People Who Love Their Jobs

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I've been searching for it for over an hour now- one of my favorite cartoons on higher education. It shows a split screen panel with two professors. On one side, a tenured professor stands behind a lecturn, lecturing while his students drool and fall asleep. On the other side, it shows an adjunct professor excitedly moving through the class as he shares something. While it's not always true, it has made me think, because the people we enjoy most as teachers are often those who are passionate about and enjoy what they do.

A few weeks back, I was in the Department Chair's office dealing with one of our voluminous problems this semester. I told him that I was actually excited to come to work on Mondays, and he told me "that's almost the definition of success". People can tell that I like what I do, and I think some of them catch the fire because of my enthusiasm for and understanding of the subject matter we discuss.

Frequently when I substitute for other instructors, the students invite me back any time. I'm not saying the other teachers are bad; what I think is true is also true of so many other industries that the longer one is there the less clearly it comes across that you like your job. I think they enjoy the class because I like my job, that for me it's more than work, it's an adventure.

Not everything we do at work is fun. It's work. Work can be fun, however, and I have tried to show them and discuss with them things that are relevant to their lives even if they never study anything scientific again. When you can show them how it matters, I think they value it more.

Very few people love what they do. Many people do it for the status or the money, which is just another way by which they obtain status. Some of them do what they do because they don't know what else to do or don't think they can do better. A few do whatever they can find for work. I've been in all of those camps, but for once in my life, I actually have a job I enjoy that satisfies my soul and compensates me adequately for my time and effort. When you love what you do, the work day is easy and passes quickly. When you love what you do, other people pick up on your positive energy, and the time is better spent even if they never get as excited as you are.

Maybe it's just because I'm new to teaching. A close acquaintance of mine who teaches high school described most of us as active and engaged, and one of the professors here remembers being as excited and engaged as I am. I'm starting to think that the young professors are well liked not just because they're cute, which is true of me, but also because of their energy. I make class fun. Share your love of what you do. Who knows what will happen as a result?

They Need Parents

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As I drove to work this morning, I noticed something I found very odd. There's a section of my commute that passes through a series of rather handsome tenement housing blocks that house the city poor. Since I got stopped at every light for children to cross the street, I looked at them, and I saw that many of the children, despite the abject poverty in which they live, have cellular phones.

Children do not need phones, they need parents. Phones are an excuse to not be a parent, to not be present, to be able to reach out and touch them from far away and keep tabs on them without knowing where they really are. Children do not need presents or toys or privileges. They need values and morals and knowledge. They need to know they are loved because their parents are there for them, not because they can call them on a cellular phone.

With so many people in poverty in this city and so much talk of the economic malaise, this struck me deeply. What do you think the children are learning from the example of their parents? How likely do you think these children will be to innovate and design and make something of themselves? How much do you think they value what they have? What do their parents do for a living that means they can afford cell phones but not put a roof over their own heads?

What do children really need? Yes, I know very well I don't have any, but I was one once. I remember vividly when I was in elementary school coming home and calling out my mother's name. I didn't need anything per se; I just wanted to know she was there, with me, in the house. I remember another evening when I arrived home many hours in advance of my parents to a locked house. I was very lost and alone. What a child really needs is to know he is loved. Animals know this; I have a beagle at home who, no matter the hour of night, even if he doesn't get to see me long before I head to bed, jumps up and down for joy to see me. They crave attention, which you can only provide when you spend time with them.

What a child really needs is to be taught what is right. They need to see their parents do what they ought, even if it doesn't bear the fruit for which they hope. They need to learn about morality and faith, about the Source from which our hopes and rights really come. What would help them most is for parents to sit them down in the home regularly and discuss family, faith, and fortitude. They do not need friends; they have those at school. They need parents to show them the boundaries, to give them rules, to require things of them, and push them to do what they ought. Then, when they fall short, they need parents who love them, for who they are and what they did accomplish of the total required of them, who forgive them and comfort them and welcome them back and enjoy what they do and how they act.

