Looking back on it, I'm not sure I was science grad school material. After 16 years of constant schooling (K-college), I maybe should have taken a break. The dull repetition of sitting in lecture/discussion, taking tests, and jumping through hoops was taking it's toll. I was ready to have a job and enter society, and thought (hoped?) graduate school was just a short stop along the way. I was planning to go and breeze through classes and then get to the hands-on research, but I had deluded myself. It was hard. (I know! Well, duh, right? ;-) ) I didn't have enough hours in the day to study and do all the other stuff I wanted to do, like ski, climb, hike, play the piano, and spend time with friends. Synthetic chemistry wasn't as interesting as I thought it would be, though maybe still interesting enough to pursue a career doing it. But I think the real reason I went was because I was unsure what else to do besides continue to go to school. That and they were paying me to go, a relatively novel concept as far as I was concerned. Fear of the unknown kept me there; I'll be more specific soon.
As my research started, I noticed that the grad students did not all come with the same levels of preparation. Some had done much more research than I had (even though I did a summer internship at the University of Wyoming and some undergrad research at the College of Idaho), and some had even come to CSU the summer before to pick an advisor and project. I showed up at 8 am on the Monday after the end of classes, ready to start my work. I realized fairly quickly that my group mates had 1) been there since 6:30 am, 2) come in on the Saturday and Sunday before rather than going climbing, hiking, mountain biking or drinking (which is what I did), 3) had projects that they'd been thinking about for months (I think I had barely picked a project at that point), 4) didn't try out for the CSU jazz ensemble (I ended up as the back-up piano player, and I learned a lot that one semester!), and 5) were generally in our research advisor's good graces (which I was not, and it would take 18 months for me to get there). I don't know if they were all just that ambitious or if they got better advice than I did, or if I missed some memo that said "show up early for the best projects and to not look like a loser." Appearances mattered, apparently. My first two thoughts that morning were "what the hell?" and "holy sh*t!"
In short, I had some issues that were mine to solve. To this day, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about quitting grad school and what it's meant for me, career-wise. I'll never know if I'd be happier or better off as "Dr. Anderson" (though I do enjoy it when vendors and job applicants call me Dr. Anderson without knowing that I don't have a Ph.D.), but I've had a fulfilling, interesting, and productive life and career so far. What more could I ask for?
But this is a Blog, so (insert snicker here) you also get to read my opinions and some observations I've made about education and industry against the backdrop of a 14-year chemistry career. If you don't care about higher education in America, skip to the last paragraph. But I implore you to think about what education prepares a person to do. (As a father of young kids, I think about this topic A LOT.)
Graduate school--despite many peoples' best intentions--is part of a system, the system of taking smart people and turning them into parts of an Industrial Complex, albeit skewed toward leadership roles. The idea (circa 1997) was this: go to college, go to grad school, do a post-doc, get a job in industry or pharma and you'll be set. If you get a Ph.D. you'll get a job as a professor or mid-level employee, and work your way up to become a manager. One unstated caveat was this: employers really mean "finish your Ph.D. and a postdoc or 2, and then we'll talk." Another caveat (more relevant here): not getting a Ph.D. means that you have to take orders from other people, and that you'll never get to be "the boss." There was a general disdain for non-Ph.Ds. within the chemistry graduate school culture. The folks who "opt out" of grad school were "sell-outs" or "chicken" or "too dumb to hack it" or "settling for the booby prize." Some folks were all of those things, sure, but I would say that most people are NONE of those things when they choose to opt out of a given system. The only "pass" you'd get from the Ph.D.-bound peanut gallery for getting an MS was if you were leaving Chemistry to go do something else, like Law.
After all that strange psychology, and after I did indeed earn a Master's Degree in Chemistry from Colorado State University, I have to ask the question: why is getting a Master's Degree instead of a Ph.D. considered "chickening out" or "quitting" or "settling for the booby prize?" Is it because we place such a high standard on having a terminal degree? College endowments are often based on what percentage of their faculty have terminal degrees in their field. Most 4-year colleges and universities don't hire folks with Master's Degrees to teach. Never mind that earning a Ph.D. does not necessarily make you a good teacher. It might make you good at problem solving in your particular field of expertise, good at applying chemical tools. But there were no courses in grad school about education, or a variety of other topics we regularly encounter: troubleshooting electronics, glassblowing, tube fitting, getting along with other people, ethics, or scientific writing (though there are writing requirements in proposals and theses). These are all skills I've learned on the job. My "shop skills" (the ability and desire to actually pick up a wrench or screwdriver and fix something) came from my summer employment at a submersible pump and electric motor company during my college years, not from my graduate education. The teaching skills came from, well, teaching.
I'm not the only one who has noticed this narrow approach, either. A well-written report was drafted and submitted to the president of the American Chemical Society, which outlined many of the shortcomings of chemical graduate education. They point out that our current system of graduate education was set up just after World War II, you know, 70 years ago. Here's the understatement of the day: a lot has changed since then. We are not narrowly focused in our jobs and career paths anymore. Regarding science, the interesting, meaningful, and high-impact research happens at interfaces; for example, biodetection, the field I work in, sits at the interfaces between optics, surface chemistry, molecular biology, and engineering with a dash of theoretical biology and theoretical physics thrown in.
