Like Professor Ugoretz, I believe training is an ugly word for what I am doing in college.  I am not training for anything, unless I am pursuing a career in procrastination and exploring my interest.  What an interesting career choice that would be!  However I cannot seem to find a median salary for procrastinator anywhere on Google, and apparently exploration seems to have gone out of style since the days of Magellan and the Conquistadors.

But i digress.

I will not be trained in college.  I was trained at my job working at Modell’s when i was seventeen.  I was trained on which way to face baseball gloves to be most appealing to customers.  I was trained as to which shin guards were the best financially to sell.  And I was trained to add an order of socks to every purchase, regardless if they were eight dollars a pair, and even when it was obvious the customers, whom I knew from my own neighborhood and youth leagues, whose kids I personally coached in intramural sports, were shopping there while counting pennies trying hard not to take their kids out of Little League.  And the more senior members of the staff (the nineteen year olds) were trained to admonish me for not forcing pairs of socks and these poor parents.

I hated that job.

I refuse to believe I am being trained again.  I propose that I am DEVELOPING.  I am not being trained to read at a higher level, I am developing skills I already had, and improving the quality and understanding of literature, at the same time increasing my appreciation for it.  I am not being trained to write academically, I am developing my own writing style, a writing style I can be proud of, a writing style I may one day want to share with the world.  I am not being trained to be a psychologist, I am developing skills to help me think cognitively, and developing an understanding of the layers of the human psyche.  This development may never help me in my career path, unless it helps me to understand people better.  Or maybe I am being trained to make things sound better than they really are.

I have not been trained in college.  I have developed skills that I have been developing since i was two years old, and if you tell me that I am delusional and I am being trained but do not even know it, well then I will just be upset.

But I do truly believe there is a difference.  When I hear the word trained, the images that come to mind are Pavlov’s dogs, trained to be hungry when they hear a bell.  The other image is a kid raising his hand, asking the teacher for permission to leave the room to use the bathroom.  Even in the most urgent case, sitting in that seat bouncing up and down, hoping the teacher would call on me and be merciful enough to allow me not to urinate on her classroom floor.  That is training.  And training is important.  At an early age we are trained to raise our hand before asking a question or leaving the room because it avoids mayhem.  It avoids chaos.  It keeps things in order.  It keeps the teacher in control.  These things are all of the upmost importance.  Even through high school, it keeps things in order.  It shows respect for the teacher (although if a teacher told me in the 12th grade I could not use the bathroom, I most certainly would flip out).  At least one has the courtesy to ask.  It is perfectly fine to train a kid in some things, hoping that early training will develop into something the student realizes is right.  The student in college may not need to raise their hand in class, because by then they have realized themselves it is wrong to interrupt a teacher or another student.  They need not ask to leave the room, because hopefully they have developed a sense of courtesy, enough so that they would not abuse the privilege, and would try not to disturb the teacher on the way out.  This training is perfectly fine.  I would call it developmental training to make me feel better.

I wonder what pressuring semi-clueless parents on a tight budget to buy eight dollar socks would one day develop into?

My best guess would be Bernie Madoff.

(Inspired by multiple questions.)

I, just like every other person ever, is a part of many cultures. I’m a Jew, a woman, an American, a student, an American-English speaker, a reader, a writer, a traveler, an internet-user…I could go on. Each of the things I specifically chose to mention have at least one culture, if not many, many sub-cultures.

And each culture has it’s own rules, habits, in-jokes, and unspoken rules to navigate. I won’t make a joke about Chekov’s gun when chatting with friends in my business minor, but you can be sure I’ll mention it when I’m talking with my friends in the media studies department.

People switch between cultures all the time. As part of an average day I’ll be within the general student culture when I’m at my classes, I’ll be part of the Jewish culture when I eat my kosher lunch, I’ll be part of the feminist culture when I argue about objectification in some classroom text, I’ll be an American-English speaker when I tease my friend about her pronunciation of “about.”

Of course, it could be argues that these are small switches, most of them between cultures that have no real conflicts. I think that people are stronger in certain cultures than they are in others, but I also think that much of culture conflict is exacerbated by people referring to the “other.” I always strongly maintain that most people are more similar than they are different, but it’s always the surface differences that tend to come first when we judge other people and when we introduce ourselves.

I’m getting a little bit abstract, so I want to try to use myself as an example. When I was born, my parents gave me four names (and a family name.) “Jacqueline Anne,” the name I use in college, and work and internships. I typically refer to it as my English name, and I respond to it, and I’m totally comfortable using it.

