Redefining ‘dino’

As an undergraduate, the UBC Debate Society was a major activity for me, less in terms of attending competitive tournaments in other cities and more in terms of befriending that circle and taking part in rounds during the great majority of club meetings.

As part of my U of T wrap-up (and maybe subconsciously as preparation for the PhD defence) I went to my first Hart House Debate Club meeting today, and took part in my first round under British Parliamentary rules.

As an undergrad, I saw older debaters, usually late undergrads or law students, called ‘dinos.’ At the time my mind would not have stretched the category to include 38-year-old year-ten PhD students who won their first tournament (Pacific Cup, with Greg Allen in fall 2001) before most of those present in the room were born. Now I perceive the possibility for a short return to debate between now and either the successful defence or graduation, whichever is pertinent to holding student status.

System justification and politics

After his thought-provoking podcast discussion with David Roberts, I will need to read John Jost’s two books on how our psychological needs for stability and respected position in the social order drive us to defend the status quo political, legal, and economic order as natural and just, regardless of our personal position in that social order’s specific distribution of burdens and benefits: Why social change is so excruciatingly difficult

Considering student coaching

To further develop the student coaching idea:

It would be student-driven, not curriculum-driven. The starting point would be who they are, why they’re at university, and what they aspire to do in the medium- and long-term. That’s the basis for helping them find worthwhile extracurriculars and networks, as well as thinking about course planning and major selection from a holistic perspective.

I would work for the student, not the university. As a TA I have spent many hours with students one-on-one reviewing their written work either before or after submission and grading. This has all been essentially unpaid, as I didn’t have so many hours of student contact in my TA contract. I enjoyed doing it though because it felt like the only time when I was really teaching. Up in front of a tutorial I am doing am improv act, trying to weave together my prepared material with the organic discussion of the students willing to talk. One-on-one we can take our time and establish that the student is really following along. It becomes possible to see if they can repeat back the salient idea to you.

As a TA, I was chiefly paid for grading and administrative hours like keeping track of attendance. Neither is an activity that much serves to educate. They are part of the university’s sorting function rather than its residual educational capabilities. Switching sides to serve rather than sort the students is appealing.

All the student support they get at U of T is a bit like going to an emergency room doctor. Their only priority is to deal with the narrow issue in front of them, because they have no long-term relationship to any patient’s health and need to triage patients by degree of need. This student coaching service would be like a family doctor, reminding you of things it will be important to to before you’ve missed a deadline and it’s not possible, and when to get started in researching each batch of papers.

Personally, rather than pedagogically, I see great appeal in employment where I need to maintain clients but not to report to any bosses.

Defence booked

My PhD dissertation defence is booked for 2–4pm on December 2nd.

The defence is conducted by the examination committee, which consists of my PhD research committee plus an internal external examiner (from our department but not involved in my project) and external external examiner (from another university).

I will get a report from the external external a bit before the oral defence, and the most likely result of the proceedings is to be asked to make minor changes over a week.

In the interim, along with TA work, I will get ready for the final round of approval for use of direct quotes. To help people feel comfortable and protected during the interviews, I told people that they would get a chance to review direct quotes attributed to them prior to publication, with the option to have them included anonymously instead.

I will also prepare the LaTeX manuscript to print a couple of dozen copies at the Asquith Press at the Toronto Reference Library. I will give them to major supporters of the project, as well as Robarts Library and the U of T archives (as we did with the divestment brief).

I am also now giving serious thought to setting up a student coaching business. One-on-one guidance about planning and working through the term, as well as engaging with the countless enrichment opportunities at U of T that it is up to the student to go out and find, would provide something which is painfully absent at U of T. It would rely on skills which I already have from my own student and TA experience, and it would serve a need and a market which I know exists. It would also separate employment and my ability to pay rent, bills, and student loans from the politics of climate change within organizations. Instead of having to stress about finding an organization to work for where I endorse their strategy and they endorse my activist efforts, I could keep myself going with work that is independent of anybody else and devote the rest of my time to making a difference on climate change in areas I am good at (research and policy analysis) rather than those where I have little experience or skill (non-profit fundraising).

Teaching and writing

While my dissertation work is overwhelmingly done, the combination of residual writing up tasks and TA work is making this a pleasantly busy term and a reminder of Septembers past, including my own starts at UBC, Oxford, and U of T.

As of last night my dissertation is off to the external external examiner, whose six-week review is the last step before the defence: now expected in the last days of November or first days of December, right around my 39th birthday.

Writing advice for undergraduates (2014)

Fortunately, the conditions under which a TA will read your essay are much like those in which everything else you ever write will be read, from reports written for your future employer to love letters written to your future spouse. This means the skills required to write these papers are generally applicable in life. Especially with dealing with an inattentive reader who isn’t especially interested in your thoughts, a special effort must be made to put forward an argument that will lead the reader along while rewarding their attention. In every case, the reader will have other demands on their time and other things on their mind. Your purpose is to convey something convincing and scholarly under those conditions. Your two real tasks are to develop an argument and then to convey it in as clear a way as possible.

Essay writing tips for undergraduates (2013)

Quebec’s 2022 election and climate change

CBC News reports:

Legault’s growing number of supporters endorsed, instead, his politics of the status quo.

This is a politics of more tax cuts aimed at the broad middle class and of docile environmental policies, of investments in elder care and the odd quarrel with Ottawa.

…

But Québec Solidaire, the progressive party that had hoped to emerge as the alternative to the CAQ, vowing urgent action on climate change, only mustered 15 per cent of the vote on Monday. That’s about how it fared last time. It finished the race with 11 seats — one more than in 2018.