Drowning in cassettes...
Feb. 26th, 2012 10:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpDuring the summer between high school and freshman year at the university, I recall waging a successful campaign to have a battery-operated cassette recorder included among the items for which my parents were prepared to shell out cash to further my education.
The argument supporting the purchase basically was this: with my recorder, I could tape lectures and then review them after returning to my room to study. This noble experiment lasted less than a month, as I ran up against the practical reality of taping lectures.
First was the cost associated with keeping a plentiful supply of batteries, or trying to position myself near an outlet in the cavernous freshman lecture halls so I could use the power supply.
Second was the rather poor quality of the sound captured while sitting in said halls.
Third was the need to stay particularly alert during lectures, so as to be able to lean over and note the reading of the tape counter (assuming I had been blessed with the foresight to set it to 000 before starting to record) any time something was said that was (or might be) worth reviewing later.
Fourth was the perceived need (or lack thereof) to actually review said lectures. Indiscriminately capturing 15 or so hours of taped lectures per week meant—if I were to diligently review what had been said—spending another 15 hours per week listening to recordings of generally poor sound quality. Chasing after important bits entailed about as much effort trying to find the corresponding important places on my tapes.
In my case with my freshman recorder, I was fairly lucky: it turned out that not much was said that I did not understand (except, perhaps, in freshman chemistry, but I don't believe anything would have saved me, there), so by the end of that first semester, I stopped recording my lectures completely.
The idea of taping proceedings for subsequent review persists, of course, and more successfully. Back around 2000, when I still worked at NASA's Johnson Space Center, I recall how Japanese delegations would unfailingly have one or two recorders going during meetings. It soon became clear—based on the nature of comments made and questions asked by delegation members on the following day—that significant effort had been spent listening to (and understanding) what was on those tapes between the time the meeting ended the day before and the time the meeting reconvened the following morning.
As it happens, the lure of the cassette recorder captured my mother's imagination, and over the years, she accumulated a small mountain of cassettes that captured all sorts of items: foreign language drills, her favorite radio programs, and even the occasional conversation with me (as I found out today, when I stumbled on a tape apparently made while we were driving along in a car, prior to one of my early trips to the Soviet Union).
I also found a tape I thought I had lost forever, of an interview I recorded in 1994, in Ligonier, Indiana (my father's home town), with a woman in her nineties who, back in the day, worked in my grandfather's house and knew my father, who was an adolescent half a dozen years or so her junior. That tape came about as a result of my attending the Sunday service at the Ligonier United Methodist Church, during which (as is the custom) visitors are asked to introduce themselves.
When my turn came, I did so and also announced my purpose in visiting the town, which was to learn what I could of my paternal ancestors. In addition to the one gentleman who took me home to meet and interview his grandmother, there was an older fellow there who buttonholed me and related a tale from his childhood.
One day in late autumn, while hunting squirrels on his way home from school, he was stopped by my grandfather, who was the town's doctor, and was instructed to shoot an additional three squirrels per week and deliver them to a certain family in town. As it happened, my grandfather was treating a sickly boy in that family, and he felt the extra meat would aid in the boy's recovery.
"What about the sheriff?" asked the boy. Apparently, while it was pretty commonplace for boys to show up at school with their rifles, which were collected by the teachers and then returned at the end of the school day, bagging more game than was allowed for by local regulations was a good way to get into trouble with the law.
"You leave the sheriff to me," said my grandfather, and apparently dropped a word or two where it mattered. Extra squirrels were shot and duly delivered, and the sick boy eventually got stronger.
So many cassettes!
Cheers...
The argument supporting the purchase basically was this: with my recorder, I could tape lectures and then review them after returning to my room to study. This noble experiment lasted less than a month, as I ran up against the practical reality of taping lectures.
First was the cost associated with keeping a plentiful supply of batteries, or trying to position myself near an outlet in the cavernous freshman lecture halls so I could use the power supply.
Second was the rather poor quality of the sound captured while sitting in said halls.
Third was the need to stay particularly alert during lectures, so as to be able to lean over and note the reading of the tape counter (assuming I had been blessed with the foresight to set it to 000 before starting to record) any time something was said that was (or might be) worth reviewing later.
Fourth was the perceived need (or lack thereof) to actually review said lectures. Indiscriminately capturing 15 or so hours of taped lectures per week meant—if I were to diligently review what had been said—spending another 15 hours per week listening to recordings of generally poor sound quality. Chasing after important bits entailed about as much effort trying to find the corresponding important places on my tapes.
In my case with my freshman recorder, I was fairly lucky: it turned out that not much was said that I did not understand (except, perhaps, in freshman chemistry, but I don't believe anything would have saved me, there), so by the end of that first semester, I stopped recording my lectures completely.
The idea of taping proceedings for subsequent review persists, of course, and more successfully. Back around 2000, when I still worked at NASA's Johnson Space Center, I recall how Japanese delegations would unfailingly have one or two recorders going during meetings. It soon became clear—based on the nature of comments made and questions asked by delegation members on the following day—that significant effort had been spent listening to (and understanding) what was on those tapes between the time the meeting ended the day before and the time the meeting reconvened the following morning.
As it happens, the lure of the cassette recorder captured my mother's imagination, and over the years, she accumulated a small mountain of cassettes that captured all sorts of items: foreign language drills, her favorite radio programs, and even the occasional conversation with me (as I found out today, when I stumbled on a tape apparently made while we were driving along in a car, prior to one of my early trips to the Soviet Union).
I also found a tape I thought I had lost forever, of an interview I recorded in 1994, in Ligonier, Indiana (my father's home town), with a woman in her nineties who, back in the day, worked in my grandfather's house and knew my father, who was an adolescent half a dozen years or so her junior. That tape came about as a result of my attending the Sunday service at the Ligonier United Methodist Church, during which (as is the custom) visitors are asked to introduce themselves.
When my turn came, I did so and also announced my purpose in visiting the town, which was to learn what I could of my paternal ancestors. In addition to the one gentleman who took me home to meet and interview his grandmother, there was an older fellow there who buttonholed me and related a tale from his childhood.
One day in late autumn, while hunting squirrels on his way home from school, he was stopped by my grandfather, who was the town's doctor, and was instructed to shoot an additional three squirrels per week and deliver them to a certain family in town. As it happened, my grandfather was treating a sickly boy in that family, and he felt the extra meat would aid in the boy's recovery.
"What about the sheriff?" asked the boy. Apparently, while it was pretty commonplace for boys to show up at school with their rifles, which were collected by the teachers and then returned at the end of the school day, bagging more game than was allowed for by local regulations was a good way to get into trouble with the law.
"You leave the sheriff to me," said my grandfather, and apparently dropped a word or two where it mattered. Extra squirrels were shot and duly delivered, and the sick boy eventually got stronger.
So many cassettes!
Cheers...
