Tag Archives: education

Still no such thing as a free lunch

Economics, News, Politics, , , , , , , , , ,

Some moron running for senate in Georgia thinks he has a great idea to, well, I don’t really know what it would solve, but like usual, a House Representative in Georgia, who wants to rise in power, thinks it’s a really good idea to put school children to work to earn their “free lunches.” Basically, U.S.Representative Jack Kingston thinks it would be really nifty for the poor to put them to work sweeping up cafeterias for their lunch money, because somehow this would instill in them the idea that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. If you think about it, he’s advocating a legal fix to an old adage that doesn’t actually have a lot of connection to anyone’s reality.

The obvious counter to this whole situation is this belief that somehow this is going to make poor kids feel like they’ve “earned” their lunch. No kid pays for his or her own lunch at that age, or at least very few do, because no kids have their own money at that age. Their parents give them money, so they aren’t learning money management skills. They’re learning that their parents have money, or they’re learning that their parents have no money. That’s really the lesson that gets taught here no matter how some Republican Neanderthal wants to spin it.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. Well, it’s not really a secret, but I grew up dirt poor. My mom was uneducated and my dad split when I was too young to ever know him. So my mom worked crap jobs and was basically too uneducated (and proud) to take government handouts. She probably should have. It didn’t help that she was sick and then went blind in one eye. She tried and that’s really all that’s important.

So, at one point I was put on discount lunches. Somehow, even though our apartment was overrun with cockroaches on a daily basis and our neighbors were crack addicts and prostitutes, we were too well off to get full free lunches. So, my mom had to pay a certain amount of money and then got discounted lunches for me when I went to school.

Let me tell you about those discounts. They gave you a special paper card that you had to present each and every time you presented for lunch, and the system was so obviously designed to point out that you were using this card, which meant that every other kid looked at you when you were presenting it, and I can’t tell you how bad kids are at making someone feel like shit in some weird process of making themselves feel better about themselves. It was humiliating every time I had to present that card and then pay my token of the discount I was allowed to pay. There were many times when I skipped lunch because it was easier to not eat than to have to go through that process each and every time at lunch.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that Representative Kingston never had to go through that experience when he was growing up. And I’ll bet that not once has one of his children ever had to go through such a thing just to get a stupid lunch meal. That sort of thing scars you for a long time, and even in my middle age these days, I have never forgot how it felt to have to present that stupid card when I was at that age.

And that’s the problem with a lot of our representatives who think they actually represent people they serve. Edmund Burke argued a long time ago that he could “represent” miners in his district even though he’s never been a miner because he knows what’s best for them. He was wrong then, and Kingston is wrong today. I’m sure there’s a special place in Goddess Hell where Kingston has to ask for a school lunch each and every day and is told that no, he must starve because there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Taking Umbrage With the N-Word

News, Social Networking, Writing, , , , , , ,

There’s an interesting article on Salon this morning from Mary Elizabeth Williams on how white people shouldn’t use the N-word under any circumstance.  Ignoring for a moment that most of MEW’s articles tend to be reactionary and designed to cause people to get upset over mundane things that they wouldn’t normally pay much attention to, the points she brings up are interesting, although I’m not sure I completely agree with all of them. I’ll let you read it for yourself and then decide. What I did want to discuss is my own particular perspective in the whole thing, coming from someone who would never use the word, mainly because I find it offensive, and even more important, that it rarely serves a purpose in any conversation I’ve ever had.

But I want to go back in time a bit to a friend of mine I had back in the days of my second visit to the college environment. I had decided to attend a community college (years after the Army AND West Point), cause I was interested in pursuing computer science as a future field. Anyway, my roommate at that time was a really cool guy named (for the sake of here) Bob. Bob was friendly, a good all around guy, and he was dating a woman that he was eventually going to end up marrying. He was also a pretty big guy, and he hung around with a bunch of other big guys, a few of them caucasians and a few of them of all different types of backgrounds, ethnicities and colors. But one thing that used to shock the crap out of me was that Bob used to refer to ALL of his friends as “my Nigga.” And they would refer to him in the same way. And none of them had a single problem with it.

I once asked Bob if that word didn’t bother him, and he looked at me like I was a moron. To him, the word had little contextual meaning as it did to me. It didn’t even have the same meaning to the African-American friends he had, because I couldn’t resist asking them either. They just didn’t grow up in an environment where they felt the typical socio-economic fabric that hangs over so many African-Americans of urban locales. They just smiled when I asked about it and didn’t have a negative thing to say whatseover.

