Posts Tagged track
Stockholm: CPS Week
While my Stockholm trip to attend CPS Week has gone well until today, I suddenly find that my travels are far from over. Thanks to the ash cloud ransacking the UK, Europe, and Scandinavia, Sweden may become my new home for awhile. I really seem to be a marked man when it comes to air travel.
Day 1: Saturday 4/10/2010
When I arrived in Norfolk, there was a mix up at the ticket counter – the web check-in boarding pass I printed the day before was invalid and it took some work for the ticket agent to print a new one. When we arrived in Chicago that afternoon, it was a very long trip from the B concourse island to the international terminal. We had to go under the ramp, into the main terminal, and take a train to the international terminal, a good 15 or 20 minutes. Fortunately, the terminal was not busy and we were able to check in at the SAS counter without any issues.
The TSA agent checking my boarding pass at the O’Hare International Terminal commented about me being from Virginia; she said she had never been there. When I travel to other parts of the country, I always get interesting comments from the locals about me being from Virginia. In Palo Alto, a waitress commented that it was cold in Virginia, when at the time I remember it was really much warmer at home than in Silicon Valley. When in Gloucester visiting an old roommate, I got a comment from his neighbor that I was from “Virginny.” I’ve also heard another Massachusetts resident (who attends school at William and Mary) refer to “Virginny,” as well. Hollywood always portrays Virginians with thick backcountry accents when the reality is nothing of the sort. Some have the Tidewater accent, but it’s unnoticeable to the untrained ear.
Also, there were no restaurants in the O’Hare International terminal: 8 bucks for a pre-made sandwich. Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait long until the Stockholm flight departed. I noticed that nearly everyone waiting was Swedish, for there were no blue American passports that I could see. Once on the plane, I realized we lucked out on the seat assignments and got extra legroom since we were just behind the premium economy section.
On the flights, my adviser and I talked about the direction of my career in school and afterwards. Placement at a faculty job would probably require more time in school, perhaps up to another year, while a research lab may require less. It’s all about gaining enough experience to do what you want to do. It was interesting to talk to him about the possibilities since he has experience in both industry and academia. Both have benefits and drawbacks and there is no way I want to close the door on any particular track just yet. Just this week I talked with some other students in our department about the time required to complete a Ph.D., and those Master’s students involved in the discussion were wary of spending years in school to graduate. I would not be opposed to spending another two years in school as long as I worked hard enough to get some good papers published in the hope that I could get a good faculty position at a research university. From the looks of it, I have plenty of time to think about it and decide.
Day 2: Sunday 4/11/2010
As usual, I didn’t sleep much on the plane, only short bouts of 10 or 20 minutes. The sun came up quickly and the clouds parted, giving us a view of jagged mountains and snow and little sign of life. Before landing, the ground was covered up again by thick fog, which we soon descended into.
Though it was 7:30 in the morning, the airport was almost completely deserted. Immigration and customs was a breeze considering we were the only flight arriving at the time. A high speed train took us from the airport to the Stockholm Central terminal; a speedometer read well over 200kph as trees and buildings flew by. I doubt any train at home travels anywhere near that fast. From the train terminal, we took a subway two stops until we were near the hotel. One thing I found odd was that the subway tickets had to be purchased from one of several convenience stores surrounding the subway entrance. In the subway terminal, there were no ticket machines or windows and no signs indicating where tickets could be bought. Instead, we had to ask someone at the entrance looking for freeriders where we could purchase tickets.
The city was mostly deserted, though it was a Sunday. Stores were closed and nearly nobody was on the subway or walking around on the streets. Even the school where the conference was to be held was nearly empty of students with the library closed. Weatherwise, the day started out cloudy but later the sun came out, with temperatures in the lower 40s – pretty much a December or January day at home. It’s a good thing I brought my heavy coat.
The hotel had a room available as soon as we arrived, which was surprising since it was only 9 in the morning. My adviser and I slept for a few hours and then headed out in the afternoon, exploring Gamla stan and the area around the conference. We walked by the parliament building and the Stockholm Palace, taking a ton of pictures.
