Pomp, Circumstance, and Strange Shoe Choices

This weekend is Graduation Weekend here in Happy Valley.  The ceremonies over these three days mark the culmination of an academic year that started with an earthquake and lead to, in some ways, the end of our world as we knew it.  Here are just a few of my somewhat random thoughts about this year’s graduation:

1. I noticed something for the first time today that, once I saw it, I wondered why no one had ever done before.  Three resourceful families were tailgating graduation--one complete with canopy, plastic wine glasses, and champagne!  Genius!!!  You're going to be stuck there for a good while, you might was well start celebrating instead of complaining.  :)

2. I think I may have underestimated one of my male students all this time.  Today under his blue graduation gown, he had on a bright kelly green shirt with a very, very loud pink tie.  He was one of two boys not wearing a white shirt and blue tie or blue shirt and gray tie (the other was wearing a gray t-shirt and rumpled jeans and looked as though he rolled out of bed hungover, wearing whatever he went bar hopping in last night, threw on his gown and strolled off to graduation).  Again, genius!  His family surely had no problem picking him out.

3. As I was walking down to the Green Room before the ceremony, I noticed two girls walking in front of me wearing what had to be 5” stilettos.  I thought to myself that every year the heels seem to get higher and higher.  During the ceremony, a few of my colleagues made the same observation.  Some of the stilettos and platform shoes were so high as to be awe inspiring in a you-know-there’s-going-to-be-an-accident-and-yet-can’t-look-away kind of way.  This is one of those few days in your life when everyone really IS watching you; is it really the day you want to wind up in a cast from falling off of your own shoes???  The winner of the Most Female Graduates in Reasonable Footwear award goes to Recreation, Parks, and Tourism Management, in case you wondered.

4. At the end of the ceremony, during the singing of the Alma Mater, one of my colleagues nudged me and motioned for me to look behind me at our students.  The entire group of them was not only singing, but swaying back and forth to the song, arms draped around each other.  It was an adorable and touching sight.  During the 4^th verse, their voices swelled to be heard above the pit band and the thousands of spectators.  They confirmed what I suspected at the fall graduation ceremony: that this new enthusiasm for the words and meaning of their school song has become a new tradition.  The refusal of these resilient young men and women to be cowed or shamed by others and their determination to hold their heads up to look for solutions to the problems they are confronted with is both awe inspiring and humbling.  I have never been more proud to be a teacher, and I will always be proud to have been their teacher. 

Congratulations, Penn State Class of 2012!

The Hidden Dangers of "Yes"

For the sixth straight year, Penn State students have persisted in participating in what they call “State Patty’s Day,” an event organized on social media outlets, the sole purpose of which is to provide an excuse for people to wander aimlessly around town for 36 hours straight in a drunken stupor so profound that they appear too brainless and purposeless to even qualify as extras on The Walking Dead.  No, I take that back.  It does appear to have one other purpose: to ensure that photographs of people wandering the streets half-dressed and with fewer functioning brain cells than a pureed carrot can survive in perpetuity on the internet for not only future employers, but future grandchildren, to find.

No, I’m not a fan of this event.  And no, it’s not a “holiday.” Stop calling it that.

Funny thing is, I don’t think many of my students are fans anymore, either.  Last year in a very long, very candid conversation with my graduating seniors, I heard many of them say over and over that the majority of the people who were drunk all day, wandering out into traffic, driving the wrong way on one way streets, and generally causing mayhem, were not PSU students but people from out of town.  The arrest records and emergency response reports bear this out.  My response to them was that not one hotel was booked up that weekend (yes, I really did check), so these people who were coming from out of town were staying somewhere.  That “somewhere” was with people who go to school here.  Over and over again people told me stories of coming home to find 6-7 guests in their apartments, some people they didn’t know.  I suggested that they were the ones with the keys; they could always say no.  My students looked at me in horror.  “Well, that would be kinda rude, wouldn’t it?” one normally very bright young woman asked me.  Rude?  Someone you don’t know is crashing in your apartment without your consent, after coming here uninvited and spending the whole weekend drunk and disorderly?  I think “No, you can’t sleep in the apartment I pay rent for” is the only reasonable, sane response.

This year, in the midst of my yearly pathetic attempt to convince them why participating in this insanity is a bad idea (particularly this year), I heard more than one student complain that out of town guests had invited themselves for the weekend.  My students felt compelled not only to allow these people in their apartments, but to make accommodations for them (being home at a certain time to let them in, making bedding available, and even granting specific food requests).  The comments I heard were all variations on the same theme: “This is just a hassle. I wish it would go away.”  I was dumbfounded.  I suggested to one young woman that she could just tell these people that it’s a VERY bad time for this and they should not expect to come and stay with her.  Then she was dumbfounded.  “I don’t want to be rude and say no.”