But in Hebrew, my names is “Chana Yocheved.” (Yocheved = Jacqueline, Chana = Anne). And when I introduce myself in synagogue, or in a specifically Jewish context, that is the name I use. It’s mostly a practical decision – it’s not fair to ask everyone to remember all four names for me, even though I self-identify with all of them. It’s also pretty difficult for a lot of my friends to pronounce the Hebraic “Ch” sound, which is similar to a Spanish “J,” and is pretty guttural for English speakers.

It means, though, that I have a very real line dividing me between two of my cultures. And for some people it becomes a very Big Deal. I personally find it pretty funny, and I’m always happily surprised when two of my friends from different contexts figure out that they both know me.

But I’m essentially the same opinionated geeky me, no matter what you call me. I like creature comforts like curling up in blankets on cold days, and I love my family more than anything, and I love hanging out with my friends.  I love writing out all of my names, because they’re all mine.

So in the real world, I don’t really see myself moving between cultures in th same way, I guess. I have the same facebook page for everyone who knows me (you can look me up to confirm) and I don’t really feel this whole “dichotomy of cultures.”

But then, you have my internet persona.

Online I have my username, which is actually a fandom-specific name I came up with years ago, and have basically stuck with every since. You could trace me across multiple sites with the same name. And there, I actually do only project certain aspects of myself. Online, I’m American, and I’m a woman, (I’m careful to use gender-neutral pronouns for myself these days, but I think it’s obvious). I won’t even acknowledge my real name online, and I generally stick with purely fandom-related posts and topics. I have a lot of different interests, of course, but for the online culture(s) I’m a part of, I make a personal split between what belongs online and what doesn’t.

And that is weird, sometimes. I often wish I had more friends in real life that I could talk fandom-related stuff with, because then I could be 100% myself all the time. As it stands, I have to consciously hold myself back sometimes on my blog from chatting about certain things.

But again, it’s not that I am anything less than myself. My writing style and opinions and whatnot don’t change very much. It’s just that I’ve created a truncated version of myself for online interactions – I love using the internet to socialize with people who share my interests. But I am fully aware of how much they could be lying to me, so I choose not to reveal my whole self. It’s the only place where I actually feel the transition to another culture.

But I’ve been noticing more and more that people are more lax about hiding identity online. With different journalistic integrity issues coming up as bloggers become a more reliable (to a certain extent) news resource, a lot more people are revealing their names so that they will be trusted. And there’s something else to consider as well – with modern technology, my “secret identity” is as secret as other people care to make it. Track my IP address for long enough and people would be able to track me to New York, to Queens College, to my apartment. I’m sure my computer is hack-able. So is the wave of the future one where another “culture split” is doomed to fall? Some of the stuff I’ve read (both fiction and non-fiction) seem to think so. And of course, some don’t. (Like, oh, Ender’s Game? I suppose we’ll have a more in-depth discussion when we get there…)

When I see the word “culture”, I can think of an unlimited number of ways this word can be interpreted. Culture is such a broad topic that makes it difficult to tackle all of it. In this reflection, I will discuss culture in the context of “school culture”, and will give my interpretation of “what is school for, if not training.”

When I look back at school, I see it as a place of social interaction. Like Professor Ugoretz daughter’s kindergarten teacher said “the main goal of kindergarten was not teaching kids to count or to read or to know their colors and shapes.  It was teaching them to interact with each other, not to grab, not to hit, how to sit still and stand in line.” Though this was mentioned in the context of kindergarten, I believe that is applies to all levels of education, K-12, including college. School does not provide training for a profession, but it provides a community and education that allow people to interact with each other.

In the beginning years of education when the topics are standardized among all, schools are not training students but are unifying them. Horace Mann was one educational reformer who pushed for common education for diverse populations. Through state run formal education systems, students grow up with the ability to communicate with each other under a common language. This is especially important for communities composed of immigrants as it allows them to assimilate and participate in the society.

Schools build connections and these relations are recognized over the content and rigor of the class. When we look at the great Ivy League colleges, the students that come out of these colleges are distinguished by the connections they have to the college. People recognize Ivy League schools for the social prestige they have, even though an equal education could have been obtained elsewhere. A student may have attended all the lectures given on an open courseware website by such an Ivy League school, but they will not be viewed upon as equal to a student who has attended the college.

An example of schools building unity among students is from my personal life experience. In my early days of school, I remember one of the first things that I had to learn was the Pledge of Allegiance. Everyday in class, we started by pledging to the flag but I did not understand the meaning of the words I was saying. Though they mentioned it was voluntary, I followed along with what everybody else did, and it became a part of my school culture. This pledge is one of the ways that school has connected me to society.

