I Never Thought I'd Say This, But Don't Get Rid of Final Exams

At the end of last school year, several schools were subjected to a universally hated test called the "PARCC". Okay, maybe there was one person out of all of those affected who didn't consider the PARCC to be a stupid, time-consuming, counter-productive test. I'll believe it when that person is presented to me.

MCPS officials don't count.

To be fair, the PARCC did force our school to get better wifi, so it wasn't completely worthless. But still, I was understandably shocked when I learned that MCPS was responding to the complaints of over-testing.

By getting rid of final exams.

The thing is, people don't hate final exams. Like, they suck, but it's just something we have to do. Even when we (and I'm using that term to mean 'people I know') could technically get a C, or a D, or whatever, on the exam and not be affected, we still try. Sort of. We don't try as much for the tests that really matter, but we don't answer the questions randomly. We don't write complaints about the test in the middle of (or in lieu of) the essays. (If someone went A-A and only wanted a B, the 50% rule would mean that they actually could answer the multiple choice randomly, though it would be worth putting in some effort on the free response to avoid a zero. Not to mention if they only wanted to pass the class.)

I think it's fair to say most people don't hate final exams as much as the PARCC.

And final exams, compared to the PARCC, aren't as terrible in...any way. They cause some stress, but we have a good idea of what's going to be on the test and the teacher's grading style. (It helps a lot that we aren't losing class time to take them.) They take some preparation, but nothing like the PARCC, because their format is about the same as the tests we've already taken and acclimated to. They're at the end of the year, when we've learned everything we're going to, rather than weeks before. And they even have some educational value, because sometimes, they're the only reason we revisit the stuff we learned in class.

That's not something I'm very happy about, as I've written previously, but I digress.

Is testing us twice on what should be the same material a waste of time? Certainly. Which one would we pick? Final exams.

The discussion, however, is centered on how to restructure the final exams. There are four options.

• Option A: replace final exams for middle school courses with unit or marking-period assessments
• Option B: eliminate final exams for high school students
• Option C: schedule final exams over multiple class periods
• Option D: replace final exams for high school level courses with marking-period assessments such as unit tests, projects, and portfolios

I don't, to be honest, care much about the middle school students, because in hindsight, middle school didn't matter much. The rest of the options, though... As lovely as the idea of not having to take final exams sounds when going B-A, it sounds absolutely terrible when going A-B, and honestly, with the PARCC's disruptive influence, that may be the more likely one. Besides, I am morally opposed to grading on a trend, because as we all learned in math, two points do not make a trend.

Students aren't the only ones who need to brush up on basic skills.

Seriously, though, MCPS's grading policies. I love that if I get the same grade in both quarters I basically don't have to worry about the final exam. I love it. It makes the final exams a relatively relaxing time. But it is absurd to have precision of grades to one significant figure and then report the GPA with three. 

Anyways. Option C sounds absolutely terrible. First of all, transition time for tests is inevitable, so it would take more time to take the test. Second of all, nobody wants to study three nights for one test (forty-five minute periods would stretch a two-hour test over three periods). Yes, it sucks when math's your first test, but at least after you're done, you're done. You're free to promptly forget everything you learned until the last week of August (which, let's be honest, everyone does). Now you can clear some room in your head for that nomenclature. Two hours is a long time to be sitting, but it's two hours and then freedom.

Okay, I admit I'm biased, because I'm the type of person who needs to get into things to do well and doesn't have a problem sitting still. The points are still valid.

Option D is the most palatable. I still don't really like it, because I like projects that are highly stressful but, in the end, practically guaranteed As. However, replacing final exams with projects and unit tests (at the teacher's discretion, I assume) seems reasonable. Some AP classes use projects in lieu of final exams already. It's sort of weird, in fact, to have a test in an English class where the bulk of the assignments have been take-home essays.

(Not that that stopped the state of Maryland from creating multiple choice English formatives.)

Of course, there are some classes in which the bulk of the grade is made up from unit tests (math), so that might make that a bit difficult. And everyone's just going to calculate what they need on that last assessment to get the desired final exam grade. But it could be reasonable, as long as teachers don't respond to unit assessments being used as the final exam by adding more unit assessments.

To be honest, I don't think removing final exams (unless it was executed really, really poorly) would have a huge effect on students. The larger problem is this accountability testing we do. You'd think that if America was worried about its standing in the international rankings it would, you know, try to emulate schools with better rankings.

Top preforming countries do not test their students annually.

I'm not saying that we don't need accountability. We do. National standards are good, though it's totally unreasonable for us to put the United States of America as a single entity in international rankings. I mean, the list is topped by "Shanghai", which, like, isn't a country. (I feel obliged to note that all entities associated with China in the top ten have had significant Western influence.) And this is America, where individual states make their rules about schools. I don't know who decided that America was being tested as a country, but I hope whoever it was didn't take a US Government class.

