Tag: list

Twelve things I would change about the college experience

As a follow up to my last post about college related stress, and on a slightly similar note, here are some things I would change about the Bible College/Seminary (for American Readers) experience. You can sum up these points with “make the college experience more reflective of real life.” I have some other thoughts about the process the Presbyterian Church uses for sorting out its candidates. But I’ll keep this general for the sake of maintaining my position as a candidate…

  1. Make ministry more of a priority
    I feel like I’ve been sucked out of any sense of normal church life (well, normal based on the last eight years of heavy involvement in church life) by the college experience. I’ve almost forgotten what its like to talk to somebody on a week night, or talk about anything other than what I’ve learned or been thinking about during the week on a Sunday. It’s what people ask. And I’m often too tired or distracted to care. College students are meant to be involved in church life, as a candidate I’m meant to do ten hours a week… But count off the hours of church on a Sunday (twice), Bible Study, and a Staff meeting and my time is up. This may be my bias against languages speaking – but I spend a lot of my time doing language grunt work, and a lot of that time wondering what the payoff is in terms of my future ministry, the answer, in the day and age of amazing computer programs and multiple reliable translations, “not a whole lot.”
  2. Teach more practical stuff, earlier
    Maybe if I’d done MTS I wouldn’t be saying this – but shouldn’t our facility for training and equipping people for ministry be training and equipping people for ministry. I’m sure most ministry stuff is better caught than taught – but having some formal apologetics training, and a bit of pastoral care/counselling training from the outset would be terrific, and ending up with some how to do the business of church would be nice too. Just thinking about the practical side of ministry, and how things are going to work in the real world when rubber meets road, would be a more valuable exercise than most language classes (there it is again). Role playing, talking to experts, practical stuff that gives you some idea at how you might tackle awkward pastoral issues wold be heaps more useful than hoping you get some really sticky situations in your 10 hours of parish time.
  3. Get students thinking about modern communication technology
    Call me biased, but I reckon every Bible College student should blog. Blogging helps to find a written voice. It’s a chance to articulate thoughts on issues raised in class. It’s a chance to be creative, and to think about application. It’s a chance to get ideas out into the world. Blogs could even be part of the assessment process. Vocational ministry is about communication. Bible College students should be thinking about how to use technology, social networking, emails, anything they can get their hands on – for the sake of the kingdom. Blogging is great for crystallising thoughts. They should not only have to blog, but they should have to post comments on the ideas of their friends (on their blogs). This is only a partly serious suggestion. But most marketing people think the Internet is the future – so we have to encourage people in ministry to be thinking about how it fits with their future. The college itself needs to think about how to use the web better, both in terms of its own homepage and the wider world of social networking, blogging, and multimedia stuff.
  4. Make students teach RE as a community service/part of the curriculum
    Why are we keeping young, dedicated people who are being educated about the Bible out of what is a golden opportunity for loving and serving our communities.
  5. Equip students better mentally to cope with Scholarship
    Rather than spending a week before college starts grappling with the Greek and Hebrew alphabets – we should be helping prepare students for the challenge of dealing with  stupid “Emperor’s New Clothes” scholars are going to present to their thinking. Academia rewards new and exciting ideas – which gives rise to a lot of people getting excited about really dumb stuff that shouldn’t be taken seriously past showing why it’s dumb. College should not be a time where you lose your faith and have doubts preyed on by scholars with an agenda who you’re not really warned about. Some scholars are wolves in wool
  6. Modernise assessment processes (get with the programs)
    Seriously. Who uses pen and paper for anything other than taking phone messages (other than GTD people) any more? Why am I expected to lug a pen into an exam and scrawl illegibly as fast as I can answering four questions in 2 hours? Get with the times. Students inevitably write slower than their ancestors, and type faster. Concerns about plagiarism or cheating with the power of the Internet are both stupid and unfounded – a) because you can check for plagiarism as quick as you can say “google” and b) because the whole idea of a robust education is getting people to interact with the ideas that are out there – and it’s stupider to expect students to rote learn said ideas in order to regurgitate them in an exam situation. There are tens of good computer programs out there aimed at making the art of theology easier – why aren’t these being deliberately included in the curriculum so that a lifetime of sermon preparation/Bible teaching is also easier?
