Luckily Porter finished his master’s degree in two and a half years even before Mark and I finished our lab work. Then, he joined another project for his Ph.D. I was the only student left on the project since Mark quit. The only thing I did not expect was the money also ran out. I actually used all their data together with mine for the analyses. It did help me to get more interesting results. Very soon, I finished my thesis draft. My major professor was away at the time so I sent it to him in the mail and one to my co-professor. A model of the tree decline that I put together to explain our results shocked my professor so much that he could not believe that I had come up with it. He actually called the college and asked my co-professor on the phone whether it was his idea.
Overall, he was happy with my thesis although there were grammatical errors, but Anthony had already edited for me before I gave it to him. There was one error about which I was right. The tool I used to sand my sample wood is called a “plane.” He disagreed. So, he asked me to change it to “plan.” I did not; instead, I wrote beside the word he circled, “please look for the word in the dictionary.” The next time, he crossed out my word again and said he did look in the dictionary, and that it was spelled “plan” without an “e.” Finally, I made a special trip downstairs to his office and asked him what kind of dictionary he used. He said, “I am sure I was right.” Then he turned around while still sat in his chair and took a Webster’s Dictionary from his shelf. “Plane” is a tool that carpenters use and there was a picture that showed what one looked like. Then he said, “Well, I did look up the word in the dictionary at home. Maybe my dictionary at home is too old.” I left his office without a word.
Later, my professor wanted me to change the axis on two of my figures. He used the red marker as usual and told me that these were wrong. I told him that I would check it. I found nothing wrong in using the two figures to explain my point of view; of course, it was also all right to change it a little. But his big red marker “wrong” made it difficult. I went downstairs to his office and showed him the sources for the style of my figures, meaning that there was nothing wrong here. Again he refuse to accept that. I had no choice but change it to the way he wanted
Friday, February 15, 2013
Mark quit
One weekend when I went to do my office work, I noticed that Mark’s desk and shelf were all cleaned and empty. There was only one small box of books and papers with his professor’s name written on it. I thought that he had moved to a new office. The next day, I realized that he quit his graduate studies without telling anyone. I felt very sorry for him because I had the same thought a lot of times. He was a very nice guy with very close Florida ties; every time he said something, he would say “Back to Florida.” He was younger than Porter and me. He was a very smart guy with good grades. He was a little slow in the field because he was big and heavy plus wore glasses. Porter was the opposite; he did not have excellent grades but was good with his hands. Because he had the lowest GRE scores, our department chairman did not want to accept him at first. My professor insisted on accepting him since they were from the same college and they were like real brothers.
I felt that we were so close to finishing. It was the third year of our studies; it was too close to quit. But Mark did; he got a job in town. A few months later, he came to our office for a visit. I told him that I was surprised that he quit. I was the one who was supposed to quit. His professor was good. He always had an assistant in the lab to help him and after all, he found time to sit in the office to read a novel or newspaper. I never even heard any disagreements between them and I was shocked that he just got up and left. Oh well, I was not in the position to judge him.
Not long after, he came to visit our office again; he and his friend were talking about how to get back at their professors, that is, in their imaginations or dreams. It was quiet fun to listen to how many bad tricks they could think of. They had to hate their professor really bad or maybe it was their own way to get out their frustrations. He returned to a different department a year later, took another year to finish his Masters degree with a different professor and later found a job in New England.
I felt that we were so close to finishing. It was the third year of our studies; it was too close to quit. But Mark did; he got a job in town. A few months later, he came to our office for a visit. I told him that I was surprised that he quit. I was the one who was supposed to quit. His professor was good. He always had an assistant in the lab to help him and after all, he found time to sit in the office to read a novel or newspaper. I never even heard any disagreements between them and I was shocked that he just got up and left. Oh well, I was not in the position to judge him.
Not long after, he came to visit our office again; he and his friend were talking about how to get back at their professors, that is, in their imaginations or dreams. It was quiet fun to listen to how many bad tricks they could think of. They had to hate their professor really bad or maybe it was their own way to get out their frustrations. He returned to a different department a year later, took another year to finish his Masters degree with a different professor and later found a job in New England.
Missing Cores
I was finally able to take all of my tree cores out of the college walk-in freezer to dry and mount them. However, I found out that I was missing quite a number of cores. I just couldn’t figure out how. I went back to recheck my field records and found out that these were the plots I had cored the most, 15 to 17 trees per plot on six or seven plots. Just in case I never put them in the college freezer, even though I was sure I did, I checked the field trip dates and my signatures in the sign-out book for our department’s freezer key. I did take the key and went to the freezer the day after each field trip. So, I went to talk to my major professor about the matter. He sounded not surprised. Well, they must have been lost. I told him that I would like to find out how they were lost. Maybe someone took them accidentally. I told him that I bundled each plot together with tape and each region together with another piece of tape. Then, I put these into a closed box. Someone had to open the box and unwrap the tape to get them and wrap the rest back together again, and that person knew what he was doing because he took my most abundantly sampled tree plots. And these were useless to someone else because only we (he and I) had the sampling data codes for the cores. They were only useful to someone who had both the field records and the cores. My professor was the only one besides me who had those data.
His attitude made me suspect that he had something to do with the missing cores. Though I did notice there were a few days that his lab window was covered with brown paper and no one could see through so I assumed that was for a test for the undergraduates. Now, everything together made me upset. I said that he should try to help me get those cores back. He said that he didn’t know what to do. I said that I was going to complain to the department chairman that the college freezer was not secure. My hardest labor didn’t allow me to let it go that easily. Plus, how were we supposed to do research if we didn’t have a safe place to store our samples? Finally, he said that I could initiate a memo and he would have the secretary distribute it to the entire department to see if anyone had seen my lost cores. I did as he said.
Our department technician Joe came to offer his help right away. He said that he knew what hard work I had done to core those hardwood trees. If I needed to go back to the forests to recollect them, he would volunteer to help me on the weekends. I told him that I just wanted the cores back or if someone wanted them, they should have come to ask me for them.
One day while Anthony and I were having lunch in the office, my professor walked in and told me to hand over my cores to Mark who was supposed to be studying the pathology of decline. He told me that he would do similar studies like I had done. I was shocked. I said, “My cores. I have not finished all the processes. He wants my cores.” I could not finish what I had to say. I started to cry. I spent three summers of hard labor collecting cores from more than 500 trees. I was just about to get the tree ring data from them. My professor asked me to give them to Mark. How was I supposed to finish my research and degree independently plus I considered myself as having the best knowledge of the three of us graduate students about cores and tree ring research. I was working on the same amount of work from my proposal that all my other committee members had said was impossible to finish. I was doing the work myself day and night, on weekends and holidays. I had never worked this hard physically and mentally in all my life; sometimes, I thought I would go crazy. I hadn’t even gotten any results from my work yet.
