I had lunch with a group of folks from work recently. The ceremonial get-together (to honor a few of our colleagues) occurred at a rather classy French restaurant (The Left Bank) in downtown Larkspur, California. Larkspur is the tiny San Francisco suburb where I currently reside, in Marin County, which, according to Wikipedia, was the county with the highest per capita income in the country per the 2000 census.
It was one conversation in particular during this event that got me to thinking...and still has me deep-in-thought. What’s on my mind is the whole matter of “social class.”
The two individuals on my left were engaged, for a time, in a dialog about places they’ve lived and visited; both of them are extremely well-traveled. So, when such places as Hong Kong, Paris (or even Philadelphia!), were brought up...well, there simply wasn’t anything for me to contribute to the conversation. I’ve been to a lot of the states in the United States, and lived in five of them, but I’m most definitely not a world traveler. I obtained a passport for the first time ever this year, though it remains unused and stored in my sock drawer. (And, I’ve never been to such obvious American places as Philadelphia or New York.)
Then, when lunch was served, they talked about the food. One of them had, like me, ordered the salmon. When asked how it was, she said, unenthusiastically, “oh, it’s ok.” (My reply would have been, “it’s wonderful!”) The other one commented similarly on his lunch and speculated about the spices used in its creation. (I wouldn’t ever have a clue about such a thing.)
In terms of “worldliness,” these two individuals, both about my age, clearly eclipse me. I felt out-classed because I was. Although a casual observer would likely place us all in the “upper-middle-class” of American society because of our education, occupations, and income levels, by sitting next to these two, and listening in on their conversation, I was aware of what I’d call a “class distinction.”
Both of my parents were high-school graduates, and I was the first in my family to attend college. Subsequently, after my bachelor’s degree, I proceeded over the course of my lifetime to earn three more graduate degrees. In terms of educational attainment in this country, I must place in the top couple of percentage points: I am not only highly educated, I am (admittedly) overeducated.
However, I continue to be aware, in situations like this lunch-time conversation, that my roots, and class origins, are decidedly not “upper” anything. I remain small-town working-class at my core: my educational achievements alone having contributed to an enhanced class status. I possess a set of life experiences and financial deficiencies that have apparently kept me stuck with the outlook and narrowness of the lower-middle-class.
Surely a person more worldly than me has: Traveled. Experienced. Tasted. More.
My lack of worldliness is a source of embarrassment for me, and it’s something I try desperately to conceal...you know, other than when I am confessing to it here.
Soundtrack Suggestion
Oh lets get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France Lets get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance Lets get rich and build a house on a mountain making everybody look like ants From way up there, you and I, you and I
You never can tell. About anything, really. Don’t you think life is mostly a matter of random encounters and chances?
Which is a rather odd introduction to a little story of laughter and embarrassment during a time of high stress...
Last Tuesday evening I was attending the monthly meeting of the Board of Trustees of my college. I was there because one of the programs within my area of responsibility was going to be eliminated by action of the Board.
It was all high drama. People wanted to have a say in the decision...and many signed up to offer their personal testimony. Although the action item had originally been placed toward the end of the agenda, it was moved up to the beginning so the Board could take its vote while interested members of the public were still in attendance. The testimony and ensuing discussion took almost three full hours.
I was sitting in the back of the room. The furniture in the peanut-gallery section is notoriously uncomfortable, so I had arrived early to get a chair (and a location) that would suit me best. As the meeting got going, more and more people filled the room until it was a standing-room-only situation.
Ultimately, two young women were standing very close to me. I was very conscious of how tightly we were all packed in, and the high likelihood of encroaching on someone else’s personal space. The room started to get warmer and warmer, but the temperature was just right for me as I was sitting next to a very large (but closed) window – which kept cool the air in my region of the room.
At one point, as one of the speakers was just finishing up, another of the audience members came over to me and wanted to see if the window by me would open. I resisted, saying (quietly), “yes, but even if it does open, I’ll freeze.”
