A nightmare too far

I dreamed I was getting ready to start a new graduate program to seek a Ph.D. in Psychology. At age 62. In Kentucky. While maintaining my day job teaching in Ohio. And in my dream the thing that worried me the most was not the stupidity of starting a new Ph.D. on the verge of retirement or the fact that Psychology would require me to do scary things with stats and spreadsheets--no, the burning question that turned this bizarre dream into a nightmare was What will I listen to on all those long drives?

Fortunately, I woke up from that nightmare, and the real-life nightmares I've been facing in my daily life are much less stressful. For instance:

I keep being required to feed people. Now I love feeding people if I'm doing the cooking; putting together a tried-and-true recipe in my own kitchen is one of my love languages. But I don't like being in charge of selecting food for a group of campus colleagues. I worry about making the wrong choices to suit every palate, and then I worry about submitting the invoice incorrectly so it doesn't get paid, and then I worry about forgetting to put the leftovers in the fridge. This happened once over the summer when a plate of chicken-salad sandwiches got overlooked and sat out overnight, and then I couldn't just throw them away in the nearest trash can because staff cuts have led to changes in the trash-emptying schedule so I had to go wandering around looking for a trash can that was likely to be emptied within the week or risk living with the smell of three-day-old chicken-salad sandwiches in my workspace. Nightmare.

For a morning person, a slate of back-to-back classes and meetings running from 1 to 6 p.m. on a Monday is another kind of nightmare, but at least I won't be expected to think too much at this afternoon's meetings. In one meeting: I'm assisting a colleague who is working remotely, so I have to get to the room early, pull up the Zoom link, connect with my colleague, and then stand by throughout the meeting to step in as needed: Bev, can you check and see if everyone is on the same page? Bev, can you troubleshoot that problem? Bev, can you let me know when everyone has finished that task? I can't lead the workshop myself because it deals with the kind of software that makes me break out in hives, but I am happy to help my colleague, who has helped me often in the past. But frankly, it would really be easier if she could insert a computer chip in my brain and then run me around the room like a remote-control robot.

Over the weekend I tackled the first major pile of grading for the semester, which included some student handwriting that nearly drove me demented--but the content of the essays was so delightful that it offset the nightmarish scrawls. Today I'll grade a pile of essays submitted online, which I couldn't do over the weekend because a nasty stye in my eye made staring at the small computer screen painful. The papers will be more readable on the big monitor in my office, but the eye still hurts. Not so much a nightmare as an annoyance, especially since nobody will mind if I put them off for a day or two.

Similarly my crowded schedule of meetings and tasks this week: It will be a challenge to get it all done, but it's doable as long as I keep up a steady pace, and if I have to let something slide, there will be no screaming involved. So I guess my daytime nightmares are pretty tame these days. I may experience some discomfort--but nobody's forcing me to drive a six-hour round trip twice a week with nothing good on the radio. That's a nightmare too far.

In times like these, WWJD?

I went outside because my hands were so cold it hurt to type and I felt ridiculous wearing gloves and huddling under a blanket in my office when it's 80 degrees outside, but as I searched for a place in the sun where my black sweater could serve as a solar cell, I happened upon the bench near the library with the plaque that honors a colleague who died 15 years ago, so I decided to sit there and warm myself inside and out by pondering the question What Would Jackie Do?

Jackie taught Political Science, and in an election year she would get her students involved in political campaigns so they could see up close how the sausage gets made. She would encourage them to apply their critical thinking skills to everything, to ask questions about motivations and rhetorical devices and unintended consequences. She was a no-nonsense straight-talker but she never steamrolled anyone, instead empowering students to learn for themselves.

In times of campus controversy she would challenge assumptions, demand clarification, and expose sloppy thinking. She carried enough institutional memory to help the rest of us understand the historical issues underlying current problems. It was fun to sit next to her at faculty meetings, where her whispered comments provided an eye-opening education to the newbies amongst us.

She taught here through some difficult times, but I don't know how she would react to the petty wrangling we're enduring on a regular basis today. If the administration took away her support staff and demanded that she master procedures that changed every other week and then chastised her when she made a mistake, what would Jackie do? 

She probably wouldn't curl up in a fetal position and whimper, which is what I wanted to do this morning when I saw the email indicating that I'd once again messed up one of our ever-changing procedures and I was going to have to go through a tangle of multiplying emails just to get the vendor paid for an expense that is fully funded by my grant and that has already been approved at the highest level. And Jackie definitely wouldn't threaten to retire immediately after being encouraged to seek further assistance from a person whose e-mail autoreply says "Off campus--unavailable for appointments."

Jackie was just getting ready to retire in the spring of 2009 when she was suddenly felled by complications of cancer treatment. If she were here today, she wouldn't take any rash steps but would probably step outside, find a warm place to sit, and think deeply about the situation. Then she might just share some choice words with the person responsible for the current problem, and I would be happy to follow her example if I could only figure out who that person is.

Not ready for prime time

When is a woman in the prime of life? I suspect that any woman who has time to ponder the question has already passed her prime.

I keep hearing on the news that Kamala Harris is proof that a woman in her 60s can be in her prime, and last week my comedy students heard Hannah Gadsby insisting that "A 17-year-old girl is never, ever, ever in her prime."

"I am in my prime," she adds. "Would you test your strength out on me?"

Hannah Gadsby was 40 when she said that in her comedy special Nanette, and no, given the fierceness on display in that performance, I would not test my strength out on her. But then I am hardly in my prime. Am I?

