Nerdliness is Next to Godliness

Eee! I started my PhD this week. Flex time. Faculty of Information. U of T.

I can’t explain how much it ruled. We talked about philosophies and methologies and grant applications and research and ahhhh! I can’t even believe how lucky I am to get to do this kind of thing. Dreamy.

I have my own little office at the university! It’s overlooking Spadina. I swear to you, it is nicer than my work office, which – while more spacious – overlooks a parking lot and the 427. 

I have a supervisor, who is super smart and has really great positive energy. She also took me to the adorable Faculty Club to celebrate my beginning this thrilling challenge!

Sigh.

I wish to be a nerd forever. Or at least for the next six to eight years. Hah.

The Nestle Case

So this whole thing with Nestle baby formula and developing countries and tainted water has been going on for over thirty years now.

No matter what Nestle might do, I can’t quite get my head around how they can possibly prevent tainted water from getting into the formula.

As much as I’d like to think it’s possible, education is not the answer. They’re dealing with people living in poverty, which implies a level of desperation. If you have the choice of whether to feed your baby possibly tainted formula or feed your baby nothing, I am pretty sure the choice is pretty clear.

And as much as I think they could theoretically supply pre-mixed formulas, that cost factor would have to be passed along (Nestle isn’t a charity) and the people would likely end up either not buying it at all, or buying and diluting it with potentially tainted water.

And as much as I like the idea of them providing clean water, there’s a cost to that as well, and Nestle isn’t a market leader in the H2O business.

And as much as I like the idea of them investing in infrastructure, that really isn’t where they have competitive capacity. (As a classmate of mine mentioned: when cars in a remote area of Venezuela start crashing because the country didn’t invest in proper roads, nobody expects Ford to rebuild them.)

Thing is, I just don’t see an alternate solution. Yes, the business has continued to exist there, so it’s obviously profitable. But is it fair? Is it right? Does it promote long term social objectives? Is the corporation making a commitment to positive global citizenship?

I would venture to say no to all of these things.

So why the eff does Nestle keep selling its wares there?

Well, what about the mothers who are unable to breastfeed? What about babies who won’t latch, who need alternate nutrition to thrive? What about the fact that illnesses like AIDS are rampant and can be passed through breastmilk? Where’s the alternative? Isn’t Nestle filling a legitimate need?

It seems to me that it’s not Nestle’s obligation to fix the structural problems, per se. The company shouldn’t take a loss to provide its product. But it also seems like it’s incredibly irresponsible to provide what is effectively half a product to consumers, knowing full well that they’re unlikely to have the capacity to safely obtain the other half. And the risk inherent to the second half isn’t just a bad taste or an allergic reaction — it’s toxicity and death.

So what can be done? I think the answer is a partnership of some sort, but I’m not sure what.

My Stomach Feels Empty

I don’t know if it’s the transitioning back to my proper time zone, but my stomach has felt seriously empty since I got in last night. Nothing will fill it.

As for the rest of me, it’s amazing how a small change can point out so many inconsistencies in one’s life. Funny, that.

I’ll tell you, I sure wish I could’ve traded returning my sad self home with importing my much-adored husband over there.

Back To Class

So I ate, slept, ate, studied, and slept yesterday. Ohhhhhhh, the excitement!

Today was all classes with a nice lunch in between lectures. Not a ton of excitement, but I got to wear my cute new mini-sundress.

It’s ridiculously short, I know. I should’ve gotten short brown leggings to go with. But I didn’t, and I’m wearing it anyway.

Tomorrow we go business formal for our day trip to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. I’m bringing a change of clothes, as we’ll be doing a city tour in the afternoon. More pictures, baby!

Another Semester Down

Alrightie, I’m officially done two of the three years of my MBA. I bid a fond adieu to IMC and branding and the wonderful professors I got to learn from this semester. It was, I think, the best one to date, and will hopefully lead to even more cool learnings next year.

I’ll be celebrating in style with my charming classmates on Saturday. There will be comedy gold, there will be boozing, and there will be karoke. I kid you not!

I’ve got a few weeks off, then I’m off to study international business in Germany for the rest of May, then I’m back at Rotman for the rest of the summer.

Please figure out how to help me make school last forever.

I Like Brains

Seriously, is there anything cooler ever to exist than the brain?

I was reading some stuff on neuroeconomics today — basically, a discipline that takes neuroscience and economics and applies them to psychology — and I nearly lost my mind with the excitement of it all. Neurons and activation and weird words that I had to read fifteen times and multiple processes and decision-making and behaviour. Ahhh!

The brain is flipping crazy. I love it. I will definitely be taking psych electives in the 2007-08 year.

That is all.

Existing Is Fun

Institutionalized spirituality has never appealed to me. How is it that one is supposed to be able to find what should — according to all sources — be an individual experience within a strongly collectivist one?

Well, if not institutionalized spirituality, then what?

Why not an awe and amazement for the science that came together over gazillions of years that ultimately resulted in humans even existing, that ultimately resulted in each one of us getting to experience this very moment?

I would never refer to this as “spirituality”. Instead, I think it’s acknowledgement of reality and a gratitude that you could be so lucky as to come together as you did — even if it’s only temporary. It’s a reminder that you are lucky enough to have a chance to do good things that could contribute to moving the species forward. It’s an awareness of your responsibility as a component of the universe. It’s a wonder over how the heck it even came to be and a giddiness that you got to see even the tiniest speck of the big picture.