To me, it seemed as if everyone was pretending that the weather was nice. People at coffee shops sat outside at tables, wearing winter coats while being punished by the wind. Others stood in lines at ice cream stands, despite the 40 degree weather. Plenty more were out running and biking. I suppose weather can be much worse in Stockholm.
The crowds picked up some in the afternoon, but there were few restaurants around our hotel so we settled on a Mongolian BBQ place. I’ve been to similar places at home, but in the brief time I’ve been here there wasn’t anything interesting that caught my eye. Just the usual McDonald’s and a few other places labeled “American Grill,” or “Steakhouse.” I travel thousands of miles to get away from American food, among other things, but it seems I can’t escape it.
Day 3: Monday 4/12/2010
Though sleep was better than the previous night, I still had trouble. I almost never sleep well on trips since it’s always hard for me to adjust to new environments. I got up before 7AM and went out for a run beyond the university where the conference was, noticing there was a large park I could check out, so I headed that way and was surprised. City blocks now packed with commuter traffic and sidewalks packed with people suddenly gave way to a vast forest with tons of dirt trails. Plenty of other people were out running and biking.
I tooled around on the trails for awhile and headed back. I was surprised that traffic would stop even if it looked like I was about to cross the street. In addition to the trails, there were large paved paths with marked lanes for bikes and pedestrians. Sweden seems to have solved the bike path problem so prevalent in the United States. By making the paths wider and by separating pedestrians and cyclists, cyclists can cruise the bike paths without having to dodge pedestrians. In the city, sections of curb separated bike lanes from vehicle traffic, also decreasing the chance of a bicycle accident.
On Monday, there were a handful of workshops; I attended one on “Cooperating Objects,” which appears to be a new buzzword in the embedded/sensor networks community. A few people spoke about event detection and machine learning, with ideas similar to my research. There were easily several hundred people, much more than at previous conferences I attended, people from all over the world.
At the reception Monday evening, I met Alexandra from Romania, who attended school in Slovenia. It was interesting talking to her, considering that we are from very different and faraway places, yet we work in the same field. We hung out quite a bit between breaks throughout much of the conference and through her I was introduced to a few others from Eastern Europe. At school, it can feel very insular with few people to share your work and ideas with, but at a place like this, everybody is doing the same thing, and they come from everywhere.
Day 4: Tuesday 4/13/2010
Tuesday was a long one. I was up at 6:30 to run, with plenty of daylight. I explored a different part of the park than before, but ended up by a factory. I’m still surprised at the number of trails in the city.
The plenary speaker seemed to be more of a biologist, speaking about human and animal brains as a control system. There were quite a few talks in IPSN about machine learning and/or event detection so it was interesting to see others’ approaches to similar problems. Later on, there was a poster and demo session which lasted until nearly 7:30 at night.
During the poster/demo session, I met a guy from the University of Utah which had concocted a sort of “x-ray” vision with 802.15.4 radios – I remember reading about this on the internet a few months ago. Link quality between radios would change due to people moving about in the room, and with enough links, the moving people could be localized. Apparently, his paper based on this was rejected mostly because nobody believed it.
Day 4: Wednesday 4/14/2010
On Wednesday, I hit the motherlode for trails when out on my run. On previous runs I seemed to hit dead ends – running into roads, office buildings, or even factories, but today I found a trail that took me out to the rest of the park. There were plenty more trails and open space by the time I had to turn around. It was also sunny right from the start instead of morning fog.
The IPSN tracks were pretty interesting, again with a few on event detection and machine learning. One group took a twist with a technique I used in my paper that I hadn’t thought of. I also went to the CPS conference sensor network track, but didn’t really see too much differences compared with the typical sensor network research.
Day 5: Thursday 4/15/2010
I ran again in the morning, out to all the new trails I found the day before. Unfortunately, the clouds returned. At the conference, my adviser’s adviser, Jack Stankovic, was the plenary speaker. During his talk, he used the example of a storm in Chicago as a reference to real time job scheduling. The next day, I was supposed to return home via Chicago – hearing about any airline problem in Chicago was the last thing I wanted to think about. This example eerily foreshadowed the problems to come for my return flights (through Chicago).
