jessingrassellino

Author: 54752785

  • Beauty in the Process

    This week, I experienced starting a lot of different types of learning. I am working on obtaining my AWS certification, so studying for that; I also started working on a piece of music and that meant needing to learn how to use a new looper pedal! AND I started writing a new poem.

    Toward the end of the week, I also read a tweet from a good friend who felt very frustrated with his inability to focus. This got me thinking about the idea that we have to focus our energy in long, intense sessions in order to achieve something.

    For example, this week (and most weeks), I don’t really have TIME to focus for very long. Maybe I get a free half hour during the work day, and then another hour before bed to do calmer things like reading, writing, or planning for my day.

    One of the things I tried this week was practicing an etude. It turns out that etudes are a great metaphor for many things we want to do in life. Most musicians detest etudes at some early point in their career. Etudes seem a bit pointless; we practice them, but the benefit is unclear in the short term. During my undergrad, those 30 minutes a day I spent on my weekly etude were frustrating at first. After a year, though, I started to love etudes! These short studies forced focus by only being “about” one thing – one bow technique, or one left hand technique, or one musical technique. The structure of the etude allowed me to use a shorter period of time to improve one area over the span of a week.

    In that spirit, I have approached the past few weeks. My learning and products are not done. Is learning ever done? At any rate, I was pretty reluctant to share this week, because it’s hard to share something when it doesn’t feel finished. That said, I think it’s important to share with you the poem I’m halfway through writing.

    handwritten draft of a poem I’m working on, after Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

    The above picture is of my journal from this past week, as I’ve worked on my poem, modeled after Lady Lazarus, by Sylvia Plath. It is one of her later poems, one that I’ve known for more than twenty years now. In all that time, I never read the poem quite as I did during the past week. For the first time, the rich depth of her imagery became apparent to me. It is difficult to craft a poem the way she does, and I found myself stuck. I couldn’t finish the poem in time for this week’s post. Instead, I give you this, an unfinished work.

    A reminder: just because you don’t have all the time, all the energy, all the focus, or all the answers, doesn’t mean to let go of what you want to accomplish. Accept yourself, where you are, and know that you’ll get where you want to be with steady effort, regardless of the bumps. And hopefully, I’ll be able to share a complete poem with you next week. Cheers!

  • How To Leave Home

    I have chosen to model this poem after the poem Facts by Philip Levine (in What Work Is). The poem attempts to employ a casual, narrative tone, exploring one large narrative by creating smaller narratives within each stanza. I have made every attempt to adhere to the spirit and style of Levine’s work. I definitely felt the challenge in my learning this week as I stretched these muscles!

    How To Leave Home

    july 19, 2020

    The ferry from New York to Vermont rocked on the
    lake, not yet frozen solid. Every fifteen minutes, at
    all hours of the day, boats departed. On the ferry,
    our cars swayed, and we swayed inside.

    If you’re careful, you can actually transport a
    table, and all four chairs, more than one hundred miles,
    tied to the top of a 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser
    station wagon — just in case you ever need to.

    I didn’t plan to leave Plattsburgh, in the beginning.
    Sure, some people did, but most people I knew stayed.
    They stayed and complained about their dead-end jobs,
    egotistical bosses, abusive husbands or nagging wives.

    John Dewey, renowned philosopher, attended the University of
    Vermont. A student there insisted to me that Dewey wrote his
    great works in one of the residence halls. I was on my way to my
    admissions audition; the student was probably high.

    An Oldsmobile Cutlass cruiser is a moderately reliable vehicle, and
    people from Plattsburgh routinely drive fourteen-year-old cars.
    Monthly payments for new cars are too costly, but the repairs for
    old cars can be put on credit and paid, over time.

    My boyfriend’s brother was ashamed to be seen riding in my
    fourteen-year-old Olds, when he visited Plattsburgh from
    Queens. If he had worked for the privileges in his
    young life, he would have felt differently.

    I don’t blame the student for being high, especially with a
    dull job as the student librarian. He may have been bored, or
    fighting anxiety, for the library is filled with intimidating
    intellects such as myself, unafraid to speak our minds.

    There is a lie in the previous stanza. Yes, I’m
    smart, but not intimidating. Frequently, I face my own
    ignorance and despite my best efforts, I’m still stunned by the
    increasing gap between myself and that which I don’t yet know.

    I was the most ignorant when I lived in Plattsburgh.
    Mediocrity was not questioned, and chaos was normal.
    I looked for escape in second-hand encyclopedias and
    piles of library books, growing a world in my mind.

