In the absence of information, what do we do? Make it up!

In the absence of information, what do employees do? Speculate!

Here's the latest: Rumor has it that the for-profit college I teach for is 1) closing; 2) moving; 3) getting shut down by accreditors; 4) being abandoned by students like rats from a sinking ship. The stink of out-of-control speculation filled the faculty office today as we stood around and contemplated our uncertain future. Notably failing to mention that the future is never certain, we hashed and rehashed what little information we had, until we sounded like breaking-news TV anchors, ratcheting up the drama as we got more and more anxious.

Satisfaction will not be forthcoming. The facts will remain hidden from us because the administration's working style is to play things close to the vest. Rarely is information free-range. It's more like Chicken Run at our school. Information sneaks out at night, wiggling under doors and jumping barbed wire fences. You can imagine that the quality of that sneakily obtained information is suspect.

If rumors are true, the school will either be moving or closing by the end of the year when the lease is up. Closing makes sense. Enrollments are down. The parking lot hasn't been full in many, many months. In this the granddaddy of recessions, our classrooms should be bursting. This term I have two classes with only one student. Surely that is not sustainable. In addition, regulations are heavier and sharper than ever, from both the government and the accrediting agency that gives us our license to disburse federal dollars (student loan money). With so many more hoops to jump through, who could blame the owners if they decided to call it quits?

True to our natural process, we feverishly searched for someone or something to blame. Maybe, we wondered, it's the new gainful employment regulations requiring schools to post consumer information about the retention and placement rates for each vocational program. Prospective students are comparing our rates to our competitors and realizing that 18 months at our school won't guarantee employment.

We also blamed various elements in our organization. There is apparently a feud between the directors of admissions and marketing. They refuse to speak to one another. That might be affecting our ability to attract new leads.

We blamed our college president, for being invisible. Once "one of us" (an instructor), he is now rarely seen, and never heard. The silence is perplexing. Maybe we'd be doing better if we had visible leadership.

We could blame the competitive higher education landscape in this area of metropolitan Portland. Three community colleges are in the immediate vicinity, all with much lower tuition and excellent reputations. Public and private universities abound. For-profit competitors butt heads on the late-night airwaves: Everest, Heald, and the University of Phoenix, with pockets far deeper and fuller than ours. We are a speck of a for-profit college. How do we find a niche in this market, when there are so many other attractive options?

We are a motley crew, our little faculty group, a band of misfits that fell into for-profit vocational education sort of by accident at different times over the past 15 years. Some of us are trained teachers; most of us aren't. But we all care about doing a good job. We want our students to learn the skills they need to succeed in their fields. With class sizes of one, two, or three, how can students get the benefit of interacting with their peers,working on team projects, or leading class discussions? So maybe it's our fault too, for losing the spark, for burning out.

I think every school has an energetic tipping point, above which lies profitability, ecstatic facebook reviews, and steady referrals and below which lies empty parking lots, droopy teachers, and muddled, soporific students. When we fall below the tipping point, it does no good to fill the bulletin boards with Valentine's Day hearts or plaster the walls with student testimonials. When a prospective student takes a tour, she sees lifeless hallways and empty labs. Dreary, boring, no place I want to be, she thinks.

The lobby used to echo with the sound of chatting medical students. I used to hear hear armies of students descending the stairs. What will become of us? Will this site close? Or move to be even closer to the shadow of its competitors? We don't know. Speculation is cousin to the gossip mill, which rumor has it is surprisingly accurate. In the absence of information, rumor runs wild with the free-range chickens.

After 50, you can do whatever you want

This morning at breakfast, just for the hell of it, I plotted the relationship between age and the amount of stuff you can get away with on a hand-drawn graph. Just now I put it into Excel. Age is on the x-axis. The amount of stuff you can get away with is on the y-axis. It was an odd looking U-shaped chart. 