That’s when it struck me.  My students were very uncomfortable saying know, even to unreasonable requests from acquaintances, because they didn’t know how to say no.  They had no model for it because they had heard it so seldom themselves.

No one likes to say no.  It’s human nature to want to please other people and accommodate requests, but those of us who did not grow up in the “everyone plays, everyone wins” era at least have some model for saying and hearing no.  We’ve been told no by parents, teachers, coaches, and directors and survived it.  We’ve learned to understand that “no” isn’t fatal and doesn’t have to be mean.  By always telling our kids “yes,” we’ve robbed them of that model.  By always giving them what they want, whether it’s the lead in the play, a place on the team, or a car, we’ve taught them not only that hearing “no” is bad, but that saying “no” is worse.  If no one has ever told them no, it must be really, really terrible.  If their parents and teachers avoided it, they probably should, too.

I’m not suggesting that being able to say no to their friends would prevent any of the bad behavior that goes on here during this annual event, but it might allow them to let it die the natural death it should have fallen to years ago. Then again, if they had heard "no" more often earlier in life, the whole spectacle of walking around drunk, throwing trash and urinating in people's yards, and stumbling out into traffic, and then demanding shelter from people you hardly know might have struck them from the start as the bad idea it truly is.

A Few Thousand Special Snowflakes....

Last week I again had the chance to participate in what is one of my favorite professional duties. It also happens to be one of the most frustrating.  Graduation.  I love graduation ceremonies and I will admit that I tear up at every single one.  What’s not to love?  It’s the one day in an academic career when everyone is happy—parents, students, and faculty. 

 

Since I started teaching, I have had the chance to participate in roughly 18 graduation ceremonies.  In all that time, I never seen a ceremony disrupted by a student.  This year two students, one male and one female, decided that moment after shaking hands with everyone on stage was the appropriate time for Tebowing.  In both cases, their self-conscious silliness was mostly ignored.

This fall’s ceremony was disrupted several times by parents and family members.  In every ceremony, the attendees are instructed twice to please hold their applause and cheers until after everyone’s name is called.  Families are told that every one present is there to hear the name of one person, and everyone present deserves to be able to hear that one name be read as that student crosses the stage.  It shouldn’t require an advanced degree to understand that if you’re blowing an air horn (and it does happen with dismaying frequency), no one is going to be able to hear the name being read at the same time.  For the first 50 names, more or less, everyone behaves appropriately.  Then one family member decides that their special snowflake is far too special for their family to be held to the same standards as everyone else, so they yell and scream when that snowflake’s name is called.  A few minutes will pass and some other family will decide their snowflake is far MORE special, so they yell and scream and clap.  Sooner or later, someone breaks out the air horn.

This happens at every ceremony.  Most of the time, it’s only half a dozen families or so who think their student is the most special snowflake in the blizzard.  Occasionally, it happens frequently enough that the nomenclature or the provost feels compelled to scold the crowd and again ask that they not prevent other families from hearing the name of their student.  This time, both the nomenclature and provost had to scold the crowd several times, with increasing irritation.  At one point the rest of the crowd was so disgusted with the blatant disregard for the several hundred other graduates that they broke into applause after one scolding.  You have to know you’ve really crossed some social boundary when a few thousand people are applauding you being publicly scolded.

This annoys me every year, but it was particularly galling this year.  Unless you live under a rock or on a deserted island in the Pacific ocean, you have at least some vague notion of the events that have plagued Penn State this fall.  I don’t wish to minimize the trauma to everyone involved by oversimplifying the case, but three men are currently awaiting trial, several more have had their careers either ended or irrevocably disrupted, and an entire community had been turned on its head because at least three people decided the rules did not apply to them.  Apparently, and sadly for all of us, some people in the PSU family have not learned from this lesson.  You would think that any one in any way connected with the university might be particularly sensitive to playing by the rules, doing the right thing, and looking out for the other people around you.  It makes me unspeakably sad and unsettled to discover that it’s largely the parents who chose to do otherwise.  We often wonder why it is that so many young people seem to feel that there are no consequences for their behavior and that the rules don’t apply to them.  We have no business being shocked by this; they are only following the example they have been taught.

In all fairness, even this fall it was only a small percentage of families who behaved badly.  Most smiled and waved quietly as their student crossed the stage and then cheered their hearts out when the last name had been called.  After the last student had crossed the stage, several yelled out from various points “WE ARE…”and everyone—administrators, faculty, students, and families thundered back “PENN STATE!”  It was a fun and proud moment, but not as proud as the one that came at the end of the ceremony.  Just before the administrators and faculty process back out of the hall, the entire crowd is asked to sing the Alma Mater.  In most ceremonies, the students begin singing proudly “For the glory of Old State…” and then peter out from there, humming along and leaving the faculty and the alumni in the crowd to carry the song to its end.  This year, to my surprise and delight, the students sang with earnest through the first three verses.  The real moment of pride, though, came at the beginning of the last verse when the singing from the students swelled considerably.*  I hope their families noticed, too, and decide to follow their example.

