Chaos and Order
Granted, I am clawing myself out of my shell to communicate that I am alive and well, and plotting my world takeover. Nah, just kidding, I have been busy at work, putting some order in the chaos of a life that I have. Chaos theory - that is something I will get to later in this post.
I am a rebel. I rebelled against the academic bureaucracy. That is why I am essentially AWOL from GW and self-employed. To make a long story short, I was a President's Fellow at Gallaudet for the past two years. From their website, the program is described as:
The Gallaudet University President's Fellowship program supports post BA deaf and hard of hearing full-time graduate students in their pursuit of a Ph.D. or terminal degree in an academic discipline. The goal of the program is to increase the number of deaf people qualified for teaching positions at the University level.One of the eligibility requirements is to be a full-time graduate student. Reasonably, I was able to handle only a 2-course load, with 2 classes to teach. Being a PhD student in Computer Science, a field of study not natural to my abilities, required a very delicate balance to keep everything in order. I realized that after the first year of graduate school. Meanwhile, I never received the mentorship I sorely needed to sustain my academic progress at GW where I encountered severe communications obstacles on a daily basis, where the smallest nuance makes a big difference.
To make matters worse, Gallaudet was never able to provide me with a functioning computer for the two years I worked there. The first year, I was given a hand-me-down desktop that used to be Dr. Beasley's old computer. And that's the faculty marshall, the mace-carrying person at the graduation, the longest -serving faculty member. He was already old when my parents were Gallaudet students! I got something like a clunker of a 486, which I never touched all year. The next year wasn't much better. I inherited Jack Mika's old Pentium 2, which would have done the job for my office necessities (I had a GREAT view of the Tower Clock!), if not for the maintenance folks' ineptitiude. My internet jack was dead and they came and failed to fix it a few times, but never got it to work all year. So, there you have it, I was essentially an outcast at Gallaudet, a loner at George Washington, and yet required to shoulder more than my share of the weight by some Gallaudetian bureaucratic policy.
So, naturally, I rebelled. The Dean insisted that I overwhelm myself while enduring their inferior, perfunctory support. All the while, I was seeing other PhDs teaching the same course I was teaching (Algebra 2), yet, I was getting better results: I teach in ASL, while the hearing professors can't sign for dung. I had no need for a crystal ball to see my fate: After 5 long, hard years of toil and getting my PhD, my fate would be the same as theirs: teaching Algebra 2 for the rest of my long life (Dr. Beasley is still teaching Algebra 2, he must be at least 80). I would never realise my dreams of driving forward the technological progress of deaf devices. So, I simply kept my course, maintaining the balance of taking 2 graduate courses while teaching two courses at Gallaudet. That didn't jig with the bureaucracy of the Gallaudet Administration, so Dr. Karen Kimmel, the Dean, did not renew my fellowship.
So, there you have it. By my own free will, I let Gallaudet excise itself out as an impediment of my life experience, and as a natural result, I no longer had to endure the hardship of being a jealous loner in the exceedingly silent world at GWU. Of course, I still have to finish my glove project, no question about that. It is just a matter of getting my chaos in order before I can really manage my so-called ADD, sit down, get in the programming mind set and finish the project in one last spurt. It is really important that I finish it, because it composes a huge part of my Big Picture.
So, what have I been up to lately? A lot! I have been totally unleashed that I have been released from my restrainory obligations at Gallaudet and GW (except for the glove). It sometimes is really hard to believe that this surreal world is really reality, all the discoveries (not necessarily original, just that it occurred naturally, on my own) that I have made. People sometimes call me a mad scientist, and I am not inclined to disagree, because there are all sorts of experiments I conduct as an autodidact, a self-taught person. Basically, that is what I am doing for my education now, homeschooling myself while laying the foundations for my income-generating needs. More on my self-employment soon.
What have I discovered, you might ask? For one, I know that soda cans and bottles can be dangerous, if the pressure exceeds the failure point of the can/bottle. I have tested and discovered how plastic soda bottles rupture under excessive levels of carbon dioxide pressure.
Another cool thing is my research on chaotic systems using lasers. I "laser-scan" a cloud of smoke generated by my smoke-ring generator that I invented. I was astounded into instantly comprehending chaos the first time I lasered a cloud of smoke emitted by some of my smoking peers (don't smoke, it kills!). Further testing and refinements, I still am dazzled every time I do it. Still a lot to do, though. Just an example of what I am talking about:
The disordered state of unformed matter and infinite space supposed in some cosmogonic views to have existed before the ordered universe.
and
A dynamical system that has a sensitive dependence on its initial conditions.So, you can say that I am gearing up for my Big Bang. My Big Bang will be me becoming a professional blogger. More on that very soon, I promise. Yes, Vlad, it also involves vlogging, big time.


1 Comments:
Interesting subject. Gallaudet is famous for treating its students shabbily, especially with the ones in Ph.D programs. I heard the stories from some.
Something has to be done.
Dr. Beasley taught Algebra II for so long time? How pitiful.
R-
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