What not to do if you are a career college

I know I said I was going to let go of the career college and stop wallowing in the past. It's hard. Recently I whined about the linen truck that goes by several times a day, driven by one of my former students—oh, dear, will he make it to class on time, oh dear me. It's hard to ignore the screaming transmission as he wrestles the truck around the corner, but I'm trying. Mostly I've been focused for the past few weeks on my shaky recruiting strategy, wherein I struggle to wrangle faculty to interview for my dissertation project. More on that topic later. I'd like to say I've left the career college behind, but every day or so, someone, usually my former-colleague-now-friend Sheryl, calls me to update me on the latest insanity she's heard from “reliable sources.”

More than once I have contemplated writing a sitcom based on life at the career college. I wouldn't have to invent a thing. The truth would be way more entertaining than any fiction I could create. The characters are already there, a bizarre cast magically assembled by a quirk of fate. At the top you've got the invisible absentee college president and the two eccentric owners, one a former educator (so I've been told), the other a bankrupt real estate developer (this I Googled). This cabal rules from the shadows off-stage; you never see them. Running things from day to day you've got the uptight VP of Academic Affairs, a former office-manager-turned-administrator, micromanaging via scathing emails. Then you've got a little clutch of Program Directors, hopping around with varying levels of competence, trying to please the VP of Academic Affairs and keep the students from escaping, complaining, or suing the college. Toss in a few neurotic instructors and a swarm of demanding students, and you have the perfect script for a darkly morose comedy.

Even before I left, one of the program directors had started demonstrating odd behavior. I don't know if I've ever blogged about him before. I'll call him Wally. He is the Associate Program Director for one of the more popular programs, but not a healthcare program. (I should say was, not is. More on that in a minute.) Some time back, Wally got in trouble for showing pornography to some students. So I heard. Now, I'm sure it was probably done in the context of a discussion on free speech, but apparently the females in the group did not appreciate the educational nature of the presentation and complained to other students, other instructors, and eventually to other program directors. By the time the campus closed in early May, everyone knew about it. We all wondered how and why Wally managed to be one of the three lucky employees invited to transfer to the main location.

Enter Denny, my former boss, also one of the three invited to keep his job. Denny stormed into the office of the Human Resources Director (who doesn't rate the bestowal of any name, fictitious or otherwise) and proceeded to loudly lodge a complaint against both Wally and Wally's boss, Velma, who had repeatedly failed to display backbone, despite knowing about Wally's indiscretions for some time (and despite being thin as a stick). Are you getting this? I know, really?

Do you remember a 1960s show called Peyton Place? Probably you are too young. (I have to keep reminding myself that I am now older than a lot of people. I still feel like I'm about twelve.) Maybe you've heard people murmur in awed disgust, “Wow, what a Peyton Place!” and wondered what they meant. The phrase is now part of the vernacular, and I would say it is synonymous with soap opera, in case you haven't Googled it yet. Well, if you've ever seen a soap opera, you will understand the nature of life at this career college. It was always fraught with drama—I could tell you stories!—but now, according to reliable sources, the place is nuttier than a fruitcake factory.

Each term ends on a Thursday, which means Friday is set aside for teachers to grade papers, prepare final grades, and attend teacher training at the in-service. That was today. Reliable sources have reported (Sheryl heard it from Denny, who may have witnessed it with his own eyes) that Wally was informed this morning that he was being terminated. He retaliated by proclaiming, “I'm going to kill myself!” while walking by an open door to a classroom filled with new students attending orientation for the new term which starts on Monday.

Now do you see why I mention Peyton Place? It seems too deliciously entertaining to be true, doesn't it? Surely someone wrote this script! But knowing Wally (a fellow chronic malcontent who has seriously lost his hold on reality), it probably is true. From my lofty perspective, ten weeks after being let go, ten weeks into self-employment, I can look on the whole sordid episode with righteous glee. Didn't I predict the place would implode!? Vindicated! Validated! Today I laughed loudly and long, maybe ever so slightly guiltily, when Sheryl told me the news. All of which just affirms my conviction that I did the right thing by turning Denny down earlier this week when he offered me three classes for next term. As an adjunct, of course. Should I feel insulted or appreciated that they thought of me when they needed someone to teach the 10-key calculator class?

I turned him down not out of pride, but out of practicality. I will be conducting my faculty interviews at that location. Yep, I am happy to say, I got permission from the college president to have access to the faculty. I pleaded via email. He tersely granted it and handed me off to the VP of Academic Affairs (oh yay, lucky me). While I wait for IRB approval for my revised method, I contemplate the slow-motion meltdown of the career college that used to employ me and wonder what effect all this will have on the perceptions of faculty who will soon talk to me about academic quality. I am going to have to document the conditions at the college for my dissertation. I can do that. The hard part will be resisting the temptation to turn my description into a soap opera. Fade in...

When a good idea goes bad

If you are just tuning in, here's the story to date. For the past ten years, I worked for a career college at its campus in Clackamas, a city near Portland. On April 1, we received notice from management that our site would be closing at the end of the term. Students were invited to transfer to the main campus in Wilsonville. On April 9, full-time faculty were notified individually if they were being asked to transfer or if they were being laid off. Three people, all program directors, were invited to stay. The rest of us were given notice that our last day would be May 2.

For the past three weeks, in an effort to cope with my shock and grief, I documented the closing of the campus with my funky old Sony Cybershot and posted the photos on my faculty webpage.

I took pictures of packing boxes. I took pictures of people I have grown to love and admire (and avoided others). I photographed the flyer that a posse of outraged students plastered the halls with in a futile attempt to save a teacher's job. I documented the stairs our boss Denny fell down. I captured a teacher's tattoo and and another teacher's glittery flipflops. Everywhere I looked I found people that deserved to be honored, moments that needed to be acknowledged, objects that deserved to be recognized. Some images were meaningful only to me, but some of the images seemed to sum up the bittersweet last days at our special campus. It was slipping away so fast. I wanted to preserve it, for me, for us, so every day I took more pictures and expanded my webpage.

Sheryl's filing cabinet, for sale for a day to the highest bidder, now left behind.... A whiteboard decorated with a student's scribbled love notes to a teacher she would never see again.... An accounting teacher on his shiny three-wheel motorcycle.... Classrooms, stairways, hallways, the lobby, the smoking area.... The view of the empty parking lot from the third floor computer lab.... A bizarrely shaped coffee cup imprinted with a tagline so astoundingly apropos I could hardly hold the camera still for laughing: There's a better life out there.