My professor left when he saw that I was crying. Anthony said, “Well, it’s not nice for him to do that to you but he is your boss. I will help you carry the cores to Mark after lunch.” I tried to explain to him that maybe my work was slow since Mark hads an assistant in the lab to help him. He only had three trees in each plot to analyze and I had 7–12 trees in each plot, plus I didn’t have an assistant. Now, he was taking over my work. I had never done anything wrong or showed any incapability to do my work. After lunch, we started to carry my boxes of cores out from my lab to Mark’s. My professor came back and saw us in the hallway. He said, “No, no. I meant corers, not cores.” We misunderstood each other. He could have said more clearly “increment corer” or “your tools.” Still Mark had his own work to do, so why would he want to do mine which was completely different, not to mention at a very late stage.
Mark got my “increment corers” and he went to collect a few cores here and there at nearby forests. Then, he came and asked me to teach him how to process the cores. The process included drying, mounting, sanding, and measuring. I was working on two cores from each of 500 trees, for a total of 1000 cores. I told him that I could show him the processes involved, but I didn’t know how to transfer the data and how to run the tree ring program yet. I would have to try that or learn the program myself when I got there. I could see his frustration because he mainly used Mac personal computers. He was not familiar with mainframes and large databases. I told him that I had just taken a computer-modeling course, and that he should take it too. A former Ph.D. graduate student friend tried to figure out the tree ring program but couldn’t. I would be very glad if he could try to help with the program before I reached that step because he had only a dozen cores, not 1000. I just didn’t understand why Mark had to repeat my part of the work; he should finish his own. But it was the idea of two major professors, just to make sure that I was doing it right, I guess.
His attitude made me suspect that he had something to do with the missing cores. Though I did notice there were a few days that his lab window was covered with brown paper and no one could see through so I assumed that was for a test for the undergraduates. Now, everything together made me upset. I said that he should try to help me get those cores back. He said that he didn’t know what to do. I said that I was going to complain to the department chairman that the college freezer was not secure. My hardest labor didn’t allow me to let it go that easily. Plus, how were we supposed to do research if we didn’t have a safe place to store our samples? Finally, he said that I could initiate a memo and he would have the secretary distribute it to the entire department to see if anyone had seen my lost cores. I did as he said.
Our department technician Joe came to offer his help right away. He said that he knew what hard work I had done to core those hardwood trees. If I needed to go back to the forests to recollect them, he would volunteer to help me on the weekends. I told him that I just wanted the cores back or if someone wanted them, they should have come to ask me for them.
One day while Anthony and I were having lunch in the office, my professor walked in and told me to hand over my cores to Mark who was supposed to be studying the pathology of decline. He told me that he would do similar studies like I had done. I was shocked. I said, “My cores. I have not finished all the processes. He wants my cores.” I could not finish what I had to say. I started to cry. I spent three summers of hard labor collecting cores from more than 500 trees. I was just about to get the tree ring data from them. My professor asked me to give them to Mark. How was I supposed to finish my research and degree independently plus I considered myself as having the best knowledge of the three of us graduate students about cores and tree ring research. I was working on the same amount of work from my proposal that all my other committee members had said was impossible to finish. I was doing the work myself day and night, on weekends and holidays. I had never worked this hard physically and mentally in all my life; sometimes, I thought I would go crazy. I hadn’t even gotten any results from my work yet.
My professor left when he saw that I was crying. Anthony said, “Well, it’s not nice for him to do that to you but he is your boss. I will help you carry the cores to Mark after lunch.” I tried to explain to him that maybe my work was slow since Mark hads an assistant in the lab to help him. He only had three trees in each plot to analyze and I had 7–12 trees in each plot, plus I didn’t have an assistant. Now, he was taking over my work. I had never done anything wrong or showed any incapability to do my work. After lunch, we started to carry my boxes of cores out from my lab to Mark’s. My professor came back and saw us in the hallway. He said, “No, no. I meant corers, not cores.” We misunderstood each other. He could have said more clearly “increment corer” or “your tools.” Still Mark had his own work to do, so why would he want to do mine which was completely different, not to mention at a very late stage.
Mark got my “increment corers” and he went to collect a few cores here and there at nearby forests. Then, he came and asked me to teach him how to process the cores. The process included drying, mounting, sanding, and measuring. I was working on two cores from each of 500 trees, for a total of 1000 cores. I told him that I could show him the processes involved, but I didn’t know how to transfer the data and how to run the tree ring program yet. I would have to try that or learn the program myself when I got there. I could see his frustration because he mainly used Mac personal computers. He was not familiar with mainframes and large databases. I told him that I had just taken a computer-modeling course, and that he should take it too. A former Ph.D. graduate student friend tried to figure out the tree ring program but couldn’t. I would be very glad if he could try to help with the program before I reached that step because he had only a dozen cores, not 1000. I just didn’t understand why Mark had to repeat my part of the work; he should finish his own. But it was the idea of two major professors, just to make sure that I was doing it right, I guess.
Confrontations
One day, my professor and co-professor came to me and said that Porter told them that I only chose small trees to core, these were suppressed trees not representative of the population, but would have been easier for me to core through. If the results were wrong, I would be responsible. That lit my temper instantly. I told them that I did not choose small trees to core and that I always tried to locate the largest trees in each plot. Except the first three trees in each plot were out of my control because Mark chose them for collecting root and leaf samples. And yes, most of Mark’s trees were suppressed trees since he would not be able to get the leaves if they were too tall. I had to core his trees, so I intentionally chose bigger ones after Mark’s first three trees.
“Why didn’t you ask me about my job instead of Porter? I was the one doing the work. Porter had his own job to do in the field. I had the basic training in China as part of my undergraduate studies. I know what suppressed trees look like.” My professor said that he trusted Porter’s undergraduate training here in the U.S. first. I was angry. I told him that what he was doing was wrong. He should not have accused me of doing something that I didn’t do, but had just heard something from another student. He had all my field data. He should have at least checked the data before that accusation. He told me that there was no way he could check it because he didn’t follow me around while I did my work. I said, “if you don’t have a way, may I suggest a way to you?” He wouldn’t listen to me until my co-professors suggested he listen to what I had to say. I said, “You are right that you cannot follow us around, but your job is figuring out how to check our work out there. You have all of our data. Porter measured every tree in the plot so he would have the average tree size for each plot. I only cored 7–12 trees in each of his plots of which Mark decided the first three trees of mine. And Mark and I would also have an average size of the trees I cored. If my trees were smaller than the average size of Porter’s, then you and Porter would be right. But if my average is larger, that indicates that my trees were dominant trees and not small suppressed trees.” Even if you think that I made up the data to make them bigger, I took every one of my tree samples back to the college and you could measure the cores yourself which would tell you the diameter of all my trees,” I added. Finally with my co-professor’s help, he agreed to check my data against Porter’s. He said, “Okay, I will go home tonight to calculate all of Porter’s averages, you do yours. Tomorrow at 8 o’clock sharp, let’s meet here to compare them.” I was hoping Porter would do his own calculations and I would do mine and Mark’s data.
