I’m a pretty good girl. Good as in ~ bad. But when is it good to BE bad? Should we perhaps ask Rihanna?

The problem with ideas, apart from (*actually a_part from…) how humans want to own them is how personal they are. They belong to us –> they are us –> they reflect and speak to who we are and how we think and what we value. I know what you’re thinking: shit.

WAIT! Why is this problematic?

Because ideas are about two things: a) having (them) and b) doing them. Some (most?) people get stuck on Part A. They “have” an idea but they silently nurture and cradle it, looking to refine it over time before enthusiastically divulging. They may not have the b*lls (or stamina) to vocalize that idea and run with it. Here’s the thing – running with an idea isn’t about running at all – it’s all about dodging.

Why? Because there is a bravery and shamelessness that comes with/from trumpeting bad ideas. Courage is what motivates bad idea-sharing. You might get hit with some tomatoes. That’s why I like people with bad ideas. They’re creative and fearless (at least, less self-conscious than the bulk of the population). And they need to dodge the arm-chair haters who patiently stew to shut down the ingenuity of others.

You’ve got to be bad (to the bone!) if you wanna get GOOD.

[What's your bad idea? Share below].

No matter where you are or what you’re doing, you are also always on (in?) a boat.

It’s true! How do I know this? From warnings and admonitions not to rock the boat. Nobody WANTS to do that, right? Wrong.

Look, I’m not without relevant boat questions: How big is the boat? Who else is on the boat? Is this boat outfitted with sufficient life-saving devices? Where is the boat going? How did we get on it? And – importantly – is there a water slide? The thing is, boats were (are) MADE to rock. They can (party) rock. So I’m not sure why we’re so obsessed with keeping the boat still.

Rock that boat. (Just don’t tip it).

Starting today and until March 31st (2013), I’m going to be a Fellow with Action Canada. It’s a leadership development and public policy program that builds capacity for Canada’s future. What else? It’s the only Canadian fellowship that offers both senior leadership development and cross-country conferences to enhance an understanding of Canada and public policy choices for our future. Fellows are chosen from all sectors, including business, science, government, academia (me?) and the professions. It’s a policy nerd‘s dream come true and an amazing way to serve our country.

Part of the application process involved the composition of a theme statement in response to the question: Does Canada have the education systems it needs to meet the economic and societal challenges of the future? Back in February, I chose to write about our bad (educational) attitudes and muse on the ramifications it has on our labour force. I’m posting it because it is a) a labour of intellectual love and b) EXACTLY 500 words (count ‘em!). *I also want to remind people that I can write in proper paragraphs and make points without music videos. In case you were wondering…

E.N.J.O.Y.

Our constant challenge as a nation is, and will continue to be, the maintenance and acceleration of our global economic competitiveness. Thrust in the new knowledge economy, we will be competing on creativity. This directive is the least prescriptive recipe of national ambition that Canadians have faced. I believe that Canada has the high-quality education systems that it needs to meet the socioeconomic challenges of the future, but that it lacks the educational attitudes that are inherent to perpetuating and catalyzing the elusive – and yet central – goal of innovation.

This stance is informed by three facets: my past position as a Research Associate at the Martin Prosperity Institute, the world’s leading think-tank on the role of sub-national factors in global economic prosperity; my experience as a Research Assistant to the book Academic Transformation: the Forces Reshaping Higher Education in Ontario, and my undergraduate degree in McMaster University’s interdisciplinary Arts & Science Program, designed to provide students with a broad-based, liberal education in a small cohort-based setting.

In order to fully realize the climate necessary for increased ingenuity, the associated policy action is to amend inherited ideas about what learning is, can, and should be. This will require a comprehensive re-evaluation of the design and implementation of curriculums at the elementary level all the way to the delivery of post-secondary education. Fruitful innovation is a product of creativity, risk, and (numerous) failures. Our schools need to build environments that foster each of these.

What do I mean when I suggest that educational attitudes have to change? Currently, our education system discourages risk and punishes failure. During one’s undergraduate degree, for instance, there is little incentive to enroll in a course that will be intellectually intensive and time-consuming. Indeed, there is far greater incentive to enroll in a course that affirms prior learning or has a reputation of being “easy.” Rather than placing primacy on the “achievement” of a grade of A, we should be encouraging risk and celebrating failure – reframing error as a learning opportunity and cultivating collaborative inquiry and problem-based learning. While this posture may seem wholly attitudinal, I believe that it is fundamentally a policy issue because the framing and rewarding of “learning” inhibits the development of innovative minds that our educational systems are designed to promote. Crucially, we fail to leave room for experimentation and limit exploration.