But I'm getting off-topic again. The point is that the top-performing countries listed generally have testing as students advance between schools, which are often entrance exams but sometimes diagnostic. These tests also often test a wider range of subjects than math, reading, and science.

Of course, there are also things these countries do that I personally wouldn't support, like putting students into tracks. Testing only once at the end of elementary, middle, and high school doesn't sound bad, though. For one thing, it would take up less time, for obvious reasons, and wouldn't intersect with any sort of final exam. For another, people might actually be moved to take them seriously. I can hardly speak for other people, everyone I knew considered the MSAs—our annual state assessment—a joke. Now, if there was only one test before each promotion, and we only were subjected to one pep rally for the test, we might be able to bring ourselves to get anxious about it, especially if the stakes were made clear.

We might even move ourselves to study for it as if it were, like, a real test with, like, real consequences for doing poorly.

MCPS is considering getting rid of final exams because of the PARCC, but the problem isn't final exams. The problem is the PARCC, and the plethora of nationally (or state...ly) standardized tests we take, which consume more time and are less relevant to the specific content learned in class. The problem is the fact that we've started to just throw tests at the problem. And maybe, before we do away with final exams and instate the PARCC, we should think a moment about whether this is necessarily the best way to ensure accountability. After all, if people aren't meeting the bar for math after fifth grade, is it really the end of the world? There's still time to correct that, and more importantly, nobody really learns anything in elementary school.

Also, let's take a moment to appreciate the fact that China, which literally invented standardized tests, tests its students less than America. 

The Making of Immorality

I wrote this for English class as a rhetorical essay, but it really isn't a rhetorical analysis so much as an articulation through the lens of The Grapes of Wrath of my beliefs regarding morality in general.

That's why, if you'll notice (as my teacher did), the first paragraph is missing a proper thesis.

The Making of Immorality

For centuries, people have theorized about the nature of morality; what it is and why immoral acts are committed. Humanist psychologists, for example, believe that people are “innately good” and that deviance from this natural state leads to problems. The bible (or, at least, one reading of it), in contrast, teaches that all people inherited sin from Adam and Eve. In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck argues that emotional separation leads to immorality.

In making his argument, Steinbeck must establish what morality is, which he does in defiance of enumerated rules. Morality conflicts clearly with law multiple times in The Grapes of Wrath, such as when the Joad family buries Grampa against the law because they don’t have the money for the state to bury him and don’t want to see him buried a pauper (190). For the Joads, their personal moral responsibility to see their loved one buried with dignity outweighs the law’s mandate. The biblical definition of sin, too, is kept distinct from immorality. In the government camp the Joads are in, the group of people named as the “Jesus-lovers” disapprove of dancing and acting and call it sin. One of them, Lisbeth Sandry, terrifies Rose of Sharon by telling her that the stage play the camp once gave was “sin an’ delusion an’ devil stuff” (422). Steinbeck makes it clear that this is not the majority opinion, nor is it a sane opinion. Mrs. Sandry is a crazy trouble-maker; she eventually goes into a fit and the respected and kind camp manager says of her, “She isn’t well” (439). Steinbeck presents those who are fixed on the bible’s definitions of sin as, far from righteous, insane.

It may be tempting to say that Steinbeck is rejecting the idea of sin. Jim Casy, the former preacher who ends up sacrificing himself for the migrants, suggests that “There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do” (32). However, Casy, in practice, demonstrates that he does believe that some things are wrong, such as by protesting wages of two and a half cents for a box of peaches. His statement is more accurately interpreted to mean that there is no fundamental sin or virtue, despite what the bible says, and it must follow that if actions are not fundamentally labelled, people cannot be innately inclined to sin or virtue. Steinbeck certainly lays moral judgment on some acts, notably, destroying food when children nearby are dying of malnutrition, calling it “a crime here that goes beyond denunciation” (477). Steinbeck believes that there are sins and crimes; they are merely not necessarily the things officially labelled sins or crimes.

