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Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 2,856
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According to the Forbes article, tenured professors made up 17% of college classroom professors. A large portion of the other 83% live something like this: http://www.npr.org/2013/09/22/224946206/adjunct-professor-dies-destitute-then-sparks-debateAfter 25 years of teaching French at Duquesne, the university had not renewed her contract. As a part-time professor, she had been earning about $10,000 a year, and had no health insurance.
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Joined: Oct 2011
Posts: 2,856
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I suspect that 50-60 hour weeks are generally unhealthy. Literally. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/top-best-most/gaining-weight--maybe-it-s-your-job-172121651.htmlSometimes the extra pounds can be blamed on the work environment. "Among all workers, employment for more than 40 hours per week and exposure to a hostile work environment were significantly associated with an increased prevalence of obesity, although the differences were modest," researchers concluded. Working long hours leaves less time for exercise.
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Joined: Nov 2012
Posts: 206
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Medicine has in recent year been described as high paying jobs with the best life style. None of my son's pediatrians work 5 days a week (3-4 days) and they can actually takes years off for having kids without being punished by the labor market too much.
The good thing about being an academic is that you can choose when to do work (excep the few hours a week teaching), but I don't know any seriously sucessful academics who don't work all the time.
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Joined: Nov 2008
Posts: 309
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The good thing about being an academic is that you can choose when to do work (excep the few hours a week teaching), but I don't know any seriously sucessful academics who don't work all the time. These days it's not about being seriously successful... I think we work all the time just to survive in academia (at least in biomedical sciences).
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Joined: Mar 2013
Posts: 1,489
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Medicine has in recent year been described as high paying jobs with the best life style. None of my son's pediatrians work 5 days a week (3-4 days) and they can actually takes years off for having kids without being punished by the labor market too much.
The good thing about being an academic is that you can choose when to do work (excep the few hours a week teaching), but I don't know any seriously sucessful academics who don't work all the time. And some academics work all the time, because the love their research and it doesn't feel like work.
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Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 75
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In fact most of the thread that I've read so far is also kind of over the top, to me Yikes is what I am thinking while reading this thread myself. And perhaps I shouldn't resurrect this thread since it is on the second page, but I am quite appalled at some of the things here. Only in incredibly rare circumstances will a PG child find a peer set while in elementary or secondary school, even in a large metro area. Exactly how do people think schools should accommodate those kids? A one on one tutor could be provided by the schools, but that doesn't do anything to create the peer group for which so many of you are clamoring. How exactly is the school supposed to create a peer group when those other children just don't exist in that area? Sprinkle fairy dust and *poof* the children magically emerge? And children shouldn't be allowed to do work that they can and are performing successfully just because it's not on as high a level as what others *could* perform? Should students not be allowed to take a tennis class (even though they can meet at least the minimum requirements for the course) just because they can't play at the level of my son? So we keep kids who are capable of performing the work out because they can't meet some super secret level above the class? Even though we're not really sure where that level is, either, since it will fluctuate constantly depending on whether the students are merely HG or PG? And fluctuate with their interest in school, their interest in the topic, and their motivation to actually work? By all means, don't dilute the curriculum in any way, but anyone, regardless of LOG, who can do the work and wants to do the work should be allowed to do so. This is one of the reasons the charge of elitism comes into play and why there is even support for eliminating the few programs we have. Unless we are discussing a boarding school for the PG which services children from all over, ANY school will be limited by its student population. What we should be asking of schools is for them to create supportive environments in which PG children (or others who want to pursue subjects beyond the required curriculum) can be encouraged and nurtured by trained professionals. The schools should set the minimum required for passing, but there should never be a ceiling set. On ANY child. If it matters, I have no idea where my child is on the LOG scale. He has never been properly tested, scores as PHS on the OLSAT or SAT (I forget which because not important), is bored and hates school, and is always described by people as different and a unique thinker. He's had good teachers and bad, ones who tried to help him stretch and challenge, and others who felt doing so would be the end of Childhood as we Know It. But guess what? I know NT children who have had similar experiences with schools and teachers, much of this is not exclusive to the gifted world.
