Organized religions are marketing machines run by hucksters seeking market share

My last post probably sounded like I was softening up. Do I sound malcontented now? I am beyond malcontented. I'll tell you why, not that you care. I'm past malcontented, verging on infuriated. My Internet connection evaporated 20 minutes after it started snowing, and has been cutting in and out every few minutes ever since. I'll probably be cut off before I finish this post. Even after Century Link came to my house on a Sunday to hook me back up, I'm still disconnected. Argh.

If that isn't enough to make me gnash my pearlies, eight years of olive oil and cat hair have finally choked my kitchen sink drain into paralysis, leaving a stinking pool of fetid water undrained. If my kitchen drain was my lungs, I'd be purple and dead on the floor.

And to top off this wicker basket which is heading rapidly toward hell, I just realized that I am incapable of making a commitment. I can't commit to a relationship, I can't commit to a career, I can't even commit to a religion. I seem to be constitutionally incapable of making a commitment. (Oh, how the nihilist is laughing.)

Let me explain how I came to this realization. Yesterday I was paging through some random blogs (I am beginning to suspect they aren't actually random, Google, you scamp), I saw over and over the cutest-on-the-block blogs presented by proud wives and mothers (never husbands and fathers). These smiling women praised their husbands, bragged about their children, (posting umpteen photos of the insides of their homes—have they no care for home invaders and burglars?), professed undying devotion to their marriages, and thanked God for their gloriously contented lives.

Herein lies my beef, leading to the provocative and as yet unsubstantiated claim in my post title. I am positive that if I were to corner all of these women and ask them about their religious beliefs, they would to a woman say they were devout Republican Christians and proud of it. Moreover, if I were to tell them I am not, they would no doubt look at me in horrified pity and ask how could this be? I would have to shake my head in resignation. They have something I lack. Somehow they have the enviable ability to choose something and believe in it. They have commitment, to their relationships, to their families, to their religions, to their beliefs.

I can always tell when I am angry. My writing tone gets really snarky. (I love that word, snarky. I'm sure it is out of fashion to use it, sort of like bling, cool, and you go, girl, but I don't care.) Sometimes I don't know I am angry until I actually read what I've written.

Back to my rant. I missed out on the commitment gene, it appears. I don't know how else to explain it. There is something wrong with me. (Damn, my Internet connection is... no wait, now it's back on. Jeez.) This lack of commitment is what drives me to say things like organized religions are marketing machines run by hucksters seeking market share. If I had been raised a good Christian, or Buddhist, or Mormon, or whatever... no, I don't think it would make any difference. I would still say it. I just don't have the commitment gene.

I think organized religions are marketing machines bent on increasing market share in a bid for world domination. It seems obvious to me. They use every marketing tool in the book, plus the good old-fashioned tried-and-true you-are-going-to-hell messages to persuade customers to commit to their brand. Most people seem to be looking for some sparkling edifice to hide behind, some altar to kneel before, some set of rules to follow, so they can finally feel safe. Commitment is no problem for them. Just offer them the best deal and they will sign up for life. Like those happy blogger gals.

Not me. If I believed in hell, which I don't, I'd say to hell with all you religious believers. Except, I already know I'm in the handbasket, heading toward hell on earth (AKA increasing hatred and violence, destruction of the ecosystem, and unbridled self-centered obsession). Maybe those blogger moms don't realize it yet, but they are in here with me. Here we go, wheeeee.

What would I do if I knew I could not fail?

Whenever I feel backed into a corner by life, I ask myself this question. It's the key to my self-made prison door, at least for a few magical moments. What would I do if I knew, beyond any doubt, with total certainty, that no matter what I did, I could not fail?

When I ask this question, two things happen. First, the pressure on my chest lifts a little bit. I have given myself permission to make "bad" choices. The question promises me my choices will not lead to failure. That means there are no mistakes. All paths are valid, all paths lead to learning. Some paths may be less painful than others, but none can be considered a total loss.

Next, with the pressure off my chest, I begin to breathe more deeply, and with oxygen, my creativity begins to flow a little less sluggishly. Possibilities start to burble to the surface of my messy bog of a brain. The fear recedes. The prison walls fade.

For a few brief moments I am suspended in the great What-if. Through a haze of creative possibilities I see another version of myself accomplishing remarkable feats, creating fantastic images, bringing light to the grim twilight world, and being abundantly compensated—financially, emotionally, and spiritually. For a few heady moments I'm not me, I'm someone else, someone with creative power and fearless productivity, making art, writing stories, expressing my certainty. For a few moments, I am positive that everything I do will be a satisfying success.

Then my normal fearful self grabs the wheel and steers away from the cliff. Whew. Close one. I almost took a chance on myself. I almost let go of my chronic malcontentedness. What would I do if I knew I could not fail? That question is deadly. Asking that question can lead to change. And we all know what happens when we allow change to happen. Things aren't the same anymore.

I've been sent to committee

It sounds ominous, but being sent to committee is a good thing in this case. This means my concept paper is making the rounds of my faceless, nameless committee. This terse message, "Sent to committee," from my Chair indicates one of two things: Either she thought the paper was good enough to warrant the next step toward approval, or she couldn't be bothered to read it and she is expecting the committee to do her work for her. Considering the unsteady relationship we have, I assume the latter. But I could be wrong.

It may not matter soon anyway. My illustrious university is changing the way it handles the dissertation process. After numerous complaints and a few withdrawals (frothily documented in the discussion folders), the administration has decided the process needs revising. Instead of letting any old flaky adjunct be Chair of a committee, they will now endeavor to ensure that only full-time faculty are allowed to be Chair. The adjuncts can still be members of the committee, apparently, just not Chair. Of course, I know from experience that full-time status does not preclude flakiness.