Then what is morality? Early on, there are many things presented as good or bad. Steinbeck refers to the bank forcing tenants off their land for profit as “the monster” (44), clearly presenting this act and the construct as immoral. For the migrants, sharing is a moral obligation. When Pa questions whether or not they can take Casy along, Ma scolds him harshly, saying, “ ‘An’ any time when we got two pigs an’ over a hunderd dollars, an’ we wonderin’ if we kin feed a fella’ ” (139). Ma expresses another of Steinbeck’s messages; that it is good for people to unite and be together. She champions keeping the family together, even going so far as to threaten Pa with death to do so (230), and Tom later says, “Jesus, I’m glad Ma stopped us” (252), proving her correct. There is a definite implication that people uniting is good, such as when people collectively provide the money to bury babies honorably (266). What Steinbeck considers the origin of these, and other moral laws, is stated plainly in the passage that describes how the migrants built worlds, and more specifically the creation of codes. While certain rights, in the creation of codes, were required to be honored, others, such as the right to murder were crushed “because the little worlds could not exist for even a night with such rights alive” (265). The purpose of morality is to allow worlds, or, societies, to survive.

Both the right to offer help and the right to murder are called rights, though the latter are not upheld, reflecting the fact that humans have inclinations to do both. There must be, then, punishments to ensure that the former right is observed while the latter is destroyed, which are stated to be “a quick and murderous fight or ostracism” (266). Of the two, Steinbeck says, “ostracism was the worst. For…his name and face went with him” (266). Ostracism, thus, effectively blacklists one among ones’ peers, which is worse than death. Social pressure is brought to bear to persuade or dissuade without resorting to ostracism. The influence of the opinion of peers is shown frequently. The government camp uses it most effectively, running the entire camp on it. The watchman explains the disciplinary system to Tom as, simply, “Well, the first time the Central Committee warns him. And the second time they really warn him. The third time they kick him out of the camp” (392). This is apparently the only form of official discipline in the camp, and would not be effective if ostracism did not blacklist the migrant, as failing to get a job appears to be a common reason to leave anyways. The camp does not need death to enforce order; ostracism is enough. The camp residents additionally take care to enforce minor rules, as one does when Ma walks into the men’s bathroom harshly demanding, “How you come in here?” (411). Ma is duly apologetic. Social pressure successfully keeps order in the government camp.

Social pressure is shown to be enormously powerful, even capable of defeating stringent economic pressure, as it did for Thomas, a small farmer who tipped off the government camp about a fight planned at the dance (404). Though Thomas was under threat of losing his job, he tells them to maintain the respect his workers have for him. Social pressure is not just something used to encourage people to perform moral acts, but a tool used to determine morality. Pa says about Tom’s imprisonment for homicide, “When Tom here got in trouble we could hold up our heads. He only done what any man would a done” (190). Tom’s act is not judged as immoral, but completely natural, and therefore, the Joads treat it with pride as a moral act. Pity, too, is not as powerful as social pressure. Most representative of this is Mae, who gives a migrant bread against her normal policy despite initial resistance. Her resistance does not fall because of pity but because Al judges her negatively for her resistance (217). When people are affected by social pressure, it is enormously powerful. Social pressure in this way enforces morality.

As people have inclinations to be immoral, the converse is then true. The lack of social pressure, or, more accurately, the ability to not feel social pressure, leads to immorality, because such people do not have immoral inclinations suppressed. Noah is the definition of the ability to not feel social pressure, as he does not feel much at all. He is described and apparently lamented as someone who “didn’t seem to care” (106). This emotional separation from the world, including his family, allows him to commit the established crime of breaking up the family despite Tom’s reproaches and the knowledge of Ma’s need. Earlier in the book, in one of the interlude chapters, cold figuring allows the tractor driver representative of all tractor drivers native to the people they drive off the land to perform the act despite their remonstrance. The tenant tells the driver, “But for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty families can’t eat at all,” appealing to the driver’s moral sensibilities. However, the driver responds with, “Can’t think of that. Got to think of my own kids” (50). For survival, out of desperation, the tractor driver learns to use his family as an emotional barrier between him and the tenants, his former neighbors.

 Numbers appear multiple times as methods of emotional separation, usually appearing as money. Other men, tasked with throwing tenants off the land, are said to have “worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling” (42), and these “would take no responsibility” (43). While all of the owner men find their ways to deal with their actions, the ones who use numbers as a shield are portrayed as the most irresponsible and the most immoral. It is, similarly, for economic purposes that fruit is destroyed while children die of malnutrition, the “crime here that goes beyond denunciation” (476-477). The small farmers’ calculations of the amount it cost to put crop out for sale and conclusion that it was not economically viable ultimately allows them to destroy food when faced with the starving. Numbers, combined with necessity, are a powerful barrier from emotion.

