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Provostial Prattle

& Other Obiter Dicta & Hortatory Utterances
Aimed at Warren College Students &

Anybody Else Who'll Listen

The following essays appeared in Warren Briefs, the student newspaper of Earl Warren College during the first half or so of my tenure as its provost (1994-2004). That means that they were directed to college students who are now old enough to have spawned a new generation of college students. However, reareading them I have decided that they are timeless (or anyway that I have not changed my mind about what I said in them), so I am posting them here in case somebody may find a useful idea lurking somewhere in them.

Insofar as I have copied them correctly, there are here printed unmodified. (Well … except for the silly bits that I decided to fix or the stuff that was deleted by the Briefs editors for being insipid and/or tasteless that I decided to restore. And of course the titles are sometimes different.)

Table of Contents

  1. Twenty-Four Words
    Ethical conduct is not always obvious, and often ethical considerations conflict. Still, some general rules of thumb are helpful. In this article I highlight the "Four-Way Test" of Herb Taylor, today promoted especially by Rotary International. My comment was published just before graduation in a year in which newspapers brought daily reports of horrible human behavior around the world, most of which could have been avoided, had participants been a little more idealistic. Warren Briefs, Spring, 1999.
  2. Next Comes Life
    The campus is now beginning to plan our sixth college (creatively named Sixth College so far), and that means the creation of a new educational plan, a new set of general education requirements, and fresh thinking about what general education should do. In the course of things a panel of UCSD alumni reflected on what turned out to matter to them about their general education courses. In this article I reflect on some of the lessons they had for us. Warren Briefs, Winter, 1999.
  3. How I Learned to Spell
    When people meet your writing before they meet you, the first impression they form comes from what that writing tells about you. This article explores that, although it is embarrassingly autobiographical and isn't likely to do much for the first impression a reader gets of me. Warren Briefs, Spring, 1998.
  4. Everything Hangs on Coffee at Earl's
    This article was inspired by my realization that a third of incoming Warren students are transfer students, almost all of them living off campus, and hence at a severe disadvantage in trying to develop social networks on campus. Warren Briefs, Winter, 1998.
  5. To Light Your Own Faggots
    This article is about being interested in what is going on around you. I am bored with people declaring they are bored, and here I argue that "bored" is mostly another name for empty-headed, although I am a little more discrete than that. Warren Briefs, Spring, 1997.
  6. On the Profligate Squandering of Ignorance
    This article is about asking questions. I was told we had a problem with students not finding campus resources. The place is afloat in resources, but people seem to walk around expecting the resource fairy to appear to tell them about whatever might be useful to them at the exact moment of need. Sorry, gang. There is no resource fairy. You have to ask for yourself. Warren Briefs, Winter, 1997.
  7. Don't Just Sit There, Change Your Major!
    Most students pick college majors when they apply to college during high school. (Mostly they major in biology on the theory that they have at least heard of it.) I would guess that at least half of all UCSD students are not in the majors they would actually like best if they simply thought about it. This essay was designed to persuade people to rethink their majors. As far as I can tell, it had no effect on anybody. Warren Briefs, Autumn, 1996.
  8. How to Get Into Graduate School
    This is the true poop on how to get into graduate school. Reading it should improve your chances by, oh, I don't know, maybe 65.349%. Maybe some other number. Warren Briefs, Welcome Week, 1996.
  9. Go Away! (On Doing a P-of-C through EAP)
    Overseas experience is one of the best parts of a college education. UC provides a superb Education Abroad Program (EAP). As of Autumn, 1996, Warren students can easily fulfill one of their Programs of Concentration (P-of-C) that way. Best of all, the EAP office has lots of fellowship money, so it can even end up being cheaper than staying here! Warren Briefs, Spring, 1996.
  10. The Wickedness of Orange Ink (On Taking Notes)
    An attack on the use of highlighters and a description of a much better way to mark books. Several students commented on how useful this was to them. It is probably the only essay in the bunch that actually was useful. Warren Briefs, Winter, 1996.
  11. Being at Risk (On Being Examined)
    Written as a not very subtle suggestion that midterms matter, and obliquely containing some suggestions for how to ace them. No students commented on this being even remotely useful. Scary maybe, in poor taste, perhaps, but not useful. Then again, it didn't appear until after midterms.Warren Briefs, Autumn, 1995.
  12. What a Person Knows by Graduation (On Becoming Wise)
    I was asked to address words of wisdom applicable simultaneously to graduating seniors and entering freshmen. I decided to talk about what a person ought to learn in college. Everybody knows you are supposed to come in dumb and go out smart. But what does that mean? To show it was full of wisdom, this piece was printed in an olde-Englande script font with an olde-parchmente scroll as background. It wasn't very legible, and as far as I know only the editors ever read it. Warren Briefs, Spring, 1995.
  13. How to Pick a Major (On Deciding What to Be)
    A suggestion for a quick and painless way to resolve uncertainties about your choice between two majors. It works once in a while. Warren Briefs, Winter, 1995.
  14. What Are Provosts Anyway? (My Debut)
    This was my first Briefs article. I tried to explain what a provost was. That was probably a mistake. It's pretty clear to me now that people who worry about what provosts are probably are up to no good. Better I should have written about politics or religion or sex and made people mad. Warren Briefs, Autumn, 1994.

