Learned Behavior

I was talking to a friend the other day about family, and about the trainwreck that is my immediate family. I don’t know if some of the siblings talk to each other, but I know a lot of us don’t. I’m not even sorry about that, at least not any more. I feel like I tried. I know some of the what went wrong and how, but I am also sure I don’t get all of it. One thing I know is that I don’t have to stay in the middle of this mess and let it keep hurting me. I have an obligation to do what I can for Dad, as best I can, until he passes, which means some limited interaction with the others, as required. Then it is time to move on.

I wonder sometimes what my parents and my Dad’s first wife were thinking. Surely you don’t go into it thinking you are going to have kids that are never going to care to speak to each other again when they grow up. I can remember my mother trying to micromanage my relationship with my younger brother. It never worked. She never stopped. I know she’s a lot of the reason for tension with the older kids, and with very good reason.

One thing I do know is that you cannot create relationships for other people. You can, if you are the authority figure, create an environment in which healthy relationships are possible. You do this by creating a community of respect for individuals and differences. You do this by leading by example. You do this by respecting and valuing the other members of the family or community, and trusting them, by and large, to figure things out and do what’s right. To want to do what’s right.

You have to love and respect yourself, with all your flaws and weaknesses. Everyone has these. If you can’t love your vulnerable, imperfect self, you will have a hard time teaching anyone else to love themselves. And if you don’t love yourself, it is mighty difficult to love someone else.

I wonder sometimes how it is for my siblings’ kids. I think it is better and healthier than it was for us, and I hope they have better relationships between siblings and cousins than I have had.

I am often sad that I never had a family. Sometimes a small voice whispers that maybe it is a good thing, looking at the past. Mostly I believe that it just is — nothing I chose, nothing I had real power over, a sign, if anything, of a changing world where often our values and what we want and expect for ourselves hasn’t quite caught up with modern day reality. Sometimes a louder voice whispers that if I had the chance, I could have done it, not perfect, but with a lot of right.

My realistic voice says to take this lesson into my classroom and my relationships with others. Love myself, create the environment where healthy relationships are possible. And hold on for the ride, because you never know what will happen next, who will come into your life. Give love freely, and accept it gratefully. You never know how people will change you, if you leave yourself open to love and change.

Sitting in Judgment

I was on a hearing panel that suspended a student yesterday.

It’s funny how everyone says, “This isn’t me.” Guess what? This is you. This isn’t all of you, but this is part of you. We are the sum of all of our actions. The kindnesses, the cruelties, the lies, the truths, the intentions, the regrets, the results. All.

I am no exception to this. I have done things I am ashamed of. I have hurt people, with intentional and unintentional cruelty. I have helped people, sometimes intentionally. Sometimes not. I have stolen, taking that which I knew was not mine. I have been scared of consequences, and chosen an action that I knew was not correct, and hoped that no ill would come of it. I have had moments of grace. I have had moments of failure. And all these things are the sum of me.

What I have learned is to try to keep myself out of the situations where I might be tempted do wrong. I have learned to be more mindful of the impact my actions have on others. I have learned that my intent and the result I obtain are not always the same, and so I must be cautious with my intent, cautious in my action, and aware, always, of what is going on around me. I don’t often succeed to the extent I wish I would.

When we suspend a student, we confront someone who has done wrong. Several wrongs. Rare does a student get suspended on a first offense. If one is, it means the actions were both premeditated and egregious. The student stands before the council and faces their least honorable self often with words of denial, ‘This isn’t me.’ Often with apologies. Often claiming to respect the honor code they have broken.

I don’t want to hurt them more, but I do want to say, “Yes, it is you.” But this is not the sum of what you are. You can take this experience, the darkness you’ve found inside yourself, and you can accept it. Learn from it. Learn to avoid putting yourself in a position where you will make a bad decision again. Learn how to put/keep yourself in positions to make good decisions. And you are greater, and will be greater than this one thing you did. No matter how horrible this one thing was. Let it motivate you to do better in the future.

And let it open you to compassion when you are confronted with others who wrong you. Remember this darkness is in all of us, but so is the ability to learn, change and reach for light.