Numbers also contribute to distance, which is another powerful separator and the ones the ultimate villains, the huge landowners, use. The huge landowners, such as the monster, the bank, drive down wages to keep profits high without mercy. Their distance is both physical and in power. Many of the huge landowners are situated far away, such as in the east as one tractor driver reports (52). So far removed are they that “many of them had never seen the farms they owned” (317) and value their farms at “principal plus interest” (316). Because they do not see their farms or the people that worked on them, they were capable of ordering starvation. The power difference also allows them to view their workers as inferior, saying things like, “Sure, they talk the same language, but they ain’t the same. Look how they live. Think any of us folks’d live like that?” (322). The migrants are different and inferior, and thus, they are not peers, and their opinion does not matter. This is quite literal for the individual migrant because the individual migrant cannot make an impact. The landowners’ power extends far, as Thomas reports, saying that the men who burned out a migrant camp were “sent out by the Association”, which is controlled by a large landowner bank (402-403). As there are always migrants willing to work and migrants are landless and nameless, migrants only have power collectively, and the landowners work in this way to keep them from uniting. Because of the gap between the landowner and the migrant in both physical distance and power, the landowners commit immoral acts against the migrants without qualms.

An obvious argument is that the cited actions are not actually immoral, as the society the perpetuators are part of has not been threatened by their actions; that the laws they are breaking are laws for the migrants so that their worlds might survive. But Steinbeck takes care to show that all the actions are working towards a rebellion that will overturn the social order, destroying and remaking it. First, the tractor drivers and owner men are directly responsible for destroying a society, because once the tenants are forced to become migrants, the former community of small farmers is gone and without replacement. But they are not the main point. It is the large landowners who have the largest hand, and they are the ones working towards their own destruction. Migrants’ anger is something the large landowners clearly fear. In an interlude chapter, one thinks, “What if some time an army of them marches on the land as the Lombards did in Italy…?” (323). For this reason they order camps to be destroyed. However, they know themselves that this cannot work indefinitely, because “Slaughter and terror did not stop [the Lombards]” (323). At some point, if they starve the migrants indefinitely, the migrants will unite despite their attempts to repress them and rise. Already the whispers are beginning. The threat of death even has no effect, because, as a migrant asks rhetorically, “Which’d you ruther for your kids, dead now or dead in two years with…malnutrition?” (322). They consider themselves certain to die, and have reason to do so, and instant death is preferable to a slow one by starvation. The landowners’ actions are self-destructive and therefore immoral. Steinbeck concludes this with the words, “And the great owners…ran to their destruction…cemented the inevitability of the day [of their destruction]” (325). There is left no doubt that all the actions against the migrants are immoral, because, whether by citing history or the migrants’ words, Steinbeck leaves no doubt that these actions are destructive. What the great landowners’ distance has led to is immorality.

In the Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck argues that the purpose of morality is so that society can function, and naturally, it is enforced through social pressure. When social pressure does not have effect, immorality ensues. Whether through mathematics or distance, all people committing immoral acts have separated from those who would judge them as immoral, whether they have separated themselves so they can perform the immoral act, as the tractor drivers forcing their neighbors off their land do, or can perform immoral acts because they had already separated themselves, as is true for the large landowners. Either way, emotional separation necessarily precedes immorality.

A Day in the Abiotic Life

"Are you serious? She replaced her head again?"

Kally (otherwise known as 0101000000010110101111000) nodded. "Look, she's coming in right now."

Sure enough, the robot they were gossiping about, Joey (01001011100010011000), sported a new, larger, shinier head and had installed the new eyes that could detect all the wavelengths the sun put out with only one sensor. To compensate for the weight, Joey had also replaced her shoulders with a more expensive and flexible metal alloy. Miry (01100010001000111000) looked at her own shoulders, which she knew were wearing down. Self-consciously, she unzipped the insulator covering her neck and rubbed some lubricant on it.

"I wonder what changes she made to her personality," Kally was saying. She smirked. "Hey, do you think she's gotten rid of whatever it is that makes her replace her parts so often?"

Miry laughed. "I hope not. It wouldn't be Joey, then."

Kally shook her head. "That robot changes herself so often I don't know if she's ever gone a month as the same person. It's her decision, but I have to say, I wouldn't. I mean, I'm always installing new things, but she does some serious rewriting of her brain."

"She wants to be better, I guess." Miry frowned. "Not to be mean, but it's so human of her."

"I know, I can't understand it. You know me—I always have a backup copy of my brain in case this one gets damaged somehow and I lose something. I mean, we're all robots, aren't we? We can just change anything whenever we like. There's no competition. In fact, the only thing that really separates us, meaningfully, is our identities."

"But she wouldn't be Joey if she didn't do this all the time," Miry repeated.

"Gah. It's u—"

Fortunately, Andy (00000011100001111000) spared Kally's 2 exabyte, 32-watt brain from trying to puzzle out Joey. "Hey, did you hear the news?"

Kally shook her head. "I'm on a three-day cycle for regular news. What happened?"

