Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!

May 2008 bring you joy and peace.

Mind block

I read a study once that said that going on vacation decreases your IQ. I think it may be right. For the past few days, I've been failing miserably at producing quality output. Everything I've produced has been "first draft" material, at best. I thought I was capable of better, but right now I'm not proving that to myself. On vacation for a week and my brain has already atrophied.

Wheee!

For the last couple of days, my daughter and I have spent some time playing table tennis on the Wii. It's fun! I'm really enjoying it, and, given that I'm such a sports klutz, that is saying something.

I did realize one technical detail about the Wii, though, that I don't like: It's built for TV output. When you connect it to a digital projector, the picture quality isn't as good.

Still, it's fun!

The Wii isn't ours, btw. It's on loan from my nephew. I asked to try it so we could decide if we wanted to buy one. The jury' still out.

Take a leaf out

This boy knows exactly how to spend the holidays.

Avoiding triggers

A lifetime ago, someone I knew made life choices that I don't officially know about. I heard about these choices from secondary sources, sources who were quick to add that I wasn't kept in the loop because, judgmental as I am, I wouldn't understand much less accept the new state of things.

The assessment was accurate. I disapproved of the choices. I was also angry and hurt at being cut off. To cope, I avoided contact with the person and anything to do with the person altogether. Truth is, this didn't take too much effort. Recall that I was the one written off initially, so it's not as if the other party was trying to make contact. In fact, it took me literally years of getting the cold shoulder to realize I was making an idiot of myself.

I have practiced avoidance to great effect. The relationship has lost prominence in my life and the memories sting less and less. I'm still not completely indifferent. It's been years, yet a recent, rare, close encounter with the person in question left me depressed for two days. I regard the situation as a chronic condition such as migraines or asthma. There is no real cure for any of these. You just have to avoid the triggers. What was it that Linus (of Peanuts by Charles Schultz) said: There is no problem so great that it can't be run away from.

So if there is news about this person, spare me. I'd rather not know. Knowing means having to dredge up long-buried hurts and resentments and get over them all over again. It's not worth the pain.

Personal bubble

On several occasions, students have come into my office to discuss various issues with me. Some of them forget to bring ballpens or paper. To take notes, they reach over to my table and help themselves to supplies.

The first wave of emotion that hits me is exasperation. Paper and pen are so basic--how can you come to school without them? And you knew for a fact that you were going to talk to me (I don't normally call for these meets--they do), why even bother to walk into my office unprepared?

The second wave is voilation. Many of these kids don't ask for my permission to use my stuff. Mind you, there's nothing particularly precious about my stuff. We're not talking about Watermans and scented linen paper. My ballpens are generic, plastic, and disposable. Some are even missing their caps. I use scratch paper from spoiled printouts or old student work. Still, it is my stuff and messing with it without my consent breaches my personal bubble.

Change of image

For the year to come, I'd like to change my blog title. This is a milestone for me. I've been blogging for--how long has it been?--four years now and have gone by "Headless Chicken" ever since. The title reflected my state of being.

Nowadays, though, I'm feeling less headless chicken-y, so the blog title strikes me now as being an anachronism or historical artifact. I think it's time for a change, but to what?

My current mood now is anticipation. I can't wait to see what's next. I was therefore thinking of titles like "Looking forward", "Moving on..." or "Next!". I've also considered, "Warning: Life Ahead."

Any ideas?

"Regret management"

The phrase "regret management" is mentioned in the book Sins of the Night by Sherrilyn Kenyon. I love when writers are able to coin a phrase that so precisely captures a sentiment.

If you've lived for any length of time, you have regrets. There are things you wish you would have done better, choices you wish you didn't have to make, etc. The regret could have been prompted by something as trivial as an extra slice of roast beef, as cutting as a misspoken word, or as deeply profound as a life decision gone wrong. We all regret something. In the system dynamics of living, regret is one of life's regulatory devices. Sincere regret triggers amendment and amendment leads to better choices and, possibly, fewer regrets. Somewhere in this dynamic lies the management.

Season's side-effects

For several years straight, I ended the Christmas season with a bout of the flu. All the running about in traffic, in crowds, up to late in the evening would take its toll and I'd spend the first few days of the New Year in bed with a splitting headache and joint pain.

A couple of years ago, it dawned on me that the way to avoid the post-Christmas flu was to dial back the holiday cheer. I'm not a sociable person in general. I keep my own counsel and am content with the company of a few close, long-time friends. So much (not all) of my party-going during the season is an expression of conformity to social pressure rather than personal preference.

Finally, I came to my senses. It was time to follow my intuition and just sit out the socials.

