EppsNet

Over the course of each academic term, he asks undergraduate and graduate business students three questions:

1. A year out of this program what do you expect your job will be?
2. What kind of job contributes the most to general well-being?
3. Practicality aside, if you could be doing anything 10 years from now, what would it be?

What’s striking is that there is almost no overlap among the students’ answers to these questions. . . .

The question then becomes: Why are students studying so hard and paying so much to reach objectives that are neither what they dream of nor what they think of as especially responsible?

— The Importance of Doing Meaningful Work – Forbes.com

My son has a math test today. He was up till 3 a.m. studying for it.

In my experience, a positive mindset is essential to successful test-taking, so on the drive to school, I give him a piece of advice.

“Walk into the classroom,” I say, “look at the teacher and lay down a challenge, like ‘Let’s do it.’”

“It’s not her test,” the boy says.

“What does that mean?”

“It means every class takes the same test — Schneider, D’Antonio . . .”

“THAT DOESN’T MATTER,” I say. “The important thing is to lay down the challenge. ‘Stop bitin’ on my styles.’ Granted, that one doesn’t make any sense, but it gives you the positive mental framework that you need for mathematical success.”

Authorities say a motorist has driven off a cliff, plunging about 200 feet down a steep canyon near Calabasas, after swerving to avoid an animal on the road.

— Driver Avoids Animal, Careens Off Calabasas Cliff – cbs2.com

Ouch — was he a PETA member?

I like animals. I ran over a squirrel once and I felt terrible about it but it did run right out in front of my car.

However — in the event of having to make a split-second decision between clobbering an animal and driving off a cliff, well, the animal is going to get it.

On a side note, kudos to the headline writer for the alliteration: “Careens Off Calabasas Cliff.” Who says a liberal arts education isn’t good for anything?

As a member of the Trojan Network and a graduate of the School of Engineering, I make myself available to answer questions from current USC engineering students about what life might have in store for them.

I got an email today from a young man who included this priceless bit of information: “When you got your master’s degree, I was one year old.”

Really?! It seems like just last week but thanks for reminding me that 20 years have gone by.

Look kids — if you want to do a computation like that, go ahead, but keep the results to yourself . . .

At Northwood High School, Honors Euro Lit is known by its acronym — HEL (pronounced hell) — and widely regarded as the hardest class at the school.

In order to get an A in the class for the first semester, my son needed a very high score — around a 98 — on the final exam, didn’t get it, and finished with a semester grade of 89.27 — a high B.

If he’d had at least an 89.5, the teacher would have rounded it up to an A. So out of 1,000+ possible points over the course of the semester, an 89.27 means you missed an A by only three or four points.

I’ve always encouraged the boy to be proactive with his teachers. Some people call this “sucking up” but I’ve been a teacher myself and I can tell you that teachers like students who are engaged and make an extra effort. When there’s a close call on a grade, those students may get the benefit of the doubt.

Being a public school teacher is unrewarding in many ways. You’re not going to get rich, for one thing. And you’re not going to be held in high esteem because the conventional wisdom is that public education in America is a disaster.

The only real attraction of the job is that every day you have an opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives. And even there, in most cases you will fail.

“Make sure the teachers know that you want to do well in their class,” I tell my kid. “Ask them what you need to do and they’ll tell you. They want to help you.”

After his final score was posted in HEL, he went in after school to talk to the teacher about his grade. They went over some previous assignments and exams, including a Macbeth exam where the teacher found a question that he felt he “didn’t teach very well.” He gave the boy four points back on the question, which gave him an 89.55 for the semester. That’s an A.

Father knows best, suckas! Academic success is not (just) about academics.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

— George Santayana

“Is that a fact?” she said. “Well–I’ve got news for Mr. Santayana: we’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive. It’s pretty dense kids who haven’t figured that out by the time they’re ten.”

“Santayana was a famous philosopher at Harvard,” said Slazinger, a Harvard man.

And Mrs. Berman said, “Most kids can’t afford to go to Harvard to be misinformed.”

— Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

One of the hardest things to convey to students is how often the answer to a question is, “I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody does know.”

— NeuroDojo: How can we turn teaching problems into teaching puzzles?

A young lady named Hope Xu — from University High right here in Irvine — scored a perfect 2400 on this year’s SAT exam.

I’ve advised my 16-year-old son that henceforth, when he’s faced with a tough decision in life, he should ask himself the question “What would Hope Xu do?”

I know one thing she wouldn’t do and that is to run into her dad’s bedroom at 11 p.m. and start doing flying front kicks when he’s trying to sleep.

“Why are you doing that?” I ask him.

“I just drank a Red Bull,” he says, then dances back out the door singing a song I don’t recognize . . .

This is how “diversity” works in practice: Intellectual contention is drowned out in a sea of emotion, much of it phony. Members of designated victim groups respond to a serious argument with “pain” and “shock” and accusations of “hate,” and university administrators make a show of pretending to care.

