Preface:
At the moment I am employed by Seattle Repertory Theatre as their Education Intern. This means that I am spending most of my time these days bringing theater into the classroom, or bringing students into the theatre. But with all of the things that schools are expected to do these days – provide healthy lunches to students, educate them about substance abuse, teach sex ed (or “no sex!” ed), and provide after-school daycare, not to mention teach kids to read and write so they don’t fall through the cracks and math and science so we can keep up with China – what is the value of art? And do we have time in our busy schedules for Drama education? Why take a whole class period to do a prep workshop with a teaching artist, just to spend another full class period or two taking a field trip to the Rep to watch “The Three Musketeers”?
There are some very idealistic answers out there such as, “Art is what we live for!” or other things that invoke the soul, but I will leave metaphysics out of this discussion for now. Not because I disagree with the idealists about the power of art in the world, but because most educators I know (especially teaching artists) are incredibly down to earth about what they do. I’m sure if you asked each of them why arts in education is important, you would get several different answers. These are mine, and as I am a drama student/educator/enthusiast, they will be in the realm of drama.
DRAMA ENCOURAGES CREATIVE THINKING
In many standard classrooms – teaching any topic – there is a propensity to encourage correct answers over incorrect answers. In basic studies, such as grade-school level math, geographic memorization, scientific principles, and historic facts, the model of “correct versus incorrect” makes a ton of sense. Because 1+1=2, no matter what any “decide-for-yourself Montessori mom” may say. (I love Montessori school, but seriously? Math is not very kumbaya!) Columbus ran aground in 1492, Baton Rouge is the capitol of Louisiana, and water is made up of oxygen and hydrogen.
However, as we all find out when we get older, most of the important problems in life that we will be expected to solve are not so black and white. What is the most effective way to combat an auto-immune disorder? What transportation modes will be best for the Puget Sound region in the next ten years? What are the best financial decisions that someone can make so that their kids can go to college in fifteen years? How do we get more butts into the theater? How can one person with a given skill set most effectively make a positive impact on the world? These are all complicated questions with no correct answers, and they all require some amount of creative thinking, experimenting, failing, being bold, and outlining objectives and tactics for achieving those objectives.
The funny thing about school is that we begin to encounter gray-area questions at different points in each field. As soon as we have mastered grammatical rules, grammar class turns into a creative course on writing styles in prose and poetry. But at what point in business classes is there more than one right answer? College? 3rd year of college? Dave is in 2nd year medical school and there’s still a predominant culture of having the right answer. When med students turn into doctors they need to make judgment calls on which of several treatments will be most effective, and “being right” is more about finesse and je ne sais quoi than it was in school.
Drama education prepares students – even those who never plan to pursue drama as a career – to think creatively in these gray areas. Forgetting drama history classes for a moment, there are no correct answers in the acting classroom. There are bold choices that you need to justify. There are characters and situations you need to establish. There are requirements to think on your feet. You need to know your strengths and the strengths of your scene partner. And Drama education, unlike most other areas, does not require as much in-class foundation building as the rest of education. You have experience living in the world? Great! You get to think creatively about how you are going to approach a problem – or in drama terms, what is the tactic you are going to apply in order to overcome your obstacle and get to your objective?
And this is the first of many reasons why I believe Drama in education is valuable. It trains students to think about the various ways to creatively tackle a problem – without fear of getting marked down for being wrong – well before other areas of study have built a base upon which students can be creative. And to tell you the truth, I desperately want my future scientists to be bold in their hypotheses, I want my future geographers to seriously consider character and setting when they study distribution of wealth, and I want my business execs to think on their feet (not to mention be killer public speakers!). Drama builds these foundations.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Most Awesome Thing Ever!!