Family is supposed to bring people together. Cell phones help keep us apart, because why should we have a face-to-face-to-face, when we can just mass text one another? Children need to know what really matters. They need their parents. They need good parents. They need parents to point them to goodness by virtue of their rhetoric as well as their examples. That will elevate their station in all the ways that really matter and make real men out of them in the end.

Why I Go Without Internet

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I've made a few new acquaintences in real life lately. Just this Sunday, I told one of them that I frequently miss out on activities because some communication goes out only via the internet, and so if it's last minute planning, I don't get it. I don't have internet at home.

There are many reasons for this. It helps me completely disconnect from the in silico world and reconnect with actual friends in person and with the earth in my back yard or in Red Rock NCA. It helps me control how I use my time. A friend of mine, who owns a marketing firm, told me a few weeks back that most internet activity occurs between the hours of 10AM and 2PM. The internet sucks people in. It helps me control what gets into my house. See, when you're at home, where nobody sees you, you think nothing of doing things that you wouldn't do in public...like math. It doesn't have to be something nefarious or evil, just that I wouldn't manage an online dating profile from work or post malicious comments about coworkers or the job there (assuming I had them to say), and since I cannot at home, they go unsaid and I calm down. I also don't impulse buy or buy comfort items. If I want something, I have to go to the store, and I frequently don't want Rocky Road badly enough to walk the mile to Smiths to buy it.

Years ago, I got some really good advice from Pat Morita in The Karate Kid. "Best way avoid fight, not be there." There is also a poem, whose origin yet eludes me, that says, "All the water in the world, no matter how it tried, could never sink the smallest ship unless it got inside. All the evil in the world, the blackest kind of sin, cannot hurt us the least bit unless we let it in." So, I choose not to have to fight with cable or the internet or those nefarious forces that roam it in search of easy prey. The dirty back alleys of yesteryear are now something we carry with us into every refuge and sanctuary. We carry our iPhones in our pockets and allow both bad people and good people to contact us at their leisure. You no longer have to seek trouble and go there; it can find you anywhere and at any time. Now they come to you, even when you do things you believe to be innocuous. It is for me a fortification.

I really like to disconnect. People forget that cell phones are a privilege, and instant gratification is the business of fast food companies, not mine. They expect me to answer because I can, even if I am at work, asleep, or in an important meeting. Last night, I was paying bills by phone. It is not that I don't care or am involved in something bad, it is that I am already involved in something that deserves my attention because it was there before you came.

Not having internet allows me to control better that to which I give my attention. Sometimes it's inconvenient, but I don't use it as a crutch. Last week, I read three books cover to cover, and I really rather enjoyed it. I took my dog for a walk three nights. I even met some new folks. I get out and enjoy the world, and I rather like that. Sometimes I think we have too many options in how to employ our time. CS Lewis wrote that it does not have to be something wicked that destroys a man. "Adultery is no better than cards if cards will do the trick...the safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." In short, he can win our souls by simply wasting our time.

Almost exactly a year ago, someone I once knew well told me this, which inspired me:

I've always hated social networking sites. I've always hated the internet in general. It connects me to the virtual world, but disconnects me from reality. I'm picking up more books, going on walks that will be full of thought, writing incessantly, and spending time with actual people. I will not allow the internet to consume me like it does so many others. I've made up my mind, and this will be au revoir.

So she since returned to the internet; big deal. I'm not sure you can survive or thrive in a world dominated by quick connections without the internet, but the point I have adopted is this: I will not allow the internet to consume me. Playing video games, surfing, tweeting, using facebook, etc., are fine as long as the games are not playing you. My object is to recover and retain a modicum of self control and trade the jejune and ruderal for things of eternal consequence.

So-Called "Rights"

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There has been a lot of talk of late about so-called 'rights'. Many of these things may be common today, but when I was born, they were not so. The wide-spread enjoyment of rights is a relatively recent innovation. Most of recorded history has been a repeated cycle in which one tyrant passes power to another, by will or by blood. Although many people have never had it so good, it's never enough, and they want more.