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Twenty-Four Words

June is a happy time at UCSD. Orientation for new students. Graduation for finishing students. Summer break for all students, since even if they are going to summer school there is something "different" about studying in the summer. But the year has been marred by the hideous news from Yugoslavia, and by a global crisis of smaller-scale ethical issues ranging from school shootings to the presidential impeachment, from slave markets in Sudan to Pakistani and Indian nuclear testing, and from partisan bickering over Medicare to the controversy about hormone-fed beef. At Warren a few cases of cheating on exams or of insensitive behavior in the residence compound have set me thinking about ethics here at home too.

In 1932 Herb Taylor was put in charge of a company facing bankruptcy, and was credited with turning it around through improved morale when he introduced a simple code of ethics for all employees. Taylor was a member of Rotary International, an association of business and professional people, of which he later became president. In 1943 Rotary adopted Taylor's simple "Four-Way Test" as an ethical standard for its membership, and it was eventually translated into more than 100 languages for use around the world.

I can remember Taylor visiting our school when I was a kid and passing out copies of the "Four-Way Test." (It probably helped that I lived not far from Rotary's international headquarters.) As I was reviewing the cases of some of our errant Warrenites, I was put in mind of it. It went like this:

Four-Way Test of the things we think, say or do:

  1. Is it the truth?
  2. Is it fair to all concerned?
  3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships?
  4. Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

That's only 24 words (if you don't count the numbers). And sometimes no course of action is available that meets all four criteria. But it is hard to think of an ethical catastrophe, personal or global, in the recent past that wouldn't have been avoided if this "test" had been applied.

I was only a kid when Taylor visited our school. And the Four-Way Test seemed like saccharine "school-think" to me at the time, right up there with the importance of drinking lots of milk, getting up early, and having perfect spelling. But this year has convinced me that Taylor was on to something. Just 24 words (if you don't count the numbers), and life could be so much better.

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Next Comes Life
What UCSD Alumni Say About General Education

Sixth College is projected to open its doors in fall of 2002, at the same time that Eleanor Roosevelt College moves into its projected new buildings just west of IR/PS and RIMAC. The starting point of a new college is always a joint faculty-administration planning committee. The committee for Sixth College was named in February, and to launch it in productive directions a small conference was held on "general education," incorporating panels of alumni and of new faculty, and a kick-off speech by Donald Kennedy, perhaps best known for his adventures as president of Stanford during the "culture wars" fought over the changes in their core curriculum.

The alumni stole the show. (They are UCSD alumni, after all.) Each was asked what non-major course was most influential in the long pull, what course would have been best left untaken, and what course should have been taken but wasn't. And each was asked what considerations should be most important for Sixth College. Several themes kept recurring in their answers:

