Category Archives: Education

If you have no voice, does democracy really matter?

Education, News, Politics, , , , , ,

One of the paradigms of democracy is the idealism that goes along with that institution, specifically that when everyone has the opportunity to vote it somehow translates to a freer society. We know this isn’t really the truth, which can be provided with evidence from Ukraine, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, and practically every other dictatorship that requires mandatory voting in which the choices are limited to either the dictator or specific party choices. Whenever we talk about those kinds of nations, we laugh at them and raise our hands in solidarity, voicing our opinion about how great our democracy is.

But is it?

I started thinking about this question the other day when one of the national politicos started talking about the inevitability of Hillary Clinton running for president. And I started thinking, why is it inevitable? And more importantly, why her? Why not the guy who lives down the street from me who waves to me every time I walk by, even though I think he’s kind of nuts? How about the cute girl that works at Starbucks? I’d vote for her. She really couldn’t do a worse job than anyone currently in government. And at least she gets most of the drink orders correct. That means she can take instructions from the guy standing at the register, create the correct drink and bring it to him without totally screwing it up. Most politicians fail at taking the order, and from there you go from ordering a carmel espresso and end up getting an F-35 that crashes because it goes so fast that its pilots pass out when flying the thing.

But back to democracy. Who decides what people are on the ballots? If you read the propaganda that gets put out, we do. But who are we? Most people don’t think about that, yet they will go and vote for one of the names of people they don’t really want. Very few, and I mean VERY few, choose someone that is not from one of the two main parties, even if they don’t who any of the people are from either one of those parties. Basically, most of our elections are decided by attack ads that cause cognitive dissonance about one candidate, or you might vote for someone because you saw more yard signs with that person’s name on it. Or you might recognize the name because the person has served in Congress for so many years that it’s impossible not to mention the name, even though you haven’t heard a single thing about what that person has ever done in the 40 years he or she has been in office. Yet, you’ll vote for him or her because, well, they’re on our team, or some bizarre reason makes you think that somehow this person who has always had the job will somehow change things for the better, even though he or she has never tried doing that in the past.

It’s enough to drive one batty.

The problem with elections is that they serve people who have strong name recognition, which in most cases means someone who already has political clout or a lot of money and economic connections. That means that most of us are unimportant and insignificant. Seriously, we’re insignificant and basically unwanted by those who are in power because talking to us is a waste of time when there are so many important people with power and money they could be talking to.

Part of the problem is that our country is so big that in order to have any influence, you already have to be part of the power structure to even be heard by anyone who might make a difference. Yet, we’re also in a country where more and more people are graduating from college and universities, which means there are more and more people who have the brains and intelligence to possibly change the world for the better but are compartmentalized by those in power instead. So, the only places they have to make a name for themselves are in business or the arts, which for the most part means an alternative route to a place that politicians ignore or condemn as unimportant again.

The real problem isn’t just that so many people have so little voice in government. Well, actually that is the problem, and as in most iterative scenarios, if you crunch those numbers, you end up with a lot of people growing more and more dissatisfied with government, which means people start protesting, and when those protesters are marginalized, like the Occupy Wall Street protests were, people start to look for other avenues to participate in political empowerment, which if you follow the logic, means that it may lead to very dangerous outcomes, because once people give up on the given institutions and look for their own places to have their voices heard, pretty much anything can happen. That’s basically the menu that led to the French Revolution and practically every other overthrow of a social institution in the 20th century. With this much anger festering, I can imagine that when things do happen, those with money and power aren’t going to be the royals trying to find a new position in the new paradigm, but possibly the victims of such anger.

We’re already starting to see this sort of thing in race relations. Sure, we like to pretend that those are just circumstances that got out of control, that everything is really fine, but in reality when you have powder kegs all across the country, and world, ready to explode at the first ignition of trouble, it shouldn’t be all that surprising when you see that sort of thing happening on a regular basis. Which then leads to people in larger cities feeling completely unsafe in their cities because whenever these things happen, the police are completely taken by surprise and overwhelmed. People power has a tendency to do that. But when people no longer trust their government to be the instrument that keeps things safe, they start looking to protect themselves, which makes the next powder keg that much more of a demonstrative explosion.