I hope this will affect my process positively. In other words, I hope my Chair is replaced by someone who will actually show up, be committed, and give me timely feedback. Actually, at this point, any feedback at all would send me into a tearful frenzy of gratitude.

I've stopped filling out the post-course surveys. As soon as I finished all my course work and embarked upon the research phase, I realized that I would quite likely encounter some of these mentors again. And that has been the case. I am not stupid. If I rate my academic experience honestly, and describe my disappointments in detail, that information will eventually be shared with the mentors. It won't be difficult for them to identify which malcontent submitted such eloquently negative feedback, thus jeopardizing any harmonious working relationship I might have had with them if they should end up appointed to my dissertation committee.

Students at the college where I am employed are asked each term to fill out evaluation forms to rate their instructors, courses, and the school overall. When I was a new adjunct, lo, these many (eight) years ago, I remember I was given the results of some student evaluations before the end of the term. I was appalled. I knew the evaluations weren't going to be complimentary, but that isn't why I was shocked. The point is that they were given to me before the end of the term, before I turned in grades, while I was in a position to retaliate against the students that gave me negative feedback. This class was divided into two armed camps: the students who loved me and the ones who wanted to lynch me. I could have really let them have it.

For a brief moment I considered what I could do to punish those students who dared to write negative feedback about me. Give them extra writing assignments, make them give an oral report, or just knock ten points off the top, whoops, too bad you didn't do so well on that last test. Then I thought, wait, what a gift. When I took off my angry teacher hat and put on my marketing hat, I realized I had been given a golden opportunity—or as we say in higher education, I had encountered a teaching moment. First of all, those students were a mirror for me, reflecting back what they thought I did well and what I needed to improve. That's valuable information that can help me learn and grow. Any serious student of marketing knows the value of customer feedback. Second, I was being given a chance to connect with them, person to person, to build a genuine connection, even with the ones who hated me.

And that is what I did. I stood in front of the class, told them I had received their feedback, and thanked them for being honest. Then I told them never to do it again.

"I know who wrote what," I said. "I know your writing style, I recognize your voices. You have given me power over you now. I can make your lives a living hell for the rest of the term."

They stared at me, round-eyed. A few guilty ones quickly looked away.

"I'm not going to do anything with this information except try to do a better job." I said. "But you all need to protect yourselves. If this school has a habit of giving the evaluation results to instructors before the grades are in, then you place yourself in a position of danger. Normally I say tell the truth, give honest feedback. But this time, I say, don't."

We made it through the term. I don't recall that I flunked anyone, and I didn't get fired. In fact, I got hired on full-time.

At an in-service some time later, I asked why I had been given evaluation results before the end of the term. That question, and others like it, have never been satisfactorily answered. Over the years I have come to realize that the institution I work for is as dysfunctional as any mom and pop business can be, run by pompous ignoramuses masquerading as educators and administrators. The fact that I've been "sent to committee" means I am one step closer to joining their ranks. Tra-la-la. I can hardly wait.

Another day in the life of an Access instructor

Today I watched my group of seven Access students struggle through their first test. They are a motley bunch of unique individuals. Four paralegals, and three business students, all women. The paralegals sit together in a row. The business students sit alone, far away from each other and the paralegals. I'm not sure if that is significant. I stood at the back of the room, trying to keep my eyes open and my mouth shut.

Today, J., a heavyset girl with porcelain skin, was hunched over in pain from a gall bladder attack. Drama being her middle name, I'm not sure how much of her ponderous movements and expression of suffering was for my benefit and how much was actual pain. Next to her sat her friend, dark-haired M., blazing through the test at a fevered pace. (Later I discovered she didn't do half the work. I heard from another teacher she is planning to drop out to get married and live on an army base. I hope she won't need any job skills there.) Next to M. sat K., tall, heavy, immature, and on probation for cheating. It's difficult to think of anything else when I see her: cheater, there goes the cheater. By the window sat A., the best student in the group, possibly in the entire cohort, maybe in the entire school. She certainly has the best attitude. If every student were like A., what an effortless pleasure this job would be.

In the back sat C., alone in more ways than one: the obvious lesbian, wearing men's shirts, and carrying a huge head on her tiny thin body. She is my favorite in the group, although we rarely speak. An older gal, R., sits in the back on the other side by the printer, bashing her way through the test as if to demonstrate her competency. I'm standing behind her. I can see what she is doing. She finds her way eventually, but competency isn't the word I would use to describe her process. The last business admin, the blonde M., is a forty-ish round apple-shaped bubble of energy perched on stick legs.

Blonde M. finished the test early. She trotted up to me, waving her printouts, and said, "Our other instructors always let us leave after we finish a test. Can I go?"

I'm not sure what rankled me, the fact that she felt like she was exempt from the request at the end of the test that students stay to work on their lessons, or that she thought I should knuckle under to the pressure to let students leave early because other instructors apparently do. I could have said, sure, go forth and prosper, grasshopper, but I didn't. What I said was, "You need to be here for a certain amount of time in order to get credit for the class period."

"I have to take my son to a doctor's appointment," she protested.

"What if the test had taken you the full two hours?" I asked. "Would you have stayed to finish the test?"

"Well, yeah!"

"Well, then why can't you stay now?"

She gaped at me, looking a lot like a goldfish I used to have, except less orange.

She trotted off to have a cigarette, slightly miffed. I leaned against the table at the back of the room, silently urging the rest of them to hurry up and finish. One by one, they did.