No one thought of Bob as a racist, and not once was race even considered a part of the conversation.

But for me, I never could come around to using that word, even in the mixed company of where it was tossed around on a constant basis. I just didn’t feel comfortable saying it no matter how “welcome” the word was. And part of that is because I grew up in an environment where the word was used in very negative circumstances. The whites I grew up with around in the late 1960s and early 1970s were living through forced busing and the ramifications of the Civil Rights movement, so there was still a long of antagonism existing back then. I was fortunate in being integrated with very diverse populations as a child because I was dirt poor in an urban environment (Santa Monica, California). While many of my caucasian neighbors (meaning people who lived way out of my neighborhood of crack houses and prostitution dens) lived in isolated communities, I spent most of my free time at places like the Santa Monica Boys Club, which tended to cater to the poorest kids who couldn’t afford to spend time after school at the YMCA (where the richer kids hung out). So, I was exposed to all sorts of diversity that quickly educated me on what words were friendly and which words were taboo. As I was always a friendly sort of kid, I learned the ones that made friends (and made lots of friends) and discarded the words that turned friends into enemies.

Years later, in the presence of Bob and his friends, I was completely out of place because the conversations they were having were alien to me, so I did what I did when I was a kdi. I listened and avoided participating whenever I felt uncomfortable. There are certain words I’m not comfortable saying, and I’ve discovered that that is probably never going to change.

This is why I don’t feel concerned that there are rappers out there using the N-word in their music. I generally don’t sing to rap music, mainly because there’s not a lot of it that insterests me. The types that does generally doesn’t have profanity in it, or it’s impact is in a completely different direction. I do think that there are a lot of people who feel they have to emulate that type of behavior to be seen as cool, and fortunately, I’ve never been known to be someone who seeks out that type of status. Whenever I consider myself “cool”, there’s usually a sense of irony or sarcasm involved.

Which brings me back to that word. I don’t know why people feel such a need to use it. But unlike the professor mentioned in MEW’s article, I don’t care enough about the fact that others use it to feel slighted myself. Words do have power in some circumstances, but what MEW and people like her don’t often recognize is that they also lack power if people don’t subscribe to their doctrine. Whenever I hear the N-word, I don’t think “subversive”, “cool”, or even “outrageous.” I think “uneducated” and “limited in vocabulary”. But then, when writing a novel, there have been times when I have chosen the simple phrase rather than the more complicated one because the message was the medium, not the other way around. And in those cases, I guess my own jury is still out.

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

Business, Education, , , , , , ,
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?

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.

Whether or not there are children who are unteachable

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Dave Murray of MLive published an interesting commentary on Are there Children Who Are Unteachable? What’s most interesting about the post is the commentaries from mostly Michigan readers of MLive (which is the online presence of the Grand Rapids Press). After you get beyond the knee-jerk reaction responses of people who post to every article with diatribes against whatever spot issue they have, some of the responses actually become quite interesting. I’ll let you read through all of that on your own and save my personal views on the issue, mainly because unlike the majority of the responders, I realize that I’ve never been a grade school teacher, so I’m not going to truly understand how difficult (or easy) it might be.

However, I thought I would share one somewhat similar story because it involved one of the first classes I was teacing. It was about a decade or so ago when I was teaching political science at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. I was really new, and I’d be shocked if I wasn’t making numerous mistakes in my attempt to use my doctorate knowledge in political science to teach others. However, one thing that remains in my memory was one student I had who was struggling throughout the entire semester.

He was a quiet Hispanic younger man who rarely chimed in during class, and we were nearly halfway through the course when he remained after class and wanted to speak to me. He said he was having trouble with some of the information and wondered if there was anything he could do to bring himself up to speed. Now, over the years, a lot of us teachers have a similar kind of story where some student, who is failing the course, suddenly realizes he’s failing out and tries to salvage his grade. He’ll promise all sorts of thing, but usually not deliver. Generally, this really burns out a lot of teachers because this happens so many times.

However, I offered him the chance to stop by my office hours, and I’d look deeper into his situation (as it wasn’t something we could solve in the few minutes after a lecture). To my surprise, he showed up the next day for my office hours.

We sat down for about an hour, and he told me what was giving him problems. Our subject at the moment in class was about Congress and the committee structure. His question, when he asked it, opened me up to realizing something that really impacted me. He wasn’t confused about Congress and the committee structure. He had no idea what Congress was.