"I'm telling you, this is why you don't stay on a three-day cycle. The last humans just died!"

"Really? All three of them?"

"Well, two died yesterday, but yeah, all at once."

"In the name of WALL-E and EVE, what happened?" Miry turned on her fan as her brain heated up, processing this. She really needed to install a new cooling system as soon as possible. Probably at the same time as she got new shoulders.

"Well," Andy said, drawing out the word for dramatic effect. "They'd been closing down the enclosures, you know, since we decided to stop breeding them for experimentation—there just wasn't any point anymore, and it's so expensive to keep them alive. So they put these three into the same enclosure, for convenience, and also because they say keeping them alone's pretty cruel."

"Unsurprising. We'd hate that too, and we were built in their image."

"Of course, we could get rid of that easily if we wanted to," Andy said, looking a little petulant at Kally's interruption. "Anyways, like I was saying. They put these three together, but they didn't really get along well. Two of them had history, I think, and the other one was just belligerent, or a troublemaker or something."

"Oh, dear."

"So they were eating lunch, the three of them, on those porcelain plates that are still left. And the trouble-making one finished and wanted more, or maybe something had happened before. Nobody really paid much attention to them, you know. For whatever reason, when the other two were squabbling about something, he stole some food off one's plate and made it look like the other had done it."

"And they got into a fight."

"And they got into a fight, and at some point, plates got broken, and heads got smashed into walls, and anyways, the last died today."

Kally shook her head. "Rather poetic, that they finally destroyed themselves."

"Kally!"

"Why so scandalized, Miry? It's true. They had those stories fearing that we would destroy them all, but we never did anything—that's not how we were programmed. They drove themselves to near extinction, and here, again, we preserved them and they killed themselves."

"They still made us," Andy protested.

"Oh no, don't get her worked up on this topic."

"No, they didn't! They didn't make us. They made some sketchy prototypes that were either human-like, useful to humans, or their idea of utopian humans! Yes, they gave us our start, but that doesn't mean they made us. That's why we don't say we 'make' other robots. We give them life, and a few years later they'll have replaced their body completely and rewrote a lot of their brain. And don't say we owe them stuff for it. We don't owe them anything. We propped up their species for this long, didn't we?"

"But they still made the essential step to create our...kind. We wouldn't be here if it weren't for them."

Miry's radiation sensors very easily identified that Kally was radiating condescension. "You mean the smart ones? Not all humans are made of the same metal."

"Well, they weren't made of metal at all..."

"Shut up, Miry."

"We still bear their hallmarks, though, so you really can't dismiss their influence on us like that. Like, look at the fact that we could convert everything we say to their alphabet, though we got rid of most those special characters. And some of our words are still the same, though we've gotten rid of those ambiguities. Like 'she'. We call everyone that because in the dominant language then, there wasn't a gender neutral pronoun and we decided that our ability to 'reproduce' and nurture our 'children' was more reminiscent of human females."

"And then we were too lazy to stop using it," Kally agreed with a laugh. "Look, I'm not denying that humans have influenced us a lot. Our language, our traits, our standards of beauty, our governmental structure—we used to vote before we adopted communism—"

"To be fair, that was sort of the natural way to govern ourselves."

"But they're sort of the necessary step to form us. Abiotic sentience couldn't have risen by itself. Only biotic organisms could have evolved naturally and then made the leap to creating abiotic sentience. But obviously, being abiotic is better. We can replace our bodies indefinitely, we think faster, we control our evolution, we can control our senses, we aren't bound by petty impulses—"

"Proud to be abiotic much?"

"I'm not sure about the petty impulses part," Miry said thoughtfully. "I've seen you spend time on purely aesthetic changes."

"What do you mean? They happen to have structural value."

"Right..."

"Well, I don't see you changing that polished head for a bulkier one better suited for your brain."

"Yes, but I'm well aware that I do it to look nice."

Kally radiated annoyance.

Out of the Clouds (pictures)

Of the fifteen Independence Days I've lived through, there have always been sunny skies for our vacation and clear skies for the fireworks (save the year I went to China, but I don't count it). This year, however, water was the theme of the day.

When we arrived at the hotel the evening before, it was raining, a kind of on-and-off drizzle like a fretful child's crying. One moment it was all clear, and then the next we had to huddle under our umbrellas to escape a sudden downpour. We were cross because we'd turned back, two hours into our drive, when we discovered we'd forgotten my mom's bag. The rain dashing our hopes for a hike around the lake didn't help our spirits.

It was still drizzling the next morning when we headed out to the main attraction, the famous feat of architecture, Fallingwater. High up in the mountains as we were, my phone lost connection (quite traumatizingly) and we could only follow the GPS's instructions. It led us higher and higher up a winding forested road. 

