Can it be summer?

I'm getting really fed up with a couple students and just want them OUT of my class. (Or want the class to end...I'm switching up in the rotation and will not be teaching this particular class in the fall, so if these folks fail, there's no likelihood of me getting them again in my section).

I have several people who skip regularly, and then cry poor when they miss quizzes, etc. I also have people who get sick, miss, then come to me after the fact - after I have handed back the quiz - and want a make-up. So far I've said no, but I'm expecting someone to go all Office of Disability Concerns on me at some point.

(My official policy is I need prior notification, even if it's an e-mail the morning of. Interesting how some students can manage that and some can't)

I also have one person who's earning 10%s on the quizzes. These are not hard quizzes....like definitions of terms and stuff. This is someone who sits next to someone who is either her boyfriend or a boy she wants to impress (I can't tell, but from his contemptuous treatment of her I think it's the second) and doesn't pay attention.

And all this stuff makes me crazy...all of the "let's sit in class and be dumb," all of the noise, all of the people groaning when I expect them to know something.

You know what? I'm tired too. I'm sick of being in a too-warm classroom too. But it's my job to prepare you for whatever future classes you may take (or, conversely, persuade you to major in something else), so I keep doing it.

(And you know? It really doesn't help to read about the GSA wasting my tax dollars on junkets places, or the Secret Service hiring hookers in Colombia....when I wind up buying my own pens and notebooks rather than using the departmentally-provided ones because I think, "What if I wind up using it for non-academic purposes, that would be like stealing." My mom used to say she taught me and my brother to be too nice; I think she may also have taught us to be too ethical.)

They're trying to divide people

I've heard the Hilary Rosen commentary about Ann Romney, and other commentators' additions to/extrapolations from what she said.(I guess Hilary Rosen did apologize, but still....when something like that is said, it often gets at what is in a person's heart/mind. You don't say that kind of thing without believing it on some level.)

It seems to me there are two factors being conflated here: first: working moms vs. stay at home moms. Second: "the rich" vs. "everyone else."

The whole working-mom vs. stay-at-home-mom argument makes me frustrated. For one thing, it's a tired argument. I remember the "mommy wars" being hashed out in the 1980s. We've been arguing about this for thirty years, people. Isn't it time to let it go? There will ALWAYS be some women who prefer to stay at home and raise their children, and some women who know they are happier having childcare and working outside the home. But I guess there's that old "Let's make people feel guilty for their choices" factor coming into play...I remember back in the earlier days, the pendulum was towards the stay-at-home moms: working moms were supposed to feel guilty because they were missing their kids' milestones. Or God knows how awful that nanny REALLY is when you can't see her. Or kids in day care are more disposed to be violent. Or whatever other scare story.

Now, the pendulum has swung...and stay-at-home moms are supposed to feel guilty. Because they aren't "contributing." Now, I realize that "data" is not the plural of "anecdote" - but when I was growing up, my mom was a stay at home mom. Several of her friends were as well. I do not remember ANY of them sitting on the sofa watching soap operas and eating chocolates. (My mom did watch "Guiding Light," but usually it was while she was either dusting or doing dinner preparation). In addition to being there for us kids and keeping the house up, my mom (and several of her friends) also had large gardens (contributing to the family food budget by raising some of the food - and my mom was hardcore; most of the stuff she grew she started from seeds). My mom also baked bread. And she sewed some of the clothes my brother and I wore (at least until I got old enough to get pissy and upset about it...I feel bad about that now, but peer pressure is an ugly thing).

And my mom and her friends did volunteer work - at their churches, for the PTA, for other groups. My mom taught several classes in different things through the local continuing-ed center (I guess that would count as "working outside the home," though it was at times when my dad was home to watch over my brother and me).

One thing I've noticed as an adult involved in volunteer work: it's increasingly hard to get people to take part. Or to take part in groups like the church women's group or the AAUW. And I think part of that is that so many women work now...women who might have, 40 or 50 years ago, done lots of volunteer work are now so taken up with what they have to do for their careers (and at home) that they don't have time.

And I think it's wrong, very wrong, for the people criticizing stay-at-home moms to discount the fact of the woman BEING THERE at home...I remember how my mom was there every day I came home from school. So, if I had an upsetting day, she was there to try to make things better. Or if I had homework I'd rather not do, she was there to push me to do it. And if I got sick at school...a phone call home was all it took to get her to be able to help me.Even beyond the logistics of it, KNOWING she was there for me was important and valuable to me. But you can't put a dollar value on that, I guess. You can't treat it as "income" and tax it. (Hm. I wonder if in some cases that's the root of the uneasiness some have with stay at home moms - they're not participating in the "economy" in the same way by generating taxable income. And perhaps they consume to less of a degree...)

But the bigger thing than "My mom was a stay at home mom and it was really great for me" is the whole idea of criticizing and belittling someone for a choice they make - a choice that is morally neutral, a choice that is individual. I've said before how I HATE the "the personal is always political" attitude. This is part of it. I  dislike busybodies and to me, someone criticizing a woman for choosing to stay at home (or, conversely, for choosing to work outside the home) smacks of busybodiness - someone who wants to tell other people how to live their lives, who wants to impose a one-size-fits-all solution on the world.

I wonder if some of this - though not all the commentators on the issue have been female - but if some of it is something I've noticed in some women. (Not all women. And probably some men do this too, but I've mainly seen it from women in my life). This is: instead of saying "I've made my choices, I accept that I have given some things up for those choices in return for gaining some things, and I am not going to regret my choices," they try to justify their choices  - make themselves feel good about them - by putting down everyone who chooses differently.

And that's so damn junior high. I'm sorry, but it is. Judging someone based on their chosen lifestyle, when it's one that's perfectly legal and moral (I would not, for example, be so accepting of someone whose chosen lifestyle was robbing banks) is just...annoying. Maybe it's because I have issues with feeling judged by people myself, but I want to scream at Hilary Rosen and anyone else who would put people down, "Try walking a mile in her shoes."

(I wonder what the reaction would be to a stay at home DAD. They DO exist.)

The other divisive factor that's gotten rolled in here - I suppose to make the Mommy Wars seem fresh and new - is the whole "The Rich" vs. "Everyone Else" argument. Ann Romney knows nothing about what "ordinary" people go through, because she's rich. Mitt Romney is "too rich" to be president. (Um, like Obama and his family are ordinary middle-class people? I think it would be interesting to know the last "non rich" president. I'd speculate Truman, but maybe he even qualified as rich....)

I don't know. The whole hate-the-rich argument bugs me. I'm not rich....though in some situations, making $60K a year and having investments and having money put aside for retirement, I'd be considered to be. I certainly consider myself to be materially successful. But I don't feel like I should feel guilty for earning what I do...I work pretty hard (as I noted in an earlier post). With the investments, I had plenty times when they tanked (a few that even went to 0)...there's risk involved in investing money and some of the hate-the-people-with-investments types sometimes seem to overlook that.

I don't really care that some people make hugely more money than I do. In some cases, the high wage-earners work awful hours. Or they do face a lot of risk - one bad year, and they're out of a job. Again, it comes down to trying to walk in the other person's shoes.

And even at that: being fabulously wealthy is not necessarily something to envy. I went to school (high school and college) with some kids from uber-rich families, and some of those kids were pretty messed up, or had really sad family dynamics. Money can't buy a functional family.

But it distresses me that there seem to be factions in our society who want to divide - who want to pit people against each other, instead of encouraging people to find solutions to things like our governmental spending problems. I sometimes, in my darker moments, wonder if pitting people against each other is intended as a distraction from other things.

This really bugged me

Yesterday, I got a phone call:

"Dr. Ricki, this is Administrator A. Do you have a little time right now?"

And I was all, oh crap what now. And I said, "Uh, I'm preparing for class, but I have a few moments."

And so, A went on: "You have Student B in your class. As you know, Student B has a number of disabilities. Student B was having problems last week because Student B ran out of medications but now has a refill."

And I'm like: okay, why are you telling me this? (And a note: Student B missed lab AGAIN yesterday).

So A says, "Student B has come to me about an assignment he handed in late."

And my response was, wearily: "I know Student B has had health issues. I've let him hand in stuff late even though I normally don't. I have the late assignment on my desk; I just haven't gotten to grading it yet."

And then she was like "No, he has an assignment right now that's late that he wants me to tell you to allow him to hand it in."

Sorry, WTF? Rather than coming and asking me FIRST, and getting my "yes, that's OK" he goes to an ADMIN and sics her on me. That's creepy and wrong and I feel very bad about it.

What's worse? As she was explaining this to me, I could hear B in the background telling her what to say.

I said "Yes, that assignment can be handed in" (in fact, it wasn't due yet. But what the hell ever.I'm not going to argue with someone whose grasp on reality isn't that tight).

But MAN. Getting an administrator to call up, and I presume bully a bit if I said no, rather than asking me first? That seems very slimy.

I'm happy to make accommodations for disabilities - I always do - but I don't like feeling like people need to get Big Brother or Big Sister to call me up and TELL me to do it.

I guess I grew up sheltered

There's been a lot of discussion about Derbyshire's article on "The Talk," which apparently got him released from his contract. (He was claiming that white parents have the same avoid-people-of-other-races, they're-dangerous talk that some Black parents do).