*For the non-PSU folks, the last verse begins with these two lines:

"May no act of ours bring shame,

To one heart that loves thy name..."

Raise the song...and your voice

This is the time of year when I see a lot of people who have recently decided to change majors for one reason or another. A huge percentage of them tell me they want to go to medical school or to become a physician assistant—both very noble, honorable professions, to be sure. When I ask them what make them want to become doctors, nurses, or PAs, many of them respond with lengthy explanations about how they’ve always loved science and biology in particular, how they had a pediatrician they loved, how a PA helped diagnose their asthma or a nurse took care of a sibling who had been hospitalized, etc. A good many of them, though, give me the same, vague answer: “I want to help people.”

This is a noble calling, too; don’t get me wrong. I am all in favor of the give-back-pay-it-forward-leave-the-world-better-than-you-found-it philosophy. My problem is with their very, very limited definition of “helping people.”

As I started writing this a week ago, I intended to write about the many ways in which you can help people outside of medicine. Then I saw a documentary on he replications of the original Stanley Milgram studies on authority. Milgram's original studies brought volunteers into the lab and paired them with "learners" who were really research assistants. The "teachers" were told to give increasing electric shocks to the learners sitting in a remote booth when they made mistakes on the task given. Even when the learners screamed in pain and complained of heart trouble, a lab coated investigator asked the teacher to keep going. Milgram found that the vast majority of people were willing to give what they thought might be dangerous shocks to another human being just because someone told them to. In one version of the replications, teachers came in to the lab in pairs. One of the pair was another research assistant who, in half the cases, was told at one point to refuse to administer any more shocks. When that person refused, far more of the subject teachers were willing to also refuse. One person standing up and saying "No. This is wrong." is all it takes to inspire others to do the same.

Shortly after watching this special, news broke about Jerry Sandusky's heinous acts and the horrible cover up that ensued at Penn State. The most shocking, and for some of us most heartbreaking, part is that so many people seemed to have had the chance to stand up and say "No. This is wrong," but no one did. People did what they believed they had to, but no one did what they should have. I have no doubt that their failure to do more than they did will haunt Mike McQueary and Joe Paterno until the day they die.

So here is my charge to all of you, future clinicians or not. Want to help people? It's this simple: Be the one who stands up. Be the voice that says "No. This is wrong. I won't go along with it." Be the one who inspires others to stand up and do the right thing. Be the one who insists that we are all better. Be our pride, not our shame. No matter what you do after that, you will have helped everyone. Not a bad day's work.

Only Your Mother Thinks You're THAT Important...

Jon Stewart, among others, took a few minutes to poke fun at Anderson Cooper when it was demonstrated to him that his Blackberry was contaminated with fecal strep.  I wasn’t even a little bit surprised—not because I think Cooper is more unsanitary than the average person; I don’t.  In fact, I’d be far more surprised to find out that it was relatively uncommon to find some kind of fecal contamination on most cell phones.  My hypothesis is based on using the ladies room at work.  Not one day goes by when I don’t encounter someone in the bathroom on their phone.  Mostly, because I work at a university and the largest age demographic is between 18-25, they’re texting but many of them are actually carrying on conversations in the bathroom.  In the stall.

I can see a logical reason why Anderson Cooper’s phone might make the trek with him to the bathroom.  He’s Anderson Cooper.  You can probably envision a scenario in which not getting that phone call right NOW might have an impact on his career, or at least the current story he’s working on.  It wouldn’t take a great deal of imagination to come up with logical reasons for, say, President Obama, Thomas Freiden (director of the CDC), your local police chief, or maybe even Sarah Palin might need to keep their cell phone handy at ALL times (“What’s that?  There’s a pie eating contest in Iowa displaying a cardboard cutout of Mitt Romney and I wasn’t invited???  Get everybody on the bus, quick!!”) but the vast majority of us do not fall into that Need to Know NOW category of life.  This is almost certainly the case if you are 19.  You can wait 5 minutes to get that call or text.  It isn’t going anywhere, I promise.

Anything you take with you into the bathroom risks fecal contamination, and it doesn’t have anything (or much, anyway) to do with washing your hands.  Every time the toilet is flushed, miniscule droplets are propelled into the air by the force of the water entering the bowl and flushing whatever it finds there down the drain.  The force of this water is generally higher in public bathrooms, creating more aerosolized water.  That water is contaminated with whatever has been in the toilet bowl recently and if you can’t foresee fecal matter having been in the average toilet, you probably aren’t old enough to be allowed outside the house unsupervised.  Or to have a cell phone.  It is not in your best interest to take anything you don’t have to into the bathroom stall with you, and this is especially true of anything you repeatedly hold up next to your face throughout the day.

