I caught an HPU advertisement on the radio this evening in which one presumably high school-age guy is talking to a friend, who is already in college.

“What are you doing this summer?” College-Age Guy asks High School Guy.

“I’m going to be at HPU, with you,” High School Guy replies. “I really want to get a head start on college classes.”

Good for High School Guy. He’s probably the ambitious type; maybe he’s getting a jump start on his education so he can finish in two or three years and go on to get a J.D. or a M.D. (In which case, he’ll become either Very Eligible Lawyer Guy or Very Eligible Doctor Guy.)

I assumed that the ad was a message to those about to enter college that taking summer school can be a good way to finish college in less than four years. And indeed, with the rising cost of education, more and more students are opting for that route.

Others, like this questioner, might do it because graduating earlier from college would mean graduating earlier from law school, a master’s program or medical school. A female friend, whom I had lunch with last week and is currently at JABSOM, said she purposely chose to go right into med school after college rather than taking a year off because of concerns about how soon she could do other things — like start a family — after earning her M.D. Although she did her undergrad in four years, I imagine there are many other med students out there who are willing to blitz through their college years for an earlier graduation from med school.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, there are those who take five, seven, even 10 years to go through what would normally be a four-year undergrad program. These career students belong to the Facebook group called “Graduating College in 4 Years is Like Leaving the Party at 9 p.m” (UHM Chapter). For many, reasons beyond their control dictate this extended undergrad experience — money, having to split work time and class time, being able to get into the right classes to finish your degree.

Or maybe, as freshmen, they want to major in Economics, then as sophomores, they want to major in Hawaiian Studies or Old English Poetry; then, they graduate with a a double major in Greek Philosophy and Communications, and a minor in Food and Restaurant Management.

But for others, maybe it even comes down to this: College is fun!

I grad from college in four years, and even that felt short. So, I guess it’s hard for me to understand why, in the absence of things like real money or time concerns, students would want to finish college early.

My dad often tells me that he can’t understand why college students wildly celebrate graduation, when they will leave the best years of their lives behind. I’m not sure if I’d call my college years the best of my life, but considering they were filled with meeting tons of great people my age, making lasting friendships, never waking up before 9 a.m., taking fascinating classes with incredible professors, having a party option every weekend, exploring New York and Boston and actually having spring, summer and Christmas vacations … yes, I’d say college was pretty darn awesome.

But maybe that’s just me. I wouldn’t want to stay out ’till 4 a.m., but I’d hate to leave a party when it’s just getting started.

Would you skew a paper’s thesis to match your professor’s political views if you thought it would earn you a good grade? Would you stick to your own beliefs if you thought it would negatively affect your grade?

An entry by Stanley Fish on his NYT blog, “Think Again,” is what got me thinking (again) about politics and the classroom.

Fish is talking about whether there is a correlation between a professor’s political affiliation and his or her teaching ability (he argues there is none). I’m been thinking about a more simple, but related, topic — how a professor who makes his or her political views very apparent in the classroom can create a detrimental learning environment for students.

I haven’t taken a poll, but I would guess that the majority of the faculty at the University of Hawai‘i lean in the liberal direction. In the few classes I have taken at UH, including a Hawaiian history class and a political science class, it was not difficult to figure out the instructors’ political viewpoints, and they made little effort to conceal their personal opinions about the subject matter. But I don’t know whether a couple of professors are indicative of the entire university.

I don’t mean to say this is only a problem at the University of Hawai‘i. I majored in Political Science at a tiny, liberal arts college in Massachusetts where there were of course concerns about some classroom lectures. Politically biased professors have also been the subject of many articles about higher education. A site called “Politics in the Classroom” has even been set up for students to “out” teachers whom they believe have a political agenda in the classroom.

Certainly, there is no problem with a professor holding strong political opinions. That kind of passion for your subject compels one to delve into the issues and often leads to better instruction. The problem starts when an instructor begins to use lessons as a platform for his or her political views. Then, the class ceases to be about academic learning and starts to be about political advocacy.