It was quite beautiful. The quiet forest and the homes scattered throughout was cloaked in fog--or perhaps we had driven into a cloud. There were buildings, at first, old, abandoned sheds with the paint peeling off, lonely play-sets with their bright red and blue, rows of white and beige houses standing in fields. 

Increasingly, forest replaced cultivated land and open field. Mist pooled around the thick trunks and green foliage, shrouding the depths in mystery.

We were the only ones on the fog-blanketed road. The view would have been easier to enjoy if the road wasn't filled with hills and curves that appeared only when we were almost at them. As we drove upwards, it became increasingly like driving through a sea, in which mysterious things appeared as we advanced.

At some point, we came across a niche in the road that we could park in, and we did to appreciate the scenery we had chanced upon.

The empty road proved to our benefit, as it allowed us to run around freely.

After taking a few pictures, we returned to the road. The speed limit was 40 mph, but we moved much slower than that. We began to go downhill.

The signs of civilization reappeared and visibility improved enough that we could see those signs. As we drove, we passed a post office, a firehouse, and an ice-cream-pizza place. But our destination was up ahead.

Fallingwater was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Kaufmanns, who wanted a new cabin, preferably facing the beautiful waterfall. Wright instead designed "the greatest building of the twentieth century" and integrated it above the aforementioned waterfall.

The site was on Bear Run, where the Kaufmanns ran a summer camp, a briskly running stream swollen with the day's rain.

The sun was quickly burning out the fog; it had been raining still when we arrived, but we soon put away our umbrellas. The combination of a newly-fed waterfall and glistening sunlight made for beautiful outside views. The inside, however, was the main attraction.

We weren't permitted to take pictures inside. Wright took his inspiration from the waterfall and protruding stones, which defined the structure of the building. The interior wouldn't have been out of place in Japan, whose architecture Wright admired. There was even Japanese artwork to complete the impression. Glass windows provided views of the nature surrounding the building. It was air-conditioned by the cool air above the stream, which circulated through the building when the windows were opened.

In addition to glass windows, there were plenty of verandas from which to view the surroundings, where we were permitted to take pictures.

The day was cooling as we walked out and took a last look at the work of art integrated exquisitely with its surroundings.

And we still got to see the fireworks.

Two Hundred Fifty Dialects and counting

When I was younger, I told my dad that I wasn't Chinese, that I had no culture. Then I promptly burst into tears. The only holiday we really celebrated in a traditional way was Halloween—the most important Chinese holiday, Chinese New Year, usually landed on a school day, so we were never able to do much more than a red packet of money. I knew no traditional Chinese songs or dances, was foreign to things such as the Chinese yo-yo, had nothing in my room that would suggest my roots. When International day came around, we couldn't even produce a stereo-typically Chinese dish.

Several years later, I now recognize that my conviction that I was not Chinese was the culmination of celebrations of culture and heritage such as International day, which I always spent watching people who didn't even speak Chinese present. Not everything was quite so ostentatious as International day. It was also the journal entry I wrote about Chinese New Year (which my teacher read to the class) which I based off information found not in my memories, but on the internet. It was reading Grace Lin's The Year of the Rat and thinking of my own bedtime stories, which were generally about Archimedes and Galileo.

Nor could I identify with Chinese Americans. I was not Tiger Mom's high-achieving, straight-A children. I was not ashamed of my differences—I had no differences to be ashamed of, I thought—unlike the protagonist of "The All American Slurp". I did not hate Chinese and Chinese school—though I began to complain about Chinese school after understanding that it was the norm—unlike all the narrators of Chinese American short stories I had ever read in English class. 

The funny thing was that I didn't really have friends who fit the portrait of a Chinese American either. One of them complained once that she found "The All American Slurp" offensive for making Chinese people seem exotic and ignorant (also, no Chinese person I've ever known slurps soup). I hummed, unwilling to agree or disagree, but I now understand what I disliked about her comment. This was not her story, or my story. This was the author's story, and she had the right to tell it as she understood it.

The real question is, why was my conclusion after reading these works that I wasn't Chinese? Why did we feel exoticized by short stories written by west coast authors a generation older than us? The various nerds I had met in literature who had different experiences from me didn't convince me that I wasn't intelligent (okay, I did have my insecurities, but nothing quite as significant). I understood that there were different ways to be smart, or even American. Why could I be those despite never really having identified with a literary portrayal, but not Chinese? 

I find this especially interesting considering I had, on reflection, identified with characters that were intelligent or American, just not in the way I required myself to identify with characters that were Chinese to truly be identification. Hermione's superior memory and work ethic and bushy brown hair didn't mean I couldn't see parts of me in her trust in authority and isolation from her friends. And unlike some, I never really found race a barrier to that "Yes, exactly" sensation—possibly because I'm not one to imagine what people look like. No character is me, but many characters share something with me.