Just today alone, I have seen people post things about 'rights' that don't exist. This morning, there was a story on yesterday's student protest for the 'right of education' that was nothing more than an inflammatory fit. Then there was a blog article I read about the 'right to healthcare'. The story of those who advocate these rights seems to be the same, even down to the faces of some students who lobby for them. It is however not a mature way to handle something to say "give me what I want or I will be a miscreant".

Today, however, I also saw something that gave my arguments power. Representative Jesse Jackson Jr admitted that these rights aren't in the Constitution. They desire to put them into it. There is currently no actual legal right to things such as health care, education, and a home. You can watch him talk about it on cSPAN:

The thing is that rights don't come from government. They come from God. Unless they come from somewhere other than man, they can be taken away by man on a whim. If government grants you something, it's really an 'entitlement', not a right, and if it can be taken away, it's not a right at all. These rights are unalienable, meaning that they cannot be removed by man. Inga Barks said years back, "There is God and there is government. God is greater than government, and government doesn't like that." They want you to remember why you need them.

These politicians don't care much what you think unless it's what you think about them. They want you to be beholden to them for everything. At first, they may extend to you some new freedoms you've never had and give you free handouts, but in the end, all oppressors are all-oppressive, and you will rue the day you handed them the reigns of your life. Things are better for us today than they ever have been, and the things that are wrong will not be changed for the better until and unless the men who change them do so without guile, without ulterior motive, and without gain. I challenge you that if you want what is right, first do what is right, and I promise you that the consequence will follow.

Love Thy Neighbor

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Imagine a world where a homeless man, out of food and out of work, can walk up to a woman's door in the middle of the afternoon and tell her, "Ma'am, I ain't had a bite to eat for some time, and I sure could use a warm, dry place to sleep." Imagine a world where that woman responds, "Come right on in. I have some soup, and there's a spare bedroom down the hall in which you can catch some shuteye." Imagine a world where that same stranger then joins the family for family dinner and laughs and eats and prays with decent folk. Hard to imagine? That's the way this world once was.

Times have changed. Why? We are first of all not allowed to love our neighbor and secondly afraid to do so. I have had my share of people take advantage of my kindness, but I have stopped alongside the road frequently myself and given assistance or a kind word to strangers without so much as a thought of any reward or recompense.

Jesus told us this was a sign preceeding his second coming. To his disciples at passover, he told them, "and because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold (Matthew 24:12)".

People all around us are looking for love. I observed on the way to work this morning not less than five very young couples holding hands and walking arm in arm. I spoke this weekend about and with several couples who believe they are in love only because what they take for love is a bastardized and incomplete picture thereof. People yearn for compassion, they yearn for companionship, and they yearn for connections, at a time when it has become, by virtue of a combination of technology, crime, and politics, more difficult than ever to connect with other people.

It is a hallmark of a society that waxes cold in iniquity that there is less love therein. We have become paranoid and fear fraternization and familiarity. We have been hurt. We live near enough to people that we fear that we do not trust anyone and jealously hold to what we have. In November at the HOA meeting, one woman was very agitated because she thought her own neighbors, who are renters, had broken into her house. Last night, I heard gunshots from my back yard, and I live in a relatively affluent part of town. We do not know our neighbors because we fear them. How then can we possibly love them? We do not love our fellows because we have been betrayed in the past. Without trust, without faith, and without love, sometimes we do unto others before they do unto us and thereby shoot ourselves in the foot.

Sometimes we are not allowed to care for others. Friends of mine laugh at me when they drop by work, because I will prop the door to my office open when there are visitors. I explain to them that I simply cannot abide to risk the chance that someone will accuse me of inappropriate behavior behind closed doors. I am concerned about the laboratory classrooms whose windows are completely obscured, because who knows what might happen in them? We are afraid. We fear liabilities, and so we don't offer to help repair homes or bind up wounds or invite friends over, because we don't want them to sue us for being injured on our properties. We fear the police, and so even good people flee when they arrive, even if they have nothing actually to hide. I have been pulled over once when I wasn't doing anything wrong, but because they wanted to make sure my temporary tag was legitimate. Yesterday, I was approached by cops while sitting in my car outside my own parents' house because it is known that there is someone suspicious loitering in the neighborhood. Some groups that used to feed the homeless no longer do because if there's a fight or something, the cops might come, and they are afraid. We fear other legal consequences, and so people like me do not get close to students for fear of fraternization or too familiar of associations. In general, we fear strangers, and so, among other things, we take our candy over after halloween to the hospital so they can X-ray it.