  1. It is a rare class that was a bad choice in retrospect. (Only one of the alumni could think of a course that she regretted having taken.)
  2. Single-minded concentration on one's major was seen by all of the alumni as a bad strategy, which the Sixth College planners were urged to try to discourage. Courses (especially humanities courses) in secondary areas (like Warren programs of concentration) were affectionately (!) remembered and considered to have had a positive impact in later careers. (MMW and Revelle Humanities were viewed especially positively.) The Warren alum, a physician, found her whole attitude toward life transformed by her anthropology PofC, and regretted waiting until so late in her college career to start it.
  3. Group activities (projects, clubs, joint assignments, discussion groups) were remembered as educationally important, not just fun. For one thing, one learned unexpected things from other group members; for another, working in a group led to discussion about how to do the task, and that in turn led to a good sense of how the parts of the project fit together. (There was agreement that valued "teamwork skills" were learned this way, although no-one seemed able to say just what these skills were precisely.)
  4. All felt that they had had some of their most effective learning experiences through hands-on learning in labs, internships, community service, even jobs. All of the alumni urged the framers of Sixth College to try to think of ways to facilitate opportunities for students to participate in directed research activities.
  5. None of the alumni mentioned doing anything because it would look good on a résumé, or because a later employer would be looking for it. All had a broader view of having benefited from general education in a much more general way, as human beings, not as job-getting machines.

As I listened, I found myself noticing that most of these impressive alumni could not have laid out these views when they entered college. They were views that became obvious to them only in retrospect. You, on the other hand, have the advantage of having just read this list: the wisdom of the ancestors, or anyhow of the students who came before you.

(Do you have ideas for Sixth College? If so, E-mail them to your AS representative for the planning committee.)

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How I Learned to Spell

Many, many years ago, before the invention of the web page or the Xerox machine or maybe even the oil lamp or the stone tool, I was a college freshman. And like all college freshmen before and since I took a compulsory course in English.

The first essay assignment (something about whether Mary Queen of Scots deserved what she got, as I recall) involved a reasoned argument, and I was resolved to rise to the occasion. My essay was full of reasoning that would have convinced all the skeptics of Athens and stylistic flourishes that I envisioned as the foundations of a soon-to-become-important new school of writing (probably the Nouveau Baroque). With great self-confidence and an overweening sense of accomplishment I turned it in to Dr. Hale (or perhaps it was Hearty), who wore the same tweedy jacket every day and always chewed a pipe but somehow smelled of cigars.

Dr. Hale (or Dr. Hearty) had the essays ready for us later in the week. Mine came back full of red circles, each with one of my spelling errors in the middle. I was horrified. Vanished now were the converted Athenian skeptics; gone the birth of Nouveau Baroque: All was eclipsed by the fact that I couldn't even spell.

I don't remember whether Dr. Hale (or Dr. Hearty) put any comments on the paper or not. But I did learn a lesson: Irrelevant, low-level, piddling, trivial, banal spelling errors (!) had clearly distracted his attention from the ingenious insights and fabulous flourishes of my literary effort. Intending to present myself as the Genius of the New Age, I had through pure inattention and sloppiness succeeded in coming across as the Baron of Baloney. And I was mortified.

My next paper didn't have any spelling errors. It wasn't that I suddenly learned to spell; what I suddenly learned to do was to pay attention to the little voice in the back of my head saying, "You'd better check that."

Moral: First impressions can respond to writing as readily as to anything else, and attention to detail makes a difference. If I am to be the Baron of Baloney, I want to do it on purpose, not because I have been sloppy.

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Everything Hangs on Coffee at Earl's

As I write this, we are just coming up on another quarterly orientation for new transfer students. Let me tell you a little about transfer students:

Item 1: The California Plan for Higher Education REQUIRES that the student body at UCSD be AT LEAST 60% upper-division. (In fact, I learned the other day that we are not required to have any lower-division students at all!)

Item 2: About a third of all the students entering Warren College each year are transfer students, nearly always coming in as juniors. Although most come in Fall, some enter in Winter or Spring.

Item 3: Almost no juniors or seniors live on campus, so nearly all transfer students have to be commuters.

Implication 1: About a third of all Warrenites arrive with no experience of UCSD and no opportunity to live on campus and engage in the 24-hour sociality that entering freshmen and sophomores use to make friends, become involved in activities, and hold midnight res-hall discussions about whether pigs have wings. The transfer students bring, instead, experience of successful completion of programs at a wide range of other institutions, social networks that span a range of universities, knowledge from courses we don't teach, and experience with student activities we still need to develop. What they need is campus contacts.

Implication 2: A challenge for all of us is to figure out how to connect our "native" students, those who started here as freshmen, with our transfer population, and with the richness of external experience that they bring with them. Warren is a pretty friendly place, but we don't have any compulsory courses that all juniors or seniors have to take and that provide a forum for these two groups of students to meet each other. And yet when it happens, it is enriching for both sides.