I wonder, too, if the number of folks who stick it out in graduate school truly reflects the desire of those folks to pursue scientific careers. Does peer pressure simply make graduate students "stick it out?" "Everyone else is doing it" seemed like the reason a lot of folks stayed in graduate school, at least when I was there. It took a lot of time, thought, and preparation to screw up the courage to tell my advisor I wanted to quit grad school and go get a job. Fortunately, he beat me to initiating that conversation because he noticed that I wasn't that crazy about it. (I should also point out that I met my wife at that time, so I was a bit distracted, and it showed. What can I say? Love is a many splendored thing!) I was ready to be done with school, ready to get a job, and ready spend as much time as I could outdoors. (I should also point out that I left a couple of good friends when I left graduate school, one of whom I still see now and then. I missed them immediately, and think on them often.)
What did I get with my MS in Chemistry?
- decent income & good benefits
- regular hours
- AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, TIME to do other things (outdoor activities, music, woodworking, renovating a home, etc.)
Other things, like respect from my co-workers, I still had to earn.
Since I graduated with MS in 1999, the job market has had ups and downs, twists and turns. There are fewer industry jobs than there used to be, and certainly far fewer jobs than qualified candidates. The job market is such that, not only do you have to know someone, you have to "connect" with them before you can even get an interview. With that glut of scientific experts in mind, I think back to some of the advice I received when considering the Master's: "stick it out" and "an MS has limited potential" and "only extenuating circumstances make smart people leave Ph.D. programs" and so on. This bias is pervasive; even in my current job, during a performance appraisal, one of my bosses wrote "family issues forced Aaron to get his MS rather than finishing the PhD," to which I had to reply to him, personally, "NO! this choice was all mine. Nothing "forced" me to do anything." I worked hard to get where I am. To the well-meaning advice givers, I would argue that I've had a successful career, even becoming a Research Scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. So, in this instance, and using our typical metrics for success, quitting graduate school early and earning a Master's degree was a good career move for me. I didn't need a terminal degree to prove myself smart and successful.
The last point I'd like to make is the "leadership" potential of Ph.D. vs MS, at least as far as I've observed. It's true that in most companies, the leaders have Ph.D.s. Out of the 5-6 supervisors I've had since 1999, I've only worked for one person who didn't have a Ph.D. The last company I worked at spelled out what level you could expect to achieve with a certain degree and a certain level of experience, and the glass ceiling for non-Ph.D.s was pretty obvious. Rather than resent it, I appreciated their honesty. But any bench chemist, regardless of degree, is doing work that someone else wants done to make someone else rich, pure and simple. To say that just because you didn't get a doctorate you'll be someone's lackey is a bit short-sighted. Everyone who works for any company is someone's lackey. We all have a supervisor, who reports to another supervisor, who reports to the CEO or director, who reports to some sort of investor (or tax payer). So everyone who is working for a company is working for "the man." I hope that we can all find interesting, fulfilling jobs to offset this bitter truth.
I also hope that if you're in graduate school, you're not demoralized; if you are headed to graduate school, I don't mean to dash your dreams; if you have a Ph.D., you don't think I automatically hate or disrespect you. On the contrary. I admire the tenacity and focus required to work 12+ hour days for 5+ years for <$25K/yr and little respect, with hopes for a career that may or may not pan out. The world still needs innovative problem solvers to lead us as we continue to face scientific, social, and economic challenges on an ever-increasing scale. Like I've told my own student interns: all of the easy problems have already been solved. And honestly, I've considered, more than once, going back for my doctorate. For now, it's not in the cards, and I guess this little essay is part of the process of letting go of that immediate possibility. But who knows! I once met a man who went back for his Ph.D. in NMR spectroscopy in his 50s. It happens.
Regardless of your educational and career path, I implore you to think carefully about your motivation, and keep an open mind about changes and choices. Keep in mind, also, that outside-the-box thinking required to solve difficult, emerging problems will probably require outside-the-box education, perhaps even outside-the-box companies with novel business models. I am sure the one-size-fits-all, macro-scale paradigm that society has adopted will not work. The report I cited earlier, in its 60+ pages, agrees with me.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Quitting, Part 2: Ski Patrol
This essay is second in my "Quitting" series, but it's the one I wrote first (back in October). For me, fall has always been the time to start thinking about winter. It was the time to check out Warren Miller's latest offering. Winter meant skiing. And for the past decade, skiing meant ski patrolling. That's me, pointing at the snow under the guise of teaching an avalanche class:
During my 10 year ski patrol career, I became an instructor in every National Ski Patrol discipline (First aid, Transportation, Avalanche, and Mountaineering), took on the role of regional representative for the Mountaineering program, and received a National Appointment for my efforts and accomplishments. By all metrics, I was into patrolling. I even half-considered quitting my day job at one point to become a pro patroller. I spent $100s on gear (and sold $100s worth), went to seminars, and traveled a lot to classes and to teach. I loved the idea of helping people out while following one of my true passions--skiing.
But a lot of factors conspired to change all of that.
The "new" wore off. The years of limited snowpack when Pajarito Mountain didn't open dampened my zeal. Adding kids and side job as musician and piano teacher ate up too much energy and time. The hustle of the industry became too grating. The straw that did my patrol career in, though, was a back injury that manifested itself two years ago. Actually, this injury was probably a result of a significant fall ten years earlier that left me in the hospital for a day, but the symptoms finally caught up with me in 2011 and the herniated disk pressing on the nerve root between L4 and L5 left me in pain and unable to lift (dorsiflex) my left foot or even curl my toes upward. Sitting for long periods of time was a problem (the position of sitting on a chairlift with your feet unsupported, incidentally, is one of the worst for your lower back). In addition to spending time in recovery and physical therapy, I took the season off from patrolling, mostly because I didn’t trust my back not to give out during a toboggan run in the process of attempting to save someone’s life. It was nearly a soul-crushing experience to be unable to do the things I loved, including picking up my then 2-year-old daughter without wincing in pain.
