Strongly Worded

Taking a Blogging Break

See you in August!

Posted by Dori at 3:36 PM 3 comments

Talking (Work)Shop

I just enrolled in a writing class. I have taken a few workshops before, most recently a week-long course at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. I wanted to do travel writing but "Memoirs of Crisis" was the only class with available slots, so I spent a week in wacky and wild beach-side Provincetown, workshopping pieces about bulimia, AIDS, homelessness, and racism. It was intense.

I'm sure many of you are familiar with writers' workshops. Generally they comprise a mix of talented women, mainly on the friendly and down-to-earth side, many with edgy glasses. Thrown in are a few out-of-the-mainstream types who wear flowy outfits (made of hemp or other natural fabrics) and have names like Thunder. There is usually at least one person who is very thin and very serious and has an MFA. And usually there is a lone guy, one who is jokey and nice, and who gets undue attention and achieves mascot status because he possesses a Y chromosome.

Another characteristic of writer's workshops is that people tend to Put Things Out There, and often write about exceptionally private things in great detail. It is excruciating to workshop their pieces, to listen to them read about their wrenching experiences, and then to say: "That scene with the three acts of sod*my? I found the sentence structure a little off-putting; I noticed some inconsistent use of tense."

I liked the people in last night's class - for the most part, it seems like a good (and super talented) group. However, four very talkative, very macho guys have enrolled. And many of the participants have MFAs and published works, so I felt intimated. And we kicked off with some oversharing. The instructor asked us to write about the best or worst five minutes of our lives. One person wrote about hitting addict's rock bottom. Another person wrote about the birth of a child conceived after years of infertility. A third shared a detailed sex scene followed by a depiction of heartbreak. And we wrapped up with a story of someone's (unsuccessful) resuscitation of a dying relative.

No way in hell was I sharing my piece about a happy five minutes: riding cross-country at horse camp.

Posted by Dori at 9:17 PM 5 comments

I Carried a Watermelon (Twice)

My friend Erica is one of those people I like a lot but rarely see. We actually met through work, though our meeting was probably inevitable because we have many friends in common and in fact even dated the same guy (at different points in time). In the very small world that comprises Greater Boston Nonprofits, she now holds the job that was formerly held by the woman who replaced me at my former soul-sucking job.

Anyway. Erica is way busy. (Not that she's too-cool-for-school, just hard to get a hold of.) So I see her very occasionally when she's free for brunch at my house, and at her fabulous seasonal parties for which she goes all out. And by that I mean all out. She makes homemade crackers and bread sticks. Figs stuffed with marscapone and gorgonzola. Dates filled with almonds and dipped in dark chocolate. All kinds of fancy dessert goodness ... it goes on.

According to her E-vite, last night was "An Lazy Summer Evening of Deliciousness," whereas Erica invited a mix of people over for punch and treats on her gorgeous patio. I went over with a batch of friends and we burst confidently onto the patio, drinks in hand. And we found ourselves facing a group of seniors sitting decorously on lawn chairs. Erica was nowhere to be seen. The seniors raised their eyebrows at us, we smiled uncertainly, and then we turned on our heels and went back out to the street, laughing hysterically and thinking we must have barged in on the wrong party. Is that Erica's house? We felt like idiots. Someone suggested we call Erica to check. Someone else argued: "What are you going to say? That we think we're at your house but it's full of old people?" The point was moot because Erica did not answer her phone. In the end, we sheepishly traipsed back in, and it turned out that we were in the right place, and that the much older guests were board members from Erica's job. They arrived early and left early. The party was lovely. Nobody seemed to notice, or care, that we made two entrances.

Posted by Dori at 8:49 PM 1 comments

I Am So Ordinary

So I do not have anything monumental to report. I am not newly pregnant, like the beagle-owning, tap-dancing Jen, nor have I recently birthed a second child, like the hilarious, 7-Up chugging Big K. Nor have I completed a really cool documentary-spawning road trip like Marigoldie (whose blog is password-protected).

So what non-monumental things have been preventing me from regular blogging? Sleepiness and malaise caused by the cocktail of drugs that are supposed to lessen migraines and generally improve my neurological well-being. (The jury is very much out on that one.) Going on some decidedly non-monumental dates (unworthy of UpDATES, at least for now.) And working rather hard, visiting more students in intern-land. (I did, by the way, give an email smack-down to the .05% most brilliant student, but he never wrote back.)