There were a few other sessions in the IPSN track that were interesting – at least one other event detection paper that was related to my work. Then, in the afternoon, it was time for my presentation. Since I was in the sensor networks track of RTAS, most people were in the concurrent IPSN track, so I didn’t get a huge audience.
Just before the presentation, I found out about the ash cloud coming from Iceland. One of the other people in the room mentioned about flying back through Chicago the next day, as were my adviser and I. He then mentioned something about maybe not getting back, and that’s when I found out about the ash cloud causing a huge mess in the UK and northern Europe. It was headed to Sweden next.
With this on my mind, it was my turn to present. I thought I did reasonably well and finished on time, except that I rearranged my slides just before the presentation and wound up having a backup slide placed ahead of my last slide, causing me to skip through it.
Following my presentation, my adviser and I locked ourselves in a discussion room in the university library and proceeded to call the airline reservation number to get a new booking. The earliest we could get was the following Tuesday, over four days away. Weather reports stated that the cloud might stay for days or weeks. I walked back to the hotel and extended the hotel reservation until Tuesday while in the lobby other conference attendees scrambled to adjust their plans.
At the very least, I’ll get to see more of Stockholm and Sweden, though the weather isn’t supposed to hold up. Fortunately for this week it has been fairly warm and sunny. We’ll have to take it day by day to see if the ash cloud will dissipate enough to allow us to go home. If Tuesday comes and goes and there’s no sign of the cloud letting up, it might be worth a try to head south via train or bus through Denmark to somewhere where I can fly out.
W&M Logos and Mascots: Over for now?
This weekend, I wore my team-issued jacket to the Colonial Relays in support of everyone running. Like most of my team issued stuff, the jacket had the feathered logo, since the feathers weren’t banned until my last year of eligibility. At the meet, plenty of my old teammates who were still competing wore the same jacket, but with a different logo over the breast. Apparently, those on the track team caught wearing the old jacket or logo would get in big trouble. I miss the feathers, for they gave our school logo character that it now lacks. For the first four years of my life at William and Mary, the feathered logo worked swimmingly.
Unfortunately, in 2006, the school president at the time decided not to protest the NCAA’s ruling that the feathered logo was offensive. Without any prior complaints, the NCAA decided on its own to review the logo and the use of the word “Tribe”. I recall the local media interviewing the state recognized Native American tribes, finding that none of the tribes found the feathers or “Tribe” offensive. While the NCAA permitted “Tribe” to remain, it threatened sanctions if the feathers were not removed. The school president could have chosen to stand and fight the NCAA, but caved to the demands instead, leading to the featherless interim logo, and finally, in 2007, the design of the “WordArt” logo. A weak design begotten from weak leadership.
Also this week, the college athletics department announced the new mascot, hopefully ending several years of controversy which began with the logo. For a few years, there was Colonel Ebirt, a caricature of colonial attire, but it was retired soon after the logo brouhaha began. ”Tribe” is pretty ambiguous, and neither my teammates nor I cared that we were without a true mascot. ”Tribe” by itself seemed more to symbolize the members of the school better than any mascot could. Screaming it before the start of a race reminded me that I wouldn’t be alone in the suffering to come.
The new mascot, a griffin, was narrowed down from a possible six, but I’m sure just about any of the choices would inflame much of the student body. I bet the pug was included as a strawman so that anyone complaining would say, “at least it’s better than the pug.” I’m not sure how a griffin will fit in with “Tribe.” A tribe of griffins? As with the logo controversy, it’s more about change for the sake of change instead of leaving well enough alone. It reminds me of a great quote from Calvin and Hobbes: “A good compromise leaves everyone mad.”
This weekend I…
Posted by Matt in general, microfracture on April 5, 2009
… rode outside for the first time since the surgery. This was a huge step forward and I had been waiting too long.
Over the past week or two I had been getting really restless. The hour on the trainer every day gave me a workout, but the weather was starting to turn. Spending nearly 95% of my time indoors over the past seven months was starting to really get to me. As goes the quote from “Office Space,” “Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day,” which was pretty much what I have been doing. I would walk back and forth from the Computer Science office and that was about it in terms of getting outside. Something was about to give.