Father’s Day

Dear Dad,

I wish I could call you today to wish you a happy Father’s Day and to have a talk about all the things going on in my life. I learned to take your advice on some matters with a grain of salt, but with others you had good insights for me. Moving, selling my house, making plans for the future — there are times I feel so overwhelmed with it all, and I wish I could talk it over with my Dad.

But we can’t talk on the phone easily anymore, and I had to make due with letters. I sent you two last week. I forgot it was going to be Father’s Day at the beginning of the week, and so I just sent you a note from Washington. I knew I missed the week before, so I hope it helped make up for that. Wednesday, after I returned to Texas, Father’s Day was on my mind, and I sent you another card specifically for it. I posted it that day, but I don’t think it will arrive until next week. I hope that will be okay. I will send you another note today; your regular weekly letter since phone calls, like I said, don’t work well anymore.

I would imagine that the sister who is taking care of you will visit today. Maybe she will even take you out somewhere. I wonder if my other siblings will mark the day in any way. There are two who could easily visit. There are two more who could at least send a card. But that’s not my business nor my problem. I don’t control anyone else’s relationship to you, only my own. I know I could do better; I just hope I do good enough.

Good enough to let you know you are loved. Good enough to let you know I’m in your corner and would do what I can for you. Good enough to let you know that whatever has happened with my siblings, that I’m not blaming you for that.

There’s been a lot of water under the bridge, Dad. Sometimes I wish you had been a different, stronger person, with more integrity. But I got what I got, and you are the only Dad I will ever have. One thing I know is that while you often didn’t understand me, you loved me beyond reason, you were proud of me. Sometimes you wanted to protect me, even if you didn’t know how. Sometimes you did know how.

I will always remember how, after that bad car accident, you bought a car for me and drove it out to me from California. It wasn’t the type of car I would have picked out. Then again, we aren’t the type of family where parents buy cars for their kids. I knew that you were doing your best to take care of me. I washed that car, and I took care of that car, and I appreciated that car knowing how it represented your love for me.

We’ve had some rough patches along the way. I wish I could go back and find a better way through some of them; you don’t realize how precious time is until it is gone. I know, I know, you aren’t dead yet. And I will love you in my actions through to the end.

One thing I’ve come to understand is that even when the parent-child bond is damaged or broken, whatever things that happen to sunder the two, just what a powerful force it is that pulls our hearts toward each other. Wanting your parent’s love and approval is one of the most powerful forces on earth.

I love you Dad. I wish I could make you better. I wish I could make you as sharp as a tack. I wish I could redo some things from the past. I know I will do my best to write you every week though I expect I’ll miss a few. And I will visit at least twice a year, through to the end. I will do my best to be there when that end comes.

Love,

Dr. Jinx

Semester Wrap-Up

The semester comes to a close. My temper has been short lately. My patience has been short lately. It will be good to have a change and necessary to take a break.

What is it that makes this time of the semester so difficult for everyone? Part of it is, undoubtedly, sadness that we won’t much see this group of students again, since on the most part, we truly like them. Some of it is the high paperwork load that comes with wrapping up a semester. Some of it is the grade-grubbing and begging. I’d rather help students work hard and learn than give them grades that make them sad. But my job is to report what happened over the course of the semester, according to the rules laid out in the syllabus. There was the option of coming for help before the last week before the final exam.

I am also questioning myself. I made my final optional, but in order to insure that students came to class and learned the last material, I insisted on no unexcused absences for the last week and a 70% score or higher on the final homework. I think 3 failed to make the score on the final homework. One, in part, because he handed it in late. Another just did poorly. One of the two didn’t show up for the final. The second scored poorly pulling a borderline C down to a D in my class. A rule is a rule, and I know that it is part of my job to enforce rules. Though sometimes we make judgment calls on things. Let them walk away with a C and be done. The consequences of not knowing the material will catch up. Of course, sometimes that is the wrong thing, and it is better to accept responsibility for handing the consequences out rather than delaying it for some other instructor. Right. Wrong. Hard to tell. And maybe there is no right or wrong here, there just is what is.

Many students struggle with the concept that actions have consequences. Fair enough. But sometimes better to leave well enough alone. Also fair enough. Perhaps for next time, if where I am going to be teaching in the future allows optional finals, I will find a way to change how I notify or change the policy in a way that is gentler on everyone’s spirit.