But for me, when I hear of a parent giving "The Talk," I think of the one I got when I was about 11, from my mom, that ended sort of like:

"That is how babies come into the world. I'm telling you this now because you're growing up and soon your body will begin doing the things a woman's body does when it's mature enough that pregnancy is possible, and I don't want you to freak out or be scared by these changes because they are natural. I also want you to know that you can come and talk to me any time if you have questions. And some of your friends might start having sex in the next few years. Understand that if you're not ready for that - and I hope you won't be, not for a while - you don't have to do it just because other people you know are."

It was probably good she gave me that talk when she did, because just about a year later, one of those big changes happened. It didn't freak me out but it did surprise/shock me a little. (I remember finding out after going to the restroom before last-hour English class in seventh grade). (My reaction wound up being something like, "Oh great, I'm gonna have to put up with THIS every month from now on)

I didn't really go to her much with questions: I kind of knew what I needed to know. (And also, I knew, at 11, that it would be MANY MANY years before I was ready to do what she was talking about being done. And I also remember being moderately horrified at that age to think that - gasp - she and my father had obviously done that TWICE, because there were two kids in the family. Hahahaha. Yeah, I was a pretty innocent tween...)

(I find now I am going to her with questions about "my changing body" though. I'm about the age she was when she started perimenopause and it seems there are a lot more things happening now that freak me out a little than what happened when I was 12.)

Just a little observation:

Dear student,

If you didn't skip class, like, 2/3 of the time, you might just score better than a 10% on an exam.

But I imagine you'll blame me for failing. That's okay; I have tenure and besides the students who do come to class regularly give me positive evaluations.

However, you might want to rethink the whole going-to-med-school thing.

love,

dr. ricki.

There's probably nothing I could say

...that would convince people who think I'm lazy otherwise. But I'll say that stories like this annoy me.

Now, granted, it might be an apples-and-oranges comparison. Apparently the columnwriter is addressing community colleges, where expectations are somewhat different. But still, you hear from lots of places, both right and left, that college professors don't work hard enough, or they're paid too much. (For the record, as a full professor with 12 years experience, I make just under $60K a year, provided I teach in the summer as well.)

But I bristle at the same old, "Professors are only in the classroom 12 to 15 hours a week! We need to work them harder!" I got to thinking last night about a breakdown of my time in a given week.

In a typical semester, I teach 14 hours. A "full load" here is 12, but because my department is down two tenure lines and an instructor, 14 hours is the usual  minimum. Some semesters I've taught 15. (At 16 hours, we're supposed to be paid more. I've never taught that many. I think one of my colleagues is doing 18 this semester, but he's getting paid the (pitiful) adjunct rate on top of his base salary for those extra hours).

Another complication for people in the sciences - I am not sure if this happens at every school or not, but where I teach, we get one hour of teaching credit for every two to three hours in lab. So many semesters, I "officially" teach 14 hours, but am in the classroom 17, which is approaching the "magic minimum" that Levy proposes. (The semester I taught 15 hours, I was in the classroom, I think, 19 hours a week. That semester is kind of a blur now).

Also, even though I'm at a "teaching focused" university, I'm expected to do research. I try to make between five and seven hours per week during the regular semester (more in the summer) to either do fieldwork, do labwork, analyze data, write manuscripts, or read articles related to my research. I don't always get to it - because research isn't what I'm being directly paid to do, it often gets pushed to the back burner when I have a busy week.

I don't currently have any graduate students, but here, if we do, that's on top of everything else we do - there is no release time, unless you have written an enormous grant that brings in lots of overhead costs. 

:Levy suggests profs spend an hour out of class for every hour in class. That can vary widely. I might spend an hour out of class per hour in class for the classes I've taught for a long long time that require little updating beyond reviewing the material. But when you do new preps - which on a small campus you tend to do fairly frequently - or you are taking a class you've taught and replacing the textbook - it can take as much as 3-4 hours out of class per hour in class to prep. (And it can take longer if it's material that's difficult or that is less familiar to me.I always find the stuff on predation models in ecology requires a lot more review than things I actually use in my own research).

On top of that, there's grading and test-writing. I suppose some profs use the textbook-supplied testbanks, but I loathe them, because the questions are often badly written. So I write my own tests. And I write new ones each semester, because I hand the old ones back (I think there's heuristic value in students getting to read over their tests with my comments on them). It can take a couple hours to write an exam and another hour to type and proofread it (including having to do multiple forms with scrambled questions to try to defeat cheating).

Grading can take a while, as well. A half hour to an hour, perhaps, for a quiz, maybe up to 4 hours for an exam, depending on how extensively I write comments on the papers and how complex the essay questions were. And grading papers - I assign papers in most of my classes; even if they're "not English classes" as some students protest, students need experience writing in a range of disciplines. Papers can take me a couple days' worth of free time to grade. Grading labs might take an hour or so, but that's a weekly thing, that's something that's "always there" to be done. (Same with quizzes)

On top of that, I'm expected to hold 10 hours of office hours a week. Granted, I can be in my lab working or in my office grading or prepping if no one comes in - but I have to be available. (I have heard that some people believe professors come in to campus 10 minutes before class starts, and leave right after class. Not so, at least not in my department. I'm usually here from 7 am until maybe 3 or 4 pm, and I often take grading home with me).

There's also committeework. We're expected to serve on at least one campus committee. If you're clever, you can pick a low drama one like Library or Honors (and if you're lucky, you get your choice), and the amount of work is fairly minimal. But if you're a chair - or if you're on a committee like Academic Appeals - you wind up not just putting in a lot of time, but dealing with a lot of stress.

And that's actually the uncountable factor: the wear and tear and stress of some of the parts of the job. I know every job carries its own load of stress, but on college campuses there seem to be all kinds of things. I've had to pacify students who were angry about something. I've had students share awful, frightening TMI stuff with me (either medical stuff or stuff pertaining to court cases they were involved in).  I've had to write make-up exams on short notice for students who had big problems and couldn't take the regular exam, and I didn't know that they weren't just "skipping" until after the fact. I've had students in class who behaved strangely. I've served on committees where the meetings got kind of ugly and nasty.  I've had people e-mail me and tell me "Here is this thing I need you to do and I need you to do it by 5 pm." where I have to reshuffle my day's schedule. I've had interactions with administrators, where they exerted their authority over me to a degree where I went back to my office and cried. (I'm not an unusually sensitive person, I think, but when someone's told you "yes, you can make this accommodation for a student" and then when it actually comes down to them having to DO something toward that accommodation, yelling at you for putting them in that position...)

And even without problems, teaching well takes a lot of energy. I'm tired when I walk out of class, even on days when it's been a good and dynamic class. I'm on my feet a lot. 

On top of all of that, we're kind of expected to do off-campus volunteer work. And we're expected to document it. And there's other kinds of documentation....we have to keep up portfolios of our scholarly productivity, service, and teaching evaluations. And we have to participate in departmental review, and we have to do work towards accreditation renewal when that comes up. And then there are other things that come up...I had to fill out a "diversity report" last spring, on how I was incorporating "diversity" into my classes. (One of my colleagues proposed we all talk about "species diversity" on the questionnaire...which was not what it was getting at, of course, but to paraphrase the old blues musician, "The microscope don' care what color your hand is." So we tend to feel that overtly teaching "diversity" (the way it's being intended to be taught) is kind of....beyond the scope...of biology)

And there are lots of other little one-time things. Recruiting events. Interviewing people who've applied for scholarships.  Advising students. Dealing with red tape on behalf of students. (It's interesting how offices will sometimes tell them flatly "no" for something they SHOULD tell them "yes" for, and when you as a prof call up, they're willing to accommodate the student...)

Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. I understand that there are lots of things that go along with the position of a tenured professor, that there's a lot of stuff expected of us. I find myself busier now than before I had tenure.

The thing is...some weeks I have a hard time finding time to take care of myself. I joke that I need to have at least 14 pairs of skivvies (and I do), because if I can't make time to get to the laundry for a while - well, I can wear the same brassiere a couple days in a row if I need to, and I have enough blouses that I can generally make it for more than a week without laundry (and could probably wear some more than once without washing)....but underwear, no, I need to have a clean pair each day at a minimum.

There are some days where I get home, eat dinner, do a little prepwork for the next day, and then head out to evening meetings or volunteer work - where I'm essentially involved in work from 7 am until 9 pm. I'm glad those days are rare - but they do happen a couple times a month. Some weeks I have something nearly every night of the week. A lot of times these days I feel like I'm beginning to lose "myself," because I have very little free time (And yes, I AM complaining there). When it gets to the point, like it did one day last fall, when you realize you're out of milk and you sit down on the kitchen floor crying because you don't have TIME to go out and buy milk, and you DON'T KNOW WHEN you will have time to go out and buy milk...

Some days when I do get home early, I've gone to bed at 7:30 because I was just that tired.

I suppose I do need to dial back on something. Probably the volunteer work, but I can't really see what I would drop...it's valuable to me and some of it, it would be hard to find someone else to do. (Not many people willing to lead a teenaged Youth Group...) Usually I wind up "dialing back" on doing stuff for myself...I don't read as much for fun as I used to, I don't sit down and watch movies like I used to. I sew less and knit less.

So it frustrates me when someone who might not have taught on a college campus claims we're "lazy" and that we need to be forced to work more hours. At this point, if the state legislature came to us and said, "Either teach 25 classroom hours a week or take a pay cut" I'd take the pay cut without hesitating. 

And, to end, an old joke: A senator, upon hearing of the reported workload of college professors, was enraged. "We must get these people working 40 hour weeks!" he exclaimed. And throughout the land, college professors rejoiced, because that meant their workweeks would go down by at least 1/3....