It gave this weekend. The Colonial Relays was this weekend, and on Friday I walked over from the office and watched some of the distance races. The hour or so that I was out there had been the longest I’d been outside in quite a long time. That night, I went back and talked to a few of my teammates and alumni that had come back to watch. It was a great change of pace and was good to see everyone run. I talked to a lot of people that I hadn’t talked to in months, some even longer than that. A lot of people asked me when I would try running again, since the doctors have given me the okay to start. I replied that I wasn’t sure, but it would be soon. In talking to my old teammates, I had forgotten what I had left behind. For quite awhile, I’ve been in my own really tiny world, working on my projects.
Until now, the only times I would be shocked back into reality was when I would be having a discussion with my adviser in the late afternoon. We would be having a discussion on the whiteboard in his office and I would happen to glance out the window and see all my teammates run by in a blur. It’s a real kick in the butt to see that and remember what I used to do. In the world of computer science, the atmosphere is mellow, but determined. In the world that I came from, it’s about getting on the track and suffering. Unfortunately, in the context in which I live now, I don’t think anyone says, “I really dominated in that conference paper.” You don’t sweat and breathe hard while thinking up and coding a slick algorithm.
On Saturday, I got up, ate breakfast and prepared to do what I had done since before Thanksgiving: get on the trainer and pound away for about an hour. I would open the window, turn on the fan, and listen to music while I looked outside at the law students coming and going from the library. But on Saturday, the sun was shining and it was getting warm. I couldn’t take it any longer: it was time to go out.
It was about the best feeling I’ve ever had. I was uncaged, released into the wild, my natural habitat. I hauled it out past the state park at York River. The weather said the wind was blowing 30 mph gusts from the west, but I didn’t notice a thing. I powered up hills where over the summer I remember being exhausted and downshifting into the lowest gear. I remember trying to upshift, only to look down and see there were no more gears to use. A dog bolted out from its house and chased after me for nearly a quarter mile, but I kept it at bay. I turned around right before the road ended at the river. As I got closer to home, I never got tired. I looped around campus and got to the track just in time to watch the 4×800.
Yesterday was the first day in months that I didn’t do any work before dinner. I still did a little before I went to bed, so I couldn’t call it a complete day off. I was outside at the meet all day and got a nasty sunburn. I guess that happens when you don’t have a built up tolerance from running or biking outside every day. I watched all the distance relays and hung out with everyone some more. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. On the bike, I’d gone 45 minutes over an hour, and despite feeling much easier than the trainer, was enough to make me not want to move for most of the afternoon.
Today I went out again, but took it easier. I was definitely more tired today and felt more normal as compared with pre-surgery rides.
As for my knee, I was out of the saddle several times and really hammered up some hills without any real discomfort. I might have felt something this afternoon walking around, but I can’t be sure. I do know, that if my knee could handle what I did today and yesterday, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to do at least some running. Sometime soon, the same thing will happen with biking outdoors and I’ll just start running on a whim. It won’t take much to push me over the edge.
I finally broke down and got a new bike. For awhile, I’ve been worried that the rear cogs are so worn that someday I’ll go up a hill and the chain will just rip off. I tried a few new bikes out at the bike shop, the first one being a Specialized aluminum frame. It felt like my old one, nothing really special about it. But, I tried a Giant TCR-0 with a carbon frame and it felt like a rocket. It was an unused 2006 and I think I got a pretty good deal on it since equivalent new models of just about every manufacturer go for about $1000 more. I’d been to bike shops quite a bit in the past few years and I don’t often see anything older or discounted. It seems most owners keep a limited stock. The components had been switched up and have a combination of Shimano Ultegra and 105. I really don’t need the way high end components since I don’t care too much about saving some fraction of an ounce of weight. As it is, the bike feels like a feather compared to the steel Bianchi. Since my shoes and pedals were a mess, I went ahead and replaced those. Hopefully I’ll be able to try out the bike before the weather crashes this week.