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Joined: Nov 2009
Posts: 75
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I have zero problem with kids that aren't PG, EG, or even garden variety GT being in an academic placement with my DD. What I have a problem with is that student raising a hand to complain about the pace, or to elbow my kid to 'hush' about a contradiction in the textbook, or an interesting gap in the historical record... discuss a definition, etc. Look, I know that this is technically out-of-level for the class as it perhaps currently exists. But still-- "Honors/AP" ought to mean something, and I think it not unreasonable that if some students find that pace/level inaccessible, that a different placement might be better for them, rather than telling my DD that she MUST conform, or insisting that the class be "made" to be accessible for those less able students so that the differences between them and the HG+ students in them is somehow less apparent to colleges, universities, and scholarship-awarding organizations. What makes you so sure that the kid who is elbowing your kid to hush is lower in ability? What makes you so sure that the kid asking the interesting questions is higher in ability? I think you may be conflating ability with personality and intellectualism. I went to an extremely competitive high school with a lot of very smart kids. I was smart, but not the smartest kid there by any means. However, I WAS the kid with her hand in the air asking the annoying/interesting questions. Meanwhile, some of the kids who were on paper brighter than me (especially in math) were the ones rolling their eyes at me and asking if this was on the test. Shall we discuss who had the grades and numbers to get into Stanford and succeed big time? (Hint: not me.) Don't tell me those kids weren't smart. They were. They simply had a different attitude towards education. Past a certain ability level, which I think is probably around IQ 120, I believe these differences have more to do with family culture than almost anything else. I was raised by intellectuals who valued debate, learning, and knowledge above money, achievement, and status. My own kids are being raised the same way. Yet there are kids in my DD's class who are being raised to value right answers and high achievement above all. Tiger cubs, shall we say. Are they less intelligent than she is? They are probably less creative and less divergent in their thinking, but this does not mean they are less intelligent. It's really another conversation altogether. I think what a lot of us are really talking about here is the differences between kids (and adults) who care about learning, thinking, and ideas vs kids (and adults) who care about Achieving Paper Thingy and Shiny Object A. (Of course, school can suck that caring out of you.) Thank you. I think there are some things being incorrectly ascribed to LOG in this thread.
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Joined: Jul 2011
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In fact most of the thread that I've read so far is also kind of over the top, to me Yikes is what I am thinking while reading this thread myself. And perhaps I shouldn't resurrect this thread since it is on the second page, but I am quite appalled at some of the things here. Arms races are all about WINNING! Appallation is a natural human response to certain aspects of WINNING!
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Joined: Nov 2009
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You were doing enough to get by, not extending the level of discussion, etc. How is this better than a class with hard working, passionate non-gifted kids who would take the class to the next level? My point is that learning with other kids of very high ability would have been more likely to create an environment where my thinking about the subject would have changed. ETA from UM's last post: I don't mean that the class should have been HARDER. Well, not in the sense of more homework or near-impossible problem sets. Back then, my math classes were pretty good in a straightforward, pedestrian way. I mean DIFFERENT. More big or old ideas. More new ways of looking at, say, how to do geometry or algebra. That kind of thing. This was precisely what happened to me when I ended up a small liberal arts college where being bookish by choice and asking lots of probing questions were encouraged. Classes were small and many people on campus enjoyed talking about the big ideas of the day. Not everyone was HG+, but enough were that college was a good challenge for me. I had to learn to study (which was hard) but I found myself getting a lot out of what I was doing. Most importantly, the vast majority of the classes I took were aimed at very smart people, and you either kept up or got a bad grade/dropped the class. You don't get that community experience with the hard-working types whose parents are driving them. Especially for these types, "hard working" and "passionate" don't necessarily go together. I certainly don't see much academic passion among the tiger cubs I've met. But don't you see the verbal bias in your thoughts? I do know an incredibly smart young girl who has tested in the 145 range for IQ, and she would NOT meet your standards because she doesn't like discussions. She would be perfectly happy with a one on one tutor in school, no peer group required. She also doesn't do much beyond what is asked of her, so she wouldn't be one of those kids pushing the class higher, despite her LOG. Some of what you and others are describing here is more attributable to a highly verbal, socially secure individual who wants to engage others, rather than actual LOG.
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Joined: Nov 2009
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In fact most of the thread that I've read so far is also kind of over the top, to me Yikes is what I am thinking while reading this thread myself. And perhaps I shouldn't resurrect this thread since it is on the second page, but I am quite appalled at some of the things here. Arms races are all about WINNING! Appallation is a natural human response to certain aspects of WINNING! Perhaps for those for whom "winning" is a zero sum game. For tennis? Sure. For education? Doesn't have to be, and I, at least, don't see why it has become such.
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