Day #5 of the 30 Day Film Challenge
Sep. 4th, 2020 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatDay #5 of the 30 Day Film Challenge - A Film where a Character has a job that you want.
Oh dear, this is hard.
I actually tried to go in this direction in school when I was 18. I took anthropology, I minored in Epic, Myth and Folklore. I traveled to another country and collected ghost stories. But alas - it wasn't meant to be. The Universe had other plans. Probably a good thing - I get claustrophobic (due to exploring one too many tunnels as a kid) and issues with arachnids.
Oh dear, this is hard.
I actually tried to go in this direction in school when I was 18. I took anthropology, I minored in Epic, Myth and Folklore. I traveled to another country and collected ghost stories. But alas - it wasn't meant to be. The Universe had other plans. Probably a good thing - I get claustrophobic (due to exploring one too many tunnels as a kid) and issues with arachnids.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-04 11:09 pm (UTC)He's a test pilot, a physicist, a neurosurgeon and a rock star! He hangs out with the Hong Kong Cavaliers (including Jeff Goldblum), he's romancing Penny Priddy (Ellen Barkin), and kids think he's the coolest guy ever. Well, he is the coolest guy ever.
When is "Buckaroo Banzai 7: Revenge of the Red Lectroids" coming out?
(Oh wait. We don't live in that dimension.)
https://youtu.be/RdanCNK4ayo
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 01:26 am (UTC)It does not age well.
But I loved it when it came out. My mother and I went to it - and we were both in love with Peter Weller who played Buckaroo Bonzai. Hey I want his job too.
Sigh women never get cool jobs in movies.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-04 11:18 pm (UTC)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGUfvZU4wiE
The none of the characters really matter in the movie except for Professor Kingsley. I was in grad school when it came out and for obvious reasons it hit home. Yes, in our department we had our version of Kingsley, the prof we were afraid of, just as demanding, just worthwhile listening to, but a lot more good-natured. But more than once, he really zinged poor under-grads who stumbled into taking his classes.
You were in law school not me. Were study groups a thing? In grad school if you couldn't do it all by your lonesome you weren't going to make it.
The Socratic method. Pure garbage. Unless you have students in the class who don't need the class, its a pretentious waste of time. You think students at that level have the time to guess what you think is important and read up on it as the term goes along? It doesn't happen. If you've got students in the class past that stage, you can play the game, and make the ones who need the class feel like crap.
Students bombing out. Of course we had them too. Men and women totally unprepared for post-graduate work, intellectually, emotionally and/or in terms of maturity. Sadly the ones that had the most trouble with us were the ones that got their degrees from the same department of the same university. I don't know who else graduated with them and went elsewhere. But it didn't make the department look good.
Complicated romances. Yeah we had those, too. ;o)
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 02:03 am (UTC)I loved The Paper Chase. The TV series is the best of the three though.
Is law school like The Paper Chase?
Not really.
I was disappointed.
It wasn't anything like the movie. Of course I didn't get into Harvard, I went to the University of Kansas School of Law - which is a good law school, but it's not well Harvard. And it has more students. We had a class of 200. Most of any previous year.
Were study groups a thing?
Yes. Except it's more like discussion groups. You are discussing the case. In law school, you get books of case law. You are reading the judicial opinions and rulings on court cases and analyzing the precedent that the judge made his ruling on and determining how the judge came up with that rule.
In class - the professor will call on you, request a reciting of the facts of the case, and a determination on how it should have been resolved and why. Often, the professor will give you a case and ask you how it should be resolved based on the precedent of the case you were assigned to read the night before.
The cases -- kind of read like stereo instructions. It's not easy reading. And you don't know who will be called on in a class of about 50-100 students.
The point of the study group - is to provide socialization and a means to discuss case law. Except people are competitive and selfish assholes - and it seldom went that route.
I found them unhelpful and gave up.
Law School is kind of like high school on steroids. I hated law school. I think I would have loved grad school - I like writing research papers and presenting them. I'm actually extremely good at that. That would be easy. No, law school, unfortunately was mostly multiple choice and essay tests, with the goal of training everyone to pass the Bar Exam. The Bar Exam is a two day multiple choice and short essay timed exam from hell.
My dyslexia hit the wall in law school. I'd figured out how to compensate up until law school.
There were classes that weren't test oriented. Not many, but they existed - or I think I would have flunked out. As it is, I got a C average. I got A's and B's in everything that did NOT have a multiple choice test and wasn't taught by socratic/lecture method. It was so obvious - that my guidance counselor told me to go a psychological testing organization that could determine and prove that I had a learning disability - in order to get special compensation for the BAR. They even told me where to go, and how to go about it.
The Socratic method.
Only works with law school, I think. You are arguing case law. Basically it is a way to teach people to think critically, argue a point based on facts, and do it on their feet. Kind of like teaching debate. I mean law is a professional vocational school kind of like med school or police academy - you aren't teaching people to become professors, you are teaching people to defend criminals in court cases, present facts at a trial, write wills, draw up contracts, negotiate contracts, etc. And preparing them to take a BAR EXAM or professional exam.
