now that I listened to my bank's advice way back in the day and said nothing to the police. But I digress.

Here's the way I see it. If UCLA can be hacked, pretty much anyone else I do business can too. Assurances about encryption and login screens that attend to potential sound-recording hacks won't be enough anymore. (Not that they ever were enough, but this is front-and-center now.)

Now, I'm not going to tell you what I specifically intend to do next, but if you're in the same boat as I, I recommend that you go to the UCLA ID theft site and click on the "Protecting Your Credit" link. Take the most protective measure you can live with, not the least. Because the way I see it, anybody who is willing to hack something like the UCLA database (I show generosity to UCLA's security protocols here) must not only have smarts and speed, but also patience.

Someone with patience is willing to wait six months for a fraud alert to fall off a credit report if the money to be made is still good.

Excuse me; before I get back to writing on my papers, I'll need to grab a crash helmet to pull over my aluminum-foil cap.

Open-letter Advice for a Fellow AD/HD'er

A fellow grad student who, recently diagnosed, is now fighting the good fight against Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD), sent me an e-mail asking me for tips on how to stay on-task. As messy as my response is, I liked it so much I figured, hey, why not post it here?


Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. Let me see if there's anything I can pass along to you that may work...

Of course, the problem with AD/HD is not just the distractibility, but the alternation with hyperfocus. While the methylphenidate (Ritalin) has helped me stay more on top of my general attention, I've employed strategies over the years to help keep me on task that have met with some greater or lesser degree of success.

1) One bite at a time. This is the response to the question "How do you eat an elephant?" Instead of being overwhelmed by a project (which is easy to do when you can see the whole thing in all its ginormous complexity and depth), break it up into doable tasks. If still overwhelmed, break up the tasks into smaller tasks. Make a game of it (Always make a game of it, life is serious enough).

2) Delayed gratification. I make deals with myself to do a task with sight of a small reward at the end (not before starting, not with a little bit to go). This goes hand-in-hand with breaking down big things into small tasks. You can take a lot of pressure off yourself by self-negotiating a reward after completing a small task than by waiting until that "big moment" when "everything" is "done" (and I put these all in quotes because none of these concepts really exist).

3) The egg timer. This can be any countdown timer. I have a Timex countdown timer I use all the time when I do laundry so I don't forget it.

I use a tea bag timer widget that I got off of Yahoo! Widgets (widgets.yahoo.com) that I can keep on my computer desktop and set to whatever time I need and count down. I use this for when I have a task that I know I don't want to do precisely because I'll get carried away with it (like shredding my mail). Start the timer, do it, and stop when the timer goes off. This is best for tasks that you can walk away from and come back to, but will pile up unattended.

4) Choosing battles in the war of attrition. Part of that overwhelmed feeling comes from simply taking on too much. The world is just so full of possibility, isn't it? But not only do we assume we can do so much more in the same amount of time (that now/not-now binary that seems to be an AD/HD hallmark), but because of the AD/HD we can actually take longer than the average person to get things done well. So sometimes you will need to be brutally honest about what you can or can't do on a certain moment, day, quarter, year.

Of course, this requires knowing your priorities, and you can't know those until you know what exactly what you want to do. So go ahead, make a silly collage, post a dozen lists on your wall, do whatever you need to do to create a visually accessible reminder of what you're doing. This will in turn help you make decisions.

Yes, it is all right to use stickers. It is all right to change your mind one month later and go to highlighters.


These of course are very general (and not exhaustive) guidelines, and you'll have to adapt them as the need arises, sometimes on a moment-by-moment basis. Just don't get rigid and inflexible, don't take stuff too seriously, and whatever mistakes you make (and you will make them, because I make them constantly), remind yourself there is always a way to compensate, or correct, or walk away. There is no unfixable mistake. (For the most part. In my optimism I don't expect you to commit manslaughter anytime soon.)


I sure hope she can use the info. It would make one of us. It's not as though I really benefit from my own advice, hehe.