No one ever told me...

...that I would spend most of my professional life being a cheerleader for other people. Nor did they tell me that it was so tiring.

On Thursday afternoons, I take part in co-managing a student project to complete an environmental innovation project funded by the EPA. Today, the students were in need of a pick-me-up, so I spent most of the class period asking them to describe accomplishments we'd already made in the project, and rewarded them by tossing bite-sized candy bars left over from Valentine's Day. It's one of those moments that is certainly worthwhile, but you don't expect to encounter in your career while slaving away at a PhD.

I suppose that it's not a requirement unique to professors, but also applies to managers and parents and pastors and marketers and missionaries and bus drivers.

Whom in your life have you had to cheerlead, even at the expense of your personal productivity? How do you keep yourself cheered along while doing so?

Carpenter, Skeptic, Savior

I learned a valuable lesson about skepticism a couple years ago.

My wife and I had just bought our first home (yay!) and decided it would be a great investment idea and a lot of fun to replace all of the carpet with laminate wood flooring. Six months later, we were approximately 10% of the way done, and learned that we didn't find it to be much fun (and, it turned out, we were also eight months away from moving again).

But I learned the value of asking good skeptical questions:

• "Is this really a right angle?"
• "Was that cut supposed to be measured from the tongue end or from the groove end?"
• "These measurements can't possibly be accurate!"

(Okay, that last one isn't a question, but you get the idea.)

I learned that carpenters have to be very good skeptics: They have to know how to ask constructive questions that challenge the status quo to help develop a correct understanding of reality. We have to do the same thing in physics problems (hence my use of a Pascalian group problem-solving strategy), and in studying theology.

It's also important to remember that Jesus was a carpenter, who had to ask such skeptical questions about every cut He made. In many ways, He also applied that same clear-cut understanding to the spiritual world, calling into question those who sat on their spirituality a little too comfortably.

Here's to good skepticism!

Potential Kindred Spirits?

Things aren't looking good for global warming/climate change activists. Let's look at the record.

1. Their message isn't welcomed by a society of people who don't want to make changes to their lives.
2. Their message is based on claims no one completely understands.
3. The scientific credibility of their message has been compromised by scandal.
4. The public challenges their claim because of seeming inconsistencies with reality.
5. Because of these inconsistencies, they've had to expand their claims and change their name.

Yes, it seems like things don't look good for the climate change movement.

But these traits make it very similar to another movement that's in trouble: the young-earth anti-evolution creation science movement (or any variation thereof). These members of these two movements could learn from each other, offer each other empathy. They are, potentially at least, kindred spirits.

The great irony, though, is that Christians provide the climate change movement with some of its most ardent opposition, creation scientists included.

Even if one disagrees with their conclusions (on scientific or theological grounds) or questions their methodology, is it more important to join the broader culture in mocking them, or to spread the gospel by identifying with their challenges? Shouldn't we be capable of empathizing with people with whom we don't agree?

Undergraduate Corner: Dream big, but keep your head in the game

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

Today, you'll get to hear from my wife, Amy. Enjoy!

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Hi. I'm Amy, Brian's wife. He's given me the keyboard today to share a simple, but profound thought I've only recently wrapped my head around, as the title says: dream big, but keep your head in the game.


When I was an undergrad, I had big hopes, long-term year plans, meticulous GPA trackers, and color coded notebooks. I was the unstoppable force immovable objects dread. My goal, simply stated by my roommates so often, was to take over the world and I was going to use a finely sharpened #2 pencil to do it.


My senior year brought a series of life and perspective changing events (injury, boyfriend, breakup ... are some of mine, feel free to add your own to your mental list).


I found myself losing sight of my big dreams in the murky waters of the everyday mundane. Then, in the need for catharsis, I would attempt to catapult myself toward my dream, leaving the dreary day planner behind. I swung between these two extremes for years, along the way running blankly through graduation, first jobs, even marriage.


In 2009, I realized I had settled into a routine based life that lacked forward-movement. Most of my college "deadlines" and "goals" had passed. Just before beginning to wallow in self-pity, I remembered (after some not-so subtle reminders from a certain physics prof) that looking backward while trying to move forward will get you nowhere.


