On Data, Logic, and Summer Camp

Ad hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Forgive me for taking Philosophy classes when I was younger. Forgive me for being a dork about logical fallacies. And forgive me for the fact that I am always, therefore, hesitant to assume that just because two things have a numerical correlation, they must be related.

This fallacy translates to "with this, therefore because of this." It is probably the most irritating, in my opinion, of all fallacies, and I have to note a problem here. A consulting/research firm called Hunch released survey information recently that showed a correlation between kids who went to summer camp and kids who have seen a therapist and announced that "Hunch users who went to summer camp were 13% more likely to patronize a therapist."


http://hunch.com/explore/prospect/report/?e1=671884&e2=785033

Excuse me, HOW are these related? At all? Yes, I went to summer camp. And yes, I have sought care from a therapist. Do I think the two are at all related? No. There are about 30 different factors that, quite honestly, contribute to seeking a therapist aside from attending a summer camp.

First of all, there's the possibility that a student who was sent to summer camp was sent because both parents were working which, admittedly, could cause some emotional instability in a child needing more attention. But, quite frankly, I'd attribute this correlation to what is actually a positive factor: the kind of parent who would send their child to summer camp because they want what's best for their child is, in my opinion, also probably the kind of parent who would more likely advocate that their son or daughter seek help when they're struggling with something. Which, I think, ultimately shows a more positive environment than a negative one.

Hunch presents this information as if going to summer camp is in some way emotionally scarring. And I'm sure it could be, as much as going to the circus can be mentally scarring for a child with an irrational fear of clowns or going to visit a family member can be emotionally scarring for someone who has been sexually abused. It doesn't mean that going to the circus or visiting family are universally scarring experiences. But if this little piece of survey information, framed in the logically unsound manner it has been, gets out, parents may decide to stop sending their children to summer camp.

And I can tell you that the summers I spent at camp are some of the best memories and healthiest experiences I have ever had, and it bothers me that a company that specializes in statistics and analyses of human behavior could so blatantly misguide people about the data they're presenting.

Irritatingly yours,
Rachel Leigh

My day today has consisted of baking 5 dozen cookies and watching True Blood. I need to do more things.

On CG Bloodshed, Beating Up Hookers, and My Obsession with GLaDOS

Confession:

I have always loved video games, but I am terrible at them. Seriously. I think the only game I’ve ever been good at is Mario Party, and that game is about 85% chance. The only game I have ever beaten is Pokemon Yellow and I swear to god if anyone ever accidentally overwrites my game and I have to start over at the beginning I might cry because dammit I worked hard for that.

My favorite game, like any good video game nerd, has always been Ocarina of Time. But don’t let that fool you into believing that I have ever beaten Ocarina of Time. Are you kidding? People who are actually good at video games have a hard time beating the Water Temple. I just kind of sit there the entire game and pathetically whimper trying to play Epona’s Song until someone takes the controller away from me and saves me from my misery.

And what about FPS? I grew up getting shot to death playing Goldeneye 007 with my older brother. I try and play Halo and I end up running in circles because I can barely operate the controls, let alone actually kill somebody.

That has never changed my obsession with games though. I have always loved to watch people play video games, and I have always loved a game with good graphics, a good plot, or copious amounts of CG-bloodshed. The red death screen in an FPS is a guilty pleasure. Also, for some reason I’m obsessed with the countdown to respawn in Halo. Another favorite has always been Grand Theft Auto. I don’t really know why except that maybe I secretly wish I lived a life that involved stealing cars and beating up prostitutes. The world may never know.

I always felt like a bit of a fraud, because I am a professed video game dork. I love them. But because I’m so bad, if it weren’t for the YouTube “Let’s Play” community or growing up with a much more video-game-talented brother, I wouldn’t even know half these games existed. Is it possible to be a nerd for something you’re terrible at?

Also, I may be obsessed with "Still Alive" and "Want You Gone" from the respective endscreens of Portal and Portal 2. Just sayin'.

Geeking out,
Rachel Leigh

On Earning Your Masters in Business to Earn Your MRS with a CEO

There's a term that I had never heard before I went to college. Actually, there's a term that I had never heard until I started frequenting TotalFratMove.com. It's a term that I've spent a good portion of my time since then making fun of.

M.R.S.

The term "MRS degree" refers to a girl who goes to college with the intention of meeting her future husband and managing...not much else. Honing her skills in sandwich making, domestic skills, coloring, and husband-pleasing at the going tuition rate (and probably paying (or at least having her family pay) all of said tuition).

She probably looks something like this:

(photo credit goes to Sorostitute Stories, which, while being slightly teased in this post, is actually one of my favorite blogs on the internet)

Any time a girl goes out of her way to do something that really conforms to rigid gender roles (especially if it involves cooking, cleaning, sex, or being in the kitchen), she's working towards her MRS degree.

As someone who loves to bake, I frequently have reasons to crack jokes about my MRS. My second week home for the semester, I sent out a text that said "Earning my MRS, one batch of brownies at a time" after making what was my fourth batch of brownies since I'd been home. When, not long after, I asked for an apron for my birthday, the general response among my friends was that I was working towards my MRS. And whenever I end up baking or cooking or spending an entire night in my room coloring, I joke that I'm earning summer credits towards my degree.