The next morning, I compared my data against his. Every one of mine was 2–3 cm larger than Porter’s average. Not a single one was smaller. Then my professor said, “Okay, you are right. You did not choose small trees.” I received no apologies from anyone.
This incident forced me to take charge of my own research. I had been always out of the decision-making process too many times. Sometimes, I didn’t even know where we were going and what we were going to do there. One week, we went back to one of our old sites from which we had already collected samples in the previous year. For me, I didn’t know what to do because I already had all the samples I needed. Porter said that we needed to help Mark find the three trees that he sampled for roots and leaves in the woods. The trouble was, there was no way to find them because he did not tag or mark the trees. All the shrubs covered up everything and they all looked alike now. I was upset most because I did not even think that this was the purpose for revisiting the site after driving and walking for so many hours, and because I knew it was a waste of time and energy. I had a big argument with my professor after I got back. I asked him why not let me know if there was a meeting before the trip. He said that he had told Porter to let me know. Porter said that he left me a note on my desk but wasn’t sure. So I told my professor that he should simply leave a note in my mailbox or inform me directly, since I, like Porter, was also his research assistant. Secondly, if all of them claimed that they had better, or basic training on sampling here in US, it was a stupid idea just even to think they could go back to a forest to find a few untagged or unmarked trees a year later. Then, my professor said, “It was my idea, okay; am I stupid?” I was upset. I said, “Yes, you are a stupid professor.” My sharp criticism shocked everyone because I was always quiet. I said, “My being quiet doesn’t mean that I don’t think. Just because I don’t say anything, does not mean that I don’t have anything to say. Plus you guys never gave me a chance to say anything. Then you wanted to dump all your problems on me. I let everyone else go first to show my respect. But that doesn’t mean that you guys should take over and not gave me a chance to speak.”
Later on, Mark wrote an abstract about our work for the annual pathological conference. He put Porter’s name first, then, his, then mine, followed by the two professors’ names. I thought it was okay until the second round I saw this red circle around my name and a note “I wonder if her name should be here at all?” I asked Mark about who wrote that and he said that Porter did and they already had disregarded his comment. My name should at least be there, if not second. I said, “Porter again?” I was upset. I sat there for a long time and I wrote him a nasty open letter telling him what was on my mind because I could not say it myself without crying. We did not have email back then. I don’t remember most of it now. Basically, I said that he must drink too much beer, smoke too much whatever he was smoking, forgot what I had done in the field, forgot how I had helped him set up his each and every one of his plot before I even started my own work. For the lab work after the fieldwork, too bad that he was not my major professor and I did not report to him what I did in the lab. I wouldn’t mind waiting for him to finish his Masters first, then Ph.D. then find an assistant professor position somewhere and maybe then I would report to him or let him check my work. I was just angry with him for the years we worked together and he never stopped undermining me all the time.
My professor came to my office with the letter on his hand and asked me to go with him to his office where Porter and Mark and my co-professors were already seated. I noticed that he tried to keep himself from laughing on the way downstairs. Porter was standing at the farthest corner. My professor said, “How could you write something like this to your fellow graduate student?” I stated “there were all the facts, and I asked how could he treat me like he did.” My professor again on his side, asked me to apologize for what I said in the letter to Porter. The others said nothing. I was not happy; I apologized to him about the letter, and said he should not have pushed me into a corner and left me with no choices.
I complained that I was not fairly treated there. My professor said he already had given me special treatment. I said that I knew, so special that I could not take it anymore. He said that I made a big deal out of little things and it was so hard to cooperate with me. I said to my professor that I only wanted fair and equal treatment as one of his graduate students.
I did not say anything earlier since Mark did not care. Let’s be fair. “Why was Porter’s name first anyway, Mark wrote it and he was going to the meeting? I think that Mark’s name should be first on the abstract since he wrote the abstract. Then, whoever contributed after Mark more, should follow in that order.” Mark seemed to wake up; he said, “Yeah, you are right, Ying, my name should be first.” And he did move his name to first place.
From then on, Porter was very nice to me. He asked for my opinion every time we went somewhere and said hi whenever he saw me. But for me, I was exhausted. I really didn’t have much enthusiasm like when I first started to work with him and my professor. I thought that in China it was very difficult to fight professionally with men. Sometimes, I wondered why he even accepted women graduate students, unless that was the way he trained us to face the real world.
During all this time, Anthony gave me strong support. Without him, I don’t think that I would have kept fighting to the end—to the completion of my degree. We were good friends. He took me out for hiking, every time I was on the top of the mountain looking down and far away, it really helped me rise up from all my problems. He and his father always used to go hiking on weekends. He also introduced religion in my life since I did not have any before. I actually prayed very hard for God’s help to get through.
“Why didn’t you ask me about my job instead of Porter? I was the one doing the work. Porter had his own job to do in the field. I had the basic training in China as part of my undergraduate studies. I know what suppressed trees look like.” My professor said that he trusted Porter’s undergraduate training here in the U.S. first. I was angry. I told him that what he was doing was wrong. He should not have accused me of doing something that I didn’t do, but had just heard something from another student. He had all my field data. He should have at least checked the data before that accusation. He told me that there was no way he could check it because he didn’t follow me around while I did my work. I said, “if you don’t have a way, may I suggest a way to you?” He wouldn’t listen to me until my co-professors suggested he listen to what I had to say. I said, “You are right that you cannot follow us around, but your job is figuring out how to check our work out there. You have all of our data. Porter measured every tree in the plot so he would have the average tree size for each plot. I only cored 7–12 trees in each of his plots of which Mark decided the first three trees of mine. And Mark and I would also have an average size of the trees I cored. If my trees were smaller than the average size of Porter’s, then you and Porter would be right. But if my average is larger, that indicates that my trees were dominant trees and not small suppressed trees.” Even if you think that I made up the data to make them bigger, I took every one of my tree samples back to the college and you could measure the cores yourself which would tell you the diameter of all my trees,” I added. Finally with my co-professor’s help, he agreed to check my data against Porter’s. He said, “Okay, I will go home tonight to calculate all of Porter’s averages, you do yours. Tomorrow at 8 o’clock sharp, let’s meet here to compare them.” I was hoping Porter would do his own calculations and I would do mine and Mark’s data.