From age zero to about 29, you can use age as an excuse to screw things up. Kids aren't expected to have it all together, and even 20-somethings can't be trusted due to inexperience and stupidity. So the line starts high on the y-axis for little kids and gradually drops till it gets to 30, where it plunges precipitously.

Then it flatlines from 30 to 50. After 50, it rises straight up and angles off till it is about the same level it began at age zero.

Here's how to interpret this chart. When you are under 30 and you screw things up, people will say something like "Did you hear about So-and-so? He's the shit!" Because they expect you to screw things up. You can get away with a lot.

Between 30 and 50, it's a different story. "Poor thing, she accidentally erased the client's files. So sad, wonder if they are hiring at Wal-Mart?" It's bleak, carrying the weight of perfection on your shoulders.

But once you hit 50, you are home free. After you turn 50, no one is watching you, waiting for you to screw up. They know it is going to happen. You can destroy the client's files, and once again people will say, "Wow, did you hear about So-and-so? Wish I had that kind of freedom!" Everyone expects you to have "senior moments." Mess up the company books? No problem! Mail a report to the client's competitor by mistake? Who cares! After you pass 50, everyone expects train wrecks. After one moment of fascinated horror, they will turn away and pretend they don't know you. It's like your mistakes (and you) are invisible.

Another perk of passing 50 is that you are too old to be attractive, so you don't have to worry about looking good anymore. What a relief. Free at last! From 30 to 50, all eyes are on you. You can't make any mistakes. You have to have your lookgood in place all the time. But once you pass 50, you can do whatever you want! After 50, the world is yours.

Life or something like it

Sometimes I wish this life was done. Over. Finis. I'm not quite ready to be dead, but being alive is sometimes so excruciating. I have a hard time seeing it as a gift. Even though I live in the US, eat organically, pollute the air and water with reckless abandon, and spend my free time whining about being a doctoral student, I still twitch. It's pathetic, but it's a rare day when I wake up feeling grateful to be alive.

Oh, I have moments of extreme relief. Like when I see a school bus go by. That was me, back in 2001, driving a short bus in Gresham, Oregon. Or whenever I sew on a button or mend a hem. I used to sew clothes for a living, a strangely self-mutilating form of personal hell. I guess you could call the relief I feel at not having to sew or drive a school bus gratitude.

Gratitude implies there is something to be grateful to about the things I am grateful for. Presumably something like God? After so many years living with a nihilist, I'm reluctant to approach the idea of God. As a survivor of Twelve Step programs, I wrestle with the concept of a higher power, that is, a power greater than myself. A power that can help me guide the short bus in the rain and snow without losing a passenger or running over a pedestrian. A power that can help me avoid sewing through my finger. Or strangling my customers. (I think another page called Custom Sewing Hell might be in order. I'm feeling a lot of repressed rage.)

I don't believe there is something guiding me or planning my life for me, like a great big Franklin Planner in the sky. I think I have free will. Except when I'm watching episodes of True Blood or reading the Betsy the Vampire Queen books. Then I'm a slavering compulsive addict. But usually I opt to believe I have free will.

Which I generally use to turn my back on the idea of a higher power. I simply refuse to participate, thereby leaving God no one to engage with. And me with no one to blame for this thing I call life.

Math anxiety and the wreckage of the future

Today is the first day of my first official dissertation "course," the 12-week period in which I am expected to revise my concept paper and write the dissertation proposal. I logged on to the university website, entered the course room, and clicked the little button that gives the school permission to deduct $2,380 from my bank account. I took a breath and said a prayer before I clicked it. Only for a brief moment did I contemplate the thought of not clicking it. Dissertation hell, here I come.

I started this journey in 2006. One course at a time, I've dipped my inquiring mind into a long list of interesting subjects, even ones that weren't in the business department, such as The Art and Science of Adult Education and Foundations of E-Learning. I was lucky to have many choices for electives. When I started "attending" this online university, learners could choose from a veritable smorgasbord of subjects.