Lessons

This semester I have two students who are honors course contracting my classes. This means that they want honors credit for the class, and we create a written agreement about what they have to do to get it. In practical reality, I write the contracts with some broad leeway so that we are doing extra work but the exact details are somewhat fluid, and easily customizable to my needs or the students’ needs. Sometimes I think I should be more formal about it, but so many classes like this I don’t teach very often, and so, no, I don’t have enough mastery of the material to really know ahead of time.

One of my honors students has not been showing up to class. I get that he’s generally smart enough to learn the material on his own. And I also get that the engineering school is being a gigantic problem for him with group projects and teammates who aren’t helping. And a grandparent recently died. I can cut him some slack once for missing my class, but I think he’s missed two or three in a row. And this isn’t the first absence.

I called him in to talk to him about it the other day. “Look, I know you are under a lot of stress, but make it to class. Think of it this way, would you want a letter (of recommendation) writer to say that you were reliable except when you are stressed and busy?” I shouldn’t have said that. I’m not going to put that in a letter, even though I’m annoyed. And even though I am annoyed, this is still a student that I just plain like. I should have poked more into how he was doing first. The poor kid was like a whipped dog for the rest of the day, either from me or from exhaustion.

I felt like such a heel. On the other hand, I really think he should be coming to class.

So lesson one, write it into the honors course contract. No absences except for excused absences or with prior consent of the instructor. I have to go to extra effort for you, you show up to class.

Lesson two, listen first. I already know this one. It is the execution that’s sometimes is lacking.

Lesson three, focus on the positive. I really wish I’d said instead, “I miss you when you don’t come to class.”

Lesson four is just a question for my readers. What should I do now? If I could write a Dear Student letter, what should it say? Oh, heck, here’s a first try. What do you think?

Dear Student,

I called you out for not coming to class the other day. I think I did a bad job of that. I wish I had asked you first what was going on in your life that caused you to miss class. I wish rather than getting on your case, I had told you that I missed you when you don’t come to class. I wish I had written it into the honors course contract so that we both would have agreed to that ahead of time. You looked bad the rest of that day, and I’ve been feeling bad since. I hope you will accept my apology for handling that badly. And I hope you will come to class. I miss you when you aren’t there.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jinx

The other side?

Since I wrote and published Half-Assed, a mild case of concern has set in. Was I fair? Did I see it from the other side? What have I missed? One known cognitive bias is that we tend to rate experiences not on their overall happiness, but on their peak intensities (good or bad) and on how they end. And that relationship surely had a painful and unpleasant end, which certainly has colored my view of all of it.[1]

Another aspect of my thinking is from watching the video at the Representation Project, about judging men and their maleness. Men are supposed to be the fixers in the relationship, and they are supposed to do a good job of it. When one fails to do so, whether through sloppiness or lack of knowledge, we are (meaning I am) quick to judge.

What if he opened up the electric plug, and understood generally how it worked, but couldn’t quickly come up with a way to shorten the wires and strip the plastic coating? He could have asked — I would have had a suggestion — but men aren’t supposed to ask. There are numerous “How to Repair It” books around the house, all of which I purchased.

What if his access to the resources was reduced, not really knowing the books were there, since those were mine and not his. Unable to ask, because guys don’t ask. Not conscientious enough to really care about doing it right. “I put it back together, and it works, even though it is ugly and doesn’t look right. Good enough. And I don’t really like this vacuum anyhow, partially because I didn’t pick it out and partially because I just don’t like vacuuming (who does?), so maybe we should get a new one.”

I have an advantage of sorts in that I’m a female. I’m not supposed to know how to fix things. I know I can generally learn from a set of instructions, and so I provided myself with sets of instructions. I’m conscientious, which you might call anal-retentive if you are mad at me. If I am going to do a job, and I can do it right, I get stubborn and I will do it right. I’m experienced. I’ve been living alone and I’ve owned a house for over a decade. If something breaks, I’m the first line of defense for fixing it. I might not have started out as confident or competent, but it grows.

And as for the rest, it is one thing to have an attitude or opinion of really valuing communication in a relationship, but it is another thing to know how to do it. How would you learn when your parents never do such a thing? When your previous girlfriend made it impossible to do such a thing? How would you know how to deal with someone who tells you up-front what she needs and wants? Would that be a good thing or a threat? Maybe someone more confident would have been able to make more of it. But maybe this just wasn’t him. Not even when I was the one who was putting forth the effort and trying.

