More/Less

I've had an up and down couple of weeks - I got a journal article accepted (finally), got some good work done. But I also wrestled with the self-doubt I always wrestle with, lost my patience with myself, got despairing over the new AHA "sugar guidelines" (no more than 9 tsp added sugar in a day, or apparently you get fatty fat fat and then die of TEH DIABEEETUS. And as I like candy and as I like sugar in my tea, and as I have been known in the past to get a wee bit obsessional over reading labels - well, I've had some issues these past couple days with my diet).

So I got to thinking this afternoon. There are things I need to do more of and things I need to do less of. And I should make a list, to remind myself.

Do more of (because it enriches my life and reminds me of who I really am):

pray.

light candles and just watch the flames for a while.

read articles and books in my field, especially about stuff I'm teaching, because it makes me feel smarter, and because the students get excited when I talk about stuff that's being currently researched.

be quiet; listen to music.

play the piano.

do my own home cooking, because it soothes me.

go to bed early when I'm tired.

breathe deeply.

maybe take up yoga again, if I can manage to not use it as a stick to beat myself with on the days when I don't feel up to doing it.

take a break and drink some water.

make tea (yes, even with sugar, if I want it).

read stuff that interests me: ancient history, Christian spirituality, history of technology, how people lived in the middle ages, Dickens novels, Gene Stratton Porter novels, books about maps and geography, funny books.

read my books of comics when I feel sad because they make me feel better.

get out on the weekend and go somewhere, even if I don't have a purpose in mind.

remind myself that I'm smart and capable and basically a decent person.

embroider.

watch old re-runs of NCIS on USA Network if I'm tired after work and what I really want to do is sit and watch old re-runs of NCIS.

Do less of:

feel like I'm "second best" because I'm not as good at the ridiculous self-promotion that some people I know are good at.

watching the news.

getting upset over stuff I basically have no ability to change (save voting when it's time to vote, or praying).

second-guessing myself.

beating myself up for not being as "perfect" as I think I should be.

obsessing over whether what I eat is going to wind up killing me or making me chronically sick.

obsessing over my weight and hating myself for not being slimmer.

tell myself that I'm "wasting my life" because I occasionally like to spend an evening watching old re-runs of NCIS.

worrying overmuch about the future. (Number one, there's lots of stuff I can't control, and number two, the "ultimate" future, at least for one who believes in an afterlife, really is not something that one should "worry" about - it may get bad here but it will ultimately be OK.)

getting irritated because a particular person I know has an irritating voice. They can't help it.

in general, getting irritated at piddly stuff that I don't have control over.

Peanuts - what happened...

I'm doing some research right now that involves a couple hours a day of staring down a microscope at stuff. Mostly it's pretty dull, so I kind of let my mind wander while I do it.

This is what I was thinking about this morning: I wonder what would have happened to the Peanuts kids if they had grown up.

And then I began to make scenarios in my head. I realize for some this is near-blasphemy, but considering that some (notably the writers of Family Guy) have speculated on Marcie and Peppermint Patty, I think maybe I'm not doing too much wrong here.

First of all, Linus. (Who was always my favorite). He wound up going on to college and working on a degree in philosophy and theology. A couple years later, Sally followed him to the same school - she being still in love with him. Sally pursued a degree first in Home Ec, but then moved over to Design when she found she had a knack for textile design. During this time she and Linus reconnected, and he realized that she had shed a lot of her earlier selfishness and pettiness and grown up to be quite a lovely young woman.

They were married the year before Linus started graduate school. During his work on his Divinity degree, Sally supported them by designing fabric for a major manufacturer. Later, Linus got a professorate at a small Midwestern liberal-arts college. Once he was granted tenure, Sally concluded that what she really had always wanted to do was be a wife and mother, so with Linus' blessing, she gave up her design business and they started a family, ultimately having two daughters and a son. They became sort of the quintessential faculty family, and lived pretty much happily ever after. Their son grew up to work for the State Department; one of their daughters became a veterinarian and the other, a schoolteacher.

Marcie went to college to study biology with the ultimate aim of being an RN. She and Charlie Brown (who was at the same school, studying English) dated briefly but decided they weren't that compatible. Later, while she was in nursing school, Marcie found that Franklin was studying to be a pediatrician. They fell in love, were married, and after they got their degrees, Marcie helped her husband in his practice. When they could get away from the practice for a time (and every seventh year, when Franklin took a sabbatical and had one of his partners mentor a new pediatrician, to take up the slack) they would go to Africa to provide health care for children in developing countries.

Charlie Brown started out majoring in English. However, in the middle of his junior year, he decided that what he really wanted to do was to be a barber like his father. So he dropped out, went to barber school, and ultimately took over his father's business. A few years later, the "little red-haired girl" (whose name was Tess) took her two sons in for a haircut at Charlie's barber shop. It turns out she had weathered an unhappy divorce and was raising her two sons alone while working as a second-grade math teacher. She and Charlie got to talking, she brought her sons back for later haircuts, and eventually Charlie worked up the courage to ask her out on a date.

A year and a half later they got married. Charlie petitioned to, and was ultimately allowed to, adopt her sons so he could be their "official" father. He continued to cut hair and Tess continued to teach. On the weekends, he coached his sons' soccer team (it turns out he was better at soccer than he was at baseball) and he served as their Boy Scout troop leader. He and Tess live pretty much happily ever after, and certainly more happily than Charlie ever anticipated he would.

Peppermint Patty turned out to have skill at sports photography. She was hired by Sports Illustrated to cover NBA games and she wound up being romantically linked to a couple of famous players - one from the Chicago Bulls and one from the Boston Celtics. However, she was never one to kiss and tell, and being a photographer, she knew all the tricks for avoiding paparazzi.

Lucy took a business degree and ultimately wound up serving as Schroeder's manager. Schroeder traveled the world as a concert pianist and Lucy traveled with him as a manager and caretaker of sorts. However, the romantic relationship she hoped for never blossomed - Schroeder turned out not to be interested in women, but he was too shy and, with a misplaced sense of caring and not wanting to break Lucy's heart, he never told her. So she spent her life following him, expecting he would eventually fall in love with her, but she could never quite see the signs that should have tipped her off. (Lucy's business acumen was much better than her skill at personal relationships).

Pig Pen moved to New Mexico and went into politics. He served for a number of years in state government despite his appearance and hygiene challenges. In fact, he turned a rival's criticism of him on its head, and his slogan became: "Pig Pen - dirty on the outside, but clean where it counts" because he was known for his honesty and transparency. Later, he served as a university provost.

Lessons

Perhaps I am too good at looking at things as object-lessons; I don't know.

But today, I realized I was possibly "bein' schooled."

It was a workday at the local Christian camp. They have regular workdays because there's a lot of upkeep necessary the (now ex-)director didn't exactly keep his end up, and there's been tons of deferred maintenance - to the point where the denominational office is making noises about selling off the camp and making one big camp "in a convenient central location" (not for us; it would be a 3 hour drive for us - meaning our kids wouldn't go, most likely).

So we're doing something that may wind up being a futile task (if the denomination decides to sell the site, everything will be plowed under to make way for either McMansions or luxury condos for the rich folks who are fleeing the city to the south of us...it's kind of the Aspen phenomenon in some areas around here already, where the rich folks move in and either people feel they "have" to sell because their land goes so high, or utility costs skyrocket, or the rich city folk complain because people have chickens or donkeys on their property - chickens and donkeys they had long before the rich folk moved in. But money talks...so the chickens and donkeys usually wind up going.

Anyway. So I showed up. Found out that my youth group wasn't going to be there (d'oh) because of "illness, girlfriends, and football," or so the other guy from my church who showed up told me his phone message went.

(An aside: I worked HARD this week. I even gave up my usual Friday night relaxation to grade a mess of student papers so I'd have this morning free. I don't ever get to use...I don't know, "Shopping" or "Working on a quilt" as an excuse for not doing something).

The men were cutting tree limbs. I looked kind of longingly and the stacks of limbs piling up and made noises about "you need someone to make brushpiles for you, or load those into a wagon?" because I generally prefer outdoor, muscular-type work to cleaning.

But no. They needed me to clean. Specifically, to wash windows.

And I admit I grumbled as I did it. (I was washing the outside of the windows - the spider-encrusted, greasy, icky outside). "Why am I doing this?" I asked. "This makes no difference at all. No one's going to see this - it's not like the brush-cutting where the entrance looks immediately better."

And then later on: "I can't do a good enough job at this. No matter how hard I work, there are still going to be stains and webs and the windows are still going to be kind of greasy."

And you know...it was almost like someone was responding to me, going, "There's no unimportant work here. What you do will matter even though you don't think it matters as much as things like brush cutting."

And: "You sometimes have to learn to live with "good enough" as the quality of your work. Not everything can be done to perfection."

So I kept working. Eventually, I realized - hey, the windows look pretty good, they look brighter and cleaner. (At least from the outside).

And then I went indoors to change the water. And you know, from the inside? The windows still looked streaky and ugly and (to my eyes) not "better" enough from how they were. But other people reassured me that they were a LOT better.

And I wonder if that isn't one of my problems: I see everything I do from the "inside," so to speak: I can see all the smudges and streaks and the not-perfect-job. But maybe, if you look from the outside, it's really kind of OK. I once had a friend who told me that I was "too good at too many things" - and the fact that I was good at a lot of things lead me to be extremely self-critical, because I expected that I would be able to do everything well.

