Taking the 51 at 8:30 am

I have been going to De Anza 4-5 times a week over the past few weeks. I primarily go to work out at the gym, and (slowly) clean my office.

I take the bus to get to work. I scored a bus pass from SJSU for $73.50, and have been using it since March (I actually just plopped down another $73.50 for a new bus pass than I can use until February). I take the 51 bus, which takes me from downtown Mountain View to De Anza.

A few times I take the 8:30 am bus, when I can be up and out by that time.

When I get to the bus stop, there are usually some teenagers waiting with me, because the bus has a stop at Mountain View High. They sit there, not speaking to each other, each with their own peculiar look; the guy who wears pink, the scrawny little guy, the girl who seems so focused, she never seems to turn her head. They get on, and I get on, and there are other kids on the bus. No one talks to each other. These kids probably see each other at school, in addition to being on the same bus, but no one talks. They play with their phones, their ipods, their video games, whatever. I read business textbooks.

We get to the high school, about 1/3 of the way through my trip, and they get off. For the next 1/3 of the trip, there are very few people on the bus. Sometimes, it's just me. The bus then stops at a retirement community, and a bunch of Chinese retirees get on (I rarely see a retiree who's not Chinese get on - I wonder why). It's never clear to me where they're going, because I get off before they do, but the only stops after mine are a random intersection and a shopping center dominated by Target.

I love it when the retirees get on. The bus comes to life. There is a buzz of activity as they talk amongst themselves. The last time I was on, a guy initially sat toward the back of the bus and wanted to get into a discussion going on in the front, so he made his way to the front, as the bus was moving (I was scared he was going to fall, because he looked like such a frail little old guy).

This country has an obsession with youth. Younger people, supposedly, are more energetic, and more lively. If all you saw of the U.S. was this bus I ride on, you would think the opposite. The last 1/3 of the ride, like the last 1/3 of life, is filled with far more energy than the first 1/3.

The Plan

"Work hard, work passionately, but apply your most precious asset - time - to what is most meaningful to you. What are you willing to do for the rest of your life? does not mean, literally, what will you do for the rest of your life? That question would be absurd, given the inevitability of change. No, what the question really asks is, if your life were to end suddenly and unexpectedly tomorrow, would you be able to say you've been doing what you truly care about today? What would you willing to do for the rest of your life? What would it take to do it right now?"
-Randy Komisar, in The Monk and the Riddle

I read that quote today, as I was sitting on the bike at the gym. I'm taking this entrepreneurship class starting next week, and have to read The Monk and the Riddle before the first day of class. I like this quote because it relates to what I've been planning to post about for the past week; my business plan.

A week ago, I finished up BUS 290, the capstone class to the MBA program I'm in. It's odd that I'm not taking the capstone as my last class, since a capstone class should be the cap that finishes off the program.

Anyhow, the class was entirely project-based: No tests, or formal homework, or anything like that. Our homework was to work on our projects, our test was the project, and most of the reading was to be done researching our projects. I think that's kind of cool, but probably not good for a community college mathematics class.

The project was this: create a business plan for a business you could actually put together with resources you could get access to. No billion-dollar corporation, no gigantic non-profit that would benefit millions of people. It had to be something you could actually do.

I decided to open a bed and breakfast, in Flagstaff, AZ. Why a bed and breakfast you may ask? It's kind of a long story.

I remember staying at a bed and breakfast in England, in 1986. There were sheep and a sheepdog, and I thought it was cool. I was 10, so sheep and a sheepdog were very exciting.

Fast forward to 1999. I was in Belize - not the beachy Belize you see on travel sites, with the beautiful waters and the snorkeling. No, I was in the heart of Belize City, where the people live. The lodging there was less than desirable - cockroaches scampering through the community showers and a creaky wood floor I swore sunk a little with every step. I thought to myself, 'this city needs a bed and breakfast'. I even came up with a name: Jeff's B^3 (Bed and Breakfast in Belize).

In my adult life, I have loved going to bed and breakfasts, not only to enjoy them, but also to criticize them; find things I could do better, or make better. Flies on the fruit? C'mon, I wouldn't let that happen. Dry muffins? I could make them much better. You see, I believe that I can clean better and faster than most people (I worked as a janitor for a year), and can make breakfasts people would love to eat (you should ask me about my chocolate chip banana bread).

I decided that the bed and breakfast idea would be the one to go with. I chose Flagstaff because of the family ties I have to the city (my grandfather worked for the city's newspaper, my dad was born there, and Lauren grew up there). It's the beautiful town in Arizona people don't seem to know about. When I brought up this idea to classmates, the first response was, 'you want to open a b&b in the desert?' - Flagstaff is about as different from a desert as you can imagine.

So, I put together the plan, the strategies of pricing, marketing, monetary budgeting, and everything else. I found out a lot of information about bed and breakfasts and tourists to Flagstaff. I discovered bed and breakfasts can easily make a killing in that city. I made a list of all the things needed to run the bed and breakfast. I came up with a name - Maya's - I named it after my niece.

The one thing I didn't think about enough was a warning that came early on, from Lauren's dad: personal time. And that's where the quote above comes in. Time.

After putting together everything, we had to present our plan to the class, in a brief, 8-minute slide presentation. I ended my presentation by saying I didn't think I would actually do this. It was too time-consuming, and I don't think I would be willing to run a bed and breakfast for, in Randy Komisar's words, the rest of my life.

If you want to read the business plan, it's posted here. Please note that this is a pdf file that is almost 40 pages long, so think about if it's worth your time.