I can't see doing it for English Lit, Russian, Archaeology, Media Studies, etc.
But if you are teaching future litigators, negotiators, mediators, advocates, and well lawyers? Yes, the socratic method when done correctly helps. It taught me how to negotiate and argue a point based on factual data and precedent.
No complicated romances in law school that I knew about. I dated, but it never went anywhere. (*cough*Kansas*cough). Students bombing out? Rarely. It wasn't HARVARD, it was the University of Kansas. People might quit, but honestly all you needed was a C to graduate and get JD. Law school was kind of boring in that regard - no soap opera stuff - but keep in mind we had over 100 students, everyone lived off-campus, and was studying all the time or doing internships. We did drunken karaoke. But that was about it.
Men and women totally unprepared? No. It's not that intellectual. If you could take multiple choice tests and write essays, you'd be fine. Again, high school on steroids.
Very disappointed in the intellectual level of the student body.
I don't know what an top-tier Ivy league law school would have been like.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 02:48 am (UTC)I started taking Sociology as an undergrad minor and hated it. I took a general Anthropology course, liked it and switched to that as a minor.
I didn't know I was dyslexic till late in college. I was lucky it wasn't worse. I'm glad you got some help with taking the BAR. With me from Junior High onward my grades kept getting better, as stuff like handwriting neatness which I honestly couldn't control meant less and less. My teachers didn't know and neither did I.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 01:07 pm (UTC)That's why you can't really compare Grad School to Professional School. One isn't necessarily easier or better than the other - they are just two different ways of teaching and thinking with a completely different end goal in sight. Personally, I think I'd have done better in Grad school - but I don't really know.
I started taking Sociology as an undergrad minor and hated it. I took a general Anthropology course, liked it and switched to that as a minor.
Did the same thing. Hated sociology. Instead went the Anthropology route for my minor.
Sociology reminds me a lot of philosophy and psychology - they are called the soft sciences for a reason. Of the three, I disliked sociology the most.
I didn't know I was dyslexic till late in college. I was lucky it wasn't worse. I'm glad you got some help with taking the BAR. With me from Junior High onward my grades kept getting better,
Same. I found workarounds. Until Law School. I didn't know I was dyslexic until a poetry teacher pointed it out to me in my Sophmore year of undergrad - because she was too, and caught me doing something she'd do to compensate for it. I was reading a poem aloud, and she was watching how I read it.
I think they are handling it better now than when we were in school. A lot of kids weren't as lucky as we were and fell between the cracks.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 02:32 pm (UTC)I learned my compensating before I ever got to school. It may have been just from being read to a lot. I got very good at guessing what should come next for sentences in context to make sense, which was a giant help in learning to read foreign languages. I never was in the 'slow group' for reading in school but there were hints about my problem all along. Reading the wrong word out loud in class. Terrible trouble getting my hand writing to look like anything. Having to read and reread everything as long as a sentence I wrote in class to make sure I hadn't left something out or written the wrong word. I just thought it was the same for everybody, till a woman who was my professor and my friend kidded me about it.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 05:35 pm (UTC)He reads slowly and hated reading, but learned it faster. And is better at math and measurements, which make little sense to me.
It's very hard to compare - and I think the reason that a lot of educators miss it in some students - is they are look for definitive symptoms. One size fits all. When that doesn't exist. I remember the psychologist I saw at the premiere psychological testing clinic in Topeka, Kansas -it was actually nationally known. The Menninger Foundation which moved from Topeka to Houston in 2003. I saw them in 1993.
She told me not to call it dyslexia - because that wasn't really it, it's a visual and auditory coordination disorder. They don't really understand it completely. But she told me that I'd managed to come up with all the compensation techniques she'd advise someone to use on my own. And I was doing very well - until I went to law school - where I hit the proverbial wall.
The compensation? I got extra time, someone else would fill out the computer score sheet, I would just circle the items in the test booklet. They'd discovered that the transference of the answer to another sheet was what was causing issues.
I have to do that at work a lot - it's why I hate spreadsheets. But I've come up with compensation techniques now - I check it five times. If I make a mistake, I'll ask someone else to look at it - if I can't find the error. It's made me a bit of a perfectionist and very detail oriented as a result.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 05:36 am (UTC)So where did I go wrong? Not that I wanted to be an astronaut, my asthma would never have allowed that anyway. But any job in the space program? Engineer, or even just a worker helping to assemble a spacecraft.
Easy answer, two words-- high school. (Buffy fan, no further explanation required).
But one can still dream, or enjoy and appreciate the actions of others far braver and more creative than I.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtEIMC58sZo
Note: IMO, one of the best edits in the history of cinema occurs when they cut from the rocket lifting off to the faces of the wives, shaking and crying in deep relief that the damn thing didn't simply blow up, the possibilities of which were far greater than the general public ever knew-- until the Challenger explosion.
OK, this is not good. I don't have the time to re-watch all these cool movies, and this series is only just starting!