My office hours are over

I was wise, this semester, ending my office hours an hour before class starts for me on my long days - it gives me time to eat lunch.

And I can (legally) close my office door. (There is a new campus policy that our doors must be open all through our office hours. I find this slightly annoying and patronizing - where my office is located, I often get people who hang out in the hall and discuss things, loudly, and rather than always look like the "Get offa my lawn!" cranky lady, I just would shut my door to cut out the noise).

I have one student who has "boundary issues." In terms of time, but also in terms of what he believes it is appropriate to share with me. Several days lately I've had him show up to my office twenty minutes before my class is set to start, as I am eating, and start talking.

And keep talking. And not understand or pick up on any of my non verbal "please go away I need to get ready for class" cues. Even when I get as rude as I ever get to a student and start leafing through notes as he speaks.  And he can eat up that 20 minutes -and more, if I wasn't saying "I'm sorry I need to get to class" and walking past him. And, I'm sorry, but as I said somewhere else, I am not freakin' Mr. Miyagi and he is not the Karate Kid. I have well over 100 students to concern myself with, and he's demanding a bigger slice of my attention-pie than I can give.

And he's one of those people who just seems to be a Bad Luck Joe - the kind of person that all kinds of crazy crap happens to, and which he has to share with people around him. And, okay, I get that some people don't have a lot of people to listen to them (for that matter, I don't). But. I get tired of being the 'trouble tree' for my students (like the old glurgy story about the guy who, when ever he came home for the evening, "hung his troubles up" on a sad little tree in the front yard of his house, so he wouldn't carry them in to his family. (In less-glurgy versions of the story, the tree DIES because he burdened it with so many troubles.))

So I've taken to closing my door while I eat. That probably eventually won't stop him from knocking, but at least it's a visual message.

Something I wish I could do

Walking across the building (had to get an additional microscope for a student; one of the labs I teach in is used so heavily that a lot of the microscopes are trashed and need repair by this time of the year), I saw one of my former students. He was a good student, and he still says hello to me in the hall when we happen to meet.

Today, he was sacked out on the sofa in the student lounge. And that makes me jealous. I've long been jealous of people who can sleep anywhere. For me, I have to be somewhere dark and quiet and preferably on the cool side in order to sleep. And I can't sleep when I feel people are looking at me...I need privacy.

I also knew a guy when I was in grad school who kept a pillow in the bottom drawer of his desk. At times when he wasn't doing anything between classes, he'd go into his office, pull out the pillow, and take a nap with his head down on the desk. Even if the lights were on. Even if the other people in the lab were talking.

I wonder if it's possible for a person to retrain their mind to allow themselves to sleep anywhere? One reason why I didn't even remotely consider joining the military when I was of age was that I was afraid my sleeping difficulties would lead to me washing out - I doubted if I could sleep in a barracks setting.

I really wish I were better at "tuning out" the world so I could sleep. (I honestly wish I was better at "tuning out" the rest of the world in a lot of ways.)

My one thought

I haven't really spoken about the whole Martin/Zimmerman thing, because first, I suspected the news narrative was too simple, and second, I wasn't there to see it.

But the old saying, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" keeps popping into my head. Especially when I see people who are calling for the blood of Zimmerman or others involved...or people who are releasing addresses that are either (thought at the time) to be those of his or his parents.

It's a bad situation all around, and it may become much worse, if lots of parties not directly related start jumping in. Already I wonder if Zimmerman will get a fair trial. (If he's guilty, he should face the penalties. End of story. But I don't think he should be tried in the court of public opinion first.)

I just have a feeling this is going to be a long, ugly, hot summer, with lots of people venting their anger at people who likely don't deserve it.

I have to remind myself...

...that I'm teaching for people like the guy I wrote about in the last post, or the woman in my intro class who always asks interesting questions, or the people in ecology who go, "Wow, I learned a lot in lab today!" and not guys like this guy, but:

I have a guy in one of my classes who is a douchebag. Sorry for the harsh language but that's the best simple description I can give of him. He seems very self-absorbed; on several occasions I have had to speak to him for carrying on a conversation with the person next to him. He also spend most of one class period snickering over the fact that he got a 69 on an exam.

Well, today, it was ten minutes until the end of class. I wasn't quite done (I was thinking I'd finish the chapter and we'd leave a bit early, but then a couple people had questions) and wasn't to a good stopping point yet, so I kept going.

And he groaned. Loudly, and pointedly, and in the most "OHGOD WHY IS SHE STILL TALKING WHEN THERE IS BEER TO BE DRUNK?" sense.

I fought down my annoyance and didn't respond but damn. This guy plans on being a doctor...or so he said at the beginning of the semester. All I can say is that he's got an awful lot of maturing to do if he thinks he's going to make it in med school.

So, deep breaths. I'm teaching for the people who get excited when they learn they CAN identify trees. Or the people who wish me a good weekend at the end of Friday class. Not for guys like this jerk.

Sometimes, you do the right thing.

I had a student call me up earlier this week. This is someone who has ALWAYS been in class, who has ALWAYS been engaged and responsible.

He said, sounding shaken: "My dad's in the hospital. They don't quite know what's wrong but they're talking about putting a pacemaker in. I don't know when they're taking him back for examination...I might not make it to class today."

I told him it was important that he be with his dad, that there was nothing happening in class that was more important than what he was doing now, and that he could get the handout I was giving either off the class website, or he could pick it up from me during office hours.

He stopped by to get the handout yesterday. And he thanked me profusely for being understanding of the situation. He said that his dad was better, apparently it's a problem that medication can control, so they're trying that first. I smiled and told him I had had family members with health problems (one year I raced up home in a hurry because a stress test showed a "blockage" on my dad and they were worried that he might need surgery - he did not, but I was grateful that I was able to be there). He said, "No, you don't understand: some of the professors were telling me, 'No, you need to be in class.'"

I don't know. I've had people ask for excused absences so they could wait in line to buy freaking movie tickets for a movie that was opening, or so they could drive 300 miles to see some band they liked play. I figure that a person's dad maybe going in for heart surgery is a valid reason for them to miss class.

I just told him he was welcome. But I felt good that he appreciated  my willingness to let him miss. It made me feel like I had maybe made one right decision this week.

Tired

I'm just tired. I think it's partly the "worst" allergy season in years (but they said that about last year, too), and the sudden onset of heat and humidity (dear God, what is the summer going to be like, if they're predicting 90 degrees for Palm Sunday?). But I think it's also what's going on in the world.

I haven't really said anything about the Martin/Zimmerman issue. Whenever I see something getting played up big in the media, and it seems like there's a simple narrative, I get a little suspicious. I also think that my input is not needed: I'm not a witness, I'm not an expert.

So many things I see in the news lately dismay me. Both the fact that the event happened to begin with (there's so much violence in the world) and also the way commentators want to spin the information to make it fit their own personal narrative.

It's one of those times that I have to remind myself that most of the things that go on in the world really don't affect me directly. I've started largely ignoring the news (except for a few minutes of local news, and that mainly to catch the weather). The place inside my head is a nicer place than the outside world. And really, save for voting in November, there's not a lot I can do to influence things. Oh, I mean, there are things I can do locally to affect individual people's lives...I can continue to do the volunteer work I do, or I can pick up trash off the roadside, or I can go to a committee meeting I'd really rather not but at which something important is going to be decided and I have some knowledge of the situation. But I can't influence the Supreme Court or write a budget for the U.S. that won't sink us further into debt, or eliminate the possibility of the Taliban rising again once we leave Afghanistan.

I wonder if maybe one of the problems of the 24-hour news cycle is that people begin to think of things having an immediate and extreme impact on their lives when those things are taking place half a world away. Or they think they can somehow change things by feeling strongly about them.

I don't know. I'm just very tired right now.

Sticking my fingers in my ears

Because I don't want to hear the ugliness that's coming.

Dick Cheney got a heart transplant.

I can already hear the howls of outrage about how he doesn't "deserve" one because he's a bad, bad man and a wrong-thinker and all of that (and also that he's, like, OLD).

You know what? That kind of thinking makes me sick. I may disagree with President Obama on just about everything, I may be annoyed by Mrs. Obama's attitudes...but if, God forbid, either of them needed an organ transplant, I'd hope they got it. And I'd hope they'd have the best surgeons available to do it.

Because they have family that loves them. Because they're fellow human beings, and I don't like to see fellow human beings suffer.

The allocation of donated organs is pretty complex and has a lot of ethical questions about it. But I'm not going to claim someone "deserves" to die when a good-match organ is available for them just because of their politics or their attitudes. (I would probably feel differently if it were a mass-murderer on Death Row, but none of the individuals I've named above fit that scenario).

Increasingly, I'm disgusted by the ugliness, the "other-making" that both sides seem to engage in ("other-making" - using language that tries to dehumanize your opponent). I turn off radio hosts who have ugly "pet names" for politicians they dislike, or who use snarky terminology. I try not to use it myself; I try to disagree with the ideas and articulate why I think they're bad ideas, rather than demonizing the person.