The real problem (think I’ve said that a few times now) is that people keep thinking that “it can’t happen here” which is usually the last cry you hear before something happens and then you hear “I never thought that could happen here”. Our institutions are being stretched to the limit, and while the solution would have been to stop educating people so they wouldn’t realize they were being marginalized and disenfranchised (and believe it or not, you can vote and still be disenfranchised), but we’re way beyond that, and no one these days could ever justify the idea of saving the state by not educating people, unless you’re Stalin, or a politician in Iran.

But then, no one really cares. There are too many interesting things on television to pay attention to this sort of thing.

Does pronunciation equal intelligence?

Education, , , , , , , ,

I don’t usually go to Wheel of Fortune to get inspiration, but a very unusual circumstance occurred during a recent episode where a contestant had the words “Mythological Hero Achilles” on the board and only had to read it to win. He pronounced Achilles as “A-CHILL-ees” and was pronounced by Sajak to be incorrect. Wheel of Fortune later stated that “When a contestant tries to solve a puzzle, they must pronounce it using the generally accepted pronunciation.”

Now, I won’t go into the incorrect plurality in that sentence, but let’s just take them on their word. And that brings me to my conversation today, because I’ve been through this exact same thing, and let me tell you that quite often people assume you lack intelligence just because you can’t pronounce something correctly. To explain that, I’d like to bring you back to my days as a Ph.d student at Western Michigan University where I was studying political science, and in particular political philosophy.

For those who know me, it’s generally understood that I’m very well read. While other kids were reading the equivalent of Harry Potter back in my grade school days (Harry Potter wasn’t around yet, so to be honest, I don’t even remember what the kids were reading back then), I was reading classical literature, and at some point got into a major Greek and Roman influence that drove me to read all sorts of historical tomes. When I got to graduate school, I had read a lot of the material that was being assigned, so you might think that I was pretty well prepared.

Well, that might have been the case if I had read these books because some school had required me to read them. But I read them on my own, and quite often I had to go through other critical studies to even figure out what I had just read. What I never got out of this was some type of discussion about the literature, which meant that I was picking up as much information as I could without anyone actually helping me along. I remember in high school asking a teacher about some of the material I was reading on my own, and she tried really hard to pretend she knew the material, but it was pretty obvious that she was making it up as she went along and was too proud to admit that she wasn’t a reader of Hume, Rousseau and Tacitus (which I had been reading at the time). And these weren’t even obscure authors from history.

So, when I got to graduate school, I remember being in one of those group discussions where were were talking about someone like Herodotus, and I brought it up in conversation right before the professor corrected me on my pronunciation of the name. And then when I brought up another author, I received that same correction on that name as well. A few days into this course, I started to notice a sense of sarcasm coming from some of the other graduate students who had grown up with these authors in the formal courses they had taken. They all pronounced the names correctly, and there was a sense of dismissing me whenever I brought up anything that I thought was significant.

It took nearly an entire semester for that professor to finally recognize that my bad pronunciations were not indicative of my lack of knowledge concerning these authors. When that moment happened, she and I had many conversations about political philosophy that indicated that she no longer thought of me as some grade school dunce who entered her classroom. But I will say that for years of graduate school, I never received that same respect from some of those same students who attended class with me that semester. There was always a sense that I didn’t know what I was talking about because I couldn’t pronounce a name as well as they could.

And this is one of those snapshots I took back with me when I realized that much of my education before graduate school was self-taught and self-learned. While others were attending really expensive Ivy League colleges to gain knowledge, I was spending my time in the Army, reading whatever I could find whenever I had a spare moment to myself. I sometimes wonder if my understanding of literature has a bit of a skew because of how I learned it and because of what I was exposed to while learning it.

But I do know how that contestant felt like on Wheel of Fortune. After he lost, he then gave an apologetic interview about how he knew how to pronounce the name but just flubbed it. I remember making the same kind of comment the first time I mispronounced a literary name. And then I stopped apologizing after it happened numerous times after. Because I learned something during that time that it took me a long time to realize. You see, I did a lot of mispronouncing of names back then, but one thing I did know was what those authors wrote, and what they meant. What I learned was how many graduate students bullshitted their way through conversations about those same authors, as they knew how to pronounce the names, but hadn’t a clue what those authors really meant.