It’s that thing about responsibility. You can’t ever really give someone responsibility. The other person has to take it. You can give all you want, but if the other person doesn’t take, it doesn’t matter.

“What else could I have done,” is the question I am always asking myself. I don’t have an answer, and I don’t think I ever will. A relationship, a good relationship, requires two capable, responsible, willing, and invested partners. I am not sure I had that. I am pretty sure of my own investment, even though there were times I had a hard time holding it together. I know what I was willing to do. The one thing I saw clearly at the end was that if it was going to get better, he had to make the move, to make the commitment toward that happening. It wasn’t there. I think it had been missing in all the earlier conversations we’d had. Maybe it wasn’t neglect. Maybe it wasn’t not caring. Maybe it was just not knowing how or not being confident enough to try.

But once again, here we are. There it is. It is my job to make peace with this. I hope that I am; I hope you can see I am trying; one slow step at a time.

1. For more information on this, I read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. For a discussion on experienced vs. remembered well-being see page 4 of this NYTimes article for a discussion on duration-neglect and the peak-end rule.

Half-assed

I fixed the plug on the vacuum today. It’s been broken for a while, and I know who last fixed it. I think I remember an “oh, this is so hard, we may need to get a new one,” at the time.

Let’s just say that repair was half-assed. Which means, I took a look at it when I went to fix it and I thought, “Seriously, this is the best you could do? It would have taken 5 more minutes to do a quality job here, and you couldn’t bother?”

The cord was pulling out of the plug. You could see the insulation exposed. This wasn’t actually harmful, but to my mind, annoying.

How do you fix such a thing? Since the plug had already been replaced once by a professional — before the repair mentioned above — I had to remove two screws on the plug, taking it apart. Inside I found the electrical cable, stripped, with a white and a black plastic coated copper wire exposed with some fiberglass or similar insulation. What needs to be done? Loosen two more screws, removing the wire from the plug. Shorten the white and black wire sufficiently so that the cord is snug in the plug. Remove the outer plastic coating, exposing the copper inner wire. Screw this back in to the plug, making sure we get white on the correct side and black on the correct side. Screw the plug back together. Voila, done. It took about 10-15 minutes.

The repair represents that relationship for me. Half-assed. I know my patience and pleasant personality were getting burned off at the end, but sometimes it just strikes me as I look back at all the big and little things that got neglected. I don’t think I am easily in a half-in/half-out state in a relationship. If I am in it, I am in it. I give my heart, and I do my best to fix things. I get stumped sometimes, if talking isn’t helping. I brought up the problems, but even I had to disconnect after a while of non-response.

“What the hell were you doing?” I want to shout. Nothing? Expecting me to figure out how to make you happy and to do all the work to make it so?

And should I be surprised at the ending? After all, it’s easier to go buy a new vacuum than to spend 15 quality minutes fixing the electric plug. Except that, actually, it is easier and faster to spend 15 quality minutes fixing the electric plug.

I remember the beginning too, the connection, and connection is rare. To think it perished to a half-assed general lack of effort. That just makes me angry. But there it is.

Screw-ups

I screwed up today. Dad had an appointment for a blood draw at 1 pm, and I didn’t show to visit him until 12:30. My sister was there to take him to his appointment, and I barely got to say hello before I had to say goodbye.

Relations are tense with my sister; we don’t communicate. She had it marked on the calendar in his room, but Dad and I haven’t visited in his room yet this trip. I didn’t see it. I have a cold. I slept in today and headed here later than I might have.

It’s not her fault. It’s not my fault. It certainly isn’t Dad’s fault, but there it is.

Now I have the option to cool my heels for another hour and a half or so and return to see him, hoping he is alert and awake then, or to declare I did what I could today. Neither one feels great. As I so often tell my students struggling with life decisions, “There is no right answer. There is no wrong answer. You have to do your best and decide.”

