The Price of Free Food

People have often said that nothing in life is free.
As a college student people are constantly offering me free things, especially food as an inducement to go to things. I don't love food in general but sometimes the idea of not having to buy food or even just not having to make food is an attractive idea. However, I still do not take up every offer of free food. One problem I have with it is becauyse although they say it is free it is often not meant as being free. They give it to you so that you will go to the program or activity. In essence they are offering food in exchange for your participation. I know in many instances people take the food and leave without participating and although most people don't think there is anything wrong with that I don't like to because it almost feels like cheating.
And yet I get daily emails from something called Bookbub that is a list of free or cheap ebooks. I will often "buy" the free books. Perhaps I should be better at reviewing them which is, I think, why they give them out for free.

Changing Culture

So when I was heading home from my LDS mission my mission president* thanked me and the 15 or so other home-bound missionaries for the culture that we had brought to the mission. We were only about 15 of about 160 missionaries who were spread out across most of Indiana. How could we make a difference I thought, or at least a significant one. Some of the Elders were in leadership (one was an Assistant to the President and others were zone or district leaders) so they might have had a wider impact but  I just couldn't see it.
Last year I was a newbie in the Geology "gradcubes" (a room where 24 of the gradstudents have desks and partial cubicles). I was in the quiet row, where probably 70% of the time I was the only one sitting in my row and 90% of the time there wasn't conversations. Also, there were some conversations that went on in the other rows that were not the best quality.
This year I'm one of the second years, which means that some of the second years of last year (but not all) have graduated and moved on and some of the gradstudents that are my year have moved to other offices or rooms in the building, but overall between 15 to 20 of us are the same. But some people have also moved desks. This year my row is the talkative one and I have company probably about 80% of the time and conversations... well I'll just say I'm more distracted this year.  The conversations are often uplifting and/or educational.
Overall, the gradcubes have a different culture then they did last year, and only a few people changed. Even though the mission was a little different (more wide spread and bigger in general) maybe my Mission President could see it, could see how we impacted the mission culture as a whole.

*A mission president is "a 3 year, full-time, unpaid position to supervise, train, and help 290 or so missionaries." https://www.mormon.org/me/2TDZ/Paul

Criticism

This week I worked on a poster that I have to make for a conference. I made my first draft and really didn't love it but it was as much as I could give at the moment. When my professor looked at it he gave me quite a few things to change and more advice then I really wanted to deal with at the moment. The next day I went back to it and changed it a lot. I didn't necessarily change it in the way he said but I addressed the issues his comments were about. For example he said I should create blocks around different subjects. I don't think that looks very nice and it wouldn't have worked very well with the images I already had. However, I made the flow a lot more clear, which is why he wanted me to change it in the first place.
I learned that technique from my Dad. He told us that when he was writing his dissertation his adviser kept rewriting sections of his work, and as his adviser was not a native english speaker they always sounded terrible. Finally, my Dad realized that he didn't need to write what his adviser said, he just needed to rewrite where his adviser said.
I've heard that the author Shannon Hale said something similar. When someone tells you to fix something they are almost always right, but how they say to fix it is almost always wrong. That you have to figure out yourself. Granted I think this works for more creative types of work...
I think overall I am pretty open to criticism and take it pretty well. However, it usually is easier to make the changes if I have given it a little time. It is really hard to suppress that first spark of hurt that comes... even when I didn't love it to begin with it and kind of agree with the criticism.

Unifying Influences

I went on a fieldtrip on Satuday to more or less the middle of no where.We went off roading in 12 passenger vans... and got stuck. It took perhaps an hour, hour and a half to get both of our vans unstuck and back on a firmer road. We only had 2 shovels (but at least we had them) and we hauled flattish chunks of limestone from the nearest rock outcrop to use as planks to put under the tires. For the most part it went fine and people stayed good natured but at a few moments there was some argument and under the breath mutterings of stupidity (if they had just listened they would have known why certain things were being done). "Too many cooks in the kitchen," as someone noted.
It actually wasn't an uncommon concurrences for these poor geology vans or so I've heard.

This picture really doesn't give it justice.

Not long ago I was talking to some geology students about how close everyone seems to be in the geology department, I've heard or been part of such a tight knit university department. One of the students I was talking to explained it simply. "It's the fieldtrips." Which I think refers to both the time spent together (with more time you are more likely to become friends), but I think also to sharing hard experiences.
In High school I wrote a research paper entitled "Boosting a Nation's Self-Esteem: The Impact of the 'Space Race' on American Nationalism." Then, in my novel "Legend Speaker" I wrote about a girl who tries to unify a series of nomadic hunter-gatherer groups. When trying to figure out how to make that possible for my characters to accomplish I had a discussion with my brother and we talked about how there are three main ways to accomplish unity on the large scale.
1)A disaster like Hurricane Katrina.
2)A common enemy like most wars or more specifically 9/11.
3)A common goal such as winning the most medals in the Olympics.
The problem though is most of these are high stress situations, and as shown in the minor example of the fieldtrip that can lead to argument and tension. There are plenty of examples of high stress situations leading to the exact opposite of unity, so the question is when do they cause unity and when divisiveness. There seems to be something about success in the endeavor that lends itself to unity in the end but that might just be a circular argument.

Giving Ferns some Light

I am reading Anne of Green Gables at the moment and I was thinking about Diana, Anne's best friend. It has been a while since I have read them all but in the first one at least Diana is portrayed as kind of boring and a little slow but still endearing. It made me think of some other familiar ferns. Samwise Gamgee and Ron Weasley are both often portrayed in a similar light (especially in the beginning of the series). It seems a little sad though. Why must ferns appear in an unflattering light. Occasionally I listen to a podcast called Writing Excuses. In one of their episodes they talked about how each character should act and be written as though they are the main character in their own story, even if it is not the current story. I've always thought it would be cool to write a story like that, one where the main character is really the supporting character. In my short story Anchors I played with the idea a bit. I remember in the writing class I wrote it for one of the other students said I should have written part of the story from Nate's point of view about what he had learned in his travels (perhaps how it wasn't as glamorous as he'd hoped). I didn't do it. It would have defeated the point of the story (at least how I saw it). In Legend Speaker my main characters are definitely not ferns but I still tried to give my ferns some good scenes and character development. Maybe that is why I like stories where the main characters don't do everything because that just isn't reasonable. There is a fairly common saying "Behind every great man is a great woman." It suggests that woman throughout history have played the role of ferns, which is awesome... I just wish people would stop portraying ferns as a little dumb. Let ferns act in their own story. Sam Gamgee certainly finds his own place.