Things not to say…..

In another week, my Baby Girl and I will be off to her college orientation.  In honor of that occasion, and the millions of teenagers just like her who will be embarking on their college careers this fall, I thought it might be helpful to review a list of things that you should never say to your professor/instructor.  You might think some of these are painfully obvious.  Once upon a time, I did, too.  Then I lost count of how many times I heard these things, just in one semester.  So here’s my Top 10 List of What Not To Say, Part I.

1. I wasn’t here on Monday.  Did I miss anything?

I’m astonished at how this one persists, even though I’m utterly certain that every student has heard admonishments not to say this and the inevitable joke “No, we realized you weren’t here so we all went home” or something to that effect.  First of all, it sounds as though you believe that life doesn’t really go on as usual in your absence.  It takes a special kind of egocentrism to imagine that everything stops when you decide to go elsewhere—the kind usually only awarded to 3 year olds who are cute enough to pull it off.  More importantly, though,  the question is a little offensive.  It implies that at least some percentage of the time what’s going on in class is useless—and that the instructor is well aware that it’s useless and is just doing it to fill time.  You may not see the value of what’s going on in class, but you should at least have the sense to acknowledge that the instructor does.  Frankly, we just don’t have the time or energy to waste on thinking up busy work for you.

2. I wasn’t here on Monday.  Can you tell me what we did?

Better, but still not ok.  This assumes that something of some importance went on in your absence, so that’s a step in the right direction.  It took 50 minutes for the rest of the class to go through whatever it was that happened on Monday; what makes you think I can distill it down to 2 minutes for you right now before class starts?  You might be brighter than everyone else in the room, but I’m guessing you’re not THAT much brighter.  If it were possible to cover the material in 2 minutes, that’s what I’d have done on Monday.

3. My flight leaves on Wednesday afternoon for Spring Break.  Is it okay if I’m not here that Friday?

The short answer, of course, is sure!  Knock yourself out.  In Loco Parentis stopped applying the day you got that high school diploma, Snowflake, and I’m not your mom.  Also, I don’t pay your tuition. You don’t HAVE to be here any day.  You already paid for this class.  What you’re really asking is, can I get credit for being here and still go on vacation early, and the answer to that is an emphatic no.  Here’s why—the dates for spring break are set years, seriously, years in advance and are published.  They’re on the school web site. They’re on your syllabus.  They’re plastered all over campus.  This is a little like saying to your boss “I’ve used up my vacation days, but I REALLY want to go to Cancun with my friends?  Is it ok if I don’t show up for work next week?”  The best answer your likely to get here is “Sure.  It’ll make payroll that much easier this period if we don’t have to pay you for next week.”  The likely answer is “Ok, but if you’re not here next week, don’t bother being here the week after, either.”  You get a week off.  If you want to take more, that’s up to you, but you’re not going to get special allowances to be able to do it.  You’re asking someone else to do more work so you can go play early. That never goes over well.

4. How much do I have to write?/How many pages does this have to be?

Ok, I get that a lot of students ask this question because they’re anxious about doing well and want to make sure they’re putting in the right amount of effort.  What this sounds like, though, if you’re on the receiving end is “This assignment is so far beneath me that I need you to tell me the minimum amount of effort I need to put in to get credit before I can move on to really important things.  Like who Snookie is sleeping with.”  There are a number of students who ask this question who are thinking this very thing (with some variation on the really important thing); you may not be one of them, but you sound like them when you ask this.  There are better ways to get the information that you really want: “I’m trying to gauge the level of detail you’d like in our responses. Do you have a maximum page limit for this assignment?”  or even “Would you mind looking over a draft of my response so I can get some feedback as to whether or not I’m on the right track?”

5. I just figured out my grade and it turns out I’m failing, which is a HUGE shock to me because I only missed the first 2 weeks of class and then those three days before break! I swear I’m a really good student and I NEVER do this badly in class.  What can I do to get more points in the last 3 days before classes end???

Again, there is a short answer to this question and you probably already know what it is: Nothing.  You had 14 weeks to prove to me what a great student you are, and you did.  What you’re really asking here is that someone else do more work to make up for the fact that you did less than what was expected of you for the last 3 months.  If you were truly that conscientious about your grades, I doubt you’d be this shocked, SHOCKED to find out that there’s a failing grade going on here.  You’d have already known after the first test and taken steps to correct the problem then.  How do I know?  Because at least 1 of your classmates did exactly that.  

I do occasionally hear this request for special extra credit from students who are doing very well in the class and want to create a buffer to be sure they get the highest grade attainable.  My response to them is that I don’t report total points or even percentages when I turn in grades. The registrar asks for your assigned letter grade—that’s all.  No one will ever know that you got a 99% instead of 105%.  Honest.