And I find that very important, no matter how you say the names.

My Thesis Proposal I Never Turned In

Education, ,

My thesis was on the 1991 August Coup in the Soviet Union. Here’s the thesis proposal I wanted to go with, but am certainly glad I didn’t choose:

Abstract

Okay, there was this big revolt in the Soviet Union. You know that place that became Russia? Well, it used to be the Soviet Union. And they were kind of communist. Well, they claimed they were communist, but they were more of a socialist republic without the socialism part (well, and the republic part, too, for that matter). So, I guess they were kind of like an aristocracy, except no one had any money, so they were like a poor aristocracy, and they had no real power either, so they were probably more like a bunch of thugs who would beat you up if you didn’t give them your milk money. We all remember those guys. Those were the same guys that stuffed you in the trash cans during your freshman year in high school, and they’d laugh as you tried to pull yourself out of the can, but some kid before you had thrown his tuna fish sandwich into the trash bin because he was sick, and now you’re covered in bad tuna, and well…wait, I was talking about the Soviet Union.

 

Definitions:

“the” – This word seems to show up a lot before other words. No one in history has ever figured out what it means.

“fashizzle” – doesn’t really mean anything, but uncool, white guys often use it to pretend they’re not uncool, white guys.

Research Questions

  1. So, what’s with that?
  2. What the hell is that?
  3. Does this make me look fat?
  4. Do you think it bites?

Hypotheses

  1. If I throw a rock at that really big guy who is working out in the gym with really heavy weights, I believe that my top speed at running will increase twenty percent higher than normal by the time he catches me.
  2. Che chingu sogehagesimnida. Ore-kanman-imnida. Anyung haseyo.
  3. Life is like a river.
  4. If you add one kilajoule of potential energy to a discharged atomic isotope that currently has negative momentum caused by electromagnetic displacement, an equal force of distraction progression (caused by chaotic disbursement) will equal 1/10th of the fragmentation of disabled housing processing.

Methodology

Start with a base of flour, add in a batch of uncooked rice, approximately 13 ounces, and then stir while frying at a medium boil. After 15 minutes, add paprika and then baste in a turkey baster. Let it sit for an hour and then serve with white wine.

Discussion

So, like, this chick and I are totally digging each other, and then she suddenly reveals that she’s been seeing this other guy, so I says to her: “Yo, babe, I don’t think this is going anywhere,” and she gets all haughty on me, talking about the whole “commitment thing, and I just know she’s going to bring up that I was dating Suzie that one time we broke up for fifteen days, and then she’s gonna….

Conclusions

  1. Never poke a one eyed man with a stick. It’s just not a good idea no matter how much you think it might be.
  2. Never start with number one if you don’t have a number two to follow it up with.

The Underlying Problem of Giving Them the Pickle

Business, Education, Healthcare, , , , , , , , ,

Pickle

Just recently, I was working for a health care organization that seemed to be having some difficulty in customer service. As a result, the higher-ups thought it would be really beneficial if the education department (of which I was a part) took up the task of teaching customer service to the front line employees, specifically the people who engage patients when they come to the hospital system. So, after a few meetings that consisted of management explaining how customer service needs to improve (in which I was reminded of the infamous pro dominant adage of “We will beat our slaves until moral improves” but I digress), we were then shown a motivational film that’s been making the circuit called “Give Them the Pickle.” In case you’re not familiar with this film, it features the creator of the ice cream parlor Farrell’s as he explains how a customer got really upset in one of his establishments because he asked for an extra pickle and was then told that pickles are extra, or something like that. This started a whole series of adventures where this owner decided to change the customer service model of his franchise forever. There may have been an “and they lived happily ever after” at the end of it as well. I’ll admit, it was motivational and it was a good presentation. But it seemed to miss a few things, specifically when dealing with the company where I just worked.

First, the problem inherent in our company has a lot more to do with service than just customer service. To begin with, customer service tends to be lacking WITHIN the organization, so that quite often it can be a bit difficult to deal with other parts of the company because of the silos that have been created and maintained. When you have that sort of atmosphere going on, telling those same employees that they now need to focus on customer service when they’re having enough trouble providing company service to each other, well, there’s a dysfunction already harming the larger issue.