When I look back through the photos, one thing strikes me: everyone I photographed was smiling. Big, wide smiles. There were no sad faces, no moping expressions, no defeated postures. We all looked happy, despite the fact that our lives were being turned upside down, inside out. Even I looked happy.

The last day came. I finished my grades and had Denny sign off on them. I made arrangements to have the bookkeeper mail my final paycheck. I cleaned out my desk drawers. I posted the last photos on my faculty webpage. I prepared auto-replies that would activate at midnight, stating that I was no longer with the college. I packed up my book bags with my binders, my stapler, my post-it notes, my scissors. And finally, I drafted a goodbye email.

I addressed the note to everyone in Wilsonville and Clackamas. In it I described my gratitude at having been a part of the organization for ten years and how I was certain what I learned would help me in my new career. I entitled it Happy trails from Clackamas. At the end of the note, in a postscript, I gave the URL to my faculty webpage.

I finished the letter and then sat there with my mouse poised over the SEND button.  I had a gut feeling it might not be a wise thing to do. I re-read it, trying to imagine how it would be received. Should I take off the URL to my webpage? Should I delete the letter altogether? Should I fade away quietly without a protest, without one final poke, one last prod? I wanted to say, Hey, look at us, you stupid college, look at what you did with this bonehead move, you disregarded the needs of your students, you disrespected your faculty, you destroyed your brand. You thought by cutting off our campus, you could save yourselves. You thought you were abandoning us on the part of the ship that was sinking. Ha.

I predict we will survive, we will flourish, our ship will sail on, and in the end your top-heavy boat will sink into obscurity. Because you can't treat people disrespectfully forever. Sooner or later, you will find out what happens when you sail too close to the rocks. The next thought running through my head was, What have I got to lose? What are they going to do, fire me? That made me smile. So I hit SEND and sat back to wait.

Within moments I got my first response, oddly enough from the Compliance Officer, wishing me farewell and giving me his personal email address. (“Let's link up on LinkedIn.”) I was pleasantly surprised. In another few moments, two more responses wishing me well from employees who were former students (“I learned so much from you!”), then another from the program director in Wilsonville (“I never really knew you, but good luck!”). A few minutes later, Denny came into the office, checked his email, and said, “Your link doesn't work.”

“What? No, are you sure?” I said. I quickly typed in the URL. Sure enough: Error 404: File or directory not found. We looked at each other. I turned back to the computer, opened Expression Web, and tried to load up my site. And there it was, the message, spelled out in black and white:

There is no site named http://blablablacollege.info/myname.

It was dead. My faculty website was gone. I had been well and truly spanked.

I responded the way I responded to every interesting incident at the college over the past three weeks. I got out my camera and took a picture of it. A simple image to commemorate the end of ten years of service to a for-profit career college. There's a better life out there.

How to survive a campus closing

I'll give you a hint: It has to do with spraypaint and glitter. No, not really. I'm just kidding. I know I sound obsessed with expressing my feelings with a can of orange spraypaint, but I'm not stupid. I know that would be vandalism. These days I try not to do anything for which I have to make amends later. Spraypainting you guys suck in 10-foot tall letters on the lobby wall would probably qualify.

The students from the soon-to-be defunct Clackamas campus of our sagging little career college have been invited to visit the mothership in Wilsonville, to meet the faculty and get acclimated to the stuffier air. Many aren't attending due to transportation challenges, which I'm sure will be compounded come next term, when they will be expected to show up at 7:50 a.m. Or at 5:40 p.m. for those night students who get off work in Portland at 5:00 p.m. Rotsa ruck making it on time in rush hour traffic.

Everyone is universally unhappy about the closure, for a variety of reasons. Some students are worried about teachers. Others are fretting over transportation. Some teachers are frantically searching for other employment. Some are feeling guilty they still have jobs. I think I might be the only one who is actually anxious for it to be over. I'm so ready to be done I told a student today that we had only two weeks left in the term. Ooops. We really have three. My bad.

I'm processing my feelings by turning my faculty website into a photo blog. I'm taking pictures—last looks—of all the things that made our campus unique. The dingy front lobby. The mailroom. The worn out classrooms. The odd barbeque we found parked on the roof outside the emergency exit door in the third floor computer lab (What are those corporate sneaks up to on Fridays, when teachers and students aren't around? Planning how they will save their own jobs, with a side of steak and brewskies, no doubt.)

We are situated in an old three-story office building next to a shopping complex and across the street from the Clackamas Town Center Mall, which made the news last December as yet one more (ho-hum) site of a random shooting. Our building is a two-tower faded orange stucco box with angled facets that must have seemed modern and edgy back in the day and now just look cheesy and amateurish. Moss grows on the shaded patio areas that divide the two towers, the smokers' hangout.

Inside, the carpet is old and worn, especially on the stairs. Many feet trod those stairs over the past ten years, mine among them (I rarely take the elevator). The front lobby atrium ascends to the third floor, an echoey cavern of light. Any day now, I expect someone, a student or a teacher, to fling themselves over the second floor railing in a fit of despair. I can't be the only one who has contemplated it. Unfortunately the drop probably wouldn't kill me, so I would just have to lay there while swarms of medical assisting students practiced taking my blood pressure and draining my veins of blood.

Hey, on a lighter note, my committee returned my proposal with three, count 'em, three minor grammar suggestions, which I fixed throughout the paper in less than an hour. I resubmitted the paper with the hope and expectation that my Chair will send it on to the Graduate School for review. That will take another two weeks or so. I will brace myself for their comments, but in the meantime, I will begin preparing my application to the Institutional Review Board, the group that approves applications to interview human subjects. I also found out who my committee member is, inadvertently, because her real name appeared in her comments. I immediately Googled her and found out she's a proud alum of the University of Phoenix.

It's strange how there seems to be two tracks of academe these days: traditional and for-profit. This will have to be a topic for another day, because it is almost midnight, I am missing Letterman, and I'm too tired to think anymore. Stay tuned. And start stocking up on spraypaint, because you're invited! Mark your calendar, May 2.

