Looking for a Career? Take the Path Less-Traveled

For those of you about to graduate from academic programs at various levels, here are some thoughts about career selection, and how those selections worked out for me.   Enjoy!   --Prof. Oates  18 April 2011

0)  Take the path less traveled. The alligators know the well-worn paths, and they're much more likely to make your life miserable and, maybe, eat you alive if you take the traditional career paths.  Progress in traditional career fields is much harder and often much less interesting than in new fields.  Look for a field that's just opening up.  In my youth, that was computer software (not so much lately).  Now, it's stuff like molecular biology, nano technology, and renewable energy where opportunities are springing up like mushrooms on a rain-soaked lawn.

1)  "How to Become a Medication-Math Instructor without Really Trying (To)"

     http://profoates.blogspot.com/2009/10/retrospective-how-to-become-medication.html

2)  "Fourth Quarter," a sketch of how I played the game, and how I hope to finish it out

     http://profoates.blogspot.com/2009/10/fourth-quarter-2008-12-17.html

3)   Some untitled thoughts about M.D. degrees for one of my twenty-something friends, quoted below

"... Let me try to take a crack at some advice myself.  The good news is that students who've accumulated some experience and maturity, many of mine at OCCC for example, very often far out-perform their 18 or 19 year-old counterparts academically.  They've figured out what they want to do and what it takes to get there.  They're willing to do pretty much whatever it takes to accomplish their goals, including working full-time, going to school full-time (12 credit hours/semester to keep their financial aid going), and in some cases tend to a brood of two or three kids, all at the same time.  I don't know when these people sleep, but I can testify to the fact that SOME of them do all this and do well in school, particularly if they can find some instructors who are willing to help them juggle all these conflicting responsibilities.  ...

"The bad news is that sustaining the level of activity that's required to get a doctoral-level degree of whatever flavor is really tough.  In the three-to-six years that's required beyond a bachelor's degree, there's a tendency for the whole business to begin to wear on the student big-time.  I experienced this first hand as I did the first 12 hours of my masters full-time when I couldn't find a job in 1970/71, then pieced together the rest of a masters in computing science working full time and taking six hours each semester.  When I got a chance to go on "sabbatical in reverse" from my silly-villian Air Force job and return to O.U. to teach and work on my Ph.D. full-time for a year, I jumped at the chance.  After a year's worth of teaching computing science courses (assembler language programming) in '76/77 and taking some pretty good comp. sci. and electrical engineering courses, it occurred to me that I was going to work that hard and harder for two or three more years in order to get a teaching job that paid about 2/3 of what I was making working for the Air Force.  In the mean time, I'd draw teaching fellowship pay that didn't quite make my house payment.  It didn't take too long to see that continuing wasn't worth the investment, and I returned to my Air Force job for a year or so before moving out into the private job market.

"Obviously, your situation is considerably different from mine, but the principle is the same. Lots of things can keep you from reaching a goal that includes a doctoral-level degree. I'd say you pretty clearly have the smarts to do it, but it's a really long road.  If I were in your shoes, I'd be careful to get into a program that has what I'll call graceful exit points. For example, pharmacists these days get only one degree, a doctorate in pharmacy. If, for some reason, they do not complete their six year program, they have no bachelor's or master's degree, no nuthin', nada.  That path is definitely not equipped with graceful exit points. On the other hand, following a program that has the usual bachelor's, master's, and doctor's degrees has those milestones as safety-exits, and may still have considerable commercial value, even if not completed to the doctoral level. 

"As you pointed out, the medical profession tends to be full of B.S.-level grunts and M.D.-level demigods without much in between.  There's not much to do about that, but it might be a good thing to look at some of the emerging bioinformatics programs, bio-statistics programs, and the like where the level of specialization even at the master's level permits some independence and, possibly, jobs that don't have the master-slave relationship that medical staff vs. physician relationships entail.  The genetics side of your interests might fall into a category with non-subservient master's level jobs, but I'm not conversant enough with the details of that field to be sure of that.