A few years ago, the school sold out to an investment company, and the hatches were battened down. Learners were given a pre-designed program. The curriculum was set. No more choices. I was lucky. And here I am, six years later, much older, wearier, and arguably no wiser than when I started.

I've changed some since 2006, but my same old fears are still with me. Am I smart enough to do this? Will my bank account hold out? How can I fool everyone that I am statistically competent? Will there be a job for me, at the advanced age of 55, when I finally complete this degree? What kind of job can I expect? Who will hire a fading, chronically malcontented Ph.D.?

My friend accuses me of straying into the "wreckage of the future" whenever I dwell on the myriad possibilities for failure. She's right, but I can't seem to help myself. It's where I feel the most at home.

I teach an occupational course in which students use 10-key calculators to perform various business math computations. They learn to use the memory feature to multiply and divide multiple numbers. I have an older student who clearly exhibits signs of living in the wreckage of the future. She broke down weeping during a one-page test of basic arithmetic. I'm sure the same thoughts run through her mind as run through mine: Am I smart enough to compete with these young twenty-somethings? Who will hire me if I can't do basic math?

What she said to me was, "It's not that hard!" as tears streamed down her face. She means, it's hard, and it shouldn't be. She thinks there is something wrong with her. I tried to reassure her, without outing myself as a complete math incompetent. (After all, I am ostensibly teaching the class.) What can I say to soothe her ragged self-esteem? She believes it's important to know how to do math, probably because that is what people have told us from the moment we learned to count. Welcome to educator hell.

I've had a wary relationship with numbers ever since I can remember. In second grade I cheated all the time in arithmetic (sorry Mrs. Corbin, although I'm sure you knew). In third grade Miss Hubbert told me to stand in the hall until I could learn how to tell time on the clock. (Back then time was a mysterious analog thing, not digital like it is now.) I got some passerby to tell me the time so I could go back into the classroom, but it took me years to understand the relationship between the big hand and the little hand.

Some brains are better with words, some are better with numbers. The only thing I can do with numbers is line them up and make them look good. I can format the hell out a column of numbers. But anything beyond calculating the mean gives me cold sweats. That is why my dissertation will most likely end up to be qualitative rather than quantitative.

Clearing the decks

In preparation for the next adventure in Dissertation Hell, I started going through some of my old journals, looking for drawings I could scan to put on this blog, and I came across some that made me laugh. However, it occurred to me that I may need to trade in my art persona for a more professional image, if I'm going to get a job in academe.

My problem is, I vacillate between thinking I'm an artist and a scholar. Some days I want to chuck it all and head for the hills with my paintbox. Other days I think burying myself in esoteric articles about whether quality is measurable is the greatest pursuit on the planet. I feel like I'm going nuts.

It's fun to look at my old drawings, though. They have nothing to do with scholarly research. But they sure are funny. Oh boy, now I'm back in Art Hell. Argh! Why can't someone pay me to draw and paint what I want?

I predict that in about one year, I will have a similar complaint, but it will be along the lines of "Why can't someone pay me to research and study what I want?"

Which leads me back to what I've known all along. I'm a chronic malcontent. Nothing will truly make me happy, because happiness for a chronic malcontent is unattainable. Why do I even bother talking about it, nobody cares. Bla bla bla.

Am I the only person not on Facebook?

The career college where I teach recently launched a Facebook page. This in spite of the fact that the Facebook website is blocked from the computers in the student computer labs (due to students spending hours farming on Farmville instead of researching on EBSCO Host).

I haven't actually looked at it. I don't think I need a Facebook page to view someone else's Facebook page, do I? I don't think so. (My 20-year-old niece would be cringing right now.) I guess I should be embarrassed to admit that I don't know how social media works. I know what it is and what it is for, and I have made a personal vow to keep my distance, so I don't really know HOW it works. I just know I don't want to participate.

