Category Archives: me

Success and Luck

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I have had several conversations about success and luck today.

The truth is that if someone is successful at anything meaningful, s/he had to work hard, but s/he also got lucky. The right opportunities appeared at the right time, and the right place for that person to take advantage of them. This isn’t to say that hard work wasn’t involved. It certainly was. It is to say that luck is involved too. Sometimes a lot of it.

Now, most people, especially most successful people, think it is all about hard work. I don’t want to deny hard work, but realize that some people who are less successful worked just as hard, but didn’t get the same opportunities.

What really grates is the implication that if you aren’t in whatever successful group it is, it is surely because you just don’t work that hard.

This is explained by the Just World Hypothesis, a known cognitive bias in psychology. We all want to believe in a just world. And in a just world, the deserving, the hard-working, will succeed, and, well, we know who it is that fails.

News bulletin: the world isn’t just.

This goes along with all the talk about the relationship between power and empathy. They don’t go together. Here’s a link to the research paper and scientific results.

I hope you didn’t miss the video with evidence that wealth and economic success go along with poor behavior: cheating, taking advantage, lack of empathy.

What got to me today was a conversation about online dating. I tried that several years ago. My experiences were mostly pretty awesomely awful. And hilariously funny. But not so much while I was going through them.

A friend met her husband on one of these sites. I don’t think she realized that she immediately began offering advice on how to succeed, how to play the game right. I know she wasn’t criticizing me, but all I could hear was the message, “if I just tried harder, put together the right profile, screened the other users of the site more carefully, then success would be mine too.”

It grated several weeks ago when someone else commented, “Well, I didn’t meet my special someone until I was 50.”

As if … as if we can just play the game right and find the relationship we are looking for. Or anything else. Yes, it requires hard work. But it requires more than hard work.

And hey, I also know I’ve done this to other people too, in a variety of contexts. I’m not innocent of this, and it is hardly a crime. We all say things that strike others the wrong way sometimes. No sense in getting angry, No sense in getting upset.

So yes, it is kind of stupid to get so upset, I know, but after the awful experience this spring, it all hits home that I’m 44 years old, and I honestly don’t believe I am going to find that special person. And even if I do, at this point it is too late to have a family.

And yes, I do know how negative and unfair that line of thinking is. The Just World Hypothesis. If I’ve been doing things right, I shouldn’t have to go through this. And what is it I did wrong? Can I fix it? Make it up to the universe and somehow get back on track? Of course not. Ah, but the world isn’t fair. And yes, yes I do have to go through this. And the other things that are bothering me right now.

I have to just let this and all the rest go. I have to find a way to be happy with the life I have, not with the life I thought I’d have, not wanting something that isn’t mine. Focus on the things that I am grateful for. Surely students are the next best thing to having children. Even when they walk out of class right after quizzes.

But another truth is, as true as all that might be? It isn’t comforting much of the time. It all tastes like ashes. These days it takes a hell of a lot of effort to put on that happy face and keep moving forward. Not that I’m about to stop, but just saying.

And yes, yes, I do know first world problems. Yes indeed.

I also know that this is a sign that my world has been disrupted, and I haven’t resolved the disruption yet. I think it is harder when you are older. But maybe I’m wrong; when you are older you at least have more experience and maturity to realize what is happening and what you need to do to get through it. I am surely an expert at grief by now.

If you are single you establish a pattern (eventually) that at least mostly works for you. Then you start a relationship, which disrupts the pattern. Then if the relationship ends, you don’t have a pattern any more, and you go through a time as I am now, where I spend a lot of what little free time I have alone. Which is hard on a person. Solitary confinement is punishment everywhere for a reason.

And the other part, too much work, too little free time, just wears me down day after day after day. I haven’t had 24 hours off since the beginning of the semester. Not even when I was sick. And some real nasty issues have come up at work, making me uncomfortable and unhappy there. So nothing in my life aside from teaching the honors class is working well right now. And that is working well at the price of a hell of a lot of time to make it happen, and once again without much hope that I will get to re-use the work I put into the class this semester. No wonder I am emotionally and physically tired.