There’s a sense that, without some form of spirituality, we are threatened with the possibility of being taken over by a collective megalomania. It’s said that without some sense that there’s something else out there, we become our own gods. (Alternatively, of course, celebrities or athletes or kings or designer labels can take on the role.) And, to be fair, this does seem possible. I have ranted time and again about the ickiness of North American culture and how we seem to be a little… lost. But institutionalized spirituality is still around and “better’ than ever– see politics and war for evidence — so perhaps these aren’t the connecting points at all.

Why do people feel so uncomfortable with the idea that children might not be raised with this traditional “spirituality” component? How can the feeling that you’re just a tiny piece of the gazillion amazing things that happen every second spur megalomania? How can the concept that you’re incredibly fortunate to even get to exist go horribly wrong? How can having the awe we all so admire in children for the whole time you’re around be so troubling?

Travels Through Space, Not Time

The good news is in: This May, I’m off to study at the European Business School! After a stressful application process and the most nerve-wracking interview of all time, I got an A for Acceptance Package today.

Wiesbaden (that’s last May), Germany is my destination.

I am pumped.

Life Isn’t an Algebraic Equation

It’s a statistical one.

So everybody is talking about this “phenomenon” called The Secret. Basically, the concept is that if you think positively, good things will come to you. I have big long ragey rant about what the logistical extension to this says about people who get cancer, live through sexual abuse, or live in poverty, but I am not going to go through that whole thing now. What I want to address is the response I get from Secret fans when I ask that question.

“Well, I mean, I don’t agree with that stuff either — some things you can’t control. I mean, it’s life, right?”

Right. So what you’re saying is that life doesn’t come down to the linear equation.

y = mx + b

The Secret implies that life satisfaction (y) is a result of some variation of b (where you cross the x axis, presumably some standard level of satisfaction) added to some m (slope term) multiplied by x, which is presumably your level of positivity. As you increase your positivity from x to x+1, that level faces its multiplier (m) and increases your life satisfaction (y).

But where on earth is the term that addresses the chance inherent to our existence?

y = B0 + B1x1 + B2x2 + … + Bixi + e

(Pretend those Bs are beta symbols and the numbers and is are subscripted.)

Here we can continue to believe that y is life satisfaction, and B0 is our b from the linear equation above. Our y isn’t purely a result of the x that was positivity, but instead a result of a gazillion x terms, their multipliers, and — most important of all — the error term.

The x terms take into account actual abilities. As much as I think positively about it, I will never be an Olympic athlete. And you know what? I don’t believe for a split second that I ever could have been one, had I even started training at three years old. My body isn’t built for such things. This is simply fact of my existence. Along the same lines, there are people who don’t have that built in ear that lets them become incredible musicians, some people don’t have the minds for astrophysics, and others aren’t genetically created to live to 100. None of these are slights against individuals without these abilities. It’s reality. No matter how much someone may say that “YOU CAN BE WHATEVER YOU DREAM!” that simply is not true. (This annoyance is the foundation of what I like to call American Idol syndrome – god forbid people be honest with each other and themselves and just admit that they aren’t good at everything.) Nor is it pessimistic — it’s reality.

The error term is what allows for chance. Who can say why someone is brutally murdered by a stranger? Wrong place, wrong time? Who can say why someone else wins the lottery? Right place, right time? That’s the error term. That’s what the whole thing forgets.

Here’s the real thing of it: The Secret is utter rubbish. There is absolutely no scientific evidence that supports their assertion that our thoughts affect frequencies we send out into the world. It’s no surprise that it was inspired by a book called The Science of Getting Rich. It reeks of materialism and greed and — to be frank — profound laziness. There is no easy answer to getting what you want out of life. It requires effort and planning and risks.

Ultimately, being a good person isn’t about getting things back. Life isn’t about dollars and perfect mates and dream jobs. It’s about finding satisfaction in the the ordinary.

2007 Has a Nice Ring to It

I was so pleased to just discover that I wrote my 2006 resolutions here, and I’d met all of them. Yay! So in hopes of meeting these new aspirations, I will continue the public, incredibly vain blogging of the 2007 goals.

(1) The Toughness Conundrum. Find a happy medium between trying to be more tough and trying to be more sensitive. I used to have a really hard time being tough (i.e. asking for what I want, not letting myself be taken advantage of, being too soft to avoid hurting people’s feelings, etc.), so I worked really hard on that for the last few years — I think with a pretty decent level of success (though certainly not perfect, hah). That said, I often find myself trying so hard to be more frank that I find myself feeling like a bit of a jerk, like I’m being unnecessarily demanding. I don’t know if there is a happy medium, but I’m going to keep working on it.

(2) Professional Maturity. I find myself endlessly and incredibly frustrated by stupidity that doesn’t even directly affect me at work — it’s a real waste of energy, stupidly juvenile, and I need to learn to better focus on the things that I have control over and be happy with those successes.

(3) Studiousness. I want to see if I can possibly finish my degree a semester early and, if I’m going to make that happen, I need to buckle down yet again. Even if I decide not to fast-track, I still want to be more focused on my classes — not a grade-obsesso type, just more focused for the sake of enhanced learning.

(4) It’s About Me. I generally don’t think I’m a selfish person, per se, though I know I’m rather what many likely consider self-absorbed. I don’t have a problem with that, as I think it’s good to be aware of oneself and as conscious of your kickass attributes as your personal challenges, and I think it’s a big part of what helps me do well with the things I’m good at. However, sometimes I worry that I’m taking it too far and I don’t want to turn into something untrue to the kid that my parents raised. I really just need to get with Buddha and find the internal zen.

(5) Get into the Dirty 30s. Enter this new era of my life feeling satisfied that I’ve achieved the key goals my 19 year old self set out for me. Make another list of reasonable but challenging aspirations for my thirties so that I can come back at 40 feeling as great as I do now.