Leave College Time Alone

As we get ready to vote in the recall election on Tuesday, the accusations and speculations are flying fast and furious. The candidates are accused of manipulating numbers, misrepresenting the things they've done well, being either unclear about they  would do differently or digging their heels into what they've done that led to this whole mess in the first place.

I think Scott Walker is a bad governor. He operates on the "it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission" principle, and then forgets about the whole "asking forgiveness" part. He tramples on process to do what he wants to do. He pits the citizens of Wisconsin against each other, as though taxpayers and public employees are completely different populations. Regardless of Tuesday's outcome, he has damaged this state in ways we may never recover from.

People are holding a magnifying glass to Walker's entire life, including his time as a student at Marquette University.We've already heard about dirty campaigning for a student government position. I've heard rumors of academic dishonesty through my academic circles. And now this morning, I'm reading an article that claims that Walker fathered a child while in college.

We are pointing back at his time as a young adult and saying, "Look! He hasn't changed at all. He lied/cheated/abandoned back then, so we can't trust him at all now."

And that's where I have some problems with all this. I've spent a lot of years with college students--first being one and then, for the past 24 years, working with them. And now I have two 20-year-olds and two 17-year-olds living in my home. I think it's fair to say that I have a lot of experience with young people. Not to put too fine a point on it, young adults do dumb things. Being stupid and making bad choices are part of the developmental process of becoming an adult, no less than the way a toddler takes a few steps and falls down while learning to walk.

I cringe to think of how some of my young adult decisions could be used against me now. There are things I'm ashamed of and things that hurt me. It's true that those experiences shaped me, just as Scott Walker's college experiences surely shaped him. But I think it's completely unfair to claim that those young adult experiences and choices represent who someone is 25 years later.

Indeed, this is a critical time in the recall--but these are cheap shots and they don't speak well of us. I want him out of that office, too. His "divide and conquer" strategy caused problem in my home, with my Republican husband and me arguing heatedly about politics for the first time in our marriage. I had to leave a state job I loved because my family couldn't handle the hit to our income. There's part of me that wants to do whatever it takes to get Walker supporters to change their minds--but I just don't think this is the right way.

Process Does Matter

Being married to a conservative Republican, I live every day with comments about the recall--people just didn't get their way, unions are the ones behind the protests and recall, Walker is making a good difference, etc. Between my husband's comments and Facebook posts, as well as the ever-present Fox News, I've heard it all and have mostly learned to tune it out.

Today, my 17-year-old son asked me to remind him what the recall was about. I told him what some people (i.e., his dad) think, and then I told him what I think.

For me, it truly isn't about collective bargaining. Rather, the collective bargaining decisions represented what was, to me, a much deeper and more serious problem: the lack of decent process. At no point did I feel like Scott Walker was giving even a pretense of listening to anyone. Listening to others doesn't mean you have to agree with them. It does mean, however, that you should work hard at understanding their concerns and developing a sense of shared goals--and then working together on figuring out the best way to get there. If he had truly given a chance for people's voices to be heard and addressed, I would not be in support of this recall. What I object to is being silenced and invisible to an administration.

It isn't about unions. It isn't about the fact that when I was a public employee, I was about to have an extra $300 taken away from each paycheck at a time when my husband had been in the unemployment cyclone off and on for two years already. It isn't about what got decided or what the votes were. It is about the fact that too many people who lived in this state were ignored and denigrated. It is about the fact that rights that were established over a period of decades were eradicated with glee. It is about the fact that just one of those jobs that were promised would've made a huge difference to my family. It is about the fact that my elected representatives weren't decent enough to do what they felt needed doing without a modicum of kindness and respect for the people who would have to live with the results of their decisions.

So Scott Walker, if you had made the same decisions but had been decent and humane about it, you wouldn't be where you are right now. Process really does matter.

From the Voice of a Sister

I am frequently amazed at how I will encounter something right after I've been thinking about it. Just yesterday I was thinking about sisterhood and the women religious with whom I work. Today, I found this prayer that recognizes the women on whose work we continue to build and live.


A Prayer for the Times

My favorite part is the beginning:

Dear God, creator of women in your own image,born of a woman in the midst of a world half women,carried by women to mission fields around the globe, made known by women to all the children of the earth,give to the women of our timethe strength to persevere,the courage to speak out,the faith to believe in you beyondall systems and institutionsso that your face on earth may be seen in all its beauty,so that men and women become whole,so that the church may be converted to your willin everything and in all ways.

Amen, Sister.

Sisters

I’m not one to discuss my faith and spirituality much. Sometime it is because words cannot begin to capture my thoughts, feelings, and experiences. More often, though, it is because the simple act of speaking or writing about these things will push people away. I’m a bridge builder and connector, and knowingly doing something that would separate me from others is not something I do.