I used to teach marketing. That's what the school hired me for was to teach marketing. But the program lacked students at the location where I taught, so the administrators moved the program to the main campus, where I used to teach but don't anymore. I could if I wanted to drive 25 miles each way, twice a day (for morning and night classes). No thanks, not at $3.50 a gallon. So now I teach mostly computer applications, keyboarding, and a few introductory business classes. (Remind me again why I am getting this Ph.D.?)

I bring up marketing because the social media marketing wave has long since crested and left me for dead on the sand. I could flog some interest in the topic, if I had to get a job. Or if I had to teach a class. But truly, I have no interest in learning about social media because I have no intention of connecting with anyone.

There, I said it. What do you expect? I'm a chronic malcontent. And a raging introvert. Maybe raging is not the right word. Tree falling in the forest and all that. More like, stoic introvert. Frigid introvert. Chilly, austere, lifeless introvert? No, that's not quite right. Well, I guess I'll write more about being an introvert on an Introvert Hell page, eh? In the meantime, what is up with all this social media crap?

I'll tell you what I really like. I like trying to understand why people do what they do and like what they like. That is what appeals to me about marketing. Not the slimy attempt to persuade people to buy more, bigger, better, but the humble pursuit of understanding buyer behavior. I don't want to be on Facebook, but I want to know why you are. How you use it, what you get out of it. I have no interest in Twitter, but why do you tweet? What do you tweet, how often do you tweet, and most importantly, how has it affected your life, your relationships, your feelings of self-worth?

See, I may be a chronic malcontent but that doesn't mean I don't care about others.

Perplexed and dumbfounded by my students

For-profit career college education is hell, no doubt about it. But school is school, and if you want to get the most out of the experience, wouldn't you want to at least show up for it? I mean, actually come to class?

I am perplexed and dumbfounded at how many students consistently miss class.

Then I remember what it was like when I was a student. No. Wait. I always went to class. Sometimes I slept through it, but that's another story. At least I went. And when I was a fully grown mature adult of 30 something, going to Cal State Los Angeles with a bunch of what seemed like teenagers, I NEVER missed a class. Even when we had earthquakes. Even when we had riots. I was serious about my education. After all, I was paying good money for it, or at least I was borrowing good money for it (that's when I was still using credit cards). I was going to get something for my time and Citibank's money, and I did, by showing up to class.

I realize that many of my students are single parents of chronically drippy kids. I realize they are living on next to nothing, waiting for their student loan money to come through, trying to keep gas in the beater, living out of vending machines... it's not easy, I realize.

But some of the students who face the toughest challenges are rarely or never absent. And they work their fingers raw catching up. So, I ask you, what makes some students motivated to show up for their own education, and others not? And is there anything that I can do, as an instructor, to motivate them to care about showing up?

Wait a minute. Do I sound like I care? I don't, not really. It's not my responsibility to motivate another person. Even if it were, I don't have that kind of power. I can't make someone think or believe or feel a certain way. Even if I held a gun to their collective heads, I couldn't force them to want to learn. All I can do is try to present the material in a way they find engaging and offer persuasive arguments for why they should learn it. It's sales, basically. I'm just a huckster for higher education. And I use the word "higher" loosely.

Still malcontented

Wow. I don't believe it. Two days in a row. Does this mean I qualify as a writer? Hmmm. I doubt it. A writer is someone who publishes their work, right? Wait a minute... doesn't this count?

My age is showing, I fear. When I think publishing, I think books. I love books. I have a ton of books. I love the smell of the musty binding, the feel of the scratchy paper. I love my disheveled paperbacks that I inevitably drop in the bathwater. I love that I don't have enough room to display them all. I love that they are dog-eared, marked up, old friends.

What do I read? Oh, I can't tell you that, I'm way too embarrassed to admit my current addiction runs along the lines of trashy paranormal romances. I'm not a very sophisticated reader. When I'm not reading articles on quality assurance in for-profit higher education, I'm reading Kresley Cole, Mary Janice Davidson, Laurell K. Hamilton, Rachel Caine, and Charlaine Harris. Yes, I am a True Blood addict. And yes, I am single. How did you know?

