91. Piling and filing

What I’m up to

I am jet-lagged, and it’s the best. This morning I got up before 5:30 and worked for three hours straight to finish a grad school project. Then I worked for another hour to prep for a summer class I’m co-teaching before the rest of the family woke up.

What I haven’t done is stepped foot on campus, and I need to do that soon. Work starts next Wednesday, and I have tons to do for both my classes and the library before then.

I also hit a parenting milestone: we sent Anna off to the Philippines by herself. She saved up money from tutoring and babysitting this year, and she wanted to spend it on an experience. What’s funny is my kids have long been obsessed with the idea of traveling as an “unaccompanied minor,” I think because I once told them a made-up story about two sisters who fought so much, their parents sent them off to different sets of grandparents in different countries for a summer (I tended to tell heavily moralistic bedtime stories haha). Anyway, Anna traveled as an unaccompanied minor to see my family in the Philippines. She is having the time of her life and, as my summer class students pointed out, is storing up experiences for a future college essay. :)

Today, summer class has moved online because the government has called a typhoon day, but so far, no rain.

Home sweet home

What I’m reading

I finished Rachel Cusk’s Transit series. This is a series for writers, I think. As I mentioned before, Cusk’s narrative structure is uniquely character-centered. It reads like a writing exercise, but in a good way. (After reading three of her books in succession, however, I became acutely aware of how harshly her narrator describes people’s physical appearances. It is a little weird.)

I am currently reading the first book of a fantasy series. (EDIT: I went back and removed the title, because I just got to a scene that makes it no longer possible to recommend it widely 😬). I read fantasy in fits and starts, and picked up this one because it’s gone viral on social media. I notice that what often happens when I read fantasy, especially YA series, is a lot of (internal) grumbling about boredom or quality of writing… before suddenly finding myself completely sucked in. It’s a good read for the last week of vacation.

I am also finishing Season 3 of The Parisian Agency, a show about a real-life family in luxury real estate (watch it — it is so fun).

Oh — on the plane, I finally watched Aftersun and The Departed. Aftersun is… quietly devastating. The Departed was the perfect airplane watch, although it did remind me that I much prefer Leo to Matt Damon (#unpopularopinion).

What I’m thinking about

Reunions. During our time in the US, we spent a week visiting Taiwan friends. First we had dinner with a group of former colleagues who happened to be in Chicago at the same time. Then we went to a former student’s wedding, where we got to see a few MAK families who moved back to the US a couple of years ago. Afterwards, we spent several days with J and M, very close friends who moved last year. The time with J and M felt like an official reunion, as several families from our school overlapped our visits. These reunions were so, so wonderful. Living overseas, our closest friends really become family — the adults are like aunts and uncles and the kids cousins to my own kids. But unlike blood relatives, there’s less of a guarantee we’ll get to see each other regularly once people move back; it’s the hardest aspect of TCK/A living.

During our visit to J and M, we got to see J’s new school, the girls drove us around in their own car (!), we compared notes on American pantry staples (Aldi’s Avocado Serrano sauce — I stocked up and I’m having some on my breakfast right now!). We spent hours sitting around a fire, catching up but also talking about nothing. Seeing J and M’s beautiful new life in the US was bittersweet; it was weird seeing them move on, but it also made me feel a little better about moving back sometime in the next few years. It’s also so much easier to deal with goodbyes when there’s the possibility of seeing each other again.

We are now about to meet a new batch of colleagues. It’s hard to say goodbye and hello (over and over and over), but this summer reminded me that it’s worth it.

(Love you, J!)

What I’m learning

I just finished two major projects for grad school — one was field notes for an observation of an information environment (by necessity, I picked the boarding gate at SFO), and another was a log and analysis of my personal information management.

The latter was particularly interesting: I basically had to write down several instances of information interaction every day, like Googling the cast of the Barbie. I had to indicate what I did with the information, then, after two weeks, I had to analyze my log.

Before, the study of personal information organization focused on how people find information, but more and more are studying what we do with the information.

At school, I give a presentation every year about organization and responsibility, and one thing I talk about is piling vs filing. The idea is that we have a tendency for one or the other, and if we want an effective organizational plan, we shouldn’t fight our impulses.

What’s interesting, however, is that info technology is changing, and that’s also changing how we interact with information. For example, this article (that I think I’ve linked to before), brings up the generational gap between people who use filing and directory systems to organize their digital resources vs. the younger generations who grew up with more sophisticated search technology. Some research (Whittaker, 2011) actually indicates that piling is actually more efficient than filing, and rapidly advanced search capabilities is making this more and more true.

Anyway, a key takeaway for me is that people tend to spend time curating the wrong information: we tend to save too many emails and documents, but we don’t spend enough time organizing web resources and photos. This means we end up with massive amounts of text files we will likely never open again, but we waste time trying to find websites we made mental notes to remember or photos buried in hundreds or random screenshots.

What I’m digging

I liked the Barbie movie!

My new Kindle Paperwhite (I downgraded from an Oasis).

Getting grades for school work. I’ve missed external validation! Haha.

August in Taiwan is hot and humid, but you can’t beat the clear skies.

Until next week,

Kate