Your Job 1: Do yourself a favor: If you are a "native" Warrenite, make a point to go out of your way to welcome some of our incoming transfer students … EVERY QUARTER. Drop by the dean's office and ask to help with some commuter arrangements, for example. If your major has a club, participate in it, and make a special effort to make the newcomers feel welcome. If you are involved with some Warren student organizations, make sure that their activities are well publicized to commuters. If you meet a commuter, invite that person to your next activity. When you meet transfer students, suggest coffee at Earl's.

Your Job 2: If you are a transfer student, realize that the "natives" are friendly, and that they need your experience and perspective, but first they need to know you are here. Warren has great student organizations. Join one (or more). Most majors have student clubs. Join that too. Don't avoid coming back to campus at night to participate in activities. Carpool with other students who live off campus. (You meet some really nice people in car pools as long as you observe the absolute cardinal rule that the driver picks the radio station.) If somebody invites you to coffee at Earl's, go there! Hey! Offer to buy the second round!

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To Light Your Own Faggots

When I was a kid we sometimes went to see children's plays at Chicago's wonderful Goodman Theatre. Elegantly emblazoned across the proscenium was the inscription, "You yourself must set flame to the faggots which you have brought." (It turns out to be a quotation from Kenneth Sawyer Goodman —1883-1918— in whose memory the theatre was founded after he died in the famous flu epidemic.)

Being little kids, we would ask what faggots were (kindling), and why you were supposed to bring them to a theatre (they were metaphorical, and being little kids we had probably brought loads of them), and whether that wouldn't be a fire hazard (only for metaphorical fires, which were okay).

For a theatrical company it seemed an odd slogan, as though they lacked the power to inspire us. But the quotation has remained with me all my life, long after I have forgotten the plays themselves. There is something profoundly rightheaded about it. It tells me that in a theatre or a university or anywhere else it is my own responsibility to be inspired, interested, instructed. If I refuse to engage myself, there is little anybody else can do for me; I will be destined to be bored … and boring.

At this time of year, as I watch graduating seniors leaving us for different destinies, beyond our ability to provide them any further opportunities, I find myself wondering how many have managed to set fire to the fuel they brought with them. The old proscenium hangs over the scene in my mind's eye like a Biblical vision: You yourself must set flame to the faggots which you have brought!

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On the Profligate Squandering of Ignorance

A university is a mighty army, engaged in a mythic (Sisyphean?) struggle against the forces of ignorance. There are two fronts in this battle. The collective ignorance of the human race we attack with research. (If humanity understood everything about chemistry, we wouldn't need any more chemistry research.) And the ignorance of individual people we assault through teaching. (If I knew everything about chemistry, I wouldn't need to take a chemistry course.)

Committed as we are to this noble enterprise, we rarely stop to consider that there are people who actually seem to value ignorance. In fact one runs into them every day. Here are some conversations I've overheard around campus (or at least I have heard approximately these). The speakers all appear to be members of CUPI, the "Campis Unyon for the Premotion of Ignerance" [sic].

"Go to a discussion section? Why would I want to waste perfectly good ignorance on a discussion section?! You know, a human being has a limited supply of ignorance; once you use it up, it's gone!"

"Ask a question in class? Why would I want to ask a question in class? In the first place, people would realize that I had more ignorance than they did and they would all be envious. But worse than that, I hear your brain gets all wrinkly as you suck the ignorance out of it. I want to go to my grave with a really smooth brain."

"Visit the career center? Why would I do that? It's true that I want to end up working as a professional turtle breeder for IBM and have no idea how to go about it, but a person has to keep a sense of perspective: Think of the ignorance I would be wasting! You know, if you save your ignorance and invest it, I hear you can retire in real confusion."

"Check out OASIS? Why would I want to check out OASIS? Wait! Don't answer that! I don't even want to know! It's a waste of ignorance. My goal in life is to be so ignorant that my very name, ME, will be the measure of human ignorance, and furthermore ordinary mortals will be measured in micro-MEs."

So next time you are about to criticize somebody for not asking how to get somewhere, or not asking questions in class, or not wanting to know about something you can explain, stop and reflect: is it really just shyness, or are you dealing with someone deeply committed to the cultivation and preservation of ignorance? If the latter, spread the word about CUPI. I don't think very many people know about it. (They never ask.)