Put four students in a team project, add a deadline... and hit BLEND

Here I am, skulking back to my blog after being outed as a closet optimist. I've had some interesting feedback on the whole sordid expose. My sister laughed (kindly). She didn't sound all that surprised, once again proving I don't really know myself, have never known myself. She copied my self-portrait and drew a smile and a dimple on my malcontented face. How's that for sisterly love! Pretty cool.

It's humbling, but maybe it's also a little bit liberating, to discover this not-so-new, not-so-secret side to my personality. Liberating because if you don't know who you are, you could be anybody. All this time I thought I was a frustrated creative, a plodding malcontent, an irritating pot-stirrer, a rabble rouser. But turns out I could be totally wrong! Maybe I'm really a successful, well adjusted, creative, productive member of society. Maybe I'm a secret millionaire, so secret I haven't discovered it myself yet. Maybe I've written ten books and I'm working on my eleventh! Whoa. Maybe my thighs really are thin, maybe my hair isn't gray, maybe I'm not growing a mustache! I mean, there's just no telling who I am these days, if the once and former chronic malcontent is really a hidden optimist.

We started a new term at the career college this week. I have six preps, 26 contact hours, and not very many students. One class has one student, one class has two. The others have a handful each. The two classes that will be most interesting (for me) will be the two sections of Human Resources Management, where I require the students to work together as a team to choose and produce some sort of group project. This is the same process I used last term in the Organizational Management classes I may have blogged about previously. This term, I think one class is going to pose some problems. There are four students in the class: three women, one man. Two of them know each other, the other two are retreads from another time, another campus. And one is a chronic malcontent.

How do I know? Because I dislike her intensely. Her (not real) name is Teresa. She's my shadow. She represents all the things I dislike in myself, that I'm afraid to look at, afraid to express. She's obese and messy (like I fear I will become). She wears glasses (like I do) and her hair hangs down in strings around her face (like mine used to). She wears sloppy clothes (like I do when I can), and her fat-girl pants are usually halfway down her butt, so we would all be able to see her butt crack if she weren't wearing a grimy-looking thong (have I ever worn a thong? Maybe in my drug-hazed youth). She drags herself to class with a scowl, avoiding eye contact. Mostly she's silent, but every now and then, someone will say something (usually me) that rouses her ire.

The task today was for the group to begin the brainstorming process. I served as scribe, standing ready at the whiteboard, stinky marker in hand. “Who needs help?” I prompted. “What needs changing?”

Steve, the token male in the group (family man, toy collector, future accounting major and entrepreneur) cleared his throat and said slowly, “Gas prices need changing.”

“Oh, should they be higher?” I chirped.

“No, lower!” he said with some heat. His emotion roused Teresa, the sleeping giant.

“Gas prices are so high because the Middle East countries aren't producing as much oil,” she said proclaimed hotly.

The older gal, Dina, who is back at the career college after several years in the workforce, looked at Teresa and said with just the slightest hint of contempt, “We don't buy much oil from the Middle East anymore.”

They bickered about U.S. oil production for a few moments, until I leaped into the fray, verbally speaking.

“If this topic is interesting to you, you'll probably want to do some research, so your project is based on facts rather than just opinions. Okay, any more ideas? Who else needs help? What else needs changing? What can you find out?” I raised the marker, ready to write.

Everyone slumped back into their stupor. They stared blankly at the whiteboard. Lisa (20-years-old, size zero, bottle blonde) checked her smartphone. Steve gazed out the window. Dina drummed her fingers on the table. Teresa hid behind a wall of hair, her back to the board. Clearly the team has not started the first step of the group process (forming, storming, norming, and performing.)

I blame myself. If I were a really good teacher (which I'm not), I would devise a team-building activity for them, so they can get to know one another. Part of me wants to help them, ease them into the group experience. The other part of me just wants to sit back and watch the train wreck. I'm like the scientist poking the frog with an electrode. If I put four uninterested students in a pot of hot water (a forced team project) and turn on the heat (a 10-week deadline), what will they do? Will they climb over each other to claw their way out? Or will they help each other? Stay tuned. This is bound to be fun (for me).

I'd be running in circles if I could only remember why

I'm circling my dissertation proposal like a fly buzzing a pile of... no, wait, I'm not going there again. Tired metaphor, too close to home. Been on that pile, still scraping the poop off my clutch pedal. I posted my irate diatribe (re: tiny fecund dogs and their fetid output) in the laundry room (neatly sandwiched in a plastic sleeve and hung with a pushpin), but I'm not sure it's been read yet. Nothing has changed. Except I bought more flashlights.

I have a memory like a gnat's lifespan. That is to say, very short. A few days ago I was irate over something unrelated to stepping in dog poop, and I was anxious to blog about it. But now, the passage of time has eroded the memory. Now all I remember is that I used to be irate about something I thought was worth blogging about. Maybe I've found the secret path to serenity: dementia. If you can't remember what upset you, why get upset at all?

It's a trick. My brain is trying to kill me again. It knows I am feeling the pressure to finish the dissertation proposal, and it is eroding my cognitive functions in a frantic attempt to keep me calm. I guess it's working. I feel pretty good. This despite the fact that I've had Chapter 2 (the Literature Review) open on my computer for the past three hours, and I haven't typed a single word. La la la. What have I been doing? Anything but. I cleaned the cat box (and the human box). I refilled the minutes on my stupid smartphone. I roasted some beets. I made some tea. I nuked my rice-filled foot warmer. I'm like a cat, turning round and round before settling down to the important work of napping. Except I've been turning and turning for three hours. And napping is not an option.

On the radio today I heard part of a program about Oregon's new education standards. I usually don't pay attention to K-12 stuff; it's too complicated for my peanut-brain. But someone said something that caught my attention today: The new standards are developed from an assessment of “college and career readiness,” and form the basis for a decision to focus core reading curricula on fewer classic literature texts and more informational texts. I want to know who decided what constitutes “college and career readiness”? Did a cabal of employers hold a book burning, in the name of enhancing the development of job skills? No more 1984, no more The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Nope, now it's all about How to Read an Annual Report.

And now I remember what I was so upset about a few days ago. Oh, darn. Now I've forgotten again. But that reminds me of something else. University of Phoenix is having accreditation troubles. I don't think they'll actually lose their accreditation, but they have such a monstrous online presence, I worry that there will be negative fallout for all for-profit online institutions, including the one to which I pay my hard-earned cash. As if there wasn't already a huge stigma against both for-profit institutions and online learning. I'm not a fan of University of Phoenix. I'm also not a fan of for-profit higher education. I am feeling very unemployable after hearing this news.