The thing is, though, I'm beginning to wonder how much I really am joking. Clearly, I'm not someone who only wants to go to school to find a husband. But I do love to cook and bake, and I really enjoy taking care of people. And a lot of girls I know are proud to claim that they aspire to an MRS. Not because it's all they want, but because they want to do what makes them happy and the idea of taking care of someone and starting a family makes them as happy as the dreams that brought them to college.

I'm beginning to think there's nothing wrong with that.

Questioning some things,
Rachel Leigh

I think it's pretty rare to be able to say that you've had the same teacher for four classes in high school. I think it's also pretty rare to be able to say that that teacher had a profound and lasting effect on who you are as a person.

I wish I could have been around for his last year teaching. One of my all-time favorite teachers, who taught me for three years of my high school career and helped to shape my views of life, choices, technology, English literature, and the importance of play in learning, is retiring this week.

While I may have graduated last year, I am actually deeply saddened that no future students will have the experience of him touching their lives. Teaching them about the uselessness of Classics majors, how to be "brief but brilliant," to never start a sentence with "however," that all literature is about sex and death, and that a good gifted class reading ends with everybody dying or the Singularity.

He taught me how to say the things worth saying, to really fall in love with the work I was doing, and that sometimes the best projects are ones that you write the night before in a fit of brilliant inspiration. Also, that sometimes everyone decides to kill off their main character.

Remember Elpenor. Sleeping with a sword between yourself and that special someone. The Sick Rose. Childhood's End. Alexander Rybak.

...You will be missed.

Love,
Rachel Leigh

On Marilyns and Audreys

For a few weeks now, I've been thinking about the fact that, in life, there are Audreys and there are Marilyns.

When it comes to classy, ballsy, talented women that are nearly universally admired, there are no two names more ubiquitous than those of Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. As a matter of fact, as many of my friends from home will attest, I've earned myself the nickname Audrey F**king Hepburn when I do something particularly "classy" (irony, I use it).

Both women had reputations for being outspoken and honest about what people expected of them and had any right to expect of them. Both have been idolized and quoted and misquoted by girls for decades. But, I've noticed, nearly every girl is either an Audrey OR a Marilyn.

Don't get me wrong. I adore both of them, but there are some key differences that make Marilyn more appealing to some people and Audrey more appealing to others. First and foremost, the fact that Marilyn is, pretty much universally, a sex symbol. On the other hand, the most iconic image of Audrey Hepburn involves an updo, pearls, and her representation Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Plus, I mean, some people just prefer blondes. Though Edward Cullen prefers brunettes. Please shoot me for that reference.

And maybe this whole post.

I believe happy girls are the prettiest.

Believing in pink,
Rachel Leigh

On Words and Unfinished Projects

So a few months ago, I began a post that I never published.

It started a little something like this:

This topic leaves little room to snark, but I was thinking the other day and I got curious, started exploring this grand little series of tubes we call the internet, and found something.

It all began in class the other day:

The title of this post was "On Linguistic Universals" and what I had intended it to be about was the way certain words are nearly universal cognates. I had been thinking about "mom" and how nearly every language's word for mother, or at least its shortened version, is incredibly similar. Mom, ma, mama, mami, mutter, madre...

I started talking to my professor about it, and he mentioned that there's a very similar trend with pa/fa in reference to fathers in other languages. He also pointed out that these universal words are part of the proof generally used to support to idea of a universal grammar.

But the discussion of this idea is less important to this post than why that post never got published. I had been initially fascinated by the topic, but in trying to research my post, I ended up losing steam and so this idea for a post simply sat in limbo for months.

I am disappointed to say that I may never finish that post, but it lends itself to a problem I have always had with this blog. I often come up with an idea for a post and then abandon it before it reaches full development.

Hopefully, at some point, I will be able to go back and flesh out several of my aborted posts in the future, because some of them were actually pretty decent ideas that might help to legitimize my blogging a bit more.

Until then, though, I'll be stuck writing posts explaining why I don't write better posts.

That's kinda metablog-y.

Loving you,
Rachel Leigh

On the fact that it's JUNE and I wonder where all the time has gone

My darling readers:

I wonder if there are still any of you out there. If so: hi. I've missed you. It's been well over a month since the last time I posted anything on either this blog or my class blog for 383. It's been over a year since I started this blog, and I guess I should catch you up on what has changed since this time last year.

I have finished my freshman year of college at the University of Richmond, where I attempted a foray into the Greek system that ended rather disappointingly. I made my share of mistakes as well as my share of excellent decisions, not the least of which included interning for a month at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, getting a job working in the Digital Scholarship Lab at the University, and pursuing a degree in pouring things into other things. (No, really, I mentioned to one of my friends that I've gotten to be quite good at that, and they have since decided that this is the real reason I pay tuition and spend nine months of the year in Virginia.) I wonder if that counts as an arts degree or a sciences degree.

