Advice to the Graduating Class of 2012

I've been asked to offer some advice to our grads in our school's newspaper. Teachers usually offer some short quote, but I've never done well with brevity. I asked if I could write something longer, then put out a request for help on Facebook and got some wonderful suggestions from my army of wise friends. Here's my first draft. It should probably be shorter, but let me know what to add, cut, or fix.
 

College, the military, work: They’re all hard work. They’re much harder than high school. Imagine how easy your classes would be if you went back to middle school. That’s how easy high school is compared to the world beyond. Get ready to work a lot harder.

In college, don't worry so much about picking the right major that you avoid taking classes you are curious about. You may miss the thing you'll love to study, and that's more likely to lead to the career you are good at and truly enjoy.

That being said, take money seriously. Tax payers gave you a gift of a public education, and they didn’t expect a thank you card. Sallie Mae will expect your soul. (Your credit card company will be even worse. Avoid those guys.) Whether you get a student loan or a gift from your parents, learn that it’s real money and that you have to pay it back somehow. Hopefully, you’ll even learn that you have to pay society back for that public education, too.

Don't get a tattoo until you're at least 25. Some of you will ignore this advice, and, when you're older, you'll regret it. If you get a tattoo somewhere you can't hide during a job interview... Well, unemployed people have lots of time to think about their bad decisions.

When dating, try to find somebody you would be proud to introduce to your good friends and your parents. Recognize that the thing you will do most with this person, in the long run, is talk. Once you’ve found this person, if you want to keep him/her, keep talking.

Travel. Go to China. Go to Europe. Go camping in eastern Oregon. Go to Ashland, watch some Shakespeare, and travel to ancient Rome or a world filled with magic creatures. Travel by reading a good book. Just go. Traveling doesn't just increase what you know; it expands what you're capable of imagining.

The world can be a very difficult place. In some ways, it's going to get harder during your lifetime. You will have opportunities to make it better, and I hope you take those. But, more than anything, remember that the world is worth it; it’s filled with enough beauty and wonder to justify all the hope you'll need to get through it.

Oh, and keep in touch with your high school teachers. We deserve to hear about your successes, because we’re very proud of you.

Study the Tiger

Study the tiger

Circling its prey

Every sinew curves

Into a winding path

While it’s burning bright.


There’s comfort in its trajectory;

Lives don’t move in straight lines.

Perhaps I too will come round to where I want to be

Through bends between trees in the darkness.


Or is this just a fantasy I choose,

Solace in my own winding path

Before the weight of the world

Lands on my back?

Lessons of Surgery

I've learned so much today!

Lesson #1: Surgery isn't so bad. Shots of anesthetic? Bad.

Lesson #2: Anesthetic wearing off is also bad.

Lesson #3: "You may feel a little pinch." = BS

Lesson #4: You can reply to a text message during surgery. If you tell the person what is going on as you write, you will creep them out.

Lesson #5: If you try to block out the doctor-nurse banter during surgery with an episode of Jordan, Jesse Go!, you have to turn it up to 9.

Lesson #6: Your doctor may allow you to see what he's doing during surgery. It's best to refuse and close your eyes tightly.

Lesson #7: Cauterization after anesthetic does not hurt. You will smell burning meat, though. It’s not a bad smell ...until you remember that you’re the meat.

Lesson #8: When you sit on frozen peas, they conform to your body wonderfully. When you thaw them and refreeze them, they form big, spiky chunks.

Lesson #9: Writers are MORE productive when they can't get out of their chairs.

Lesson #10: The day you have surgery, your wife will be very sweet. She will allow you to avoid all housework. She will not like your idea of playing poker with the guys the next day.

Lesson #11: Even a dull pain can keep you up until 4:30 in the morning. Make that 5:30.

Short Story: Fea's Tenses

I've written this story for a big-deal writing contest, and I want to get some feedback before I send it off. (That's allowed by the contest, don't worry.) The story is long, but if you have fifteen minutes and would be willing to look it over, please let me know what you think in the comments section below before I send it off. Thanks!

[Update 3/30/12: Thanks to all the folks who've given me feedback, here in the comments, on Facebook, and by email, I've made some significant changes to the story. I want to especially thank Megan Geigner, a PhD candidate at Northwestern (bio here), and Wendy Hart Beckman, owner/president of Beckman Communications, a professional writing service. Both of these friends went above and beyond the call of duty, and I am so grateful for their honesty and thoroughness. I hope they're pleased with the changes. I still have time to make more, so keep those suggestions coming!]

[Update 3/17/13: Though the story didn't win that contest a year ago, I've continued to polish it and get feedback from even more friends and students. The story is now available on Kindle, so I have to remove it from this blog, but if you're so inclined, you can still get a copy (less than a buck!) here:

 
 
http://amzn.to/WthJ3m

 Again, thanks to you all!