The years of budget cuts have forced the public universities, state colleges, and community colleges to raise tuition and cut back on under-performing programs. They have also become more selective about who they admit, leaving the dregs (non-traditional students) nothing but the for-profit sector. For-profit higher education institutions wouldn't have swooped in if there weren't such good pickings left by the failure of public institutions to meet demand. With the ready availability of student loan money, for-profits make a killing, students get a second-rate education (at best), and taxpayers are on the hook for the loans that end up in default.

Now I remember what it was. I was driving home late Wednesday night after work, listening to NPR. A guest on Tell Me More said he was against the idea that public funds (i.e., taxpayer-funded student loan money) should be used to support degree programs such as art, music, and anthropology, because, he claimed, the graduates of these programs incur student loans they will be hard-pressed to pay back. This argument came as no surprise to me, but I was still saddened to hear it.

The for-profits don't waste their time offering art, music, or anthropology. They offer programs that are in high-demand fields such as healthcare, business, legal arts, and criminal justice. Makes sense. It's all about the money. But what happens if public institutions do the same thing? Are we destined to become a nation of healthcare workers? What happens to society if we don't also grow artists, poets, writers, musicians, and philosophers? Who will dig up old bones and excavate buried tombs? Who will record our experience in art, music, and word? Who will help us make sense of it all?

Society is richer for the artists and anthropologists. So, in my opinion, society should pay to educate them, even if those student loans are never paid back. But I'm a frustrated artist and a crazy recovering debtor and clearly not in my right mind.

Resistance to change: The ongoing challenge

The theme for January is always the same: Do it differently than I did last year. Don't eat so much, eat better food, get more exercise, drink more water, read better quality trash, write more, live less fearfully... bla bla bla. After years of New Years' resolutions abandoned by February, it seems sort of pointless. So I am enjoying the fact that I got a few things done over the winter break, without any expectation that my new behaviors will turn into ongoing habits. If I drink more water today, that doesn't mean I won't dehydrate myself tomorrow. I make no promises.

My dissertation chairperson took time out of her holiday celebration to send an email letting me know that my concept paper was approved by the mysterious Graduate School reviewers. I know this is good news, although all I can see is the even taller mountain ahead of me, the mountain known as the dissertation proposal. It's just more of the same: writing to persuade some anonymous reviewers that my study is worth conducting. It's hard to conjure up enthusiasm for a project that has long since lost its allure.

Someday this will all be over. Right. And someday I will be dead. There's no telling which will come first, when you get to my age. I was heartened to read in the university discussion posts that I'm not the oldest graduate student: Several are in their sixties. Well, at the rate I'm going, that could be me in a few more years. Funny, I don't feel that old.

Whenever I want to stoke my internal boiler of bitter self-righteousness, I read books on servant leadership and think about how the management style at the career college that employs me is anything but that. In fact, I would characterize the college management style as slim on leadership and devoid of service. Servant leadership is a concept that appeals to the frustrated idealist in me. I have a deeply held belief that employees have value and should be treated with respect. Further, I believe that management's job is to serve employees, so that employees in turn can serve their customers. To me, it seems self-evident. That is why I get so cranky when the so-called leadership at the career college treats faculty as if they are an expendable resource, like tissues to be used and tossed away.

Rumor has it that it is now a fact: the site in Clackamas is moving. Where and when remains uncertain, but because the lease is up in June, we surmise it will be before then. It is unlikely management would move during the middle of a term. If management intends to move between terms, then moving day would likely be Friday, May 3. If this is the case, the new term would start Monday, May 6, in a shiny new location. Whether they will bring their old grimy teachers to the shiny new location remains to be seen.

One of the precepts of the servant leadership philosophy is that management includes employees in discussions about disruptive change. I think moving or closing a campus is a change worth discussing with employees, don't you? It is eight weeks till our next in-service meeting. How much you want to bet management fails to mention any specific plans for moving or closing the campus? Further, how much are you willing to bet that, if we ask straight out, that direct answers will not be forthcoming?

As I was cruising indeed.com doing what all people do when they cruise indeed.com, I found a new job listing for the college: Instructional Designer for growing career college's online division. Must have a Master's in education. That sounds sort of interesting. I don't qualify, of course, even if they were willing to hire a snarky old teacher from within. I got the feeling as I read the ad that, as their brick and mortar campuses are tanking due to lack of enrollments, the school owners and managers are putting all their hopes on the online dream. Like every other college and university on the planet. Yeah, lots of luck with that, dinky career college.

There is no shortage of change in the world, that's for sure. It seems to me the people that survive and succeed are the ones that are able to adapt to change, whatever form it takes. The ones that wither in the ditch are the ones that say things like, We've always done it that way; This will never catch on; I can't learn anything new; Don't tell me, I don't want to hear it. I can relate. I have my own resistance to change. No new technology, please, my head is exploding. No new laws, I can't keep up with the ones we have. No new jargon, I can barely understand you as it is.

What if I learned to embrace change for its own sake? What if adapting to change was a grand adventure rather than a terrifying obligation? What if I knew I could not fail? Would I do anything differently in this new year? Or would I slink back into my snarky role as the Chronic Malcontent and blame “management” for my resentments?

Miscellaneous musings from the chronic malcontent

I'm closing in fast on a birthday, who cares which one, and I was reminded of it today while standing in line at Good Will to purchase some paperbacks to immerse my brain in while my body is immersed in hot bath water. (Science fiction and vampire romances are my current favorites for reading-while-bathing.) A dark-skinned short guy who may or may not have been about my age was in line ahead of me. As he stepped up to the counter, the chubby young female cashier hesitated a slight moment, and then asked him, “Are you over 55?” He hesitated an even slighter second and nodded vigorously. Presumably he received an over-55 discount. Just then, another cashier opened up her register and beckoned me over. She rang me up quickly and politely, but didn't ask me the same question.

So what does that mean? Should I assume I look younger than my age? Or maybe that other cashier just likes older men? Or maybe nobody gives a you-know-what about middle-aged white women shopping at Good Will? Whatever, it doesn't matter. I didn't have to admit my age, I bought my books, they got my money, it's a win-win for humanity.