The next morning, I compared my data against his. Every one of mine was 2–3 cm larger than Porter’s average. Not a single one was smaller. Then my professor said, “Okay, you are right. You did not choose small trees.” I received no apologies from anyone.
This incident forced me to take charge of my own research. I had been always out of the decision-making process too many times. Sometimes, I didn’t even know where we were going and what we were going to do there. One week, we went back to one of our old sites from which we had already collected samples in the previous year. For me, I didn’t know what to do because I already had all the samples I needed. Porter said that we needed to help Mark find the three trees that he sampled for roots and leaves in the woods. The trouble was, there was no way to find them because he did not tag or mark the trees. All the shrubs covered up everything and they all looked alike now. I was upset most because I did not even think that this was the purpose for revisiting the site after driving and walking for so many hours, and because I knew it was a waste of time and energy. I had a big argument with my professor after I got back. I asked him why not let me know if there was a meeting before the trip. He said that he had told Porter to let me know. Porter said that he left me a note on my desk but wasn’t sure. So I told my professor that he should simply leave a note in my mailbox or inform me directly, since I, like Porter, was also his research assistant. Secondly, if all of them claimed that they had better, or basic training on sampling here in US, it was a stupid idea just even to think they could go back to a forest to find a few untagged or unmarked trees a year later. Then, my professor said, “It was my idea, okay; am I stupid?” I was upset. I said, “Yes, you are a stupid professor.” My sharp criticism shocked everyone because I was always quiet. I said, “My being quiet doesn’t mean that I don’t think. Just because I don’t say anything, does not mean that I don’t have anything to say. Plus you guys never gave me a chance to say anything. Then you wanted to dump all your problems on me. I let everyone else go first to show my respect. But that doesn’t mean that you guys should take over and not gave me a chance to speak.”
Later on, Mark wrote an abstract about our work for the annual pathological conference. He put Porter’s name first, then, his, then mine, followed by the two professors’ names. I thought it was okay until the second round I saw this red circle around my name and a note “I wonder if her name should be here at all?” I asked Mark about who wrote that and he said that Porter did and they already had disregarded his comment. My name should at least be there, if not second. I said, “Porter again?” I was upset. I sat there for a long time and I wrote him a nasty open letter telling him what was on my mind because I could not say it myself without crying. We did not have email back then. I don’t remember most of it now. Basically, I said that he must drink too much beer, smoke too much whatever he was smoking, forgot what I had done in the field, forgot how I had helped him set up his each and every one of his plot before I even started my own work. For the lab work after the fieldwork, too bad that he was not my major professor and I did not report to him what I did in the lab. I wouldn’t mind waiting for him to finish his Masters first, then Ph.D. then find an assistant professor position somewhere and maybe then I would report to him or let him check my work. I was just angry with him for the years we worked together and he never stopped undermining me all the time.
My professor came to my office with the letter on his hand and asked me to go with him to his office where Porter and Mark and my co-professors were already seated. I noticed that he tried to keep himself from laughing on the way downstairs. Porter was standing at the farthest corner. My professor said, “How could you write something like this to your fellow graduate student?” I stated “there were all the facts, and I asked how could he treat me like he did.” My professor again on his side, asked me to apologize for what I said in the letter to Porter. The others said nothing. I was not happy; I apologized to him about the letter, and said he should not have pushed me into a corner and left me with no choices.
I complained that I was not fairly treated there. My professor said he already had given me special treatment. I said that I knew, so special that I could not take it anymore. He said that I made a big deal out of little things and it was so hard to cooperate with me. I said to my professor that I only wanted fair and equal treatment as one of his graduate students.
I did not say anything earlier since Mark did not care. Let’s be fair. “Why was Porter’s name first anyway, Mark wrote it and he was going to the meeting? I think that Mark’s name should be first on the abstract since he wrote the abstract. Then, whoever contributed after Mark more, should follow in that order.” Mark seemed to wake up; he said, “Yeah, you are right, Ying, my name should be first.” And he did move his name to first place.
From then on, Porter was very nice to me. He asked for my opinion every time we went somewhere and said hi whenever he saw me. But for me, I was exhausted. I really didn’t have much enthusiasm like when I first started to work with him and my professor. I thought that in China it was very difficult to fight professionally with men. Sometimes, I wondered why he even accepted women graduate students, unless that was the way he trained us to face the real world.
During all this time, Anthony gave me strong support. Without him, I don’t think that I would have kept fighting to the end—to the completion of my degree. We were good friends. He took me out for hiking, every time I was on the top of the mountain looking down and far away, it really helped me rise up from all my problems. He and his father always used to go hiking on weekends. He also introduced religion in my life since I did not have any before. I actually prayed very hard for God’s help to get through.
My Third Field Season
The third summer of my fieldwork, I started to get more familiar with the forest sites, common tree species, and so on. I could finish all of my increment cores on time or even slightly earlier than my co-workers, so I could take a little “cat nap” to restore my energy for the next plot. Usually we measured two or three plots per day depending upon the driving distance. Also I became more comfortable working with the two guys from the department. The most important thing was that I didn’t have to worry about anything else, for example, looking forwards to coming back and checking my mail. I was more concentrated on my work. Nothing else except hard work drew my mind away. Plus, it didn’t look like I was going to finish the project and my degree in two years but my scholarship was ending. I began to look for possibilities to fund my continued studies.
By chance, I found a summer job to work for another professor. That provided some extra savings for later. This was an opportunity since my professor said that he was not sure when he would be able to support me as a research assistant on this funded project. When I mentioned that I would take this summer job because of the flexible time, he was not very happy. He said I should have told him I needed a summer job. I was confused since he knew I was working in a Chinese Restaurant far away from college and I asked him about funding.
One afternoon before the fall semester began, my professor came to the lab where I was working on this summer job. The other professor, his postdoctoral associate, and I were all there. Surprisingly, he told the other professor that he was going to give me a research assistantship in the fall, which he had not told me about. Then he told him that I could not get two checks from the college, implying that I had to quit. So the other professor said that actually the job was ending in October so it was no big deal, just for one month after fall start. However, my professor thought that I should quit by the end of August. The other professor was very nice to let me quit my job considering that he had to find another person for two more months. Unfortunately, my assistantship did not start until November because my professor did not handle all the paperwork correctly. That made me feel very sorry for quitting, not to mention the money that I really needed.
I received $7500/year based on 20 hours per week, also last year funding which I did not know, even though every granduate student was working overtime. I worked day and night plus weekends just like all the other graduate research assistants. The light in the office was always on till midnight everyday. I sure felt the pressure from my professor right away. He really made sure that I did my job and did it right. I quit my Friday night restaurant job so that I could concentrate on that one project.