If I can bike or even run outside more often it will provide more of a balance to my life. I really can’t just hole up and work all day — there’s got to be a balance to the equation. The recent discussion about goofing off boosting productivity probably has some merit in it. Biking or running isn’t really goofing off, but it provides the same release.
Pandora Radio: Mixed bag
I’ve decided to branch out from my usual Internet Radio fix and experiment with Pandora. There’s been a lot of rave reviews out there, and I recall reading a Slashdot article about the data mining algorithms that go into determining your preferences (or maybe that was Last.fm). I’ll probably mess around with Last.fm to see the differences, since Pandora definitely has its highlights and drawbacks.
The interface is great since I just have to fire up a web browser and cookies automatically log me in. There’s no messing around with a software mp3 player and picking out the correct format so the player can interpret the stream. Sound quality is okay, but it seems that some tracks are better than others.
Nearly all the reviews I read said that Pandora was excellent in picking out songs they liked. I don’t entirely agree with this. In the web-based interface, you name an artist or song you like and Pandora plays music based on particular musical qualities of the artist or song. It seems that for me, when I name an artist or song in my existing mp3 archive, one of three things happens, each with about equal probability:
1. Pandora plays a song I’ve already got in my mp3 collection. Many times it isn’t even the same artist of the initial artist/song I specified, which makes it kind of weird. It would appear as though the preferences/data mining engine is almost too good, but this definitely isn’t always the case.
2. Pandora plays something that seems almost completely orthogonal to what I specified. For example, I put in Bruce Springsteen and it played something from Megadeth with lots of screaming and out of control percussion. I’m not sure how this relationship was determined, but it definitely didn’t give me what I wanted.
3. I actually hear something new that sounds similar to the artist/song I put in. In these cases, there definitely seems to be a relationship between the original song or artist I specified and what Pandora plays. This is the case I would prefer.
Pandora definitely doesn’t live up to all the hype — its preference/similarity determination seems to be either spot on or way off. Most of the time it seems to work, but I would rather hear something new than something I’ve already got in my mp3 collection (of course Pandora doesn’t know this). That’s one of the reasons I’ve been listening to Radio Paradise — they play all kinds of stuff I’ve never heard before and a wide enough variety to keep me coming back. One of the big features of Last.fm is that it can determine your preferences from your existing collection, so I may have to give that a try to see the differences. It seems that like most of these “Web 2.0″ apps, the data mining and social aggregation algorithms sort of work, but not enough to be really cool.
Microfracture: +19 weeks
Posted by Matt in microfracture on January 5, 2009
Not much going on with respect to my knee. I’m still continuing my leg strengthening routine with leg weights and biking with the resistance trainer. I was on my feet for a few hours again over the weekend and again noticed that I was more tired than before the surgery had I done the same thing. Maybe it’s the biking, but it’s hard to tell. Regardless, it’s a far cry from the daily fatigue I faced while running on the track and cross country teams. Some guys used to hate it, but at the time I really didn’t care — it was just something I dealt with. Now, I’m starting to realize how much effort it took to get through practice every day and how ransacked I got after nearly every workout and race. Tiredness for me now equates to about the level of tiredness I faced during the first few weeks of a new training cycle when I was on the team.
I still have occasional pain in my left knee, which is probably just the IT band again, but sometimes I think I feel something in the joint. I’ve been stretching more after biking to help keep everything loose before I get in front of the computer for most of the day. I spend about 15 minutes or so now, which is better than when I first started biking, where some days I wouldn’t stretch at all. I really should do more so that I can adjust better if I bike more or start running. If I start biking on the roads for any significant amount of time or add in running, I could be in trouble with not stretching enough. Plenty of typical soft tissue injuries could be in store for me if I don’t watch out.
I drove the Mustang again yesterday for the second time since I’ve had the surgery. I’m planning on driving it again more now that I can handle it, but it still has me worried whenever I put my foot on the clutch. Each time I even touch the clutch I think about the popping and pain that ensued prior to the surgery. It’s like going down stairs was for awhile. I just have to overcome the fear, but at the same time I wonder if the clutch is going to wear down the fibrocartilage in my knee in the same way that running might. I will gradually drive it more and see how it goes. I may throw in the towel if I start to get discomfort.