So far, it seems to be working.

Vacation mode

The Christmas break began for me yesterday. I stayed home, missing the last of the organizational parties (come to think of it, I missed all of them this year). The break is earmarked for playing catch up with the other work that had fallen to neglect.

However, instead of working, I find myself instead giving in to the other things that normally have to be squeezed in between work and more work. For the first time in recent memory, I saw old friends for both lunch and dinner yesterday. Dinner was particularly special because it was Redg's 40th birthday. We cooked dinner and had a nice meal with a married couple we'd been friends with for the last 20 years.

I've also spent a great deal of time reading. I read a lot by habit and necessity, for work and for pleasure. Usually, I'll balance off a pulp fiction paperback with something more career-advancing or soul-expanding. Since a couple of days ago, I've jettisoned the serious reading in favor of pure mind candy. I've blogged before about needing a periodic "fiction fix" to keep me sane. Well, I've been getting high for the last couple of days now and it feels great.

So, I find myself quite decidely in vacation mode. Yes, the work will get done. In fact, I'm starting on stuff immediately after this post. Give me a couple of hours to stave off the guilt, afterwhich I polish off my reading glasses for my next dose.

How to deal with a zero result

What is essential when planning experiments is rigor. You can control the rigor with which you conduct the experiment. You can ensure integrity in your data collection, appropriateness in your materials and instruments, and correctness and precision in your analysis techniques. However, at the end of the day, you cannot control the result.

What happens if you get a zero result? If you are taking a PhD, the thing to do would be to try alternative methods to see if you can improve on the results. If you are taking a masters, then a zero result, if arrived at rigorously, should be acceptable.

A zero result though, is always depressing.

Finding approval from within

It is natural to seek out external, confirmatory evidence that we are making the right choices. When issues are complex, where solutions are generally imperfect, we look for reassurance from our peers, our superiors, or from the Almighty Himself. We look for certainty.

Often enough, though, we don't have the luxury of certainty. In these cases, we make a choice and choose, in the process, to live with the consequences.

Frozen

I feel as if my work is at a standstill. This week is so full of meetings. I am unamused.

I didn't need to see that!

At a stoplight, we were queued behind a passenger jeep. A young woman approached the jeep's rear entrance. She was dressed in a brown blouse and cream colored leggings. She ducked as she boarded, bending at the waist, exposing her backside to us.

She was wearing a pair of white panties with orange stripes. You could see them, clear as day, through her leggings. Quick, call the fashion police!

Ladies, this is why God created thongs and Brazilian waxes.

"Down with love"

I think I'm about done with attending weddings from start to finish. For several years now, I haven't taken the time to attend both the ceremony and the reception. I generally only attend one or the other but not both. When I do attend the reception, I almost always make it a point to come just in time for the meal to be served.

Why is that? Because wedding receptions in particular have become lengthier and lengthier, with each couple trying to outdo the other in terms of tributes, speeches, and games. It's getting old, or maybe I'm getting old. I miss the days when wedding receptions involved a reception line, dinner, and the cutting of the cake.

Part of my reluctance also has to do with my affinity with the couples getting married. Most of my relatives and really good friends are already married. Those who are not are not likely to be. I'm not really close to the people whose weddings I'm attending now.

I imagine my next round of full-length features will come when my nieces and nephews begin getting married. And if their parents have anything to say about it, that won't be any time soon.

The end is nigh

With the last workweek before the break upon us, everyone and his grandmother are trying to squeeze in every conceivable meeting. We're living three weeks in one, and it's really starting to annoy me.

I had meetings set for this Monday and Wednesday. These meetings were scheduled weeks in advance, after much coordination among parties concerned. Late last week, both these meetings were superceded by other meetings that did us no such courtesy. We were just told: be there! No ifs or buts. In fact, there was another meeting I was being asked to attend, a whole day affair that involved travelling to Cavite, for heaven's sake! I assessed the meeting's relevance and decided it wasn't worth the effort. Besides, attending meant missing out on two thesis proposal defenses and no, that was not an option!

The collateral damage in all this is, as always, my research. There's some analysis and writing pending. I was hoping to get to it soon, but soon keeps getting pushed back. I'm afraid it might have to wait for the break, which is really cutting it close as I have a January deadline.

This experience has also taught me that Saturday classes are a very bad idea for me. When I have a Saturday class (or even when I don't), I try to take a weekday off to attend to other things. The problem is that I'm not always able to do that. I invariably have a meeting that will prompt me to go to school. Maybe that will change after I'm no longer chair.