Now I had saved a little money. Before I started my third summer of fieldwork, I asked Anthony to give me a ride to buy a good sleeping bag, good boots, and a raincoat. For the last two summers, I did not have my own sleeping bag or raincoat. I had borrowed a sleeping bag from Mrs Wang but I always woke up feeling cold in the morning. My feet were always wet in sneakers. I was so shocked when I saw the price tags in this camping supplies store. If a Chinese person had given me a ride all the way to the store, I would not have bought anything. He told me I would not be cold or wet anymore after I ended up spending more than $200 for all these things. I was very uneasy because it was way above my budget. I never spent that much for myself except on textbooks (average $400 per semester). Actually, I never spent any money on my clothes or anything except my rent and simple food and my share of local phone calls, absolutely essential things. On the way back, Anthony asked me whether I wanted to go to his place for dinner since it was on the way and it was after dinnertime. I said no, I had to go home to get over today’s big spending and re-budget. The sleeping bag really did let me have a good rest and kept me dry in rainy weather.
I was still collecting samples in the field, then coming back to store them in the freezer, then drying the cores from each tree, mounting them in a piece of grooved wood, then sanding them to make them smooth. After that, I measured the width between each set of rings under a binocular microscope and recorded the data on an Apple IIE computer. After obtaining the data, I transferred the data to a mainframe computer at the university, ran a tree ring analysis program to analyze the data, and produced growth curves to reconstruct the growth of the tree since its beginning. I then examined correlation between the growth of the trees and drought, temperature, and disease.
By chance, I found a summer job to work for another professor. That provided some extra savings for later. This was an opportunity since my professor said that he was not sure when he would be able to support me as a research assistant on this funded project. When I mentioned that I would take this summer job because of the flexible time, he was not very happy. He said I should have told him I needed a summer job. I was confused since he knew I was working in a Chinese Restaurant far away from college and I asked him about funding.
One afternoon before the fall semester began, my professor came to the lab where I was working on this summer job. The other professor, his postdoctoral associate, and I were all there. Surprisingly, he told the other professor that he was going to give me a research assistantship in the fall, which he had not told me about. Then he told him that I could not get two checks from the college, implying that I had to quit. So the other professor said that actually the job was ending in October so it was no big deal, just for one month after fall start. However, my professor thought that I should quit by the end of August. The other professor was very nice to let me quit my job considering that he had to find another person for two more months. Unfortunately, my assistantship did not start until November because my professor did not handle all the paperwork correctly. That made me feel very sorry for quitting, not to mention the money that I really needed.
I received $7500/year based on 20 hours per week, also last year funding which I did not know, even though every granduate student was working overtime. I worked day and night plus weekends just like all the other graduate research assistants. The light in the office was always on till midnight everyday. I sure felt the pressure from my professor right away. He really made sure that I did my job and did it right. I quit my Friday night restaurant job so that I could concentrate on that one project.
Now I had saved a little money. Before I started my third summer of fieldwork, I asked Anthony to give me a ride to buy a good sleeping bag, good boots, and a raincoat. For the last two summers, I did not have my own sleeping bag or raincoat. I had borrowed a sleeping bag from Mrs Wang but I always woke up feeling cold in the morning. My feet were always wet in sneakers. I was so shocked when I saw the price tags in this camping supplies store. If a Chinese person had given me a ride all the way to the store, I would not have bought anything. He told me I would not be cold or wet anymore after I ended up spending more than $200 for all these things. I was very uneasy because it was way above my budget. I never spent that much for myself except on textbooks (average $400 per semester). Actually, I never spent any money on my clothes or anything except my rent and simple food and my share of local phone calls, absolutely essential things. On the way back, Anthony asked me whether I wanted to go to his place for dinner since it was on the way and it was after dinnertime. I said no, I had to go home to get over today’s big spending and re-budget. The sleeping bag really did let me have a good rest and kept me dry in rainy weather.
I was still collecting samples in the field, then coming back to store them in the freezer, then drying the cores from each tree, mounting them in a piece of grooved wood, then sanding them to make them smooth. After that, I measured the width between each set of rings under a binocular microscope and recorded the data on an Apple IIE computer. After obtaining the data, I transferred the data to a mainframe computer at the university, ran a tree ring analysis program to analyze the data, and produced growth curves to reconstruct the growth of the tree since its beginning. I then examined correlation between the growth of the trees and drought, temperature, and disease.
Dinner at our Professor’s house
At the end of the semester, Anthony’s professor invited us to his house for dinner. I asked Anthony for a ride. He told me that he would pick up another friend first, then me and maybe Yuli, another Chinese student. I heard Yuli’s story in China before I met her. Her Chinese professor and colleague came to my institute the year before I came to the U.S. Yuli was a Masters student of this professor. From the conversation, I noticed that something really bad happened and that she just couldn’t get over it. I didn’t know what had happened until she came to our school in the U.S.
Her fiancé was one of the earliest students who went abroad to study in 1980. He was in Canada while she was still in China. She was always very proud of him. One day, she got a letter that said he would be back home in one week. She was so excited and prepared everything for their wedding. But a week later came with news of his death. He committed suicide because he could not get along with his major professor and couldn’t deal with the stress from his studies and research. She was so devastated. She had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a hospital for over a year.
The good thing was that she recovered and continued what her boyfriend didn’t accomplish. She came to the US for her Ph.D. She joined our field trips a few times and she tried to help me core the ash trees, but only broke the tool. My professor said he never had anyone break the tool and she was the first. He took us out for pizza to reward her for her help. Then, he took us to the ice cream shop, we told him we each only needed a small cone; he did give her a small cone, but gave me the biggest one he could find in the shop.
I was surprised that evening when Anthony came to pick me up alone. He explained that his friend had changed her mind, and Yuli had gotten a ride from someone else. When we got our dinner plates and lined up for dinner, there were goldfish crackers and snacks on the dinner table. So we put the tiny crackers on the big dinner plates hoping that real dinner would be coming soon, but that never happened. My professor left first; he took all his beer on the way out. Very soon we left as well. His wife must have been on strike for the day. Later, we did have more parties at the professor’s house with a lot of food.
Anthony had this big green Plymouth Voltaire from his grandmother; the car was 10 years old with only 10,000 miles. It was cold and icy that night. On the way home, he was embarrassed since his car did not cooperate well. It was difficult to start at first. Then, the car kept dying on the road. He said, “come on, I know it’s cold. Keep going.” I thought it was funny. I heard about the trouble of owning a car. Now, I finally saw one in person.
Her fiancé was one of the earliest students who went abroad to study in 1980. He was in Canada while she was still in China. She was always very proud of him. One day, she got a letter that said he would be back home in one week. She was so excited and prepared everything for their wedding. But a week later came with news of his death. He committed suicide because he could not get along with his major professor and couldn’t deal with the stress from his studies and research. She was so devastated. She had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a hospital for over a year.