The very attractive (approximately 20-year-old) coed standing right next to me, who had not acknowledged me during the entire proceeding thus far, jumped right in. She put her hand on my shoulder and said (or, more accurately, announced) , “oh, don’t worry, I’ll keep you warm.”
I snorted. Giggled way too loudly. And blushed wildly
Another speaker had already taken the microphone. Several people, in a semicircle around us, all turned our way, put their fingers to their lips, and went “shhhhhh!”
My face turned even more red, I’m sure.
When things settled down, I turned to my new, attractive, young friend and said, sincerely, “that was very funny.”
So much, though, for The Dean bringing any sense of Decorum to the room!
Soundtrack Suggestion
I don’t like you But I love you Seems that I’m always Thinkin’ of you Oh, ho, ho, you treat me badly I love you madly You’ve really got a hold on me
Here I am in another city, in yet one more Starbucks. As I begin this entry (and, now, finish it off), I’m in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, right near the UCLA campus.
Why am I here in LaLa Land? Well, to participate in a training session for a select group of California Community College administrators. This event began on Sunday morning and goes until Thursday (tomorrow) afternoon. It is long (endless, actually) and very intense.
And, yesterday, just for a little extra local flavor, we were treated to a 5.4 earthquake. The campus building I was in swayed for several seconds. Great state, this California. During the quake, I quickly started packing up my computer. The guy sitting next to me (a native Californian) calmly pulled his laptop out of his backpack and called up the USGS site to find out the magnitude.
But, I digress.
Regarding this training: leave it to a bunch of educators to come up with an educational experience that absolutely ignores everything we know, or think we do, about teaching and learning.
We have 72 participants, coming from all around the state, and we all are confined to one large classroom here at the UCLA Conference Center, all day, every day. Our “training” consists of one mind-numbing PowerPoint presentation after another. (I call it Slow, Painful Death by PowerPoint.) It would seem that the organizers of this event actually believe that total information saturation leads to learning. So far, this has been, more or less, one massive data dump … which has left me dazed, confused, aghast … and, mostly, just plain fatigued.
What are these people thinking?!
Some of our presenters have been more interesting than others, of course. A couple of them have even been rather insightful and/or entertaining. However, the philosophy of the program seems to be to throw as much minute detail at the group as possible: and to call that “education.”
We’re all staying in the dorms here at UCLA. What fun. The days start at 8:00 a.m. with a half-hour set aside for small groups (we’re divided up into twelve groups of six for that half-hour) to report out on our “ah-ha moments” from the day before. Mostly, all we can come up with are simple regurgitations of small pieces of information presented the preceding day. (During which time other participants tend to ignore the speaker and talk amongst themselves. Very adult.)
Actually, what else is there can we do (other than mere summaries)? When information is coming at you (us) a zillion miles an hour, there is no time for processing or reflection. Where is the opportunity for learning, assimilation or an “ah-ha”?
HA!
And, then, to compound this weirdness, there is the expectation that each participant will complete a “scrapbook page” about our experience. We have construction paper and colored pens and other kindergarten-type tools to assist us with this project. What the heck is this about?!
I have some questions for my curriculum-developing colleagues. What ever happened to our focus on learning? Where did our attention to process (not just content) go? How about group discussion and collaboration? (Even though some presenters have attempted to engage everyone, a “small-group discussion” or a meaningful “dialogue” is just not gonna happen with 72 students in the room.) What about this experience could possibly foster critical thinking? And, dear ones, what happened to student learning outcomes (SLOs)?
As you may or may not be aware, SLOs are a huge deal in the community college world (as accrediting bodies are increasingly insisting we have clearly defined outcomes to shoot for at the course, program and institutional levels). In terms of course outcomes, we are obligated to explicitly state what students will come away with: what they will know or be able to do as a result of a particular classroom experience.
Learning outcomes were apparently completely ignored in the development of this training. Totally and utterly. And, honest to god, I don’t know what the goals or objectives are, either. We never even used that kind of language in terms of defining what it is we’re doing here. We have paid our money, shown up, and been put in a dark room for several hours a day while they perform a data dump.