One day last year, I was on the bus near the main hospital when I overheard a conversation between a bunch of the passengers. One said something about our hospital, as in he’s never been there and people always told him to avoid it. And then people chimed in about how the people that worked there were rude, the services were all overpriced, and not a single one of them failed to mention our competition as the better facility to go in case you ever need health care needs fulfilled. I brought this conversation back to my organization when I first heard it, and the immediate response I received from management was a reinterpretation of the message, that they were complaining because they couldn’t afford the good health care that was provided by our establishment, not that it was overpriced; when it came to the customer service part, they just continued talking about how because they were already miffed at the prices, they would interpret anything else as negative. Basically, they had solid information from people who were complaining, and the response was that obviously they were confused about what they were complaining about, so nothing needs to be changed.

This is the organization that now needs to “improve” customer service by teaching employees how to give free pickles as ice cream parlors. Keep in mind that we don’t give out free health care, free testing supplies (or tests), cut rates on surgery, an actual better product than any other health care facility (even though the argument keeps being made that they do, based on a sample size of none, as statistics don’t really make a lot of sense when you’re comparing to yourself (one divided by one still does manage to equal one).

So, how do you improve customer service when you actually don’t pay any attention to the public to whom you are now supposed to be providing better customer service? The simple answer is you don’t. The solution isn’t really a riddle, but an acknowledgement that perhaps we need to go out into the population and talk to them, find out what they would like from a large hospital system that claims to know what they need without actually asking them, and perhaps worrying less about pickles and more about why people might be there in the first place. I was in the hospital last year with a kidney problem, and I was scared during the time I was in there. One of the worst doctors I’ve ever experienced was one who was actually from the place where I worked. She didn’t care one iota about how her patients felt, and she was kind of a moron as well (which as a communications person, I attributed to the fact that she had zero listening skills, which made her diagnosis work absurdly bad).

Which brings me back to the whole communication aspect of this whole situation, which you probably should have guessed it would come in at some point or another. If you want to figure out what’s wrong with your customer service, talk to your customers and try to find out. It’s a good thing to look at comment cards and all that, but quite often a comment card is one of those things logged AFTER a bad experience, which means you don’t really have the opportunity to fix what was wrong, and like the place where I worked, they probably never will.

Some of these things should go without being said, but unfortunately I think that’s the problem. They haven’t been said, and thus, people are now convinced they have the answers after having watched some old entrepreneur talk about giving pickles to customers when they ask for them.

The problem of being asked questions that no one wants an answer to

Business, Education, , ,

Last week, I received an email from two separate sources at the school where I teach. The first one was informing me that I would be charged for parking, and it would be coming out of my bi-weekly pay. It also stated to inform them if I was no longer working on campus, as that didn’t require a charge for parking. The same day, I received an email from another entity asking me pretty much the same thing.

So, I responded to both of them at separate times, indicating that I was teaching ON campus, BUT I didn’t utilize their parking because I worked down the street from school, which meant that I was walking there every day and haven’t used parking since I started working there years ago. In other words, each year they’ve been charging me for parking that I don’t actually use. And never will.

Their response: None. Last week, I was charged for parking.

Does anyone else find this a little annoying?

This falls into what I like to call false communication, meaning that someone addresses you with a conversation but isn’t really interested in the response. What was really going on here was that the administrators of my school were informing me that they were going to be charging me for parking, and it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that they were going to do it regardless of what I said or did.

This is one of the problems a lot of businesses have. A great example of this was the debacle that Netflix went through a few years ago when they tried to raise their prices but did it as if they were offering a “service”. The service they were offering was one that no one wanted, so when people responded that this was a bad idea, they went ahead and did it any way. So, the result was that a lot of people left Netflix and never came back. No amount of cajoling or explaining “this is what we meant to say or do” made a difference. Because they lost their customers by basically telling them one thing, being adamant about it, and then going ahead and doing regardless of the feedback from customers.

And that’s the problem right there. When you ask for feedback from customers, you acctually need to do something about responding to it. If you say, I want to hear from people about our services, don’t be surprised when they respond with negative information. If your goal is to get only good responses, you’re basically wasting the opportunity of asking for information in the first place.