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Don't Just Sit There: Change Your Major!

I have been talking to high school students and their parents recently, and answering questions about UCSD and Warren College. Oddly, all high school students think both that they want to be doctors and that they have to major in biology to do it. But I keep suspecting that this is simply the first thing that popped into their heads when the application form asked for a prospective major. What high school student knows what ECE stands for? Or what math majors turn into? Or what sociology is about? How many really believe medicine is more interesting than skate boarding? So let's get this thing out on the table.

Hospital administrator, copyright lawyer, window designer, cartoonist, private detective, university president, store manager, parish priest, diplomat, archaeologist, stock broker, stand-up comic, mortician, newspaper reporter, grade-school teacher, news analyst, air force officer, statistician, eye surgeon, editor, pilot, actor, prison warden, etc., etc., etc. These are real jobs in the real world, but none corresponds with any particular college major. In fact, there are very few jobs that correspond with particular college majors. English majors can and do get into medical school, while pre-meds can and do get rejected from medical school. Classics majors can and do become generals; history majors can and do become stock brokers. And so on.

Accordingly, the fact that you are interested in a particular career probably shouldn't have much effect on your choice of a major, and you should not imagine that a particular major either ensures you of (or condemns you to) a particular career. With very few exceptions (mostly in engineering), the choice of your major actually determines nothing; it at most biases your future in favor of certain types of career. (You are more likely to end up a personnel director if you major in psychology than if you major in geology.) What skills you have to market, or whether you have done an academic internship, or how generally educated you are, will matter more to an employer than what your major was. How well you do in your major, or whether you studied abroad, will normally matter more to a graduate school than what that major actually was.

Under the circumstances, the best approach to picking a major is to pick what you like best. For one thing, studying something you really like makes it a lot easier to do well in it. (Indeed, doing well in it may be part of why you like it.) Furthermore, to the extent that the choice of a major biases your destiny in the direction of one career or another, it is likely to be a force for your ending up in a career you will also find interesting.

So before you leave for the quarter break, take stock: Are you actually enjoying your major? Is there another major you would like better? Why? How much do you know about it? Why not take an experimental course in it just to try it out? Don't feel trapped! Changing your major could be the best thing you'll ever do. Besides, it will give you a whole new topic to make New Year's resolutions about!

Click here for a related essay on how to select a major.

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How To Get Into Graduate School

One would think that starting school would be quite enough to keep a person occupied in the Autumn Quarter without worry about career planning. But in fact the Autumn Quarter is the prime time for applying to graduate school. If you are planning to become a doctor or a lawyer or a sociologist or an orchestra conductor, the fall of your senior year is the time for serious action.. Accordingly, here are some tips on how to proceed, starting immediately:

  1. Visit your professors during their office hours and ask about graduate programs that might fit your interests. Don't take the word of only one professor (who is likely to send you to his or her alma mater), but ask as many of them as possible. If your GPA is weaker than you would like, be honest with the professor so that the programs proposed are still ones where you might be accepted.
  2. If you are taking any courses with graduate TAs in the field you want to study, corner them too and ask why they came to UCSD and what other places they might also recommend.
  3. In many cases, you do not need an undergraduate degree in a field to qualify for graduate study in it. English and philosophy majors can and do go to medical school. Economics majors go into graduate programs in sociology. And so on. So don't be afraid to ask.
  4. Once you have the names of some likely schools, check out their web sites. If the web site offers to mail you more information, ask for it. Also drop by Career Services to see if they have a catalog or other information about the target schools. (Caution: Don't judge a program by the excellence of its web site. Cute graphics or nifty links don't have anything to do with how good a training program lies behind the site.) You might also consider telephoning and talking to the target department's graduate adviser or to some graduate students in the program. If the program isn't going to meet your interests, now is the best time to discover that.
  5. Graduate admissions are normally based on (1) your score on a national exam, usually the Graduate Record Exam, (2) your statement of purpose, (3) your GPA, and (4) letters of recommendation from your professors, in roughly that order of importance. Plan to take the GRE or other necessary exam(s) as early as possible so that your target school doesn't hold up your application waiting for exam results. (If your exam score is lower than you expect, you can normally retake the exam, but if it stays low, consider changing plans. It's no fun launching into a career in something you are going to be bad at!)
  6. Get as many people as possible to review your statement of purpose. It needs to do more than just say that you love such and such a field; it needs to present you as a person likely to be successful in that field. Does it do that?
  7. Letters of recommendation help a file only if they come from people who have something to say. Pick referees who know you as well as possible, and always discuss your plans with them when you ask them for letters. Don't be embarrassed to have a professor write letters for you to a host of different schools. Professors are used to this, and besides they have computers.
  8. Some departments (such as Anthropology) hold meetings for undergraduates on how to apply to graduate school. Find out if the UCSD department corresponding to your target graduate field does this, and plan to attend. (If they don't, then suggest it to them. They will think you are brilliant.)