But there we come back to it again. Put on as happy a face as you can and keep moving forward. Keep moving forward. One step at a time. But that sure doesn’t make it easy, and it sure doesn’t make it better quickly. But yes, it is, indeed, all I can do.

Walking out of class

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Friday is quiz day. I give a quiz. I try not to make it an easy quiz. This week inspiration came in the form of an online homework problem everyone said was difficult. I didn’t think it was that bad, but I took time to write up a solution and post it for them. Then I recycled it for the quiz question, figuring that after they had tried to do it, and after I had posted a solution, it was fair game. And if we still didn’t know how to do it, it was time to learn.

I could tell that many were unprepared for the question, and they were too flustered to come up with a coherent strategy for dealing with it.

And that’s fine. That’s why I solve quiz questions immediately after giving a quiz. If you don’t know how to do it and you should, well, now I’ll show you again and hope that this will impress the method on your brain.

Five students stood up and walked out before I started doing the quiz solution.

That kind of blatant display of disrespect for me and their own learning annoys the daylights out of me. I know that we are a learning environment, not a forced learning environment. You can lead a horse to water, blah blah blah.

But. Wow.

I’ve seen this happen in other people’s classes, including one I was sitting in on for fun. I know this has nothing to do with the quality of the instructor, and everything to do with the quality of the student. Still … it can be hard to sit/stand there and take it.

I pointed out to the ones who stayed that they were at a competitive advantage in the class.

Before we went home, I reminded them that I would love to see them in office hours. “Maybe I am weird, but I love to watch you do math,” I said, “I guess that’s why I am a math teacher. So if you are wondering if you would be `bothering’ me in my office hours, don’t. Working with students is the best part of my day. So come.”

Three new ones did. Maybe the day was not without its successes.

Honors Class

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The challenge with teaching an honors class is making sure you have interesting enough questions to keep your smartest students on their toes while not intimidating the hard-working middle of the class into hatred and helplessness.

First exam was Thursday evening, and so Friday’s quiz question was the following:

Have a conversation with the exam you took last night. Was it a victory lap or a street fight? Did it go better or worse than you expected? In the conversation start figuring out what message your exam has for you.

Everyone thought the exam was a formidable opponent. There was plenty they knew how to do, and also some spots where I made them think. Many are concerned to see how they did, but they also express having better knowledge of what to do to prepare and resolve to destroy the next exam.

My favorite comments:

  1. I kind of enjoyed it. I’ve never had a challenging math test. They have always been straightforward and procedural. This one made me think. … This class has been helping me break my habits of memorize, plug and chug. I would not have done well had I used those methods.

  2. I wish you would just give me numbers, but you are an Honors Exam and that’s what I should expect. By the end, I felt better about you. You made me think and you were challenging, but I think we may be friends. … You taught me that I can think through a problem, even if I am not sure where to start.

    (This second commenter, a young lady, got a 100 on the exam!)

Now I better hope I can come up with a good next exam …

Teaching

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One downside to teaching is that there are days when, in another job, I’d just stay home in bed and allow myself to be ill. But I’m not in another job. I’m a university teacher.

Today was one of those days.

My throat was in agony whenever I tried to talk, and I had to get the microphone working in order to teach.

In my morning room, I can’t tell that the mike is working, but I need to talk quietly or it won’t be long before I’m not talking at all. And when I can’t hear that it is working, I keep trying to compensate.

Then there’s the muzzy-headedness, and mistake after mistake after mistake where I just don’t line my points up very well. This is frustrating for the students; I get it. They begin to talk amongst themselves, and then I try to compete with my voice which is a painful disaster.

You know that moment when you are about to start to cry, from feeling like you are the biggest screw-up in the world and nothing you can do right now will change it, right in the middle of class, in front of the 60 students out of a hundred who bothered to show up the day after an evening exam …

I managed to channel it into irritation instead. “Look, guys, I know I stink today, and I know I’m hard to follow, but I can’t compete with you (talking while I’m talking). So make up your minds whether you are going to help me out or whether we just want to go home and don’t really care about learning this after all.”