If you don't bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you

I believe this is paraphrased from a Biblical reference. Not being a Biblical scholar, or even a Christian, I have no idea whether that is true. It sounds ominous enough to have come from the Bible, but what do I know. I'm just a poor white trash atheist. What appeals to me about the concept is the somewhat comforting affirmation that it's okay to acknowledge my creative urge to self-express. More than okay, it's imperative.

Nothing can stop me from expressing who I am!

Lately I have been feeling an upswell of creativity. It seems to have reawakened during the time I spent waiting for my Chair to respond to my first concept paper submission (only to discover she didn't actually have access to the paper, another story, see previous rant). All that time on my hands waiting, what to do, what to do. I know. I'll create something.

When I was a kid, I was always writing, painting, drawing. It was my natural state. All kids are creative. I was no exception, but I think I might have been more intense about it than my friends or classmates. I felt the urge to express like a physical wave coming over me, forcing me to sneak away to be alone with my tempera paints and Prismacolors.

In the beginning my creativity was like breathing air. Had to have it. But over time, things changed. I changed. As I grappled with the painful realities of survival in Los Angeles, my desire to create got entangled with my urgent need to earn money. I fell into the trap of believing that my art was obligated to support me, instead of the other way around.

My mantra was: I am willing to earn doing what I love. As if it were simply a matter of mind over reality. Sadly, it is not that simple for me. In my experience, this is not a society that supports artists, unless you follow the party lines and make acceptable art (see previous rant on Thomas Kinkade).

Artists are subject to the same laws of supply and demand as other producers. I'd like to think that art is exempt; it goes against the very definition of art to condemn art-making to the whims of the market. The truth is, I'm just cranky that the demand for art never included the kind of art that I made. My art was acceptable—I was acceptable—when I painted landscapes and flowers. When I graduated to painting lush images of nude females, the titillation and embarrassment in the family manifested as ridicule and feeble pleas to paint something "nice."

My desire to force my art to support me led me down the dark path of art "made-to-order," which isn't art at all, but a perversion perpetrated upon dreamers by a cruel and unsophisticated society. Well, I'd like to blame pretentious collectors and creators of "art," but truthfully, I lost my sense of self and sold out to the almighty dollar. Yes, I did paint a canvas for someone to hang over her couch. Yes, I drew pictures to go on greeting cards. Yes, I sketched space costumes of transparent vinyl for topless Vegas dancers. Yes, I drew a pen-and-ink caricature of my friend's daughter's chihuahua wearing a basketball uniform.

Art made-to-order, also known as commissions, spells doom for an artist like me. My art is self-expression. I can't express someone else's self through my art. It is psychically and physically impossible. When I succumb to the siren call of money and make art to get some, I can't call it art, and I can't claim to be an artist. It feels odd to recognize that, in these days of "all but dissertation," I am feeling strangely creative, and more and more inclined to arrange my life to support my art. More to be revealed on that, I'm sure. And oddly enough, the more I write in this blog, the more I want to create. That old feeling of "must express" has started to return at odd moments. After I write a blog post, I want to keep expressing. It is like something I thought long dead is opening its eyes and stirring its wings.

The art I make now is for me. As pure as it has ever been. And now I know my job is to bring forth what is within me, no matter what. I don't care if you think it is in bad taste. I don't care if you are offended. I don't care if you would rather see butterflies, mushrooms, and fairies. Go buy a Thomas Kinkade. Go buy a velvet Elvis. Put any stupid thing in a frame and call it art. You'll be in good company. But you cannot have what is uniquely mine. I'm closed. The sign says Shut. Not for sale, not at any price.

It's always something

One of my favorite movie lines is from a movie called Elizabethtown:  "If it's not this, it would be something else." That pretty much sums up my malcontented life these days. Just when I think I've cleaned up every scrap of paper on my big plank of a desk, made every phone call, responded to every email, washed every dish, the temperature drops and it snows.

It's not enough snow to cause a problem for me, living in the city, but my feet are constantly cold. I can't get warm, not even with socks rated for forty below. I hate being cold, especially my feet. I'd rather be drenched in warm rain than be dry and freezing. Right now, of course, we get the worst possible combination: wet and cold. It's (almost) spring in Oregon.

People sometimes accuse me of dragging around my own little gray raincloud. I can't help it. On cold, wet days, I am genetically predisposed to avoid seeing the bright side of life. If the sun comes out even for a brief moment, my head shoots up like a dog scenting a squirrel.

I have a lot to be grateful for, but I'm not feeling it right now, because my feet are so cold. I should be thanking the internet gods that I'm back online. (I guess those infant sacrifices finally worked). I should be heaving heavy sighs of relief that I finished revising the second draft of my concept paper (truthfully, it was 95% new material) and got it successfully uploaded to the course room, where it becomes my Chair's problem. Speaking of my Chair, I should be praising fate that she came back from her week to god knows where and actually responded to my email. I should be prancing around singing, "She's alive, alive!"

There is a theory about malcontentedness. Picture two tanks of water. In one there is a floating island. In the other, there is not. Picture two sets of mice, swimming for their lives in these two tanks of water. The mice in the tank with the island find the island and can rest there. Whew. The mice in the tank without the island swim until they are exhausted. As they are going down for the third time, they are rescued by the scientists. This process takes place over and over again. Finally, in the last experiment, the scientists take away the island, and set all the mice a-swimming together in one big tank. You may not be surprised to hear that the mice who were trained to find the island swam longer than the mice who never found an island.

Think about your family? Did you grow up in a family in which there was an island? In my family, there was no island. Thus, my malcontentedness. No hope. I'm always swimming, always drowning... even if you put an island in front of me, I won't believe my eyes. I will walk around it, stumble past it, tell you I can't see it.