And I've also read that one of the values in "failure" - in doing something, trying something you know you're not that expert at - is that maybe, that failure can be like the comparison - like the white wall that sets off a piece of artwork - and you come to appreciate the things you CAN do well more. I don't know.

I refer to myself as a "recovering perfectionist" but the truth is, just like anyone who is in "recovery" from anything, I do have relapses, times when I fall back into the old ways of thinking.

"homesick"

I don't know that that's the most appropriate title, as I generally regard the place where I live now as "home," but I do feel kind of...I don't know, sad? Nostalgic? Lonely? for some of the places I used to live.

See, this is not my favorite time of year here. It's hot, it's horribly sticky, it's dry (though we might get rain later this week courtesy of Gustav). It's the time of year where it feels like nothing changes.

I want it to be fall. I want it to be fall quite badly.

I grew up - and until about 10 years ago, lived - in the Upper Midwest. Northeast Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. And there are some things about those places I miss: the fact that it's beginning to be harvest time there (my mom talked about buying some new-crop apples the last time I talked to her. In the grocery store nearest me, all they have are the tired old "lady" apples that have been flown in from Australia). It's cooling down there. People are beginning to get their fall clothes out.

I miss that. I miss the distinctness of the seasons. Where I live now, we have experienced temperatures in the upper 70s in December. I'm sorry, but that is Not Right. December should be cold. Uniformly cold. It should snow.

And late August should start feeling like fall, darn it. Not feel like summer is that guest, the one who stays long after everyone has left, the one who laughs a few seconds too long and too loudly at every joke, the partier who does the sad old trick of putting the lampshade on his head. Whatevs, summer, I'm done with you. Go and hibernate for another year. Sleep off your binge of heat and humidity and come back when I'm ready to welcome you again.

I kind of get a tiny hint - a tiny inkling of fall. Yesterday I had to walk (mostly) across campus - I had to get my allergy shot and thanks to the fact that there is construction on campus and EVERY SINGLE STUDENT who lives in the FREAKING DORMS has to have a car on campus - and has to park that car as close to the dorm they live in or the buildings they have class in - there are NO spots anywhere near to the student health services. (I really think - and I have told enough people this for it to be considered my "hobby horse" - that they need to designate a couple spots in the closest lot for the doctor and the nurse and the counselor, and they need to dedicate five or ten for people who are USING the health services. Because not all of us who come to health services are perfectly ambulatory people just coming for an allergy shot...)

Anyway, I parked at some distance and walked the half-mile or so to the campus health service (you thought I was exaggerating the bad parking situation, no? It's true...no spaces that were legal for me to park in within a half mile of the place).

The light is beginning to get that yellow tone it does in fall - it's not the hard, white-hot light we get in summer any more - the light that feels like a kleig light, that feels like it's trying to x-ray you or something. Fall light is a lot softer, more mellow.

Walking across campus was pleasant enough (it's still a little hot for my perfect happiness though). The late afternoon light slanting across the lawns, the plantings in full flower. Signs up advertising fraternity and sorority rush. It was fairly quiet...not too many people about (the fact that it was after 4 may have had something to do with that). It makes me long for "real" fall, though. When the leaves turn (well, as much as they ever do down here), and there's that hint of chill in the air that makes you glad you have a jacket in the car. And being able to think about making soup again, or going somewhere to get a hot chocolate.

I miss fall. I miss cooler weather. This time of year makes me feel almost like they will never come back - as if summer will last forever, in some kind of horrible inversion of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," where the evil queen wants it to always be summer and never be...I don't know, never be Halloween or something like that. And where you feel like you're going to melt walking down the street, and you know you SHOULD work on your garden but the heat index is over 95 when you get home, so you don't, even though you fear your "Martha Stewart" neighbor is reporting you to the Nuisance Plant Bureau.

So I'm ready for the season to change. I wish it would come.

Evaluated

I dislike reading the student evaluations.

(Even this morning, getting up, realizing they'd be waiting for me when I came in, I felt kind of anxious and pukey).

I'm not sure why; they're never very BAD. Or at least, if there's a negative comment, there are positive comments to balance them out (but it's the negative ones I remember, that come and niggle at me when I lie in bed at night).

I do get a lot of complaints about "too much work" or "too much information," but you know? I sometimes tend to discount those. Especially when I have students who went on to grad school coming back and thanking me for all the detailed information. I don't know. For one of my classes (the one I get the most "too much work" complaints in), it's hard to cut down - it's an important "majors" class, really kind of a capstone for these folks, and I feel the need to be very detailed and to have a certain level of rigor.

And in my non-majors class, I got one comment asking for fewer assignments and another asking for more. Which I assume to cancel each other out, meaning I'm probably doing things the right way (or as close to the "right way" as you ever can. You're never going to please everyone).

I had a friend in grad school who said if she was getting equal amounts of complaints and praise from the students, she figured she was "shooting down the middle" just right: too much praise suggested to her she was "too easy" or trying to hard to be their friend; too many complaints meant she wasn't doing what she should as a teacher. (I wish I had that kind of self-confidence; the complaints to me are still like little needles).

I did get two comments in one class that were VERY positive, that said how much they learned and how well I paced the class. But then, I got another one that basically said, "I'm never going to use this crap. Why did I have to learn it? This class was too hard."

Could you please rephrase that first sentence in the form of a constructive criticism? I mean, how does it help me to learn that you believe you're never going to use the "crap" I taught? (and never say "never," my friend.)

I think that's one of my biggest issues with student evaluations: people do not know how to constructively criticize. There is useful criticism: for example; "I had a really hard time reading what was written on the chalkboard. In the future using overhead projector might work better." or "There was not enough time given to complete the assignments; they need to be made earlier." Something I can DO something about. (And what's even better? If someone has a problem if they come to me or email me DURING the semester so I can actually correct the problem then and there. I mean, I ask if everything's going well during class, but I know some people are too shy to speak up).

But someone telling me, "I'm never going to use the crap I learned in this class" - well, that frankly tells me more about the person writing the statement than it does about my teaching style. (And if the class really IS useless to a majority of the people who are required to take it, that is not my call; that has to be something discussed with the department chair and the department as a whole).

But that's so often what you see in the negative comments - not specific things that can help us improve (I also had a student in my non-majors class say, "I don't like science, I'll never like science, so I can't think of anything to suggest for this class"), but either lashing out or complaints.

And, by the same token: praise is nice. It makes me feel good that people learned a lot in my class, or that they thought I was a kind person, but it doesn't really help me to improve (other than, maybe, to let me know that I'm doing okay). One student did say that he or she liked how I would regularly explain how the current material related to what they had previously learned, which is helpful, because it tells me that that's something I should continue to do and maybe enhance in the future.

But I find it hard to know what to do with the evaluation comments. Part of me wants to totally discount them, say "a lot of these people are people who slacked off in class, who expected to be allowed to hand in assignments late, who plagiarized" and therefore probably don't make a fair assessment. And part of me wants to go very John Houseman in The Paper Chase and remind the students that it's a tough world out there, jobs in the sciences are few, and you're a lot more likely to get the career you want if you work hard and take all the opportunities you can get to learn and gain experience and knowledge.

But then again, part of me wants to sort of curl up and die and go "but they HATE me!!!!" I admit it, I have delusions of being the professor on campus that everyone loves, that everyone wants to take the classes of - all of that damn Mr. Chips stuff.

So it's hard to have those two competing philosophies - especially in a world where, by and large, hard work isn't particularly valued (if you question that, look at the lives of the celebutantes, look at the popularity of playing the lotto for "big winnings"). It's a tough sell to tell people on the first day of class, "You will be reading hard books. You will be expected to go to the primary literature. You will be expected to do research on your own."

And the fact is? I'm just not charismatic enough as a person to make people work hard (if they're not already into that) and love it. I'm not a Jaime Escalante or any of those other "hero teachers" that they make movies about. And I don't know how to BECOME that kind of charismatic person who can push people until they're at absolutely their outer limits of ability and comfort and still make them love it. The fact of the matter is, if someone isn't already internally motivated by the time they get to my class, I'm not going to instill that in them.

I wish that I could. If there were one thing I could change about myself, it would be that - to somehow understand better how to relate to people, to light that fire in them. But just as I fail to get that people are joking sometimes when they are - and respond in earnest, which is either awkward or embarrassing - I kind of think I also lack the charisma gene.

So I don't know. It's hard to give up the childish delusions-of-grandeur and accept that I'm good but not great (and will never be great) and that no matter what I try to do to improve, there are still going to be people who sit there like lumps and who complain that they'll "never use the crap they learned" in my class. (And yeah, I know, I'm personalizing it, and I should accept that it's them, not me - but I still deep down have this Save The World mentality where I think that if I were just a bit better, or a bit more exciting, or a bit more SOMETHING, people would have these epiphanies where they'd never again believe that anything they were learning was useless "crap.")

give me strength

This is not going to be a fun week, work-wise.

I have my first exam for one class to write. (As I hand back the exams - unlike some of my colleagues - I have to write new, from-scratch ones every semester. Which takes time.).