    The upstanding citizens, professors and business leaders,
    praised my curiosity, but chided my ambition. They didn’t
    understand my need to be a part of a bigger world.
    Each was satisfied to be the big fish in a shrinking pond.

    I will never return to Plattsburgh, or Burlington, not to
    watch the leaves dance on autumn trees, nor to
    pay homage to family or tradition. I know that I
    don’t belong, and I don’t have the heart to face it.

  • On Solitude

    I have chosen to model this essay after ‘On Noise’ by Seneca. The essay attempts to employ a casual tone, with plain language, in the casual style of a letter. (reference: https://thewonderreflex.blogspot.com/2013/08/seneca-on-noise.html)

    jess ingrassellino, july 2020

    People are surprised to find that I am undisturbed by solitude, especially during a pandemic. I cannot see the benefit of being constantly surrounded by people. Here I am, living alone and in solitude by choice for many years now, the happy introvert. I wake up each morning, thoroughly using and enjoying the whole of my bed, arms dangling over the top right corner, legs crooked and peeking over the sides, toes over the bottom. My refrigerator and sink are exactly as I left them the night before, filled with the foods I like. I know my coffee will be ready, and that nobody has used the last of the cream and forgotten to remind me to get more. Think of the artist who focuses on his painting, watching daylight dance over his still life, casting changing shadows. Hear the slow, steady tick of the metronome as the musician draws her violin bow across each string, coaxing steady warmth from each tone. 

    “You must be mad to want to spend any more time alone!” You may say, after spending the past four or five months in semi-quarantined solitude. But time alone in my space is no different to me than putting in headphones on the most crowded of subway trains, isolated in a sea of strangers. It is far more bothersome to be partially attached, sharing space with someone who does not respect or accept the need for my human soul to have its moments alone, or worse, someone who has never taken the time to look inward.

    “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” —Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670)

    This may well be true. We have never been more able to be connected to others as we are now. Mere months ago, one could find, in any number of cafes or bars, groups of friends, together alone, tweeting and texting and posting. Disconnected while social. And this, this is dangerous. This disconnectedness from our fellow humans when we are with them bleeds into our relationships with ourselves. So many I know have found themselves for weeks or even months locked away from family and friends that they see (but don’t connect with!), and they are missing their friends, quite naturally. So they are looking to their empty homes, their digital book and music collections, their fashionable clothes and handbags, all currency in their social worlds, sitting around them like a pile of money in the apocalypse. And in their isolation, they may appear to be in a relationship with themselves, but this is no reason to suppose that introspection or connection is happening. To sit with oneself in solitude is to be in an active discussion, even interrogation, with one’s own mind. Confronted with the pain of the past, the struggles of the present, and the promise of the future. Deeply acquainted with one’s own strengths, weaknesses, misgivings, doubts, and regrets.  

    Every now and then, we give the impression that solitude is a problem because we are bored, because technology is amazing, because we have to work, because, because, because. Yet, it appears many are driven from solitude not to avoid boredom or to experience technology or to do work, but rather to avoid themselves. We’ve painted solitude as the homeland of the loner, the solitude-stricken “unpopular” nerd, the psycho, the serial killer. The most dangerous temperament of all is the one that cannot sit with themselves; those with such temperaments have perpetrated the worst crimes on our society. The president tweets at 3am, but doesn’t know why he feels so insecure.  Cops band together to murder civilians who have not committed crimes, defending their actions ‘out of fear’, never examining the source of the fear they claim. Despots ruling with iron fists commit genocide, surrounded by sycophants serving as their inner voices. 

    “To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.” Deepak Chopra

    The president, the cop, the despot: they are afraid. Pick out the weakest, most harmful person, and you will see someone who has not been in solitude with themselves. Someone who is not comfortable sitting with who they are and what they have done in their lives. Someone seeking constantly and completely the company and approval of others, no matter what the cost. Shift to thinking about those most admirable humans who have been considered successful, and you will notice they are at ease with themselves. The Dalai Lama, men and women of the buddhist traditions, anyone who can sit alone after five months of a pandemic, in peace with themselves, and smile because their life is not something to be avoided, but appreciated. 

    “This is all well and good,” you may say, “but wouldn’t it be better to just get out of your head and your house and spend some time not thinking so deeply?” Sometimes, yes. I will concede this point. Avoiding myself is much, much easier than sitting with myself in solitude. Losing my thoughts and worries in shelves of books and crates of records is always preferable, even if less beneficial, than sitting in solitude. But, when I can venture back into the world again, I’ll do so with a stronger, centered self.