It's hard to think. I'd write more, but my feet are cold.

Wallowing in the messy bog

For the past week I have been valiantly struggling to revise my concept paper. Here's what I think I have figured out.

I'm on my own. The Chair of my committee (do I still have a committee?) has informed her learners on her faculty webpage that she is out of the country. I think she'll be back today, but who knows? She did not tell us where she went. She did, however, inform us that she has been receiving phone calls from learners at "all hours of the day and night," and from now on we must email her to set up an appointment if we want to talk with her on the phone. Yes, this is the same person who called me "Sweetie."

Nobody cares. It does no good to complain to anyone about this whole mess. I've been complaining about being in dissertation hell for so long, I might as well be yelling, "Wolf! Wolf!" People who ask how I'm doing are just being polite. They don't really want to hear my whining. What they want is the same thing I want: for this nightmare to be over. Of course, we want this for different reasons. I just want the pressure and anxiety to end, so I can get some sleep. They just want me to shut up.

I can't control anything. There is nothing worse than feeling out of control. (Nothing?.... Nope. Nothing.) My entire existence depends on being able to control my environment. People, places, things... I constantly labor under the delusion that I am in control. The image that comes to mind is the ant riding on top of the log that is floating down the river. Yep, I'm driving this log, look at me go! The truth is, I can't control anything. Not time, not space. Certainly not people. Nothing. Most of the time I can't even control myself: my feelings and behaviors are unpredictable at the best of times. This is not the best of times. I am completely and utterly without control.

I can create wreckage. Just because I have no control over anything doesn't mean I can't create some serious wreckage. All I have to do is look behind me to see the trail of chaos and destruction in my wake. So, although I have no control, clearly I am not without influence. If I could harness some of that destructive energy and turn it to work for me, what could I accomplish?

It's easier to play small. I willingly put on my cloak of malcontentedness everyday. It is an old familiar friend. It helps keep my life manageable, helping me maintain that illusion of control that keeps me going. It also keeps my life small. I am a dreamer. Sometimes I dream big dreams, dreams that involve me taking chances, talking to people, actually making phone calls, actually telling the Universe what I want. When I imagine myself doing those things, I want to curl up in a ball under the covers.

It would be easier to just quit on the whole dissertation thing. What do I have to lose (besides six years and $45,000?) I mean, all this learning, it's mine now, no one can take it away from me, whether I have a degree or not. At least, the knowledge is mine until Alzheimer's claims my poor tired brain. But I'm just stubborn enough not to cry uncle. Not because I want the degree. I doubt I'll actually do anything with it anyway. No, I want to finish because I'm not a quitter. So, let her call me "Sweetie," "Stupid," and "Grumpy," I don't care. I know my internal dwarves. I'm in good company. We are all in this messy bog together.

A ritual is just a desperate habit

I'm baaaaack. Online, that is. See previous post. The phone company came out on Sunday (yes, they do actually work on Sundays, who knew?) and got me back online. The phone guy, tall and rangy, has worked through at least four incarnations of the phone company. Pacific Northwest Bell, then US West, then Qwest, and now Century Link. What must that be like? If I had to guess, I'd say his loyalty is to the brotherhood of phone repair guys, rather than to a specific company. Companies come and go. But communication snafus are forever.

Speaking of snafus, my communication saga isn't over yet, apparently. I'm happy to report, there is improvement. The phone guy replaced the phone jack in my apartment (full of old paint, gunk, and cat hair), and got me back online, but at about half the speed I'm paying for. Some phone company magic has to take place with a large device called a bucket truck, and then maybe I'll be able to stream video. But I'm not counting on it. When I got home from work today, the connection was down again.

I have a ritual for getting re-connected. Disconnect everything from the modem. Wait five minutes. If that doesn't work, then I plug and replug the phone line, wiggling it around, hoping to hit the sweet spot. That didn't work today. So, today I unplugged my telephone, which is in the bedroom so as not to interfere with the all-important modem line. After that, the modem lights all came on. Eureka! I replugged my telephone and the lights stayed on. I guess my ritual worked. I'm really glad, because the next step would have been to sacrifice a Christian baby. (Kidding! Any baby will do.)

I'm hurrying to upload this post before the ritual magic fades and I am once again disconnected from the cyber world.

So, I guess this post is about rituals. Now that I think about it, my life is full of rituals. My getting-ready-for-work process could be called a ritual. I do the same things in the same order pretty much every day. I hit the snooze button three or four times before I roll out of bed. I worship in front of my light box for a few minutes while water for my tea is heating. I make breakfast and eat it—the same food everyday: four eggs and a pile of over-cooked vegetables. (The vegetables vary somewhat from day to day, but the pile is roughly the same size and flavor.) I brush my teeth, get dressed in one of my black or gray thrift store suits, and walk out the door at the same time every day. Is this getting boring? Ho hum. Maybe this isn't a ritual at all, maybe this is just a habit. What's the difference? Hmmm. I think a ritual is a habit with desperate overtones. A habit fraught with drama. (A drabit?)

Well, maybe my morning routine is a ritual. When I imagine changing it, or not being able to follow it, I feel really anxious. Go without my tea? Not hardly. Go to work without eating breakfast? Terrifying thought. Maybe it is more than a ritual. Maybe it has crossed over to becoming a superstition! Maybe bad things will happen if I don't follow the ritual. Like I'll be really mean and grumpy all day. Hey, wait. I'm mean and grumpy anyway. Maybe rituals have nothing to do with it. I am, after all, a chronic malcontent.