I’ve worked at a few places that have this faulty philosophy where they basically only want to put forth a positive image, so they suppress anything that sounds negative. An example is a human resources department I worked for that used to constantly say “Our company is the number one company in our area and people want to work here.” They say this even though their turn-over is massive, and they basically can’t hire people to remain even in the industry in which they are a pominent player. What has happened is that they kept telling this lie to themselves to the point of where actual employees used to joke with each other by insulting the company and stating “Yeah, this is the place where employees really want to work.” When your boast becomes a sarcastic retort, you’re obviously doing something wrong.

I once worked for a company that kept being hit by national scores on bad customer service. Therefore, management decided that it would educate staff on customer service so they could raise these scores. As I listened to executives explain how they would begin training the staff in customer service, the one thought going through my mind was “you know, if the customer service of the staff teaching customer service is atrocious, how do you expect to raise those scores?” And that was a huge concern. I’d listen to one supervisor talk about how staff was going to work hard to increase those customer service scores, and I’d look around the room at people who weren’t happy to be there in the meeting in the first place. And you’d wonder, do they even realize there’s a problem much bigger than customer service ratings on forms from people outside the organization?

And that’s the other problem. As long as people are short sighted enough to not realize the problems are inherent within the system itself, they’re never going to solve the problem.

I go back to my school and think, if they only knew that their lack of communication is hurting them, they might actually do something about improving it. But even if I said something, they’d most likely see me as an outlier and continue doing what they do, because up until now, nothing has caused them to think they’re doing anything wrong. Until people are affected and their illusions of security are threatened, they have no reason to make changes.

And thus, we get charged for parking even when we don’t need…or want…it.

There’s a difference between giving information and asking for money

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Now, if SHE emailed and asked for my phone number....
Now, if SHE emailed and asked for my phone number….

I received an email from the place where I received one of my bachelor’s degrees. Apparently, according to the email, students from that school have been trying to get a hold of me to tell me about campus activities, important events and to inform me of all the great things that other alumni are doing to support the institution. Having received numerous contacts from this university over the years, what they’re really telling me is that students from this school have been trying to get in touch with me to beg me for money for the university. Simple as that.

So, this alumni organization would really appreciate it if I would update their records with my new phone number so they can get right on that “informing me of things I’m missing out on”.

Look, I don’t mind that a university needs lots of money to pay its professors and cultural studies programs to explain why fish fall in love, but I’m not a spigot of revenue that a university can rely upon to help pay its Board of Directors, or to provide fuel to their limousines they use to drive to their private hanger at the airport.

If I was extremely interested in continuing to provide kickbacks to the executives from my university, I would have contacted them personally so that they would not have had to hunt me down with some undergraduate (or graduate) on a stipend or grant-writing scholarship.

I think what bothers me the most is the dishonesty in the email, in that they’re pretending to be doing me service that somehow gets provided by me giving them my phone number. The reality of the situation is that any emails they send me completely keeps me up to date on what’s going on with the alumni of that university, meaning that a phone call from some undergraduate isn’t going to provide me with more information than I already have. But what I have learned (from a graduate school, not from that school itself) is that foot in the door processes allow you to gain so much more if you can get someone to give up just an inch on ground. In other words, if I am willing to give my phone number, I’m more likely to donate money the next time someone calls because I already “agreed” to provide my phone number first.

So, I’ll pass on this “great” opportunity.

The End of Teaching As I Know It

Education, Writing, , , , , ,
My buddy Joshua as he surfs the web reading the news
Joshua, contemplating another adjunct professor gig

Last semester, I was teaching public speaking, and I started to notice how many of my students really weren’t interested in learning anything, but in just getting through the course. I’ve been noticing this a lot in my courses, although this is not new to me, as I distinctly remember mentioning this phenomenon a decade ago when I was teaching political science in a community college and remembered one of my students honestly asking me during a lecture: “Do we need to know this?”

Every semester, I seem to get one or two of those overly inquisitive souls in my classes that sort of makes things all seem worth it. That’s the student that reminds you of why you teach in the first place, because you realize that they want to learn, and you’re just the person to help them do just that. This last semester was no different as I had a few students who were scared to death of speaking in front of audiences, and I was able to teach them that there was absolutely nothing to fear, and they thrived as a result.