  • Communities of Practice

    Anyone who really knows me knows that I am wary of communities of practice. My wariness has little to do with the people themselves. In the places and spaces I’ve been in a community of practice (education, music, sofware testing), I have found many passionate and well-intentioned people. However, I’ve also observed things about these communities of practice that have invariably led me to move to the edge or even leave most of them.

    First, the closer to the center of a community one comes, the more tightly held the belief structure. A friend of mine has a great saying  – “Strong opinions, loosely held”. I like it. That means that I can hold an opinion and stand for it with fervor, but, when presented with adequate evidence in a different point of view, I can let go, loosen my grip, make room for multiple interpretations, or even change my view altogether. This level of flexibility is the stuff of academic rigor and scientific integrity, but studies and hypothesis are not required to practice this. The art of listening with the intention of learning (rather than “listening to respond”) is key. Positive communities learn from each other, and the center is less like a rock and more like molten lava, shifting and changing with new information.

    Second, most communities of practice start to sound like broken records after a period of time. While there are large bodies of knowledge that inform many communities of practice, they tend to draw upon the same historic body of literature or scholarship, which necessitates a certain kind of repetition. In communities of practice like software testing, where the ideas and practices are rooted significantly less often in rigorous academic study and more often in the personal experiences of the participants themselves, it seems that the ideas are more circular and less well-examined, at least from an academic perspective.

    What do I mean by academic perspective? Well, since software testing is largely a qualitative pursuit, at least in the context-driven or exploratory modes, this would entail performing structured qualitative case studies to better understand what actually works, and to be able to answer the question “How do we know it works? What evidence do we have that this practice is working?” Qualitative research methods in the social sciences require specific tools and structure to be applied before a claim is made and verified, and then there is still (and likely always!) discussion and disagreement. However, the areas of disagreement are substantiated through rigorous qualitative research methodologies applied by skilled researchers.

    In software testing, we have narratives presented at software conferences as our single biggest source of information and evidence that a practice or idea is working. We do not necessarily know that exploratory testing produces better results than scripted testing, writ large, because we have never studied the practice in any structured way. While inspiring and interesting, narratives and appeals to the “thinking tester” do not make a coherent body of evidence on which to judge any action. Similarly, in other fields like education, teacher narratives and appeals to the “thinking educator” would not constitute a rigorous understanding of what works in classrooms. Many communities of practice suffer from an abundance of opinion and a lack of evidence, but software testing’s ubiquitous absence from academic circles (particularly and especially in North America and Europe, less so in India), make the absence of evidence more conspicuous to the participant with an academic background (in this case, me).

    Finally, in communities of practice, even those where many of the participants come from a wide range of backgrounds (bankers, musicians, writers, scientists), the bulk of thinking about the problems within the communities is centered on the domain knowledge of that community. Certainly, participating in a community of practice means understanding the fundamental values, principles, and problems in that community of practice. The thing that is tough for me is that so many participants see the trees, some see the forest, but few see the landscape(s) beyond it. In the education community, most of the teachers I worked with (out of a faculty of 220) told me that they did not understand why I would pursue a doctoral degree (a masters is required in NYS, so we all had them). They frequently reiterated that they did not see the value or point in me pursuing my education. Also, they did not see the value in me teaching in other areas and subjects outside of my own (I taught English grammar at a private school for a time, in addition to my job). Interestingly, they could understand the idea of doing it for money, but they could not understand doing it for learning reasons.

    In the software testing community, people initially responded to me learning programming by telling me that I “didn’t need to program” to be a tester. People in the same community have responded to my music and teaching background with surprise – “How did you get into software testing from music teaching? It’s so different!” (for the record, it’s not so different). When people learn that I am a writer (of technical books for others, of poetry/blogs/etc.) for myself, they ask “where do you find the time?” In my mind, the question becomes “How can you afford not to do something outside of your realm of experience?” Meaning that the more seemingly disparate lenses we can look through to understand our problem, the more innovative the potential approaches to solving. Communities of practice, by their definition, don’t encourage breadth of knowledge, as they are focused on solidifying beliefs around a center core.

    So, where do we go from here? We can do nothing.  That’s easy.  Or, we can learn from other communities of practice,  and adopt rigorous ways of looking critically at our own experiences so that we have a broader and better of understanding of the good work that we do.  It’s up to us.