Withdrawal symptoms

You know how I whine about being in hell, and how I said I'm not on facebook, in my usual slightly snotty, somewhat superior tone? Well, now I'm really in hell. I can't even get on to the Internet, let alone onto facebook. Yep. My worst nightmare has come true. I'm offline.

We are having Weather. Not real weather, not tornados, thank God, not a hurricane, just a little wind, a little snow, some mildly freezing temperatures. It's not even worth writing about. But apparently, the wiring in my old apartment building is sensitive to temperature fluctuations. At least, that is what Craig, my supremo guru at my Internet service provider says. I have DSL. Apparently the wiring is so twitchy that I can sometimes get connected if I call my landline using my cell phone. Except that only worked twice, and now it's not working at all. Blink... Blink. That's the DSL light on my modem. A faint, feeble cry for help.

I'm sneaking time from work to update my blog. Not that anyone would know if I updated it or not, but my commitment to myself was to update it at least once a week. Because I'm at work, I don't have access to all my drawings, so this post will go unillustrated. (If I could illustrate it, though, the image would be one of me, wild-eyed, strangling one of my Access students for interrupting me every fifty-six seconds with inane comments: "I don't know where I left off." Like I keep track. "Where's the document tab? Oh.")

It's late. I'm whipped. I had my nap, but I'm still exhausted, and being disconnected from the Internet is not helping. Why is that? It's not like I can be home, online. And what would I be doing anyway? Checking my email. Writing this blog post. Nothing of consequence. Actually, if I were home right now, I'd be lying in a hot bath, reading some smutty vampire romance.

Why am I feeling so malcontented about not having Internet access? It is pathetic how attached I am to being connected, even if I am not home to use it. Even if I'm just doing banal tasks like checking email. I would rather my car break down. I would rather not have phone service. In fact, I'd gladly trade my landline for DSL service. How come my phone works but DSL doesn't? No idea.

I may be offline for a few days. The phone company has promised to visit me on Sunday, if you can believe it. I'm not sure I do, but that is what they said. So I'll be home, waiting. Twiddling my thumbs. Staring at my modem. Blink. Blink. Blink.

I surrender

If you are an educator no doubt you have had to endure many hours of in-service training. We had ours yesterday. On a day already crowded with grading and prepping, the five people in my department dropped everything and scurried down to our main campus 20 miles south on I-205, where we were treated to a taco bar (I abstained—no corn, no dairy, no wheat, no sugar, no fun), followed by three hours of butt-numbing "workshops" designed to improve our ability to teach.

First up, what to do when a student brings a gun to school. Yep, knowing how to handle that problem would definitely improve my ability to teach. In fact, it might improve me right out the door. I used to think such a thing could never happen at our school, but in reality, it has happened. A gun made it as far as a parking lot. Knives have made it into the hallways. Now that I am more familiar with the for-profit education world, I can understand why students feel the need to resort to violence to make their point. "What do you mean you don't have my financial aid check? Maybe this big KNIFE will help you to find it!"

OK, so now I'm informed about what to do if students get violent. What do we do if they suddenly keel over from a heart attack? Apparently nothing, unless we are trained to use the shock machine. And even if we are, we'd sure better get it right—no hiding behind the Good Samaritan law on this one. If you are trained to use the AED and you screw it up, you can kiss your ass good-bye, apparently. As in major lawsuit coming your way. I had no idea. Guess I'll think twice about helping someone in trouble. And I'm sure if I'm the one who keels over, I'll be turning blue waiting for the paramedics, because my colleagues sure won't be hurrying to help.

The next workshop was a gripe session about our low-down, cheating, plagiarizing students (the pesky scamps). The questions we must ask: Did they know they were plagiarizing? Have they done it before? And should we kick their sorry-ass souls out the door? In this age of the disappearing college student, I can just hear upper management cringing at the thought of letting a live one slip through their fingers. "Surely you can rehabilitate this habitual cheater!" they will cry.

With each new plagiarist exposed, we get angrier and angrier, feeling more and more maligned and disrespected. But we should remember it is not about us. Hell, if I were an adult student—hey, wait a minute, I am!—I mean, if I were a person of less integrity (ahem), I might succumb to the pressure of allowing my smarter classmate to share her paper with me. I might brag about the great speech I wrote without revealing that I stole it off the Internet. I might be tempted to let my 5th-grader do my math homework for me. The burden of being alive is sometimes overwhelming. I wish I could cheat sometimes. I wish I could hire someone else to live my life for me. I surrender, I submit, I give up.

And finally, in the third workshop, we were regaled by the lecture from the sage on the stage, the instructor most intoxicated with the sound of his own verbiage, who absolutely had to share with us in a loud and passionate voice his new discovery: groups! He has discovered the wonders of having his students work in groups! Eureka, it is a miracle! And he proceeded to tell us not only what happened when he sorted the students into groups, but made us watch PowerPoints of each group's presentation. Was I the only one who surreptitiously sneaked in one earbud so I could listen to my mp3 player?

After we were sufficiently bludgeoned into being better teachers, we stumbled out into the rain and drove back to our shabby campus, where we frantically resumed our grading and prepping. New start on Monday, a handful of new students to "teach." What will I be teaching them? Don't bring your weapon to school. Don't cheat. And get used to group projects, because after day one, I'm not saying another word.

Obama asks higher education, "What are we getting for our money?"

The aggressive push of the Obama Administration to make higher education accessible, affordable, and effective is stoking a heated debate. In an Associated Press article posted today on msnbc.com, the author described the Administration's position on the role of higher education in American society.