All day tomorrow is taken up with the Sept. 11 remembrance thing which I now wish I hadn't volunteered to work at. (And after that - I got kind of roped into something. One of the ladies at my church - who is a representative of one of the Major Home-Based Cosmetic Concerns - came up to me and told me that she felt like I needed a little "pampering" [this being after the whole mess with the youth group, which I think - hope - has corrected itself]. Turns out she wants to do a facial and "makeover" on me. Well, I am of two minds. One part of me says, you meet people where they are, and to her, she is trying to do a very nice thing for me, something that she'd regard as pampering. Never mind that I'm kind of touch-averse [the facial] and my general feeling on makeup is that the less you wear, the better - I wear it mainly to camouflage a little unevenness in my complexion. But I feel like if you're pretty to begin with, makeup doesn't add that much, and if you're not, there's not much point - kind of the old painting a mud fence thing. [and I've still not decided which camp of those two I fall into - "doesn't need it" or "it won't help anyway."] So I don't know. I'm going to go, and I'm going to be polite, but at most I will buy a lipstick from her [if there is, in fact, a hard sell attached to this thing]. I'm a long-time Clinique user, I like it, it does well for me, and I'm not willing to change just to make a friend happy.)

I got the WRITING part of the paper rewrite done, and got set to attack the figures. Unfortunately, my idea of "will just take a little work to fix up" and my co-author's idea of "will just take a little work to fix up" are very very very different. What he proposes be changed will require, I expect, about 15 hours of grueling, eye-crossing labor over the computer. And I can't push it off on him as I'm the one who has the software package that allows the map generation. I sort of want to cry; I feel like no matter what I do to the damn diagrams it's not good enough for him. He seems to think I'm magic and the only reason I've not made them PERFECT is because I'm stubborn or something. No, I've not made them PERFECT because your standard of PERFECT is almost impossible given the limitations of the program.

I will be going nuts with grading this weekend. Why did I choose to give a short-test in one class, collect a major homework in another, and collect a project proposal in my third on the same day? (I've made the short-test as much multiple choice as I can possibly justify to myself. I feel bad about that but I fear I have no choice).

Finally - for those of you who teach - how do you keep from Homer-Simpson-style strangling (or at least being distinctly uncivil and chilly to) a student who has a smart remark for EVERYTHING? I feel like I shouldn't be ticked off at this guy because I genuinely think it's how he relates to the world, that he can't be serious about anything, and that he HAS to be the center of attention by making his cracks. HE thinks he's funny, but his humor's getting on my last nerve. The thing is, when I react less than jovially, he gets all hurt, like I'm rejecting him.

On second thought - heck yes, I am rejecting him. I am too tired and too old to put up with a constant stream of peanut gallery remarks.

I've explained to students (including him) on a number of occasions that things that seem like they're funny and new clever remarks (Like: "Not many people in class today! Are you going to give us bonus points for being here?") are actually very old to faculty who've been teaching more than a year, and are not at all funny. (I use the analogy of this: you're a checker at wal-mart. The checkout system's on the fritz and things won't ring up easily. Every time something won't ring up right, the person you're waiting on says, "Oh, it must be free today! Ha ha ha!" I ask them if they would find it funny the fifth time someone said that. Yeah, maybe I should just suck it up and not say anything but I SWEAR I am going to go medieval on someone's backside someday if I hear one too many "Are you going to cancel class" cracks.)

(And I know - were I posting this on a certain bulletin board I visit, a certain person would immediately pipe up that the guy who's annoying the hell out of me is probably an Asperger's Syndrome person, and I should just suck it up and try to be nicer to him. There's someone I know where that's her response to everything - no one's ever a jerk; everyone who's annoying has some kind of syndrome that excuses them. Look - I know all about autism; I briefly had an autistic kid in Youth Group. There's a difference between Autism/Aspergers and being a total git, and I think I can identify total gits when I see them).

And I have a meeting tonight from 6:30 until dog knows when. And I woke up at 4:30 this morning and could not get back to sleep, so I just got up and worked out then, since I would have had at most another half hour to lie there.

Oh, and I had a weird dream last night - one of my colleagues and I were on some island somewhere doing research, and we saw this porthole/door thing. Looking in it, I realized that there was a meth lab set up in there, and that we were probably in some danger to us, because the meth-lab people (who were in there at the time) saw us and gave us evil looks.

Then Fred Thompson (?) came walking along and said, "It's okay. I'll sit on the porthole here and keep the people from getting out until you can go and get the police."

Huh? At least that's better than the dreams I have where I'm trying to find something and I can't, or where everyone's misunderstanding what I say and everyone's angry with me even though I'm trying to be nice.

That said - sometimes I wish I didn't dream, or at least didn't remember my dreams - they tend to be pretty exhausting.

serious and sad

I have to be serious today. Part of this is to vent but part of it is just asking advice, or maybe support, or I don't know what.

Some of you know that I'm a co-leader of the Youth Group at my church. This is kind of a challenge because I don't have kids, have never worked with kids, and a lot of the time feel like I'm making it up as I go along.

I thought I was doing pretty well - lots of people were telling me that I was doing a good job, that the kids were learning a lot. We even had a Youth Sunday last fall where the kids did all the serving and that was well-received.

Well, somehow, things have changed. I don't know if this is some kind of resentment or frustration or something a few people had that has been coming to the fore (because this is the first I've heard of problems), or if there's an agitator somewhere, or what.

I am also an Elder in the church, and there was a "special" meeting called for this afternoon after church. I wondered about it at first, then figured it had to do with the plans to start some kind of adult version of a pastor's class, as we've had a lot of adults join the church in the recent months.

I was wrong. And I really wish someone had given me a heads-up.

The meeting was, "What shall we do about the youth group?"

A couple weeks ago, there were some minor acts of vandalism (they were repairable - unnecessary but repairable) and were committed mainly by someone who has been disinvited back.

But the feeling I got was two-fold:

First: should we just give up on this and start again in a few years

and second, and strongest: "We don't have kids of sufficient quality in the youth group."

And I don't know how to respond to that. Yes, we have a lot of kids from broken homes. We have kids from tough family situations. We have one kid who's on fairly heavy-duty meds. And I thought we were doing reasonably well with them.


But I guess they're not the "kind" of people that some members think will make "good" future members, or something. That's the sense I got.

And you know? I'm not looking towards, "will these kids grow up and join our congregation?" In fact, I'm expecting at least some of them won't - they'll move away for jobs or college or because they go into the military. What I'm trying to do is introduce them to God and God's teachings now, so whereever they end up in the future, they'll have that as a base.

But I guess a lot of people have been complaining to the minister. And, in the name of shielding me, he never passed on those complaints until they got severe.

And so now I'm faced with an unattractive prospect - either dump the program (and doubtless have some people believe I quit in a fit of pique or some other bad reason) or keep going, knowing that there are at least some people who think it would be wiser to pull the plug.

I cried a lot during the meeting. I could not help it. Part of it is that I feel like I am doing my absolute damnedest to make this work, and I've frankly done pretty well (some of the complaints have been about things like, "Their athletic shoes leave black scuff marks on the tile that have to be rubbed out. Can't you ask them to wear other shoes?" Considering that some of these kids might have but one pair of shoes, no. And even if they aren't in that situation, I'm not going to micromanage to that degree. I will admit there have been weeks after hearing that complaint where I ran around with a dry sponge after youth group and tried to clean up all the scuffs).

But now I feel like I've reached the point where there's enough non-support that I don't know what to do. I pointed out that it was me and one other woman running the group - every other helper we've had has either flaked out on us, or has had a change at work where they can no longer come and work. And oftentimes the largest complainers are the ones who never set foot in the church outside of Sunday morning.

And part of it is, frankly, stuff that's my own "stuff." I'm a perfectionist. When I hear less than a perfect report, I assume it's some kind of a failure on my part - if the kids respected me more, this wouldn't have happened. If my lessons were more interesting, things would be different. If I had more of a charismatic personality, maybe I'd attract some of the "right" kids. I don't know.

And on the other hand, I'm frustrated with the perception of "we want the 'right' kind of kids." Isn't the church more a hospital of sinners than a museum of saints? That's my objection right there. It's NOT the "good" kids that need us so much as the kids in tough circumstances, who maybe have been given up on at home or at school - and dammit, I'm NOT willing to give up on these kids. I'm not willing to write them off as "bad." Sure, they have problems - but I've also seen flashes of insight and real love and kindness come from them.

And that's really what I object to about the idea of pulling the plug. Because it's all tied up, in part, with the sense that I've failed...that I've failed to control things well enough, that I've failed the kids. But I also think if we end the program, it sends the message: here's another group of people who's giving up on you, who says you're not worthy.

Oh, I've read the kids the riot act. My co-leader and I really laid it down last week. (In fact, one of the kids I suspected of the vandalism - the other suspect was not there and he may not be returning - came and apologized to us afterwards). We told the kids that we need to be twice as good as people expect us to be, because many people seem to think we're only half as good as we actually are.

So after trying to deal with it - and feeling that I HAD "dealt with it" last week, it hurt to have it brought up again. Especially hurt in the middle of a group of people where I'm by far the junior, where I sometimes feel like I have to be extra-good to gain the same level of respect.

I was actually begging them for a "probationary period." Like I had done something wrong. Actually, I do feel like I've done something wrong, I just don't know what.

So I don't know. I just don't know what to do. On the one hand, people are telling me how much they appreciate my work. But...and there's always that little "but" - the kids aren't the "right kind" of kids.

I'm not quite brave enough to argue (even though I think I'd be right) that Jesus hung out with people who were not the "right kind" of people.

But I'm very sad and very conflicted right now. I work my tail off, I have almost no support, I keep being paid this lip-service about how everything's so wonderful, and then I hear that all these people have been coming to the pastor with complaints (which in itself bugs me - it feels like they're going over my head, like they're maybe trying to get me in trouble or persuade the pastor to suspend the youth program without my input).

So I don't know. If I were a different sort of person, I would have resigned right then and there...told them that if that was how they felt, they could find someone else. But like so many things that would feel satisfying at first, I would feel terrible later - because it would be the kids I screwed over, not the people making the complaints.