Today is a day to reflect before toddling off to work my five hour evening shift at the career college. The sun is shining yet again, although it's cooler today, and breezy. Leaves levitate in swirls and eddies. Maple seed helicopters whirl earthward, glowing in the sun, to lie scattered all over the ground. I'll see little maple tree sprouts in odd nooks and crannies next spring. If I had time I would head up for a trot in the park. We are having an amazing stretch of dry weather. In fact, we've had only a quarter inch of rain in the past three months, which apparently is a record since data has been kept at the Portland Airport. It's not summer anymore, for sure. It's now uber-summer, the strange season we sometimes get in early October. Days are warm, nights are frosty. The grass is brown, the ground is rock-hard. My black car is coated with a fine veneer of dust. The air is dry as a bone, a bane to firefighters struggling to contain wildfires raging in Washington and eastern Oregon. So far no one is using the d-word: drought.

To complement the new season, we have a new term at the career college. It's been a busy couple weeks, trying to end a term and prepare for a new one. New term, new schedule, new faces, new rooms... and same old problems. The parking lot is emptier than it should be, for both morning and evening classes. (Come on all you new marketing and admissions people, we are counting on you to save us!) Management is demonstrating its usual disregard for employee morale and empowerment. The tech department, intent on launching the latest gadgetry, is ignoring feedback from both faculty and students. I haven't seen the college president in weeks: he usually makes himself scarce around term ends and beginnings, as if he fears one of us might accost him for some help.

The latest debacle to rave about is the bungled implementation of Microsoft Outlook.Live. Outlook.Live, for some unknown reason, is now management's communication tool of choice. (Oh, could it be because it is .... free?) Faculty and students are required to sign-up and sign-in daily to check for messages—from whom we are not sure. The word “bullshit” has been bandied about by numerous frustrated parties, as log on IDs and passwords fail to work, and when they finally do, and we are finally granted access to the miracle known as Outlook.Live, there's nothing there to reward our suffering. No important messages from management, anyway, except to tell us to force students to sign up. It's a classic management blunder. If I were to write a book on customer service quality, this would have to be in it, as an example of what not to do.

Hey, I almost forgot, if anyone is reading this and keeping up on my endless dissertation saga: Good news, my chairperson reported via email that she sent my concept paper to the committee (whoever they are). I don't think that means she has approved the paper, I think she is just tired of reading it and would like to... share the love, as it were. I hope this is good news, but I'm afraid to get my hopes up. She said she is trying to streamline the process for me, which I appreciate.

What to do about that pesky Reply All button

So much to rant about, where to begin, where to begin...

First, I suppose I should grudgingly mention that the weather has been.... fantastic! You know when I said fall was here, and I was all doom and gloom over it? Well, huh, go figure, I was wrong. The Pacific Northwest is having glorious halcyon days like you wouldn't believe. The tomatoes are red! Shocking! (The last two years, they stayed green right into winter.) If it weren't so cold at night, and if there weren't drifts of dead leaves on the steps in the park, I would think it was still August, not almost October. We haven't had any rain to speak of in over two months. Did you hear me, two months! In Oregon! Yes! I know! Too many exclamation points!

So against the backdrop of this delicious weather, we wrapped up the term in its stinking shroud and buried it good and proper. The long commute to Wilsonville is over, at least for ten weeks. How did Excel go? Thanks for asking. I flunked the Voc Rehab woman who wept and begged me not to. I flunked the guy who threatened to bring his shotgun to school. In Access, the whining blonde paralegal who threw up her hands and left without finishing her final, fuming, “This is so stupid!” got a B, believe it or not. (She had someone at home doing her homework for her.) A few sorry ass souls received the Ds they earned fair and square. But, yay!— a few students got As, and they earned those As (in spite of me, I could add, although I'd like to take some credit. I think my test reviews are pretty good).

There's no time to take a breath and relax. Yesterday I spent a few hours grading finals, trying to submit my grades before 12:30 pm. Didn't quite make it before it was time to troop downstairs to Room 101 for in-service. All the usual nutcases and wackjobs were there, assembled in one frigid room, noshing on baloney sandwiches. (Rather than get pizza or wraps, the food coordinator thought it would be a nice change of pace to present a poor-white-trash menu: white bread, velveeta cheese, potato salad... Luckily for me, I brought my own protein powder.) The nutcases and wackjobs I refer to are my colleagues. Four times a year we are required (by the State of Oregon who authorizes our college to grant degrees) to have teacher training, also known as in-service. I get to see some teachers I haven't seen for a while, and a few I probably wouldn't miss.

We were required to attend three back-to-back sessions of scintillating material designed to magically transform us into better instructors. The first session, held in a dark room lit only by a PowerPoint slide, was memorable for the statement spoken by the presenter (who happens to also be my boss): “Everyone who is here is valued.” I wrote it down, because it was worded so awkwardly. The subtext: The ones who aren't valued have been let go. I guess it's clear that all the people that got laid off over the past few months, including those whose last day was yesterday, weren't valued. And oh, by the way, yes, the school is moving next year, but as yet the location is undisclosed. (Why do I suspect that one day I will show up to work and there will be a lock on the door and a scrawled sign: We've moved! So long, suckers!?)

I had two choices for the second session: ethics or teaching tips. Neither session really appealed to me, but I went with the teaching tips workshop. (A discussion of ethics at a career college opens up a very deep can of squirmy Red Wigglers. Not a good scenario for the Chronic Malcontent.) The teaching tips session was presented by the school librarian. (Yes, we have a library, but it is in Wilsonville, not at podunck Clackamas, where we have what looks like a library—a room lined with obsolete law books—but apparently isn't really a library. In fact, we aren't allowed to call it a library, we have to call it the resource center.)

She looked the part. The librarian, let's call her Jane, is a fireplug of a woman, with a closely curled cap of auburn hair that reminds me of the hair on my Tiny Tears doll, before I cut it all off. Jane wore a dark blue pantsuit whose jacket didn't quite match the pants, plus a snappy flowered blouse. Of course, she had the ubiquitous gold-rimmed spectacles. (Is there a librarian in the world that doesn't wear glasses? Reading really messes with your eyesight, take it from me.) Not counting the crazy earth shoe strappy flats on her feet, all in all, Jane looked sharp, really put together.

