I’ve been feeling very conflicted lately about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding.

Of course, it’s good news. Weddings are happy occasions—even though, in my opinion, they should all be held at city hall or in Las Vegas and cost no more than $500 including the rings—and Chelsea is a former first daughter, so a bit of public spectacle is expected.

On the other hand, the media coverage is making me a little upset. I have seen no fewer than 4 news stories this week about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She is in the middle of a four-country tour, visiting Afghanistan, Pakistan, Korea, and Vietnam. Yet, every interview I have seen—from the Associated Press to the Washington Post to the evening news—offers obligatory information about her trip, but ultimately focuses on a single perspective: that of Mother of the Bride.

Sure, Pakistan is interesting and all, the articles say, but what are you wearing to the wedding? Who’s invited? How many bridesmaids?

She is the Secretary of State!, I yell at my screen.

It’s possible that a man in her position would be asked these questions, but I doubt it. We can’t truly know for sure, however, since no one else is in her position: Hillary has a unique resume and place in the world. Nevertheless, I don’t remember Brian Williams asking George W. Bush questions about daughter Jenna’s wedding in 2008.  I also haven’t seen interviews like these with Bill Clinton, who is at least as media-accessible as his wife.

For all I know, Hillary loves talking about her daughter’s wedding. And there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of fluff alongside the “real” news, especially when it humanizes a public figure. So I’m conflicted. Maybe this coverage shouldn’t bother me at all. But it does. Does it bother you?

Christopher Edley, dean of the University of California at Berkeley, has proposed a fully-online undergraduate degree program. The idea has been met with some skepticism within and outside of Berkeley. Personally, I think it’s a fantastic idea for schools to improve educational opportunities to students in all kinds of circumstances who, for all kinds of reasons, can’t complete a traditional on-campus program.

As someone who struggled to go to college as a working adult, I would have loved to have had an online option. Sometimes I worked nights and dragged myself, half-asleep and desperately clutching the biggest cup of coffee I could get my hands on, from the graveyard shift to the morning class. Sometimes I worked days and dashed from work to school to work to school to work. Once, I nearly failed an oral exam because the professor ran out of time to question everyone and I couldn’t stay after class or come early for the next one.

My college experience was not unique, of course. There are many more like me. And we’re the lucky ones—we may miss out on dorm life and study groups, but we still get to learn. Those in less-fortunate circumstances are precluded from attending college altogether. At least I was able to find a job with hours that allowed me to go to class. At least I had a loving and supportive husband who didn’t mind my absenteeism and frequent crankiness. At least I lived and worked in close proximity to my school. At least I had no children to support, aging parents to look after, or disabilities to overcome. Online degrees create opportunities for students who aren’t as lucky as I was. My own alma mater—small, urban, and under-resourced—probably won’t be able to offer an online degree. But a school like Berkeley, with its size and resources, can make a real difference in a lot of lives.

Some argue that the online version of an undergraduate degree is watered down; you miss out on the social experiences and lively after-class discussions that make college the horizon-broadening adventure it’s meant to be. In some cases that may be true, but some of us miss that stuff anyway and still get a great education. Not only that, but it’s hard to imagine that any degree offered by Berkeley could be subpar. I hope they follow through with this idea and open the doors of education to many more students.

What do you think of fully-online degree programs?

I don’t know if it can get much more embarrassing than crying at work.

Oh no, wait—yes it can. Crying at a workplace where you’re the only woman for miles around is worse. And doing it in front of your boss. And having to talk about it for the next week. Well, that’s my crying story. Hey, everyone’s got one, right? Right??

In my case, it came at the end of a stressful and frantic week when it seemed like I couldn’t do anything right. A piece of my code had a bug. Stupid, annoying bug. Software had to be rolled back, customers reassured. It was a whole big thing.

After I fixed up the code, I went through a few rounds of “you suck” meetings. What was wrong with me? How could I have been so careless? I had to explain to group of managers exactly what the problem was and why I didn’t catch it before. I was up every night that week—working, worrying, and wondering whether I even belong in this profession.

At the end of all this, a senior manager asked me to send an e-mail to the entire company explaining the bug. Ughhhh, really? Do I have to? Yes, really. I really had to.

So I composed a mea culpa, previewed it to another manager, swallowed my pride, and hit “send.” Not five minutes later, another senior manager (my boss’s boss) pulled me aside to tell me how inappropriate the e-mail was—not the intent of it, but the tone. He was upset with the way it was worded. Apparently, I had humiliated myself incorrectly.

Well, that was too much for me. The tears came, and I couldn’t choke them back. That I managed not to out-and-out sob was the only victory of the day. I hoped that Boss would discreetly back off and leave me to my embarrassment, but he had me cornered in my office and just kept… on… talking. Luckily, it was late in the day and no one else was really around. After apologizing as coherently as I could, I headed right for home.

The next week, I had several conversations with all kinds of managers who kept asking to talk to me about the encounter. Some were of the “are you okay?” variety, and some were still on the “you suck” thread of the week before. I endured similar conversations with my fellow engineers as well. Apparently, word had gotten around.

The bug itself I have long since gotten over. Bugs happen. But the crying at work? My brain still hangs on to that one, hauling the memory out every now and then so I can re-live it. It will fade eventually, I’m sure, and I’m really looking forward to that day.

Have you ever cried at work? How did you handle it?

When I was a teenager in small-town Vermont, my family couldn’t get cable television at home. The technology was around, of course, it just wasn’t profitable for Adelphia to lay so much cable through all that nature for so few customers. Devastating for me at the time, but not, all in all, a big deal. Nowadays, however, there are similar rural communities all over the country that cannot get high-speed Internet connections for the same reasons—and that is a very big deal.

Because we use it as much for entertainment as for vital communication (I do, anyway), it is easy to see Internet access—especially broadband—as a luxury and not a necessity. Perhaps that used to be the case, but times have changed. Broadband is needed in all kinds of ways, just as electricity was needed when the Rural Electrification Act was passed in 1936:

• Kids need it. Much as I love Facebook and Hulu, the Internet is about far more than that, even for teenagers. Young people need broadband to study, communicate, and keep up with their connected peers. The later in life you begin to cross the digital divide, the longer the journey is.
• Farmers need it. On a farm, broadband is today what electricity was in 1936. Back then, farmers needed electricity to run new equipment such as threshers and milking machines. Now, they need the Internet to communicate with suppliers and customers, get weather updates and commodities information.
• Everyone else needs it. The way I see it, I wouldn’t have a job without my high-speed connection—I wouldn’t be able to find one! I need broadband to look for work, to keep in touch with networking contacts, and to research companies. My counterpart in a rural community, with dial-up or nothing, is at a definite disadvantage.

For all these reasons, I was glad to see this week that President Obama’s administration announced nearly $795 million in grants and loans for increasing broadband access all over the country, particularly for rural communities.

Obama has made a great start, but this funding comes from the stimulus bill—a one-time infusion of cash. Truly increasing broadband access will require a sustained effort, much like the Rural Electrification Act did. After all, it took us nearly 50 years to provide electricity and telephone service to most farms.

The focus on rural communities also narrows the scope. Broadband needs to be affordable as well as accessible. With an average monthly charge of $39, it’s not always enough to simply have the option there. A sustained effort could expand the scope to help out those families for whom broadband is too costly.

What do you think of expanding broadband access? Do you have a high-speed connection at home? Could you live without it (I couldn’t!)?