Evil, 'tis evil, I tell ye...
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 12:35 pm (UTC)But yeah - the idea of space travel or being a NASA engineer - really cool!
Easy answer, two words-- high school. (Buffy fan, no further explanation required).
High school or school period has killed many a person's dreams. My father wanted to be a geologist - but ran into a wall on the science front in school. My brother an architect or film director - didn't get high enough grades in high school and like myself, tests horribly. We both don't, for the same reasons more or less. Imagine how many bright students dreams were killed by a poor educational system and standardized testing? I'm kind of hoping COVID-19 forces that to change. It might - it has already exposed the huge discrepancies in education across the board, and the problematic nature of certain educational methods.
And I'm watching my niece now - who was doing well, and had wanted to go into science, but high school (and she's going to a very good private school) - kind of didn't live up to expectations.
Sigh.
Note: IMO, one of the best edits in the history of cinema occurs when they cut from the rocket lifting off to the faces of the wives, shaking and crying in deep relief that the damn thing didn't simply blow up, the possibilities of which were far greater than the general public ever knew-- until the Challenger explosion.
They did that in film version of The Right Stuff as well - which I was impressed by.
And you're right - the General public wasn't aware of how dangerous this was until The Challenger disaster - which shocked everyone and kind of changed the space program. It slowed it down considerably.
OK, this is not good. I don't have the time to re-watch all these cool movies, and this series is only just starting!
Evil, 'tis evil, I tell ye...
Yes, sometime in May, a critic opined that "soon we'd run out television content and movies" - and I thought, eh, somehow I'm not worried. Sorry, don't see that happening. And even if it were to happen? It would take us a very long time to notice.
There's so much content. You know there's too much content when people keep coming up with competing lists of 50 best shows or movies to watch or binge, and they aren't the same ones.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-06 09:45 am (UTC)For me, it was less the educational aspects as the social dynamics. I didn't understand it then as clearly as I do now, but I became very uncomfortably aware that it was more a matter of grooming the "winners" among the student body than tending to the needs of the rest of us. I was a good student, did very well on my SATs, and my guidance counselor-- who was a very smart, and very dedicated woman-- was appalled when I told her I was not seriously considering college.
She told me that the college experience was nothing like the high school one, and that I should seriously reconsider my choice to simply go out, get a job and work, which is what I planned.
In retrospect, she was right, but I couldn't get past the hatred I had at the time for the system, and was sure it would simply be perpetuated if I continued in it.
And there was, in all fairness, monetary considerations. My father was nearing retirement, and the Hamilton Watch factory had recently been acquired by a big Swiss company, who were busy dismantling it to maximize their financial investment (they really just wanted the name-- new watches were to be build overseas).
The workers union fought them tooth and nail, but they eventually simply ran out of funds, the company was effectively gutted from a production standpoint. Among other losses, my dad's pension that he had paid into for decades all-but vanished.
I had no intention of burdening my folks with college costs, so that was the final nail in the no-college decision.
You can't change the past, so I try not to lament it. I did okay, all things considering. Now if only there hadn't been the "Reagan Revolution" and the gradual growth of the right-wing plans to get all those damn peasants back in their proper place in the world.
~sigh~
( And yet-- I'd take Reagan or Bush any day over the current human cancer. Misguided, IMO? Yes. Evil sociopaths? No. )
no subject
Date: 2020-09-06 01:08 pm (UTC)My experience was slightly different. Although the one you expressed above fits with my co-worker (now retired from crazy company) Lando's. Who had to fight to get into law school. His high school guidance counselor was racist and was steering all the black students to get jobs after school and not go on to college. His parents who were educated fought her, and he ignored her and found his own graduate schools to apply to.
He also had a mentor - an esteemed black male role model who talked him into pursuing law school over med school.
But he told me about an African-American woman who was brilliant and would have made a great lawyer - that was steered in the wrong direction by this guidance counselor and her life didn't turn out as well.
There's ways around this, as you can see above - but you have to want to find them.
Lando did, the young woman did not.
Let's face it life is not fair, and most human beings are selfish assholes. How else would we end up with a sociopath in the white house, and still have people supporting him? For a lot of people - their default setting is selfish, unself-aware, asshole.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 06:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 12:38 pm (UTC)Actually I wouldn't mind being a chef...except I suck at chopping. LOL!
Very cool choice.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 02:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 05:41 pm (UTC)Thank you. Also Rickman and Winslet reuniting after Sense and Sensibility.
Frustrated landscape designer/gardener - eh? So is my brother. Although very cool.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-05 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-06 09:25 am (UTC)Would it be OK if I add you to my flist? I've seen you post a number of times here on 'kat's blog.
If you enjoy newspaper and magazine comic strips/drawings, I post one daily on my blog, and sometimes pictures I take as an amateur photographer. Not too much else, my life is mostly boring, which these days I'm rather grateful for!
no subject
Date: 2020-09-06 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-06 03:15 pm (UTC)Take care.