The good thing was that she recovered and continued what her boyfriend didn’t accomplish. She came to the US for her Ph.D. She joined our field trips a few times and she tried to help me core the ash trees, but only broke the tool. My professor said he never had anyone break the tool and she was the first. He took us out for pizza to reward her for her help. Then, he took us to the ice cream shop, we told him we each only needed a small cone; he did give her a small cone, but gave me the biggest one he could find in the shop.
I was surprised that evening when Anthony came to pick me up alone. He explained that his friend had changed her mind, and Yuli had gotten a ride from someone else. When we got our dinner plates and lined up for dinner, there were goldfish crackers and snacks on the dinner table. So we put the tiny crackers on the big dinner plates hoping that real dinner would be coming soon, but that never happened. My professor left first; he took all his beer on the way out. Very soon we left as well. His wife must have been on strike for the day. Later, we did have more parties at the professor’s house with a lot of food.
Anthony had this big green Plymouth Voltaire from his grandmother; the car was 10 years old with only 10,000 miles. It was cold and icy that night. On the way home, he was embarrassed since his car did not cooperate well. It was difficult to start at first. Then, the car kept dying on the road. He said, “come on, I know it’s cold. Keep going.” I thought it was funny. I heard about the trouble of owning a car. Now, I finally saw one in person.
Western Standards
I took one of our department chairman’s classes, the “History of Ecology.” We explored a lot of early ecology that eventually became its own science today. Our term paper assignment was to research our own topics exploring the history of ecology. So, I decided to write a paper on China and how early ecology developed into ecology today. I was surprised how much English and Chinese literature we had in the libraries and how much I did not know. I explored how ancient Chinese a few thousand years ago actually already used ecology even though our national ecological society in China following western standards was formed in the late 1970’s. I stated a number of examples.
Famous food chain and pyramid theories were summarized by a famous ecologist named Lindemann in the early 1900’s. He studied organisms in a small pond in Minnesota for a few years while collecting lots of data. He tried to make sense of his massive data and was very frustrated. He had a Chinese roommate who had a little book of ancient Chinese proverbs. One day he was bored. He happened to pick it up and read. A “light bulb” went off in his head, “yes, my data was just like that, like, the ‘big fish eat little fish; little fish eat shrimp; and little shrimp eat mud.’” There was a food chain in the pond. Later he found that the food chains overlapped forming a food web. My Chinese ecology book said that Lindemann acknowledged his Chinese roommate in his original thesis but I did not have anyway to check it, so I could not put this in my paper. Also an ancient Chinese proverbs book stated, “A bird was chasing a cricket, but the bird did not know someone else was behind it.” “There was only one tiger that could dominate a mountain” implying the food pyramid. You could have a mountain full of grass, sheep, and other herbivores, but the tiger was at the top as the carnivore. Also, I explained how Chinese farmers used the natural ecosystem to help their farming. For example, raising fish in the rice paddy, fermenting farm waste to produce natural gas for cooking, then reusing the waste as fertilizer in the field to help new crops, adding to the diversity of species to decrease pests and diseases, and mixing plantings to benefit each other.
I asked my major professor Dan to read my paper first to check my English. He was shocked to find out how much was new to him in my paper. He praised my paper as a very interesting paper and was sure that I would get an “A.” But, different people can have different opinions. Our chairman almost failed me saying what I wrote had nothing to do with ecology in China. I should have instead written about what happened after the 1970’s when the Chinese Ecological Society was founded. My emphasis had been on the time before ecology as a science in China. I defended that we talk about history, not the present just like he had talked about how the science of ecology was formed in Europe and America, not just after the European and American Ecological Societies formed. He did not care; he could talk about prehistory of ecology anywhere. I had to write about China his way. He asked me to rewrite my paper and to delete most of it which made me feel very uneasy. I revised it as much as I could. He gave me a “C+.” That was the lowest grade that I had ever received during my entire studies.
I strongly disagreed with my chairman’s point-of-view of the “history of ecology in China” which was not consistent with its definition. The definition of ecology is the study of the relationships between organisms and their environment and surroundings. Although the Chinese did not have the words “ecology” or the “Ecological Society of China” until the early 1980’s, it didn’t mean that the Chinese over the last 5000 years did not study or apply their ecological knowledge. They knew of the relationships between living things and their environment—how to live more harmoniously with the maximum diversity of living organisms. We now call this an “ecosystem.” Although, it has been a challenge to balance our ecosystems as long as our existing, Nature tried its best to balance itself and we humans tried to learn our lessons. There are thousands of examples in the ancient Chinese literature. Sometimes I think the ancient people knew more about ecology than modern people. They knew how to keep our natural world in balance and treated the ecosystem as a whole because they respected nature.
Modern people think “science” gave us a “license to kill” since we do not like the world as it is. We lost the basic value of life. We want more and our desires are endless. When the pursuit started for the maximum of everything we wanted, we put ourselves at the center of the universe. We eliminated all those other life forms, germs, fungi, and bugs that make us uncomfortable or sick. The only thing is that we speed up their adaptations and mutations, and they come back hundreds and thousands generations later to fight our same generation. The longer we live, the less we adapt to change.
Since the Industrial Revolution and capitalism took over the world, greed and mass production became a way of life. We forgot that we are part of nature, not above nature. We change how the crops grow and how the farm animals are raised for maximum profit, forgetting we are what we eat. We eat fat and weak chicken fast grown in just a few months, and we become fat and weak. Life needs care, love, and freedom. Almost everything we eat has a life of its own; animals usually kill only when they are hungry and they have to work hard to get it.
Food is the most important factor for all survival after fresh air and water. Throughout Chinese history, 80% of the people were small family farmers and farming was the most important occupation. China had a very strong tradition to put agriculture first. Now, China is following Europe and America with only about 3% of the population as farmers. Farming has been industrialized like a “biological assembly line,” without ethics or morals. Commercial fertilizers and pesticides are problematic. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) threaten the integrity of the natural ecosystem. Americans once believed that we had the best, safest, most secure food supply in the world. Industry’s preoccupation with making foods that “taste good” with fats and sugar, and that “look good” by being artificially shaped, colored, or ripened, fails to meet good nutrition and health. Widespread use of agrichemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and artificial food additives are problems for food safety. We bred crops in which no pest was interested or lethal to pests as if we are different than pests. You cheat the food and the food cheats you in return. More and more people became weak and fat; more and more people became allergic to food.
For a shiny diamond or a lump of gold, we didn’t mind turning a huge mountain upside down. For our endless need of water, we used up most fresh clean water on the earth. For our endless desire for new things and comfort, we create new things everyday. We created so many things that our bodies had a hard time to recognize and adapt. We trashed so much that we ran out of dumping ground.