So I don't know what to do. This is 100% volunteer work, done after my longest day of teaching. I used to love it - I felt it was one way I could give back, one way I could minister to people. But I don't like the feeling that others think I'm ministering to the "wrong sort" of people and that something needs to be done to change the group's composition.

It's going to take a few weeks at least before I can start to feel joy in doing this again, I think. (And I don't even want to think about how to present it to my co-leader: it was proposed that she was part of the problem because it was thought she recruited some of the "bad" kids.

One of the problems, of course, is a lot of the "good" or "desirable" kids already are going to church somewhere. Thanks to the church split of a couple years ago, we lost most of the youth group and have been having to rebuild from scratch.)

But I really don't know. I'm hurt, I'm sad, I'm kind of angry (both at the kids who have brought all this onto the youth group by their foolish actions and also at the adults who can't be bothered to come and help me, but who can condemn the kids and complain to the minister about the program while still telling me I'm doing a good job.)

(Actually, I think that's what bothers me the worst - people telling ME I'm doing a good job and then coming and voicing their complaints to the minister. It feels like talking-behind-my-back. It reminds me too much of the girls in high school who were all simpery and nice to my face, and then said horrible things about me behind my back. I realize it's not the same thing, really, but it feels like it).

I suggested maybe a "real" youth minister - someone with training and someone who would be paid - be hired, but they said that there wasn't money, and besides, none of them had ever had a good experience with having a "professional" youth minister.

(And I will never take pay for the position, even were it offered. Because that sets up even a greater level of expectation. And obviously the group isn't living up to the level of expectation some people have for an all-volunteer organization)

So, I don't know. I suppose I keep the "nuclear option" open - tell the kids up front, "This is what people are thinking" and tell them that if they don't shape up and police themselves, we won't have a youth group any more. Or I suggest another form of "nuclear option" - if I don't get more good, consistent, shows-up-when-they-say-they-will help, I will resign and there will be no more youth group.

I don't know. I'm running on and on here. But I'm really in a lot of pain right now and I don't know what to do.

Homesick

This is going to be sad and maybe a little whiny. You've been warned. Skip if you want to.

I'm going through the last bits of some data related to my dissertation project - mostly, looking up some information about the different research sites. This is in hopes of getting the second paper out of my dissertation and maybe someday getting it published. (I defended the thing in 1999. The first paper came out last year. Academic publishing is Hell.)

But it makes me horribly homesick, which seems strange to me. I mean, I've lived HERE for eight years now, almost as long as I lived in the place I'm homesick for.

I suppose part of it was, like youth being wasted on the young, I didn't realize how carefree my grad-school days were until now. Now, when I'm responsible for teaching 13 credit-hours, and getting research done, and guiding students through their research, and running the Youth Group (and we had some minor vandalism last week, caused by a child who WILL NOT BE COMING BACK until he can prove he's mature enough to handle it, but I still got in trouble for his actions), and serving on committees, and and and. It's like there's always someone "needing" me for something.

And it wasn't that way in grad school. Oh, I taught - I was a TA. But I had a wonderful (I realized it then but appreciate it even more now) professor I worked for - any crap from the students, his blanket policy was, "If they don't want to listen to you, send them to me and I will back you up." (I think I've shared here the story of how a student basically TOLD me I was going to accept a paper of his 3 weeks late, I sent him over to the prof's office to see what the prof said, and I had the delight of hearing the prof's "HELL NO!" echo down the hall).

I mean, not like it's any great insight or anything but: being a responsible person is hard. And it's tiring. And it's also often thankless. But, God help me, I cannot do otherwise.

And part of it is just the weather. I remember the first year I was here, about this time, I looked at the calendar and calculated how long it was likely to be before it cooled down, and then I just closed my office door, put my head down on my desk, and had a little cry. It's so HOT here. And so HUMID. And it doesn't seem to change. It's kind of like the movie Groundhog Day, but without being about to drink 37 milkshakes without suffering any ill effects, and without the eventual redemption scene.

And it's ragweed season. One thing I've discovered about allergies - Claritin and the desensitization shots help with most of the physical symptoms, but they don't touch the exhaustion and dysphoria I feel when the pollen's thick. It's just something that has to be lived through, but it makes me miserable every August. (I've also been waking up at 3 am and not being able to back to sleep. Even if I go to bed at 9 pm and fall asleep right away - unlikely for me - that's only 6 hours of sleep, which is not enough.)

So I'm sure part of this is kind of out of my control. But knowing WHY I'm sad doesn't help much to undo it.

But anyway: I was relatively carefree. I didn't have as many ugly confrontations with the entitled side of human nature. I was also living with my parents, so instead of having to keep a whole house and yard, I only had a comparatively few things I had to do, pitching-in-wise. It's a lot easier to clean house when you have one or two other people working alongside you. So there were a lot of good things I probably didn't fully appreciate at the time that are now gone forever.

But, the other thing is just the whole idea of the locations - most of these sites I had visited myself or at least knew where they were. The names are familiar to me. I can picture being out there, in the field, on a nice summer day (to think, in those days I complained about 80 degrees being "hot." It didn't even get down below 80 for the low last night here). I knew what I was doing, I was pretty good at it, I could just go and work and get stuff done. And it was satisfying. I had one goal, one directive: complete the research and finish the dissertation.

I miss having single big goals.

I also miss the people I worked with. I called in just about every favor I was owed that summer to get field hands - I promised to teach people the different plants, if they just would come and help carry equipment for me. I took people out to lunch (which I loved doing ANYWAY) in return for help. All of my officemates helped me on various occasions. My advisor's wife went out and helped me. The guy I was dating went out and helped me.

(And right now, that's what's hardest - I'm working through the sites he and I visited together. And I remember that time - how I honestly and seriously and naively thought that I was going to marry him. It was the one time in my life when I can truly say I was in love. He made me feel like I was beautiful and it was endlessly interesting to talk to him - we could talk for four hours about "nothing."

Needless to say, since I am still single now, it did not work out between us. But I think of the hope I had that summer, how the future seemed golden, how I'd get my Ph.D. and marry this guy and we'd find jobs together at some little college and we'd buy a house together and and and....)

Being a grown-up is very different from how I envisioned it when I was a child. And being out in the work-force, being a "full grown-up" is very different from how I envisioned it would be that summer.

Oh, don't get me wrong - I'm not dissatisfied. Most of the time I'm pretty happy. I'm grateful to have the job I do, I'm grateful to live somewhere where I can afford a house as a single woman. But reading the old names of the towns and the preserves where I worked brings up the old pictures from that summer in my head and it kind of makes me wish I had enjoyed it more while it was happening. And it kind of makes me wish I could go back to those places - and this time take the time to stop at that little cafe for a piece of pie, or bring a change of clothes so that when fieldwork was done, I wouldn't think I was too grubby to go into that bookstore. And most of all, to be able to bask in what would turn out to be my last summer before the yoke of responsibility dropped onto my neck.

"My good people, enjoy being 20 years old; you have it but once in your life." - Edith Piaf

adulthood and reality

Something I've been thinking about for a couple of days...

Ann Althouse commented on a New York Times story about career women who are wives and mothers, and how the story is yet another one of those "I tried to 'have it all' and my life still isn't perfect" stories that makes you wonder (or makes ME wonder, at least) why on earth they run such a thing.

I mean - I can see how someone in some other part of the world (like, say, one of our soldiers fighting in Iraq) might see it: rich American woman with healthy family, living in safety, even has a housekeeper, can't be happy because her house isn't as clean as she'd like it to be or because she's not a famous researcher.

And yeah, I get the idea of dysphoria and depression. I get that some people, outwardly "should" be happy and they aren't. And it's hard for their families and hard for them. But it's not a newsworthy thing - not in the sense of "this is some big sociological problem in the U.S." If anything, it's more a story of a personal, or, perhaps, medical nature - it may well be some of the discontented women have some kind of underlying neurotransmitter imbalance that could be improved by meds or talk-therapy. Or, hell, if they're so dissatisfied, they can make a change. This isn't Saudi Arabia or the Sudan - if you're a woman and you're not happy in your marriage you can get out. Or if you're not happy staying at home all day you can get a job. Or if you hate your job, you can try for a different one. Or start making art. Or something. Just sitting around and complaining to a reporter doesn't really solve much.

Heh. One of the commenters there talked about "finding the cloud around the silver lining." And yeah, I've had my share of days when I've walked around going, "I have every reason to be happy but I'm just not feeling it." But to me, that's not a usual state of being. (And if it were - I'd be seeking some kind of professional help.)

But, you know? Not having everything just exactly the way you want it to be? That's pretty much the state of being a grown-up, isn't it? (Probably also the state of being a child, but I'm talking not of children vs. grown-ups here, but of people who are stuck in an adolescent ideology vs. people who are more grown up). Complaining that everything isn't super-extra-wonderful-perfect is kind of an adolescent trait; shrugging, saying "sometimes things are just that way" and getting down to work seems to me to be more of an adult trait.

Work isn't always wonderful and happy.
Families aren't always harmonious.
The house isn't always clean.
There isn't always time to pursue interests or hobbies.
Stuff you try out doesn't always succeed.

That's just the way it is. Sure, it sucks, but it's how life is. That's why we call this existence "life," and not "Heaven."

There are a lot of things I'd love to have - I'd like, for example, to be a more well-known researcher than I am. (I have a few small articles published, mostly in not-very-widely-circulated journals). I'd love to have more of a social life (despite the rather shallow dating pool here). I'd love to have really nicely done gardens and landscaping.