Federal student loan funding is being used to fund students who are unlikely to graduate or get a job in their field. Some critics say some of those students should never be allowed to go to college in the first place because they can't read and do basic math. In his State of the Union address, Obama expressed his intention that every family in America should be able to afford to go to college. He didn't say that every person should go to college.

It seems to me so much of the disagreement between factions stems from a basic question: What is the purpose of a college education?

If you are a leader in a publicly funded institution of higher education that offers degrees in fields like art, music, and philosophy, you might be worrying that so much focus on "gainful employment" is the kiss of death for your liberal arts programs.

This saddens me. I can relate. If I had been left to pursue what I loved, back in the 1970s, I would have studied painting. I would never have listened to people who said I would never be able to survive as a painter. I would never have switched my major to graphic design (commercial art), which ended up to be a hopeless endeavor for me, because I am constitutionally unable to produce "art" to order.

I think of the artists and musicians and other creatives who are being allowed to study what they feel passionate about, without the threat of future unemployment looming over their shoulders. I'm sure they think about their career prospects. But vocations choose you sometimes. If you don't bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you in its efforts to come forth. Ignore your art at your peril.

Vocational education and liberal arts education are different things—they shouldn't have to compete. Unfortunately, they are being forced to compete because taxpayer dollars are being used to fund both "useful" occupational programs and "useless" pursuits such as art and theater. The value of higher education, then, has become all about the money, and the measure of a quality education has become simply whether or not the student graduates and pays back his or her student loans.

I am a believer in lifelong learning. I hope I never stop taking classes somewhere to expand my skills and my mind. But I don't believe that everyone should have a college degree. I think there should be multiple definitions of higher education, multiple avenues toward learning. Certificate and diploma programs should focus on the job skills demanded by industry. Let academe offer four-year and advanced degrees.

My life is a farce

I'm back in dissertation hell. I'm four weeks into my first dissertation course, waiting for my Chair to give me feedback on my concept. We've been playing email tag. Then voice mail tag. I keep asking the same thing: I need feedback on my concept. For four weeks, I've been... well, I've been writing this stupid blog. Waiting.

At last we connected by email, chose a time to talk on the phone. I was set to call her at 12:30 pm. At 11:00, the phone rang while I was in the process of burning my eggs. It was my Chair, calling from somewhere in the deep South. "Just thought I'd try you," she warbled. "What can I help you with?"

I came right out with it. "I want feedback on my concept paper." I didn't add the part about, remember that concept paper I wrote four months ago, that you never gave me one speck of feedback on? What's up with that weird sh-t?

After some short chit chat, she casually remarked, "Why don't you upload the paper to the course room and I'll take a look at it over the weekend?"

I was aghast. What! All this time I thought she had the paper. She was my mentor during the course where I wrote the thing, how could she not have the paper? Argh.

"Ok, I'll upload the paper right away," I sighed. "I wish I'd known that you didn't have access to the course room."

She laughed. "Yes, they don't tell you that, do they?" I wasn't finding this amusing, but she clearly was.

Some more small chit chat, and then she sang out. "Thanks, Sweetie! Bye-bye!" And she was gone.

So now I'm Sweetie. I assume that she calls all her learners Sweetie. Probably that is what they do in the South, I don't know. I don't mind being called Sweetie if it makes her feel connected and helpful. I just wish she really was connected and helpful.

We have plans to talk again on Tuesday. Like that is going to happen. I guess I'll send her another email. Maybe I'll sign it "Sweetie," and see if that helps.

I am the anti-christ of marketing

You can define marketing as "a practice employing methods of communication to persuade people to do, think, feel, or believe something." In that sense, you can call marketing a form of brainwashing. That's how I think of it.

I love the essence of marketing, which to me is the fascinating challenge of understanding consumer behavior. I love figuring out why people buy what they buy, love what they love, believe what they believe. I love style, I love self-expression. The best qualities of marketing are about answering the questions, Who are you? What do you believe in? What do you prefer? What makes you uniquely you? That's why I love marketing research. It's all about asking the questions and trying to understand the answers.

Unfortunately, the part of marketing I hate is the persuasion part, because the objective of so much marketing is to sell more stuff to people who already have too much stuff. Have you seen The Story of Stuff? You should.

I sometimes teach introductory marketing classes. The students invariably are interested in marketing only to make money. They get that it is a game of scheming and manipulation. They are used to it, being experienced consumers themselves. They rarely care about the environmental impact of producing and marketing products in an endless cycle. They don't seem to understand the finite nature of earth and its resources. The world seems like one big mall to them.

They assume that whatever brilliant product they devise for their class project will be of riveting interest to the entire population of the planet. And that everyone has the resources to purchase said product. And of course they assume everyone in the world has a computer, Internet access, PayPal, and Facebook. Don't get me started.

I show them Sut Jhally's Advertising and the End of the World. Yes, it's old, and the scary monster from the 1990s was the hole in the ozone layer, but that was just the harbinger of global climate change. The concepts are still relevant, and the commercials are compelling. My local library used to have a copy, which I borrowed and showed to several marketing cohorts. I'm not sure it did much for them, but it scared the crap out of me. That is how I became the anti-christ of marketing.

Marketing is just a set of tools. Marketing is like fire—it can keep you warm or burn your house down. In unscrupulous hands, marketing is part of the machine that will destroy our planet and us along with it. In the right hands, marketing is a tool that can be used to persuade people to rethink their consumption habits in support of our common welfare. How many hands do you think are in the second category?

Relationships are highly overrated

It's Valentine's Day. I read some stories today about how being in a relationship can help you live longer, improve the quality of your life, help you lose weight, and improve your sex life (really?). All I can say to that is bah humbug.