"I wish I had "mo-betta" ideas on this topic, but I hope you'll find this at least somewhat useful.  In any event, I'm available to answer questions, and I've been at least part-way down one of the roads to a Ph.D., and sometimes that's helpful.  I was always "feeling my way in the dark" when I was on my Ph.D. adventure, because no one in my family had degrees outside the teaching field, and no one I knew had a clue about how to navigate the top academic levels of science and engineering.  I don't know how helpful sharing my experiences along these lines may be to you, but I'm willin', anyway. :^)

C. L. Oates

18 April 2011

Norman, Oklahoma, USA

Time to Help

After the May 3, 1999 F5 tornado in OKC, driving to work every day required me to cross the mile-wide swath of destruction the tornado left between my home and my work location. The sight of rubble piles where houses had been, houses with missing roofs and walls, and automobiles scattered, crushed, and twisted like the Jolly Green Giant's beer cans assaulted by eyes for many, many days. It was quite depressing.

Now, I try to imagine what a whole region of a country (Japan) in this condition would be like. The devastation is simply unimaginable: first a very severe earthquake, then tsunami-driven floods, and now who-knows-what from damaged nuclear reactors. Health care, transportation, utilities, and communications are down completely or heavily impaired and will remain so for some time. It's so far from my personal experience (thank goodness) that it's really hard to comprehend.

If you haven't done something to help, pick up your cell phone and text redcross to 90999 to donate $10 to the relief effort. It only takes a minute, and if everyone would do it, a considerable donation would result. Your fellow humans need a hand.

Thanks in advance!

Chuck / Prof. Oates

Norman, OK, USA

15 March 2011

Oklahoma Burning!

Oklahoma Burning!

Prairie Fire Burns South of Norman

Isn't it *wonderful* to be oil-dependent?!

Isn't it *wonderful* to be oil-dependent?!

Isn't it *wonderful* to be oil-dependent?!

(from my Facebook wall after the Libyan political crisis had been festering and run oil prices up, Tuesday, 1 March 2011)

Tuesday at 2:35am ·    

•   Mats Ittonen likes this.
• • Chuck Oates 
    Presumably, political instability won't be able to turn off the sun, and certainly NOTHING will stop the Oklahoma wind! Sounds as if it's about time to make (flip?) the switch. Meanwhile we have at least another decade or two or of this nonsense, even if we start a renewable energy "Manhattan Project" today, which seems pretty unlikely, given the sophomoric folks we've sent to the U.S. Congress. :^(
    
    
    Meanwhile, American oil companies run TV commercials telling us we need to drill our way out of "foreign-oil dependence." Sophomoric also, not to mention quite impossible at this point.
    
    
    The only bright spot is that, wonder of wonders, power companies have done the math are beginning to build wind farms like crazy. Both Woodward and Weatherford, Oklahoma look like the Jolly Green Giant has gone crazy setting out three-bladed pinwheels. See a (very) few of them at http://bit.ly/ebY63G , http://bit.ly/gPDRNY , and http://bit.ly/dFPx2i . 
    
    
    That's great, but it would be even better if they could build them using locally-built wind turbines--not easily found in the U.S., since wind turbine manufacturers, like Norman's Bergey WindPower,http://www.bergey.com/ , have a hard time getting financing for anything bigger than turbines of several kilowatts. It certainly isn't for lack of ready and willing local engineering talent!
    _________________________
    Sophomore: from the Greek words for "wise" and "fool."
    
    
    Tuesday at 10:09am · Like
    
    
    
    
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    Chuck Oates Here are some shots of the Blue Canyon Wind Farm near Medicine Park (Lawton), Okla.: http://bit.ly/gtfQWK . I'm not sure where they're getting "largest wind farm in Oklahoma," though. The Woodward wind farms are *much* larger in wattage and maybe in land area.
    Tuesday at 10:18am · Like
    
    
    
    
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    Chuck Oates Photo 68 of this albumm gives a bit better idea of the extent of the Weatherford wind farm: http://mysp.ac/eDpFRo .
    Tuesday at 10:41am · Like
    
    
    
    
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    Richard W James They are build wind farms here too by Vega.
    Tuesday at 6:11pm · Like
    
    
    
    
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    Chuck Oates 
    The more, the merrier!
    
    
    Maybe we should also experiment with some facilities to break water into hydrogen and oxygen with any excess electricity produced to even out the load. The hydrogen could then run turbojet-driven generators when the wind is calm. (I don't know of anyone firing turbojets with hydrogen right now, but I don't why it couldn't be done. Those things will run on Chanel No. 5 if you have a sufficient supply.)
    
    

Signs of spring ...

Madam Montessori, Still Teaching!

Chuck Oates

27 February 2011

Norman, Oklahoma, USA

Madam Montessori, Still Teaching!