Ok, so maybe that's a little overboard. But, in the financial world, a Roth IRA is the most awesome thing ever. A Roth IRA is an individual retirement account that you fund with after-tax money. The current amount that you are allowed to fund is $5,000 per year. So what's so great about this thing?? Because Roth IRAs are funded after-tax (you have already paid the taxes on your income), when you take the money out when you retire, the money is taken out is not taxed. Because our government has a progressive tax structure (lower income pays a lower tax rate than higher income which pays a higher tax rate) and we are in our mid-20s, hopefully earning the least amount of money in our career, this becomes a no-brainer. Your current tax rate is somewhere between 15% and 25%, however, when you're older your tax rate could be 38% or higher (depending on who becomes president between now and then). That means the cost to you is 15% now, but could be 38% later. I say pay the taxes now and reap the benefits later.
So why doesn't everybody do this? One is that you have to be under a certain income (I believe it's $100k). Second is that you cannot take the money out until 59 1/2 years old. If you take out the money before then, then you will be major penalties. So, even if you can only put in $200 a month or whatever, set up an account with any brokerage firm (T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Scottstrade, etc).
Best of luck and keep saving!
B-Squared
So why doesn't everybody do this? One is that you have to be under a certain income (I believe it's $100k). Second is that you cannot take the money out until 59 1/2 years old. If you take out the money before then, then you will be major penalties. So, even if you can only put in $200 a month or whatever, set up an account with any brokerage firm (T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Scottstrade, etc).
Best of luck and keep saving!
B-Squared
Monday, September 8, 2008
Fannie, Freddie and our Bloated Government
The mess that is Fannie and Freddie is extremely confusing and honestly can't be explained in a blog setting. The next time we all meet up I'll explain. I'm sorry but I've tried to write this twice and it is just so complex that I can not write this and have it make any sense.
B-Squared
B-Squared
Sunday, September 7, 2008
What does it all mean?
Can I make a humble request to out resident financial expert, b-squared, to explain what is going on with Fannie and Freddie? It's all over the news and seems like sort of a big deal... so the government is taking them over, but what does that mean? For those of us who don't have a mortgage, should we care?
Saturday, September 6, 2008
The Artist & The World
(A Monologue)
Nathaniel: (to the world)
It was dinner time, August 31st, 2008. There I was with my family: my mother, my father, and my brother, with the cat Doctor perched at the window behind. You see, I was shortly leaving for Paris, my father had come up from Texas to spend time with me before leaving, and we were having our last supper as a family for a while (of course, typically all of our dinners fall under that category, so this was not such a tremendous occasion, yet it had the feeling of a tremendous occasion both because of my upcoming departure and that of my brother going back to school for the 4th time). My mother posed the question to us both why we made decisions that are so different from what normal people do. I was shocked. A bit confused, you see. I didn't see my decisions as being altogether that strange. Granted, moving across the sea without much of anything over there is strange, but the other decisions in life I had made, decisions that led me to that place, etc...I didn't find those very strange. What she meant was, why do I not care about money...or, more of the effect of, why do I continually put myself in a place where I cannot make any money. Normal people care about that. Given my actions, I do not, she insinuated. So why is this?
At the airport, before checking in, after being dropped off by my mother and brother, I went down to have a cigarette. It would be my last for several hours (thankfully in Copenhagen, they have smoking stalls installed in the airport). A man came up to me while I was smoking outside of the SeaTac airport. Of course, he asked me for a cigarette, which I gave him one. He offered me a Marilyn Monroe Zippo Lighter in exchange for three more cigarettes...but as you can imagine, I declined. I told him I had to save my cigarettes, I'm moving to Paris! He asked what I do. I told him, "I work in the theatre." "Where?" he asked. It looked like he hadn't heard me. This man was not "all the way there" you see. "I work in the theatre," I repeated. Am I insane? Is this not a normal response to someone who asks where you work? Well, he still couldn't get it. I told him I was an actor, a lie, of course, but better than trying to explain Director or Production Manager. For God's sake, he must know what an Actor is! How could you not? He didn't. He asked if I was a double...or...or...something something something. I told him, "No, I act in small plays. Nothing too big, I'm not famous" (Though, I was wearing a fashionable outfit and could've been mistaken for celebrity, should've been mistaken for celebrity if this man was not out of his wits). "Of course not, no, not yet!" He said and finally, I thought that he understood what it meant that I work in the theatre. And then he asked me, "Where do you work?"