It got better after that, but I was still wet-eyed in line to order my lunch.

The honors class in the afternoon was better, but I appealed to their mercy straight off. We laughed at a few things and did one problem with minimal talking to help save my voice. The no-talking problem … now something about that was interesting. I want to try that again.

The Advantages to Being Female

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One of my students was rubbing his face this morning in a characteristic gesture that I recognize from my past week of extreme stress.

“Hey,” I called out, “is everything all right?”

He told me he was really stressed. I don’t know what I said; we got started with class. We talked for a moment about questions and concerns with regards to the exam tomorrow night. Then I taught my lesson.

I had a crowd after class, someone wanting to learn some math, some concerned with logistics, and the young man who was rubbing his face, who wanted to tell me what was up.

Apparently he made an error in recording his exam schedule, and missed an exam he was supposed to take yesterday at the disability center. The instructor wouldn’t make alternative arrangements, and he has to take the exam with the rest of the class without the additional time he’d normally get.

You don’t see young men get to the crying point often, and when you do, you know they are under a phenomenal amount of stress.

You can’t bullshit someone in a situation like that. “Oh, it will be all right,” that’s just empty words. We know it’s just one exam, but to this student at this time, it’s the entire world.

You want comfort at times like that from a caring authority figure who can let you know absolutely that you are okay and you are not a fuck up.

I’ve been paying careful attention to how this one has been doing all semester; he’s not getting the disability accommodation on my quizzes, and it’s my responsibility to make sure that situation is working for both of us.

I put my hand on his shoulder, and I told him that if he was doing in that other class what he was doing in mine, and he could calm down between now and that exam, that I was confident that he would get through it okay. More than okay. I’m convinced he’ll do well.

I know that’s still just empty words; it requires my authority and his conviction of my ability to stand in judgment to carry that message through. It couldn’t make everything better, but I think it helped.

Honesty and ass-kicking

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“I have this policy about honesty and ass-kicking: which is that if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.”

Quote from Taylor Mali’s What Teachers Make which is a poem that is performed in this video. Performance poetry is called Spoken Word Poetry. Other videos on Taylor Mali’s Website

One painful thing, that is also humorous and ironic, is that there are a substantial number of people who ask you to be honest and blunt with them, and then when you do, they explode in anger and indignation.

If you listened to them, you’d believe it is because you are just wrong, wrong, wrong in every single way.

But if you can catch it from just the right angle (which is hard to do with an irate and indignant person in your face), the situation is really really funny. You asked for it, so I had to let you have it.

I will do you the honor of taking you at your word. If you explode afterwards, I am old enough and wise enough to know that is a reflection on your character.

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Grace

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A word I use a lot, and spend a lot of time thinking about, is grace. It defines the core value of who it is that I want to be in difficult circumstances. I do not want to be angry. I do not need to be righteous. I do not want to be superwoman. But I want the power and the rightness that comes from being someone who thinks and acts and speaks with grace.

When I am thinking about grace, I slow down. I will take deep meditative breaths, and move my hands as I move my lungs. I will reach in and reach out in sweeping movements, as if my body can imitate the state that I am trying to achieve with my mind. When I am upset and thinking about grace, I change my actions and movements even when I cannot quiet my emotions and thoughts.

I took martial arts for years, and I know I was one of the clumsy ones, not a dancer, not a gymnast. But here’s a truth, and the truth is that if you practice anything long enough you will get better at it. I am sure when I left the class that I had internalized the principle of moving from my center, not that I do it perfectly all the time, but that if ever my consciousness rests on my body, that is what my mind is asking my body to do. And I can see it, in myself and in others.

And grace is like moving from your center, or all those graceful dance or martial arts moves. It comes from the core of your values. It has to be rooted deep in your connection to the world and everyone else in it.