I actually, unexpectedly, enjoyed the season off, so much so that I took the next year off as well and elected “Alumni” status. I managed 5 days of skiing last winter, none of them lift-served, a fact that most die-hard snowsports enthusiasts probably don’t consider bragging rights. I taught one Mountain Travel & Rescue class. This year, I didn’t even (and don't plan to) refresh my OEC (first aid) skills (I'll do CPR through work). While I miss the free season pass and Patagonia pro deal, and had a hard time letting go of the effort I’d put into my accomplishments as a patroller, there are a lot of things I don’t miss.
First on the list: downhill skiing has become really expensive. Skis, boots, poles, bindings, clothing, gear, food, lift tickets, 4wd vehicles, and gas for a family to go skiing adds up fast. A day of skiing for my family at our little local area would cost roughly $150 just for lift tickets; a season pass costs $300 each for adults. When it was just me skiing or just me and my wife, it was manageable (though I ate a lot of Ramen noodles and cheap microwave burritos); now there are two more folks in my house to outfit. While it's true that patrollers pay less money for their time skiing--a fact that almost made me not quit--there’s a lot of effort and time commitment involved for that privilege. Some of that work just isn't fun for me any more, things like "courtesy rides" and talking people down slopes they have no business being on and policing closures.
Next: skiing has changed to something I don't enjoy as much. It's not folks herringbone-ing up a slope in their knickers and sweaters to catch a few powder turns, or one or two double chair lifts going up a remote mountain hours from any definitive medical care. It's not just mountaineers going skiing because they love it. Now it’s big business. It’s millions of dollars of infrastructure and investment, it's gondolas and trams and high-speed detachable six-seat chair lifts, it's condos and golf courses, it's grooming and snowmaking and a whole host of other expensive conveniences. It is often development on public land for the financial gain of a few (Pajarito Mtn. is a notable exception). It is stocks and bonds and money.
And machinery. In-bounds, it’s a constant hum and buzz. Next time you go skiing at your local ski area, take a look around at everything that requires power. The lifts, snowcats, snowmobiles, base-area buildings and cafeterias, and buses and shuttles all require electricity or fossil fuels. Snowmaking, a necessary part of having a ski area open in Colorado or New Mexico in November (with the exceptions, I suppose, of Silverton and Wolf Creek), requires electricity and water. Unless your local ski area has installed or insisted on sustainable energy options, there’s a good chance it runs on coal, a fossil fuel that has dire implications for climate change, public health, and environmental impact when it's mined and burned. Here we should also acknowledge the use of transportation fuels: a typical Denver-ite will drive his or her SUV or sport sedan 1-3 hours each way for a day (6 hours?) of skiing. Hopefully the SUV driver has a car full of friends to decrease his or her carbon footprint. But that’s just the skiing public. Trucks haul food and other goods for consumption, area employees drive to/from work, and on and on. Consider your carbon footprint carefully with your outdoor activities, especially lift-served skiing. The ski industry as it exists today runs largely on fossil fuels, despite its green-washing efforts.
As I approach middle-age, my time spent outdoors is needed to get away from noise and the trappings of modern society--cars, motors, electricity, and controlled environments. And maybe it always has--as a teenager I mountain biked alone, a lot, in the desert hills and mountains North of Gooding, ID. I rarely saw a soul and came to crave those doses of solitude. Now that I'm a parent, I’d rather take my kids hiking, snowshoeing, or cross-country skiing deep in the woods, away from machinery,
than spend my day listening to the chug-chug-chug of the lifts, the roar of the snowmobile, and the traffic (and rap music the high school and college kids insist on blasting) in the parking lot. Or I’d rather skin up some tree-covered ridgeline for a great view and some solid aerobic exercise, where all I can hear is the whisper (or roar) of the wind in the trees and the crunch and “shussh” of the snow under my skis,
where the pace is slow enough that I can notice, stop, and appreciate things like these bird tracks.
The crux of it for me, though--and this really should have been enough justification for calling it quits--is that time spent patrolling meant time away from my family. The summer OEC instruction and fall refresher cycles were just not how I want to spend my evenings and weekends anymore. My wife was my best, most reliable, and most fun ski buddy for many years--in fact, she was a patroller for a couple seasons--but after we had kids, if we wanted to ski in-area, we had to ski separately, wait for grandparents to come visit, or hire a babysitter. I missed hanging out with my wife on weekends!
And with kids, it’s a no-brainer. It’ll be almost a decade from now before my kids are even eligible to patrol, so there’s a good chance that waiting for them to reach high school before I spend time with them on the weekends will backfire, that they'll be strangers. Being gone most weekend days is just not a viable choice. My kids seem to change almost every day, and I miss them enough during the week when I’m at work and they’re in school.
Maybe someday I’ll go back to patrolling, if my obligations and interests change again. Granted, if you really want to learn to ski well, there’s no method that’s more efficient than spending many, many days working on your turns in-bounds with the lift to whisk you back to the top of the mountain after each run, and I don't see myself leaving the sport altogether. I’m thankful that I had the opportunity in my 20s to have 40+day seasons, that my dad combed ski swaps for deals for my sister and me when we were young, and that we had small, inexpensive ski areas close to home when I was a kid. But I’m also glad I met my wife who enjoys cross-country skiing so we could avoid the contrived modern ski area. If you want to ski in-bounds, save your money, and weigh the “hidden” costs. After a while, you may come around to the point of view I outlined above.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
During my 10 year ski patrol career, I became an instructor in every National Ski Patrol discipline (First aid, Transportation, Avalanche, and Mountaineering), took on the role of regional representative for the Mountaineering program, and received a National Appointment for my efforts and accomplishments. By all metrics, I was into patrolling. I even half-considered quitting my day job at one point to become a pro patroller. I spent $100s on gear (and sold $100s worth), went to seminars, and traveled a lot to classes and to teach. I loved the idea of helping people out while following one of my true passions--skiing.