Today is my last day here. I can’t come back tomorrow; my flight leaves at 8 am. We did have a good visit yesterday. I was there for 2 hours. Part of the time we were watching a holiday performance at the nursing home. Yesterday he told me that he would drive down to Texas to visit me next Christmas. He likes the warmer weather. I suggested we should take a side trip to the Grand Canyon. Of course, I’d have to do more of the driving for that. He wanted to know where we were going to dinner, and I named one of his favorite restaurants in the area. He gave me a hard time about my abused fingernails. It was bittersweet.

So much of visiting a nursing home is bittersweet. It is the right thing to do, so hard to do, and the only thing you can do. I make it out here twice a year. Maybe I could make it three. Given how far away I live, I could probably justify one. Do what you can do. Try not to let the rest get to you.

It is getting to me a little today.

More on shame

A friend posted on Facebook,

Dear advisors of graduate students,

Please read, comment on, and edit your student’s paper before it is submitted to a journal.

Sincerely,
A cranky reviewer

She’s right and criticizing the correct person, but I can’t help but feel for the student.

You see, I was that student.

I hope my friend writes something like, “To the senior authors/advisor of the student on this paper: seriously, you couldn’t put the time in to comment on, edit, and help put this paper together? You do know that is your job, right?” and, “To the junior author on this paper: Your senior authors/advisors let you down. This isn’t your fault. You are probably doing all the right things. You can’t control them. So don’t take my comments as a reflection on your ability or worth; they aren’t. And keep trying. You are doing work that has merit, and everyone benefits from professional critique before a paper is submitted. Even senior faculty.”

I know that even if my friend correctly calls out the advisor, it might be the student first reading those reviews. She’s right to call out the advisor. But oh, do I ever feel for the student.

I hope the student is stronger than I was.

Even 13 years later, I still have tears in my eyes thinking of that night and how I felt. I was so ashamed of myself, for not doing a better job. For not being more. For not knowing how to write that paper correctly. For being an ignorant student, instead of the expert professional I thought I was supposed to be.

Shame thrives in darkness and isolation. Talking doesn’t make it go away, but it makes it a little bit better. A little less frightening. A little more like adversity that I have overcome, rather than a sign that I am a failure as a person.

The one thing I have been able to do with all the pain is to use it to offer my students something better. I don’t ever want them to feel like that.

Stress, burnout and advice

Sometimes I think I give too much advice. I like to give advice. I like to give good advice! But not everyone needs advice, sometimes people need empathy more than anything else. So I hope that my predilection isn’t a big negative on my listening skills. I hope it isn’t affecting them much at all, but I guess if I’m honest, I have to admit that it probably does, and I should be careful.

But there is one definite upside of giving advice, which is that if I find myself saying it to someone else, then I have to listen to it. Sometimes, the first time you can really hear something is when you find yourself saying it.

And most recently I found myself saying, “You have to take time for yourself. Study after study shows that a 40 hour work week maximizes productivity, especially for knowledge workers.”

I’ve been working some ungodly hours for most of the semester. More than 40? Sometimes more than 60 a week. I haven’t liked it, but I’ve felt like this is what I need to do to get everything done.

And maybe I slipped into that grossly unproductive zone where you are working and working at things and not really getting anything done. And making mistakes. I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes. The first exam proofreading was embarrassingly bad.

So. Stop. Stop it now. I am stressed. And I am feeling a lot of burnout. And you know what? I do not need to be a hero here. I’m afraid of not doing enough, but maybe that is stupid. If I did less, maybe I could do more.

And so, I need to try to take all or most of this next weekend off.

Don’t believe me? This web article is not perfect, but it discusses the relevant research.

It comes down to productivity. Workers can maintain productivity more or less indefinitely at 40 hours per five-day workweek. When working longer hours, productivity begins to decline. Somewhere between four days and two months, the gains from additional hours of work are negated by the decline in hourly productivity. In extreme cases (within a day or two, as soon as workers stop getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep per night), the degradation can be abrupt.

Many of the studies quoted above come out of industrial environments, and it may be argued that the more creative mental work of programmers, artists, and testers is fundamentally different. In fact, it is different , and Colonel Belenky explicitly addresses that:

In contrast to complex mental performance, simple psychomotor performance, physical strength and endurance are unaffected by sleep deprivation.

The ability to do complex mental tasks degrades faster than physical performance does. Among knowledge workers, the productivity loss due to excessive hours may begin sooner and be greater than it is among soldiers, because our work is more affected by mental fatigue.