This has proven to be exhausting and also interesting, since I meet separately with supervisors and students and act as a kind of double agent. One of our students is working on a revolutionary aircraft that will be test-flown in the Fall, and he's assembling some vital parts and sanding them down. "If you sand them too much," he told me, "you get holes, and then you have to patch them, and if you do that incorrectly, then you get air bubbles and that could cause a serious malfunction." I was taken aback and asked if that made him constantly stressed, given the responsibility and his friendship with the test pilot.The student was cavalier, confident that he was doing a good job, and that any errors on his part would be picked up by other members of the assembly team. The supervisor thought otherwise. Point blank, she said: "there are serious problems with his craftsmanship. I have pointed them out, but he doesn't seem to get it."

Another student seemed very happy at his placement, especially about his flexible hours. He did, however, express some scorn towards his supervisor's "traditional style," because he arrives each day at 8:00 a.m. precisely, and leaves at 4:00 on the dot. I snickered along with the student and introduced him to the term "clock watcher." Then I spoke with the supervisor and learned that the student's "flexible" hours are in fact erratic, and that he once rolled in at 3:00 p.m. and was late for an 11:00 a.m. meeting. I also learned that the "clock watching" was the result of parenting, and that the supervisor has a child at camp that needs to be picked up and dropped off at specific times, yes, on the dot. I felt like an idiot, but could not go back and say anything to the student, because unlike a real double agent I maintain confidentiality.

That's pretty much it. I've seen robotic arms, and learned about all kinds of software, and emerging markets for hydroelectric power and how they relates to salmon populations. Who knew?

Posted by Dori at 11:12 AM 0 comments

At the Car Wash

The dental hygienist finally persuaded me to get an electric toothbrush. I've been resisting for years, mainly because I didn't (and still don't) want to own yet another thing that needs to be plugged in/charged (cell phone, iPod, wireless computer keyboard/mouse ... ), or that has a component that needs to be periodically replaced (Britta filter, contact lenses ... ). I also don't want another thing cluttering up my bathroom.

But in the name of periodontal health, I bought the Vitality, which promises to produce a "healthy mouth that shows in your smile." However, during the seemingly endless minute during which the "brushing" is supposed to last, it feels like there is a fucking car wash going on in my mouth.

Just sharing.

Posted by Dori at 4:24 PM 4 comments

The Top .05%

One of our students is getting conducting an internship at a nonprofit this summer. It's actually a "lipstick on a pig" type of situation, in which a fancy consulting outfit runs this very competitive "summer consultancy program" in which it farms out ivy leaguers to financially strapped organizations. "Buddy," the student in question, would never have chosen this gig if it hadn't been dubbed a "consultancy," and if he hadn't been rejected by the real consultants at McKinsey, Monitor, and all the other places where they only hire juniors and seniors.

All of our students get a site visit at some point during the summer to ensure that all is well in intern-land. In general, intern-land tends to be pretty sweet. Many of our 20-year-old students work with computers, and they get paid a lot (the record so far is $35 an hour.). The students who work in finance or who actually get the McKinsey/Monitor consulting jobs also get paid big bucks and live for free in penthouses in NYC and see clients in high-rise buildings with orchids in the lobbies.

Well, Buddy's "client" is a 4-person nonprofit organization that operates out of an inner-city warehouse. He is getting a stipend of $2,ooo, which works out to $5/hr. . And his project is to develop software for an inventory system. To his enormous credit, Buddy is not a computer science major and has never developed software before.

Somehow he has figured out how to do this, and he very proudly told me about his work and how the experience has really changed his career interests and that he is now interested in social enterprise and small business development. I was thrilled until he said, "But the organization is getting the sweetest deal ever. I mean, it's ridiculous. I'm in the top .05% of the smartest people on this planet, and they're getting me for $5/hr."

I was stunned. I retorted that he was getting not just $5 but experience, connections, learning, exposure, blah blah, but in retrospect so are his classmates that are getting $35/hr. It is lame that he is getting paid so little. But the lameness has nothing to do with his unbelievably arrogant (though probably accurate) assertion of his brilliance. I may follow up with an email that says that everyone deserves to be fairly compensated for his/her work. And that while he may be in a very high percentile of brilliance in a certain genre of smarts, he may be way down there in kinesthetic intelligence, emotional intelligence, social intelligence (definitely) ... and as we all know there are many ways to be smart. And on top of everything? He's had an exceptional level of privilege to hone and develop his gifts. There may be a ton of people he encounters every day, getting paid minimum wage at the mall, who could have the same abilities as he does, but not the opportunities to develop them at a fancy school. He may not be quite as unique as he thinks.

If you have anything else I should add to the email (other than "you arrogrant bastard," let me know).

Posted by Dori at 9:44 AM 3 comments