Enough. I apologize for the length. I hope at least that I have stimulated you to get started. Good luck!

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Go Away! (Doing a P-of-C through EAP)

"The world is a global village; you need to know about other countries; all our fates are interconnected." And so on. You've heard all that, and much of it is even true. (Sorry, isolationists.)

"Nothing is more educational than a year abroad. Not even a year of calculus." You've heard that too, and it's true too. (Sorry, calculus fans.)

"You need to get out of here in four years to make room for the next students, or to stop being a drain on the parental pocketbook, or to take a job and start getting rich and/or doing good." All that is true too. (Sorry, malingerers.)

So how does all this come together? The answer is the Education Abroad Program (EAP), which has just become substantially more available to Warren students.

The University of California Education Abroad Program is the largest and almost certainly one of the very best in the United States. Not only does it offer an amazing choice of foreign locations and programs, it even has financial aid available. Unfortunately, in the past a disappointingly small number of Warren students have been managed to take advantage of this superb opportunity. So the college Executive Board and Academic Advising staff have developed a way to make it more available by guaranteeing you that you can meet a significant graduation requirement through an EAP center. Here is how it works:

Effective this Fall Quarter, you will be able to do an "EAP Program of Concentration," composed either of any six courses in the social sciences or of any six courses in the humanities, so long as (1) at least five of them are taken at the same EAP center (and the sixth at that center or at UCSD), and so long as (2) at least three of them count as upper division. Since all of our EAP centers offer at least 6 courses each in the humanities and the social sciences during the visit of any of our students, there should be little difficulty fulfilling the P-of-C requirement during two quarters or two semesters at one of our foreign centers. Stop by and consult an academic advisor for further details.

Here is your chance to benefit from experiencing life in Denmark or India, Peru or Hong Kong, Russia or Japan, or any of the many other places eager to host you. EAP: It's not just for language students any more! (One stipulation, though. The Advising staff doesn't get to go with you, so when you get there you owe them a postcard! Hey! It was my idea; you probably owe me a postcard too!)

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The Wickedness of Orange Ink

Ever notice that used textbooks these days are full of brightly colored bands of transparent ink spread across the pages to highlight what somebody thought was important? In the Old Days the only color available was yellow, so things were important or they weren't. Then came green and orange, and things could come in three levels of importance. Recently markers have turned up in pink and blue ink as well, reflecting the five-color complexity of life in these intellectually challenging modern times.

Although it is probably possible to date a used book by the kind and variety of the marker colors applied to it, it is rarely possible to figure out just what was important about the passages highlighted. For one thing, the ink tends to bleed through the page and mark both sides. For another, the person who marked the page had bizarre ideas about significance. And finally, as the buyer of the marked book, one doesn't know the code. What does green mean as against pink (aside from showing that the reader had green and pink markers)? Chances are that even the marking reader couldn't have told you after a few days or weeks had passed.

As far as I can figure out, using colored markers to indicate the important points in a text is one of the Great Losing Strategies of our era. It takes time, makes a mess of the book, and rarely provides much information when you review the book later. Applying colored markers to books is a snare and a delusion. Nevertheless I do believe in marking up books as I read them. (My books, I mean. Marking other people's books is very evil. I understand there is even a special room in hell for people who mark in library books.) Here is how I mark them so that the markings are actually useful to me in reviewing the text later:

