In the Learning Zone

I’d like to say “a number of years ago” but really it was back in 1985. Dad, who had been complaining about having to turn his lecture notes over to a secretary, said, “There comes a time when a man chooses what he wants to learn and what is just more effort than it is worth. I can do one computer program. That’s enough for me.” My jaw dropped and I gasped.

Maybe, rather, I’ll start like Sophia did in “The Golden Girls.”

Picture this: Orono, Maine, October, 1985. It was a new frontier and personal computers were just starting. The OS War was well under way. WYSIWYG was something more than a gleam in Steve Jobs’s eye. I was sitting with my dad in his office at UMO, trying to persuade him that C/PM was not the way to go. Word Star was already outmoded. He needed to regroup and get something new. But Dad was wed to both. He had bought a “machine” without consulting me, made the great leap to use this thing that a salesman had assured him would be good “forever” because a character based, non-graphic operating system was cutting edge. Now he was bitching because the 5 1/4” floppy disk he had used to store his lecture notes on could not be used in the University’s IBM based PCs even though they all used Word Star. To be fair he had done something similar years before when he bought a microwave that my mother didn’t want and then walked away telling her how easy it would make her life.

I told him he’d have to buy something else, that I would help him. Instead he shook his head and said he’d learned enough. That at age 60 he wasn’t prepared to learn any more. I was shocked. I had always believe that he was the consummate teacher and learner. He even had a contract to this effect on his wall that he made all his graduate students and advisees sign, that they would be both learner and teacher for the rest of their lives. And here he was giving up. I was aghast. I took him to task. He wouldn’t budge.

I’m here to tell you that at last I have a glimpse of what, maybe, Dad was getting at. I am  still a rabid learner. I ask questions, look things up, watch as others do – live or on YouTube. I like to at least get the gist of what is going on. But these days there is a depth of knowledge in some subjects, that I will no longer plumb. The stock market has always been one of those things. There has never been anything surer to make my eyes go glassy than to hear people start talking about hedge funds, puts, calls, bear markets, or all those other arcane terms used by the trading venues of the various money streets of the world. When I got my MBA I was forced to understand some of Mystery; I persevered only because it led to the greater goal. Economics is a different story, and what statistics can reveal is a thing of beauty. It may be that my disenchantment with financial Mysteries was a working class prejudice. I never saw myself having the kind of money where knowing about The Pit, The Bell, or The Street would make any difference. (Even now these phrases bring to mind “Bell, Book, and Candle.) Or maybe the risk factor is just too great; it is linked in my mind with such things as playing poker, snap, bridge, and Dutch Biltz, all games of speed, subtlety, bullying, and trickery.

Happily I have built a fairly broad knowledge base and can extrapolate like a fiend. But recently I came across an area that has challenged my initiative to dig deep. “What is Hannah’s field of study?” my sister-in-law asked. I’ve been explaining this in a cursory way for the past several weeks to people who knew her in high school. Hallway conversations don’t require much depth, but this seemed to ask for more.

I know that Hannah is working with math, and that pure mathematics has been her passion. Only just recently did she deign to find an application for her knowledge. (I was glad of this, because, after all, earning a living is something of a requirement in life; and frankly I can’t see many would pay to watch someone do math.) I understood much of what she talked about. I had done my share of calculus, becoming fuddled when we hit multi-dimensional analysis (the first 4 dimensions were fine, but I could not wrap my head around any concrete use for 5th dimensional equations might be good for). I use a fair amount of math in my knitting and cherish things like the Golden Mean, Fractals, Fibonacci series, Mobius strips, and Klein bottles. I say this as both a way of making a connection with my daughter’s work, as well as to show where my limits are.

I know that her research has something to do with fractal analysis of biological material. This makes sense to me, since we are made up of molecules, which essentially create crystalline structures. The logic of Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” demonstrated that in somewhat different terms.

I know that she uses computer programs to analyze digital images of biological material and create maps. But maps of what? How the crystalline structures hang together? How energy moves through those structures? How changes in the structures or energy patterns might indicate that certain other things are about to happen within that biological material? I know that she is working on mammograms and that has something to do with cancer. I know that her interest lies in brains, and that has something to do with migraines.

But that’s it. I understand more about cars, even ones sporting embedded computers, than I do what my daughter is choosing for her life’s work. What surprises me is that I’m OK with that. I can follow her when she is talking about what she does (I’m pretty sure she simplifies it for me and I’m not so OK with that), but I couldn’t take a test on it afterwards. Just like I couldn’t repair my own car, let alone build one. Just like I’ll continue to rely on other people to deal with the stock markets on my behalf.

Malcolm Gladwell in “Outliers” references the 10,000 hour rule. In order to become expert at a task, a person needs to put in that many hours of practice. At 8 hours a day that would be roughly 1,250 days or just under 3.5 years of daily practice. Even counting a moving target, like being a parent (just over 23 years for me), certain skills are bound to accrue. Give that, what have I spent that amount of time doing? Certainly poking around the internet. I started messing around with computers when I was 14 years old (yes, easily a bleeding edge adopter). I kept it up to the point I was working professionally as a programmer, instructor, and eventually systems administrator for a 13 year block of my life. Education has been both an overlapping field, and one that has been gained through personal practice and family tradition. I taught English for 7 years in Morocco, and again for 14 year in public schools.

There was certainly an overlap between my jobs in education and computing; language learning is important in both, as is communication facilitating between knowledgeable and novice practitioners. Understanding and explaining how things are put together, how a system is built from disparate parts is another crossover skill. Then there is knitting and spinning. I am surprised to realize that even with spinning, my newest skill acquisition, I have passed the 10K hour mark.

The thing is that as a programmer my focus was on language, systems, and communication rather than anything mathematical. My experience with images has been along the lines of storytelling, not to do with the formulas that render a picture digitally. Hannah, since she was a small child has looked as these things in terms of patterns, noticing similarities and differences, and interpreting the variations in terms of formulas. Looking through my educator lens, I can see that my way of viewing the world is not conducive to using Hannah’s glass; I cannot easily see deeply into her field of research without some serious practice.

Do I have 10,000 hours I’d like to devote to learning this new skill? It is at this juncture I understand Dad’s position. I realize he was telling me that he did not have that kind of time to devote to learning, what was for him, an entirely new field. How I differ from Dad is that I have anticipated this and built in some safety nets. I’ve learned who has expertise in areas that I lack. I’m neither afraid, nor ashamed, to ask for advice. I never rely on just one person, or one source. I also had the net, and a thousand opinions at my fingertips, something he lacked, and I know how to use it.

When my husband teaches a Bee School, he advises his students to build their own Master Beekeeper from the ranks of their cohort, someone they can go to for advice, bounce ideas off. This is his way of “learn one; do one; teach one.” The more people with mastery the better. This frees the teacher to go and learn new things, to be constantly improving, extending a knowledge base widely and wildly. I’ve learned about bees along with my husband, listening to him talk as he consolidates his practice and drawing on my own understanding of biology, communities, and business. After 14 years cheek by jowl, a lot of bee keeping management has become effortlessly familiar for me. I don’t have that kind of time with my daughter to understand the Math Mystery she practices. I am satisfied to understand her as she speaks. As far as giving someone else an equally deep review of what she is doing, well, they’ll have to ask her themselves.