It is the idea that what is is, but you can deliver things hard or soft or just right, and grace is all about the just right. And it isn’t one eloquent thing; grace can be funny or firm or angry or kind, it comes in all those flavors depending on what it needs to do.

And grace is all about redemption, but, for me, not at all about religion. It is redemptive for the giver and redemptive for the receiver. At least if both have the grace to accept the gift of grace.

It is all about reaching for something that is one step greater than who you are, one step gentler, one step calmer, one step firmer, one step more right than you’ve ever been right before. It is all about reaching and reaching just like the martial arts practice. Move from your center. Move from your center. Move from your center. Focus on your center. Focus on grace. Until you get it down, and even then, every moment when you need it you must keep your mind’s eye on grace.

Turbulent Days and Gratitude Exercises

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Trying to keep a positive attitude under stress is definitely not very easy.

I’m trying to think of something wise to say, and mostly I just want to complain and stress. Neither of which is going to do me or anyone else any good.

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One thing that sometimes helps is a gratitude exercise. Which is, to simply list some good things in your life that you are grateful for. I don’t really think this is going to calm me down or make me feel better, but it won’t make me feel worse. And it helps reinforce the brain pattern of focussing on the positive.

  1. I am grateful for a social ride tonight, overcast and cooler weather (but still plenty hot), and making it okay on my commuter bike.
  2. I am grateful that my classes are going well, and that I am providing an appropriate level of challenge for my honors students.
  3. I am grateful that my paper is fixable, even if I am stuck right now on what to do with it. I will try again tomorrow. It will be published.
  4. I am grateful that I sometimes take interesting pictures.
  5. I am grateful that I get to take so many pictures. Grateful for digital cameras and “what the heck” and somewhere to post them.
  6. I am grateful for books. Sometimes when everything else feels bad, I can lose myself in a good one. Most recently deeply enjoyed book was Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue, a follow up to Graceling. I am looking forward to reading her middle book, Fire, when the library gets it for me.
  7. I am grateful that I have good people around me who will help me get my issue resolved, even if I don’t completely trust the higher-ups involved.
  8. And I am grateful that I can set a limit and stick to it. I can walk out if there isn’t a better option.
  9. I am grateful for good friends and good food.
  10. I am grateful that the six-legged creatures have remained outside today.
  11. I am grateful for anxiety medication, and refills of such. It was a 3 dose day today (4th coming before bed.)
  12. I am grateful to make a blog post.

That’s enough for today.

The Best Book You’ve Ever Read?

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I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of the question, “What is the best book you’ve ever read?” Or, what are your favorite books? The books that really stick with people as favorites tend to be exceptional.

I posted a “name this novel” on Facebook:

I suppose it is because I have lived a rather restricted life myself that I have found so much enjoyment in remembering what I have learned in these last years about brave people and strange scenes. I have sat here day after day this winter, sleeping a good deal in my chair, hardly knowing if I was in London or the Gulf Country, dreaming of blazing sunshine, of poddy dodging and black stockriders, of Cairns and Green Island. Of a girl that I met forty years too late and of her life in that small town that I shall never see again that holds so much of my affection.

I was surprised that not one of my friends answered it.

The quote is from A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute. A reviewer wrote, “Probably more people have shed tears over the last page of A Town Like Alice than about any other novel in the English language.” I do, every time.

Alice, originally published in 1950 under the title The Legacy in the United Kingdom, is a Second World War history, a romance, and an adventure novel all wrapped up in 277 pages. And don’t let the fact that it is part romance deter male readers; you will not regret picking this one up.

The story opens in the 1930s when solicitor Noel Strachan is called to rewrite the will of a client into a trust for his nephew or niece. Then we move to the post-war years, when the client has died, and Noel must track down his surviving heir. Jean Paget, anonymous short-hand typist, comes in to quite a bit of money. And what does she want to do with it? She wants to go back to the far east, to Malaysia, to build a well.