But a lot of factors conspired to change all of that.
The "new" wore off. The years of limited snowpack when Pajarito Mountain didn't open dampened my zeal. Adding kids and side job as musician and piano teacher ate up too much energy and time. The hustle of the industry became too grating. The straw that did my patrol career in, though, was a back injury that manifested itself two years ago. Actually, this injury was probably a result of a significant fall ten years earlier that left me in the hospital for a day, but the symptoms finally caught up with me in 2011 and the herniated disk pressing on the nerve root between L4 and L5 left me in pain and unable to lift (dorsiflex) my left foot or even curl my toes upward. Sitting for long periods of time was a problem (the position of sitting on a chairlift with your feet unsupported, incidentally, is one of the worst for your lower back). In addition to spending time in recovery and physical therapy, I took the season off from patrolling, mostly because I didn’t trust my back not to give out during a toboggan run in the process of attempting to save someone’s life. It was nearly a soul-crushing experience to be unable to do the things I loved, including picking up my then 2-year-old daughter without wincing in pain.
I actually, unexpectedly, enjoyed the season off, so much so that I took the next year off as well and elected “Alumni” status. I managed 5 days of skiing last winter, none of them lift-served, a fact that most die-hard snowsports enthusiasts probably don’t consider bragging rights. I taught one Mountain Travel & Rescue class. This year, I didn’t even (and don't plan to) refresh my OEC (first aid) skills (I'll do CPR through work). While I miss the free season pass and Patagonia pro deal, and had a hard time letting go of the effort I’d put into my accomplishments as a patroller, there are a lot of things I don’t miss.
First on the list: downhill skiing has become really expensive. Skis, boots, poles, bindings, clothing, gear, food, lift tickets, 4wd vehicles, and gas for a family to go skiing adds up fast. A day of skiing for my family at our little local area would cost roughly $150 just for lift tickets; a season pass costs $300 each for adults. When it was just me skiing or just me and my wife, it was manageable (though I ate a lot of Ramen noodles and cheap microwave burritos); now there are two more folks in my house to outfit. While it's true that patrollers pay less money for their time skiing--a fact that almost made me not quit--there’s a lot of effort and time commitment involved for that privilege. Some of that work just isn't fun for me any more, things like "courtesy rides" and talking people down slopes they have no business being on and policing closures.
Next: skiing has changed to something I don't enjoy as much. It's not folks herringbone-ing up a slope in their knickers and sweaters to catch a few powder turns, or one or two double chair lifts going up a remote mountain hours from any definitive medical care. It's not just mountaineers going skiing because they love it. Now it’s big business. It’s millions of dollars of infrastructure and investment, it's gondolas and trams and high-speed detachable six-seat chair lifts, it's condos and golf courses, it's grooming and snowmaking and a whole host of other expensive conveniences. It is often development on public land for the financial gain of a few (Pajarito Mtn. is a notable exception). It is stocks and bonds and money.
And machinery. In-bounds, it’s a constant hum and buzz. Next time you go skiing at your local ski area, take a look around at everything that requires power. The lifts, snowcats, snowmobiles, base-area buildings and cafeterias, and buses and shuttles all require electricity or fossil fuels. Snowmaking, a necessary part of having a ski area open in Colorado or New Mexico in November (with the exceptions, I suppose, of Silverton and Wolf Creek), requires electricity and water. Unless your local ski area has installed or insisted on sustainable energy options, there’s a good chance it runs on coal, a fossil fuel that has dire implications for climate change, public health, and environmental impact when it's mined and burned. Here we should also acknowledge the use of transportation fuels: a typical Denver-ite will drive his or her SUV or sport sedan 1-3 hours each way for a day (6 hours?) of skiing. Hopefully the SUV driver has a car full of friends to decrease his or her carbon footprint. But that’s just the skiing public. Trucks haul food and other goods for consumption, area employees drive to/from work, and on and on. Consider your carbon footprint carefully with your outdoor activities, especially lift-served skiing. The ski industry as it exists today runs largely on fossil fuels, despite its green-washing efforts.
As I approach middle-age, my time spent outdoors is needed to get away from noise and the trappings of modern society--cars, motors, electricity, and controlled environments. And maybe it always has--as a teenager I mountain biked alone, a lot, in the desert hills and mountains North of Gooding, ID. I rarely saw a soul and came to crave those doses of solitude. Now that I'm a parent, I’d rather take my kids hiking, snowshoeing, or cross-country skiing deep in the woods, away from machinery,
than spend my day listening to the chug-chug-chug of the lifts, the roar of the snowmobile, and the traffic (and rap music the high school and college kids insist on blasting) in the parking lot. Or I’d rather skin up some tree-covered ridgeline for a great view and some solid aerobic exercise, where all I can hear is the whisper (or roar) of the wind in the trees and the crunch and “shussh” of the snow under my skis,
The crux of it for me, though--and this really should have been enough justification for calling it quits--is that time spent patrolling meant time away from my family. The summer OEC instruction and fall refresher cycles were just not how I want to spend my evenings and weekends anymore. My wife was my best, most reliable, and most fun ski buddy for many years--in fact, she was a patroller for a couple seasons--but after we had kids, if we wanted to ski in-area, we had to ski separately, wait for grandparents to come visit, or hire a babysitter. I missed hanging out with my wife on weekends!