In any case, the next week is going to be a doozy. I wonder how much work I'm going to get done?

The bearer of bad news

Someone failed an evaluation. A committee assessed a body of work and found it wanting. I was asked deliver the bad news. The recepient took it graciously at first. When the reality of the news sank in, though, the recepient began to feel the deepening ache that comes with loss. I did what I could to salve the hurt, but ultimately the healing has to happen in its own time.

Right now, though, I am angry at one person in particular. There was someone who could have prevented this, someone who had been working with the evaluatee for years and was in a position to help this person bring the body of work up to an acceptable standard. The problem was that the person in the position to help didn't push enough.

And so here we are.

Distracted

There's a ton of work to do and I'm a million miles away! I'm still walking on air from yesterday's news. I spent over an hour looking for apartments. Gosh, talk about looking forward!

Desire over pain, part 2; Christmas blessing

Thank you to Topher, Wil and Akie for comments. Honestly, the issue of the varsity is something we've been grappling with for several years now. The initiative for such an organization can come from anywhere. The Ateneo Debate Society is an excellent example of a student-led and student-run organization that is wildly successful. The basketball teams (particulary the women's basketball team, IMHO) is an example of two passions--the school's and the players--coming together.

In the case of our programming teams we are confronted with several obstacles--a lack of resources, heavy workloads on both the faculty and student side, and, well, let's just say that most of our students, God bless them, lack the cutthroat competitor gene. This is also partly why we can't depend on CompSAt to take the lead. But let me not elaborate on that.

It's time to step up the game, definitely. We just have to figure out how.

***

On another topic, I received one incredible Christmas gift: A Fulbright scholarship! It will send me to the US for five months on a research visit. It's an imperfect gift in that I will be away from my loved ones for a long stretch. However, it is very important to me, and my family is very supportive. Desire over pain. :)

Desire over pain

Doc Mana, JP Manalo, Wil Li, James Choa, and Liza Villa left today for Singapore to participate in the ACM ICPC Regionals. To tell the truth, we're not very optimistic this year. The UP team is very strong and enviably driven. It's hard to beat that combination. Still, we press on. We prepared as best we can and now we're giving it our best shot.

This has me thinking, though, that it may really be time for a programming varsity. The varsity teams practice three hours a day before class and sometimes after class. In our case, I can imagine such a schedule would be more rigorous for the coaches than it will for the teams, however it might be just what we need if we want to stay ahead.

Would the students commit to it, though? That's another issue.

Fr. Ben's advice in these cases is simple: desire over pain. If we want something badly enough, then we should be ready to do whatever we must (within lawful and moral bounds, of course) in order to get it. So I guess the real question is: how badly do we want this?

Continuing discernment

"What if the call is to stay?" was the question posed to my friend.

I mentioned over a series of blog entries that I have cast several pieces of bread in the water, unsure whether even one would float back. I was daunted, I said, by the possibility of all of them floating back. Heaven help me if they did. Nothing has floated back just yet, but there are signs that something--possibly several things--will.

So I wonder now, is this the answer to my discernment? If even one of these possibilities materializes, I am bound to Ateneo for the next three to five years. The call would be to stay.

Greed and envy

There's a reason why greed and envy are among the seven deadly sins. They turn you mean and spiteful. Spike them with pride and you have a cocktail that is sure to destroy your soul. Picture this:

You want things that you can't have.
You see other people enjoying the things you can't have.
You regard these people as less deserving than you.
And so you wish them ill, in the most self-righteous and sanctimonious way you know how, convinced that you are completely rational in your feelings and actions.

But at the end of the day, all it is is greed, envy, and pride. That's all.

So let it go. Accept the things you cannot change and focus on the things that you can.

Turnover

My probable successor and I are due to discuss next week. The agenda? Major departmental directions and priorities.

Allow me for a moment to shed all semblance of modesty and be unabashedly proud of what I have done for the department over the last five years. If you had taken a snapshot of the department five years ago and the department today, you would swear it wasn't the same animal. It has changed and grown in terms of culture and achievements, and while we all share in the credit, I can honestly claim that I provided the political will to make these changes possible.

To my critics who felt that I was rude or harsh or scary or strict, all I can say is that every decision has a cost, be it economic, social, personal, or political. Perhaps the mark of my term was that achievement was my priority and I trusted social or personal factors to take care of themselves. It worked for me and I think for the department as well. Look how far we've come.

I have not left my successor with an easy job. There is a lot on the departmental plate: the JTA, the summer camps, research, the new games major, the tracks, and so many others. The next chair must choose to either sustain and grow these efforts or let them slide. And this is the next chair's choice. Without political will, these things will simpily not happen. In the same way, though, that my character has been judged against the personalities of my predecessors, I hope my successor's achievements are judged against mine.