(Let me warn you now that there are some “spoilers” in what I write next, though I hardly think of them that way. The beauty of this novel is not in how it surprises you. It is in how the story turns whether you are reading it for the first time or for the tenth. But just in case, let me insert a photo so you have a chance to turn away now.)

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And thus we enter the first part of the novel which is Jean’s experiences during the war years, as a prisoner of the Japanese, marched from place to place with a group of women and children. Half their number die out on the roads. Along the way, she meets an Australian prisoner, Joe Harman, a cowboy/cattle rancher, who steals to help the group of women, for which he is eventually tortured and killed.

After Jean gets to Malayasia and builds the well, she discovers that Joe has lived, grievously wounded, perhaps permanently crippled. She heads to Australia to find him.

Meanwhile, guess who shows up in Noel Strachan’s office looking for her?

The final third of the novel is the story of how Jean goes about trying to make the remote outback town where Joe lives into a suitable place for a woman to live, stay, and raise a family.

I have spent the winter writing down this story … And, having finished it, it seems to me that I have been mixed up in things far greater than I realized at the time.

The beauty of this novel is in how Shute makes it happen. He writes about ordinary people who have an extra-ordinary sense of right and wrong. They simply go forth and do the job that is in front of them to do.

If you are a fan of World War Two lore, you may, rightly, object that women prisoners were never marched from place to place in Malaysia. In the words of Nevil Shute himself:

…and this is true. It happened in Sumatra.

After the conquest of Malaya in 1942, the Japanese invaded Sumatra and quickly took the island. A party of about eighty Dutch women and children were collected in the vicinity of Padang. The local Japanese commander was reluctant to assume responsibility for these women, and, to solve his problem, marched them out of his area; so began a trek all round Sumatra which lasted for two and a half years. At the end of this vast journey less than thirty of them were still alive.

In 1949 I stayed with Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Geysel-Vonck in Palembang in Sumatra. Mrs. Geysel had been a member of the party. When she was taken prisoner she was a slight, pretty girl of twenty-one, recently married; she had a baby six months old, and a very robust sense of humour. In the years that followed, Mrs. Geysel marched over twelve hundred miles carrying her baby, in circumstances similar to what I have described. She emerged from this fantastic ordeal undaunted, and with her son fit and well.

I do not think I have ever before turned to real life for an incident in one of my novels. If I have done so now it is because I have been unable to resist the appeal of this true story, and because I want to pay what tribute is within my power to the most gallant lady I have ever met.

90% of Success

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Monday, first day of class, one of the points I hammered was that 90(+)% of success is showing up on time prepared for whatever activity it is that you are about to undertake.

Today I gave a quiz and maybe brought this lesson home for a few of my students.

They did know that a quiz was coming today. And they did know what it was over (had they bothered to check). And they did know (if they bothered to check) that I told them to know their section number to prepare … actually, they should have just known that. I put it on the board on Wednesday.

Question one: Write your name in the upper right hand corner. Below your name put your UIN (University Identification Number). Below the UIN put your section number. (3 points on a 10 point quiz).

Most seemed fine, a few seemed put out that I required the UIN and section number, and yes, there were a few students 10 minutes late to class when I gave a 10 minute quiz at the beginning of the day. Whoops!

“Can I come by your office later and take the quiz?”

No.

90% of Success is Showing Up on Time and Being Prepared for Whatever Activity It Is You Are About To Undertake.

I solved the quiz problems in class immediately after giving the quiz. If you got them, you know you are right. And if you didn’t, then you hopefully learn something immediately, and in such a way as to embed the lesson on your memory.

Which is why I won’t generally give make-up quizzes. We take a quiz. We solve a quiz. I drop the lowest two in case you are absent, or have a bad day. But I don’t give make-ups.

There might be a side-benefit to the day’s lesson. A few might now be convinced that the nice lady who teaches their math class really is prepared to enforce logical consequences and will actually allow them to suffer now rather than suffer later. (We sometimes are under the impression that the nice lady is going to succumb to begging and whining. We are always disappointed and surprised when it doesn’t work that way.)