(And I admit, though I didn't hear the broadcast, I am deeply dismayed by Limbaugh's usage of "slut" in the case of Ms. Fluke. I think it makes far more sense to argue from the "can we really afford all these new entitlements as a nation, and what does it do to people's mindset to let them think that every last thing they want will be covered by the government (meaning: taxpayer money)." Now, maybe he said that, I don't know...but what got the publicity was the ugly name, and as a result, the real debate (IMHO) got lost...but I guess that's how it's going to be from now on, like four year olds in a sandbox, throwing dirt and ugly names and not really explaining anything or trying to make their positions understood. We're not HEARING each other any more; we just seem to be looking for the next "gotcha."

The good and the bad

I did some traveling over the past week (my spring break). There are good things and bad things about traveling in public. I take Amtrak, partly because I'm too claustrophobic for planes (on Amtrak, you may be in an enclosed area, but at least you have a normal-sized window and you can see, like, the Earth out of it.) But also because I don't like "security theater" in the airports where I'm essentially "told" by the actions of the Agents that they think I'm a potential criminal and therefore better watch myself. On Amtrak, at least thus far, any security checks are minimal - I'm asked to show a photo ID when I hand my ticket to the conductor or car attendant, and once or twice they've done spot checks asking people to show their ticket stubs en route, but I've never been patted down or had my bags examined. I've heard of TSA agents coming on the train, and I've seen them milling about some of the bigger stations at "big" travel days (I remember seeing them at Thanksgiving) but I've never been stopped by one....it seems they're just kind of there, maybe as a deterrent to things like pickpockets more than anything.

There are some problems with train travel:

Dude #1, carrying out a business convo on the train so loudly I could hear it in the next compartment. I would have written down and used the stock tips he was offering except he sounded like an idiot otherwise, so they'd probably be no good.

Laughing woman: I have no idea what was so funny but DAMN she laughed for like an hour. Loudly. So loudly I could hear it down the hall.

Children screaming and pounding on the walls of the compartment behind me, and then their parents yelling at them to be quiet.

Dude #2, in the dining car, all cursey and stuff. Look, I'm no angel, I use harsh language sometimes - but not in settings where there are children or other people who don't want to hear me mouthing off.

And while I don't remember it happening to me, I do remember seeing people "stranded" at a table in the dining car with three fellow seatmates, all of whom were totally engrossed in their smartphones...leaving the fourth person sort of an odd man out, left to stare out the window. While I don't expect to make lifelong friends on the train, I do think it's nice to at least speak to the people you're assigned to eat dinner with...

And there's always the potential for delays...even weather delays, even with Amtrak. And there's the potential for unpleasant employees but I have to say nearly all of the Amtrak staff I've dealt with recently - sleeping car attendants, a conductor, the people in the dining car - have been friendly and nice. (I think part of the secret is to say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me" and generally recognize the people as fellow human beings. Well, I also tip, and that probably helps, especially when I get the same people working the dining car that I've seen before...)

There are also some really nice things about train travel.

I mentioned the lack of "security theater" before - and the feeling of being safe on the rails (even if airlines are perhaps statistically-speaking, safer). But there are other things:

As I said, I get a compartment. That means quite a few hours of mostly-uninterrupted (if the parents in the next compartment can persuade their kids to stop banging on the walls) reading time. I read a couple of books this time; one on Ice Ages in general, another one on the Little Ice Age (the roughly 1300-1850 time span of colder European temperatures). And part of a book on the lost colony of Roanoake.

And there's the scenery. It's not always great - we seem to pass a lot of junkyards and blighted neighborhoods, probably part of that is NIMBY at work - but there are also lots of nice small towns and interesting Ozark scenery (though I'm usually asleep for that).

Just as you get to see the annoying people, you get to see interesting people. I stepped out at one of the longer station-stops (a crew change stop so they let people get off and walk or smoke) and I saw a group of Amish teenaged girls (I think they were teenagers; they were about the height and build you'd expect of young teens but it's hard to tell from the clothes) running races up and down the platform for exercise. (Lots of Amish and the more-traditional Mennonites (you can tell them by their dress; some of the more liberal Mennonites don't dress differently from an ordinary person) use the train.) An older couple with a teenaged disabled son helping him out, he was really excited to be traveling on the train. A young couple apparently on honeymoon taking their photo next to the train car they were in. The usual crew of train buffs or retired train employees who will tell you all kinds of interesting stories if you let them...

I also like most of the employees I come into contact with. I'm sure there are the "bad seeds," the people who know their job is probably largely a sinecure (I don't think it's easy to fire a federal unionized employee) but most of the people I come into contact with seem to enjoy working on the train and seem to enjoy people. Several of the dining car attendants who are regularly on the run I take greet me almost like an old friend. I don't know if that's because I tip fairly generously, or because I'm polite, or because I don't make crazy special-snowflake requests (and trust me, I've seen those, in the dining car) or some combination...but it's kind of nice to walk into the dining room and have someone say, "Ohhh...you must be on break again!"

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I'm only PART Irish (about 1/4) and my family never was much into "ethnicity" when I was growing up, so I'm not terribly in touch with my various heritages. And also, my father "switched allegiances" (his family was largely non-practicing Catholic - my mother's family was fairly staunch Protestant, so they wound up as Disciples of Christ and that's how I wound up as one).

And I'm not a big fan of the "drink green beer until it comes out your various orifices" celebration that this day seems to be (or at least, seems to be in the large college towns: years ago I lived down the street from a nominally-Irish bar and I just knew to wear earplugs the night of St. Patrick's Day).

But I do like the idea of this as a more reflective day. I've always been fond of the prayer/poem attributed to St. Patrick, commonly called "St. Patrick's Breastplate."

I especially like this section:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

It does, to me, convey that idea of being surrounded and protected by Christ.

I admit, a lot of days lately I "fail" at the "Christ within me" part - I get too annoyed at my fellow humans, I don't have the patience and tolerance and the ability to stop and go, "They may have some underlying problem that's making them do this" (Like: the person who cuts you off in traffic may be preoccupied because they are on the way to the hospital to see someone very ill). So it's something I need to work on more: being better at showing compassion and tolerance when it's warranted, giving "tough love" when necessary (because Christ showed tough love when He knew it would benefit the person - like the woman at the well, who had been married multiple times, but was at that moment living with a man to whom she was not married). And I need to work on being better and discerning when compassion is needed and when tough love is needed. (But I find that so hard. I think that's one of my blind spots in understanding my fellow humans).

The rest of the "Breastplate" can be found here

Sleep and dreams

Gah. I'm having the awful, oppressive, upsetting dreams again. This happens when I'm both physically stressed (this is an uncommonly bad allergy season) and mentally stressed (lots of work to do, not a lot  of free time, a couple of rather difficult students in my classes). I actually dreamed last night that one of my students committed suicide and left behind a note essentially saying it was my fault because I wasn't "nicer" to him, and I was having to defend myself before some sort of a tribunal. Before that, I was dreaming about having to carry a jar of mud (? why? I don't know, but apparently it had some purpose) around the vacant lot of the house where I grew up and deliver it to someone without being seen and captured. (It was like some kind of a wartime thing. Perhaps I was influenced by watching part of "I Was a Male War Bride" on TCM the night before, despite its being a comedy....)

I hate that. I hate it when sleep stops being a refuge and starts being something I fight a little because of the dreams I might have. (I woke up from one of those dreams with a pounding heart and in a sweat. It's possible it was a hot flash - thank you very much, perimenopause - but I couldn't get back to sleep for like an hour).

I try to use little mental scenarios to help myself fall asleep. I imagine a place to live that's different from where I live - a lot of them are inspired by things I see on Tiny House Blog. I don't know why I have the recurring fantasy of having a little cabin in the woods, off the grid - but I go through all the imaginings of how I'd have it set up (somewhere cool enough in the summers that I wouldn't need to worry about having enough power for air conditioning; having LED lights that draw less energy, so maybe I could make do with solar panels and be off the grid...). Or a lighthouse. Or a big old farmhouse somewhere really remote, where I make my living raising apples or pears or something.Or even weirder places, like a treehouse (though I still haven't figured out how a person would work indoor plumbing in one, and I'd need indoor plumbing). or a cave that's outfitted for human habitation.

The funny thing is, in every single dang one of these fantasies, I live alone. I guess I've lived alone long enough that it's not really possible for me to imagine - at least in my going-to-sleep-fantasies - sharing my habitation with another person. (Not even really a pet, although in some variants of the farmhouse daydream I have sheep or horses, but they have their own place to live and sleep at night, separate from me).

I get very elaborate in my imaginings...down to what kind of floor-coverings I have, where the bookshelves are, how (in the houses without a lot of windows) I get enough light in my off-the-grid life to be able to read.

I don't know what it says about me that so many of my daydream type of things involve me living far away from other humans. I'm really not THAT antisocial. I suppose it's that I get sufficiently fed up with dealing with people during an average workday that it seems like a nice fantasy to have days upon days where I don't see or speak to another human being...

The little pleasures

Of the small pleasures in life, I think one of the best ones is being able to get into a warm shower on a chilly day.

(And yes, it's chilly here - chilly and rainy.)

I wonder if people in the developed world, who have always lived with safe clean running water really appreciate what a blessing it is. (I was without hot water for a couple weeks a few years ago when my water heater died, and more recently was without water AT ALL for a week when the line leading up to my house cracked. Living without running water - or without hot water - is possible, but it's certainly not convenient.)

It makes a difference.

Some weeks back, I helped out at a campus recruitment event. I do this every year; it counts for service and I kind of enjoy doing it. I help out with the second half of the event. This year, the colleague of mine who does the first half got bronchitis and lost her voice, so I took over the first half of the event as well.