We change our surroundings so much that our bodies and minds can not keep up. We used to have more visible dirt but that was part of the natural process, such as soil from rocks, plants, and animal origins. Our body was made to process most of it. Now we create so much human-made material from industrial to household goods and altered the world we live in. Our body genes simply go crazy try to adapt, which may be the reason we have more cancer and other physiological imbalances. Our poor body simply tries to adapt to every change in the world.
People build large homes with constant temperature and humidity regulation. We drive in air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned shopping malls and so on. Wherever we go or stay, we spray, clean and clean, to make sure there are no germs, bugs, and so on. We do not realize that we are actually taking ourselves out of the natural world originally created for us. We create a whole New World just for our own needs and for what we think we need. We worked very hard to create a differing, distant route from the rest of the living things. We have already changed much of the gene pool leading us into the deep unknown and there seems to be no return. I just hope that we are prudent and wise in our creations even though so far it seems that everything we have created cannot pass the test of time; it keeps going astray or coming back to haunt us later.
Other life forms are destroyed to satisfy our comfort. By building large houses, shopping malls, and indoor stadiums, etc., natural ecosystems have vanished and have been replaced by big concrete structures nearly entirely sealing the outside away by power, light, temperature, humidity, artificial fibers, and chemicals. We gradually set up our own standard of acceptance and rejection. We can’t even stand our own body odors, although it is crucial for animals. We have to be covered with all kinds of deodorizers and perfume. That is maybe one reason why humans have become so confused about their sex. Even babies have a whole line of products to eliminate their odors. In a word, we are not happy with who we are and we want to change ourselves from head to toe. We do not care about the cost, as long as we get whatever we want. Humans wanted to be “god.”
We should recall our great-great grandparents sweating more for a lot of things. They were more in control of their own bodies and minds. They got paid for their work, their sweat. Now, it costs us to work out and sweat whether you go to a health club or buy a treadmill or drive somewhere for a walk or run. We have machinery for all kinds of labor. We have computers to do all kinds of thinking for us especially after introducing “artificial intelligence.” Computers could do the job faster and better for us, jobs that would be impossible for us to do. We only needed to sit on the top, figuring out how to control them. So, we have a group of people working day and night to improve this machine to replace themselves. The groups of people already replaced by a machine sit around depressed, or desperately trying to find some way to feel worth living. It has become a vicious cycle that no one could control.
To solve the problems that we created, there are more antidepressant drugs. A whole institution of scientists either re-educate children or re-educate the losers. Every now and then, some madness came out of nowhere and the madmen basically wanted to destroy the whole world. Revenge has become a classic term because now we have random terrorist acts around and people die for random reasons.
The most dangerous things are global pursuits of the same thing. Freedom is not free; someone has to pay. We are part of nature, not above it and we are connected with everything around us. Everything we do will affect others (not just another human but everything around us). Everything would still evolve forward or backward, up or down with or without us. Knowing our limits, we could coexist with nature better.
There was one more class that I took in which I had a serious disagreement with a professor, “Concepts of forest decline.” He was a pathologist. I disagreed with his putting too much emphasis on pathology as if the germ was the root of everything. It seemed that every forest decline could be rooted to disease. He was different from the chairman though and invited me to talk about my opinions with him in his office. We had long discussions and even argued. I put more emphasis on the forest development ‘time factor.’ For example, if there was an old growth forest, the trees were old; of course, it looked like it was declining. Diseases and pests took advantage of the situation and sped up the decline. But this process helped restore the nutrients and energy for the next generations of forests. I told him about observations that I had made when I researched forests in China. We were worried about the bamboo dying because it was flowering in region after region, and the Giant Panda died from lack of food. The whole world was watching. We even tried artificial regeneration by digging out those dead bamboo roots and planting new ones. It was not successful to stop massive death. After about a ten-year break, the new generation of bamboo was shooting up again. Even without our interference, the forest will grow in its own time. With our positive or negative help, it only slowed down or sped up the process. The forest population develops like a spiral spring. It is three-dimensional. From the top, it looks like it is running a circle. Only from the side you could see it was up or down or stayed still. He praised me for our very interesting discussion and gave me an “A” on my term paper after our discussion and my revisions. I liked him because our discussions were what graduate studies were all about.
Famous food chain and pyramid theories were summarized by a famous ecologist named Lindemann in the early 1900’s. He studied organisms in a small pond in Minnesota for a few years while collecting lots of data. He tried to make sense of his massive data and was very frustrated. He had a Chinese roommate who had a little book of ancient Chinese proverbs. One day he was bored. He happened to pick it up and read. A “light bulb” went off in his head, “yes, my data was just like that, like, the ‘big fish eat little fish; little fish eat shrimp; and little shrimp eat mud.’” There was a food chain in the pond. Later he found that the food chains overlapped forming a food web. My Chinese ecology book said that Lindemann acknowledged his Chinese roommate in his original thesis but I did not have anyway to check it, so I could not put this in my paper. Also an ancient Chinese proverbs book stated, “A bird was chasing a cricket, but the bird did not know someone else was behind it.” “There was only one tiger that could dominate a mountain” implying the food pyramid. You could have a mountain full of grass, sheep, and other herbivores, but the tiger was at the top as the carnivore. Also, I explained how Chinese farmers used the natural ecosystem to help their farming. For example, raising fish in the rice paddy, fermenting farm waste to produce natural gas for cooking, then reusing the waste as fertilizer in the field to help new crops, adding to the diversity of species to decrease pests and diseases, and mixing plantings to benefit each other.
I asked my major professor Dan to read my paper first to check my English. He was shocked to find out how much was new to him in my paper. He praised my paper as a very interesting paper and was sure that I would get an “A.” But, different people can have different opinions. Our chairman almost failed me saying what I wrote had nothing to do with ecology in China. I should have instead written about what happened after the 1970’s when the Chinese Ecological Society was founded. My emphasis had been on the time before ecology as a science in China. I defended that we talk about history, not the present just like he had talked about how the science of ecology was formed in Europe and America, not just after the European and American Ecological Societies formed. He did not care; he could talk about prehistory of ecology anywhere. I had to write about China his way. He asked me to rewrite my paper and to delete most of it which made me feel very uneasy. I revised it as much as I could. He gave me a “C+.” That was the lowest grade that I had ever received during my entire studies.