In hindsight I agree that I was not in my prime at 17. I was smart enough and full of ambition, but I had bad skin and too much flab and a self-image that inspired suicidal feelings on a regular basis, which didn't make me much different from most of my friends. What I had a lot of at 17 was potential. 

When I was in college and grad school I was too busy to wonder whether I might be in my prime, and as a young mother I was pouring my energy and creativity into every little thing my children did, so if I was in my prime, I couldn't have paused long enough to enjoy it.

I might have been in my prime in my mid-to-late 40s, when I was making strides in my career, writing and teaching and delivering papers, getting my kids through college and devoting myself to creative projects; physically I was in better shape than ever, except I was not aware at the time that my physical strength was masking the growth of an insidious cancer. Trust me, I didn't sit in the cancer center's chemotherapy suite with an IV in my arm pondering whether this might be the prime of life. 

These days my mind might be in its prime but my body is falling apart. In the classroom I feel alive and alert, able to think on my feet and come up with useful insights; at the computer my fingers fly across the keyboard, barely able to keep up with the creative flow. But a long day of running from classes to meetings to frustrating tasks leaves me wanting to curl up on the floor in a fetal position and cry. I go for a walk in the woods and feel great, but then after a 24-minute drive to campus, my legs are so stiff I have trouble getting out of the car and walking half a block to my office.

I've used up much of that potential that seemed so endless when I was 17, but I haven't quite reached the pinnacle of success I'd dreamed of back then. But I haven't given up trying either. If I can't identify the prime of life, maybe that's because it's still on the horizon, beckoning me onward. If I ever reach my prime, I hope I still have the energy to realize that I've arrived.

 

Celebrating the Yes while respecting the No

My administrative position periodically requires me to ask people to do things--voluntarily--for the good of the institution, and lately I keep getting two contrasting responses. The problem is that I sympathize strongly with both.

These are tough times in academe, with professors facing increasing expectations and diminishing rewards. We've lost so much in the past few years--respect, raises, benefits, awards, funding for academic programs and professional development, colleagues whose positions have been cut, access to office supplies (who will order those green gel pens I love so much?), all the perks that made our professional lives more pleasant. Rampant staff cuts mean fewer people are available to do essential work, so everyone who remains has to work harder than ever, often without adequate training or compensation. 

So when I ask someone to assist with a project, I'm not surprised to be told, "No, I'm not doing anything extra for the College this year. I'm just teaching my classes and going home." I can respect that. We all have our own ways of coping with trauma, and I can easily recall times when I've needed to sentence myself to the Timeout Box just to survive the stresses of the job.

But I'm also getting plenty of Yeses. In fact, I'm amazed at the number of colleagues who are still willing to share their expertise at a workshop or participate in a program that requires a lot of effort without additional compensation. While some colleagues need to disengage from the College and limit their efforts to fulfilling their minimal requirements and no more, others are stepping up in big ways and small.

Here's an example: staff cuts mean that I have to pay more attention to budgets than ever before, tasks I have always preferred to delegate to people who don't break out in hives at the sight of a spreadsheet. This has been a struggle. I am okay handling numbers but I couldn't get the budget technology to work, something I was reluctant to admit to anyone in a position to help me, because how pathetic is it to have a PhD and decades of teaching experience but still be unable to access the spreadsheet showing my grant budget? But last week I overcame my shame and asked for help, and a very busy person in an essential administrative position came to my office to guide me through the process step by step.

I so appreciate colleagues who say Yes that I've been trying to say it to others, although sometimes all I can offer is I don't know. My office door is sometimes the only one open early in the morning, so I get a lot of questions that previously would have been the purview of the administrative assistant whose position was eliminated. Where are the spare batteries for the classroom clickers? (Not in my office--but I'll gladly walk down the hall to show you the secret stash.) Where do we keep the staples for the photocopier? (No idea, and don't ask me how to replace the toner either.) Who will bake cookies for this English major event since our catering budget is nonexistent? (I guess that would be me, but I'm not above volunteering a colleague to help.)

In times of trouble, I try not to be judgmental. Those who need to limit their engagement and tell me No get no grief from me. But in an atmosphere of No, each individual Yes makes me want to stand up and cheer. Hurrah for the Yeses! I'm collecting as many as I can right now before everyone gets so burned out that there's nothing left but a big fat No.

Laboring on Labor Day again (again)

I'm required to labor on Labor Day--but not too hard. While my blog takes a holiday, here are the Rules for Laboring on Labor Day that I published some years back:

1. Dress down. They can make me teach on Labor Day, but they can't make me dress up.

2. Pack your own picnic. No way I'm eating at my desk when the rest of the world is outside grilling burgers!

3. Don't begrudge the revelers their revels. The people who clean our bathrooms, make our photocopies, and answer our phones work hard for very little money and deserve every minute of their day off. I do not wish they were here working, but I do wish I could join them on their day off.

4. Office hours? Are you kidding me? No one comes to my office hours on a normal day, so what are the chances that anyone will show up on Labor Day?

5. Enjoy the commute. No public school = no school buses holding up traffic, no 20-mile-per-hour zones, and no teens racing around curves on country roads.

6. Be there. Nobody's fooled by the Labor Day flu; if my students are required to be in class on Labor Day, then I'm going to be there with them.

7. Don't try to explain it. I know we have reasons for teaching on Labor Day, and some of them may even be valid ("We can't shortchange Monday labs!"), but the real reason we teach on Labor Day is that we've never been sufficiently motivated to change it.