My position may be somewhat unusual, I don't know, but I do know this: My health improved, my mood improved, and my sex life definitely improved when I finally made the choice to become single.

From 1980 to 2003 I was always in a relationship (four all together, one at a time). I never made time to find out what it was like to live successfully on my own. I was too scared, I think. I thought I couldn't live without a relationship.

Unfortunately, I don't have a very good partner-picker. I chose partners who were not all that good for me and who were unlikely to change. Not a happy combination. Lucky for me there is a Twelve Step program for magical thinking.

All those years I spent orbiting other people's lives took a toll on me, emotionally and physically. When I finally allowed myself to claim my independence in 2003, I made a promise to myself that I would never again allow someone else to invade my mental and physical space without my permission.

So, here's to Valentine's Day. Maybe someday I'll find the love that some other people have been lucky enough to find. Until that day, I'm content to be with myself.

What happens next?

I'm trapped in dissertation limbo, waiting for my Chair to respond to my submission. While I'm waiting, my constant question is "What happens next?" As if I can't wait to get out of this present moment into the next one. I'm not sure why, since I don't know what is happening now, let alone next.

Is it human nature to constantly want to know what happens next? Like if we just had some inkling of the disasters awaiting us, we could be more prepared? Right. What would you do if you knew there was going to be an earthquake in your neighborhood next Saturday at 3:00 a.m.? Would you take the week off from work to pack up your stuff and head for the hills? Would you buy earthquake insurance? Tell the truth.

A long time ago I attended a meditation group. I don't remember much, probably because I slept through much of it, but I do recall the teacher exhorting us to stop asking unanswerable questions and strive instead to be empty boats. What would an empty boat ask? That is a trick question. An empty boat would ask nothing. Boats can't talk. An empty boat would simply be. Floating on the river of life.

Sort of like my cat, I guess. He floats on the river of life. Existing in the moment. The master of the next right thing. Well, the analogy is interesting, but not all that helpful, since the cat doesn't have to earn a living, write a dissertation, or take out the recycling. Wouldn't life be grand if it were all about eating, peeing, pooping, and play? Hey, wait a minute. Isn't that retirement? More like institutionalization.

Retirement is an elusive impossibility for an under-earner like me, but institutionalization, that is not hard to picture. I'll be there soon enough, don't rush it. I'm not anxious to find myself sitting in a wheelchair, wearing a bib while someone feeds me cake and wipes my drool. Much as I dislike the prospect, though, there is something comforting about knowing that even if I can't lift a finger, I will be fed, clothed, and sheltered until I am dead. Unless Medicare and Medicaid give out. Then you can set me adrift in an empty boat.

That pesky sense of entitlement

A distressing number of my students seem to think they are exempt from the rules.

The conversation goes like this:

• Student: I deserve an A in keyboarding!
• Me: Why do you think you deserve an A in keyboarding?
• Student: Because I worked really hard!
• Me: But your performance failed to meet the criteria for A.
• Student: But I still deserve an A!
• Me: But you haven't earned it.
• Student: You should make an exception for me.
• Me: Why?
• Student: Because I'm special. 
• Me: What makes you so special that you should be exempt from the rules?
• Student: Because God made me perfect!

And there you have it. What do you say to the spiritual exemption? At that point, I just smile and nod. If the student and I are alone, I mention that she may be perfect spiritually, but her character, attitudes, and performance still need some improvement. And then the student smiles at me in a superior sort of way and says something along the lines of: "No. I'm perfect just the way I am."

Who am I to argue with God's perfection?

My own personal seven dwarves

Despite my new lightbox, I started my day feeling somewhat grouchy and grumpy and realized I was once again in the company of my dwarves. I have a lot more than seven. Grouchy and Grumpy are just part of the crowd. There's also Foggy, Groggy, Bleary, Logey, Weepy, Sneaky, Snippy, and Morose. And don't forget Snotty and Catty. They are always lurking in the dark corners of the Hellish Handbasket.

Carol's Brain

I was hoping the new lightbox would be a magic bullet to ward off my SAD, which is beginning to fill the crannies of my mind with fog. It's a feeling I associate with winter and spring. A brain filled with cotton. Because I am virtually non-functional, it makes sense to have my dwarves step in for me. My avatars, if you will.

There is a guy at work, I'll call him Frankie. After I started hallucinating a kitchen full of cranky dwarves—hey, that's another one, Cranky—I thought, I wonder if other people have dwarves that reflect their personalities too. Like Frankie, for instance. What would his dwarves be named? Probably Happy, Sunny, Chummy, Chipper. Don't forget Helpful and Skippy. Smiley and Beamer. For some reason it's harder to think of optimistic names. I don't know if you can tell, but I sometimes have disparaging thoughts toward Frankie. I say I am confounded by his eternal optimism. He says he appreciates my point of view, because he doesn't "think that way." He's too ebullient to judge me the way I judge him. He's like a freshly opened can of 7-Up. Me, I'm like a two-day old cup of cold bitter coffee.

The idea of having my own set of pessimistic, cynical, angry dwarves is utterly stupid. But it points out to me how ridiculous my self-obsession can get, especially on a gloomy, rainy winter morning.

Perplexed and confused as usual by my students

I'm still in dissertation purgatory, waiting for my Chair to respond with feedback to my concept paper. Even a response to my email asking for feedback would be a step in the right direction. What am I doing wrong (besides not asking my advisor for a new Chair)?

On the plus side, I have time to do stuff around the shack. Clean the cat box. Shake the litter out of the rugs. Organize my envelopes (I have so many sizes, yellowed with age—Who sends mail anymore?). Read some trash paranormal romances. Lay around and eat bonbons. Write in this blog. La la la.