Microfracture: +17 weeks
Posted by Matt in microfracture on December 23, 2008
No news is good news, I suppose.
It seems that my knee is doing fine with the exception of some minor tracking issues — it’s almost as if the joint is “looser” than before. I’m doing about 45 minutes hard on the bike every day along with some other free weight leg exercises I picked up from the PT. My PT appointments have gone down to once per week, which is good since it’s getting old doing that.
I think a few more weeks to a month at most and I’ll be confident about starting a return to running program. By that time everyone will have returned for the spring semester and I could try hooking up with my old coach or the athletic trainer about stuff to watch out for as I start running again. Both of them dealt with other athletes with microfracture so they could provide me with guidance as I go. It seems that the PT was/is rushing me back to running so I can be released from them, but I don’t get why they just don’t cut me loose. Rushing this is a really bad idea. My pre-surgery past self would have tried rushing back to running as quickly as possible, but I really don’t want to wind up back at square one and require another surgery right off the bat. I’m sure my coach and the athletic trainer wouldn’t mind talking to me a few minutes per week about how things are going.
I return to the doctor next week so I will see what he says about everything now that I am over four months post-op.
School can be more than an education…
…but academics come first.
Another Flat Hat article got my attention, this time about the difficulties of performing well in school while competing in intercollegiate sports. The author, a student-athlete, states that here at William and Mary, a divide exists between athletes and non-athletes. From my experience and the author’s, this divide seems to exist for two reasons.
The first reason is that due to time constraints between school and practice/traveling for competition, athletes self-segregate from other students. Going to class, practice, and doing homework consumed all my (and my teammates’) time and energy, leaving almost no time for any kind of social life. What little free time we had was spent with our roommates, who were also teammates. Living, studying, sleeping, eating, traveling, suffering through workouts, and showering with 40 other guys was enough of a social activity that we didn’t need anyone else. In fact, very few of us had friends or even girlfriends who were not on the team. Anyone who hung out with other non-teammate friends was seen as the odd one out.
Those who wanted to do well in races and in school didn’t do much else except practice and study. If you tried to squeeze in late night parties every week, your performances in school and running suffered. I’ve seen this happen to several teammates, who tried going out on weekends only to bomb tests and races. Anyone who wanted to compete effectively without hurting their grades had to make some sacrifices. Consequently, a lot of non-athletes see us as weird. My sister says my teammates stick out in the already nerdy William and Mary population like a sore thumb: “they’re skinny, don’t drink, have a shaved head…”
Since high school, my coaches have always said that we are students first and athletes second. If school is taking a hit, we should back off on the running. For me, it never came to that, but a few teammates during my five years of eligibility did quit the team citing academics. Nearly everyone on the team set high standards for themselves academically, and few failed to hit these standards. Almost everyone on the team that’s graduated since I’ve been here has gone on to graduate school of some sort, many to law or medical school. There aren’t many student-athletes at William and Mary that I’ve met that haven’t done well academically, but this high level of academic performance seems to be the exception, rather than the norm.
At other schools, student-athletes really do seem to live up to the “dumb jock on scholarship” stereotype. USA Today reported on how nearly all student-athletes on DI football and basketball teams major in the same discipline, usually something like “social sciences,” or “management.” They pick the easy way out to keep their grades high enough to compete and somehow many of them still fail to graduate. This is where NCAA policy should really push towards getting a useful degree not just “majoring in eligibility.” Those that do graduate “have been hesitant to cite their degree on job applications,” since their major was worthless.
The thought of incompetent athletes flunking out of the easiest classes really hits a nerve with the average William and Mary student, who most likely busts his or her butt to get through Organic Chemistry. Odds are that student’s classmates are also members of the basketball, tennis, track, and football teams, among others. William and Mary boasts a nearly 100 percent graduation rate with all of its teams and 36 Academic All-Americans since 1992.