And with kids, it’s a no-brainer. It’ll be almost a decade from now before my kids are even eligible to patrol, so there’s a good chance that waiting for them to reach high school before I spend time with them on the weekends will backfire, that they'll be strangers. Being gone most weekend days is just not a viable choice. My kids seem to change almost every day, and I miss them enough during the week when I’m at work and they’re in school.
Maybe someday I’ll go back to patrolling, if my obligations and interests change again. Granted, if you really want to learn to ski well, there’s no method that’s more efficient than spending many, many days working on your turns in-bounds with the lift to whisk you back to the top of the mountain after each run, and I don't see myself leaving the sport altogether. I’m thankful that I had the opportunity in my 20s to have 40+day seasons, that my dad combed ski swaps for deals for my sister and me when we were young, and that we had small, inexpensive ski areas close to home when I was a kid. But I’m also glad I met my wife who enjoys cross-country skiing so we could avoid the contrived modern ski area. If you want to ski in-bounds, save your money, and weigh the “hidden” costs. After a while, you may come around to the point of view I outlined above.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Quitting Part 1: No More Disposable Crap!
I had a few of these quitting articles started, and was wondering which one I'd lead off with, when I heard on the radio that Santa Fe banned disposable plastic shopping bags. I think it's a step in the right direction of getting rid of disposable, plastic crap. Even this counterpoint can't dissuade me from this point of view. I am so tired of plastic bags in trees, lining fences, and flapping through the breeze. The only things I've re-used plastic shopping bags for are picking up dog poo on the street and as a trash receptacle, and that's only because the county where I live REQUIRES you to put your trash in a bag before you put it in the dumpster. If it wasn't a rule or law, and I didn't mind poo on my hands, I would probably rid myself of plastic bags once and for all.
There are a variety of reasons to stop consuming disposable goods, ranging from the environmental concerns to long-term health issues. And at the end of this post, I'll suggest some solutions, at least with your food and beverage choices, to keep from getting (or buying) unnecessary stuff and throwing it away.
But to start, I'll describe a typical modern scene. At a recent event I went to, breakfast burritos were served, wrapped in 3 layers of foil. I picked up my foil-covered burrito, filled my steel cup with coffee, and watched. People picked up their foil-wrapped burritos, put them on paper plates, picked up 2-3 paper napkins each, filled up paper cups with coffee, covered the cups with plastic lids, and proceeded to eat their burritos with plastic utensils. All of it, even the foil (recylable!) went in the trash. No one said word one about it.
How did we end up becoming so comfortable with disposable goods? Why do people insist on walking around town with their paper coffee cups from Starbucks, when a good steel or even plastic cup can be purchased AT STARBUCK'S for $10-20? That paper cup, cardboard sleeve, and plastic lid all end up in the trash, more often than not, even though the cardboard sleeve at least is recyclable. Well, here is one clue from Life Magazine:
What about plastic bottles (picture from a cool photo-essay in the Atlantic)? No, that's not a dead body, but whatever "Siesta" is in Chinese, because sorting through the world's imported plastic bottles is hard work:
And here is one consequence (picture from another site), which is floating piles of crap in the ocean:
And here is another, more poignant, consequence of our waste-filled lives: dead animals. That's a dead Albatross chick, which died on the remote Pacific island of Midway from ingesting a bunch of bottle caps and such, in case you were wondering:
And from the NOAA's less alarmist take: "Regardless of the exact size, mass, and location of these areas of concentration, man-made litter and debris do not belong in our oceans or waterways."
"But," you say indignantly, "I live in a landlocked state! Surely the stuff I throw in the trash goes to a landfill and will never end up in a waterway."
To that I say, have you ever stood near a landfill on a windy day and watched what happens to the trash that can be carried in the wind? Have you ever walked down a city street and seen how much trash lines the gutters? Have you ever walked up or down a drainage, wash, or arroyo (like the one behind my house) and viewed the disposable refuse? The bottles and caps and trash go down the drainage, into the river, and to the ocean. That stuff will never go away in our lifetimes. In fact, as a result of one sampling effort, it was found that there is more plastic debris than plankton in the ocean (by mass, not by numbers of particles), a boggling concept. And the plastics degrade into smaller and smaller particles that can be eaten by ocean organisms, thus entering the food chain. The plasticizers and monomers are dissolved in the water as well.
"But," you say cynically, "Why should I care? What difference can one person make? It doesn't matter if I recycle or consume less, Bob or Joe don't care and don't recycle."
To that I say, everyone makes a difference every day. If one person makes a difference, and tells his or her friends, or gives reusable gifts (I bought my bandmates steel cups so we didn't have to drink our backstage bourbon out of disposable plastic Solo cups), that influences people then chances are, logic will prevail. We don't have to do big things to make a change in the world. We just have to catalyze changes. If I didn't learn anything else from Chemistry, I learned that in a catalytic chemical reaction, the catalyst is added in much smaller amounts (typically less than 0.1% of the atoms are catalyst) than the rest of the materials, yet the catalyst is what enables the molecular transformation of the bulk material. I'm hoping this article will be such a catalyst for folks who are either uninformed or indifferent.