Yesterday I got the thank-you letter they send out (a form letter that we can then stick in our post-tenure review files). However, the person in charge of the event attached a separate handwritten note thanking me for stepping in at the last minute (and also coming EXTRA early and hauling a lot of stuff).

And you know? It makes a difference. I know we should not expect to be thanked for doing things like that but it makes a difference. I'm far more likely to volunteer for stuff again if I feel like people notice what I'm doing and appreciate it.

Sadly, this isn't always the case with volunteer work. I've worked in capacities where all I heard were complaints. And yeah, okay, if someone is actually doing something wrong, they need to be corrected on it. But an ongoing stream of petty, "Why aren't you doing it exactly the way I want it?" comments wears a person down and saps their good will.

In my field - in the sciences - praise and even thanks for stuff you've done are rare. (It seems to me that in the art-related fields, it's more common). Sadly, it's gotten to the point where if someone praises something I've done too heartily, I'm immediately suspicious: what are they going to ask me to do? What kind of agonizing task do they have lined up for me that they are buttering me up to do?

Still, it's nice to get that little handwritten note that says, in effect: Hey, I saw that you took on more work than you were planning and more than was expected of you initially. Thank you for being willing to do that.

Hypothetical question

This hasn't happened yet, but I suspect someday it's coming.

 If a student in your class drives drunk, gets thrown in the pokey and loses their license over it, do you have to treat it the same way that you'd treat an illness in another student? Meaning, if they miss an exam, and your "emergency illness" policy is that they can make up the exam, do you have to do it for the DUI student?

 My inclination is a strong "no." People choose to drink, they choose to drink to excess, then they choose to drive once they are drunk (which is a very stupid and dangerous thing to do). (And yeah, I suppose someone will make the tiresome argument that some people "bring" illness upon themselves by not eating enough vegetables or some damn thing. Well, it's not as clear of a cause-and-effect as "get wasted, drive, get stopped by cops and you're in trouble" is)

I bring this up partly because I have a student I'm concerned with...I think they have a substance-abuse problem. I can't tell for sure, other than they miss a LOT of class with no excuse given, they are often kind of vague and unfocused in class (can't follow directions, get things hopelessly muddled - this is the person who called me up all angry that I didn't tell them where lab was going to be when I had mentioned in class "We will meet in the lab room this afternoon"). Sometimes they smell VERY strongly of mouthwash, which I think is one way people cover up the smell of alcohol? I don't know. I admit, this person is also a thorn in my side: they are one of the multi-disability people who want to demand even more accommodations. I had to call Disability Concerns to ask, "Is it really true I have to allow make-up labs for this person even if their absence was unrelated to their disability?" because that is what the person was claiming. (The official answer: no way, not if you don't do make-up labs for others).

 Also, this person has (apparently) still not taken the most recent exam, which was on Friday (They have to take it in a quiet-room setting). I expressly told this person they NEEDED to take the exam on the same day as the rest of the class, and I e-mailed the head of Disability Concerns to inform him of it. I told him if the exam isn't on my desk by the end of this week (well, I was more polite than that), the student can forget it. This one person is driving me to fits and making me miserable. Part of me wishes they'd drop but as this course is a required course for graduation...if they drop or fail, I'll just see them again in the future.

Frustrated

This is why I very rarely discuss politics IRL.

It seems the tone of discourse has become, "If you disagree with me, you are a wrong, unprincipled, hateful person. And probably stupid as well."

If someone questions whether birth control should be 100% paid for, they are branded anti-woman. If someone suggests that just MAYBE Catholic institutions should not be required to pay for birth control for employees, because it's against their religious teachings, that person gets branded anti-birth-control and it's said of them that they want to BAN birth control.

It's argument by hysteria and I'm sick of it.

My argument on the whole health-care-paying-for-birth-control-and-the-like issue stems more from the fact that we are probably 10 years away from being in Greece's financial situation - do we REALLY want to keep down that path, or do we want to do something now that might prevent it? Health care is only part of it - many other things will have to be cut. Things that are painful to most of us. I think I've said before I'd be grudgingly okay with means-tested Social Security for my generation (which means I probably wouldn't get any, but then again, will I get any Social Security if things continue as they are now?) if it meant that the people who really NEED it in the future have a better shot at getting it.

But the nuances of argument get lost in "you wanna push Granny off the cliff!"

The thing is, I don't think we can keep spending money as a government the way we are now. If you're deeply in debt as an individual, do you keep spending? (Wait....don't answer that).

Say I was deeply in debt as an individual...say I had some huge expenses. Say, the water line to my house broke and needed to be replaced (as it did, recently). How do I pay for it? Well, I take the money I had saved up and spend it on that. Then I curtail my discretionary spending - not eating out at restaurants, not buying books, etc. - until I've saved back up what I spent. Yeah, it sucks. But it's better than having the water line break and having to take out a loan (and go through the approval process for same) BEFORE I could fix it.

I think as a nation we need to take that attitude more with our governmental projects - not just assume that somehow the money will magically appear in the future, 'cos it won't.

But I'm really REALLY really REALLY disgusted with the "you're just an ugly antifeminist" attitude that people are taking with anyone who dares question whether our government should be paying for birth control for everyone....

Tornadoes

Like a lot of the rest of you, I've been watching, horrified, at the aftermath of the Midwest (and South) tornadoes this past week. I'm just old enough to remember the big tornado outbreak of 1974 in Xenia, Ohio. I grew up in Northeastern Ohio (the opposite side of the state) from Xenia, but it was still a big thing in the news. (I guess the Xenia tornadoes were part of a much larger outbreak, but I remember that day as the Xenia tornadoes, because that was what was in the news. Funny, it was a few weeks after my brother was born and I don't even REMEMBER him being on the scene... I guess he was up in his cradle or something.)

Even though I live now in what's traditionally considered "tornado alley," I remember far more tornado worries as a kid - running to the basement with my parents when the sirens sounded. Some springs, I remember keeping my treasured Snoopy doll (the one thing I felt I would have really been lost without) as close to me as possible (at least when I was at home) so that if the siren sounded, I could grab him and get to the basement (I knew there was no way on Earth my parents would let me run up to my bedroom to get ANYTHING).

I suppose the reason I weathered a lot more tornado warnings during the years of my childhood than the years I've lived here is that tornado forecasting has gotten so much better...in some cases, in metropolitan areas, they can give the intersection of streets nearest the worst of the storm. And radar is a lot, lot better than the grainy, green-and-white radar I remember from my childhood. And all of that is a great blessing and I don't always think people appreciate how much the forecasting of dangerous weather has improved.

But still, in some cases, apparently the best warnings, the most careful behavior when taking shelter can't resist natural forces...My prayers are with the families who lost family members in these tornadoes, and with the people who lost everything and are going to have to try to rebuild their lives. I know everyone says "Stuff is just stuff" and lots of things are replaceable....but some things, like photos and heirlooms, really aren't, and if they're gone, all you can really do is cherish your memories of them.

I hope this is the last we hear of bad tornadoes this spring. I hope the climate patterns this year (it looks like another La Nina year) do not lead to more "extreme" weather events.

I'm trying to understand

I suppose it's a curse of being an academic/curious person, but I try to understand other people's motivations, why they do things. Sometimes, I guess you can't.

I keep thinking of the latest school shooting. I grew up not too terribly far from Chardon, Ohio. I kind of know the area (Haven't been back in 20 years, but that's another matter). When I turned on the news one day and saw the breaking news of the school shooting, my response was, as always: "NOOOOOOO!"

I don't get it. I can think of exactly one situation where I could justify to myself killing another person: Self-defense, if I or someone weaker than I, were in clear and immediate peril of dying. Like, for example, if someone had a knife to a friend's throat, and I had a gun and a clear shot - I'd take that shot. Or if someone broke into my house at night and threatened me with a weapon. Other than that, no. Even in the case of bullies. Even in the case of something like blackmail. Even in the case of something that might ruin your reputation.

I suppose the fact that it's teenagers involved in these shootings says something. I know, teenagers are prone to believe things will NEVER get better. That it's always going to be like that. I suspect that's part of the reason behind the high suicide rate - people are using a permanent solution to what is actually a temporary problem. (Thank God my parents were there for me, thank God that I felt even at the worst days at school when I felt like I'd never fit in ANYWHERE that they cared about me and that at least I fit in in my family...)

Every time I hear of a school shooting, I wonder: are they becoming more frequent, or does the 24-hour news cycle and the (possibly false) sense of connectedness we have now mean they get reported more? When I was growing up, most of the news you heard - other than big global things like about OPEC meetings or yet another Soviet leader dying - was purely local. If there was a school shooting in Washington State or in Maine or somewhere, I don't know if we would have heard it. But now with CNN and Fox and MSNBC and all of those, with hours and hours to fill, and with competition - with the need to grab people's eyes - sensationalistic stuff makes the news.

And sometimes I wonder if for sick or evil people, if that doesn't feed the desire to do things like this: a way of going out in a blaze of - well, not glory, but a blaze of SOMETHING - of getting 15 minutes of fame. I suspect a big number of school shootings are really intended as what's called "suicide by cop" - the shooter wants to die, but instead of just killing himself (have there been ANY school shootings done by girls? I'm sure girls can be violent but it seems to me in our culture that we're more likely to turn our anger on ourselves alone - so girls seem more likely to simply commit suicide without taking others along), he has to kill others as well. I suppose because in some twisted way, he thinks it makes him a big man, or it impresses or scares other people. (I dunno. I suspect Satan's seen far worse in his career...)