  7. Make language learning more reflective of reality, and more useful
    Most ministers I speak to who use Greek and Hebrew (and its a minority) do it with the aid of books and computer software. And yet we’re expected to memorise paradigms and rote learn vocab in order to spurt it out on demand. I can’t imagine that situation ever arising in the real world… “Excuse me Reverend, could you tell me, on the spot, why this word in my KJV is translated in that way” – aren’t we better off teaching (and I’ve got to give my Hebrew lecturer credit here) people to understand the way the language works (like an animal), equipping students to dissect words and getting a bit of linguistic theory under their belts to avoid illegitimate totality transfers and to understand semantic ranges. At the moment we spend so much time doing rote learning stuff and writing out paradigms until our fingers and eyes bleed that we’ve got almost no time to look at the actual Bible or think about any of the other three subjects.
  8. Get rid of exams
    Why do we think asking for regurgitation in two hours, on paper, is a good way to assess thirteen weeks’ worth of work? No one does, and it isn’t. Assessment on a regular basis (to encourage people to keep up with the work – rather than trying to cram it into the short term memory) that is more closely modeled on the real world (discussions, presentations etc) is surely a better gauge of a person’s progress. Show some initiative and encourage people based on educational notions of learning styles and the like.
  9. Make assessment marking less arbitrary (death to word limits)
    My own, very personal bugbear,1 is the word limit. Word limits are entirely arbitrary. I am not suggesting no limit on writing – but to use words is dumb. It misunderstands language. It actually encourages dense rather than flowing writing, and complexity over simplicity. Let me explain. Every sentence is an idea. That sentence was five words. My last three sentences used a total of thirteen words. Other people may use the same number of words to express less, others more. Others may use the same number of words but triple the number of syllables, or enhance the complexity of the words they use. We all know that shift+f7 gives you a thesaurus that is capable of turning your rudimentary slang into highbrow academia. Essays should be given a qualitative assessment, not a quantitative one. Students should be penalised for including stuff that’s irrelevant to their argument – but they should not be penalised if their argument required extra words because it needed them. And if you want a limit in order to make the lecturer’s job easier when it comes to marking – set a typeface, type size, and line spacing – and then set a page limit. That will encourage more concise writing. That’s how journalists do it too. You write in column inches, not in word counts (unless you’re a freelancer paid by the word). And you cut stuff from the bottom if you have to edit it. Lecturers should stop reading when the writing gets boring. That’s real life. It’s also reflective of preaching (where you should go as long as you’re interesting – according to QTC’s preaching lecturer). The vast majority of my time writing assignments is trying to cut five hundred words from an assignment that doesn’t have five hundred words to spare. The only options seem to be to lose substantial and important logical steps to an argument, or to go over the word limit and cop a penalty. If anybody knows how to, in 2,000 words, interact with scholarship (at least 10 peer reviewed articles), the Bible, and other primary documents while answering a question that is contentious enough to be at the scholarly coalface, then please, let me know.
  10. Make assessment criteria clearer (and stick to it)
     The Australian College of Theology provides guidelines for assessing essays that almost universally get ignored (so far as I can tell). Of the five essays I’ve had marked thus far – only one referred directly to this criteria in terms of the mark given, the rest seemed just to go with some sort of vibe (though the marks have all been fairly similar).
  11. Encourage the development of the fruit of the Spirit above the fruit of the head
    I’ve chatted to a few people disillusioned with the college process online, and in real life, in the last little while – and if a criticism comes up enough, from enough different people, sooner or later you’ve got to wonder if it has merit. Assessment of someone’s capability to do ministry is almost always based not on what they know, but if they know God. And if they are suitably gifted. I don’t know how the college can do his better – but I don’t think stress, diarrhea, grumpiness, worry, academic envy, and tiredness, nor did I notice broad knowledge of scholarly opinions, Greek parsing, or Hebrew pronunciation mentioned as desirable attributes in Galatians 5 (and my Greek isn’t that bad, nor is the semantic range of the items in the list that broad).
  12. Start later, finish later (or at the same time)
    Again, a personal bugbear. Our college advertises that it finishes in time for students to beat peak hour home. Which is great. What they don’t advertise is that you have to drive to college in peak hour. We live 17 km from the college (according to the GPS) and it takes 40 minutes to get there in peak hour, and 25 minutes off peak. Peak hour seems to start at about 3pm anyway – so the trip home isn’t substantially faster. And seriously, who is at their best in an 8.30 class?