I was a little perplexed when she read her introduction to us, although the reason for that became clear later on. What got my attention was her warning: “By choosing to stay, you are giving permission for something to happen!” Wha–? She looked up at us, laughed nervously, and made a joke about not seeing anyone getting up to leave. I thought, wait, did I just miss a chance to opt out of this session? I like Jane, so I stayed put, but I wondered what would happen if I tried that on my students on the first day of the new term. How many of them would take the hint and opt out with their feet to go hang on the verandah with the smokers?

I won't bore you with all the details of her session, but here's a brief synopsis: Do! Learn! Who is Emily? NLP and covert hypnosis, rapid learning methods, email me if you want the files, no, I don't have a website, pause, drop your tone, make your voice gravely, WIIFM, SIP. Ok. There you have it, the gist of Jane's session. I hope it makes you a better teacher, too.

The final session was well-attended. Unfortunately, it was assigned to the icebox room, which happens to have a large square pillar in it. I'm sure the temperature is not related to the pillar, but to see the PowerPoint show, I had to sit behind the pillar, in the corner, directly under the AC fan. The topic was Netiquette, presented by one of our hard-working adjuncts (one of the few that are left after layoffs decimated our ranks). I don't know where she found the time to put the show together, considering she taught 32 hours last term, but it was nicely done. I learned a few things, but all I really cared about was that she impress upon the Medical Department ignoramuses the proper use for the REPLY ALL button.

In case you searched on Reply All and somehow got this blog, the Reply All button lets you respond to a useless mass email (Please help me welcome Shannon, our new janitor!) with an equally large, equally useless mass email (Welcome, Shannon!), thereby sucking up valuable network bandwidth and filling everyone's in-boxes with mind-deadening clutter. In case you can't figure out how I feel from my snarky tone, let me just declare my abiding belief that people who misuse the Reply All button should be ejected forthwith from the establishment, do not pass GO.

Today I went to another non-work workshop that was supposed to be spiritually focused but sounded remarkably like the rah-rah pep talk sessions I sat through yesterday, so I left halfway through, searching for some peace before the new term starts on Monday night. I'm not ready. I have 28 hours and seven preps. Small class sizes, luckily, but Tuesday will be a busy day: six hours in the morning, five at night, with a quick drive home in between for a salad and a nap. The tedium continues. I can't generate any enthusiasm for the task of teaching: When I get a creative idea for a new teaching approach, I think, I don't have time to design a new interactive PowerPoint, or write a skit, or prepare a game. Besides, what's the use, I only have one student.

When I was running in the park this afternoon, savoring the warm air on my face, I remembered how happy I was to get this job. It was my miracle job. A job that lets me use my communication skills and creativity, with little supervision... how cool is that? Nine years later, I am grateful to have it, but not for the same reasons. I find there is little interest in my skills. My skills expand, but my attitude contracts. I fear I am growing more unemployable by the minute.

Over the next week or so, while my chairperson is ruminating over my concept paper, I hope I will be able to find some time to make some art or write something. And vacuum my car, take out the compost, and clean up the cat toys, dust bunnies, and dessicated hairballs. And at work, I'm going to show up, do my job, and try not to whine. Stay tuned.

The perfect storm destroys a perfectly good career college

In my last post I described the mammoth production known as graduation, which happened on Saturday morning (mandatory attendance by all faculty). The event was organized and produced by two strong and capable women, let's call them Janey and Sally. On Monday morning, Sally sent out an effusive email at 6:00 a.m. thanking everyone for their participation in making it one of the best graduation events in the history of the college. Sometime after that, Sally was called into a meeting with the human resources person and fired.

Sally was not the only one. Another staff member lost his job on Monday, too. In addition, a program director who teaches accounting was told that this would be his last term at the college: in five weeks, he, too, will be out of a job.

As news of the layoffs spread to our site, the shock waves rippled outward. We muttered in the faculty office. We mumbled under our breath about updating our resumes. But no one actually thought the scythe would sweep through our site. Today I received a phone call from my colleague, Sheryl. I could tell by her voice that something was wrong. I thought her grandfatherly cat had finally kicked the bucket. Nope. Apparently, the grim job-reaper visited our site today, lopping off one of our own. By the end of July, he will be gone. Do not pass go, do not collect your vacation pay or your faculty development stipend. Turn in your grades, dude, you are so outta here.

Today, as part of my feeble attempt to earn my faculty development stipend, I attended a workshop on fostering creativity and innovation in organizations. I got up at 5:30 a.m. on a day I would normally ignore until about 8:30 a.m. (painful when you work until 10:20 p.m. the night before). Bleary-eyed, I trundled in my old dusty Ford Focus up to Northwest Portland in spitting rain, found a place to park, signed in with a seriously scary security guard, hiked through a huge office building in search of the conference room, and eventually received my sticky name tag. The two woman sitting at the registration table, for some reason, looked dumbfounded to see me. Maybe because they didn't know me and they knew everyone else? That's all I can think of. Otherwise their behavior makes no sense.

“There's coffee,” one woman said, pointing. I followed her finger and found deliciously hair-raising coffee in urns on a back table, but only non-dairy creamer (Which is worse, dairy or non-dairy? Remind me to ask my naturopath). I carried my cup, half-full, toward the front table where one person was sitting, planning to bravely introduce myself. I was waylaid. The facilitator (call me Bud!) barred my path and held out a deck of cards. “Pick a card!” he ordered. I did, slipping it in my pocket.

“Don't let me walk out of here with it!” I laughed, trying to be friendly. A woman standing nearby smiled politely. I was nervous so I had to say something else.

“Wouldn't it be funny if you could buy playing cards individually to replace the ones that get lost? My brother was a notorious cheater.” Which is a total lie, as far as I know, but the words “notorious cheater” are just inherently funny. I was grinning, expecting someone to say something like, “Wow,” or “So was mine!”

“We never cheated in my family,” the woman sniffed, not looking at me, and sipped her coffee.

I didn't know what to say after that, so I drifted away toward my original destination, where I met a lovely woman named Lynne who apparently works as a trainer at some big manufacturing company, I didn't catch the name. Each time I go to one of these workshops, when I introduce myself as an instructor at a career college, they look at me like I'm from another planet. Like, what's the difference between being a corporate trainer and a teacher? She teaches people hardskills and softskills, just like I do. The only difference is my students pay to take the training, whereas her students get paid.