I say again: this ain’t education.
And, if I had it to do it all over again, believe me: I’d pass.
I’ve had a couple of interesting interactions recently…
First: on my daily bike-path walk the other day, I ran into one of my new California friends. She wrote me soon afterward to report that I had looked “positively vibrant” during our little chat.
Second: a more casual acquaintance, and an infrequent reader of these pages, asked me in an email, with a somewhat judgmental tone (in my opinion), “aren’t you rather obsessed with your health?”
To the first person, I replied, “ahhhh…summer” … and though I believed her observation was a bit of an overstatement, I was secretly thankful that someone had really noticed me.
To the second, I reacted rather defensively…saying, no, I considered myself to be just about perfectly attentive to matters of my health. Given that I’ve spent years dealing with chronic pain, beginning in my twenties and continuing on to the present day, the old saying “if you have your health, you have everything” has profound meaning in my life.
For when a body is dealing with such issues, one can hardly say that “health” is present. Admittedly, I do spend a lot of time and energy focused on my health. It seems that it’s a condition of my existence.
Despite any projected “vibrancy” of late, however, I continue to struggle with body-wide muscular pain. And although I’ve made significant positive progress in recent months (mostly I credit the Feldenkrais Method and Anne, my local Feldenkrais practitioner), in the past couple of weeks I have been dealing with a minor setback, and the old questions such as “how did this happen?” and “why me?” come up in my mind again and again.
Regarding the matter of how did this happen?, I think I have more clarity than ever. So that’s today’s topic.
I consider my present health woes to have begun on November 13, 2003, when the Governor of the State of Oregon took the unprecedented action of firing the Board of Higher Education. I have reported on this situation before, and I knew immediately that my life was about to change, likely dramatically. The Board, after all, was my employer, and if the composition of that body was going turnover in such a wholesale manner… well, what (and who) was now in place to insulate me?
What resulted was that my entire world did shift. Within a very short time it was clear that I would be losing a job I’d held for nine years, and that I had nowhere, really, to go. I became extremely anxious. I asked myself: was I to be one of those older, displaced professionals no longer able to find gainful, skill-and-experience-appropriate employment?
Was I destined to soon become intimately familiar with that common question, “would you like fries with that?”
Of course, I’ve chronicled a lot of what subsequently happened to me here. I did lose my longtime position with the Oregon University System, but I was, fortunately, picked up for one, then another, “interim” arrangement at two Oregon community colleges. Though for three and a half years, my life was entirely focused on searching for “permanent” employment, while going to work everyday in highly-unstable, non-supportive, temporary environments.
During that time, I faced rejection over and over again in my job search. Although I seemed to have little trouble securing interviews…I had significant difficulty obtaining an offer for a permanent job. I came in second an amazing number of times. And then I ended up, in my interim appointments, working for not only unsupportive people, but for individuals who were overtly hostile and abusive. A short time into my first interim position, for example, I was lambasted and humiliated in a public meeting by the big boss. It set up a situation that entirely disallowed any possibility of comfort, security, support, or long-term prospects at the institution.
And then, if my professional life weren’t unstable enough, I continued to subject myself, in my personal life, to a relationship that involved several (and, sadly, predictable) episodes of painful rejection.
In sum, I spent a considerable portion of nearly four years dealing with repeated rejection and utter lack of support in both my personal and professional lives. (And, in fact, the personal-rejection scenario stretched back over more than twice as many years.)
During this entire time, my body was paying attention. I believe, now, that the resulting non-stop anxiety due to lack of support is the source of my current physical woes.