These two encounters, linked together so close in time, along with the "indefinite hiatus" of Emerald City Scene caused me to really think again about art's position in this world. You see, there's almost nothing that gets more attention and is thought higher of than art. When you really think about it, that is what gets all of the attention. Not even a man or woman who has led a country out of nothingness into prosperity receives the kind of attention that Halle Barry receives (She's only half-black, by the way, did you know that? So is this Barack Obama. Who does he think he is claiming to be the first Black Presidential Nominee?) Why does this happen? Because so few actually reach the level of recognizable. Most are left behind in the gutter...due to NO MONEY BEING AVAILABLE IN THE ARTS. Sure, once you reach the higher levels, your Opera's, Regional Theatres, big Museums, and so forth, you've got tons of money...far more money flows into those organizations than most small-mid level businesses, is my guess. But until you reach that level, you're all alone, pal. And to tell the truth, most just can't make it. In other business, other fields, if someone wanted to spend a little time not making a whole lot of money, soon they'd be slowly moving up the ladder into a place where they are making a comfortable amount of money and then, if they have the ambition to, they keep on rising to make a significant amount of money. Here is where most of the world, most of my non-artist friends will be. They will be lying in heaps of money. I, on the other hand, must make the choice. Make Money, Do Art. Make Money OR Do Art. I can EITHER Make Money OR Do Art.
And what I find to be the real pincher of it, is that without art in this world, there'd be nothing to make money for. Survival takes very little. It's the artistic ventures that we want to enjoy, that have the life in them. For every person out there working for some truly insignificant product and making more than enough for survival, there are a handful of artist out there hoping they can continue to do what they love and continue to provide entertainment and knowledge for the world without a scrap of money out of it. But hours and bills rack up.
To answer my mother's question, I don't think that I've made such different choices. The truth of myself and most other artists is we follow the same formula. We start in lowpaying positions and hope to move up the ladder of recognition to someplace where we can truly be comfortable financially and doing the job that we were trained and born to do. Unfortunately, in this field, it's very difficult to make it up to that second rung...and from there, ten times harder to make it to the third rung, and so on. It's very easy to just go back down to the bottom, though, and find a new ladder to climb.
Nathaniel: (to the world)
It was dinner time, August 31st, 2008. There I was with my family: my mother, my father, and my brother, with the cat Doctor perched at the window behind. You see, I was shortly leaving for Paris, my father had come up from Texas to spend time with me before leaving, and we were having our last supper as a family for a while (of course, typically all of our dinners fall under that category, so this was not such a tremendous occasion, yet it had the feeling of a tremendous occasion both because of my upcoming departure and that of my brother going back to school for the 4th time). My mother posed the question to us both why we made decisions that are so different from what normal people do. I was shocked. A bit confused, you see. I didn't see my decisions as being altogether that strange. Granted, moving across the sea without much of anything over there is strange, but the other decisions in life I had made, decisions that led me to that place, etc...I didn't find those very strange. What she meant was, why do I not care about money...or, more of the effect of, why do I continually put myself in a place where I cannot make any money. Normal people care about that. Given my actions, I do not, she insinuated. So why is this?
At the airport, before checking in, after being dropped off by my mother and brother, I went down to have a cigarette. It would be my last for several hours (thankfully in Copenhagen, they have smoking stalls installed in the airport). A man came up to me while I was smoking outside of the SeaTac airport. Of course, he asked me for a cigarette, which I gave him one. He offered me a Marilyn Monroe Zippo Lighter in exchange for three more cigarettes...but as you can imagine, I declined. I told him I had to save my cigarettes, I'm moving to Paris! He asked what I do. I told him, "I work in the theatre." "Where?" he asked. It looked like he hadn't heard me. This man was not "all the way there" you see. "I work in the theatre," I repeated. Am I insane? Is this not a normal response to someone who asks where you work? Well, he still couldn't get it. I told him I was an actor, a lie, of course, but better than trying to explain Director or Production Manager. For God's sake, he must know what an Actor is! How could you not? He didn't. He asked if I was a double...or...or...something something something. I told him, "No, I act in small plays. Nothing too big, I'm not famous" (Though, I was wearing a fashionable outfit and could've been mistaken for celebrity, should've been mistaken for celebrity if this man was not out of his wits). "Of course not, no, not yet!" He said and finally, I thought that he understood what it meant that I work in the theatre. And then he asked me, "Where do you work?"