The worst is when this turns the classroom into an uncomfortable environment for any person who does not agree with the instructor’s personal politics.

True story: A friend once described a class with some of the most interesting reading material he had encountered in college. But the person teaching the class was so opinionated about the texts, he said, that he felt the only way to get an A was to skew his papers toward the instructor’s viewpoint.

In my opinion, that’s a dangerous situation. College should be about learning to think independently and creatively, because high school so often is not. And a college classroom is the last place in the world where a person should be made to feel uncomfortable about his or her views on any issue.

Before moving to Chicago to take a $12,000-a-year job as a community organizer in the 1980s, someone advised Barack Obama to go into TV broadcasting.

Why?

He was told: “Forget this community organizing business and do something that’s gonna make you some money”

Arguably, cutting his teeth on public service at the grassroots level has, in the long-run, been far more beneficial for Mr. Obama than if he had pursued a TV news career. The Democratic presidential candidate shared this experience in a commencement address he delivered to Wesleyan University graduates last week. He was standing in for Sen. Edward Kennedy, who was recently diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

Selflessly serve the underprivileged or earn lots of money. True, it’s not always a choice between the two. But, at least at the grassroots level — or the fresh-out-of-college-with-little-experience level — let’s face it: compared to other professions, neither public service nor non-profit work is very financially rewarding at the outset.

It’s a choice many socially conscious grads are faced with when deciding on a career. Even for the most selfless individual, it’s hard to accept that non-profit position if the salary is such that you’ll either be eating instant noodles for the next 30 months or living at your parents’ house for the next 30 years.

I do think my friends look for greater meaning in their jobs because they desire to make a difference. I have friends who are teachers, and some who work in state or city government, or for non-profits. They work hard; they leave their jobs exhausted each day. They take pleasure in their work, even if it means they’re earning less than if they had gone into something more lucrative, but perhaps less morally rewarding.

I also have friends who work on Wall Street. But then, there are the friends who are earning big money on Wall Street with the goal of starting their own non-profits in a few years. True story.

Does all of this sound idealistic? Naive? Crazy?

As Obama put it: “There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care.” It’s what makes the commitment from young people that much more important.

I guess the speech struck me because, even two years out of college, I’m still doing some similar soul-searching — what I can do to make a positive change, regardless of where my career path leads. As an undergrad, Obama was inspired as he followed the debates about poverty and health care and became involved in the anti-apartheid movement. So, he said, “by the time I graduated from college, I was possessed with a crazy idea – that I would work at a grassroots level to bring about change.”

Wouldn’t it be great if it weren’t just a crazy idea?

Women: What if you walked into the ladies room and saw a person standing up to pee?

Men: What if you entered the men’s room and saw someone applying lipstick and mascara in the mirror?

According to an article in The Williams Record (my college paper), a group of students are asking the school to make campus bathrooms more welcoming to the transgender community by removing gender designations from all single-use restrooms. The students have the support of some senior staff members of the administration and would eventually like to see locker rooms modified (for more privacy for those who feel uncomfortable changing in front of others) and all campus buildings outfitted with gender-neutral restrooms.

It’s one thing to switch the signs on single-use bathrooms, but as the article acknowledges, adjustments beyond that are going to require more resources … and more acceptance from the community.

The public reaction to Thomas Beatie, a pregnant man who used to be a woman, indicates that the “T” in the GLBT acronym might very well be the hardest for our society to accept. As homosexuality is accepted gradually, transgendered individuals are still met with stares or awkward glances. Media still struggle with how to refer to transgendered people — whether to call them he and she, or “he” and “she,” or even he/she.

As more people now identify themselves as transgendered, there’s a new call to avoid separating people based on “male” and “female.” In one example, a former (mostly straight) dance club in Scottsdale, Ariz. transformed itself into the premier spot for the GLBT community following a widely-talked about 2006 incident involving the owner and a transgendered woman.