  1. I always use a pencil. That way I can erase the mark if it turns out to have been stupid and ill-considered. I have lots of stupid and ill-considered reactions to what I read, so being able to erase them is an advantage. (The only negative aspect is that pencil is not very visible in class, so if I want to conduct a discussion about the book, I need to use a ball-point and avoid having stupid and ill-considered opinions. Some days you just can't have any fun.)
  2. An important passage is indicated with a vertical line down the margin. The line down the margin means "This would have been highlighted if I were the sort of person who did that, which I am not." If something is wonderfully, gloriously, extravagantly important, I occasionally even celebrate that event by drawing two lines down the margin. (Yes!)
  3. Definitions are almost always important (and easy to put on exams), so they always count as important; a line with a loop in it identifies the important passage as a definition. I usually circle the expression being defined as well.
  4. I have discovered that a word written in the margin can easily identify high points and structural turning points in a text in a way that makes it very fast to review. Here are the marginal words that I use. (In actual fact I use abbreviations and signs and symbols, but they stand for these words.)
  5. When an author enumerates things ("there are three reasons to love calcium: first …"), I usually put little numbers in the margin.
  6. Often I circle keywords in the text so as to help add content to the essentially organizational marginalia. I avoid circling very many, though, since this can get out of hand fast, I have found.
  7. I rarely bother expressing opinions in the margins. (It is satisfying to write "BS" in the margin from time to time, I admit, but it doesn't help a person review the text later.) ("BS" stands for "badly stated," of course.)

This system is ludicrously simple, but it got me through graduate school and through all of my professional career up to now. It forces a person to read analytically, looking for the points the author is trying to make and for the ways in which they are being made. It keeps my mind on the forest around all the trees. Boring material gets interesting, disorganized writing comes out organized, the forgettable becomes memorable. It makes reviewing a chapter or even a whole book a matter of minutes rather than hours. It even seems to increase reading speed. And it keeps me awake. (Now that I think of it, that may be how it increases reading speed.) I never have a trouble with the marked passages bleeding through to the next page. And finally, pencils are cheaper than transparent markers. Try it; you'll like it.

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Being at Risk

Okay, listen up! This is your provost talking!

What' s a provost?
Search me. Maybe it's a kind of tennis shoe?
So in that case how can it talk?
I don't know; maybe it squeaks. My roommate's tennis shoes squeak. They leave marks on the floor too.
Well, given YOUR roommate, I'm not surprised!

Midterms are upon us, and I want to tell you how important it is to be prepared.

This guy actually thinks we don't know there are midterms? Who's he been talking to?
Probably Jeff. Jeff actually went through his whole first year and didn't take any exams because he thought they were optional. Talk about clueless!
I remember him; he thought baths were optional too, right?

If you have spent more time watching soap operas than doing class work, you are at risk!

What does this clown have against soaps? I mean, most of what I know I learned from soaps. I told my mother that and she got really mad; she said that was not what we were paying for college for. But I told her I was more interested in whether Debbie's trainer's therapist's daughter would find out that John's cousin Marc had gone to see Laura and spend John' s Vegas winnings than I was in becoming a chemist. Then she really got mad. Do you think you really need to do all that well in chemistry to become a chemist?

If you have missed classes without getting notes on them or making them up, you are at risk!

They don't take attendance, so why does he think a person should go to class?
I agree. I always figure that if you don't go to class that is one less place where you can catch the flu.
My polisci professor gives exams almost entirely based on his lectures.
Bummer. Is he the one who put a map on the final exam last year and flunked people who thought Peru was in Russia?
Yeah. Like, he is so un-cool!

If you can't define key terms in the course, you are at risk!
If you can't restate key arguments in the course, you are at risk!
If you can't describe the key processes that the course talks about, you are at risk!
If you can't give examples of key processes in the course, you are at risk!

Oh key yours, buddy! And what is this "at risk" business? At risk of what?
I don't know. Flunking or something.
Oh come on! You don't mean to say they actually flunk people?! Hey, in high school I once got an A in English without ever opening the book. How can this be any different?

If you have fallen behind in the assigned work, you are at risk!

I wish he would cut it out with all this "at risk" stuff. It is making me nervous.
Yeah, me too.
I don't like feeling like I am "at risk"; it makes me feel, well, you know, um, "at risk."

If you have not reviewed what you have learned so far in a course, you are at risk!

How does he expect us to review what we never looked at? This is making me really edgy.
Oh relax, he probably doesn't mean it, and even if he does, Professor Smith probably disagrees with him. Besides, the midterm's not till Monday.
Monday? Gee it's on the schedule for tomorrow.
So tomorrow, then. Tomorrow, really?