So, off the high horse, and on to something practical: what are some changes you can make to consume and dispose of less disposable crap?
- Use durable goods. Get and use a steel coffee cup ($10-20). Use a re-usable water bottle ($5-10). Take re-usable plates and cups to picnics and out camping (we bought ours at a yard sale for a couple bucks). Use cloth napkins. Use old rags, holey t-shirts, etc. instead of paper towels. Use a handkerchief instead of Kleenex for your boogers. Take your own cloth bags to the store (not just the grocery store, but hardware store, clothing store, etc.) or re-use your plastic bags. Cook on cast iron. While quality products cost more, you'll save money in the long run because you won't have to replace them nearly as often.
- Buy less stuff. Think long and hard about your purchases--not just if it's a good deal, but also if it will last and what it's fate will be when you're done with it. The Holidays (not just Thanksgiving & Christmas) encourage us to consume stuff we don't need. Avoid the big-box chains at any time of year because, chances are, you'll come out with more than you intended to buy. Make cards and gifts. Make Halloween costumes (my son was a convincing Jedi knight with a hand-me-down Karate gi, a $2 thrift store belt, a lightsaber we made out of a part of a broken shovel handle, and a robe my wife made). Don't go grocery shopping while hungry. Here's another take: If you have a roof over your head, drink clean water, eat enough food, can clothe yourself, and have access to decent medical care, you have everything you need. Everything else is a luxury. Electronics are especially problematic,
unless you just don't care about other, less privileged people.
- Buy second-hand. In a previous post, I went through dressing well on a budget and how to alter that not-quite-perfect $4 shirt. I'm learning about altering and mending pants and jackets. Bottom line: buying used requires fewer resources and less energy. I've never owned, or plan to own, a new car. I have bought and sold quite a bit of used music gear and outdoor gear. Half of my wardrobe is from thrift stores, and I patch and repair much of my clothing. I have mostly old and re-purposed furniture. I live in a house that was built in 1968. Bottom line: buying new stuff is about image, not need.
- Buy local. I'm glad to say that there has been a lot of press in my town about buying local, and there are a lot of good reasons to do so. More money stays in the community, for starters, and you help out your neighbors and friends instead of a nameless, faceless corporation. If you can shop a place that is both a local business AND local manufacturer, then it's a win-win due to the cost of shipping goods. It saves you gas money. I know a lot of people who drive 30 miles to Wal-Mart or Target to save money, but they don't consider the fuel (or environmental) costs.
- Recycle. If the thing you want comes in a container that can't be recycled, well, don't buy it. Write to the manufacturer regarding your concerns. Chances are, you'll find that they're heartless corporations and you could do better locally, OR by buying in bulk. We buy bulk and put these products into our own reused bags or jars. Glass is infinitely recyclable, if there's willpower (i.e., a market). I don't know what to say to people who still don't recycle. It's available curbside in my County, for Christ's sake. Colorado has been recycling for 30 years, Oregon for even longer. Where there's a will, there's a way. Recent case-in-point: I was at a party recently and there was no provision to recycle cans, even though they were serving beverages in cans. I ended up taking a bag of empty cans home and put them in my own recycle bin.
- Think long and hard about throwing stuff away. Look at everything you buy with the perspective that it has a finite lifetime. Dispose of things properly--our county transfer station has containers for used motor oil, household chemicals, paint, electronics, metal, and yard waste (brush, grass clippings, leaves, etc.). There is a very short list of stuff that should go to the landfill. And know where your trash goes. If you live on a coast, make sure they're not still dumping it out in the ocean. If they are, write to your policy makers. To get an idea of how much stuff you throw away, save it for a week. We went through a recent experiment in our house where we saved plastic bottle caps for an art project, and ended up with more caps than we could comfortably store on the shelves above the dryer. Hmm...
- Fix your stuff. I patch my clothing until it falls apart. Take care of your car. With a little effort and research, you can probably fix your toaster, or coffee maker. We fixed a broken vaporizer simply by cleaning the electrodes. My wife replaced the shattered screen on her iPad. In my mind, there's no reason to replace something (or throw it away!) if it still works or you can fix it. Google it. Chances are, someone else had the same problem and came up with a solution. If not, put a little effort into it, and there's your $Million idea.
The most specific books we've read on the subject of lowering human impact (on the planet and on each other!!!) are:
- The Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson. Instead of simply reduce, reuse, recycle, her mantra is "REFUSE, REFUSE, REFUSE, then reduce, reuse, rot, recycle." She keeps a blog.
- The Good Life Lab by Wendy Tremayne. She and her partner (Mikey Sklar) have embarked on an experiment where they buy very few new goods and instead rely of things they can grow or find in the industrial waste stream (things like burning restaurant grease in their cars, building shops out of shipping containers, and shopping exclusively at thrift stores and yard sales). Their schtick is to become creators, not consumers. They blog as well.
These practices that we have made as part of our lives have reduced our waste stream volume significantly. We are at the point where we maybe fill our curbside trashcan once every couple months, and that's if we've harvested a lot of noxious weeds and don't want them in the community compost. We have actually considered cancelling our trash service, but keep it for the curbside recycling pick-up.
I hope this is either old hat for you, or that it is food for thought. Let me know if you want to discuss this further, or if you have any other ideas. We are always looking for new things to try on our journey to zero waste.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
There are a variety of reasons to stop consuming disposable goods, ranging from the environmental concerns to long-term health issues. And at the end of this post, I'll suggest some solutions, at least with your food and beverage choices, to keep from getting (or buying) unnecessary stuff and throwing it away.