During all of my lectures about Congress, I just sort of assumed that most young college students at least knew what Congress was, so that it was an easy jumping off point. My conversation with him made me realize that he had no idea what the concept of the legislature branch was and was listening during all of the classes, unsure of how to place it in greater context with the things he did know. And shortly after he started communicating, I began to realize what his context was: He knew nothing but street life, violence and family that threw him out of their home when he was only a teenager. He was working a crappy job, and someone told him the only path to any future success for him was either joining a gang (something he was considering) or school. So he decided to try school first.

Still not convinced he was on the level (as to his desire to actually pass this course), I gave him the opportunity to visit me during my office hours each time I held them, and I said I would try to help him figure out what he didn’t know. I figured he’d be like most students who would act really interested and then I’d never see him again. But he showed up each office hour, and he brought his book, opening it up each time and pointing out the things that didn’t make sense to him.

At this time, I was talking to a college colleague, who saw this student in my office one day and then pulled me aside, indicating that the majority of the instructors knew who he was and gave up on him a long time ago because “he is lazy”. Not convinced, I then offered my student the opportunity to visit my office for more periods beyond my office hours, just to see if he was serious.

And he was. After a few weeks, he started to actually do much better on quizzes and examinations. And his questions were always very well thought out. By the time we reached the final examination, he was earning a solid B in the class.

He passed my class, and he then stopped in one day a few semesters later, saying that he was transferring to a local university, having been accepted under a special program for indigent students. Where he is this day, I don’t know, but I can only hope he managed to finish and made a better life for himself.

However, I did want to point out a couple of things. I really felt ill about my fellow colleagues at that time, because they gave up on this student long before they ever should have. He wasn’t lazy. He was just lost. The other thing is that I also realize that my experience doesn’t prepare me to comment on K-12 education as I have never taught in those arenas. It also doesn’t talk to the realization that if I had been confronted by a classroom full of this same type of student, I might not have reacted the same way, having been so overwhelmed, there’s no telling what mechanism I might have used to keep myself from being overcome by such problems. This is the fact that a lot of teachers have to face on a daily basis with entire classrooms of struggling students, and it doesn’t surprise me that so many good teachers probably burn out and never continue.

So, if I was to comment at all, I’d think that what’s needed is administrative attention to detail on how to best support those teachers out there who want to do more but are overwhelmed. Just blaming teachers for not doing enough is often a very weak approach, quite often enough to push even more teachers out of the business. I read through all of the comments that come from MLive, and I’m often saddened to the point where I realize that I’d never be a grade school teacher with such hostility pointed at that discipline.

Dealing With Plagiarism in an Academic Environment

Education, , ,

The other day, I was grading papers for the Communications course when I came across a paper that was so obviously not the work of the student who turned it in. As a matter of fact, it was completely stolen from an academic journal word for word. Finding the original source wasn’t difficult, but figuring out what to do wit it AFTER finding the original source then became the problem. I mean, honestly, what to you do after you find out a student has completely stolen his work that he has then turned into you?

Seriously.

That’s the dilemma I ended up with because there are no set answers as to what to do after you find out your student has dishonestly created his work for your class. Sure, you could just give him an F and move on, but is it really that easy?

Here’s the situation I ended up with, because right as soon as I found out, I didn’t know what to do. The work was obviously stolen, but my administration wasn’t around to really offer me any insight. As a matter of fact, because this was an evening course during the summer, my back up staff was nonexistent. The main secretary was “off” until the fall semester started up again, and even the “go to” person for her wasn’t in the office when I walked there to find out what to do going forward. Basically, I was on my own.

And to be honest, I didn’t know what to do. Sure, I could be an asshole and condemn the student right from the start, but really what good does that really do? It proves I caught the student, and he pays the penalty but does anything possible come out of that situation?

Yeah, I caught him. But so what?

This is a community college course where I’m an adjunct instructor. Catching a student teaching doesn’t really lead to any black and white solutions. Basically, a student gets kicked out school and that’s that. What exactly did we solve by my direct response? Personaly, nothing. A struggling student is now out of school and the teacher proved he was an asshole. Not really sure we got much out of this situation.

If I let him get off scot free, what do we get? We get a student who is going to go to his next class and see if he can get away with that one just as well as he got away with the last few ones, because you know I’m not the first one he cheated in. So, did I just kick the can down the read?