People commit suicide every day because they do not feel that anybody cares. That's probably at least partly why most people are so desperate to be in relationships- because it at least gives them the semblance that someone else cares about them, even if they don't care for them at all. We want to feel love even if other people just go through the motions towards us. we don't want to be alone. We write off people who tell us things that are hard to bear, forgetting that true friends tell you what you need to know, not just what you want to know. Too many people I know do not hold such courageous conversations because they know they might lose the friend, however temporarily, as a consequence.

The Savior commanded us to "Love one another as I have loved you". It is the second great commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves. While many of us do not love ourselves, we are afraid and paranoid, which has curtailed compassion to a great degree and sent people off "looking for love in all the wrong places". This great utopian society everyone hopes we can have will not come until people trust that there is goodness in other people. CS Lewis wrote that "If you take away all that is good in man, you are not left with a bad man, you are left with nothing at all". There is weakness and evil in man, true, but there is also greatness and strength. To find it, you sometimes have to be looking for it.

However Pollyanna of me this may sound, I testify to you that there is goodness in men. I challenge you to look for the good in men, and I promise you that if you look for goodness you will find it.

Proud to Be Chicken

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A fellow educator told me Friday about a show she watched on one of those nature shows on cable. It followed a mother hen as her hatchlings emerged and began to scratch out an existence. At one point, near the end of the story, all the chickens in the coop scattered for cover. A hawk was overhead. The mother hen whose chicklets had just been born initially followed suit, then stopped and returned to cover her hatchlings, who were naturally as yet uncognizant of the threat posed by a hawk.

The hawk dived. It careened into the sky as feathers flew, a large bunch of them in his claws. The mother hen was still on the ground. Apparently, this young hawk didn't realize how many feathers chickens have or how thick the feathers are. He continued off in flight and the mother hen saw to her babies.

We are oftens ubject to the negatively denotated accusation of being chicken. Yet, in this story, this brave mother hen was willing to sacrifice her life to save her chicks. If that's what it means to be chicken, then I am proud to be called chicken.

My Favorite Date of the Year

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Today is my favorite date of the year. It's the only date that is also a complete sentence.

March fourth / March forth.

Yeah, I know. I'm a dork.

Blessings Disguised as Trials

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Several of my friends lost their jobs recently. I know the President thinks that things are recovering, but the trying times extend far beyond this small valley. Several times, I have come close to losing my own job, either as a simple budgetary matter or as a consequence of my tilting at windmills as I speak the truth regardless of possible consequences. While for today I consider it safe, there were some ill winds recently that threatened my safety and security, but even in that time, I told my friends that I trusted that if I lost my job that God knew that was the better option and that I would find something else.

If you are like my friends and unemployed for whatever reason, I am sad to hear that you lost your job. I am sure you are stressed. I hope you have friends from whom to seek counsel and comfort in your time of need. Remember that your Father in Heaven is there and that even if nothing else you can always count on His spirit, that Comforter, to be with you and buoy you up in trying times.

Not everyone who does the right thing sees right done in return. What you decided to do at work was probably right- to fight against wickedness in high places. The longer we allow duplicities in policies to persist, the more people will push the propriety envelope and create excuses to rationalize their own aberrant attitudes. Sometimes, when you do what is right, you might be cast into the Lion's den as was Daniel; other times, you return to your fields and your flocks as did Gideon; in rare but oh so very important cases, you may be spared and elevated as was Esther. It is always the right time to do the right thing.