What do you like to read?

Welcome to the Hellish Handbasket

Welcome to another useless, pointless blog of self-obsessed palaver by a chronic malcontent. 

My name is Carol, and I admit it: I’m a chronic malcontent. What is a chronic malcontent? Someone who is never satisfied, can never be happy, sees only half empty through mud-colored glasses, and goes through each day with a personal rain cloud the way Pigpen traveled with his own dust cloud. But Pigpen was happy (I think). Chronic malcontents have honed discontentment to an art form. 

I’m not sure why I’m writing this. It’s unlikely anyone will ever read it, considering I don’t plan to tell anyone this blog exists. It’s sort of like the online equivalent of a message in a bottle. But I’m not asking, is anyone out there? It’s more like I’m just letting the universe know I’m pissed.

What have I got to be angry about? Thanks for asking. Really, nothing. I’m white, and I live in America. I mean, I should be grateful, counting my blessings, thanking god (if there is a god), right? But on the other hand, I’m female and 55, so I think I’m entitled to gripe. Plus I’m in graduate school. Plus I teach at one of the dreaded career colleges people love to hate. Plus I’m packing too many pounds as I try to recover from a misguided bout of veganism. Plus I’m single and I haven’t had sex in 8 ½ years. Is that enough? What do you think, have I earned the right to complain?

Relax. It’s not like anyone is going to read this. Certainly not you.

So, in classic nihilist style, I’ve claimed there is no point to this narcissistic endeavor. But not everything has to have a point. Does it? Sometimes the best art is the kind that seems completely irrelevant. Like art about nihilism, for example. I used to be pair-bonded to a nihilist, but that is another story. I’ve done all the complaining about that relationship that I’m going to do. Long time ago, blah blah blah, old news, ho hum.

This blog will be divided into themes that represent the different levels of hell in my life.

•      Dissertation hell.
•      Art hell.
•      Relationship hell.
•      Vegan hell.
•      Employment hell.
•      Introvert hell.

I'm sure there are other hells that will manifest from time to time, as hells are wont to do. Maybe you will find something hellish to relate to. But since no one is reading this, it doesn’t really matter. 

Why the name handbasket? Well, obviously it comes from the amusing cliché of going to hell in a handbasket. I’m not sure I know what a handbasket is, do you? I picture a sort of wicker, rickety affair with a crooked handle. That’s not all that funny, I know: I’ve received (and given) plenty of holiday gifts in baskets just like that. You can get them at Goodwill for $2.00. What’s funny about going to hell in a handbasket is the image I get in my mind of all my friends, family, colleagues, in fact the entire stinky swell of humanity, tossed into a rickety wicker basket, sliding down a dark tunnel toward hell as we elbow each other for room and scream at the top of our lungs. To me, that is funny. Maybe that relationship with the nihilist had some lasting effect on me. Hmmm.

Although, now that I am examining my mental image of the handbasket scene, my perspective is from outside the basket. Do I actually think I am exempt from going to hell in this handbasket of humanity? No, not at all. But I can’t quite imagine myself sitting in that cramped and smelly pile of bodies. It’s more like I’m discorporate, a disembodied intellect floating alongside the squirming mass, maybe taking virtual pictures. Which I would post on Facebook, of course. If I had a Facebook page, which I don’t.

So come along for the ride. Or not. Who cares. In any case, it’s quite likely my attempts to write this egotistical blog will go the way of millions of other self-absorbed, egotistical blogs: passwords forgotten, thoughts frozen in time, pages lost in cyberspace, maybe stumbled on by accident once in a millennium by a stray traveler, who reads a few lines and quickly clicks the back button muttering a one-word judgment that sums up the entire hopeless, useless, pointless endeavor: “Lame.”