Much has been written on the perverse incentives for faculty members and the unsustainability of the provincial funding structure of universities. Yet in interrogating the contemporary quality of education, we have over-focused on class sizes and lost sight of the centrality of the classroom activity. At some point, we will need to transition away from traditional rote learning and towards a more integrative synthesis of foundational learning.

How do we train students – citizens – to move away from answering questions and towards asking them? Though we cannot prescriptively “teach” innovation, we can take measures to promote and support its achievement by initiating an ideologically rooted transformation of our education systems.

Seriously, though – do you really get smarter over time? Does age promise capability and enhancement? And will I REALLY be more capable at 40 or 50 than I am at 26, or will I just be better able to trick people into thinking that?

It seems as if “age” is synonymous with influence – a sort of pre-Twitter “Klout” score. As a result, I sometimes tell people I’m 30. I figure that if they’re ballsy enough to ask my age in public (really? *And, do people do that to men?) then I can be ballsy enough to lie. And yes, I am the only woman on Earth who fakes her age to be older.

I think of my young, eager, and devastatingly competent friends patiently aging to take their places at helms in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. We smoke the future out. And it makes me think of Baby Muppets. I mean, they’re still Muppets.

Just smaller.

It may be spring for you, but I work for a University. May-August is summer.

As a result, I’ve been thinking (dreaming?) about summer. It’s something sweet that we long for, but something that (I think) also represents freedom, hedonism (!), and release. But is it all symbolic? Because as ambitious as summer IS (“I can’t wait for summer!”) it’s also marked by the languid and carefree (“I miss summer!”) – you know: lounging, reading, relaxing, BBQ-ing, beer-ing. So what is summer? These ambitions (accomplishment and relaxation) seem incompatible to me.

I guess that I’m saying it’s mostly symbolic. We protect and covet it, but is it everything it’s cracked up to be (suntans and swimming pools aside)?

CC: Adam Gopnik’s 2011 CBC Massey Lecture Winter.

I am enjoying a strange and ongoing feud in a volunteer initiative that I’m a part of.  It’s hilarious, confusing, and ultimately: riveting. Anyways, I have a front row seat but can’t really figure it out. I feel like a detective! I thought our work was about the intrinsic rewards of building and maintaining a productive and vibrant community. But I could be wrong. It could be about titles, governance, and “accountability.” Which is to say, these things totally motivate (and blind) some people.

“Give me a title and I’ll give you leadership!” they seem to claim with every careful, passive and aggressive move.

Yeah. Show me some leadership (*which is not the synonymous with “superiority”), and earn a title. Until then and in the meantime, I’m going to stay focussed on actually accomplishing things (and keep the aggressive in passive-aggressive alive). Is there a formal title for that? I think I’m deserving.

If only they’d follow my lead.

The problem with work plans is that they don’t work by themselves. People know this, right? Sometimes I’m not so sure.

I can’t help but find them farcical. Let’s make a plan to work? I’ve been planning to work the whole time – it’s my j-o-b. The worst part about them is how they, by virtue of their completeness (let me guess: this is for “buy in”) create the illusion that something has been accomplished - this false sense of promise that things will get done.

GO GO GADGET WORK PLAN!

In this way, work plans are rather dangerous things. The ironic aspect is that they take and make work, and that you have to plan to do them. Wouldn’t a simple checklist suffice?

It’s not the plan that works…it’s you.

Last night I hit up the Public Policy Forum‘s 25th Anniversary dinner. They were honoring Canada’s Prime Ministers, the “Right Hons:” Paul Martin, Jean Chretien, Kim Campbell, Brian Mulroney, John Turner, and Joe Clark. It was phenomenal, the speeches were entertaining (didn’t see that coming) and thoughtful (*at times, puzzling), and they stayed on schedule. In other words: I liked it.

Except for one thing: Chretien had pulled out. He bailed. Rumour has it he simply can’t stand rocking out in the same room as Martin (*as if he does that often). Check out what Jeffrey Simpson said about this in the Globe:  Along with high office, Canada’s prime ministers share a mutual disdain.

This disdain was partially on display last night. In their remarks, a few (not all) even dissed each other. I thought only rappers did that. But these people were leaders of our country. Their decorum and elegance shouldn’t abandon once they’re out of office. Perhaps it’s a sort of curse to be a “former” anything, but civility and class is always en vogue. The decorum of our Prime Ministers? That’s something we should have complete confidence in.