Who knows what will happen? It is quite possible that this is a blessing disguised as a trial. A story is told of two men in a town in China. The first found a horse one day, and his neighbor commented on how lucky he was. "Who knows what will happen?" said the first. The next day, while trying to break the horse, the first man's son was thrown from the horse and broke his leg. The neighbor commented on the bad luck, but the first man replied, "Who knows what will happen." The next day, king's soldiers came through town looking for conscripts. They took the horse and the neighbor's son but left the first man's son because of his broken leg. When the neighbor came over weeping that he might never see his son again, the first man replied, "Who knows what will happen?"

To the Corinthians, Paul wrote: "There hath no trial taken you except as such is common to man, but God is also faithful and will, with the trial, provide a way for you to escape that ye may be able to bear it." This I know; I will pray that His spirit will convict you with a knowledge that He is on your side, aware of your issue, and ready to assist, not in the way you might hope, but in the way that is best for all parties involved. Have faith, trust in Him, and remember that He is always there. He will provide a way for your escape.

Godspeed, and all my best wishes.

Fire the Firemen

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The firemen in our county have been under investigation for what amounts to theft. Supervisors would authorize sick time for employees who weren't really "sick" and then send callbacks to boost overtime pay for other firemen who reciprocated the favor. Today, the county commissioner announced that their pensions will be cut. In other words, they won't suffer any real punishments. They didn't earn the higher pensions anyway.  They stole this time from the system, and in essence they stole money from every one of us.

Unless the punishment fits the crime, the next crop of people in any vocation will repeat the tricks of the prior one. Fire some firemen, and some of the supervisors who authorized it for that matter, or else they will try again. Maybe somewhere else, maybe a year or a decade from now, they will swing back and try this again. Next time, like last time, they might get away with it.  If they cheated the system, they committed a crime; if the new rules reduced sick leave filings, then someone was frauding the government which means they frauded you.  Sick relatives are not sick self, and that does not give you the right to take sick leave.  If enough of the firemen did it and their supervisors knew it, that could amount to racketiering, which is a crime investigated by the FBI.  It's fraud, and quite frankly, I protest this kind of shenanigen.

The only way to prevent recidivism is to remove the problem. Fire the firemen who tried to cheat us, the taxpayers, and replace them with people who do the job because they like it, they like to serve, or they like the lifestyle, not just people who do it for the money. If your punishment is nothing more than removing the ill-gotten gain, what prevents them from cheating us again? Firing firemen might not stop it completely, but those particular firemen won't cheat us again, because they'll be doing something else for a living.

Taking Care of Business

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You may have noticed over the past couple of weeks that my activity on this blog has dropped off severely. There are other times throughout the year when this happens, like when I'm on vacation or when I'm at home, since I don't have internet there. This time, however, it's because of work.

Over the past several weeks, we've seen huge shakeups in staffing at work. One associate has been out sick for over a month. Another went out at the end of last week and won't return until May. Yesterday morning, another person came to my office to tell me she was headed to the doctor for a checkup and would let me know how it went. We don't know when she'll be back.

From my days in graduate school, I have been in this situation many times. I frequently carried a great deal of water for the organizations that employed me, so much that when I was sick, however infrequently, or took days off (which they asked me to avoid), it took several individuals to cover what I did for them on a daily or weekly basis, as appropriate. My boss and I are now covering everything on the campus for the science labs, and so I am busy from the time I arrive until the time I leave, and I'm quite frankly too tired at night to work on a blog article or lack time to actually take a break and pen a few lines.

I am here for the students. Eventually, something will happen that will impact the labs. Most of the teachers and administrators understand that this is a rough semester. With half our labs in remodel, we have already shifted resources to keep up our offerings to the students as much as possible. With the state budget in turmoil, most folks are worried at least about paycuts if not their other benefits or jobs in general. Tensions are high. Students are stressed. People get sick, and we're stuck in the middle between faculty and our customers.

Please remain calm. Let me know what the problem is, and as quickly as I am able, I will take care of business. Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.