Moshe Feldenkrais, in a chapter entitled “The Body Pattern of Anxiety” (in The Elusive Obvious) discusses the human condition in terms of our instinctual reaction to threats. For example, he discusses what we know today as “fight or flight.” Feldendkrais (1981, p. 56) states that “an animal, when frightened, either freezes or runs away. In either case there is a momentary halt….with a violent contraction of all the flexor muscles…”. Further, he considers the case of a newborn infant, a being who is “practically insensitive to slow and small external stimuli” … but who “if suddenly lowered, or if support is sharply withdrawn, a violent contraction of all flexors with halt of breath is observed.” Feldenkrais notes further that “the similarity of the reactions of a newborn infant to withdrawal of support, and those of fright or fear in the adult is remarkable” (p. 57, emphasis added).
This makes so much sense to me! I believe these observations provide a logical explanation for the chronic-muscle-pain issues I deal with on a daily basis.
I had lived a professional existence where my experience was one of rejection and almost complete lack of support. And in the case of my personal relationship, the support I enjoyed at any particular moment was at risk of being withdrawn at any time.
My body tensed, ever ready for the next piece of bad news. And it stayed that way. I apparently lost the ability to ever relax my muscles at all…from head to toe, I became totally knotted up. I was a wet dishrag: stretched, squeezed, twisted, and left-to-dry on the rack. Over and over and over again.
I suspect any body that is stretched, squeezed and twisted, in a time frame with no predicable end, is one that is going to end up in pain.
Amazingly, I have finally found an environment that is much more personally supportive. And thanks to the supplement Fibroplex, the personal health benefits of which I have previously documented (here and here), along with the “neuromuscular re-education” that I’m engaging in with the Feldenkrais Method, I believe I’m gradually unknotting these old, fatigued, anxiety-ridden, twisted-up muscles.
It is a slow, tedious, and necessary process…if I ever expect to live mostly-pain-free ever again, that is.
I have written here before about the circumstances surrounding my departure from the Oregon University System (OUS) Chancellor’s Office (CO) in 2004. Leaving was entirely involuntary on my part– as it was for everyone who worked in the Office of Academic Affairs. Starting July 2004, that particular unit of the CO ceased to exist.
(Can you imagine a university without an “academic” division?!)
To a person, those of us who were ousted, in what may be termed a “political coup,” have harbored residual feelings about the treatment we received. But I believe that we all still have an overriding, sincere concern for the fate and future of Oregon higher education.
Since that time, there has been little attempt on behalf of the CO to put back together – on any kind of permanent, coherent basis – some of the critical functions that were lost in the “reorganization.”
Well, until recently.
Early last February, an announcement appeared on the OUS website for Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Success Initiatives. The new position, as described, entails many elements of my previous job, and I was pleased to see the recognition that these activities are important and need tending-to on an ongoing basis. (It only took four years!)
Now, I have not been actively seeking other work, given that I have been hired into a permanent position here in California…and in light of the fact that I have made major life moves and job changes three times in the last four years. But, because I feel that I left the CO with “unfinished business” with regard to my inter-sector work in Oregon, and because I continue to care deeply about the health and welfare of higher education in the state, I submitted an application. The deadline was February 27.
I was ultimately called in late April to set up a time for a phone interview on May 15. And, when the time came, I thought I did well. The screening committee was comprised of four individuals, three of whom I used to work with; one of them I considered a friend. It sure seemed to be a friendly-enough group (as much as you can tell over the phone). And, I don’t see how any other candidate could have had an interview that even mildly resembled mine, given that I had first-hand experience performing many of those exact duties and producing policy documents on the very issues we talked about.
But, then I waited. For almost three weeks. Finally, finally, I received a rejection letter by mail a couple of days ago, impersonally notifying me that they had hired a candidate who more closely matched their needs at this time.
I can only guess what the story is; of course, I’ll never really know. I might only surmise that while I was talking about my unfinished business in Oregon, they were thinking, about me: “been there, done that.”
Sigh. I seem to be oh-so-good at setting myself up for rejection.
And I did it yet again.
Silly, wide-eyed, trusting, me.
Soundtrack Suggestion
If you change your mind, I’m the first in line Honey I’m still free Take a chance on me If you need me, let me know, gonna be around If you’ve got no place to go, if you’re feeling down If you’re all alone when the pretty birds have flown Honey I’m still free Take a chance on me…