But to start, I'll describe a typical modern scene. At a recent event I went to, breakfast burritos were served, wrapped in 3 layers of foil. I picked up my foil-covered burrito, filled my steel cup with coffee, and watched. People picked up their foil-wrapped burritos, put them on paper plates, picked up 2-3 paper napkins each, filled up paper cups with coffee, covered the cups with plastic lids, and proceeded to eat their burritos with plastic utensils. All of it, even the foil (recylable!) went in the trash. No one said word one about it.
How did we end up becoming so comfortable with disposable goods? Why do people insist on walking around town with their paper coffee cups from Starbucks, when a good steel or even plastic cup can be purchased AT STARBUCK'S for $10-20? That paper cup, cardboard sleeve, and plastic lid all end up in the trash, more often than not, even though the cardboard sleeve at least is recyclable. Well, here is one clue from Life Magazine:
What about plastic bottles (picture from a cool photo-essay in the Atlantic)? No, that's not a dead body, but whatever "Siesta" is in Chinese, because sorting through the world's imported plastic bottles is hard work:
And here is one consequence (picture from another site), which is floating piles of crap in the ocean:
And here is another, more poignant, consequence of our waste-filled lives: dead animals. That's a dead Albatross chick, which died on the remote Pacific island of Midway from ingesting a bunch of bottle caps and such, in case you were wondering:
And from the NOAA's less alarmist take: "Regardless of the exact size, mass, and location of these areas of concentration, man-made litter and debris do not belong in our oceans or waterways."
"But," you say indignantly, "I live in a landlocked state! Surely the stuff I throw in the trash goes to a landfill and will never end up in a waterway."
To that I say, have you ever stood near a landfill on a windy day and watched what happens to the trash that can be carried in the wind? Have you ever walked down a city street and seen how much trash lines the gutters? Have you ever walked up or down a drainage, wash, or arroyo (like the one behind my house) and viewed the disposable refuse? The bottles and caps and trash go down the drainage, into the river, and to the ocean. That stuff will never go away in our lifetimes. In fact, as a result of one sampling effort, it was found that there is more plastic debris than plankton in the ocean (by mass, not by numbers of particles), a boggling concept. And the plastics degrade into smaller and smaller particles that can be eaten by ocean organisms, thus entering the food chain. The plasticizers and monomers are dissolved in the water as well.
"But," you say cynically, "Why should I care? What difference can one person make? It doesn't matter if I recycle or consume less, Bob or Joe don't care and don't recycle."
To that I say, everyone makes a difference every day. If one person makes a difference, and tells his or her friends, or gives reusable gifts (I bought my bandmates steel cups so we didn't have to drink our backstage bourbon out of disposable plastic Solo cups), that influences people then chances are, logic will prevail. We don't have to do big things to make a change in the world. We just have to catalyze changes. If I didn't learn anything else from Chemistry, I learned that in a catalytic chemical reaction, the catalyst is added in much smaller amounts (typically less than 0.1% of the atoms are catalyst) than the rest of the materials, yet the catalyst is what enables the molecular transformation of the bulk material. I'm hoping this article will be such a catalyst for folks who are either uninformed or indifferent.
So, off the high horse, and on to something practical: what are some changes you can make to consume and dispose of less disposable crap?
- Use durable goods. Get and use a steel coffee cup ($10-20). Use a re-usable water bottle ($5-10). Take re-usable plates and cups to picnics and out camping (we bought ours at a yard sale for a couple bucks). Use cloth napkins. Use old rags, holey t-shirts, etc. instead of paper towels. Use a handkerchief instead of Kleenex for your boogers. Take your own cloth bags to the store (not just the grocery store, but hardware store, clothing store, etc.) or re-use your plastic bags. Cook on cast iron. While quality products cost more, you'll save money in the long run because you won't have to replace them nearly as often.
- Buy less stuff. Think long and hard about your purchases--not just if it's a good deal, but also if it will last and what it's fate will be when you're done with it. The Holidays (not just Thanksgiving & Christmas) encourage us to consume stuff we don't need. Avoid the big-box chains at any time of year because, chances are, you'll come out with more than you intended to buy. Make cards and gifts. Make Halloween costumes (my son was a convincing Jedi knight with a hand-me-down Karate gi, a $2 thrift store belt, a lightsaber we made out of a part of a broken shovel handle, and a robe my wife made). Don't go grocery shopping while hungry. Here's another take: If you have a roof over your head, drink clean water, eat enough food, can clothe yourself, and have access to decent medical care, you have everything you need. Everything else is a luxury. Electronics are especially problematic,
unless you just don't care about other, less privileged people.
- Buy second-hand. In a previous post, I went through dressing well on a budget and how to alter that not-quite-perfect $4 shirt. I'm learning about altering and mending pants and jackets. Bottom line: buying used requires fewer resources and less energy. I've never owned, or plan to own, a new car. I have bought and sold quite a bit of used music gear and outdoor gear. Half of my wardrobe is from thrift stores, and I patch and repair much of my clothing. I have mostly old and re-purposed furniture. I live in a house that was built in 1968. Bottom line: buying new stuff is about image, not need.
- Buy local. I'm glad to say that there has been a lot of press in my town about buying local, and there are a lot of good reasons to do so. More money stays in the community, for starters, and you help out your neighbors and friends instead of a nameless, faceless corporation. If you can shop a place that is both a local business AND local manufacturer, then it's a win-win due to the cost of shipping goods. It saves you gas money. I know a lot of people who drive 30 miles to Wal-Mart or Target to save money, but they don't consider the fuel (or environmental) costs.