2010 will be a year of new goals set and met, of renewed vision and dreams. Along the way, I think I'll find my good ole #2.

It's Weird Being on This Side

My Quantum Mechanics students are struggling through what is quite possibly one of the most challenging homework assignments of the semester. It's not necessarily the most difficult (we haven't even gotten to linear algebra yet), but it is probably the one that requires the most amount of work and thoughtfulness.

One of the problems is a scaled-down version of an assignment we wrestled with in graduate school to create plots to compare the behavior of a mass on a spring in classical mechanics with its behavior in quantum mechanics. (Plotting the classical and quantum probability densities for successively higher energy levels, for those familiar with the material.) The results are very illuminating, but it takes quite a bit of work to reach the satisfying conclusion... especially since a single mistake along the way can ruin the end product!

I spent some time after class with them in the library computer lab as they worked on the assignment. I saw in their eyes the same level of concentration & consternation that my classmates and I had displayed when completing this assignment... and I have to say, it was weird being on this side of it.

I know what the final results are supposed to look like, and I know what steps they need to take, and I know what they're supposed to learn along the way. (Granted, I will probably make mistakes as I finish my own solutions to the assignment.) And I am setting them on this task that will take a good number of hours.

It makes me think of how Jesus is described in Hebrews as a sympathetic high priest. I was reminded of the importance of that feature of His relationship to His people. I hope I can mimic it well in my relationships with my students and with others.

Additional (possibly irrelevenat) comment: I looked up "weird" in the dictionary to make sure I had spelled it correctly, and learned that it has the same origin as the word "worth." Do we think of "weird" things as having unique "worth?"

What is Done in Secret

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.  Matthew 6:1-4

As an educator, there's a lot that I have to do that no one ever sees. Grading lab reports, tracking students' grades, setting up on-line materials, fixing typos, scouring for homework problems---It is all prep work that none of my students or colleagues ever see. It also makes for boring dinner table conversation. For example, imagine the following:

"How was your day?"


"It was okay."


"What made it just okay?"


"Well, I was trying to write comments on a student's pre-class reading assignment, and I wanted to say that the expectation value of momentum was definitely zero in this problem, but when I wrote it as <p>, the on-line software interpreted it as an html paragraph tag, and it came out looking strange. It took me about half an hour to figure out why. I'm still not sure how to fix it."


"Oh... okay."

I have to remind myself that God "sees in secret," and that He has a reward prepared, apart from how many people see it or hear about it.

T-Rex on Doubt vs. Skepticism

http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=544

While clicking through random Dinosaur Comics, I found this little gem about post-modern thinking in a prehistoric context.

Undergraduate Corner: "Who Told You That?"

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."

I think one of the most underutilized verses in the Bible is right at the beginning: "Who told you you were naked?"

I had a similar question arise last week in my Quantum Mechanics class.

One of my students was growing frustrated with his halting success and many intellectual roadblocks to completing the first round of homework problems. "How can I calculate this thing [the expectation value of x]?" he asked. "I've never even seen this kind of formula!"

I spent the better part of this week thinking over how to help him overcome his frustrations. It is, at first glance, an intimidating formula

but there was something odd about his frustration.

Then, I realized what it was: He was expecting to be able to complete this course using only concepts he already knew.

"Who told him that?" I asked myself. "Who told him he needed to know everything before taking a course?"

I realized, then, that this was a cognitive hurdle that many of my students were troubled by, at all levels of physics.

I brought this up with the student during class on Friday, as the students began to work another set of problems. "Somewhere along the way," I said, "someone told you---and many of your classmates---that you had to know everything before coming into a course. I don't know who did, or when or why, but that's what keeps you from succeeding."

His jaw hit the floor. He realized that it was true---and went on to best a rather lengthy Quantum Mechanics problem, involving many formulas more scary than that for <x> quoted above.

Where did these students get this idea? Who told them they did not---and could not ever---have what it takes?