Yet connectedness is the very thing that is compelling me to write now. My own religious background is pretty vanilla. My current religious affiliation is Methodist, which is a state I married into. As a junior high school student, I was confirmed Presbyterian. When I was a young child, we went to what I like to think of as a New Age/hippy church. I was baptized EUB. Religion to me is an institution, a set of beliefs and practices perpetuated by a hierarchical structure inhabited by very human individuals. I have never had the feeling that a religious institution is telling me what to think or believe, although I do understand why many people feel that way. Religion is not the same as faith, although quite frequently the two intersect in my life.

The most meaningful experiences for me are the ones in which I feel part of the brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, believing that we are all children in the process of learning and growing, turning our faces toward our shared spiritual being. Faith for me is about my internal barometer’s response to what happens around me. It is the part of me that yearns for the connection of something greater than myself and my world, and it is the part that feels called by that greater something. It is an awareness that I matter and that I am connected to something that matters even more than I do.

I have now finished my first academic year at a Catholic women's college. It has been a nine-month-long culture shock. By choice, I have attended several masses at work, the most recent being the Baccalaureate Mass this past Friday evening. Being in a worship service with colleagues is a unique experience. We have all the usual stresses of higher education—end-of-semester grading/testing/crying, students desperate to improve a grade, various offices continuing to offer their regular services amidst all the end-of-semester-ness around them, and so on.  Yet Friday night, there we were. We’d been able to set aside the gritty details of our individual jobs and gather. I sat with my boss. We sang together and prayed together.  We wept together. We hugged each other. For that one hour, we were connected to each other and to the world beyond ourselves in a way I’ve never before experienced in a workplace. It was a reminder that our work is for a larger purpose. It is, indeed, a blessing, to be where I can use the strength I find in my faith to add to my work rather than feel I’m supposed to suppress or hide that part of who I am.

Four of the five people sitting closest to me were Sisters, the nuns with Ph.D.’s who serve on the faculty and administration. At that moment, I could feel in my heart that we were all sisters, together.

Does It Really Matter Who I Vote For?

I am frustrated by state politics, and this time it isn't by Walker or his cronies. I'm frustrated by my own side!

Specifically, I'm referring to the four Democratic candidates for governor. I'm not learning enough about what they would do--and how--once in office. All I see is posts and fliers about un-doing what Walker did. I see nothing about process at all.

• Kathleen Falk. Her supporters have come by my house twice already, I admire how she stepped into the fray early and came out with a clear statement of something she believed in (restore union rights). Unfortunately, that  struck me wrong. As a non-unionized public employee until late summer last year, I worked hard to focus on the other things Walker was doing that were bad for Wisconsin. The Troubles of 2011 were not just about unions, and anytime we let people think union rights were the center of the issue, we push away anyone who's had bad experiences with unions and we diminish the many other ways we have suffered. The fact that this was  her first statement out of the gate told me to be wary. Seeing her supporters out in the community makes me a bit nervous as well. As appearances go, it is politics as usual.
• Doug Lafollette. I'm not seeing much from him, although what I do see is entirely on Facebook through a couple private groups I'm part of. He posts links to his website but is not pushing himself. I like the approach, and I like what he says he values--although if I'm having to do all the work to find out what he stands for, I doubt he's going to fare well with all the voters who won't bother to click on a link or two.
• Tom Barrett. I've gotten some emails from his campaign, but I'm not hearing anything I didn't hear when he ran in 2010, with not enough about the fact that the landscape is very different from what it was two years ago. He seemed reluctant to get into this race, and I think that will put off a lot of voters.
• Kathleen Vinehout. Who? Well, I know who she is, but I've seen absolutely nothing from her campaign yet. I have no idea what she stands for.

From what I've seen from all of these folks, I agree with everything they want to do, even though I may disagree a bit with priorities. What I really want to know, though, is about process. How will they do things? My biggest beef with Walker hasn't been with what he's done but with how he's done it. (Although I disagree with all he has done, his goals didnt disenfranchise me; his lack of communication and respect did.) What will these candidates do that is respectful of the people of Wisconsin who voted for Walker and may still support him? How will they respond to the concerns that led to Walker's election in the first place? How will they go about trying to re-instate rights without having it all just seem an act of political revenge?

If all they do is get into office and start changing things to the way they think things should be without being respectful and valuing process, they're no better than Walker is.

I know I will vote for whichever Democrat wins the primary. I do hope I have a reason to care which one that is, and I'm hoping there is more to the platform than simply not being Walker.

When My Son Becomes a Soldier

For his whole life, my younger son has wanted to go into the military. Now that he is at the end of his junior year in high school, I find that I am paying more attention to military news, wondering what it is like for the mothers of the soldiers I read about and imagining how I would react if military personnel came to my front door. Even more than my concerns about him not coming home, I worry about what he will be when he comes home.   How can a person survive a war mentally intact?