Holistay

If you don't watch The Daily Show, you should. If you don't know who John Hodgman is, you're missing out....



Taking John's advice, we had our own little Holistay on Monday (although we did leave our apartment). Because we had a day free, and because Lauren had wanted to drive Highway 1 from Santa Cruz to San Francisco, we took the day and did just that.

First, I dropped my car off at the mechanic for an oil change (over 50 hours later, I have still to hear from him about the progress of a 20 minute procedure). We then drove to Santa Cruz, where we hung out on the boardwalk for about an hour, and then headed north.

On the beach along Highway 1

We drove to Half Moon Bay (with a couple of brief stops on the way) where we had a late lunch, and continued onto SF. Lauren showed me a few of the highlights in The Sunset District (where she has been conducting her research), saw the buffalo and windmill in Golden Gate Park, and then went to Cliff House, where Lauren was to meet with some old timers from the Sunset, who get together every month. I sat in the car, and read some of The Monk and the Riddle, which I have to read for a class that starts up next week.

We ended the evening off by going to the Tennessee Grill, and then headed home.

Older women

"you do well with older women" - Lauren

Lauren made the comment above, a couple of days ago, after leaving a send-off party for Cheri Blauwet, who is heading off the Paralympic games, in Beijing. You may have seen the Visa ads she stars in, while watching the Olympics.

Anyhow, we were at this party, with lots of young people, and I end up talking to one of the few people over 50, for about 1/2 an hour. I've found that this is often how I end up socializing at parties; I end up talking to the outsiders, the people who don't really fit in with the rest of the group. Often, this has been older women.

I've never liked socializing, and probably never will. As I've blogged about before, I dread going to events where I will have to talk to people, so I tend to gravitate to one of two types of people: the other people who dread socializing, or the people who are so desperate to talk to someone that they end up driving people away and end up talking to me.

It's no fun to socialize with non-socializers, because we just end up staring at each other with nothing to say - nobody likes that. The other group is much more interesting. They ask questions, I answer, they ask more questions, I answer, they talk about them selves, I nod, and everybody's happy.

Where I Live

I was making lunch yesterday: potato browns, mixed with some vegetables, plantain and fake ham from the Chinese grocery in town. While making the meal, it hit me: in a few years, I won't be able to go to the Chinese grocery store, the Mexican grocery store, the European produce store, Trader Joe's and Safeway, all in one hour.

I'm starting to miss where I live even though I still live here.

If you know me well, you know that Lauren and I will probably not be in the Bay Area for more than a couple of more years. Her job will take us to some unknown college town in some unknown part of the world. Massachusetts? Kansas? Washington? Wales? Singapore? Who knows?

I was riding on the light rail, after turning in the business plan I was required to do for my MBA capstone class (I'll write more about that another time), and I was hit again with the prospect of leaving the area. I was staring out of the window at the blue sky in the 80-degree weather and thought how great the weather is here. It's not humid in the summer, it doesn't snow in the winter, many of my students have no concept of what 10-degree Fahrenheit feels like, what more could I ask for? I have never cared for 'the seasons' like some people do. 'The seasons' usually involve digging cars out of snow and wearing 4 layers of clothing to check the mail. Not my idea of fun.

Why am I thinking about this now? Probably because I have a week and a half of nothing else to do. I'm in a break between MBA classes, Summer session at De Anza is over, and I'm sitting around watching the Olympics til 1AM, so I have not much else to think about, and not much else to blog about.

Teaching and Porn

When I was in grad school at MSU, I took two classes from Karen King. I really admired (and still do) Dr. King. She was the only professor I had during my 6.5 years at MSU who I felt was 'real'. By that I mean, she seemed to put things into perspective, and you could see the relevance of what she had to say to the bigger picture of life, outside of the little world of the classroom we were in. She was also younger than any professor I had at MSU, and the only underrepresented minority I had at the school (that's pretty sad, considering I had over 30 different professors while at MSU).

Anyhow, in one class she said a phrase I'd never heard before, in reference to teaching. I love the phrase because it's so true. I've been thinking about it over my entire teaching career, and I've been thinking about it a lot, this summer. She was talking about good and bad teaching and said something like "Good (and bad) teaching is like porn. You can't describe it, but you know it when you see it".

This summer, I've had a few students who have told me how much they like the way I teach, and, to be honest, I don't know how to respond. I say thanks, but what I really want to know is, what is it about the way I teach that they like?

No one seems to give me an answer I'm satisfied with. The usual response often has to do with the way I present the material, or the way I explain things. When I hear that, I wonder how I present and explain things differently than other teachers. Do I present things that differently from other teachers?

I've watched a few people teach and I don't see a huge difference in what people do, but I do know bad teaching when I see it. To me, the main difference has to do with how comfortable the teacher is, and how much they talk above (or below) the students. I've had several professors as SJSU who fall into both of those categories (I won't name names). Thing is, I still don't see what I could tell those teachers to do to make them better.

I've never taken a teaching methods class, and I wonder how effective they are. My father has taught teaching methods classes, and he once told me that he wasn't sure if these classes were effective on some of his students.

While at UC Berkeley, I worked with a teacher who had a long list of credentials, and was highly regarded because of this; I didn't see that. I saw a teacher who I would not want teaching my kids.

I've been asked several times to give talks on effective instruction, and I've turned these invitations down, partly because I wouldn't know what to say. I'm not sure I know what leads to effective instruction, or what makes a teacher good. So I'm stuck where I was, thinking about that phrase: Good and bad teaching is like porn. I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it.