Knowledge is Happiness

I would really like to learn to speak more languages. I think it would be really interesting to learn something outside of the Germanic/Romance languages, and even more so something outside of the Indo-European language family, but yet I think it would probably be easiest to branch out slowly. I've been saying for the past few years that I'm going to learn Spanish, but yet I never seem to actually get around to doing so.

I would also like to learn to play more instruments. I already do piano, clarinet, and alto sax, but I would like to know more. I think I'd like to add a string instrument to my repertoire - guitar seems like the obvious choice, I guess. I've been thinking about buying a ukelele to start out on, so I might do that. Someday I would really like to learn the cello - I think they're such a beautiful instrument - but it's really not within my financial means right now, so that will have to wait a while.

I guess really one of the main skills I would like to learn is people skills, but I think those ones just take practice. Things like striking up conversations with strangers, or making new friends more easily, bringing up difficult topics of conversation - those are all things that I've just never been good at.

Knowledge-wise, I would like to learn more science. I really liked physics (and math) a lot in high school, but just not as much as arts, so I didn't really get a chance to continue on with them in university. My best friend/former roommate is a physics student, and one of my other former roommates was in engineering, so just being around them and talking about what they were studying helped a little bit, but I would really like to know more. I thought it would be interesting to learn some biology, too, since the only time I ever studied it was learning the parts of the cell way back in grade nine--but I tried watching Crash Course and after a certain point they were just so full of acronyms and unfamiliar words that I always came out feeling more confused than when I started, so I've resigned myself to just not ever knowing biology.

Anyway, as much as I would really like to know everything, those are the most major ones, so I think I'll close out there.

If I could shape the universe

I think rather than creating a whole new universe, I'd really like to alter our own. It's funny, the more I thought about it the more I realized that I wouldn't take away war or greed or the capacity to feel pain. Truly awful things happen in the world, but I think that part of being human is having the option to do evil; and without that ability, when we choose to do good it isn't as meaningful.

Most of the changes I've been thinking about (and they have kept me up quite a bit as well because omg imagine that I could make any change to the universe I want) are really about money. I'm not quite sure how that happened.

If I could change the universe, I would make sure that researchers have funds to investigate alternate fuel sources, cure diseases, and figure out better systems for distributing food, water, and medical supplies. Don't get me wrong, it's fascinating (and a teensy bit terrifying) that to remotely control cockroaches via microchip or train a monkey to use a cybernetic arm, it seems a bit frivolous to do that when people are dying every single day because of a lack of basic resources.

This one might be broaching into the territory of taking away humans' capacity for evil, but if I could alter the universe I would bump up humanity's sense of compassion, empathy, and understanding. This is partially fueled by the American health care debate.

I know perfectly nice people that are adamantly against health care reform that, when someone they know and care about are in need jump at the chance to help them. So they're very nice people, but it's kind of an "out of sight, out of mind" mindset, or a distrust that others are really doing all they can to get a job with health benefits.

I'd like to think that if our compassion was bumped up, we'd be okay helping other people even if we didn't know them. I'd venture that the quality of internet dialogue would sure go up! Bullying, whether cyber or IRL, would drop down, the quality of political discourse would go up (because suddenly it would be much harder to call someone a fascist communist elitist hippie or war mongering corporate buy out fat cat) and relationships would probably be substantially healthier.

It certainly wouldn't solve everything - there are still people that are bad, and that would do bad things, but it would help all of us who sometimes forget to take other people's opinions into consideration and jump to conclusions.

If I could bend the universe to my will, I would make a free and appropriate education available to every person, everywhere on the planet, regardless of race, creed, income, or religion. This kind of goes with my first one, because people only have time to get an education if they don't spend several hours a day getting their water, or being constantly sick with easily treatable diseases but lack the medical supplies.

As a kind-of-sort-of-not future "teacher" (have I put enough qualifiers on that?) the thought of every person in the world having the opportunity to learn makes me incredibly excited. When I think of the impact on about countries, it's kind of abstract because I've never been to them and can't fully grasp the difference it would make, so at the risk of sounding country-centric here's what I would like that to look like in America:

• a 20:1 student-teacher ratio, as opposed to a 30 or even 35:1


• adequate supplies, so the teacher isn't forced to ration out paper or buy some on his/her own dime and students do not always need to share (but some sharing is good practice!)


• adequate funding given to all schools, regardless of standardized test outcomes (currently, if a school does well on a standardized test it recieves more money than a school that does poorly, and if a school is unable to improve its scores for a set number of years then the state takes over the school)


• in elementary school (approximately ages 5 - 11) multiple art, music, physical education and maybe even science specialists, as well as enough priority given to them that each class has each of those subjects at least 2-3 times a week (currently, it's often once a week, if that)


• in middle school/high school (approximately ages 12-18, the end of required schooling in the U.S.) a broad availablity of upper-level science, math, and advanced placement classes (A.P. classes can count toward college credit) as well as art, music, and other elective classes


• this one's particularly close to my heart, since I work with students with disabilities: a tablet computing device, iPad or otherwise, for every student, special or general education. This stems from two things: a) tablet devices can be wonderful, wonderful devices for kids with autism and offer control and indepence to students that very often lack in those areas and b) as I've looked through lesson plan ideas I've noticed the disturbing trend of games and lessons that require 5-10 times the menial prep work (i.e. cutting paper, numbering flashcards, etc) for it than it will take to actually do the activity. And then those piles of paper/game cards/jeopardy sets all have to be stored somewhere until next year when you can use them, and it's all just a mess. I want to be able to load an app on the kids' tablets and have them be ready to go; it's even an instant reward for kids who finish early since I could leave some apps on permanently as things to do when they have extra time

And you know what else I'd do if I ruled the 'verse?

Bring back Firefly.