However, I also started to notice that as an adjunct professor, I’m constantly being treated differently than the full time  professors. We obviously don’t get paid as well. Our jobs are often reliant on good student evaluations, which means being  beholden to the whims of students who don’t want too much work. My office is shared with more people than I can count (and I can probably teach mathematics if I wanted to). And this last semester, they concluded a new contract that includes all sorts of “compromises” that adjuncts now have to acquiesce to in order to get that rock star pay we’ve been getting for so many years. You know stuff like more faculty evaluations, more hoops to jump through and a desire of the administration to add more administrative functions to the non-full time faculty.

So, this summer, I opted out of not teaching a summer class (which wasn’t that big of a deal considering that I’m 1 for 4 in attempts to actually get a class during the summer. But I’ve been asking for at least two classes every semester, which might help me survive on the measly wages they pay, but for some reason they can only ever give me one class a semester.

This leaves me thinking that I might not return to teaching when summer is over. Sure, I can use the fraction of money it pays, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s possible for my writing income to finally supplant this income I was receiving from teaching. So, for the first time ever, I’m probably going to stop teaching college courses.

For years now, I’ve been trying to land a full time community college teaching job, but it’s just never happened for me. Instead, everyone keeps offering me no benefit adjunct jobs. I guess they feel that there are so many of us out there that they don’t have to offer real jobs to any of us.

So, I’m going to take myself out of the pool. While I’d love a full time teaching job, I’ve practically surrendered myself to the realization that it’s probably never going to happen. And while I’m not 100 percent sure this is the direction I’m going to be taking, I’ve seen enough income rise through my writing that it just might be possible to do. I’m tired of being treated like a second class citizen in the academic community.

One of my problems when it comes to teaching

Education, , , , , , ,

The other day, I was teaching a class on Public Speaking. My goal for the evening was to teach the nuances of persuasive speaking topics, so I started in on techniques that decent speakers use in order to engage an audience…you know, the whole ethos, logos and pathos spread. At one point, I was explaining how I was once intrigued by a speech given by Helen Caldicott that she gave to UC Berkeley one night, involving cost overruns on defense programs. I was just going to touch on it and move on, but a couple of the students kept asking me follow-up questions on the concept of cost overruns, and next thing I knew I was teaching them all about how the defense industry has practically bankrupted our country by low bidding for projects and then pushing those same projects way over budget. It didn’t take much for me to realize my audience was more fascinated with the cost overrun topic than they were in learning how to make a point about persuasive speeches. Finally, after I explained far more than I ever should have about a political economic issue, I backtracked and explained that we needed to get back on topic about persuasive speeches.

The problem is: I do this a lot. When I teach political science courses, it’s not so bad, but there are times when I’m introducing Socrates and his theory of justice, and next thing I know I’ve gone onto a tangent involving Socrates, Aristotle, Locke, Hume and numerous contemporary philosophers. Almost always, I hit a point where some young girl says: “Do we need to know this?” or my other favorite: “Is this going to be on the test?”

I remember when lecturing on interpersonal communication a semester or so ago where I ended up explaining numerous stories from Plutarch that helped me explain why people socialize. It may sound kind of strange how that happens, but it almost always makes sense at the time, even if it might take some explanation to say exactly how it might happen.

I sometimes feel like I’m one of those philosopher-scientists of olden days whenever I teach a class like that. I love stories, whether they come from history, biology or strange politics. I remember going through school when a professor would read from the book, and people would fall asleep in the class. I don’t think I’ve had a student fall asleep in one of my classes in ages.

Every semester I receive reviews from students who say they really enjoy my classes, and enough of them stay after class to ask about all sorts of topics that sometimes have little to do with the subject matter itself. Almost always, I try to present material for them to research on their own (to learn it rather than just have me talk about it), and quite often one of those students will come back another day of class and present me with questions based on that suggested reading. There’s no better feeling when some young person comes armed with knowledge, wanting to know more.

The thing I struggle with is that I don’t see a lot of my colleagues doing the same thing. Instead, it’s almost like they’re competing with students to see who can do the bare minimum to get through class (teachers competing against students). I listen to the conversations in the teachers’ office and think I must be doing something wrong, because the conversations often hit me with statements like: “You’re wasting your time. Just teach the material and go home.”

What’s one to really think?