Still more on grad school

To John Patrick: If you are interested in the Commission on Higher Education or DOST scholarships, the information is available on their websites. If you refer to the foreign funding opportuntities, you'll have to send me an email (mrodrigo@ateneo.edu) for more details. The details are normally sent to a limited number of agencies as one form of screening already--some universities tend to cast a small net.

If you are interested in grad school at all, you should try. There are millions of dollars available for studies. More people should take the opportunities.

Is this it?

A friend and colleague shared some wisdom on his own process of discernment. Is this is it, he asks? Is this what You want me to do? Is this my call, my mission, my role as You have designed and intended? Is the call is to venture out, to provide service where the needs that are greater? Is the call to stay and serve here.

Or perhaps the call is to choose. Perhaps no option is necessarily better or worse than the other. Perhaps any path is just as pleasing to You.

Fr. Johnny Go's song, The Pilgrim's Theme, captures this sentiment quite well;

The road before me bends, I don't know what I'll find
Will I meet a friend or ghosts I left behind
Should I even be surprised that You're with me in disguise
For it's Your hand I have seen in the greater scheme of things

More info on grad school; Bracing myself for the next 48 hours

To Charles (Enrinson): Are you interested in local or foreign scholarships? Send me an email at mrodrigo@ateneo.edu and I'll send the relevant info to you or direct you to the appropriate offices.

***

The next 48 hours are going to be choked with meetings. I can see I'm not going to get any work done...

A good time for graduate students

If anyone out there is thinking of grad studies, now is the best time ever to start.

There are a dizzying array of scholarships available, both local and foreign. Locally, the scholarships from the Department of Science and Technology and the Commission on Higher Education are woefully undersubscribed. I would say they can easily triple the number of scholars they are supporting--there just aren't enough applicants.

And then, we keep getting requests from Korea, Japan, and Singapore to send them MS or PhD students for either sandwich programs or whole degrees. Some of our best have been recruited--Ladylyn Ocampo, Marc Lihan, Kei Wai Hung--and there are many more slots available. Did I mention that these slots are fully-funded? Yup, you read that right. You get tuition and a stipend.

Back in my day, nothing like this existed. Now, it's as if schools are scrambling for people. So, as I said, there's never been a better time to think of grad school.

Bonus points

I received a letter from one of the student leaders regarding an event that they are hosting. In her letter, she requested teachers under DISCS to give bonus points to students who will attend this event.

I recognize the importance of the event and I appreciate its relevance to the formation of our students. However, student organizations have gotten into the habit of asking for bonus points in order to populate every event from the alternative class program to a dialogue such as this to org parties in Eastwood.

To me, bonus points should only be given if an event is relevant to the curriculum. If used for any other purpose, bonus points degrade education in general. Furthermore, if the orgs need bonus points to attract students to their events, then clearly their events aren't attractive enough on their own.

I would like this point communicated to the student orgs: stop asking for bonus points! If they want to stage events, they should do any one of the following:

• choose events that intrinsically attract students
• take the pains to align events with the curriculum
• resign themselves to having a small but interested group--which is actually better than having a large but disinterested group

The right balance

When a thesis student fails to deliver, how much responsibility does the adviser bear?

I am personally of the mind that the majority of the pushing should come from the students' end. The adviser, though, should create an environment in which the students can perform.

And this is where the trickiness comes in. If a student does not deliver, is it because the adviser was unavailable, or is it because the student slacked off? What if the teacher has a history of being difficult to reach, or what if the student has a history of slacking off? It's hard to attribute blame, and the only reason I'm interested in blame is because it helps determine ways of proceeding.

Donor fatigue

I think I've finally been able to attach a label to this malaise that seems to be hanging over me--it's donor fatigue. Donor fatigue is defined as a state in which donors no longer contribute to a cause because they have become tired of receiving appeals for donations.

Being in Ateneo has always been more than just a job. It's the whole "to give and not to count the costs" schtick, a vocation to be/give/do more, and to convince yourself that virtue is its own reward.

I still believe in these higher ideals, really, I do. I'm just tired. The years of trying so hard to please other people, working for other people and having to put up with the institutional and, personal baggage that this entails, it just wears on you. Add to that having to resist your own personal ambitions, your biases, and your inclinations, having to sublimate this for institutional good and, well, that takes a lot of energy.

About three years ago, I took some time off from work and came back feeling all the more committed. I'm thinking maybe it's time for another break.