I'm Just Not Geeky Enough

I am a geek. I've pretty much always been a geek, and I've never really been ashamed of that. I spend an inordinate amount of time with my Playstation. I own Optimus Prime and Blaster transformer toys. There is a barrel of monkeys on my desk at work, nestled amongst my four monitors. My kids have Star Trek, FFA, and Metallica onesies. I can name the pilots and colors of the five Voltron lions (I miss Sven). I have Jim Henson's autograph, and I'm staring at a statue of Kermit the Frog right now. I have a large collection of Alice in Wonderland and Sherlock Holmes memorabilia. I listen to gothic rock. I often say things like, "Why am I still talking while there's science to do."

Yes, I'm a geek... but this weekend, I learned that I'm just not geeky enough. What taught me this? Why... Dragon*Con, of course. (note the asterisk - some people seem to get a little snippy if you leave it out or replace it with a hypen. I'm not sure how you pronounce the asterisk, though...).

Some Things I Learned at the Academy of Management

Worth mentioning: the title above originally was missing the word, "Some," until I realized that would make for a blog post even more ridiculously long than usual.

The Academy of Management, admittedly grandiosely named, is the world's preeminent association for those interested in management and its study. Although the majority of the organization's membership is academics - professors, deans, students, and the like - a healthy chunk of the membership is made up of actual managers. You know, people who run businesses and have management positions in what we laughingly call "the real world." Go figure.

This weekend the Academy had its annual meeting, (or rather, Meeting, as they frame it) and I had the honor of both attending and presenting my paper on authentic leadership (for a bit of the logic behind the paper I presented, check this old post). Here are a few things I learned this weekend, in bullet-point format as you guys seem to like that format...

Feedback and Volunteering in Organizations (with the Muppets)

Maybe if I type up all of these research-oriented thoughts in my head, then I'll be able to assemble them a little more clearly. On the other hand, even if it doesn't help with my research, it might ease my guilt over not blogging lately. So let's kill two birds with one stone. Unless of course you like birds, gentle reader, in which case I will be doing no bird killing today. In that case, we will be... ummm... hitting two... targets?... with one... ummm... you know what? I'm no good with metaphors. Asking me to write a good metaphor is like asking Kenny Chesney to be a decent human being. Wait, that was a decent metaphor, wasn't it? Never mind.

In modern workplaces, whether they be offices, retail stores, schools, small businesses, large firms, or non-profits, the concept of "going above and beyond" is becoming increasingly important. There's research backing that statement up, and plenty of it. Organizations expect their team members and employees to not just do what is explicitly listed on their job descriptions, but also to do other things that benefit the organization, the people who work there, and the customers they serve. Many organizations even manage to work these "things-that-are-not-in-the-job-description" into the job description itself, oddly enough. They do this by including a line at the end of the official list of duties that says something like: "Employee shall also perform other duties beneficial to the company outside those listed here, as determined by management." When I was in the corporate world, I called that "The Auschwitz Clause," because under language like that, the company could direct you to do just about anything, from killing innocent people to selling yourself into slavery to buying Kenny Chesney albums.

So you want to get your doctorate....

I find myself with a rare thirty minutes of complete and total freedom right now, and since I don't have any video gaming devices handy, that means it's time to blog. Gather round, boys and girls, for a topic that you may be very interested in (unless you're not)... reasons why you should (or shouldn't get yourself a Ph.D.

See, since I started the doctoral program here at Georgia Tech... and especially in the last few months... I've had a lot of people tell me that they're thinking about going back to school to get that ultimate degree. They generally ask me what it's like and ask me if I think they'd be a good fit. My answers vary - usually I ask my questioners a few questions to try to figure out if they're a good fit or not, and then we get distracted talking about something like cheese or raccoons or whether Optimus Prime could beat Trypticon (he totally could), and they never get an answer to their question. So let me try to be as helpful as I can, while staying as on-topic as possible, while giving my own humble opinions on the truthiness or falsiness of certain things I've heard lately.

And We're Back!

The NeverTown has long sat silent and empty, cold winter winds whistling through the barren streets that never were. My apologies. I've been finishing up my first semester as a doctoral student and research assistant at Tech... and in case you hadn't heard, I have twins. We just finished a trip back home to Louisiana with the boys in tow. It was nice to see everybody there, but the trip really had only one primary purpose: to introduce Benjamin and Kristopher to my one last living direct-line relative who cares about them. Grandma Mabel was pretty excited to say the least. Gotta say, though, I was very disappointed that she didn't have a chance to make her famous gumbo. Damn, I miss that gumbo. Despite that, she remains my favorite person in Louisiana (although my good friend Kristy has got to at least be in the Top 5).