Hell, I'd love to have an adoring husband and wonderful children. But I don't. Just because I want something doesn't mean I get it, or even that I deserve it.

So you do what you can with what you have.

But. You can't maximize everything.

I'm an ecologist, and one of the first principles of ecology is that life consists of a series of trade-offs. For example: imagine you are designing a bird species. This bird will have, most years, a set amount of energy it can give to laying eggs. Do you have it lay one big egg, with lots of nourishment for the developing chick, or many small eggs, with less nourishment in each? Depending on the situation, the one-big-egg might do better, but in other situations (like, if survival of the chicks once they leave the nest is kind of up to chance), the many-small-eggs might be a better strategy.

However, the bird canNOT have many large eggs - there just are not available resources.

It is the same with people and time.

I realized a long time ago I could be a more gung-ho researcher than I am, but I'd have to give something up - I'd either have to neglect my teaching, which feels wrong to me (but I know many in academia use that as the path to follow). I am paid to teach. It is my calling. So slacking on the teaching is not an option.

I could also be more of a go-getter if I was willing to work on research nights and weekends - if I gave up what little social life I have, if I stopped reading books and knitting and making quilts and all of that other stuff (and I will admit, when I'm in one of those "I suck" modes of thinking, that's what I think: "You are wasting your time by having all those dumb hobbies. You should give away all your supplies and do only research in your free time." Except, I know that that would make me a less-happy and less well-rounded person in the long run. And also, you know? Life is short. There's something to be said for doing things that make us happy once in a while, even if they don't earn us any material gain or fleeting fame.)

What does get slacked on a bit is housecleaning and yardwork. Oh, I could have a perfect pristine lawn, if I gave up my other hobbies. Or if I hired someone (but, then again - hiring people to work and actually getting them to work in this town can itself constitute another time-drain not unlike having an additional hobby).

So I do what I can when I can. Every couple of weeks I do an intensive cleaning, but between times I just take a couple minutes here and there and sweep or wash countertops as needed and try not to worry too much. (And I've perfected the art of getting my living room, dining room, and kitchen - the three rooms that most people coming over see - presentable within 20 minutes, just in case someone calls and says, "oh, hey, can I drop by for a moment.") My house is hygienic, it's just not operating-room-sterile. And there may be more paper and clutter around than some people like. Eh. I'd rather have the time to read and a slightly messy house.

I do think some people - particularly the (apparently) "society" women that are described in the article need to relax a little about housecleaning. (Especially in light of recent research that says that kids that grow up in TOO clean and sterile of an environment may be more prone to developing allergies or asthma - because, apparently, their immune systems don't learn to tell "safe dirt" from "dangerous dirt," because there's never any dirt around)

The complaint that they're tired and they've had to sacrifice - really, how is that different from anyone else who's a responsible grown-up? I'm tired an awful lot of the time. There are many evenings when I'm out doing volunteer work when I'd really and truly honestly rather be tucked up on my sofa with a good book or something on the telly.

My students are tired an awful lot of the time. I have students who are single parents of young children. I have students whose spouses are deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, meaning that not only are they essentially "single" parents, they have that added level of worry. I have students who are caring for an elderly parent or a severely disabled sibling. I'm sure all of them would wish that things were other than they are.

But - they soldier on. I've seen some pretty amazing stories of people dealing with adversity. The secret is instead of feeling put-upon about it, you kind of straighten your shoulders and do the old stiff-upper-lip thing, and you just go. You just do it.

(Honestly - some days I wonder how we'd survive another WWII situation - where there was rationing and limits and deprivations. Or, even worse, like Battle of Britain WWII where people were in real, mortal danger, and things happened like children being shipped off into the countryside without their parents to keep them [hopefully] safer from harm. I tend to think that most of Generation X - and I don't say this lightly because it's the generation to which I belong - would lie down and die if faced with that kind of situation.)

I don't know. I don't want to come off as TOTALLY unsympathetic - I do ascribe to the old Plato maxim about being kind because everyone is shouldering a heavier load - but it just seems to me that there's plenty of misery to go 'round, and that what the women quoted in the article are experiencing is either not all that unusual, or, in some cases, largely a product of their own unrealistic expectations.

(And incidentally: the whole tenure-track thing the woman was complaining about? Not sure how it fits in. Yeah, tenure is nice but it's not like some kind of magic key that makes your life super-wonderful. And yeah, it's more work - you have to be sure to get research out there and give presentations and serve on committees and stuff, but - the husbands do that. I mean, it's hard - but it's not IMPOSSIBLE hard, and I don't think it's harder for a woman than it is for a man. I know plenty women with kids (some with babies even) who got tenure. I think her complaint is kind of a red herring there. Tenure really isn't the prestige-thing it's made off to be. Basically, it's a vote of confidence, a "you're doing okay, now keep going the same way." It's not like some kind of super-Ph.D.

And frankly - I work harder after getting tenure than I did before. More is expected of tenured faculty. That's probably the way it should be, but I honestly think for that one woman, tenure is not the solution to her problems that she seems to think it is.)

So anyway. I realize the irony of my just spilling I-don't-want-to-count-how-many words of personal blather commenting about the seemingly empty complaints of some woman who appears to "have it all" but still thinks she could have more. And I admit I do my fare share of complaining about stuff, but I also try to keep in mind that there's good stuff, too.

You know? My life is far from perfect. But it's a lot better than it could be. Maybe it just comes down to looking at the glass and going, well, you could say it's half empty or half full, so I'll say it's half full. Or accepting that it's half empty, but not feeling the need to have a newspaper article written about that state.

(Of course, you are an engineer, you would simply say that too large of a container was chosen for the liquid involved in the project.)

More about my trip

It's been a hectic week, so I've not been as verbose as normal. (Summer semester winding down and all that.)

My trip was pretty good. The presentation went reasonably well - I didn't have any hecklers or "pointed" questions (a "pointed" question is someone asking a question they know the answer to already, either because they want to look intelligent when they ask it, or because they want to trip you up, or, in some rare cases, just because they're an a-hole.). I didn't really get a discussion going but that's okay I guess.

It isn't like I was applying for a new job or anything - this is just one of those things profs are sort of expected to do, to keep feeding the C.V. beast, and so now I've done my bit for the year.

I will say a couple of things - I saw some folks I'd gone to grad school with and spent some time talking with them. One of them was as smarmy as I remembered him - always dropping names and talking about the type of car he drove, crap like that. But I also got the sense he was basically insecure and dissatisfied with his work, so the smarminess somehow didn't bother me as much as it did when we were in offices down the hall from each other.

A couple other people, after talking with them, made me realize a couple of things:

a. I'm pretty lucky where I am. I have a few problem students but apparently everyone has them, and it seems that cheating and dishonesty aren't so rampant (or at least, aren't practiced with the same cavalier disregard for any kind of ethical/moral standard) at the school where I teach. And whatever pressure there is to publish is a lot less than most places. And I'm doing pretty well, in most of the generally-accepted measures of "success."

b. I am good enough. That's a big thing I wrestle with - I beat myself up for not doing more research, or being a more dynamic teacher, or things like that. But from talking to my former colleagues - both in hearing what they said to me, about me, and in hearing their attitudes towards their own work, I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm far more self-critical than I need to be. (The challenge will be to figure out how to throttle back on the intense self-criticism).

People tend to seem to think more highly of me than I think of myself. I don't know if that's because I have such a highly-tuned inner critic that I can usually see all the stuff I've done that's less than perfect, or if EVERYONE walks around thinking that ~80% of the stuff they do is crap (when everyone else thinks it's just fine, or even better than fine) because they're so close to it, where they see all the false starts and screw-ups and all the stuff you DON'T usually mention in a research presentation or article.

As I said before, I'm glad I don't live in or work in a big city. Too many people. I can't remember if it was here I wrote about my "5% hypothesis" (that 5% of the human populace is just not fit to be out in public and will be a major nuisance to everyone else - so if you're somewhere where there are 20 other people, only one will be, on average, a major nuisance, but if you cram 1000 people into an area, then you begin to have problems because you have 50 nuisances). Big cities are also expensive.

And you know? I think the South is - despite what a lot of people say - just more tolerant of the whole range of human eccentricity. It's like...in the big Northern cities at least (I don't have a lot of experience with big Southern cities), there's a lot more emphasis on APPEARANCE and it doesn't matter so much what's really inside you. Whereas where I live - you can be missing teeth, or have bad hair, or be kind of fat - but if you're a decent person who is kind to others, you're accepted, you're a part of the community. My experience in some of the cities I've lived in is that, at least in some sections of the city, it's like there's an invisible version of one of those amusement-park height markers, except in the city, it says, "You must be prettier than this to walk down this street." Or "better dressed than this." Or whatever.

(I am making a distinction between "eccentric" - which I define as "weird but potentially interesting" and "not fit to be out in public" - which I generally define as people who are so rude, obnoxious and demanding that St. Francis himself would be hard-pressed not to be tempted to sock them in the nose. Yeah, maybe I'm not entirely consistent - in that I like one group of deviation-from-the-norm and can't stand another, but whatever.)

I don't know. I'll take the people with dental, skin, or hair challenges but a heart of gold over some botoxed wench with a soul like a Frigidare any day. I'm not saying there aren't good people in the cities - absolutely not. It's just, some of the most challenging interpersonal interactions I've had in my life - the ones where I came out of it feeling lessened, like I wasn't pretty enough or thin enough or wealthy enough or that there was something wrong with me because I had "failed" to marry, came from experiences I had living in the city.