I also wonder if the casual attitudes towards life and death in our culture (not just violence in the media, not just video games that celebrate being a thug...) is part of it. Or if part of it is that it's increasingly easy to see the other person as not-a-person. (One thing my faith teaches me, and it often stops me up short when I'm cussing about someone driving foolishly on the road, or complaining about someone in the line ahead of me in the grocery store: we are all children of God. God loves us all. Whether we know it or not, whether we believe it or not....we're all human, we all have some kind of value. That person who is arguing with the wal-mart cashier was someone's baby once. That guy pulling in and out of lanes on the interstate and making driving risky could be someone's dad. Maybe he's doing risky stuff because he's hurrying to get to the hospital, where someone he love is close to death... in my calmer moments I can remind myself of this and am less likely to go off on people. Oh, people still frustrate and annoy me - or rather, their behaviors do - but I try to see them as PEOPLE, first and foremost). And I wonder if a lot of these shooters are seeing the people they're mowing down as just so much meat, so much grass, not people.

I don't like the angle that "he was bullied, he was in a program for at-risk kids." Because that's too pat and too easy. I was bullied to a certain extent in school. I know lots of kids who were bullied worse than I was - some of my Youth Group kids, for example. I also know kids who got sent to the "alternative" high school (though in my town, that seems mostly to be for girls who are "in the family way" and maybe a few kids whose parents caught them with pot). That stuff doesn't make someone a bad person,  and it sure doesn't justify violence to others. Bullying is a huge problem but it seems that scrutinizing the bullied kids - which is what the "oh, he was bullied so he shot up a school" would seem to suggest - is not the answer.

I don't know. Every time one of these shootings happens, I cringe: there's probably no easy way to prevent them...it seems to me that teaching kids from cradle days the value of human life, to treat others kindly even if they don't always treat you well, and that tough times don't last. And probably also how to "fight back" on a small scale. (I think also allowing schools to expel the worst bullies might help. Or, for that matter, dropping the age at which compulsory schooling would end - but that's another question for another time). I think a lot of the policies in place at schools right now allow things to fester and escalate so that when things happen, they're big and bad.

I heard they're trying the guy as a juvenile. I think that's unfortunate.

Makes me sad

I commented yesterday how Santorum had lost me (not that he ever HAD me - he's a little too far on the nanny-state-of-the-right end of the spectrum for me). And then I got to thinking: Has there EVER been a presidential candidate (at least, that made it down toward the end) that I was super enthusiastic about and wanted to vote for because he or she was great, rather than vote for because he or she was marginally better than the other person running?

And I realized the last person I felt like that about was Reagan's second term.

And I wasn't even old enough to vote then.

That's really sad.

One little happy thing

I think this is the worst spring allergy season I've ever weathered. I'm just miserable, but am holding it together and coming in to work because the thought of the paperwork to take a sick day doesn't feel worth it.

One happy thing though: one of my intro students, after the exam last week, saw me in the hall. He asked if I had them graded, I said I had just begun them, and then he said, "Well, I'm excited for this exam. I studied really hard and I think I did well."

He earned a 96 - the top score. So he was right to be excited. (So often I deal with people who either think they should get maximum results for minimum effort, who don't seem to give a crap about their education - "studying hard? What's that?", or who totally take for granted earning good grades).

(Also, one drive-by comment: Not that he ever really had me all that much to begin with, but Santorum's "indoctrinating professors" comment lost me forever from supporting him. Yes, I agree that not everyone needs to go to college. And I suppose there are some professors who push their agendas in the classroom. But, HELL. If you go to the movies, if you watch Comedy Central, if you listen to really any of the news channels out there now, you are getting some kind of doctrine pushed at you. I'm really tired of profs getting singled out for this, and I'm getting really tired of working hard at a career where I feel like no one outside the university respects me. I know, I know...I shouldn't expect that. But it just seems to me that back when I was a kid, when my dad was a prof, profs were respected, it was seen as a worthwhile career that helped society. Now we're seen as parasites at best. And yes, ballooning university tuitions are a problem....but none of us on my campus have had a pay raise for some six years (well, maybe the administrators have, I don't know). I make a good living ($60K if I teach summers) but I don't think I'm wildly overpaid.

(As I've said before, I think the ballooning tuitions are a fault of three things: first, increasing unfunded mandates towards things like mainstreaming and green initiatives and stuff, and the administrative structure that comes with them - and then there are also lots of vice presidents that are created positions to honor someone (or conversely, get someone you can't fire but want out of the classroom, out of the classroom). And then also, the demand on the part of students and parents for the Newest and Greatest: cafeterias, new dorms with washers and dryers in every suite, fancy workout centers (not for the athletes; for the average student), computer centers with new computers every other year...all of that costs money. And also the fact that stuff like gas, electricity, all those things are going up)

Then again, are there ANY careers today that seem to enjoy general respect? I mean, other than sports stars and movie stars? One of the reasons I love "Dirty Jobs" is that Mike Rowe treats the people mucking out stables or dealing with garbage with respect - and those are people who really DO deserve respect, as they're the behind-the-scenes folks who do the stuff that keeps our society running. (But still, I'd like for once for professors not to be vilified. Yes, I know, there are the lazy tenured people who make the rest of us look bad, but honestly, on my campus at least, they must be less than 10% of the population...)

The death of fun?

This is something that's been rattling around in my brain for a few days: are we, as a culture, forgetting how to have fun? (Or is it just me?)

I watched a few minutes of a documentary on, of all things, Tupperware, while taking a break during my workout (yes, there's some irony there, as I'll note later). They showed film from the get-togethers that the Tupperware sales people - I guess the top-sellers? had, where people (mostly women, because the people who hosted the parties were women) were water-skiing, and speedboating, and even doing a few reckless looking things (I remember a shot of a boat actually being started up on land, and propelling itself into water).

And yeah, yeah: I know the common belief that the 50s were an awful stifling time to be female (though from what my mom's said, being in grad school and a young-married in the late 50s and early 60s does not sound so bad: she and my dad gave dinner parties with themes, and they learned how to cook different international foods, and they went to plays, and they had cookouts with friends, and there seemed to be a culture of "let's get together on the weekends and hang out or play badminton or something" in the department my dad was in at the time)

But now, so much, it seems that a lot of stuff people used to enjoy is now clearly marked Bad For You. (When was the last time you heard of a cocktail party? I don't remember my parents ever giving them so much, but I do remember when I was a kid and they'd have dinner parties, they did serve a few types of cocktails (they didn't have an extensive bar set-up, they weren't regular drinkers) for the people who wanted them.). Or how many times have you seen someone be served a delicious restaurant meal or dessert, only for them to say, "oh, this looks SINFUL."

Stop it, people. Stop. It. Can't we just enjoy something for once without telling the world how guilty we feel (or, more likely: pretending to feel guilty because we think that makes us look virtuous).

Or: going for a drive. The price of gas now makes that prohibitive but even before that, it seems that just tooling around in your car is now sort of looked down upon; it's something that's "not done" any more. (Of course, some people have such awful commutes that the last thing they want to do on a Sunday afternoon is to go for a drive). But I know Sunday drives used to be a common amusement: heck, when I was a kid (after the oil embargoes ended), my family used to do them occasionally.

And a lot of things that used to seem fun have been so regulated, so controlled, so vetted for safety, that they're no longer spontaneous - look at the playgrounds where things like swings have been taken down, because a kid might hurt himself or herself.

And other things are now made "medicinal" - there's a PSA that runs on the cartoon channel about "Get out and play, an hour a day" exhorting the kiddies to run around lest they become obese. When I was a kid, running around an hour a day was just a given; going outside to play after school was the reward for either not having homework, or getting your homework done. Now it's been turned into something people "must" do. And adults exercise for health - I do an hour-long workout most days, and it's not fun. Oh, maybe the first 20 minutes or so is, but after that, it's just enforced, because I know I need to do it for good health. (If I had more free time in my life, maybe I'd hike. Or I'd bike, if my balance and the horrible potholey streets and the terrible drivers in my town didn't make me feel I was taking my life into my hands). When I was a kid, getting exercise was easy, and we didn't think of it as exercise....

And other things. Certain foods become "approved" because they have health-giving compounds. You "should" eat a certain amount of fatty fish in a week. Or, a small square (but only a small one!) of dark chocolate - because it's good for you.

And hobbies: I know people who take up hobbies not because they want to relax or have fun, but because they've read that Sudoku or crossword puzzles or bridge slows down mental decline.

And stuff like Farmer's Markets....or shopping at local businesses. I started doing it because it was fun, now I'm told it's a virtuous thing to do. And you know? Going to the Farmer's Market is less enjoyable when you have people walking around talking loudly about how much "better" they are than the louts who shop at wal-mart. 

And it seems that any more, we spend a lot of time either apologizing for stuff that seems "sinful" (because it's not expressly good for us) or justifying things as being "good for us." And for me, I don't know, that saps a lot of the enjoyment of things away. It's like we all now have giant checklists of Thou Shalts and Thou Shalt Nots (Or at least If Thou Dost, Thou Must Express Thy Feelings of Guilt).

And the thing is: in a lot of arenas, we aren't really allowed to talk about the things that traditional religions would classify as sins: cheating on your spouse, lying to people, being unkind to others...