These two encounters, linked together so close in time, along with the "indefinite hiatus" of Emerald City Scene caused me to really think again about art's position in this world. You see, there's almost nothing that gets more attention and is thought higher of than art. When you really think about it, that is what gets all of the attention. Not even a man or woman who has led a country out of nothingness into prosperity receives the kind of attention that Halle Barry receives (She's only half-black, by the way, did you know that? So is this Barack Obama. Who does he think he is claiming to be the first Black Presidential Nominee?) Why does this happen? Because so few actually reach the level of recognizable. Most are left behind in the gutter...due to NO MONEY BEING AVAILABLE IN THE ARTS. Sure, once you reach the higher levels, your Opera's, Regional Theatres, big Museums, and so forth, you've got tons of money...far more money flows into those organizations than most small-mid level businesses, is my guess. But until you reach that level, you're all alone, pal. And to tell the truth, most just can't make it. In other business, other fields, if someone wanted to spend a little time not making a whole lot of money, soon they'd be slowly moving up the ladder into a place where they are making a comfortable amount of money and then, if they have the ambition to, they keep on rising to make a significant amount of money. Here is where most of the world, most of my non-artist friends will be. They will be lying in heaps of money. I, on the other hand, must make the choice. Make Money, Do Art. Make Money OR Do Art. I can EITHER Make Money OR Do Art.
And what I find to be the real pincher of it, is that without art in this world, there'd be nothing to make money for. Survival takes very little. It's the artistic ventures that we want to enjoy, that have the life in them. For every person out there working for some truly insignificant product and making more than enough for survival, there are a handful of artist out there hoping they can continue to do what they love and continue to provide entertainment and knowledge for the world without a scrap of money out of it. But hours and bills rack up.
To answer my mother's question, I don't think that I've made such different choices. The truth of myself and most other artists is we follow the same formula. We start in lowpaying positions and hope to move up the ladder of recognition to someplace where we can truly be comfortable financially and doing the job that we were trained and born to do. Unfortunately, in this field, it's very difficult to make it up to that second rung...and from there, ten times harder to make it to the third rung, and so on. It's very easy to just go back down to the bottom, though, and find a new ladder to climb.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Arya's Random Thoughts
I hate September. All my life September has represented anxiety about looming deadlines. When you're in K-12, September means the end of freedom, new classrooms full of people who could get along with if you had to, deadlines, and stress. Eventually you graduate, and the story continues in college. Register for classes, buy books, pick majors, etc. Then you graduate again. But it's not over. Now I stress out about Test schedules and Grad school applications. In summary: Fuck September. I take solace in the fact that, Someday, September will be just another month.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Touched for the very first time
While I was a medical assistant for the ER, I worked with a diverse team of health care providers who all had a role in patient care. The team could be divided into three basic groups: doctors, nurses, and support staff (this group included medical assistants like myself). The doctor group could then be further divided according to each person’s level of experience: medical students, residents, and attendings.
Right now I am a lowly medical student, a second year medical student at that. My responsibilities for patient care are zero, while my responsibilities for my schoolwork are everything. But in ten short months, I will begin my third year, which is comprised of clerkships; miniature rotations (usually 4-8 weeks) that will take me through the various medical specialties. It is then that, I am told, I will begin learning the hallowed practice of “how to do stuff to people.”