I did spend a little time roaming around and doing a little shopping. I was somewhat frustrated that the really fun, really cool shopping district was just a couple more miles north of where I was - I suppose I could have kept walking but it was kind of hot, and I figured they'd not let me into the fancy department stores anyway seeing as by that point I was all sweaty and my hair had kind of turned into a dandelion pouf from the humidity. I suppose I could have taken a taxi but I was afraid of giving the wrong address to the driver, or having him misunderstand me, and winding up somewhere where I didn't intend to be and didn't know how to get back to where I belonged. Especially because it seemed that the cabbies (at least the ones I had experience with) in that city didn't have the greatest command of English.

Oh, yeah, I'm probably going to some political-correctness hell for that - for admitting I prefer cabbies who speak decent English. But whatever.

On the other hand...the (v. expensive) restaurant I ate in for two evenings (it was convenient to where I was staying) had foreign waiters and they worked out well. The waiter I had (both nights) was a West Indian chap, and he was a good waiter - attentive without being fawning, quick to notice when I needed something, made helpful suggestions. (I tipped him well. The high prices and no-substitutions policy weren't HIS fault).

One thing I noticed about traveling - and I have to say here that I am most definitely not a "go out at night" girl - I'm not a pub-crawler (I've discovered that even small quantities of alcohol give me migraines, and most bars don't like to see that person come in who orders a seven-up or an orange juice when they could be selling Appletinis or something like that. And also - going pub-crawling alone sucks [and it's not safe - even if you're not consuming booze - bad stuff can still happen], and no one I knew invited me; most of my old buds were people who lived right in around that area and they were going back to spouses and kids at the end of the day). I'm not a concert-goer - most music venues are too loud for me. So after dinner, I go back to my hotel room.

And there's a sort of tipping point - I think it's about 8 pm for me - where the hotel room sort of ceases being a place you're trapped and bored with nothing to do, and where it becomes sort of a haven - you don't have to be out, you can put your pajamas on and scroll around the unfamiliar television lineup to see if there's either a program you like, or a channel you don't get, on. Or you can pull out your book and read. And you know? I kind of notice that at home, too - there's a point at which you kind of give up on the day a little, and you welcome whatever distraction you can find - you put down whatever work you brought home, or don't try to do "improving" things any more.

For me, it usually means finding either an episode of "Mythbusters" or something on the Food Network on the telly, or pulling out a book. Or even just going to bed early.

It's funny how travel makes you notice mundane things about yourself.

Yes, I am very much a stay-at-home, old-maidish, Miss-Marple sort of type of person. I'm coming to the point where I'm no longer bugged by people thinking that's either odd or boring - How a person chooses to spend their time, whether it's dancing at a bar or reading a novel - should really be something that's their own personal choice, without someone else's eye-rolling or implication that the person is somehow less because they're not very "social."

Because - and this was particularly true on my last trip - I get enough of people during the day. I don't need to be with them late into the night.

Gathering

Next week I go off to meetings. Presenting a paper on research at meetings is pretty much an annual event. But this is the first time I've presented at the particular meetings I'm going to, and it's the first time in years I've presented at a Major Research Society.

I'm having a little stress.

My paper is done - or as done as it's going to be, it's preliminary results - and I've practiced it and all, but I'm still stressing. One thing I've learned about the Major Reseach Society meetings is that there are a few people who attend them who are basically big dillweeds.

They are the people who live to tear down other people's research in front of a crowd, because they think it makes them look big. I've never had it happen to me, but I've seen it happen and it's ugly and you just HURT for the poor person standing up at the front of the room (more often than not a grad student, it seems).

Look - I have no problem with letting someone know their research is flawed, or there are things they've not considered. However, I think doing it in a bombastic and public way is kind of unprofessional. My tendency - in the few occasions where I've been the "expert" and someone who is a "non-expert" has sorta messed something up, is for me to catch them on their way out of the session and quietly ask them, "Hey, have you considered x, y, and z?" or "You know, you might want to try doing a different analysis [and give an example] on those data."

It just feels wrong to me to loudly correct someone in front of an audience.

But there are people who do it. Some of them are people who, I think, just have security issues - if they're not the center of attention, why, then, they might just as well be INVISIBLE! Some of them are people who genuinely think they're providing a service - either they're doing the version of rubbing a puppy's nose in its "accident" ("This is so you won't ever make that mistake again!") or they're hoping to so humiliate the person that they never show their face at a meeting again.
Perhaps some of them are just so socially awkward/retarded that they don't understand that calling a grad student an "idiot" in front of his or her peers is a bad thing.

But at any rate...even though it's never happened to me, having seen it happen is enough to keep me up at nights a little bit before the meeting. (This time next week it should be over...my presentation at least, if I'm reading the schedule right).

Oh, I also had the fear I've been dropped from the schedule...they didn't have one up until just now. I received confirmation of my talk and all that, but no communication at all between then and now.

Heh. I see I'm an 8 am, Monday talk. That's good - maybe some of the potential "hecklers" will still be in bed but I'll have lots of shiny-faced grad students and new profs at the talk.

I hope my talk is good enough. I hope it's well-received.

I'm not going to read the abstracts in detail about the other talks...one has the word "heuristic" in the title and a couple others involve rflps. That scares me a little - I hope I'm not trying to run with a crowd smarter than I am. I mean, I don't mind being "just barely" the least-accomplished or stupidest one, but I really really mind it being obvious that all the other talks are so far above mine.

(No, that's never actually happened. But still).

One of the problems is I'm at a small school, where research is totally done "on your own time." We don't have lots of fancy equipment and my paper is largely a literature survey and metanalysis of data that other people have collected, and I'm just worried that people are going to snark at it and I'm going to feel humiliated. (Well, if worse comes to worse, I'll be done by 8:15 on Monday and if I feel too much like an idiot, I can cancel my second and third night hotel stays, change my train tickets, and go home early.)

So anyway. I don't remember being this nervous before a talk before...perhaps that's because this is the first time I have NO co-authors, I'm the only one doing this work - so it's not been bounced off of a particular very critical person and refined to within an inch of its life. Also, as I said, I've never been to these meetings before so I have no idea as to the tone. A colleague of mine who has been to them describes them as "relaxed and supportive," but he's also one of those people who's oblivious to criticism and the subtle, body-language signs that people use to say, "I think you're a dork" when they aren't quite willing to come out and say it.

(I hope he's right and I'm overreacting. I always have a little bit of an inferiority complex coming from a small, low-priority-on-research school.

I'm afraid someone will say the biologist version of Sheila's, "Don't even try, CHiPS!" to me, and that I'll be devastated, and that I won't even be able to control my emotions long enough for me to sit down. [Again - it's never happened, but with harsh enough criticism and bad nerves, I could imagine it happening. And getting upset in front of a bunch of fellow scientists...well, you might as well just hang it up and open the dog grooming parlor the next week, because you'll never work in the science biz again...])

It also involves a certain amount of complex traveling, involving several types of conveyances. (How much does one tip a big-city taxi driver these days? Seriously. It's been, like, at least ten years since I took a cab anywhere.) And it's in a big city, which just makes me a little tense to begin with. (Especially now. I don't THINK the terrorists would try anything on American soil, but you never know - I'm going to be right in the "fancy hotel district" so it's not exactly a non-obvious place).

I'm just not that big on traveling (overnight traveling, traveling where you're at the mercy of others' schedules) anyway. My feeling is: I paid a lot of money for my house. I put in a lot of effort to make my house nice. Why should I abandon my house for a strange hotel room somewhere else? (I like taking day-trips, but I'm serious about this - I really don't like staying in hotels; I'd much rather return to my own nice house at the end of the day.)

So anyway. I've been doing what I can to assuage the horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that Something Is Going To Go Terribly Wrong. I have printouts of my hotel reservations (just in case they claim they never heard of me and never got my reservation). I have printouts of my receipt of the registration for the meetings (ditto). I'm practicing my talk multiple times each day, even practicing my nonchalant laugh and, "Oh, these are just PRELIMINARY results" casual statement as a hope of staving off someone who might be starting in with snark.

And I'm reminding myself that even if it does go badly, in a week now, it will all be over. Kind of like the way I think about dental appointments.

random

Emily - if I had been in a really snarky mood and someone pulled that "fake woman" thing on me, I'd probably have said, "Better a fake woman than a real b*tch."

And I have had the implication that I'm not a 'real woman' thrown in my direction, solely because I have not bred. People who throw that implication? I decide then and there I'm done with them. I don't need that kind of crap in my life.

***

I know some of you are getting sick of the body-image-fu on here, but right now it's working its way through my system (kind of like a virus, I just have to sweat these kind of things out). I listened to a few minutes of the Dennis Prager show today while doing some last minute house-cleaning before having a meeting here

Prager was talking about some actress (didn't catch who) that he described as "emaciated." His argument was that, to a hetero man, this is NOT sexy - that to guys who like women, curves are generally necessary for appeal. And he asked: why do women do this to themselves? Why do they get convinced that so skinny is the way to go.

And I admit, I was kinda screaming at the radio - stuff about "the Health Fascists tell you that even an extra pound on your body will kill you early and in a bad way" and "because fashion has dictated it for so many years that we have a skewed picture." (Although, yeah, I do know about the "men who prefer women generally prefer women who aren't skin and bones. And to be honest? I can totally look at women I know and go, "oh, she's way too thin" or "oh, she looks good" or "ooooh, she looked better before she lost that 15 pounds" Likewise - as a hetero woman - I look at guys and the really skinny guys or the really muscled-out guys - the ones who look like steroid abusers - just don't do it for me. Give me just an ordinary guy, with some normal muscles, maybe even a little paunch, and I'm good.)