And it also seems that there's a frantic but fruitless attempt to have fun - I would argue that a lot of the cheating-on-spouses falls into this category. (And I'd imagine it's not really fun, not in the long run, and causes more guilt, even in the most debauched person, than eating a big slice of chocolate cake would). Or we go after more and more loud, flashy, and in some cases, violent entertainment.

I think of what older relatives talk about having done for "fun" back in the day - they played cards. Or they made popcorn and sat around the table and talked. Or the kids rode bikes all over town. Or they jumped off the railroad trestle into the river and swam (wow, would that ever be illegal now. But my mom said she never heard of anyone being injured or killed doing it...). People had less "stuff" (especially in my mom's family), but they spent more time just enjoying themselves - no one really "exercised" (except for the guys on the football or track teams, and that was to build themselves up to compete), no one really worried about what they ate except for a few people with health problems.

It seems to me we're turning into a nation of worriers...unable to have fun.  That we overestimate some risks (and maybe, underestimate others).

Oh, I'm sure some of this is colored by my own feelings right now: I'm working a really tough schedule this semester, and it seems most days I come home, do what I "must" (Grading, generally) for the next day, and then am too tired (and it's too late in the day, at any rate) for having fun. And it seems the people around me are equally weighed down by work: I can't remember the last time a group of us from the department went out to lunch together (we used to do that several times a semester).

And I don't know how to change things or fix things...

What I need

I think this weekend I need an extended period of time in my sewing room.

I have a quilt top partly done (as in, I was stitching two pieces of fabric together, the phone rang, I went to answer it, and then never got back to it other than to turn off the sewing machine).

Making quilts - like knitting and embroidery - are things that keep me from getting too "broken." It's what brings me back to who I am, and helps me forget the troubling things of the past week. (Like: one of my disabilities-concerns students called me up ALL ANGRY because I didn't tell him what room the lab met in, and he didn't know where to go. Um....we meet in the room where we always meet. The room that's listed on your schedule. This is someone who was absent for the past three labs and he acted as if I had deliberately moved the lab and not told him....he didn't even bother to check before calling if we were in the same room as we had been in the last time he showed up to lab. And yes, I realize, I have to discount some of the reaction because of the challenges he may face, but: I don't like having long, rambling, hostile, angry phone messages. Also, he called when he KNEW I was in class...actually called while the lab he "couldn't find" was in session.)

It also helps me shrug off some of the bad news that presses on me - like that there's a move afoot to abolish tenure for profs in my state (and apparently that includes ALREADY tenured people...and profs could be let go without clear cause, which is extremely alarming. I mean, I'm a good teacher and I do probably my fair share of research and more than my fair share of service...but still, tick off the wrong legislator and you're gone. Or maybe make a little TOO much pay in one year, and you could be replaced by a younger model. And while in some cases there'd probably be recourse in the form of appeals, still, that makes everyone's lives more difficult. We already have post-tenure review, with the aim of  "encouraging" people to do their best (I've never heard of tenure being revoked for non-performance, but the way our Policies and Principles manual is worded, it sounds to me like it could be).

I try to remind myself  that things will ultimately be OK (even if that "OK" means "only in the Afterlife"), but I'm a born worrier, so it's hard to shut that kind of thing off. But going and working on quilt tops - either sewing pieces together, or cutting a new quilt - does.

Friday has to come early for me this week.

Busybodies. Freaking busybodies.

The people who will intrude in other people's lives and tell them how to live their lives, even when that person is hurting NO ONE (or no one but themselves) with their choices. This news story of the little girl whose lunch was allegedly confiscated because a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, a box of apple juice, and a bag of potato chips aren't "nutritional" enough (and in return, her mom was forced to buy a school lunch, of which the girl ate three "chicken" nuggets - and I use the scare quotes deliberately, if the nuggets are like the cafeteria nuggets I've had).

I feel for that kid. If I had been her? I would have cried inconsolably for the rest of the day - I was a little rule-follower, and even when the rules made no sense, I tried to follow them. And I was also an unpopular kid, so I felt like the teachers were my only allies at school - and so, if I felt they turned against me by ratting me out to the Food Police...well. I probably would have begged my parents Never To Go Back To School Ever Again.

The thing is - when we're graduating kids who can't read, who can't show basic respect to another human being, and who can't even minimally take care of themselves - it's WAY overstepping bounds to criticize a lunch a kid's mom packed for her.

 There are so many OTHER busybodies in the world. I fully expect before my career ends, I will see myself forced to either submit my packed lunch for Health Inspection or be required to prove I exercise the amount of time I do in a day - under the guise of "Wellness." (Already, my health insurance company sends me a god-awful nannying "birthday" card reminding me of crap like, "If you're overweight, get your weight under control" and "eat lots of fruits and vegetables and less meat and sweets." And "move more, eat less." RAEG. Like I'm not smart enough to figure out that leading a healthy lifestyle is good for me. (And yeah, yeah - I know, there are people who probably AREN'T. But why harass me? I barely make my deductible by December, it's not like I'm a huge drain on their resources.) Oh, and of course there's the obligatory "limit stress." Well, if stress is the result of a thwarted desire to choke the living daylights out of some idiot who desperately deserves it, the health insurer is a little late on that one.

With all the health-nannying, food-nannying, exercise-nannying kids get, I would not be surprised if in five or ten years eating disorders among teens and young adults becomes even more common, and then people run around going, "How could this have happened? SOMETHING MUST BE DONE."

Also: exercise in the form of running around outside (like I used to do as a kid, and frankly, I was a pretty skinny kid) becomes a lot LESS fun when you have the President's wife coming on television to tell you you "should" be doing it.

Trying to love them.

Mostly, I like my students. (I particularly like my soil science class this semester; they're all pleasant and responsible people. I could probably set up the lab, unlock the door, and let them have at it without my having to be there...and I'd come back to find they'd successfully completed the lab AND cleaned everything up - in fact, left the lab cleaner than it was when they walked in.)

But I have three students...well, that I probably need an attitude adjustment about (this comes because my women's Bible group last night wound up discussing how we are called to love the unloveable).

Person #1: wrote "joke" answers on the first exam. One "joke" answer I can roll with, sometimes it even makes me laugh. (I wrote, "Nice try but no points" next to his first one). But as I went on, I got the distinct feeling that (a) this person isn't taking this class seriously and (b) he put in some of these answers on the assumption that I wasn't going to READ the exam, just skim and give points for filled-in places. Which irritates me, because that means he assumes I'm not doing my job. (This is someone I've had in class before and he does seem like someone who doesn't take his education as seriously as he could).

Person #2: I actually have an easier time with this person because I understand there are extenuating circumstances. This is someone with multiple learning disabilities (and because of HIPAA, I can't know what they are). They lack "filters" and tend to blurt stuff in class, which makes me tense up and makes class uncomfortable. But they're also one of those bad-luck bears: they've been out sick or injured (apparently this person was in a car wreck last week) quite a bit, and they huffily* told me when I suggested they needed to get over to Disability Concerns and take the test I had dropped off that, "The dean told me I had a week to get everything made up." Interesting, the dean didn't bother to inform the student's professors....Also, this is someone that several faculty strongly suspect has a substance-abuse problem, and I'm coming to see how they see that, and wonder myself. (I just really hope this person can pass my class on the first go, so I'm not dealing with them for multiple semesters). The sad thing is, this is someone who plans to be a neurobiologist/neurosurgeon...and I just don't think they have the ability. They can't focus for very long at a time....

(*I suppose it could be that they're autism-spectrum and I'm interpreting brusqueness that some autism-spectrum people have as "huffiness.")

#3 is the one I have the hardest time with. This is someone who is/believes himself to be very popular: he's in a frat (I think he's even an officer). He wears ironic sideburns. And he's a jerk to me and the other students in class. I've had to speak to him twice (in what, four weeks of class?) about him talking loudly and out of turn in class. And he comes unprepared and then gets upset when he gets 'called' on it, as if "Because I'm in a frat and I'm Mr. Cool, I shouldn't have to do this stuff." He earned a 69 on his first exam and proceeded during the rest of class to crack jokes about "69." Dude, I know what that number represents in the sexual realm. But let me tell you, in the grading realm, in this class? It means that you will need to repeat the class unless you do much better. (I try to have a sense of humor, but there are some things I just can't have a sense of humor about very much.) (I will say if he needs to repeat the class? I will not be teaching this particular class in the fall so I won't have to deal with him. I guess I can take comfort in that.)

So, I realize we're called to pray for our "enemies" (and I don't really regard these as "enemies," just as people I let get under my skin). So I guess I need to try to pray for these people. (And not necessarily pray, "Please let Person #3 not be a jerk today")

A quick question...

What would your interpretation be if you were driving in to work and the person ahead of you had a U.S. flag on their car antenna, but the flag was upside down?

Is it just someone who's too much of an idiot to put it on correctly? (At that, I will say I'm not fond of flags as car antenna decorations and such - they get tattered very fast and that seems disrespectful to me). Or are they sending a message? I know militarily, a flag flown upside down means "we are in dire distress" but I have also known people who seemed to hate and reject a lot of what the U.S. stands for as flying/wearing flags upside down. Of course, that was during the Bush era, so I don't know. Maybe it means something different now. I don't know. I don't think I'd fly a flag upside down unless my state had been invaded by a foreign army and no help was forthcoming....

So I don't know what to make of the driver in the car. (I didn't see a university parking sticker on it, so I don't think it's likely it's a prof here).