This excerpt from a letter to a friend of mine in Europe should make you wonder why we're not all using the Madam Maria Montesorri's method to teach our young children.  It's not just for smart kids, by the way; it was originally developed for kids who had learning difficulties and were slow to learn.  It works well for them, but when it's applied with brighter kids, they essentially use the method to teach themselves, in a quite guided way.  

I should mention that my daughter Carri has an M. Ed. in Montessori pre-school education from Oklahoma City Univeristy and a certificatioin as a Montessori "primary" (pre-school) teacher. 

Enjoy!

_________________________ 

...

"We went to Carri and Dustin's house last night after supper to give them a hand with building a greenhouse, a 2 m  x  2.5 m affair that'll extend the local growing season a couple of months at both ends.  We took with us a set of Montessori "knobbed cylinders," the second in a series of four [geometric puzzles] that Montessori pre-schools use for developing the sense of diameters, lengths, and so on.  You can see the full set of four at http://www.kidadvance.com/Store/Category.asp?catid=1&offset=12 .  They're at the top left with the name Cylinder Blocks, SE003.  These matching cylinders and blocks are disassembled and re-assembled by Montessori three-year-old (or so) kids so that they can develop their vision and sense of touch.  

"Amy, who is now a year and ten months old, had learned to work the simplest of these already, the block with cylinders whose diameters decrease as their lengths decrease.  After Amy showed us her skill with the block and cylinders she had been working with, Carri got out the new block with decreasing diameters and lengths that increase as the diameters decrease (considerably harder to put together), and went through the Montessori ritual of introducing it to Amy.  She showed Amy how to unload the cylinders and then reload them into their matching holes in the wooden block.  Then they put the work (the cylinders and block) on Amy's Montessori equipment shelf where it will 'live' from now on.  

"When it came Amy's turn to go get the work and do it herself, she carried it to the low coffee table where she works on such things, and set it down.  She then took all the cylinders out and scattered them on the table.  In a matter of a minute or two, she had all of these differently shaped cylinders back in their holes in the wooden block on her very first try, no muss no fuss.  Also, during the re-loading, she had set the longest skinniest cylinder on its end on the table and balanced it perfectly while it awaited placement into the block.

"I'm not sure how much you've been around little kids, but this is usually something only kids over three can even begin to do, and doing it more than a year early is pretty phenomenal.  Of course one year to a two year-old is half their life.  It was an amazing performance.  All of us applauded and said, "good job!"  Amy was overjoyed and proceeded to work the puzzle again for us.  I suspect that Amy has inherited ["Dah-Dah"] Dustin's ability to visualize in three space and solve puzzle-like problems.  

"Amy is also counting on her abacus, in the curious sequence 1, 2, 3, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9.  This is the sequence that very young children often use, something like the counting sequence in some South Pacific island native languages that count "one, two, many."  Again, it's something that Amy is doing way ahead of the usual age for such things.  Taken together with her ability to recognize, act out, and say a few written words now (ball, hi, wave [as a verb], goat, cat, dog, Amy, and so on), it appears she's really "blowin' and goin' " on learning all kinds of stuff.  [Thank you, My Baby Can Read, also.]

"When I babysit her, she continually brings me her hard-page books and insists that I read to her, while she turns the pages.  She loves geometric puzzles, and can entertain herself for quite a while doing simple flat picture puzzles, as well as the more complex "put the hexagonal cylinder (prism) through the hexagonal hole, the square cylinder through square hole, etc." puzzles.   

"Okay, I know *all* grandparents continually go on and on and on about their grandkids, and I've just proved I'm no different, but nonetheless I am astonished at how quickly Amy is catching on to stuff.  Her speaking vocabulary is still pretty small, but it's had an explosion lately, as well.  Her listening vocabulary and ability to understand our directions and comments, though, is--have I used the word "astonishing" already?  

"The fantastic part of all this is that Amy seems to love doing all this stuff.  She is so proud of herself when she conquers something like the knobbed cylinders or a simple picture puzzle that she gives her trademark ":D" grin, laughs, applauds herself and jumps for joy.  She's almost always interested in the next game or puzzle or whatever, and in the rare events when she's not, Carri doesn't push her.  That's the whole idea of the Montessori method:  to recognize when the kiddo is ready for some activity and present it only when they're ready.  The modern Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget [zhaah pee-ah-ZHAY] (http://bit.ly/hntjIJ) worked out the formal details of all that, but Madame Montessori (http://bit.ly/ebezlV  <--be sure to at least look at the picture at the top of this article) developed the method in the late 1800s.  When the kids are ready for an activity, you don't have to do any more than just introduce them to it, and they'll do the rest with considerable enthusiasm.  Kinda makes ya wonder why we do lock-step teaching in school, boring the bright students and baffling the slow ones, doesn't it?