I'm digressing. I mention this workshop because the topic was about how management can foster creativity and innovation in the organization. One of the ways management can help its workers be innovative is by not punishing them when they offer suggestions on how to improve the company. Sally (remember Sally?) apparently went to the college president recently and passionately expressed her belief that the school could be doing more to improve effectiveness and efficiency. She presented a list of suggestions (rumor has it). What happens if management is narrow-minded, controlling, and territorial? A lively discussion followed.

Now we see what happens, for real, and it is not pretty. Sally's suggestions came home to roost in the form of a pink slip. You're outta here! That's what you get for being loyal, for caring enough to offer suggestions, and for busting your ass to put on a well-organized graduation event, and then emailing us at six-freaking a.m. on Monday morning to thank us all for being there! That'll teach you... you loyal, hard-working, committed (former) employee, you.

Speaking of dead and dying roosters, more heads are on the chopping block. If enrollments don't rise fast, two other instructors will be gone, and with one of them for all intents and purposes goes the entire paralegal program. Could this get any worse?

They hired two high-powered marketing/sales executives last month to boost enrollments. I hope it works. But who is going to teach all those students they entice into our classrooms? (Oh wait, that's what adjuncts are for.) It seems to me we are experiencing the perfect storm: the convergence of tightening government regulations, poor academic quality, and years of mismanagement. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a student of management to watch the ship founder and go under, just another career college, wrecked on the rocks of ineptitude.

I'm ok for another five weeks. After that, all bets are off. I may get to work tonight and find a pink slip in my mailbox. Thanks for all the fish. I'm outta here!

My blog has been invaded by Russians

Not many people visit my blog, not surprisingly, because I've only told a handful of people that it exists. Duh. But for some odd reason, I seem to have an inordinately large number of visitors from Russia. Now, it could be that it is a technological fluke, a lost crawler-bot thingie searching for hot Wisconsin babes that somehow got diverted to a blog by an anonymous malcontent in the Pacific Northwest. I'll be the first to admit I don't know how the Internet works, any more than I know how my phone works, or my microwave. However, I find it hard to believe that something about my blog is especially appealing to Russians.

Russia is such a geographically huge place. I am sure it must be teeming with myriad cultures, just like in the U.S. Is it impossible to imagine there is a little niche of Russians in some out of the way place that is hungry to read a snively, snarky blog about nothing? ... Nah.

Well, the fact remains that my blog is being visited by Russians. I need to consider the fact that I might be writing for a Russian audience! Holy crap. Now I'm wondering if I need to explain my idioms. (Like I even know what an idiom is.) My English sucks. (Sucks, you know, like... sucks. Blows. Bites. Oh, hell.) Maybe if they see the picture they'll get it.

I can't imagine Russians are going to care about the story I am about to tell. But whatever. (You know, whatever? Like, who gives a sh--t?)

Here's my story. Saturday morning I trundled down the freeway to a spot on the map called Tualatin, just south of Portland. It is a real city, apparently, but if you blink as you drive south on I-5 you'll miss it. From the freeway it looks like a shopping center.

Two freeways converge near Tualatin: I-5 and I-205. I-205 meanders (at 65 mph) through some farmlands. Just before you get to the freeway interchange, off to the right, suddenly looms a ginormous church. You know it is a church because it has a huge, I mean huge, cross on a towering edifice facing the properly nervous drivers who speed up as they pass by on the freeway. I'm sure many of them reflect on that gigantic cross and think something along the lines of, wow, nice digs God. Way to go, Big Guy, please don't hurt me, don't hurt me, I'm a speck, going now... bye. Whew.

That church was my destination.

I don't generally frequent churches, except during non-church hours to go to 12 Step meetings. I usually get an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach when I set foot in a church. Probably it's the memory of being six-years-old, relegated to Presbyterian Sunday School while my mother entertained herself by singing in the choir. There was too much Jesus-said-this and God-said-that and not enough Vanilla Wafers and Play-doh, both of which I ate with quiet desperation while I stared blankly at the tediously perky, perfectly coiffed Sunday School teacher.

The reason for my visit to the church: Graduation day at the career college. I was required to attend. It is part of my job, twice a year. (Can I claim worker abuse?) To haul my ass out of bed early on a Saturday morning, to burn my gasoline fumbling my way to BumF-k Tualatin, and, insult to injury, to be forced to don the academic equivalent of a monkey suit... Really, it's too much. That last one is the worst. It's like Halloween in June: a long black polyester graduation gown and a black mortarboard cap. On the bright side, though, the gown hides a veritable plethora of amenities in its sleeves: keys, hankie, cell phone, wallet, mp3 player, earbuds... (I could tuck more in there but I want to be able to waddle down the aisle.)

My stomach was clenched as I parked my car in the vast parking lot and hiked up to the institutional-sized building. Which door, which door? Oh that really big one. (Ok, yes, I'm an insignificant speck in the mind of god, I get it.)

The church auditorium was a huge cavernous space filled with padded seats arranged stadium-style. Balconies stretched above into the dark. It was like being in the Capitol Building of the U.S. Congress. I imagine the screams of angry babies and the screams of angry senators sound pretty much the same. Great acoustics, I will say that. I could hear a baby fart in the upper balcony from the very front row, where my coworker (I'll call her Sheryl) and I sat in a row that had only two seats, far to the left of the stage. (I guess you'd call that stage right. I don't know, I'm not a drama queen. Well, not that kind of drama queen.) Anyway, we were sitting in the front row because it was our job to rise at the appropriate cue, ascend the podium to the lectern, and deliver the Alpha Beta Kappa awards to the four students who managed to attend 95% of their classes for the past 18 months. (I know! What an accomplishment, to actually show up for class almost every time! Of course they deserved a special award.)

I won't bore you with the sordid details of the moment when the emcee—no wait, sorry, the Vice President of Academics—called the name of some other teacher instead of our names, leaving Sheryl and me milling around like a couple of ants whose cake just got moved. Wha? Huh? I won't tell you how I dropped the fancy red cords on the carpeted steps as I was trying to untie the gold thread that bound them together. I won't describe to you how greatly relieved I felt to finally stagger up the aisle at the end of the ceremony, thinking I would soon be on my way home, only to find out the fiends from hell—no wait, the Academic Coordinators—had arranged a reception, which required all the faculty to spread out in a great big circle in the huge atrium foyer area, like we were getting ready to play a game of academic dodge ball. I won't confess here that I sneaked (snuck?) away to the restroom, and hid behind the chaos of the crowd as I edged out the door, peeling layers as I went. I ran down the steps like a bat out of hell, black gown flapping behind me, free at last, thank god almighty, out of this church, free at last.