My 19th birthday passed this Monday, which means...well, pretty much nothing. 19 carries with it neither the satisfaction of becoming an adult, nor the knowledge that you have defeated teenagerdom, does not legally allow you to drink, or rent a car, beach house, or other item which carries a 25-year-old age stipulation. So...it really serves no purpose. But nonetheless, it happened. Hooray. I am a year older and, hopefully, wiser.

It is now summer, a time in which I am working two jobs in an attempt to afford my textbooks and living expenses during the school year. I spend a few hours a day either doing research on colleges for a local college planning company (who helped me out during my college endeavors) or doing random office tasks at the financial planning firm where my mother works. In the betweenhours, when I am not sleeping, watching copious numbers of videos on YouTube, or working, I've been passing my time catching up with old friends, going on Facebook, and being generally derpy.

And that's...just about my life these days. Hopefully the blogging will be more regular. I've missed you guys.

Still missing you,
Rachel Leigh

On Listening

I'm highly auditory.

I still have yet to learn how to really incorporate images into my posts here because, well, they don't really click with me. I can stare at walls of text and, as long as I can hear the writer's voice, they don't bother me. A lot of times, I actually skip over images, which I know is a dangerous thing to start doing, because it eliminates a lot of important context for the things being discussed.

Why am I talking about this? Well, one of the blogs I follow for my English 383 class (I linked to MY class blog a couple posts ago, go check it out) did a post on learning styles. I feel like auditory learners get passed over in these discussions. Maybe it's because the traditional lecture-style teaching techniques actually work on us. I LIKE lectures. I like the way things sound.

God, if I could incorporate sound into my blog posts without violating copyright, I would. For now, I have to settle for the poetic way the words roll around in my head.

So how do you learn?

Listening,
Rachel Leigh

On "So go on, if this will make you happier..."

Dear Readers:

It is 4 am, and I can't sleep.

I haven't had insomnia this badly in quite some time, and, to be honest, it is kind of throwing me.

Luckily, I have the room to myself this weekend (so I don't feel bad for keeping my roommate up). You want to know the weird part? I can't sleep because I'm happy. Happier than I've been in a while. I would explain the details, but I would probably bore you and/or embarrass myself on the internet, so I'll spare you. The fact of the matter is that I laid in bed for an hour and smiled giddily and couldn't sleep. Then I took a shower and talked to myself and smiled some more and still couldn't sleep. And now I'm blogging because I still can't sleep. I always thought I couldn't write when I was happy because I had nothing to complain about.

I found out that I also can't write when I'm sad (especially not when I'm sad and trying to mask it by keeping myself busy). Things haven't really changed in the situation that made me sad in the first place, except that I found out why it happened. And knowing that has made me happy.

Speaking in broad generalities for the sake of protecting people and keeping personal information off the internet is fun.

I'm really tired. Class tomorrow should be fun.

Happier,
Rachel Leigh

P.S., Watch this video of silly college boys singing the song I'm quoting in the title of this post: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V60d4EF3v6g

Oh dear. My lovely, lovely readers.

It's been months. If you're interested in what I've been doing with my blogging mind in the last few months, you should check out my writing center blog at http://richmondrachel.blogspot.com. Hopefully I'll think of more snarky things to talk about. Please don't give up on me.

Love you all,
Rachel Leigh

On Safety

Forgive me for ranting.

One of Richmond's major safety selling points, at least for my parents, was the Safety Shuttle. Affectionately called "The Raper" by U of R students, the Safety Shuttle was funded by a gift from a Westhampton College alumni to protect girls who were walking home alone at night. It only took girls and ran, by phone call, during nighttime hours and anywhere on campus. It say this in the past tense because Richmond has made some "improvements" to this shuttle.

The first of these was the gender desegregation of the shuttle. Which I can kind of understand when it's understood that the majority of assaults on campus first semester were on guys. I never really had an issue with that, but several of my female friends have admitted to feeling unsafe having guys on the same shuttle that used to guarantee them a safe way home. A friend of mine commented that "someone could get on and follow her off and back to her dorm," which is exactly what the shuttle is supposed to prevent.

The most recent "improvement" is the one I have an issue with. Instead of operating on a call-in basis, the Safety Shuttle now runs on a continuous loop around campus from 7 to 3 every night. At first glance, this sounds phenomenal. However, the Raper now only stops at 15 pre-designated stops on campus. You have to walk from your current location to the nearest stop and wait. For a long time. Then you can get on, but must get off at another pre-assigned stop, whereas you used to be able to get dropped off right at your dorm. This leaves a lot of waiting and a lot of lone walking that the old system prevented.

Then, there's the issue of where these stops are. First of all, good luck knowing. I had no idea until I looked it up online and when I tried to call the old Safety Shuttle hotline number, they did nothing to tell me except to refer me online. Second of all, there are a lot of places on campus that the Shuttle used to hit (like the off-campus but still school-owned houses at Bostwick) that are not a part of the new continuous loop.

I actually felt safer walking home by myself than waiting for the shuttle the other night, and that's precisely the opposite of what the Safety Shuttle is supposed to accomplish.

Hoping someone's listening,
Rachel Leigh