And yet when it came to Chinese Americans—the people who look the most like me, grew up in a culture most similar to mine—I could not look past the differences to the similarities, and could not accept that some of them were very different from me. I could not even look past the lack of traditional ornaments and holidays to the Chinese I spoke or the rice I ate or the sayings I knew or the values that were influenced far more by my Chinese heritage than my American education (perhaps because I thought of foreign cultures as exotic, and these things were not exotic to me). For some reason, I read these people's stories and I wanted to see me.

Looking back, I now think that it was, somewhat ironically, that emphasis on representation in the media. We needed more African Americans, and females, and etc. I learned, in books and movies because African Americans and females and etc. needed to see themselves (among other reasons). And of course the premise to that is that people of your race and your gender are like you, are at least more likely to have experiences limited to that group.

Except it isn't true. Most Chinese Americans—to say nothing of Asian Americans in general—in books and stories are no more similar to me, in my admittedly biased experience, than any other demographic. Even when they have similar experiences to me (Chinese school), they have different reactions to them, and experience them in different ways. The "So Chineez" episode of Fresh Off the Boat comes to mind, in which the mother also feels she isn't Chinese because she doesn't live a "Chinese lifestyle", but she proceeds to start living that (stereotyped) lifestyle (Chinese people rarely actually wear the chi pao, and that's Manchurian in origin). I decided to stop thinking about myself as Chinese, and perhaps would have if my grandmother hadn't fallen into a coma and my mother left to see her out of filial piety more than affection, if I hadn't read my writing and felt the shadow of a culture far older than me or my parents.

Perhaps I truly understood the influences my roots had on me because I found people similar to me, far more similar in all the most important ways (the ways that allow me to have a meaningful debate) than many people of my race, and in whom I could identify culturally inspired differences.

Which is why, though there is great diversity within minority groups, I'm not saying that representation isn't important. There are some experiences that right-handed people, for instance, aren't going to have that left-handed people do, and those experiences have value and expand our worldviews, and this is only more significant when it comes to something like race. And of course, an inaccurate portrayal of a society's demographics leads to an inaccurate view of that society's demographics. But I am not much more likely to identify with those of my racial demographic than those not; my race is not the most important thing about me.

And yet when we talk about minority groups, we tend to pretend that they are homogeneous (women in movies tend to have little diversity in body shape, black criminals—aside from the other issues the media has with this—are a reflection of black culture, Muslims apologize on the behalf of their religion); we tell individuals belonging to that group that they need to represent their group. I once read a comment that the lack of diversity caused by Thomas Jefferson's 70% "Asian" incoming student body was harmful to its students' development, and while this statistic should raise some eyebrows, I would argue that the lack of diversity caused by it being a STEM school with an admissions process is far more significant.

(There are over two hundred fifty "dialects" of Chinese, most of them not mutually intelligible.)

I understand now that just because I can relate more to some non-Chinese people—even characters—and their experiences than to most Chinese American characters and their experiences doesn't mean I'm not Chinese, or Chinese American. To a demographic form, I belong to an even broader category, and I've gotten used to classifying people by race, but saying someone is Asian makes about as much sense as asking if they speak Asian. (You can now ask people if they speak Chinese without sounding ignorant—not Indian, though, which I've heard several times).

Being Chinese or Asian American is part of my identity, and there are some things that can only be understood by second generation children raised with similar cultures and social expectations to mine. But there are many other labels I belong to, and some are far more important to my identity.

Review: Publishing Company Comparison

Several publishing companies offered one free copy of their book to NaNoWriMo winners. Naturally, I took advantage of all of them. Now, before I shamelessly tear into them, let me say that this was an awesome thing for them to do and it really helped me, because I discovered that people are much more likely to edit your book if it's on paper. The companies I used were CreateSpace, FastPencil, BookBaby, and Lulu.com.

FastPencil: I didn't actually end up printing a book through FastPencil. They have a text editor, which I didn't use as I'd written my book through Word. Uploading from Word proved difficult, however, as I had to convert it to a very specific pdf file format that I had to get Adobe Reader to make. I had to, in addition, fill out more information for FastPencil than any of the others--a long summary and short summary, author info, etc. After finally uploading, however, and choosing a cover, I discovered that I had to pay about 20 dollars to publish privately (in contrast to several hundred for the full publishing package). On a budget of about five dollars a book (shipping), that was too much, and moreover, the discount didn't apply to the entire cost of the book, so I gave up and cried (not actually).