1 I know I break this rule a lot here – I write too many words. But seriously. I’m a journalist. Brevity is my thing. You will find almost no adjectives in my writing. I don’t pad out my sentences with flowery language. I might choose a cool noun here or there, but I try to carry my writing with my vocab in one word bursts. I try to be a sniper rifle, not a shotgun. Word choice is about precision, not about scattering a few words in the breeze hoping one will hit the target.

November 3, 2010

My five favourite “how to” posts from 2009

I like finding tips around the web – and I like making up my own tips and posting them as lists. Here are five that I particularly liked from 2009.

  1. My “Recipe for Sizzler’s Cheese Toast“
  2. My “five non essential skills”
  3. My “Tips for writing complaint letters“
  4. My “Tips for finding a good cafe“
  5. My “How to make scrambled eggs with a coffee machine“

January 9, 2010

List of Lists

I have written a lot of list posts in the last two days. Here’s a list of list posts. It’s the last such list. Normal services will be resumed shortly, I have hundreds of pieces of oddness just waiting to be posted.

  1. Five reasons to write lists
  2. Seven things that occupied my time over the weekend
  3. Five interesting things I learned about Calvin
  4. Three reasons to clean your fish tank
  5. Ten things I liked about the Townsville V8 Supercar Event
  6. Five reasons I’m not doing MTS
  7. Ten songs I would have voted for in JJJs Hottest 100 of all time

July 14, 2009

List of Songs I would have voted for…

I didn’t vote in JJJ’s hottest 100 of all time (here’s the list). I love the Js, but I haven’t listened to anything other than local ABC radio for months (except to listen to a little bit of the Hottest 100 of All Time).

It looks like the vote was crashed by a bunch of old time rockers with a penchant for Michael Jackson. There are hardly any songs from the last few years, which is pretty awesome.

If I had voted (and you get to vote for ten songs):

  1. I would have voted for one song per band
  2. I would have given greater weighting to songs from great albums or from bands producing consistently good music rather than one hit wonders.
  3. I would have rewarded bands who I appreciated in their halcyon days but don’t like so much any more (hence the inclusion of The Living End and Powderfinger – they really were my introduction to JJJ – even though they went on to be darlings of the mainstream).

These are the songs I think I would have voted for:

  1. Radiohead – Fake Plastic Trees.
  2. Muse – Plug In Baby
  3. Paul Simon – Call Me Al
  4. Smashing Pumpkins – Disarm
  5. Jeff Buckley – Last Goodbye
  6. Dandy Warhols – Get Off
  7. Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb
  8. Powderfinger – Day You Come
  9. The Living End – Prisoner of Society
  10. Gomez – Shot Shot

Some of these songs were chosen arbitrarily as representatives of a band’s body of work – I really can’t decide what Radiohead, Muse, Smashing Pumpkins or Gomez song I like the best. Placebo and The Whitlams were unlucky not to make the list on the basis of criteria 3. 

July 14, 2009

Ten things I enjoyed about the Townsville 400

  1. The feeling of professional satisfaction – the organisation I work for played an integral role in bringing the event to Townsville, I have written more about V8s than anything but energy generation. I know lots about energy generation. This photo is largely unrelated.  
  2. The noise – is absolutely thrilling. The “pop” the cars make when changing gears sounds like fireworks. We were sitting in stands next to the starting grid and the start of the race was phenomenal. 
  3. The crowd – was massive. It’s weird how into the sport fans of V8s are – they’re covered in team merchandise.
  4. The professionalism – The V8 organisation, the teams and the drivers are the most personable sports stars I’ve ever interacted with – if sitting in a room as a bunch of drivers talk about the sport is “interacting” – the Melbourne Storm weren’t far off. But these guys can sell merchandise and know who butters their bread (the sponsors).
  5. The carnage – everyone goes to races for crashes.
  6. The spectacle – it’s a visual feast, fast cars, colourful starting grid set-ups, the mini racing, the utes… it was a grand day out.
  7. The teamwork – one of the things I’m really starting to appreciate about motor sports (and cycling) is the team tactics – and the contribution to “individual” success that comes from the surrounding team – like the pit crews. They change tires, fuel up and do running maintenance in a blur. We were sitting opposite the pits and I spent as much time watching the pit crews as watching the cars.
  8. Photography – I was determined to snap a few photos of moving cars looking like they weren’t moving with the background all blurry. I got a few such shots – you can see other photos from the day here. I took about 1,300 photos.
  9. The Jesus car – Andrew “Fishtail” Fisher drives a ute in the V8 Ute race – his team is called “Jesus – All About Life” – he gets great exposure and they read out the full name of his “sponsor” every time he gets mentioned (see point 4). The exposure is tremendous. In the first ute race he ran three other drivers off the road – and busted a tire while doing so.
  10. My wife – I went to the V8s with Robyn. She makes everything more fun.

