Provo Bakery

Today I felt like a traitor. I needed to get some sort of treat to bring to work, and I got raspberry rolls from Shirley's Bakery. After living next to the Provo Bakery (which bizarrely has no website) for months, going to Shirley's seemed like a betrayal. I've eaten and loved so many things from the Provo Bakery. I've sung it's praises to so many people.

But the honestly, the Provo Bakery needs to step up its game. A lot. First, get a website. Second, I keep getting dried out things from them. The more bakeries I go to, the more disappointing the Provo Bakery is becoming. And that's terrible. I say this not to be mean, or as a disgruntled customer. I still love the Provo Bakery. Rather, I'm trying to offer constructive criticism. I feel like I can never go wrong with the orange rolls or the Mexican wedding cakes. But the cookies? The bread? I feel like I can almost never go right with the donuts. Please, improve. I love you.

So, today, I needed something good, and I needed to know it would be good. I've brought all the good things from the Provo Bakery to work, and so I turned to Shirley's. And you know what, it was delicious.

Pioneer Day

I just discovered that Pioneer Day is a paid holiday at my work. To say that I am happy would be an understatement.

Sunday and animal cookies

Because I work at a newspaper, I occasionally have to work on Sundays. May is my month, where I work each Sunday for four hours, and work 9 hour days four other times during the week. It's an interesting schedule, that has both pros and cons.

However, today a serious con turned out to be Circus Animal cookies. Actually, it turned out to be a con is pro's clothing.

Apparently on Friday (when I was not working) my part of the office had an little celebration in honor of the pending Rapture. People brought treats, etc.

But when I got to the office, some of that food was still sitting out. Actually a bunch of cans of root beer and half a bag of the cookies were still siting out. Over the course of my time at work today, I have eaten most of those cookies. They aren't really good. In small quantities, they can be alright, in a nostalgic sort of way. But after handfuls and handfuls, they get pretty disgusting. I can say that, because that's what I have experienced today. I don't know why I did it, but learn from my mistake and never eat half a bag of Circus Animal cookies.

Working Hard to Slack off

When I was in high school I ran cross-country.  I wasn’t very fast or slow, so I mostly went unnoticed by the coaches, which was fine with me; I really just ran to hang out with friends and because at my school you didn’t have to take P.E. if you did a sport (and no one cool took P.E.).  Years later, I look back on my cross country experience with great fondness.  I did exactly what I set out to do, and a lot of the time that included slacking off. 

 

Most of the cross country team’s practices involved long-ish runs through the streets of Glendora.  Because my fellow medium-speed runners and I had friends spread out all over the city, that meant that we could often cut miles off the run by hanging out at friends houses.  Sometimes we’d go swimming.  Sometimes we got free Baskin Robbin’s samples from a friend who worked there.  Sometimes we just sat on the curb and waited for the team to come back our way.  Oh yeah, and sometimes we actually practiced.  The bottom line is that my friends and I didn’t put in even close to as much effort as we could have, though I was in pretty good shape at the time.  (I think it’s important to mention that we never cheated on races and that nobody wanted us to become top runners, including ourselves.) 

 

In retrospect, I actually wish I would have treated more activities the way I treated cross country.  I put in enough effort to benefit from the sport, but not enough to interfere with other activities that mattered more to me.  In other areas of my life, however, that hasn’t been the case.  Take, for example, high school academics and getting into college.  I went to BYU, but I had an application that was much stronger than it needed to be.  I don’t regret going to BYU, but I do regret having put forth so much effort when I could have spent my time doing other, non-academic interests.  (I know someone will read this and tell me about the valedictorian-class president-service nut at their school who got rejected from BYU.  First, I should say that I’m skeptical that any such stories are true.  I think it’s more likely they are myths told by parents to get their teenagers to work hard.  Second, if those stories are true, why would such a person even waste their time applying to BYU.  They could have gone to a much better school and been in the company of other altruistic geniuses instead of being with people who had GPAs in the low to mid 3.0 range.)

 

I can think of similar experiences that I’ve had throughout my life that make the same point.  As a graduate instructor for example, I started out putting in vast amounts of time and effort into teaching.  After a couple of semesters of that, I realized all that effort was preventing me from enjoying other parts of life, so I put teaching way down on my list of priorities.  In other words, I decided to slack off.  To my surprise my student ratings stayed high, my students continued to learn, and I even got an award for being a good teacher.

 

My point here isn’t to show what a slacker I am, but to illustrate how sometimes it’s actually better to not work as hard as possible because when we’re not “working” we can be doing other things that matter more.  Of course, I’m not an advocate of sitting around doing nothing all day.  Instead, I’m suggesting that people shouldn’t feel guilty about making time for the things they enjoy, even if those things are done at the expense of the what they’re “supposed” to be doing.  In the end, then, maybe we all just need to slack off a little harder.

Commuting Part 2

In the past I’ve been highly critical of suburban living generally and the commuting it requires specifically.  While I still believe that suburbia is an ecological catastrophe, I’m quickly approaching my own moment of truth in which principle meets practice.  Unfortunately, that moment is looking more and more like it’s going to be a no win situation. 

 

The situation that I’m talking about is mine and Laura’s newly acquired status as college graduates.  Laura recently got a job in American Fork (about a twenty minute drive to the north) and we no longer have any reason to live next to BYU campus.  Because I still don’t have a job, the logical thing for us to do would be to move to American Fork so that Laura could bike or walk to work.  Such an act would be in keeping with my earlier statements about the environment and the need to eliminate commuting from American culture.  In other words, it would be the ethical choice because it would avoid causing unnecessary damage to the environment.  