Then a woman called in - I didn't catch her name, but when she started crying, I really started listening. She said that she'd far rather be emaciated - have people look at her and go "Oh, she's too thin" than be, as she said, "Fat and invisible." And then she started to cry. She said she was over 200 pounds (maybe she said 300? I couldn't hear her all that well at that point. But I've known very womenly women - very attractive women - who weighed in at or close to 200 pounds. It's a matter of fat distribution, muscles, and height. The problem is - in our society - 200 pounds is sort of a milestone; it's the point where if you're a woman and you hit that weight, most people assume you have stopped being a woman and started being an It. And that's not right. That kind of attitude is not going to help a person lose weight if that's what she needs to do.) and that people didn't see her as a woman. And she talked about how she had sort of fantasized about dying of cancer, because cancer makes you thin while you're dying, and then it would only take four people to carry her out of the church instead of 12 (meaning, in her coffin).

Oh man. Oh, that just hit me in the heart. I stopped cleaning and stood there and started crying myself. Because I hear her. I hear what she's saying. I know the "invisibility." I know the feeling that you'd rather be too small than too big. I even - in my younger and more screwed-up days - sort of wished for some kind of non-fatal, not-too-painful disease that would make me lose weight - just so I could go to certain relatives' houses and have them say, "Oh, my gosh! You're so thin! You need to eat something!" instead of, "Dear....why don't you go run around outside for a while?" or "Dear...why don't you leave those cookies for the boys?"

This society is far too good at screwing people up. I'm less screwed up now than I used to be but I still have buttons that can be pushed.

I'd love to say to that woman - God made you. You're beautiful. The people who make you feel sub-human because of your weight are being cruel. And I know how hard it is to try and lose weight and be surrounded by people who say, "But if you JUST TRIED." No. Been there, done that, got the XL t-shirt. Trying harder sometimes just doesn't do it.

Anyway. It broke my heart to think that someone crapped on her so much with their attitudes that she'd rather get cancer and die than go on being who she was.

***

Remember the dude I talked about who signed up for one of my classes three times, and stopped coming each time, and then e-mailed me and wanted me to help him make up the class in two weeks (an entire semester in two weeks) before the end of last semester?

Well, he took my advice, I guess, and is in my summer section of the class.

But. I also teach an arranged-time "readings" class sometimes. I am doing it this summer, as an unpaid overload, because a good former student of mine came to me and said: I need one credit to graduate. I've taken all the majors-classes I need for what I want to do with my life. Is there any way you could let me do the readings class this summer so I could get finished?

And I said, sure, no problem. And there was another person who wanted to do that - to get finished up. So I told her that that was fine (and both of them chose topics that I am very familiar with, so it's minimal extra work on my part).

Well, the other day my department chair e-mailed me. She wanted to know if "all" the students in the readings class were mine. I wondered about the 'all' because I only had spoken with the two (Remember - our summer semester is almost half over).

So I checked with the registrar (We do not get rosters for the arranged-type classes; the idea is the students are supposed to have okayed it with the prof in charge first, so the prof knows who's in his or her class.)

Well, I had two surprise students. The disappearing guy and a woman. (Both were people that I knew how to find fairly easily; they're in other classes this summer). Turns out the woman was working with another faculty member - so it is not a problem for me.

But the guy - let's call him Earl - well, he apparently just got "permission" to take the class (oh, I have to add - this is a Permission Of Instructor class, meaning, technically, we are supposed to okay people before they join the class) from someone who is Not Me.

I am not happy about this.

I am not happy about this for more than just the obvious reason - because when I asked Earl about the class, and said, "You know, you are supposed to come in during the first week of classes and discuss your study plan with the professor," he got all huffy with me.

Wrong move, Earl.

"But I didn't know who was teaching the class!" he said. "I didn't know what I was supposed to do!"

Well, duh, Earl. You are, like, 22. You know where the departmental secretary's office is. Even if my name were not listed on the course schedule you received, you could have - you SHOULD have - gone and asked her. And you signed up for the class without first requesting my permission - you should have known who the prof was BEFORE you signed up. (Oh, what if it was Tolgar the Horrible? or Dr. Purselip-who-fails-everybody? Then what? Never, never sign up for a class like this one without knowing who teaches it!)

And, even beyond that - the freaking semester is half freaking over. This is a readings class. This is not something you can freaking cram for on the last couple days of class.

I told him: You must come and speak to me during my office hours this week and plan out the program of your readings. You know my office hours; they are on the syllabus you have in your hand.

Well, he never came in to speak to me. My office hours for the week are now over. He also knows that in another two weeks, I am going to be leaving town for a week to attend meetings, and after I get back, it will be too late.

I am really done with this guy. I am really fed up with his entitled "wipe my bum for me" attitude.

Look: it is an arranged class. The point of arranged classes is that you talk to the professor ahead of time and ARRANGE what you are going to do. Waiting until the midpoint of the semester to arrange things is too late. Being rude to the professor in charge because you "didn't know who taught the class" (and apparently couldn't be arsed to go and find out) is not the way to operate.

If this guy is pathologically shy or something and it's such a problem for him to talk to someone - and I DO NOT think that is the case; the "job opportunity too good to pass up" that he needs his B.S. for is one where he's in contact with people all the time - well, then he needs to rethink how his life is going to go. If he has that much problem working up the gumption to walk in to our (extremely non-threatening looking) secretary and asking her a question, he needs medication. No, seriously. I generally rail against psychotropic meds given out like candy but if someone's so impaired that they can't function, then they need them.

And as I see it, there are three possibilities in this case:

1. The guy is impaired in some way - pathological shyness, or memory is shot, or something, and it's a medicatible condition. In that case, he needs meds.

2. He has been so coddled he can't do anything for himself. Sorry, I don't wipe bums. I don't spoon-feed. I'm not going to deal with a person who can't make an effort to do what he's supposed to. I have my own things to attend to - as well as thirty-some other students who need some appropriate attention (like, a little help on writing up a lab report) periodically.

3. He's a massive procrastinator. That is a problem he needs to get over, himself. I cannot make him get over it. Likewise, I am not going to enable him in his procrastination - if he comes in next week I am going to hand him a pre-prepared stack of readings (the easiest option for me at this point - choose something I already know so I don't have to do any extra prep) and tell him, "take this or leave this; it is too late for you to have any choice in the matter."

If he doesn't come in next week, or the week after? Tough. He's screwed. He cannot wait until the last two weeks of class and expect me to work with him. I have exams to write during that time, and papers to grade, and other students - STUDENTS WHO HAVE BEEN DOING WHAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO - to help.

I just shudder to think what he'll be like in his "opportunity too good to pass up." I'm hoping all of this screwing around is some kind of massive case of senioritis and that he'll pull himself up by the bootstraps once he gets into what he regards as the "real world." Otherwise, too damn bad. Welcome to welfare, dude.

****

I get really sick of people who think of the jobs they are going into as "the real world" and college as some kind of faerieland fantasy where they can do whatever they want and get their asses saved at the last minute by a caring prof. College is supposed to be PREPARATION for the "real world" (and - for those of us who teach or do research at one, it IS the "real world"), not a way of avoiding it.

****

I am so glad for the four-day summer week here. Thursday is my Friday. Friday is my get-caught-up-on-research-you-don't-have-time-for-otherwise day. Saturday is actually a relaxation day, as is Sunday. And there are almost no meetings in the summer.

****

I don't think I've ever discussed my deep and abiding love for Mythbusters here, but I do have to say: it is one of my favorite shows, ever. Probably my favorite show on television right now.

Well, last night they did cold weather myths.

They tested, and more or less confirmed, the tongue-getting-stuck-to-a-cold-pole. You know, like in "A Christmas Story": "My tongue is not...stuck! Stuck! STUCK!"

They used a pig's tongue that had been modified so they could pipe warm water through it (to bring it up to normal tongue temperature; this was a disembodied tongue from a slaughterhouse). They stuck it - quite spectacularly - to a frozen pole. Then Tory stuck his tongue to a cold pole in Colorado (except it didn't stick quite as spectacularly; either he was more cautious or else the pole warmed up from his body heat).

I love Mythbusters because it's funny, and it features things being "hacked" (I love tinkering, I love to see people modify things to change their function). It's not perhaps AS science-y as it could be (I have some issues with their miniscule sample sizes, and with the lack of doing blind tests in a lot of situations). But it's a fun fun show, and I love it. I even love the re-runs that Discovery seems to show a lot.

Actually, I like a lot of the Discovery shows - I enjoy Dirty Jobs, though probably with more schadenfreude than is really proper. And I recently discovered "How It's Made" - which is sort of an odd show, but it endeared itself to me fast - basically, it's video of factory assembly lines for stuff - crayons and rope and car oil filters and stuff like that - with an at-times-cheesy voice-over. (I get the feeling - but haven't paid enough attention to the credits to confirm - that it was originally made somewhere else, like Japan, and then dubbed into English with a new narrator).

I tend to find video of stuff being made pretty hypnotic. There's the machinery end of it (machinery interests me. Perhaps I should have been an engineer - a career my father suggested to me - after all). There's also the calmness of it - everything works, nothing goes wrong, there's no drama. (I also enjoy the "making stuff" shows on HGTV and Food Network. Those are on a smaller scale, and there's more of the personality of the presenter being injected, but I still find them fun and interesting.