Also got to hang out with some old friends (where I learned I was Eternal, Chunky, and Pure), and revisit my briefest of workplaces, Best Buy #1157. Nice to see the old crew again, but nicer to know that odd men named Bubba can no longer yell at me for failing to instruct my team to sell services to people who don't honestly need them. I like to think I subscribe to a more ethical version of salesmanship, which served me well back at Schwan's and Trustfile, but maybe I just don't want it enough. Who knows?

I Forgot What I Was Blogging About

So let me tell you about Dr. Roberts. He is the professor of my quantitative statistics class at Georgia Tech (translated, that breaks down to 'really hard math stuff'), and he is one heck of a pleasure to learn from. He shares with me both his first name (James) and an unfortunate habit of digression at the slightest provocation... conversational-shiny-object syndrome, as it were. In a lecture about, say, multinomials and they hypergeometric distribution (which he specifically said to mention to our friends and family, because "it'll make you sound really smart"), it's not uncommon for Dr. Roberts to branch off into stories about deer hunting, drunken job interviews, Agent Scully, and his grandmother. Odder yet, in the end, he always seems able to tie it all back into whatever statistics we were discussing. He even taught us a dance that illustrates the concept of the sampling distribution (and which, coincidentally, is very fun to do to the tune of the Beach Boys. Not so much fun with Kenny Chesney).

However, the mere fact that he's personally a fun character doesn't make the subject matter all that much easier (which can be intimidating, given this is just the first statistics class of about four to eleven total). On Thursday, during the fifth week of my doctoral education, I finally had my first lecture that I didn't understand at all. He stood there and talked, and it was undoubtedly brilliant stuff, and it definitely went in my ears because I did hear him... but then it all just slipped right back out again, so that the floor was piled high with brilliant concepts that had leaked out of my poor empty head. I think I almost slipped on a few on my way out the door. I suppose intelligent concepts are slick, kind of like oil.

Some Things I've Learned So Far in the Doctoral Program

• It's shocking how little I know about science, how much I thought I knew about science, and how much bad science is out there. Almost all of my classes have been about how to do good science, and it's been eye-opening. And obvious, in hindsight, but aren't most things?
• Kerry is really smart.
• I remember how in elementary school my teachers would warn me about how much more attention I'd need to pay in junior high school, and how the classes would be a lot harder. Then I got to junior high, and classes weren't really any harder... but I was warned that high school would be insanely difficult. Then high school wasn't a big deal at all... but I was warned that college would be ridiculously difficult. Then college wasn't really all that bad at all... but they all said how rough grad school would be. So far...? The pattern seems to be continuing.
• I'm sure that in a month or two I'll look back at that last bullet point, cackle insanely, and ask for more cheese on my shirt, please. This will get tougher, no doubt.

An Enormously Complicated Topic: Part One

For some reason, I've been thinking an awful lot lately about science and physics.  This is odd for me, as usually the things I think a lot about are related to music, talking puppets, or my wife's expanding belly.  And further, if it's something serious and not one of those things, it's something like leadership and marketing, as you may have noticed in this blog.  But recently my mind has been going off on weird and headache-inducing tangents into the realms of theoretical physics and infinity paradoxes.  Along the way, I've thought my way through something that seems to imply that the universe and everything around us is not really what we think it is.  More likely than not, my conclusions are a direct result of me not sufficiently understanding that which I'm thinking about.  But indulge me.  Maybe it'll be educational for both of us.

I suppose I should predicate this discussion with an admission that I am a Christian.  Some people would likely say that my religious nature makes it impossible for me to rationally discuss science; however, I humbly submit that I am a Christian because of science, not in spite of science. 

Today is Not my Unbirthday...

... which is odd, given the fact that I have three hundred and sixty three more Unbirthdays than I do Birthdays, which in turn makes me much more used to Unbirthdays than I am to Birthdays.  I love celebrating my Unbirthday, and I try to do it as much as possible.  In fact, that celebration often spills out, as I'm constantly learning of other people who share one Unbirthday or another with me.  Perhaps that's why I like Unbirthdays so much as opposed to Birthdays; it's a lot easier to share your Unbirthday.

(And lest you're thinking that my preference for the Unbirthday is driven by some kind of insecurity in my advancing age... well, think that if you want, I don't care, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I can't even remember how old I am half the time, which means (a) it really doesn't matter to me, (b) I'm really old, or (c) both.  I'll leave it to you to pick the correct multiple choice.)

Birthdays really have little true significance besides an anniversary in an arbitrary human calendar system - it's not like some lever gets switched in our bodies that makes us instantly older, wiser, or more wrinkled.  You are as old as you believe you are, I think.  I know several sixty-year-olds who are younger than most thirty-year-olds I've met (here's looking at you, Doc!).  I was wished a happy twenty-sixth birthday at lunch today, after which the well-wisher hoped that she hadn't pegged me as older than I actually was.  Life remains good.