I like the field of Emergency Medicine, and I am reasonably certain that I will be an ER doc when I grow up. In this field, as in many medical fields, I will be given the legal right to take a knife and perform acts upon another human being that, in any other circumstances, would land me in prison. Of course, my right to perform these acts is based upon the assumption that I will always be acting in the patient’s best interests. “Well, naturally,” you’d say, rolling your eyes. “You’ll be a doctor. Of course you’ll be acting in the patient’s best interests, right?”
A chest tube is a long, plastic tube that is inserted into the thorax to help re-inflate a collapsed lung. The procedure sounds fairly straightforward: make a small, deep slice between the ribs to reach the pleural cavity (the “sac” that contains the lungs). Stick the tube in there to drain any air or liquid that has collected outside of the lung, decompressing the cavity and allowing the lung to re-expand. Stitch the tube to the skin of the chest to keep it in place. That’s it! There are more steps involved in making macaroni and cheese. (You can see a NSFW photo of the finished product here).
Ha, I got you! The gory chest tube photo is here. Many blunt or penetrating traumas to the chest require a chest tube, so this is a very common procedure in the ER. Now, before I ever give somebody a chest tube, I will do everything I can to learn as much as possible about the procedure. I will read about it, I will watch videos of it, I will observe the real thing in the ER. But no matter how prepared I might be, there will be that first time when I actually take the tube in my inexperienced little hands and actually shove it through some guy’s ribcage.
This is the conundrum, laid out in lovely outline-y form:
So what is the best way to train the new docs? I have no answer for this, since my real training has yet to begin. Say two patients come in who both need a chest tube: one is a homeless guy with no family and the other is a 35-year-old woman with a husband and two kids. Which patient do I take and which patient does the more experienced attending physician take?
In reality, we would both take both patients. Under no circumstances would a rookie doctor be allowed to do a dangerous procedure without supervision. Now, it is probably a bit riskier to be treated by a rookie under careful supervision than it is to be treated by an experienced doc alone, but I think that’s the price we need to pay now as a society to train the new docs who will take care of us when we’re older.
If it is in fact riskier to be treated by a rookie under supervision, this means people are dying because of their doctors’ lack of experience. This is going on right now, in hospitals all across the country. As an inexperienced doctor, I will be asking my patients to take a chance with their lives. I will be asking them to submit to what may be inferior care in order to contribute to my training and therefore to the betterment of society as a whole. This is huge and, frankly, it scares the hell out of me.
One evening at the hospital, I watched two young residents put a nasogastric tube into a little old lady. This is a long, thin tube that goes down through the nose, down the throat, and into the stomach. I think they were doing this to take a sample of the stomach juices, which they could test for blood and see if she was bleeding somewhere in her upper GI tract. Unfortunately for the patient, these two residents suffered from a common condition called “Immature Doctor In Occupational Training Syndrome” (that is, they were I.D.I.O.T.S.). The whole time that they were doing this procedure, they were ignoring the patient and chatting with each other about their plans for the weekend. They did not notice how roughly they were handling the patient. They did not notice that the patient was crying from the pain of the procedure.
I think the best thing inexperienced doctors can do is to just take it seriously. Every time we perform a procedure in training, we need to recognize that the patient is giving us a gift by helping us become better doctors. We can’t refrain from learning and practicing new procedures, and ethically, we can’t choose who we practice on based on our level of experience. So we thank them by recognizing the added risk, doing our best to minimize that risk, and then making sure that risk is justified by taking it seriously. Every time.
Incidentally, I went a bit overboard with this post with the luxury of the three-day weekend. I hope you enjoyed reading all of this, but future posts will probably be shorter. And thanks to BurnPTCruisers for putting this blog together. This is a great idea, and I hope we can keep it going.
-- DMD
Right now I am a lowly medical student, a second year medical student at that. My responsibilities for patient care are zero, while my responsibilities for my schoolwork are everything. But in ten short months, I will begin my third year, which is comprised of clerkships; miniature rotations (usually 4-8 weeks) that will take me through the various medical specialties. It is then that, I am told, I will begin learning the hallowed practice of “how to do stuff to people.”