According to an article in The Arizona Republic, the owner asked the woman, Michele de LaFreniere, to leave the club after female patrons complained about men in dresses using the bathroom designated for women. De LaFreniere responded by filing a claim of sex discrimination with the Arizona attorney general, and the owner, Tom Anderson, became the subject of dozens of articles pitting him against the GLBT community.

(Anderson reopened the club in Dec. 2007 with a gender-neutral restroom and the place now caters to the GLBT community, attracting more than 700 patrons on Friday and Saturday night. Each.)

I’ll never forget walking into a multi-stall mixed-gender bathroom in a club in Beijing, which was attended mostly by gay men. In the stall to one side was my female friend; in the stall on the other side, a guy. The stalls were private; the bathroom was bathed in soft red lighting and the sinks with their basins of smooth stones and soft cascading water made you feel like you were washing your hands in a small waterfall. It was a weird experience, to say the least. But surprisingly, “uncomfortable” wasn’t one of the feelings that came to mind.

Many people would feel uncomfortable. Williams has a fairly open-minded student body, but even there, as with most places, you’ll likely find people who want to keep the women’s room for women and the men’s room for men.

Is our traditional way of thinking about gender confining? Are we ready for all things gender-neutral?

pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_bathrooms

When I first started taking Chinese in seventh grade, I absolutely hated it. I remember sinking into my chair as my laoshi (teacher), Mr. Chao, scrawled a tidal wave of characters across the chalk board. The yellow chalk squeaked as he put the final dramatic stroke on the last character — then he turned to us.

“Bu ru hu xue, yan de hu zi!” he said, grinning, as if secretly entertained by the terrified looks on our faces. “If you never enter the tiger’s den, how can you catch any cubs?”

After more than 10 years of Chinese in the classroom, half a year in Beijing and countless Saturday sessions with my Chinese tutor, I am still astounded that my experience with Chinese lasted longer than that first challenging week of class in seventh grade. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I have Mr. Chao to thank for that. He took an incredibly difficult subject and inspired me to stick with it 12 years later.

Wednesday was Teacher Appreciation Day 2008, and tomorrow marks the end of Teacher Appreciation Week. Founded in 1984 by the National Parent Teacher Association, Teacher Appreciation Week is an opportunity to celebrate and thank educators across the United States.

There’s no doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the help of my teachers. I had the good fortune to learn from quite a few truly outstanding ones in elementary school, high school and college. They gave me a deep appreciation for Shakespeare, Asian history, sociology and international relations (to name a few) with attentiveness, humor, enthusiasm and passion.

I consider teaching to be one of the most challenging professions out there. For many teachers, the rewards come slowly, and the financial compensation can be low considering the amount of work put in. My dad, who happens to be quite a good teacher, has taught students in the Philippines and Samoa. He often says the job is as much about being an entertainer as anything else.

I’ve had several opportunities in the last year to “teach,” that is, speak to classes of students about my job, even though I’m quite new to the biz. A few weeks ago, I spoke to three separate classes of students at Ilima Intermediate for the school’s Career Day. After several hours of trying to keep their attention with relevant issues about while not losing my voice in the process, I came away with a new respect for their teacher and what she does in the classroom every day.

I constantly marvel at the patience and drive of my friends who are young teachers in their first or second years of instruction. They are working hard to make kids’ lives better at schools around the world — from New York to California to Japan, even here in Hawaii public schools. They work with a variety of students from ultra-hyper, easily-distracted elementary schoolers to more attentive but sometimes more unruly high schoolers; students who come from a range of income levels and ethnic backgrounds.

If there is someone who inspired you when you were in school, or who still inspires you to this day, take some time to look them up and send them a note. Or share your story about them here.

You may not recall exactly how to dissect a frog, label all the countries in Eastern Europe or conjugate a Latin verb, but hopefully there are other life lessons you still remember. I know I personally owe a whole heap of thanks to all the teachers in my life.

They’re the ones who taught me to catch tiger cubs.

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More on Teacher Appreciation Week:

Teacher Thank-You Card Project
Teacher Appreciation News
Teacher Appreciation Blog