"I guess I'm just having a twenty-some years later replay of Carri's early childhood.  Then, I was watching Carri acquire all these skills after I had had to watch my dad gradually lose almost all of them, at least intermittently, over several years.  Having watched Dad's decline, it was *really* wonderful to watch Carri's development and acquisition of all these capabilities only a year or two later.  There's a blog entry about all that here, if you're in a reading mood:  http://chuxstuff.blogspot.com/2011/02/lemons-and-lemonade.html .

...

_________________________________________________

A good introduction to the Montessori method in "primary" (pre-school) classrooms:  http://slidesha.re/dUZBKE .  Also, http://bit.ly/ebezlV .

Oh, have I mentioned that a Post-It Note is now known as an "Amy" around our house?  Amy pulls a blank sticky note off the pad, brings it to us, and says, "Amy, Amy, ..." until we satisfy her request to write her name on the sticky note!

Lemons and Lemonade

Chuck Oates

29 October 2006

Norman, Oklahoma, USA

Lemons and Lemonade

Many years ago, I shuddered when my wife, Sue, appeared at the classroom door in the middle of one of my classes at O.U. She beckoned, and from her expression, I knew the news was not good. My grandad (and adoptive dad) had had a stroke. His recovery was uncertain at best.

Over the next several weeks, I spent every weekend in Amarillo at the hospital and then at Dad's home as he made a partial recovery. He was partially paralyzed on one side. His formerly clear and capable mind was a hodgepodge of his old self and a different and strange person. He was unable to identify which room of the house he was in, but able to give me driving directions around town in Amarillo. He could not distinguish night from day, though his vision was quite good, and he would often rise at 2 a.m. and attempt to drive his car to a nearby coffee shop, with near-catastrophic results on one occasion. His condition varied from day to day. Some days he was almost his old self; others, he was helpless and almost completely confused about virtually everything. Over time, the latter became more and more common.

I watched as my dad declined for the next seven years, losing first one ability and then another, until we finally exchanged roles as father and son. He spent his last 18 months here in Norman in a nursing home. I used to take him to visit our family farm in Texas west of Woodward, Oklahoma because, though he had difficulty knowing where he was or what time of day it was, he could fairly consistently remember the part of his life he had spent as a child and young man in Shattuck, OK and Higgins, TX. I learned a great deal about early-1900s western Oklahoma and about his parents and siblings that I would never have known otherwise. I also cleaned up a lot of BIG messes.

When he died, I was devastated. He had been my granddad, my dad, and in some senses my brother and at the very last, my child. I thought the moon and stars might well come crashing down from the sky. I took some comfort in the fact that part of him--me--was still very much here, alive and well. For a long time afterward, and particularly while I was acting in his stead as the executor of his will, I signed my name with my full middle name, his given name, in his honor and in recognition of the fact that I was, in a number of ways, operating for both of us.

Like many bitter events, this one had a sweet antithesis that wasn't long in revealing itself. Within a month after Dad's death on Christmas Day 1980, Sue was pregnant with our one and only, Carri. She was born the following October. The wonder of that event can't be put into a few words, but one thing was soon very clear. I saw in everything Carri learned, in every new skill she acquired, all the things I had had to watch my dad slowly lose. The joy of seeing those abilities arise in dad's (great-)granddaughter are beyond measure or description; my appreciation of their appearance, though, was exponentially increased by the terrible experience of having to watch their disappearance in my dad. That effect was anything but anticipated during Dad's decline, but most welcome during Carri's childhood.

There are several potential lessons here. The most obvious is that, operating without knowledge of the future, we are very often unable to appreciate the full significance of the current events in our lives. The saying, "Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward, if at all," captures this idea well. Another is that the aphorism, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade," can leave us without any reasonable idea about how to make lemonade out of what's available. Yet another theme is that life, though finite for each of us as individuals, goes on through our offspring, and part of making the most of our very finite lives should be to ensure that the generation(s) that succeed us get a good start and have an environment, both locally and globally, that will permit them to flourish ... And on a much more practical level, the lesson is that baby diapers are absolutely no trouble at all if you've dealt with the adult variety, or the lack thereof! :^)

Make it a good day,

 
Chuck