— Best of the Web Today

Worked some physics problems with my boy last night . . . the subject at hand was torque, which his textbook expresses in units of mN.

“Back in my day, we used to measure torque in foot-pounds,” I said. “What’s mN? Millinewtons?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess so.”

“OK, we’re off to a great start!”

Steven B. Sample, president of the University of Southern California since 1991, announced on Nov. 2 that he will retire in August 2010.

Sample is widely credited with bringing about an institutional rise at USC that is unparalleled in American higher education.

— USC News

I’m so proud of what USC’s been able to accomplish academically under the leadership of Dr. Sample. When I went to USC in the pre-Sample era, the conventional wisdom in Southern California was that the rich kids went to USC and the smart kids went to UCLA.

(No one in my immediate family is or ever has been rich. I was able to attend USC on an academic scholarship, although it must be admitted that my wife and I both have rich but not overly bright cousins who also graduated as Trojans.)

Since 1991 though, SAT scores at USC have gone up more than 300 points. They passed up UCLA years ago and the gap continues to widen, much to the chagrin of Bruin alums.

So the way it works now is that the rich kids and the smart kids go to USC, and if you don’t fall into either one of those categories, you might be UCLA material.

Thank you, Steven B. Sample!

FIGHT ON!!!

We were trying to figure out what time the boy needed to wake up to get to the PSAT test on time. The test is at 9 a.m., check-in starts at 8:40, it takes 10 minutes or so to drive to the school, and 30 minutes for him to get out of bed, have some breakfast and get ready to go, so I was thinking he’d need to get up at 8 a.m.

“WHAT?!” he shouted. “That’s too early! I’ll be the first person there!”

“OK,” I said, “what time do you think would be good?”

“8:05,” he said.

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• RT @capricecrane: Enough already, Mr. Gosselin. We hate your wife too, so we just stopped talking about her all together. Give it a shot. #

My son’s going into 11th grade next week. He’s got a couple of honors classes, a couple of AP classes, Spanish 3 and a music class.

It looks like a very tough schedule to me — he’s also got college entrance exams this year — but that’s where his academic history has brought him and he says he wants to do it.

One thing I didn’t know about AP classes is that they start giving kids assignments during summer vacation. He’s working on ‘em right now!

He asked me for a little help on the physics assignment so I get to do two things I love to do on a hot summer evening: sip premium tequila on ice with a lime, and solve problems like this:

A kangaroo jumps to a vertical height of 2.7m. How long is it in the air before returning to Earth?

Oh I’m in heaven!

Researchers have found that generic American parents, faced with a child who can’t do math or science, will say “Don’t worry, Johnny, because you have so many other talents.” Asian parents, supposedly, will say “Since you aren’t apparently naturally gifted at math or science you’ll have to study extra hard in these areas,” and not stop nagging until the kid is doing well.

— Philip Greenspun

Today was the last day of school here in Irvine . . .

“Can I get a ride to Orchard Park?” my son asks. He has friends that he meets there to play basketball.

“Did you check with Mom?” I ask.

“I don’t have to check with Mom,” he says. “I’m out of school now.”

“So you don’t have to check with Mom?”

“No. Not any more.”

After he checks with his mom, I drive him over to the park. Actually, he drives to the park and I ride along.

As we’re approaching a red light at Jeffrey and Trabuco, he says, “I’ll stop the car so you can’t even feel it.”

This is something I showed him how to do. I’m pretty good at it, but he goes through so many slow-motion false stops and starts that by the time he’s done, the car is almost entirely in the crosswalk.

“We’re in the middle of the intersection,” I point out to him.

“I did it though,” he says.

As we drive past the Arco station, I notice that gas prices are up over $3.00 again for a gallon of regular.

“Obama needs to stop playing basketball and deal with these gas prices,” the boy says.

“You’re right.”

Tomorrow’s the last day of school here in Irvine. I walk by my son’s room . . . he’s studying for his last finals and listening to bebop piano music, which is not on his normal playlist.

“What you listening to, Mr. Noodling Jazz Musician?” I ask.

“Thelonious Monk,” he says.

“Is that part of an assignment?” I know he’s been studying the Harlem Renaissance in English.

“No, it just helps me study.”

He’s in 10th grade now . . . he continues to improve his study habits and time management so I pretty much let him do things the way he wants to.

“OK. Let me know if you need anything.”

By this time tomorrow, my little boy will be halfway done with high school . . .

It was like a ghost town yesterday. The Lakers were playing a close-out game. It’s Finals Week at the local high schools. Everyone young and old had something to do.

My own 10th-grade boy spent 12 hours Saturday studying at the Barnes and Noble cafe at the Marketplace, followed by an Extreme English Breakdown session yesterday at Starbucks on Culver . . .

Good luck, students!

I’m reading a USC alumni magazine when I notice a mosquito flying around the living room ceiling. So I roll up the magazine, wait for the mosquito to drop down the wall a little bit, and crush it on the first swing.

I tell my son, “I knew my USC education would come in handy.”