- Recycle. If the thing you want comes in a container that can't be recycled, well, don't buy it. Write to the manufacturer regarding your concerns. Chances are, you'll find that they're heartless corporations and you could do better locally, OR by buying in bulk. We buy bulk and put these products into our own reused bags or jars. Glass is infinitely recyclable, if there's willpower (i.e., a market). I don't know what to say to people who still don't recycle. It's available curbside in my County, for Christ's sake. Colorado has been recycling for 30 years, Oregon for even longer. Where there's a will, there's a way. Recent case-in-point: I was at a party recently and there was no provision to recycle cans, even though they were serving beverages in cans. I ended up taking a bag of empty cans home and put them in my own recycle bin.
- Think long and hard about throwing stuff away. Look at everything you buy with the perspective that it has a finite lifetime. Dispose of things properly--our county transfer station has containers for used motor oil, household chemicals, paint, electronics, metal, and yard waste (brush, grass clippings, leaves, etc.). There is a very short list of stuff that should go to the landfill. And know where your trash goes. If you live on a coast, make sure they're not still dumping it out in the ocean. If they are, write to your policy makers. To get an idea of how much stuff you throw away, save it for a week. We went through a recent experiment in our house where we saved plastic bottle caps for an art project, and ended up with more caps than we could comfortably store on the shelves above the dryer. Hmm...
- Fix your stuff. I patch my clothing until it falls apart. Take care of your car. With a little effort and research, you can probably fix your toaster, or coffee maker. We fixed a broken vaporizer simply by cleaning the electrodes. My wife replaced the shattered screen on her iPad. In my mind, there's no reason to replace something (or throw it away!) if it still works or you can fix it. Google it. Chances are, someone else had the same problem and came up with a solution. If not, put a little effort into it, and there's your $Million idea.
The most specific books we've read on the subject of lowering human impact (on the planet and on each other!!!) are:
- The Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson. Instead of simply reduce, reuse, recycle, her mantra is "REFUSE, REFUSE, REFUSE, then reduce, reuse, rot, recycle." She keeps a blog.
- The Good Life Lab by Wendy Tremayne. She and her partner (Mikey Sklar) have embarked on an experiment where they buy very few new goods and instead rely of things they can grow or find in the industrial waste stream (things like burning restaurant grease in their cars, building shops out of shipping containers, and shopping exclusively at thrift stores and yard sales). Their schtick is to become creators, not consumers. They blog as well.
These practices that we have made as part of our lives have reduced our waste stream volume significantly. We are at the point where we maybe fill our curbside trashcan once every couple months, and that's if we've harvested a lot of noxious weeds and don't want them in the community compost. We have actually considered cancelling our trash service, but keep it for the curbside recycling pick-up.
I hope this is either old hat for you, or that it is food for thought. Let me know if you want to discuss this further, or if you have any other ideas. We are always looking for new things to try on our journey to zero waste.
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
Monday, November 4, 2013
Quitting Intro: Sometimes It's OK to Throw in the Towel
I listened to a recent Freakonomics podcast where quitting was the topic of discussion. If you are unfamiliar with Freakonomics, their schtick is to look at the "hidden side of everything" from an economist's point of view. Overall, I'd say their shows are fascinating. Now, I'm not an economist; in fact, I have never taken an economics class other than Consumer Economics in High School which showed me how to balance a checkbook and shop for a car. But this podcast got me to thinking about some of the things I have quit over the years:
- High School basketball, after sitting the bench for 2 years
- High School track, my junior year, after realizing I am not a fast runner
- horseback riding, when I realized the expense and time required
- rock climbing (expensive and time-consuming; though I may pick that back up, depending on what the kids want to do)
- the Pre-Medicine program in college (how petty can people really be?!)
- going to church regularly (in favor of daily meditation)
- the Ph.D. program at Colorado State (sick of school)
- riding my bike to work (leaning over the handlebars is hard on the back, plus too many close calls with crazy drivers)
- training a search & rescue dog (too many folks who elevate dogs to "people" status)
and more recently
- ski patrol (rather spend time with my family on my days off)
- drinking alcohol (I was not drunk at work, or DWI, or abusing people, or anything like that, but so far I feel much better overall without alcohol intermittently in my system; definitely look for more on that topic later)
If you're not a regular Freakonomics listener, I highly recommend it. The quitting show in particular caught my ear mainly because quitting often leads to positive change. It definitely has for me--there's a lot of mental clutter you have to stumble over/wade through when you are doing things you don't enjoy or find productive, especially when those things are at the expense of activities you'd rather be doing. In the spirit of the Holiday season, I thought I'd tell you some of my quitting stories and why I'm glad (thankful?) that I made those changes. In the coming weeks, I'll document 3 or 4 of the things that I was deeply involved in, but ended up quitting for one reason or another (sometimes for multiple reasons) and which I don't miss that much (other than the "idea" of it). So, stay tuned!
Check out the Zen Habits Blog for a more "spiritual" look at quitting (and sacrifice).
Other "Big A" news:
The thumbtack profile I started two weeks ago has already netted me a wedding gig on Dec 7. So, that's cool!
The Affordables are playing Nov 16 for a private party in Jemez Springs, NM.
The Craig Martin Experience is playing a fundraiser on Dec 14. There we will debut some Christmas arrangements.
I'm almost done with the bottom half of my digital upright (for book & media storage). What a project! But, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right, right? I think it'll be great when it's done.
That's it for today. Have a great week!
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