July 13, 2009

Listmania

I feel like writing lists today. Here are my five reasons for writing lists. 

  1. Lists are good blog fodder.
  2. I have a number of multifaceted topics to write about.
  3. Lists encourage brevity while dealing with multiple ideas on a theme.
  4. They’re structurally easier to read than lengthy monologues.
  5. They’re more likely to be shared by other people.

July 13, 2009

Card carrying professionals

Business cards are one of the unsung heroes of the economy – for networking to bear fruit the people you meet have to keep and remember your business card – so it’s worth making them memorable. Here are 10 Business of my favourite business card designs from around the web. TrendHunter has a list of 26 but their design is clunky and requires a lot of clicking around.  Others come from this Toxel collection.

  1. Pop Up Business Cards
    These will make you stand out from the pack. Literally. They’re from a graphic design studio.
  2. Cardapult – a business card that converts into a catapult – from a mechanical engineer. There’s a video of it in action here. And instructions for how to make your own here.
  3. Minifig yourself – I’ve posted this one before – but it’s worthy of a rerun – if you work for Lego you get your own lego figurine business cards, they even customise them to look like you.
  4. The lock pick kit – perfect for locksmiths – produced for a “hacker” – this little card contains a working lock pick set.
  5. Google Me card – I’ve featured this one before too – from Ji Lee – it’s for the techno savvy entrepreneur who religiously maintains their web reputation – you would have to check pretty regularly that you haven’t been superseded by a triathlete, singer, criminal or football player.
  6. The auto dialing business card – Tom Ward created a business card that uses electronic signals to cause your phone to dial his number. Sound clever? Want to find out how he did it? Here you go (or as a PDF).
  7. Money – A significantly devalued currency opens up the possibility of using money to make money – a Zimbabwean hunter did just that – using bank notes as business cards. Talk about a silver lining. But there’s a cloud too – he had to pay a fine or serve a jail term for defacing currency.
  8. Smashed plates – if you run a traditional Greek restaurant and want to put your smashed plates to good use – try this:
  9. Or if you’re a debt collector with a penchant for breaking limbs… you could try this:
  10. Encourage a growing business – this designer wanted to leave an impression so went out on a limb to produce this growth model:

April 14, 2009

What’s black, white and read all over

Yes, the humble newspaper. Thanks Peter Combe. If you want to track down the leading daily (or in fact any other dailies) from the 400 biggest cities in the world – here’s a nice aggregator.

March 16, 2009

It’s something unpredictable

But in the end it’s right… I can not believe I just referenced a Greenday song.

Readers may be shocked to learn that this blog was not listed in Time Magazine’s 25 best blogs of 2009. Maybe next year. Here’s the list of the 25 best and the 5 most overrated. Some are probably worth subscribing to.

February 18, 2009

Green on the black list

There are a number of words I’d like to blacklist at work. Identified, sustainable, showcase… a bunch of buzzwords robbed of their meaning by overuse and the ability to fit into any context. I don’t like weasel words – and I recommend removing them from anything you write/produce/say lest you fall into a position where your colleagues play bingo based on the predictability of your speech.

The Lake Superior State University has published a list of banished words. They’re not arbitrarily selected. They give reasons. And also include popular, overused phrases. Words on the list include: green, first dude, bailout, maverick, carbon offset and others.

What words/phrases would you ban given the chance?

January 4, 2009