Entries in Life

My oldest daughter, Ginger, is growing up. We sent our nine-year-old away to camp this week. Let me tell you, camp is a lot different now than I remember it. At this camp, we can send Ginger email (for a fee, natch) and see photo albums every day of what they’re doing. I was impresseed that they seem to be teaching these 8-12 year-olds what I would consider advanced theological concepts. Maybe I shouldn’t be so scared of scary sounding concepts. Of note: you can tell the place is filled with Greeks.

For many Americans, intelligence is an enigma. We assume it is a prerequisite for success, or, worse, that success and intelligence are intertwined – you can’t have one without the other. “If you’re so smart, how come you aren’t rich?” is the common refrain. If I had any such illusions, they were destroyed in college. Many of my classmates were recipients of the Taylor Scholarship for National Merit Scholars. National Merit Scholars are very smart. They are selected because they’ve managed to score in the top for their state on the SAT. So Patrick Taylor, a wealthy oilman from New Orleans, decided to try and attract these bright kids to his area. He arranged with the University of New Orleans to provide a stipend and full scholarship to any National Merit Scholar who chose to come to New Orleans for college. Certainly they attracted smart students. But they also attracted an amazing number of unmotivated underachievers. If you are good at taking tests, but haven’t bothered to study in high school, you probably don’t have ahigh GPA. When it comes time to go to college, and you’ve done well on the SAT, your choices are limited. Even though you are a National Merit Scholar, many scholarships want some sort of minimum GPA or class standing. The Taylor Scholarship made no such requirements. They didn’t even ask for an essay. “Check here if you want a full ride scholarship to New Orleans.” So easy. But the experiment failed. My freshman year at UNO was the last year Patrick Taylor decided to offer the scholarship. He had evidently become frustrated with the type of students his experiement attracted. Instead of smart students who worked hard to succeed in school, many of the students were apathetic. One semester, a friend and one of the Taylor Scholars, heartbroken over a relationship, spent every night in my room playing Street Fighter II against my roommate all night long. He failed out that semester. My roommate, another scholarship recipient, managed to finish up that year. I’m sure that Mr. Taylor hoped to breed a new generation of professionals in New Orleans. New Orleans certainly needed an infusion like that to succeed. The city had been in an economic tailspin since the bust of oil industry in the 80s. Had the program produced engineers, doctors, lawyers, and scientists who wanted to stay in New Orleans, things might be a little different for New Orleans now. And many of those students did become professionals — but they didn’t stay in New Orleans. They were lured away by cities with more potential for growth, places with more opportunities. And then there were the students who didn’t pursue a career after college. Some of those very smart students — students who had the ability and education to succeed — had no motivation to do anything more than work as a barrista in a coffee shop. Of course, there isn’t anything wrong with working in a coffee shop, but this is not what the rich, old oilman had in mind when he handed out money so students could come to New Orleans and study. So I learned that intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean success. At least, not the kind of success most people dream about. It takes a good deal of motivation to succeed. Motivation that must be backed up by hard work.

Today, we went to the scholarship banquet for AHEPA which was held at our church. Amongst the great bits in the keynote, this stood out: In the past, our goal was assimilation. That has changed. Now we want to excel! Somehow, that seems especially poignant when it comes to education. Many educators seem to be more concerned with the assimilation of slow students than the excellence of bright students. Do we really want to settle for assimilation?

Buried in an article titled “What makes women happy?” I found a bit about desire vs. happiness that gave me a framework for something I’ve been mulling recently. Much of the article could be a rant against accumulation of “stuff”: when the possessions don’t work, we go after yet more possessions. Social scientists call it the hedonic treadmill. … we keep feeding ourselves the wrong things for happiness. Still, the important bit is this: we might desire things that don’t make us happy. I talked to Alexis about the article. She readily identified with this. I like the comparison that Alexis made. She said we desire doughnuts, but they don’t make us happy. Meanwhile, I’ve gotten a lot of satisfaction from cycling 20 miles 3-4 times a week, but it isn’t something that I might desire. When I fill my days with leisure, I tend to be less happy than the days where I work and accomplish something — like the room we just finished painting. If I spend time interacting with my children, I end up feeling better emotionally than if I spend all day tooling around the Internet, going wherever my desire leads me. I’m not sure if this is what is meant by the “hedonic treadmill,” but it works for me. Happiness doesn’t just happen when I try to fill my desires. What I desire doesn’t provide fulfillment. Of course, you should understand that when I think about “desire,” I have in mind the Orthodox concept of Passion. That way of thinking has been helpful to me to begin to discover that happiness is something I must choose to actively pursue rather than an emotion that I can just passivly enjoy.

Reading up on Jim’s weblog, I came across a quiz: “Which theologian are you?” It seems heavily weighted towards those theologians that would be interesting to those in Reformed circles (Karl Barth is like a Reformed demigod; Charles Finney started out Presbyterian; Calvin was a huge reformer; Augustine is their most ancient saint; etc.) but I suppose that since Jim is the one that pointed to the quiz, I shouldn’t be too surprised. According to the quiz, I’m most similar to the anti-hero Charles Finney. I can say that I’ve heard Orthodox theology mistaken for the Pelagian Heresy — something Finney gets accused of here — but I suspect that is because people don’t understand the original heresy nor Orthodox theology. You scored as Charles Finney. You’re passionate about God and love to preach the Gospel. Your theology borders on pelagianism and it is said that if God were taken out of your theology, it would look exactly the same.