Nicholas D. Kristof writes an op-ed in The New York Times that I find very distressing. He writes about the high number of suicides among our veterans. He acknowledges that the VA is working hard "chipping away at a warrior culture" that devalues mental health care. He prepares to end his piece by saying,

We refurbish tanks after time in combat, but don't much help men and women exorcise the demons of war. Presidents commit troops to distant battlefields, but don't commit enough dollars to veterans' services afterward. We enlist soldiers to protect us, but when they come home we don't protect them.

When my son comes home...if he comes home...what damage will have been done to him? Soldiers can experience prolonged boredom and prolonged adrenaline rushes. They witness horrors that no one can fully prepare for. They risk--their health, their friends, their lives--constantly. Is it possible that anyone can return to civilian life unchanged?

I worry, too, about what must change within a person in order to kill other people. In the news today was a story about American soldiers who posed for photographs with dead Afghan insurgents. Yes, sitting in our cozy living rooms where we are not in imminent danger, it is horrifying. Is there no dignity? No respect? How can these soldiers do such a thing?

I don't see how it is possible to kill without de-humanizing the opponent. The act of pulling the trigger against another person surely requires soldiers to think of that person as other or less than themselves. Unless we are fully aware of what it is like to be in that situation, how can we begin to understand or to judge the actions of people who are there? I can't begin to speculate whether the dehumanizing is what allows soldiers to pull the trigger in the first place or it is what happens after the first kill. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

When I was young, I was at my friend's house for the afternoon. Her teenage sister was supposed to babysit, but she was on the phone with her friend for a long time (back in the day when phones had cords and people were tethered to the phone while talking). My friend whispered to me, "I have to show you something." We creeped upstairs, and she opened the hall closet. On the lowest shelf, behind the blankets and suitcases, there were two shoeboxes. She pulled them out and proceeded to lay photographs in front of me. Her dad had been in the Korean war, and these were his war pictures. There were lots of dead bodies, and lots of soldiers standing around smiling about their conquests. Two pictures stood out the most to me, and the images are seared into my brain forever. One was her dad standing, cigarette dangling out of his smiling mouth, holding up two heads of dead Koreans. The other was him standing on top of a heap of heads--and by "heap," I mean a pile that was as tall as her dad. 

They were horrifying pictures. They shaped my views of war and soldiers in ways I've only recently begun to recognize. But when I listened to this story on the radio and later when I read the article, these pictures were what came to mind. The greater the horror of war, the greater the need to de-humanize the enemy so you can do the horrible things you need to do.

Even when soldiers don't give up their lives, they surely are affected for the rest of their lives. Two photographs that I saw forty years ago are burned into my mind and heart. How much worse is it for those who see, smell, and hear the real thing? When we send soldiers into war, do we really know what we are asking of them? And aren't we perhaps too quick to condemn actions that we don't understand?

It isn't that I think what these soldiers did was right; I just think it is understandable from a certain point of view. 

How devastating war is, in so many ways. The photographs and suicides are just symptoms of being a soldier. If we are going to ask them to do what they do, then we need to acknowledge that they have to transform themselves from the people they were into soldiers--and we must have more compassion for the entirety of the results of that transformation. We owe them at least that much.

Meaningful Work and the 23-Year Journey

For more than two decades (23 years and one week, to be precise), my professional identity was college writing teacher. Even during a period with a part-time administrative appointment, my core professional identity was teacher.

When I accepted my current administrative position, I found myself grieving over the loss of that identity. I was no longer what I had been for nearly half my life. One day I was in the car with my son. He made a minor grammatical error as he spoke, and then he said, "Ha! You can't correct me any more because you aren't an English teacher now!" After I sat in stunned silence, I burst into tears. I loved my job, and I loved being an English teacher, and stepping away from that was so very hard.

As much as I came to love my new job and the people with whom I work, I missed my old job. I missed people I'd befriended over my ten years at my previous campus. I missed the familiarity of my life--two classes per day surrounded by plenty of unscheduled time to use for grading, planning, and community building (aka, talking with colleagues and students). I knew the rhythms of the day, the week, and the semester. I loved knowing my job and knowing what to expect. When people asked me if I missed my job, the answer was "yes"--despite the fact that I loved my new job.

Two months ago, one of my colleagues asked me not if I missed my old job but if I missed teaching.

Imagine my shock when I realized that the answer was "no."

What I had found most meaningful in my previous job was neither the subject nor the classroom; it was the interactions with individual students at moments of decision-making and transformation. When I came home from work and was asked about my day, I did not talk about helping students understand what a thesis is or a student's excitement at finding the perfect source for a research paper; instead, I responded with stories about students trying to decide on a major, struggling with parental pressures, and working through relationship issues. Those were the things I loved most about teaching, and those are the things I get to do every single day where I am now.

It is quite disconcerting to realize that I don't miss what I had loved for more than twenty years. I feel so blessed to have discovered what it is I find meaningful and important about my professional activities. Had this job not happened, I would have managed to be happy for another twenty years doing what I'd been doing. And I would have missed the chance to make a difference in a way that matters to me more than I could have known.