Money is the second reason for the athlete and non-athlete divide. In the comments section of the article, a lot of students believe that the teams at William and Mary get their budgets and athletic scholarships entirely from the $1,259 per year athletic fee tacked on to tuition. They feel cheated that their tuition money is going to pay for others’ athletic scholarships. This is hardly the case. All athletic scholarships are funded from endowments and alumni donations, not from tuition. Without a strong alumni base, the athletic programs would be nonexistent. One commenter mused that he wasn’t able to use the athletic fields or run on the new track because priority went to athletic teams. Again, those fields and the new track were paid entirely by alumni donations, which specified their use for athletics. With respect with complaints about the athletic fee in general, there are plenty of fees that I pay in my tuition that go towards school programs that I never took advantage of. There are also plenty of government programs that I pay for in my taxes that I never use, either.
To me, non-athletes complain about athletic scholarships in the same manner that out-of-state students complain about in-state tuition. Out-of-state students had a choice to attend a public school in their own state and pay less money, but they didn’t (they also don’t pay VA state tax). Non-athletes had a choice to work hard in a sport in high school and potentially get an athletic scholarship, but they didn’t. As for athletic slotting, plenty of non-athletes get accepted in the same manner, but due to their socioeconomic status.
At William and Mary, we have our cake and eat it too. We can be successful students while kicking butt as athletes.
School isn’t about getting an education anymore
Increasingly, nobody seems to think the main purpose of school (especially college) is to learn and prepare for a career. It seems that college is becoming less of a place to get an education and more of some kind of camp where you go for four years. It’s not about learning as it is about the “experience.” I’ve been on this issue for some time and it only seems to be getting worse. Yesterday the Flat Hat had an interesting piece about one of the Deans of Admissions and admission policy. It used to be that admissions were based on high school GPA, difficulty of classes taken, SAT scores, and your essay. Now, according to one of the assistant deans, admissions considers:
“…all aspects of diversity, including socioeconomic, gender, race, disabilities, sexual orientation, geographic location and ethnicity.”
Aren’t all these “diversity” issues things that the admissions staff shouldn’t even know about when someone applies? Academic performance should dominate all other factors in deciding admission, and only after someone has the academic credentials and is accepted should any socioeconomic or monetary factors come into play. Truthfully, I don’t think that an applicant’s name should be on a college application: the admissions process should be completely blind to any external factors such as gender or race. The requirement that a student have some kind of college “experience” with a diversity quota seems to be overpowering the idea that going to school is about learning job and career skills. No wonder so many college students graduate and go back to menial jobs: it’s not about learning career skills anymore. It’s about the “experience.”
The Associate Dean of Admissions goes on to say that affirmative action “should be applied not just in grades K-12, but from the day a child is born.” I can’t believe she said that — especially coming from someone in her position. It’s the “spread the wealth around” mantra. It completely kills the incentive for anyone to work hard or accomplish anything. Those that have some property of “diversity” don’t have to prove their worth since they will get what they want based on their status. Those that aren’t in one of the “diverse” categories won’t have any incentive to apply to the schools they want to or to get good grades in high school since they know the admissions slots will go to those that meet specific diversity criteria.
The DoG Street Journal had an editorial recently illustrating the consequences of continuing these policies. The author argues that while there is still a gender gap in wage, that gap has reversed itself with respect to high school dropout and college admission rates. Following these trends, it is certain that the wage gap in gender will soon reverse itself as well. But, heaven forbid someone starts a movement to protect men’s rights. Those with the special privileges will fight hard to keep them, even after whatever divide they faced is long gone.
And fight they will, because those in control want to milk these policies for all they’re worth. Title IX was originally aimed at ensuring that women had an equal opportunity to attend college. With college admissions and attendance no longer a factor, the new focus is intercollegiate athletics. After JMU two years ago, Delaware, another school in our conference (CAA) is considering giving track and cross country the axe because of Title IX. Under Title IX, schools must try to have a ratio of women’s to men’s roster spaces that is representative of the entire student population. Thanks to football, this really throws things for a loop. Since most schools desperately want to cling on to a football team that incurs the school a net loss in expenditures, administrators have no choice but to cut other men’s sports. They do this despite the fact that equal opportunity does not equivocate to equal demand.
It is obvious that education is the key to solving any socioeconomic imbalances, but the key to doing so and generating a productive and globally competitive society is to reward those who work the hardest instead of those who happen to have some special property.