A better example of unification within school would be the “breadth” students must learn. Schools enforce general education requirements in order to make students well rounded. In educating students in many fields, the future politician can communicate with the scientist, thus promoting social progress and unity. A rounded education closes the boundaries that professionals in different fields have, allowing for collaboration.

Another example of the unification process of schools is when professionals, such as doctors, come from other nations into the United States. Though these foreign professionals may be well experienced in their field, they are unable to directly participate as doctors. Instead they must attend school to conform to social practices taught at school. Keeping in the context of medical doctors, students in such schools must go through social psychology classes in order to understand their patients. No matter what the profession, there are requirements to interact with society, and it is the school that establishes this “training ground” for communication. School doesn’t teach students a profession, but it provides them with the education to communicate with the society he or she will work in.

I personally believe that true training exists only when a student comes under the wing of a professional in the field. In order for a premed student to become a doctor, he or she must perform residency. A lawyer also must become a paralegal and researchers work under a principal investigator. In all professions, there is some specialized training involved which prepares the worker for his or her job. School doesn’t provide the special training, but allows for him or her to learn from a professional in the field.

Compare a few significant social interactions in your life–especially if some of them are mediated by writing…especially writing on a screen.

I’ve always preferred writing to talking as a method of communication. I find that when we write, we’re more likely to actually transmit information than when we speak to each other. And as much as I enjoy chatting with friends for hours, when it comes to the less inane, it seems to me like a waste of time and energy to fumble around a topic instead of getting to the point. I’m often annoyed when an old classmate will call me and try to make “small talk,” when all she really wants is my help, and we’ve rarely spoken beyond that. Why is there a need beyond the original greeting to act as if she’s interested in what I’m doing? I know that she wants something, she knows that I know, and once we’ve covered the fact that we’re both doing well, there’s no need to inquire further. Of course, this isn’t always so, but it’s usually clear when a person is genuinely interested. I might come off as a bit jaded, but I’ve honestly no patience for it.

On the other hand, there are real friends, people who want to speak to me and to whom I want to speak, and those people I make a point of calling from time to time, or (preferably) seeing them in person. In those cases, inane conversation is really an important aspect of the friendship, and really very enjoyable. We’ll email and text message, too, of course, but generally, these relationships are in person.

I bring the latter forward now because I’d like to compare it to my online interactions with absolute strangers I have never met, and probably will never meet. (And no, I’m not talking about following the Dalai Lama on Twitter.) I’ve met these people through my online interests, generally on a fandom-related site, and they know me only by my handle.

My online relationships are fairly one-dimensional. While my friends in the real world know about my family, other friends, interests, goals, and everything in between, my online friends know about one particular interest of mine. Granted, they know far more about it than my real world friends would ever even care to learn, but they don’t know me, just that one aspect of my identity.

But my online interactions aren’t about getting to know other people. They’re about learning and communicating and delving deeply into whichever shared interest we have. Sometimes, they do dip into the real world- for example, one of the contributors on one forum once asked for help on a newspaper article she was writing on a certain topic, one my sister knows much about firsthand. I was able to connect them via email, and two completely unrelated people on different continents shared information. However, as a rule, I don’t ask for information unless if it’s offered. We’re united only by our love for a fandom, and that’s more than enough for a relationship so limited.

This topic doesn’t mention learning, but I’d like to address it, too, since it’s applicable here. I feel that when I’m speaking to friends in the fandom, I’m much more likely to be open to new information than when it’s taught to me by a real world friend. I think that I associate the Internet and my online friends with fun and enjoyment, and one of my favorite things to do online is to read essays written by online friends. For example, I took a class on mythology last year in college, and found that a topic that had greatly interested me before the class became far duller when taught in a school setting. But a few weeks ago, one of my fellow posters on one site took The Odyssey and The Iliad and compared them to the storyline for several seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (here, if anyone’s interested). And that I was much more interested in reading; and, in fact, for the first time since taking the mythology class, I took out my copy of The Odyssey to reread it. There’s a certain, more casual attitude in writing when it’s over the Internet (case in point: this would be far more formal if I weren’t writing it for an online course), and because of that, there’s far more openness to learning and teaching. It doesn’t matter that I’m still in college and half of my friends of livejournal are forty-year-old professionals; they read what I write and treat it with respect, like they would any of their peers’ work. On the Internet, a screen conceals us all and forces us to treat others as equals unless our online behavior makes that impossible. Without race, gender, age, or other external factors influencing our opinions, we really can teach and learn from each other with no reservations.