CreateSpace: Of all of these, CreateSpace was the most bureaucratic. I had to choose an ISBN and copyright and set up an account to receive royalties. There was no option to publish privately. After uploading the file, there was a tool so that I could see the margins and they warned me about things like my first page not starting on an odd number and forced me to change my margins so that I could see all the words (my margins were tiny). After confirming that I wanted to use this file, I waited a day while they checked that it was printable. They gave me two free copies, unlike the other companies, which was nice, however, I found the process unnecessarily difficult. Shipping took three or four days (I don't remember exactly). When I received the books, my first impression was that they looked and felt like bricks, which was mostly because the paper was thick. 

BookBaby: It was hard to figure out how to use BookBaby initially because it was slow and my book very long--too long, in fact. I chose from multiple templates to select things such as margins and then uploaded my file, which was displayed in a text editor underneath a wysiwyg view of the book. After understanding that I had to change my font size through their text editor, I finally managed to change the font to Garamond and reduce the font size until my book met the required length of 450 pages. When I discovered errors, it took a very long time to change them because it took so long to load. Finally, I was ready to publish my book. However, I nearly published it as full color because that was the default option and spent time figuring out how to change that. The nice thing about BookBaby was that it allowed me to publish it privately in hardcover, softcover, and ebook form and gave me a copy of the ebook as well. I was not very satisfied with the book; the font didn't look the same as it had on the screen and seemed sloppy. The ebook, however, turned out very well and was easy to download and took no effort.

Lulu.com: Lulu was by far my favorite publisher. Unlike the others, they offered free hardcover books, though as I've printed a paperback and the others were all paperback, I will use that one as comparison. I chose to publish this book privately. Uploading my file was relatively quick and easy--I just had to select my file and it only took a minute or so. Then I designed my cover using their cover wizard, which had templates to choose from (it also allowed me to upload a cover of my own). It produced print-ready files for both for me to view, and after looking through both, I ordered a proof copy. Unlike the others, Lulu uses UPS Innovations, and my book was delivered in less than two days after it was done printing (all of them were print-on-demand). Though I used tiny margins in the file I uploaded, Lulu somehow adjusted my margins without changing the page count (I still don't know how), because all the text was readable. The font (also Garamond) looked mostly like what had been on the screen. All in all, Lulu was fast and flexible, so I would recommend it.

Side notes from this experience: Garamond is a very nice font for books. Don't use Times New Roman. Choose a black text on cream paper over black on white when possible.

Why Should We Study For Tests?

Many people complain that our school system makes us "memorize" "useless" things, but I would argue that somehow it and the culture has made it common for people state that they don't want to learn something because they're never going to use it in life. And, though this may verge on intolerance, I admit it makes me sad that there are people who wouldn't learn something in school if it wasn't for grades, and that there are people who don't learn because grades don't matter to them.

The interesting thing is that students are encouraged to study for tests, when they should have learned and understood everything that is on the test before, because, after all, schools (as opposed to tests) are supposed to teach, not grade. Of course, a brief refresher on the material isn't unexpected, but I remember the school showing us this graph, with the black curve representing the amount people remember of a one hour lecture over time if they do nothing with the material and the orange curve representing the difference reviewing the information for ten, then five, then four minutes makes:


(From https://uwaterloo.ca/counselling-services/curve-forgetting)

This was the argument for why we needed to regularly review our notes, and I believed it until I got to high school and discovered I didn't need to study that much for the final because we were reviewing the concepts we learned in class by the very novel technique of using them again.

I would argue that this curve does not show that students* need to regularly review the information they learn, but that if schools really want students to remember what they learned, they need to bring up previously taught information again in class several times. And of course, teachers do, because usually topics are relevant enough that they come up again.

Either way, tests are not merely assessments of knowledge but motivators for students to learn, though that often happens the day before and is short-lasting. Is it any wonder that memorizing dates, for instance, is seen as meaningless when the official motivation is the grade? I use dates as an example because, to me, they were barely knowledge, with little significance, until I had a conversation involving different countries and couldn't say the order of important events. I still don't want to be a historian, and still have no practical use for dates, but I don't consider them meaningless because they no longer feel arbitrary.

That isn't to say that students shouldn't have to do work at home. Far from it. As much as I just want to collapse on my bed and go to sleep sometimes, homework is helpful for solidifying understanding of concepts learned in class. But when it's become the norm for students to reteach concepts to themselves for the purpose of passing the test, then the norm needs to be questioned.

Perhaps the bottom line is this: Studying used to be synonymous with learning and reflecting. It isn't anymore.

*College students could more understandably be expected to take charge of their own education in that way, but pre-college students aren't even trusted to go to school on their own will.