 

The problem is that American Fork is a really undesirable place for a young couple to live.  Generally speaking, there’s nothing to do there.  There are a few bottom-of-the-barrel chain restaurants and a movie theater that plays the most mainstream of films, but as far as I know there’s nothing that caters to a diversity of interests (with the very notable exception of the Chocolatier Blue).  The surrounding communities (Lehi, Cedar Hills, Highland, Apline, etc.) are more of the same, only worse.  Obviously these communities cater to a specific group of people, but they hold absolutely no appeal for me.  What’s more, rents are actually higher in these areas than Laura and I currently pay (and apartments are smaller), so we couldn’t really afford to live there if we wanted to.  These factors have combined to create a situation where the choice I see as most ethical also means months of insufferable ennui.  

 

So we’re faced with a few options.  We can live in American Fork or the surrounding communities.  Laura wouldn’t have to commute (which I’m sure would be nice for her) and I wouldn’t feel like a hypocrite for condemning something that I’m overtly complicit in.  However, we also wouldn’t have many (or any) friends and we’d have to drive a considerable distance to do any of the things we enjoy.  We’d also be paying more in rent, which would obviously be difficult.  On the other hand, we could stay where we are and continue to have easy access to many of the things we love.  Still, that’s hardly the behavior I’ve argued for in previous blogs.  

 

I draw several conclusions from this scenario.  First, that people often have to make hard and unpleasant choices when it comes to where they live.  Unfortunately, environmental factors rarely take precedence (or even show up on people’s radar) when they weigh the pros and cons of a particular living arrangement.  For me, I do weigh environmental factors against things like social life, but I’m not sure which is more important.  I’d like to say that I’d sacrifice all my friendships and hobbies for something that I believe is ethically right; I’m just not sure that I will.  For other people it might be schools or big houses, and while I don’t think those reasons are any good, I recognize that to some people they're much better than my own.   

 

Second, I conclude that many modern communities are not set up to provide for all the needs of their members.  American Fork definitely isn’t.  (Provo might not be either, but it does a better job than a lot places.)  In turn, people have to drive considerable distances if they want to do anything outside the home.  This seems like the bigger problem to me.  People are constantly forced to choose between schools, social life, etc. and how much time they spend in the car.  If housing choices always represent an expression of values, it seems immensely problematic that the environment is so often on the losing end of those choices. 

 

For the time being we’ll be in Provo while we figure out what we're going to do (and while I figure our what I’m doing post-graduation).  Ultimately, I’d like to put all the blame on the way our culture has been set up to encourage unethical behavior.  And while I think that that is definitely part of the problem, I also believe that I can’t completely avoid culpability for being willing to contribute to the problem rather than sacrifice for change.

Education

Recently, I read an article on CNN.com about a Trina Thompson who decided to sue her college because she couldn’t find a job.  To someone like myself who just completed a master’s program that, to my knowledge, has 0% job placement (and no services to speak of to raise that number) my first thought was that she was being ridiculous.  However, as I considered the situation more I started to agree with her.  In fact, Ms. Thompson’s situation made me wonder if I should consider doing the same thing. 

 

I have no plans to sue my school, but the incident raises questions about the purpose of higher education.  Much of the criticism leveled at Thompson seems to be based on the romantic idea of a “liberal education,” which might be summarily described as a broad effort to make people better, more ethical and well-rounded citizens (and people).  While, as a recent MA, I’m obviously a disciple of this idea, I also know that just about everybody goes to college today because it will make them more marketable for a future job. 

 

The point then, is that nearly every college degree is simply a technical certification from a trade-oriented school.  Ms. Thompson’s school is more obviously so, but even students at prestigious schools are there because they’re trying to become more marketable.  The skills they’re learning might prepare them for white-collar jobs, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re learning the “techniques” of a “trade.” 

 

This reality is a problem for a couple of reasons.  First, because no one is admitting it.  Most college educated people look down on someone like Thompson because her argument is painfully honest about what people expect from an education.  There are a lot of people who don’t have jobs when they graduate, but the criticisms of Thompson demonstrate that people don’t see that fact as a problem (with either the education system or the post-graduation market place).  Indeed, the defense of education-for-education’s sake that has been invoked actually suggests that people don’t think there are any system-wide problems at all.  It doesn’t matter, the argument implies, that people today take longer to get through school, are more saddled with debt, and have less of a guarantee of employment after college; just because that happens with many people, the system is still working just fine. 

 

Second, this is a problem because liberal education has a lot to offer and because if we abandon it, eventually no one will be able to think critically about ideas like ethics, citizenship, and community.  Instead, people will be locked into roles determined by class and economic status (as well as race, gender, etc.) without the ability to raise questions about those roles.  In other words, the recent debate sparked by Trina Thompson suggests both that liberal education is quickly slipping away from us while we delude ourselves into thinking that it isn’t.

 

Luckily, liberal education isn’t completely gone.  It coexists with work-oriented schooling in a way that apparently satisfies many people.  (If it didn’t satisfy them, they’d stop going to school.)  Still, if people refuse to recognize the effects of business and the market place on education there will be nothing to mitigate the capitalist onslaught in colleges.  People will continue to be in debt and unemployed, and no one will stop to consider if that is a problem.  At the same time, high-minded ideals embodied in a liberal education will keep slipping away from us until no one even remembers what they were.