I know we have some serious problems, both in terms of fiscal policy/government spending and also in terms of those in Washington figuring they're entitled to do what they want, regardless of the will of the people (or in some cases, the Constitution), but I still think we have hope as a nation. I also think maybe people are beginning to wake up about the idea of over-reaching government, what with this fight over Obama wanting to require Catholic institutions to pay for birth control for their workers. (I think - and I certainly HOPE - the First Amendment wins here. And I know that, as a Protestant, if I were working at a Catholic institution, I would not expect birth control to be made available to me: you take a job, you accept the fundamental policies of your employer.)

Sugar is the new salt...

Apparently the new bugaboo that needs to be limited is sugar. Because we're not smart enough to limit our intakes ourselves. Or sugar is addictive. Or whatever.

(I find it ironic that there is someone running for president who apparently favors legalization of all drugs - even meth - and yet, there are others who would make sugar a controlled substance).

I guess what the would-be regulators want to regulate is processed food that's high in sugar - sodas, candy bars and the like. (I say "guess" because the article is behind a paywall: a link to it is in this Forbes article). But if they really wanted to regulate "all" sugar - wtf? Does that mean fruit becomes contraband? And what about using sugar as a preservative - for many years, jams and jellies were one way of keeping nature's bounty edible by using enough sugar to prevent microbial spoilage of the fruit. (Yes, we have freezers now. But they're bad for the environment: all that refrigerant, all that electricity). And sugar used to be a part of curing meat (it still is, as far as I know). And glucose - hell, glucose is what cells RUN on. Yes, they can make that from non-sugar things, but still. Do they still allow Type I diabetics to carry glucose tablets? I can see regulations on sugar "for our own good" carrying all kinds of unintended consequences.

I don't know. This kind of thing makes me tired, but I suppose if we wind up with some kind of federally-subsidized healthcare for all (and I think that's coming, no matter how hard people are still fighting it), we will be told it's our patriotic duty to submit to these regulations (and others) because we're not smart enough or strong enough to limit sugar intake on our own. That anyone who develops Type II Diabetes (never mind that it's a disease with a strong genetic component) didn't do all they could to keep from costing the government - and by extension, the taxpayers - a lot of money. Public shaming! You get the red D to wear on your chest!

I limit my sugar intake. I don't AVOID sugar, I don't tie myself in knots over "Oh cripes, I WANT this tangerine. But it has sugar in it, and that's bad, and besides, I already had an apple earlier today, I'm probably better off just sucking on this broccoli stem instead." But I don't go crazy with the amount of sugar because, well, it's better for my health to have balance in my diet. (For example: I don't care for soda, so not drinking soda is a convenient way for me to avoid large amounts of sugar. But if you like soda and want to drink it, peace be with you.) I try to take responsibility for my own diet and I am insulted that there are people who are telling me I'm ADDICTED to sugar and need to be made to go cold turkey.

I like chocolate - so I eat a little chocolate every few days. And dammit, I don't want to have to go to Walgreen's someday and ask the pharmacist, and sign a register, like you do for psuedoephedrine.

Here's the thing: a bureaucracy's goal is to perpetuate itself. When we've managed to, I don't know, people starving in the streets (though the ads tell us childhood hunger is still a big problem), bureaucracies have to find something else to do. And since we're (still) a prosperous nation where most of the problems have been solved, bureaucracies manage by demonizing and regulating other stuff. First it was trans fats. Then it was salt (at least in NYC). Now it looks like sugar's next. And then there are those articles out there about how sitting is really, really bad for you - maybe we could lower unemployment by having the government hire people on the dole to hang out in office buildings and scream at workers every 10 minutes or so to get up and walk around.

If we were in the middle of a famine (and God forbid that ever happens), I don't expect we'd see the stories about how "food x is really bad for you" or "food y will give you this disease."

Once again, I think of good old C.S. Lewis: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."

What makes it better

There's a fairly new (sit-down, order off the menu, not a buffet) Chinese restaurant in my town. It's pretty good - I've eaten there a few times.

And they do carryout. I realized that for $3.50 I can get a couple pints of hot and sour soup - hot and sour soup that's better than what I can make from scratch at home.

So on my way home at "lunchtime" (close to 2 pm - I have an AWFUL teaching schedule this go-round), I picked a batch up. Ate half of it, have the other half for later this weekend.

I know people sometimes make rude jokes about Chinese restaurants, but several of the ones I've known - run by immigrants - the people running them are super-nice and friendly, and they work really hard to be a success. And the food at this one is really quite good, and they make some effort to plate it up nicely when you eat at the restaurant. I hope they continue to have good success, both because I like having them as a food option, but also because the people who run it are nice and do seem to be hard workers.

Facepalming.

Two things:

1. I'm getting really tired of all the Komen stories/misinformation/snarkiness. And this reminds me why I vet charity groups very carefully before I give.

2. I'm irritated at a person in a group I belong to. This group, one of our activities, is that we give out scholarships to students. We have guidelines that we follow. We've been very pleased with past recipients - most have graduated with honors, and a number of them are still in the community, working in whatever field they earned their degree in.

Because of a quirk, this year we have two International students (Well, granted - one of them is in the process, if she has not already achieved it, of earning citizenship here). One person didn't like that and threw a right fit when the second International student was named. (The first one was a "continuing" scholarship - we re-award scholarships until a student graduates provided they keep a minimum 3.0 GPA and are making reasonable progress toward graduating).

It got kind of ugly. At one point (did I mention I'm Chair of the scholarship committee?) I was very tempted to get up, say, "If you can pick people better than the rest of us, then you may have MY place on the committee."

The thing is: there is NOWHERE in the guidelines that we are restricted to U.S. citizens only. We'd have to change the guidelines. And what this person was doing was trying to get us to revoke the scholarship from the most qualified applicant and award it to someone less-qualified simply based on membership in a particular group. Which would not be ethical given the situation.

But, because that person raised a stink and another person joined in, we called a vote: do we keep this recipient or reject her? (I was ready to resign if the vote was to reject - I think that would be very wrong). The vote, with two opposed, was to grant the scholarship.

So, I went to the group president later and said: if we're going to have this problem, we need to address it. If people genuinely have a problem with us awarding to International students, then we have to rewrite the guidelines. (I didn't like the idea, neither did she, but we agreed we had to put it forward to the group).

(I will note my mother's response to all this, when I told her, because it's also kind of my opinion: "If the American kids aren't earning high enough grades or doing enough outside stuff to be the top candidates, then they need to work harder.")

Also, I'll note we get probably a disproportionate number of International student applicants, because so many of the other sources of aid are closed off to them. (Also, I've met a large number of U.S. students with the attitude of "Meh, I'll get loans, I don't have to work for them, and if I can't pay them off when I graduate, let them come after me.")

So anyway: we researched it, brought the issue before the membership, and opened it up for discussion.

Several women pointed out what my mother said. And a couple did remark on the fact that International students have fewer choices.

And then the original agitator spoke up. Now, I tend to be a very literal-minded person, so I did not get what she was getting at at first, using very veiled language. But then, as she kept speaking, I realized what she was saying:

"What if one of our scholarship recipients goes home and becomes a terrorist?"

Okay, that insulted me on three levels:

1. The two "International" students we have, one is from South America, one is from Vietnam. They've been recommended by several professors and community leaders. They hold down jobs in the community. While I am sure some "real" terrorists slipped by the notice of many, so do many American citizens who commit horrible crimes - and for that matter, there are homegrown terrorists. Neither of these kids in question seem to show any kind of ill-will to the U.S. The student from South America, in fact, is working to become a citizen, because, as she said, she was so impressed with the freedom and opportunity we have here and she wants to stay here and build a life.

2. Both of the students are Christians, they noted that in their cover letters. One had a church leader write a letter for her. While I'm aware that some Christians can become violent....most of the violent terrorists we've seen in recent years are not Christian. (Not that their faiths entered any into our decision, other than the fact that the one letter emphasized the conscientiousness and ethics of the student).

3. The thing that made me angriest? What I "heard" her saying was, "I don't think the scholarship committee is discerning enough or smart enough to recognize someone who might later present a problem and dishonor us." That was the point where I really wanted to say, "Okay, fine, lady. You get my slot on the committee; I'm DONE." Of course, I wouldn't really want to do that - as a friend of mine (not in this group) I vented to noted: "You really don't want someone like HER doing the picking, do you?" (The person in question is an attention-hound, someone who's never worked a day in their life, and someone who once berated ME for not doing more volunteer work during the day - even though she knows I teach full time. "Can't you just cancel class occasionally?" was her response. Um, no, not if I want to keep my tenure, I can't.)

I kind of abstained from discussion because at that point I was so nettled that I figured nothing I could say would be helpful.

Finally, we reached a compromise: for every scholarship slot, the committee will have a "top 3" choices which the membership will then vote on. While this will slow things down considerably and mean more work - it also means the people who think we aren't working hard or being careful will see what an effort it is to pick and choose. I'm all for making them read all 15 or however many applications that we need to wade through to pick the applicants.

The only thing is? I suspect in some ways this will spike the chances of International students a little. I know since that one person got so nasty about it I'd think twice, unless the International student was clearly head and shoulders above all the U.S. students. If it's a matter of one activity or .2 of a GPA, forget it - I'll push forward the American kid. Not fair and not right, maybe, but people who are nasty and unpleasant get their way in this world, and I'm too damn tired of fighting and being yelled at.

No good deed goes unpunished. And volunteers are usually thanked with criticism. That's just how life is.