Because of this lengthening delay in receiving feedback from my Chair, I'm in a constant state of panic. Mostly I keep it tamped down to a slow boil. Sometimes, though, it comes out sideways, in the form of nastiness toward others. I always feel really bad after I say something I shouldn't have. But it would be better if the nastiness had never happened. In my defense, it's not like I'm criticizing their choice of footwear, not that nasty. More like general snippyness, cattiness, and snottiness. (I think those are real words.) I have my reasons (malcontentedness combined with roiling panic), but I admit, it's no excuse for being snippy, catty, or snotty.

This constant low-grade panic is especially noticeable in my level of tolerance toward keyboarding, keyboarders, and my students in general. I'm to the point where teaching keyboarding is like scraping all ten fingernails on a dirty chalkboard. I have no patience with keyboarders who argue with me about where the fingers go. (I'll tell you where the fingers go! Finger this!) And I am seriously fed up with students who check their engrade score every five minutes. I love engrade, but it's the bane of my keyboarding existence sometimes.

In a discussion of the dual role of the student in the "business" of higher education, Meirovich and Romar (2006) used the terms customer and grade-seeker. The authors weren't using the terms in a negative sense, but more to simply describe the roles of the student in juxtaposition to the roles of instructors as service suppliers and retention-seekers. I use the term grade-seeker in a strictly negative sense to describe students who check their engrade scores multiple times a day, who ask questions like, "What do I have to do to get a C in your class?", who take all five absences as part of their attendance strategy, and who rarely if ever check the syllabus to find out what lesson they should be on this week.

Am I sounding snippy? What can I say. I'm trying not to panic.

====================================================
Source:

Meirovich, G., & Romar, E. J. (2006). The difficulty in implementing TQM in higher education instruction: The duality of instructor/student roles. Quality Assurance in Education, 14(4), 324-337. DOI: 10.1108/09684880610703938

The proud, the many, the chronically malcontented bloggers

One day last week while I was admiring how lovely my blog looks, I noticed the link at the top of the window that says <<Next Blog>>. Since I only have one blog, I wondered where the link might take me. Wow. There are a lot of malcontented people in the blogosphere.

Maybe Google uses keywords on my blog to transport me to blogs of like-minded malcontents. Or maybe it's just a random link to the next bizarre example of someone's self-expression. All I know is, I'm not alone. And I'm just a malcontent wannabe when it comes to whining. Some of these bloggers are masters at the art of martyrdom, sniveling, and moroseness. I bow down.

After I perused a few blogs, I noticed that some of them hadn't been updated in a long time. Like, years. Then I realized that abandoned blogs litter the blogscape like ramshackle cabins left from gold rush days. Apparently people felt a need to express themselves, they expressed, and then they moved on. Sort of like the way we use portapotties at the local park.

We got rid of another one of
your paintings today, honey!

And who can blame them, these casual bloggers. It's free and easy to start a blog. Anyone can do it. I think my mother could do it: She's 82 and typed her zip code into her dial-up account instead of the provider's dial-up number, but hey, that's a mistake anyone could make. She can type, ergo she can blog. I asked her what she would like to blog about. She thought about it for a moment, and then she said, "I think I would like to talk about how to be a friend." I was like, right on, Mom.

So, anyone can set up a blog and write a few things for a week or two, maybe even for a month. But day after day, week after week? Now, that is hard. Look at me, I've been blogging for what, three weeks? And already, I'm blogging about blogging. I'm meta-blogging. That's sort of like using one credit card to pay another. The kiss of death.

Some abandoned blogs were obviously for groups. Social groups, families, a place that was intended for members to gather and celebrate the group's existence, share accomplishments, make plans. These blogs remind me of half-built hotels. They ran out of funding, lost their investors, and now they clutter the blog horizon. You can't stay in these blog hotels, but you can tour the ground floor and get a sense of what it could have been. Is there an unlimited capacity to store these derelict blogs? What will I do when I have neglected my blog for a year and can no longer remember the password?

To all the bloggers who came before me, thank you for blazing the blog trail. Thank you for decorating the blogscape with your personalities, observations, complaints, and shouts of glory. Even if you have moved on, you've left behind an environment of creativity and self-expression that I find both inspiring and hopeful. Inspiring because after seeing your blogs, I know I'm capable of doing what you did, and reassuring because if I abandon my blog in three months, I will be in good company. Here's to us, bloggers young and old, here and gone.

Back in dissertation hell

I knew this would happen. I'm two weeks into my first dissertation course, and already getting feedback from my Chair is like pulling teeth. Argh. I feel like I'm being gaslighted. I can't believe she would deliberately be so--what's the word? Schizophrenic? What do you call it when someone's actions don't match their words?

She approved my (laughably unrealistic) timeline. She emailed that she would read the paper over the weekend. (That was last weekend). She sounded so enthusiastically supportive in her email, so chatty and encouraging. And then, nothing, not a peep, not a word of feedback, not even, "This sucks. Resubmit." Nothing.

This is what I hate about... life, I guess. That people are at times so predictable, and other times so frustratingly perplexing. I want so much to trust her. I want to have faith. I will forgive her almost anything. But her actions, or lack thereof, erode my ability to trust. Eventually I will be reduced to an automaton, saying whatever it takes to get through this and leave her behind. It's so bleak, and we've only just begun.

What if I were to have a conversation with her about my concerns? What if I emailed my advisor? Lots of luck, is what I think. I suppose communication breakdowns happen in any institution, but it seems particularly destructive when it happens in an all-online environment, where all we have is email and the rare phone call to communicate our frustration and reassurance.