Field of Study

Have I mentioned that I can’t ride my bike? In fact any exercise more strenuous that walking Luke the Dog is verboten.

After Monday’s flap fail, I’m not taking any chances with the reattachment. I don’t have to bandage it if I’m inside the house, so I stay inside the house. I don’t think the bandage was the reason the flap detached, but I’m not going to take the chance.

So I’m going a little crazy. But not as crazy as professors at USC.

The University of Southern California’s School of Social Work will no longer use the word “field” because it “may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign,” according to a letter from the department.

My father and his father spent their entire working lives doing ‘field work’ in their fields. And I don’t mean sociology, economics, engineering or mathematics. I mean fields with dirt that grow food. I don’t think they consider the success they had at making a living that way demeaning.

And guess what? After getting a BS in mathematics, working for an ag consulting firm in DC, and a year of grad school I did the same thing! I spent 25 years doing those proverbial ‘jobs Americans won’t do”!

My math degree taught me that there were three elements to algebra. Abstract algebra that is, not the kind taught in high school. They are Group Theory, Field Theory, and Ring Theory. Apparently only one of these is racist. Memo to USC Math Department from the Department of Social Work: change the terminology. WOKE UP!

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