When I was a small child and used to watch Mr. Rogers, one of my favorite segments was how he's occasionally show (on "Picture-picture") video of stuff - stuff of interest to kids, like Etch-a-Sketches - being made. So I've had the fascination for a long time.

"better than you"

First off:

Ken, I think the cheezburger cat stuff (aka lolcats) is something you either think is funny, or don't, just because of differences in sense of humor. I'm not sure that there's much to "get" - I think the idea is that some of the allusions (particularly the bad English) are to the gaming community or to the Japanese-love-of-many-things-American. (For example: there's a site out there called Engrish that posts examples of attempts to write things in English by non-English speakers. Kind of like the American guy who goes out and gets a tattoo of Chinese characters because he thinks it looks badass, but he doesn't know what the characters mean - for all he knows, it could be off a menu, and say, "Large Chicken Soup $3.")

I just think it's funny because there are a lot of stupid things I think are funny.

****
On to the real post.

One thing I've noticed about the culture (and something that bugs me about it) is the tendency of us to set ourselves off into little groups, and then snipe at people who don't belong to the group.

And frequently the group-membership, or, at the very least, the sniping, is petty and trivial and seems to me to be "you're making an issue out of THIS? Isn't life difficult enough without making people into enemies that shouldn't be your enemies?"

In my experience, women seem to be particularly good at doing this. I will give two examples.

First: the stay-at-home mom vs. the working mom.

I will start off by openly stating my prejudices in the matter: I believe that having a parent (and it could be either parent; in some families the dad might be better suited as a stay-at-home parent) stay home with the children - at least when they are very small - is preferable to sending them to day care.

This is because, in part, day care generally just isn't that good. (I've sort of seen the underbelly of it: there is a day care that uses my church building and they have terrible problems getting and keeping qualified people. Part of it is they pay like $6 an hour, which is currently less than what the McDonald's pays, so unless you are a mom with kids who might go to the day care and you want to make a few (very few) bucks, it's not going to be an appealing job).

Anyway. I didn't mean for this to be a rant about day care - but at least now you know where my prejudices lie. (That said: there is good day care out there but it's usually expensive and has a long waiting list).

But: the whole working-mom vs. stay-at-home mom thing has been a fight, since the 1980s at least (and probably earlier, but I wasn't conscious of it).

It swings back and forth - for years the attitude was that working moms tended to be these cold beings who didn't love their children, and that was why they worked. (And that was the snottiness on the part of stay-at-home moms: taking that attitude). Now, the attitude, at least in some quarters is: if you're a stay at home mom, you're wasting your life and very likely setting yourself up for extreme poverty when your husband leaves you.

There was some woman talking about this this weekend on Book tv. I could only stomach a few moments. Her attitudes were this - that if you, as a mother, "couldn't find a few hours a day to do something to contribute financially to your family" while the kids were at school, you were squandering your potential and hurting your family. She also implied that when - and it seemed to be "when" in her mind, more than "if" - your husband "traded you in" for a younger model, if you hadn't been in the workforce, you'd be screwed and your only hope would be to get a minimum-wage job greeting at the Wal-mart.

And you know, that seemed like such a narrow and pessimistic view.

My parents have been married very nearly 50 years now (it will be 50 years in 2009.) There was never, ever a thought of ANYONE trading ANYONE in for a "younger model" - it was clear to me, even as a self-absorbed teenager, that the only woman for my dad was my mom, and the only man for my mom was my dad.

Now, granted: having some work skills is important. Stuff happens. Both of my mom's sisters buried their husbands young, and one wound up having to work as a cocktail waitress for a few years because that was all that was open at the time (Later on, she wound up managing a grocery store, after the owner realized how good and how fast she was at doing mathematics - like adding up people's bills - in her head).

But I think insisting upon working because of "what if he leaves me?" is kind of cold and kind of self-defeating.

I also think the "But you're not making a contribution to the family" argument isn't so good. My mom stayed home almost my entire childhood (she taught a semester or two here or there, once both my brother and I were in school, as sabbatical replacements for people: those were the days before the glut of grad students had eager new Ph.D.'s willing to work for a one-year stint in some new school). She contributed A LOT. We never had a cleaning lady, or a lawn service. We had good, home-cooked food nearly every day (My mom likes to cook and she is good at it). There was someone home to meet my brother and me at the door when we got home from school. (And that - in terms of our psychological health growing up - I think is priceless).

Of course, that was in the days when it was possible to do such things (I suppose it probably still is. But I'm guessing, particularly in high-tax states or communities, it might be more difficult, as I remember reading that part of the reason there are so many two-career families now is because of the rise in taxes and "user fees" over the years).

My mom was given a choice - she was teaching college when she and my dad found out they were expecting (well, it was more or less planned, but you know what I mean). My dad told her that he would be willing to hire a nanny or pay for day care (and this was in a day when that was far less common than it is now) if she wished to continue working.

And my mom says that she said no. She said that she felt she would enjoy raising their children more, and find it more fulfilling, than she would find continuing to teach college and "always be worrying about who was looking after my kids."

So she quit her job after having me, and, as I said, only went back to working off-and-on after both my brother and I were in school. I don't think she regrets her choice (I hope she does not); I know I am very grateful to her for making the choice she did.

And you know? Were I in her position - married to a guy making decent money, planning my first child - I'd make the same choice. I'd rather have the fun (yes, and the work, and the nasty diapers and vomit, and the worry) of staying home with the kid than farm him or her out to someone else and always be wondering in the back of my mind what was going on.

But - all that said - I know some women who would have quite literally gone mental if they had stayed home all day with their children. And for those women, it's probably better for them to work.

And so, it seems kind of stupid to me. Working moms aren't better than stay at home moms; stay at home moms aren't necessarily better than working moms. It depends on the family circumstances and the particular woman. I'm sure for one of those "go mental" women, it would be preferable for her children to be in day care for part of the day than to have a weepy/angry mom at home with them.

It just seems petty for women to fight over this. We have bigger concerns.

Another one that I'm beginning to see is the children/no children thing.

Couples who do not have children are not "worse," not "less of a couple," not "less of a family" than couples who do. That attitude makes me very angry because I know a few couples who have dealt with infertility and it is VERY painful for people to imply that it's your bad if you don't have kids.

Likewise, couples who, for whatever reason, choose not to have kids - that's their choice. It doesn't make them less. It doesn't make them selfish or bad. They may have very good ethical reasons: genetic disease in the family, or shaky finances, or something else. Or they may feel they'd be poor parents. Or they may just not want children.

I don't have kids, partly by choice, but mainly by circumstance. I'm not married, for one thing, and I tend to believe that it is best for a child to have two parents in the home. (There are a host of reasons other than that, as well). But I also just don't really care to raise a child - I don't deal well with sleep deprivation, I don't deal well with someone tugging at my sleeve and going, "Hey? hey? hey? hey? hey? hey?....." until I want to scream.

I have a feeling I'd probably be one of those "mental" mothers. (And no, I'm not making slams at postpartum depression, which is a real and tragic condition. I mean to say - I'm unsuited, personality-wise, to be a good mother. I do not have sufficient patience with small, pre-verbal beings.)

And I saw a t-shirt the other day that made my head want to explode.

It was on someone's craftblog website - it was one of those people who designs silk screens. And I guess she was expecting, because the t-shirt had a modification of the old Rosie the Riveter design (altered so she looked pregnant) and the phrase,

"I'm so crafty, I make PEOPLE."

Yeah, great. I'm so happy for you. Yeah, you're SO much more creative than me because you managed to have one of your eggs link up with some guy's sperm.

So I guess those quilts, some of which I've put years into (years are longer than nine months) are chopped liver, then? I guess we all should just hang up our knitting needles and embroidery floss because you have won in the making-stuff sweepstakes?

(I'm also reminded - on the other side of things - of an interview with a Peruvian weaver - she had never married and had children yet lived in a very remote and traditional village. The interviewer asked her some question about whether people thought her life choice was odd, and she kind of shrugged and said, "Well, anybody can make babies." So I guess some people think that having children is for the "little people." Whatever. I don't care for either attitude: if you want children, God bless you and be with you. If you don't, that's fine too. Again, it's about finding what you are specifically being called to do)

See, that's what I'm saying: why do people need to somehow set themselves up as superior over something that shouldn't be seen as a source of superiority? Is it because some people have such a shaky image of themselves that they can only feel good by making a claim that they're better than others who haven't attained whatever exalted state they happen to find themselves in?

I will say, on the positive end - last spring I attended a Catholic wedding (the first one I'd ever been to). The priest was talking about people and relationships as part of the homily and in his blessings for families and couples, he also included one for people who were single, "By vocation, choice, or circumstance" was how I think he said it. And yeah - you can roll your eyes and say that's all touchy-feely and politically correct and all that, but you know? It made me feel included. It made me feel like I wasn't some aberration. And I think there's some good in that, touchy-feely as it may be. (And I would suppose that of all people, a Catholic priest would be conscious of the fact that not everyone is going to be paired up, two-by-two, like Noah's Ark.) And in this society - especially where I live right now - it's really easy to feel like an aberration if you're not part of a couple.

(And again: yes, I know, statistically I AM an aberration. The vast majority of women my age are either married or in a "serious" relationship. But being an "aberration" is not something I care to think about every moment of my life. And I also know the old saying attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt about people not being able to make you feel inferior without your permission. But I don't have quite the same self-confidence Mrs. Roosevelt had, I guess, and it's really not a feeling of inferiority so much as it is a feeling of annoyance - like with that t-shirt I mentioned above - what right does the person have to think they're better than me just because of that one thing?)