Of course, all I had to look forward to at home was the seemingly never-ending uphill struggle to re-write my dissertation concept paper, but that is another story. Welcome to the Hellish Handbasket, all you Russian folks. I hope you find something here that keeps you coming back.

I don't need a Magic 8 Ball to see what's coming

I can always tell when my colleague in the Gen Ed Department (I'll call her Sheryl) has some juicy gossip to share. Sheryl waved me into the office last week, grinning like a fool with a secret. “Guess who I saw in the parking lot this morning!”

Sheryl is a spry, near-retirement gal with bottle-blonde hair who has taught English, math, and computer classes for the college for fifteen years. She has a memory like a video camera, capturing everything—events, conversations, reactions—in a linear fashion, frame by frame. (My brain, in contrast, uses a snapshot approach, organizing scenes more or less by strength of emotion rather than chronological order. So, basically my memory is a photo album organized by a three-year-old.)

The future has been looking somewhat precarious at the career college. Rumors abound. We're moving, we're closing, we're fired...  so I was quite interested when Sheryl told me she cornered the President of the college in the underground parking lot for some answers. I wasn't there, but I can picture him pinned against a car by her direct, no-nonsense, schoolteacher manner.

“Tell me the truth now. Are we closing?”

She's quite intimidating when she assumes her full school-mistress persona, complete with lowered brows, pointing index finger, and strident voice. I can only imagine he was transported back to childhood, cowering under the shadow of his first-grade teacher as she demanded he stop biting the buttons on his shirt. No, wait, that was my childhood. Well, he probably ate crayons. (I never did that.)

Apparently he realized he wasn't getting away without coughing up some answers. She said he sounded like he was eager, almost relieved, to tell her his plans for the college. His plans. That phrase surprised me. I don't know why I thought someone else was driving the bus off the cliff. Maybe because we rarely see him, our invisible college president. I guess I thought he was traveling to conferences, hobnobbing with career college academic-wannabes, doing team-building exercises while his team languishes back at our wilting campuses. What do I know. This is what happens in the absence of leadership: people make up stories to explain what they see and hear. I'm very creative, as you know. But being a chronic malcontent, my stories tend toward the sturm und drang.

 Anyway, back to the story. The answer to the question was “Yes.”

Yes, the site is closing. By the end of 2013, when the lease on the decrepit moldy office building runs out, we will have transitioned to a new site, currently under negotiations, somewhere near the airport (and our major competitors). So, we aren't actually moving; the site will be closing while a new site is opening.

I don't need a Magic 8 Ball to see the future now. Sheryl and I and a handful of other long-timers will man the sinking ship at the old place, while shiny new adjuncts and keepers from the other campuses launch the new venture. While we nurse along the old computers, patch together wobbly chairs, and erase the ghosts of 20 years' worth of scribblings on tired whiteboards, they will enjoy new desks, new chairs, new computers, new whiteboards, maybe even a few Smartboards. While we alternately sweat and freeze in the microclimates of our familiar worn-out classrooms, they will have thermostats in every classroom that actually control the climate for that room.

And when we finally usher out the last student, wipe down the whiteboards for the last time, pack up our mementos, and close the doors on the old site, what then? Do you think there will be room at the new site for us?

We'll be lucky if they remember who we are.

The fine old tradition of abusing adjunct professors

Today a colleague showed me a recent article from Salon about the “disposable professor crisis” in American higher education. In the article, the author s.e. smith, an interesting woman who writes for AlterNet and other alternative Web venues, accused institutions of relying on cheap adjunct teachers to cut costs, to the sad detriment of students. (s.e. smith is also a poet.) In the article, Ms. smith did not mention for-profit colleges; however, having worked at one small one for going on nine years, I can say my experience supports her claim. Leaving aside the question of whether you believe for-profit colleges should be included in the hierarchy of higher education institutions, the bottom-feeding for-profit institution I work for seems to be abusing adjunct faculty along with the best of them.

I find it fascinating what people believe (and don't believe) about college. But I want to know, what is college, anyway? The federal student financial aid Web site obliquely defines college as any education after high school. Not everyone believes for-profit education should be considered “college.” Tech school, trade school, career education, maybe, but not college.

Not everyone believes college should be the next step after high school. In the Salon article, s.e. smith linked to a speech by presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who said, “there are lot of people in this country that have no desire or no aspiration to go to college, because they have a different set of skills and desires and dreams that don’t include college. To sort of lay out there that somehow this is... should be everybody’s goal, I think, devalues the tremendous work” of “people who, frankly, don’t go to college and don’t want to go to college.”

His argument sort of reminds me of the “Poverty is a virtue” mentality I grew up with. Like, education? I don't need your stinking college education! Living in squalor, thumbing my nose at the elitist college-educated snobs, was good enough for my dad and his dad before him, so it oughta be good enough for me. By gum. Of course, I will be the first to admit that a college education does not guarantee a job, a steady income, or decent housing. But it's a start. Assuming we agree on what college is and what it is for.


I downloaded out the spreadsheet created by Joshua Boldt at the Adjunct Project. It was enlightening to see the comments by people who work at higher education institutions in Oregon. While the college I work for was not mentioned, several local community colleges were. Their pay scales, benefits, and attitude toward adjuncts were noted. This anecdotal information can’t be assumed to apply to all the adjuncts who work at these institutions, but it certainly opens a window on a world that has been closed to me. When I first started working on this Ph.D., my objective was to teach online for some higher education institution somewhere... now it looks like that may be a disappointing proposition. Unless you believe the claims of Dr. Dani Babb.


Even though I work at a crummy for-profit college, I still see most of our students learning, graduating, finding jobs, and making better lives for themselves and their families. In spite of the Santorums of the world, in spite of all the for-profit college bashing that is popular these days, I still think we do some good. Yeah, maybe we do treat our adjuncts like second-class citizens. But we are just emulating our betters. It's a fine old tradition for management to abuse labor. That's one thing our little college does well. You know what they say: If you want to run with the big dogs, you gotta get off the porch.