Yet another job slips through my fingers

Books, Business, Education, Memoirs, Relationships, Writing

I applied for a job where I currently work. I was totally qualified for it, and I would have done a great job with it. Made it to the second interview. And the interview went great. The next week, I was informed that I was “second” in the running, so the job went to someone else.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this sort of thing in my life. I keep applying for things, and way too often end up being the “other” person behind the person who actually gets the job. It doesn’t matter how much education I have, how smart I really am, how innovative I am, what skills I hav e, or whatever. I keep coming up as the second in line for whatever thing I’m seeking. I have news for those who aren’t following: Second place doesn’t get a job or anything else. You get to start over and look forward to coming in second some other time.

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times this keeps happening in my life. And it’s not even jobs. It happened with my writing career where I came so close to finally making it and then something gave me that second place treatment again. An example is that years ago I landed a very well known literary agent who ended up in a car accident soon after signing me on as a client. She had a brain injury where she basically didn’t even remember I was her client. I mean, come on. This shit isn’t supposed to happen outside of bad television shows. I had a second agent years later who felt he could sell my espionage fiction. Then he called me to inform me that he was going to be representing some other writer who would take too much time, so as suspected, I got dumped.

And I am getting older (had a birthday a few days ago) that reminds me that I’m probably less desirable as a future employee than all of the younger people coming out of school.

So, without sounding dramatic or whatever, I give up. It’s not worth trying any more.

When you’re blind-sided by religion in class

Education, Religion, , , , , ,

The other day I was teaching a public speaking class where the students were required to interview another student and then present a two minute speech about that person. All was going well until one of the introductions of a student indicaated that he was a member of a religion that’s been around the US for a long time but is mostly unknown to most people who don’t follow religious news, or are just not very cognizant concerning theology. One student asked what that religion was, and the student tried to respond by not getting into a conversation about religion. However, the questioning student continued, trying to get more information, essentially putting the original student on the spot to have to explain his religion to a group of people who knew nothing about it.

The one thing I could see was that he was very uncomfortable talking about his religion in front of class (the student who interviewed him had only mentioned it as an aside, saying she was exposed to it for the first time when talking to the student and was more intrigued than anything else, and then she moved onto another subject). So, as this student tried to explain quickly and without any elaboration, the asking student still continued to want to know more information.

What I found interesting from the exchange was that the questioning student appeared to be more interested in talking about the religion because it didn’t fit his understanding of Christian religions (although it actually was one of the more Baptist variety). It almost felt like this was about to turn into a “explain your religion so I can see if I approve of it” converation, although there’s no way to know that was the direction it would have taken. Fortunately, the discussion ended quicky, and then we went onto another group of students. At least before it became too uncomfortable.

This reminded me of the many political science courses I’ve taught over the years where one student is an outlier from a completely different political philosophy than everyone else. It is so easy to make just one student very uncomforable, which is something that most educators are supposed to learn is never acceptable. Over the years, I’ve taught courses where I try to take the middle ground of a group presenter/moderator rather than someone with a political opinion. What usually happens is a select few students start to suspect I’m politically opposed to their personal philosophy because they always seem to notice when I’m not siding with their side and giving conversation time to a side they might not agree with (when in reality, they haven’t a clue that my philosophy is so out of the mainstream that they’d be hard pressed to actually try to guess it if they were put on the spot to do so).

Religion is one of those scary topics because no matter how hard you try to avoid it as a conversation, someone always manages to try to pull it back in and then tries to put you on the spot to engage the topic. Students generally feel more comfortable when they can back a professor into a boxed corner. Why? I haven’t a clue. But I find that happens way too much.

For that class, we managed to avoid a political/religious issue that seemed to want to take the stage, which tells me it will likely happen again. All I remember is when I was in class instead of standing up in front of the class, and so many professors took the bait and allowed their classes to become very uncomfortable for a lot of students. What’s amazing is that administrators NEVER discuss this with professors as to how the college/university stands on such issues, so you’re generally on your own until some administrative body decides you took the wrong approach (and then they fire you).

The funny thing is: Even though my class was a success that day, there’s really no way to tell if you’re maintaining the peace as well as providing the correct education. It’s almost a continuous series of trial by error moments that you hope is helping to provide the best education to all involved.