I like the field of Emergency Medicine, and I am reasonably certain that I will be an ER doc when I grow up. In this field, as in many medical fields, I will be given the legal right to take a knife and perform acts upon another human being that, in any other circumstances, would land me in prison. Of course, my right to perform these acts is based upon the assumption that I will always be acting in the patient’s best interests. “Well, naturally,” you’d say, rolling your eyes. “You’ll be a doctor. Of course you’ll be acting in the patient’s best interests, right?”
A chest tube is a long, plastic tube that is inserted into the thorax to help re-inflate a collapsed lung. The procedure sounds fairly straightforward: make a small, deep slice between the ribs to reach the pleural cavity (the “sac” that contains the lungs). Stick the tube in there to drain any air or liquid that has collected outside of the lung, decompressing the cavity and allowing the lung to re-expand. Stitch the tube to the skin of the chest to keep it in place. That’s it! There are more steps involved in making macaroni and cheese. (You can see a NSFW photo of the finished product here).
Ha, I got you! The gory chest tube photo is here. Many blunt or penetrating traumas to the chest require a chest tube, so this is a very common procedure in the ER. Now, before I ever give somebody a chest tube, I will do everything I can to learn as much as possible about the procedure. I will read about it, I will watch videos of it, I will observe the real thing in the ER. But no matter how prepared I might be, there will be that first time when I actually take the tube in my inexperienced little hands and actually shove it through some guy’s ribcage.
This is the conundrum, laid out in lovely outline-y form:
- If I want to be an ER doc, I will have to learn how to put in a chest tube
- This means I will need to practice on real people
- This means there will be “that first person” who I will operate on with zero experience
So what is the best way to train the new docs? I have no answer for this, since my real training has yet to begin. Say two patients come in who both need a chest tube: one is a homeless guy with no family and the other is a 35-year-old woman with a husband and two kids. Which patient do I take and which patient does the more experienced attending physician take?
In reality, we would both take both patients. Under no circumstances would a rookie doctor be allowed to do a dangerous procedure without supervision. Now, it is probably a bit riskier to be treated by a rookie under careful supervision than it is to be treated by an experienced doc alone, but I think that’s the price we need to pay now as a society to train the new docs who will take care of us when we’re older.
If it is in fact riskier to be treated by a rookie under supervision, this means people are dying because of their doctors’ lack of experience. This is going on right now, in hospitals all across the country. As an inexperienced doctor, I will be asking my patients to take a chance with their lives. I will be asking them to submit to what may be inferior care in order to contribute to my training and therefore to the betterment of society as a whole. This is huge and, frankly, it scares the hell out of me.
One evening at the hospital, I watched two young residents put a nasogastric tube into a little old lady. This is a long, thin tube that goes down through the nose, down the throat, and into the stomach. I think they were doing this to take a sample of the stomach juices, which they could test for blood and see if she was bleeding somewhere in her upper GI tract. Unfortunately for the patient, these two residents suffered from a common condition called “Immature Doctor In Occupational Training Syndrome” (that is, they were I.D.I.O.T.S.). The whole time that they were doing this procedure, they were ignoring the patient and chatting with each other about their plans for the weekend. They did not notice how roughly they were handling the patient. They did not notice that the patient was crying from the pain of the procedure.
I think the best thing inexperienced doctors can do is to just take it seriously. Every time we perform a procedure in training, we need to recognize that the patient is giving us a gift by helping us become better doctors. We can’t refrain from learning and practicing new procedures, and ethically, we can’t choose who we practice on based on our level of experience. So we thank them by recognizing the added risk, doing our best to minimize that risk, and then making sure that risk is justified by taking it seriously. Every time.
Incidentally, I went a bit overboard with this post with the luxury of the three-day weekend. I hope you enjoyed reading all of this, but future posts will probably be shorter. And thanks to BurnPTCruisers for putting this blog together. This is a great idea, and I hope we can keep it going.
-- DMD
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