The little things that cross my Mind

I like going to the market on weekends in autumn when the weather has begun to cool and the vegetables have begun to come back in season. In the summertime, it’s just too hot for many vegetables to grow well, but I guess some still do. Mangoes grow well when it’s hot; yet once again the mango branches bearing fruit at the wrong time of the year are extending ever closer to my balcony in search of the energy efficient LED light bulb. Taiwan is unique so I’m told, as it has three growing seasons per year as opposed to one or two, as many places only do. If I had a bigger refrigerator at my apartment, I’d probably buy way too many fruits and vegetables. So I guess it’s actually a good thing that my fridge is not so big.

It’s a weekend and I’ve got midterm exams to write or projects to create to give students something to do and/or show for the ritual we call exam week. For the most part, I’m once again leaning in the direction of doing projects instead of traditional kinds of tests. Plus, the projects are usually easier for me to design up front (as opposed to creating the tests and having to later check them). Furthermore, as students have to post their projects to the internet, they, as well as I will then have “proof” (or something like that, like a representation perhaps) of their learned skills. And in today’s world of packaged products, having a well designed online portfolio doesn’t hurt when it comes to finding a job just out of university.

Thus, I endeavour to make sure in all of my classes that students are able to walk away with a certain amount of academic work that will remain attached to their names (as part of their internet portfolios) as proof of the skills they’ve acquired. Ok, I’m laughing a little and while I would like to say a lot more about the education system, I consider myself to be like one of the frontline soldiers, and while I tremendously enjoy what I do, I also view myself, as well as other educators, as having the ultimate responsibility of deciding which information to let through and/or focus on.

Thankfully at the university level, instructors have a tremendous amount of discretion when it comes to deciding which content to focus on. For example, in two of my high level classes with very bright, curious and even sometimes courageous first year students, I’m required by someone, somewhere out there to use an extensive number of publications (can you say information overload?) while I’m also strongly encouraged to prepare these same students to participate in the upcoming university wide slide presentation contest on fake news. So, do I focus primarily on the publications consisting of globalist propaganda or do I lean more in the direction of learning about fake news?  Of course it's a difficult decision, but someone  has to make it.

So, I weigh the pros and the cons. In my left hand are the publications comprised mostly of Hollywood chatter and globalist propaganda bestowing the benefits of carbon taxes and what not, while in my right hand is an opportunity not only to teach students how to design presentations and present them, but also to introduce them to the reality of fake news and the business of corporate/globalist propaganda. Of course, it’s an easy decision for me, and to top it all off, the proof of the valuable skills that the students have acquired gets posted to their blogs as part of their internet portfolios for all the world to see.

As I’m on various lines of thought in this post, I think I’d like to open up a couple of other points that have been on my mind recently. The first has to do with my dreams of late. While I’m often familiar with the characters in my dreams even though their faces don’t appear to be the same as the faces that I see in my imagination or I see when I’m awake, I still recognize them for who they represent to me, and the same applies to the area of the environment in which my dreams take place - while I recognize the areas for the places they represent, the pictures I remember or see when I’m awake often seem completely different. Perhaps it has something to do with how my mind translates reality into pictures or holographic images for me for me to make sense of. While I do appreciate viewing colorful pictures, I would also like to see everything as it really is - instead of just the pictures.

The other point that I’ve been wanting to bring up (for the record of course) is the noise inside of me, in the space between my ears. I guess it’s the system that I hear whenever I’m quiet or simply decide to tune into it - in that space that is my mind. It’s almost always with me; however, the other morning when I got up and 5:00 am for a chat, when I looked, the frequency noise wasn’t there and for a moment my mind was just quiet. Why is that, I wonder.