I strongly disagreed with my chairman’s point-of-view of the “history of ecology in China” which was not consistent with its definition. The definition of ecology is the study of the relationships between organisms and their environment and surroundings. Although the Chinese did not have the words “ecology” or the “Ecological Society of China” until the early 1980’s, it didn’t mean that the Chinese over the last 5000 years did not study or apply their ecological knowledge. They knew of the relationships between living things and their environment—how to live more harmoniously with the maximum diversity of living organisms. We now call this an “ecosystem.” Although, it has been a challenge to balance our ecosystems as long as our existing, Nature tried its best to balance itself and we humans tried to learn our lessons. There are thousands of examples in the ancient Chinese literature. Sometimes I think the ancient people knew more about ecology than modern people. They knew how to keep our natural world in balance and treated the ecosystem as a whole because they respected nature.
Modern people think “science” gave us a “license to kill” since we do not like the world as it is. We lost the basic value of life. We want more and our desires are endless. When the pursuit started for the maximum of everything we wanted, we put ourselves at the center of the universe. We eliminated all those other life forms, germs, fungi, and bugs that make us uncomfortable or sick. The only thing is that we speed up their adaptations and mutations, and they come back hundreds and thousands generations later to fight our same generation. The longer we live, the less we adapt to change.
Since the Industrial Revolution and capitalism took over the world, greed and mass production became a way of life. We forgot that we are part of nature, not above nature. We change how the crops grow and how the farm animals are raised for maximum profit, forgetting we are what we eat. We eat fat and weak chicken fast grown in just a few months, and we become fat and weak. Life needs care, love, and freedom. Almost everything we eat has a life of its own; animals usually kill only when they are hungry and they have to work hard to get it.
Food is the most important factor for all survival after fresh air and water. Throughout Chinese history, 80% of the people were small family farmers and farming was the most important occupation. China had a very strong tradition to put agriculture first. Now, China is following Europe and America with only about 3% of the population as farmers. Farming has been industrialized like a “biological assembly line,” without ethics or morals. Commercial fertilizers and pesticides are problematic. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) threaten the integrity of the natural ecosystem. Americans once believed that we had the best, safest, most secure food supply in the world. Industry’s preoccupation with making foods that “taste good” with fats and sugar, and that “look good” by being artificially shaped, colored, or ripened, fails to meet good nutrition and health. Widespread use of agrichemicals, hormones, antibiotics, and artificial food additives are problems for food safety. We bred crops in which no pest was interested or lethal to pests as if we are different than pests. You cheat the food and the food cheats you in return. More and more people became weak and fat; more and more people became allergic to food.
For a shiny diamond or a lump of gold, we didn’t mind turning a huge mountain upside down. For our endless need of water, we used up most fresh clean water on the earth. For our endless desire for new things and comfort, we create new things everyday. We created so many things that our bodies had a hard time to recognize and adapt. We trashed so much that we ran out of dumping ground.
We change our surroundings so much that our bodies and minds can not keep up. We used to have more visible dirt but that was part of the natural process, such as soil from rocks, plants, and animal origins. Our body was made to process most of it. Now we create so much human-made material from industrial to household goods and altered the world we live in. Our body genes simply go crazy try to adapt, which may be the reason we have more cancer and other physiological imbalances. Our poor body simply tries to adapt to every change in the world.
People build large homes with constant temperature and humidity regulation. We drive in air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned shopping malls and so on. Wherever we go or stay, we spray, clean and clean, to make sure there are no germs, bugs, and so on. We do not realize that we are actually taking ourselves out of the natural world originally created for us. We create a whole New World just for our own needs and for what we think we need. We worked very hard to create a differing, distant route from the rest of the living things. We have already changed much of the gene pool leading us into the deep unknown and there seems to be no return. I just hope that we are prudent and wise in our creations even though so far it seems that everything we have created cannot pass the test of time; it keeps going astray or coming back to haunt us later.
Other life forms are destroyed to satisfy our comfort. By building large houses, shopping malls, and indoor stadiums, etc., natural ecosystems have vanished and have been replaced by big concrete structures nearly entirely sealing the outside away by power, light, temperature, humidity, artificial fibers, and chemicals. We gradually set up our own standard of acceptance and rejection. We can’t even stand our own body odors, although it is crucial for animals. We have to be covered with all kinds of deodorizers and perfume. That is maybe one reason why humans have become so confused about their sex. Even babies have a whole line of products to eliminate their odors. In a word, we are not happy with who we are and we want to change ourselves from head to toe. We do not care about the cost, as long as we get whatever we want. Humans wanted to be “god.”
We should recall our great-great grandparents sweating more for a lot of things. They were more in control of their own bodies and minds. They got paid for their work, their sweat. Now, it costs us to work out and sweat whether you go to a health club or buy a treadmill or drive somewhere for a walk or run. We have machinery for all kinds of labor. We have computers to do all kinds of thinking for us especially after introducing “artificial intelligence.” Computers could do the job faster and better for us, jobs that would be impossible for us to do. We only needed to sit on the top, figuring out how to control them. So, we have a group of people working day and night to improve this machine to replace themselves. The groups of people already replaced by a machine sit around depressed, or desperately trying to find some way to feel worth living. It has become a vicious cycle that no one could control.
To solve the problems that we created, there are more antidepressant drugs. A whole institution of scientists either re-educate children or re-educate the losers. Every now and then, some madness came out of nowhere and the madmen basically wanted to destroy the whole world. Revenge has become a classic term because now we have random terrorist acts around and people die for random reasons.
The most dangerous things are global pursuits of the same thing. Freedom is not free; someone has to pay. We are part of nature, not above it and we are connected with everything around us. Everything we do will affect others (not just another human but everything around us). Everything would still evolve forward or backward, up or down with or without us. Knowing our limits, we could coexist with nature better.
There was one more class that I took in which I had a serious disagreement with a professor, “Concepts of forest decline.” He was a pathologist. I disagreed with his putting too much emphasis on pathology as if the germ was the root of everything. It seemed that every forest decline could be rooted to disease. He was different from the chairman though and invited me to talk about my opinions with him in his office. We had long discussions and even argued. I put more emphasis on the forest development ‘time factor.’ For example, if there was an old growth forest, the trees were old; of course, it looked like it was declining. Diseases and pests took advantage of the situation and sped up the decline. But this process helped restore the nutrients and energy for the next generations of forests. I told him about observations that I had made when I researched forests in China. We were worried about the bamboo dying because it was flowering in region after region, and the Giant Panda died from lack of food. The whole world was watching. We even tried artificial regeneration by digging out those dead bamboo roots and planting new ones. It was not successful to stop massive death. After about a ten-year break, the new generation of bamboo was shooting up again. Even without our interference, the forest will grow in its own time. With our positive or negative help, it only slowed down or sped up the process. The forest population develops like a spiral spring. It is three-dimensional. From the top, it looks like it is running a circle. Only from the side you could see it was up or down or stayed still. He praised me for our very interesting discussion and gave me an “A” on my term paper after our discussion and my revisions. I liked him because our discussions were what graduate studies were all about.
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