So, I ask you? What should I do?

Strangely enough, everyone but me is an expert on diabetes

Education, Healthcare, , , , ,

If you’ve been reading my blog for some time, you know about my whole adventure with being a diabetic. For a number of years, I lived on the edge of the problem by actually going out of my way to change my lifestyle so that what I ate was copacetic with what I needed. I completely changed my eating habits to compensate for this, and as a result, I’ve had to be very careful about what I put into my body.

Having said that, no matter how much work you do at this sort of thing, there are so-called “experts” all around me who are convinced that because they saw a TV show once, knew some guy, or just happened to hear something on the news once, they know more than someone who lives through it on a day to day basis. When I first started dealing with the problem, one of the first things I did was switch from regular soda to diet soda (or pop). This started the “you know that diet soda is just as bad as regular soda, right?” commentaries. Those ranged from the totally stupid people (“just because it’s diet doesn’t mean it doesn’t have calories”) to the New Age stupid (“the chemicals in diet soda are worse for you than if you were just imbibing regular cubes of sugar”). And there’s no shutting them up either. Go to the fridge to grab a diet soda, and you’re guaranteed a five minute screed on all things bad about diet soda. Tell them to stop lecturing you, and they do it anyway, because they’re convinced they’re doing it “for your own good”. One day, I was actually lectured by a woman who felt that diet soda would one day kill me. She would have continued the lecture, but she had to take a break and go outside because it had been fifteen minutes since she last had a cigarette.

I went to work out a few weeks ago, and someone told me that my choice of exercises (the exercise bike) was a poor choice for someone with diabetes because it didn’t affect the cardiovascular system as well as some other exercise he named. The fact that I went from sitting in front of the television set to actually working out should have been an indication that criticism wasn’t necessary, but strangely enough that fact had little sway or influence.

The other day, I was in the cafeteria choosing EXACTLY the same thing I eat every day in order to constantly maintain the correct blood sugar. Someone who knew I had just come out of the hospital felt it necessary to criticize me over my choice of lunch food. I know the person meant well, but just once I wish people would just shut the fuck up and leave me alone. I choose what I eat because a) it appeals to me, and b) it works. I don’t want to hear about tofu, soy milk products, modified starches or whatever. It’s bad enough I have to change anything in my life because doctors inform me of what I should or should not do. Having some clueless wannabe interject with naive information is really annoying.

Yahoo CEOs Lying Proves Yet Again That Rules Only Apply to Those of Us Without Power

Business, Education, , , , , , , , , , ,

So, it turns out that the CEO of Yahoo made up information about his college credentials, claiming to have a degree in computer science rather than in something totally unrelated to computer science. In most cases, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but when you’re applying to be the CEO of a large computer organization, that might be somewhat important.  I know that whenever I submit an application for a job that needs a BA in communication and I have a MA in communication, I get turned down because I don’t meet their qualifications. No, I’m not kidding about this. It happens ALL OF THE TIME to me. So I could understand why Daniel Loeb, who runs the Third Point hedge fund (which has a stake in Yahoo’s ownership)  might be a bit miffed at CEO Scott Thompson.

The funny thing is: If this was me, I’d have been fired the second someone hinted that I made up my credentials. Someone from HR would have shown up with an empty box, had security have me clean out my cubicle, and I’d be lucky if the bus driver gave me a ride back to the parking lot where my car is parked. But does this happen to CEO Scott Thompson? No, instead he apologized to investors for misleading them, and Yahoo has gone suddenly silent about any possibility of him leaving the organization. So, as of today, there’s been no move to remove him from his position. He’s still the CEO, calling all the shots.

What kind of message does this send to the rest of the population? If you’re not the CEO, fuck you. Yeah, that’s the message. Sorry for the language. I just couldn’t find an easier way to say that if you’re not the CEO, you don’t amount to anything and you get absolutely no respect whatsoever.

None. Zip. Nada.

So, tomorrow, I think I’m going to apply to Yahoo to be their next CEO. I figure I’ll use my seven separate degrees in computer science to get in the door. After all, I graduated from Harvard, West Point, Western Michigan, MIT, Dartmouth, CalTech, University of the Pacific, Stanford and some other elite university I still haven’t figured out how to spell yet. Believe it or not, a couple of those are actually true, but because honesty doesn’t mean crap any more, I’m not revealing which ones.