If you have not paced your learning over the time available, you are unlikely to be absorb it all, and you are at risk!

I can't stand this jerk any more. Let's go to a movie or something.
Yeah. Say, what are you planning to do when you get out of UCSD?
I told you: I'm gonna be a chemist.
No, I mean if you, like, flunk a bunch of stuff?
You mean that really happens? Oh God! What will my dad say?!

And if you are at risk, there is only one thing to do: get busy studying, reviewing, thinking, discussing, right now.

Geeze, I wish that guy would get a life or something. Here I am flunking out and all he can talk about is … oh!

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What a Person Knows by Graduation

With this issue of Warren Briefs we say good-bye to graduating students and (a few days later) hello to incoming students. Perhaps this is the time to list some things that graduating students know and can do better than they did and could when they entered. It is my secret, underground, very personal list, but I notice that Warren graduates I meet have mostly mastered it.

A college graduate can spot nonsense. When a headline screams that Elvis has been seen in a flying saucer, a college graduate is alert to the unlikely assumptions that must be made for this to be tenable, and may be amused but is not taken in. When a mountebank mounts a bank, you may enjoy the show, but you know better than to buy the nostrum.

A college graduate has learned how to find new knowledge. You may not know what the Caprivi Strip is, or a semiquaver or an ablative absolute, and you may not know when chi-square, K40, or habeas corpas makes a difference, or what makes a canary sing, but you know how to find out these things, and you recognize that there are occasions when knowing them can legitimately matter.

A college graduate knows that the value of an idea is independent of its source. Insight may be found in a comic book, wisdom in a ditty, or God in a puddle. As a result, you have learned to find teachers among the wise, whoever they may be.

A college graduate has discovered the dignity of human variation and is prepared to deal with others with an easy respect that is neither servility nor condescension.

A college graduate has realized that few traits are more important to full humanity than curiosity, reflection, and humor. (College graduates are hard to bore. When they were freshmen, they claimed to be bored most of the time.)

A college graduate, realizing how hard it is to know anything at all, is humble before the knowledge of others, even while being tolerant of ignorance, for we are all ignorant in our various ways.

A college graduate understands and values human civilization and contributes to its sustenance.

A college graduate has come to see that saints walk yet among us; there still are dragons to be slain; and no land prospers when run by tyrants or fools.

Happy graduation. Happy life. Write when you find work. Don't turn out the lights, since there's a new group coming in any minute now.

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How to Pick a Major

Looking for a major? The wealth of choices is all very inspiring, but it can also be pretty bewildering. How is one to decide that earth sciences is more or less attractive than theater? What is linguistics anyway? What if your initial hunch is looking terribly wrong? How does a person make a better choice?

In picking majors, it is a fine idea to talk to anybody who'll listen and listen to anybody who'll talk. But here's another bit of advice that has sometimes proven useful: Go to the bookstore and look at the textbooks assigned in the courses offered by various programs and departments. Spend some time on this, and ask yourself seriously, "Are these books that I really want to read? Would I want to know enough about this stuff to write my own book? Are the books assigned for classes in another department even more interesting? Do I want to be in a world where this is what people think about?" The results may surprise you.

Click here for a related essay on how to select a major.

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What Are Provosts Anyway?

Since 1969 I have been an anthropology professor. I still teach and do research, but now I am also provost of Warren College.

So what does a provost do, exactly? As Warren provost I coordinate the energies of the Academic Advising staff, the College Dean's office, the Residential Life office, and the Warren Writing Program. The Warren provost is also the official director of the Academic Internship Program and oversees the Law & Society and Health Care-Social Issues Programs and the one-unit Undergraduate Seminar series. And I am the person who represents Warren and its interests to the administration, to parents, and to such faculty organs as the Academic Senate and its countless committees.

Do students actually talk to provosts? Provosts are always hungry for student views, so by talking to your provost you can put in a good word for your favorite professor, praise the terrific reference librarian who helped you, exult over how literate you have become in the Warren Writing program, praise Canyon Vista pizza --I like good news better than bad news-- make suggestions, or just say hello. (The provost has no power to raise grades, abolish requirements, or establish more parking lots, unfortunately.) Come see me.

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