N.B. Just want you to think about what the narrative would have been if Campbell has been the one to jump ship. Yeah.

When people ask me why I “like” policy, I do my best to feign a serious answer, like: I appreciate the marriage of qualitative and quantitive skills, and welcome the opportunity to use data and evidence to construct a compelling narrative.

I am not telling the truth (*don’t worry they are not police). The real reason I dig public policy as an area is because you can be young in the field for a super long time. At 26, I have at least 14 years more of comparative youth – perhaps more if I get religious with the sunscreen. This is (awesome and) unlike modelling.

Not awesome? It’s also a place where, traditionally, you are supposed to act really “old.” In fact, as old as possible. It is the opposite of modelling. This is not why I chose it.

When I encounter my policy friends their learned performances can’t help but impress.  “Oh my! How boring and predictable you’ve become!” I murmur in my head, sort of admiringly. The gory details of their professional lives are foreign to me, so I can’t help but ardently observe.

From my field notes: Traditional policy making is (still!) hyper-conventional. There is a uniform, a language, a dance. Each of these things is learned and adopted ASAP by the {Junior Policy Analyst} as a way to signal their belonging and acceptance of Policy (note the Capital). The bureaucracy is a place of adoption, not innovation. It’s where you know your place – not where you design it. It rewards tenure and not tenacity.

So, we have two problems: 1. earnest appeals to a certain way of doing things and a type of conduct that is hungrily adopted and not questioned, and 2. the false dichotomy of old/young; where youth is disdained and seniority is coveted. Professionals who are more junior in their careers should be recognized for their ability to infuse new ideas and perspectives; not encouraged to instinctively emulate the status quo.

I have 14 years (or more, maybe throw some night cream in the mix) to explore a better public service, so that I can design and run it. My fellow “young” policy professionals have 14 years to be recognized for their careful imprinting of primitive peers.

And no matter how old I get, I hope I never grow up. <– This is really like modelling.

When people ask me about myself, I find it to be an extremely difficult question that should (ironically?) be simple. I mean, I’m the expert-in-residence on…myself. There is (literally) no competition on that. Yeah, I cornered the market.

Tell me about yourself! They implore, grinning. Usually I am in a situation where not answering is not optional. I think this question is meant as some sort of ice breaker – but I freeze up. It’s meant casually, but we all know that it has sinister undertones, right? I don’t read it as an invitation, but rather a challenge. Why? Because this phrase doesn’t get at who you ARE, but rather, who you THINK you are. Those people aren’t necessarily the same.

There are a few ways you can go about responding, since, let’s face it – you’re gonna have to:

• Positional: age, work, live, things I like to do in my “spare” time = “I am a 26-year-old woman who lives in Parkdale and works at the University of Toronto who likes reading.” Seriously?
• Descriptive (*adjectives are handy here): “gregarious/curious/energetic/serious…”
• Census: what the Government knows = “I’m a fully employed single woman with a post-graduate degree who has no dependents, a clean driving record and no criminal history who typically bikes or walks to work.”
• Political: show your stripes = “I’m a tidal-wave feminist with no official Party affiliation.”
• Family: go big AND go home = “I’m a really tall Greek girl who has a twin brother and is a big sister. Apart from those siblings, I’m an only child.”
• Generic: perfect example = “I love to travel, listen to music, and hang out with my friends.” NO WAY!
  
• Preferences: something from your Facebook profile: “I like basketball, playing Scrabble, watching the Golden Girls, clock radios, and respectable bedtimes.”
• Twitter: Put that descriptor to good use and whip it out of your sleeve = “Aggressive inquisitor & playful Aquarian debater who believes in girl power. I wanna go where no (wo)man has gone before & look good doing it.”
• Lie: Assume the personality of a) one of your friends b) someone you admire or c) a fictional person you have created.

“Knowing Me” is a feat that directly benefits from cognitive dissonance  and depends on some creative re-framing.

To describe yourself with accuracy takes a) incredible self-awareness and b) bravery. I think it’s hilarious and ridiculous that we go to the primary source for information on a person. Tell you about myself? Here’s my mom’s phone number, and my last 3 bosses, the two ex-boyfriends that I’m on speaking terms with, and my report card from grade one.

Me? I’m impatient, vocal, occasionally domineering, easily annoyed, and anxious about time. But instead of telling you about myself, maybe I’ll just let you figure it out.