About
Posted by Matt in on November 12, 2008
I am a Computer Science graduate student under Professor Gang Zhou at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. My research is with wireless sensor networks and embedded systems.
As an undergraduate, I also attended William and Mary and was a member of the varsity cross country and track teams. In 2008, I suffered a cartilage tear in my knee, requiring microfracture surgery. While I have returned to running, my days of hard core competition are most likely over. Instead, I have focused most of my efforts on cycling.
I am originally from Virginia Beach and have spent my entire life living in Virginia.
Now, for the hard part
Posted by Matt in microfracture on September 19, 2008
With injuries in the past, and with this one, the actual ‘getting hurt’ part is extremely frustrating but there isn’t really anything I can do about it. Once whatever it is that is bothering me crosses a threshold, there’s no going back and no decrease in training or extra stretching or icing will allow me to keep running. Usually that threshold comes really fast after the onset and by the time I realize anything is going on, it’s too late. That was especially the case with my knee. One step I was fine and the next, pow! I did have a lot of soreness in my leg just beneath it for quite awhile leading up to the meltdown, but no way I would have predicted that it would erupt into torn cartilage one morning.
The actual rest period kind of goes the same way — it’s frustrating, but again, it’s out of my control. The damage has been done so I just have to sit tight and wait for whatever it is to heal. In previous cases, however, I just couldn’t run, but I could do just about anything else. This time, I can’t even walk. But, that’s coming to an end.
It’s not until I start to come back that things really get tough. Then, things start to come back under control. The choices I make and the things I do start to have an effect on how quickly I can return to normal. Try to do stuff too fast and the injury will come back and I’ll be out for even longer, perhaps permanently in this case. Don’t do anything at all or not enough and recovery becomes agonizing and difficult. There is some optimal level of increasing activity, but it’s hard to figure out what that is. Even when I was on the team and with the help of my coach and the trainers, nothing ever worked out perfectly and I found myself suffering a lot of setbacks when trying to come back from an injury.
It isn’t just the difficulty of figuring out what and how much to do when that makes recovery hard, but the entire transition itself that can be a real pain. The amount of time and effort required is just so much more than during the most difficult weeks of normal training when I was running track and cross country. Going out for a run or workout every day is pretty easy because it’s pretty much the same kind of thing every day and I’ve done it a zillion times before so I know exactly what to do. Even alternative exercise isn’t all that bad since I get into a routine with biking or whatever it is that I’m doing instead of running. Unfortunately, in this case, I really can’t do much of anything. However, when I start to come back, there is this transitional phase where I’m forced to do things differently almost every day — all kinds of weird strengthening stuff and the gradual addition of more activity (which isn’t always running). It takes a lot more time and effort than I’m used to, but in most cases it’s the only way I’ll ever get back to normal.
It’s now time to start coming back. Yesterday, I went to the doctor and now I can start walking again, slowly. Within two weeks or so, I am supposed to try to get off the crutches completely. I’ve slowly moved around the apartment with one crutch and it’s hard. My left leg just isn’t used to it, but it doesn’t really hurt. I’m also supposed to take off the brace and gradually try to increase my range of motion in the leg. I’ve also got to set up PT appointments which will probably also help with my return to walking normally as well as range of motion. That will involve all the weird exercises and will probably be at some strange time of day so that I feel like I have a lot less time than I used to. I’m sure eventually they’ll help me figure out when I can start biking again and hopefully even run.
At this point, I can see I still have a very long way to go. The past four and a half weeks has seemed like forever, though each day individually seems to go by pretty quickly. The weather suddenly changed and it’s no longer the typical jungle summer weather but cooler and like fall. I know that it probably won’t even be until the end of the year or even into next year when I’ll be able to run again. The long, drawn-out recovery process is what makes things especially hard. My teammate who went through this same process was back to full strength in over six months after the surgery, but it’s different for everyone, and I don’t even know if I’ll be able to make it back. If the microfracture didn’t work, I’ll be back to feeling that awful grinding pain again when I run. I have to hope for the best, and at the least, I’ll be better off than I am now.
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