The Skipper's Log

Ruminations on education

[indieuh]

“All the feminist movement needed to do was bring on someone who had the balls to do something about this glass ceiling business,” said McGowan, who quickly closed the 23.5 percent gender wage gap by “making a few calls to the big boys upstairs.” “In the world of gender identity and empowered female sexuality, it’s all about who you know.”

[indieuh]

Priceless and perfect.

[maxheron]

[benningtonpostbac]

A fortuitous convergence of signs at the north end of campus on a sunny spring day.

[twentysixvision-blog]

It was gorgeous on Thursday- the entire week for that matter. I’m walking home, enjoying the sound of the most beautiful African drum rhythms and the patterns of young dancers moving to the sound on the lawn. They stop drumming as I pass.

Would you like to join us?

And this is what seperates Bennington from most campus communities: the open doors. They are everywhere here. Invitations at every turn— to make something, to join in, to create and collaborate. It’s infectious. It’s the kind of place that helps you rise to the highest creative bar possible.

I not only love what I do, I love where I do it. Beautiful Bennington. 

[neitherlandish-deactivated20150]

Merck at Sunset

[benningtonpostbac]

Beautiful springy day on campus! (Taken with instagram)

[benningtoncollege-deactivated20]

“It’s like dreaming.” 

Bennington College biology faculty member Betsy Sherman took 14 students to the Cayman Islands for Field Work Term, in conjunction with her class Field Course in Coral Reef Biology. Students became certified scuba divers and gained first-hand experience studying coral reef fish biodiversity, collecting collecting valuable data to be used for research studies and governmental policy. All photo and video by Betsy Sherman.

[sententiarum-deactivated2012110]

He teaches mathematics here at Bennington, but in a sense he also teaches physics. I took Intro to Applied Mathematics last term on a whim (I am not the most science-minded person on this planet) and discovered that I not only adored him, but that maybe I was a little more math-minded than I...

[carolynlewon-deactivated2018091]

[yungshrug]

Rollerama at Bennington

[himmelskip]

Every spring the entire student body dons skates and hits the Greenwall floor...

[playwrightongallifrey]

So lots of reading and homework assignments going on for me, a lot of stuff (in addition to the show I’m putting on/other stuff) but it’s manageable (overwhelming sometimes but I”m doing better than last term). This is why I’ve not been as active lately.

On a more-fun note, this weekend I’m in...

[benningtonstudents]

At the start of Field Work Term I had the most amazing opportunity to go on a Bennington class trip with Betsy Sherman (aka Biology Goddess/Science teacher extraordinaire) along with our Coral Reef Biology class to the Cayman Islands on a SCUBA diving data collection trip. We all got SCUBA certified (woohoo!) and went on to collect data for REEF.org, an organization that relies on volunteers (mostly students) to collect and submit surveys so they can monitor reef fish populations in the Caribbean.

There is no way to even begin to explain what it feels like to be breathing under 60 feet of water, inches away from some of the most beautifully bizarre organisms on this planet! In addition to swimming through schools of brightly colored fish, we observed sea turtles munching on sponges, huge maze-like coral colonies, shoals of squid rapidly changing color, and the list goes on and on.

 I had been dreaming of going on this trip even before I was accepted into Bennington, and it was one of the (many) reasons that I feel in love with this place. “Betsy Sherman’s SCUBA trip” became sort of a mantra for me, and after years of waiting (the trip itself is offered every couple of years) I finally found myself dressed head to toe in SCUBA gear getting ready to dive in! Plus, we had the chance to SCUBA through a shipwreck which was totally awesome.

-Amira ‘13

[himmelskip]

Applied Physics: Deformation of solid materials

Tim: This Physics class is all about not making buildings fall down. We're not gonna discuss angular acceleration very much

Math student: Why not?

Tim: Because when your building is falling down no one cares where or how fast it's falling.

[802512]

Sunday afternoon music— Will Stratton ‘09 has released two tracks from his upcoming album “Post-Empire” and I am ALL OVER THEM. I’ve already listened to “You Divers” 6 times in a row. (Fun fact: this song features Bennington alums Maia Friedman, Heather Sommerlad and Adele Mori, too)

[betterbooktitles]

The best of Children’s Literature on Better Book Titles.

[himmelskip]

If you haven't read Jonah Lehrer's recent article in the New Yorker, "Groupthink", hop to it. Here's why:

Humans tend in two directions simultaneously - we limit each other with our sameness (that's why we tend toward people we already agree with, or why we are ethnocentric or prejudiced, or why when one person buys things we all tend to want it); or we can inspire each other with our differences (that's why we explore, travel, create, innovate). We're neither one or the other. We are always both. 

When it comes to college education, understanding these dual tendencies becomes very important. Why is it that we tend to think job=business major, or rich=economics major? Why is it that we just apply to the same 10 schools our friends or parents did? That's groupthink. But the true joy of college is seeing the incredible opportunity you have to begin carving your own path. To do that, you want to be in an environment where you will interact with (not just walk past) different kinds of people studying different kinds of things and asking different kinds of questions. If you're a bio major, you want to be living, talking and thinking with artists and writers and historians. You want to live and eat and play with people who are diverse not just in where they come from or what color their skin is, but in what kinds of intellectual questions drive them, what things they are curious about, how they want to impact the world. An environment like that encourages collaboration rather than groupthink; it will stimulate your creativity rather than stifle it. 

When you read Lehrer's article you'll see that Steve Jobs understood this deeply when designing Apple's campus - putting the only bathroom in the whole building in the atrium so that engineers and designers and managers all HAD to bump into each other; or why MIT's Building 20 is known as the "magical incubator," one of the greatest idea labs in modern intellectual history. The world is in desperate need of innovators, creators, and collaborators - not more groupthinkers.

So hop to it.

[oncrickethill]

Maya L.’s cover of the Ronettes’ “Why Don’t They Let Us Fall In Love” —Chrissy