Ode to the One-Hit Wonder

Tonight I discovered a song used as the background music on a YouTube video, and I liked it so much, I purchased it on iTunes (the song, not the video). This got me thinking about one-hit wonders. I haven’t listened to the rest of this artist’s catalog. I may end up loving more of it. But this song is sufficient. That fact should make us stop and reexamine our relationship to art.

Pundits, recording artists, and cultural critics have weighed-in to lament the decline of the concept album, and I’m not going to argue that. If the album is the complete work, it is a shame that iTunes may kill that form. But if the album is only a collection of isolated works, what’s wrong with buying songs individually? If someone asked me if I were a “fan” of an artist on my MP3 player who only holds a single slot, I’d shrug and say, “Well, I wouldn’t go that far. I only own one of her songs.” Why am I compelled to distance myself from an artist because I don’t like the majority of her work? Even if I absolutely hated 99% of an artist’s work, if one single piece spoke to me in a profound way, isn’t that enough to create the kind of artist-audience connection every artist and audience seeks? And if the artist sustained that relationship for only three minutes of a single song, during those three minutes, am I not a fan?

Pragmatism dictates that the incalculable mixture of discipline and inborn talent which produce a single work capable of creating a strong artist-audience connection will generally prove repeatable, at least to some degree. Beethoven can write his fifth symphony, and those same skills and talent can also combine to produce the “Ode to Joy.” But I would scream it from the mountaintops: The “Ode to Joy” is enough. It is sufficient. If Beethoven were alive today and only wrote that one song, and you stumbled upon it in iTunes, even if you went through Beethoven’s other listings and found nothing but songs that sounded like amateur covers of songs by Slipknot, you’d be hard-pressed not to admit that, for a brief moment, this Ludwig guy must have been touched by the hand of God himself. The Slipknot fans would hate that weird outlier of a song, but you could listen to it and love it and, despite all the embarrassment caused by the association with his other horrible music, you would be a Beethoven fan.

I find this notion inspiring. I tell my creative writing students that they need to think of their work as art, and that they can compare the process by which they learn the craft to the hours of study that go into learning to compose music, the agony and excitement a painter feels when faced with a stubbornly blank canvas, and the grueling demands embraced eagerly by ballet dancers. Sure, we don’t put on toe-shoes and dance until our feet bleed. Our backache, eye strain, and carpal tunnel may not engender the same sympathy, but if you don’t think the analogy holds, I don’t think you’re writing enough. So this idea of the one-hit wonder should fill us with hope. We don’t have to write the 37 plays of Shakespeare. They weren’t all perfect, anyway. We don’t have to write (and edit) the 500 works of Isaac Asimov. Lots of those were absolute stinkers. We don’t have to write the 49 novels of Stephen King. I think he’d admit he’s not as talented as Shakespeare nor as prolific as Asimov. He’d also admit that not all of his novels are successful. But that’s okay. Because just one is enough. Harper Lee wrote a whopping ONE novel. So far, Arundhati Roy has only written one as well. If you haven’t read To Kill a Mockingbird or The God of Small Things, consider them assigned reading and buy yourself copies immediately. They can each prove that one masterpiece is sufficient.

It doesn’t have to be a novel, of course. Write a short story as good as Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Write a script as good as Zach Helm’s Stranger Than Fiction. Write a poem as inspiring and heartbreaking as Stephen Crane’s (36 word) “I saw a man pursuing the horizon.” Write lyrics as good as The Indelicates’ “Savages.” Those works were all good enough to make me an instant fan of the artists as soon as I read/watched/listened to their work.

So, whatever it is, just write it. If it’s not good enough, try again. It only takes one.

Conservatives Make a Liberal Argument Against Affirmative Action

I was perplexed by a question after hearing this last week's Slate Political Gabfest.

If you haven't heard, the Supreme Court has decided to hear a case which will challenge affirmative action in college admissions. Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin is a case in which a white student is saying she was unfairly denied admission because she was white. I won't get into my disdain for the "Woe is me, I'm a white person in America" ridiculousness, but there's a really interesting double standard that someone (someone much smarter and more informed than I am) should explore.

The University of Texas at Austin has an admissions policy that begins by admitting the top ten percenters from each high school in Texas. Because of the segregation in schools caused by geographic segregation, this produces some diversity on its own. Then the university takes economics into account, and that will produce some ethnic diversity, too. Ultimately, they have some wiggle room allowed by the Supreme Court's decision on Michigan Law School's admissions policy from a few years ago (Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003). It's this last part that the Supreme Court is revisiting, and which it will probably change, especially since Justice Kagan has had to recuse herself. The young woman filing the case claims that she would have been accepted if not for this last bit of racial preference in admissions.

Regardless of where you stand on admissions (for the record, I'm in favor of some racial preference to encourage diversity, because I see racial diversity, like economic diversity, as a valuable part of an education), this argument will hinge on the notion that the system was unfair to this young woman and the government should fix it. I have no problem with that kind of argument. Why? Because I'm a liberal. I believe that, when there is injustice in our society and the government creates, enables, or has the power to correct that injustice, it should. I don't believe the government can create perfect equality of outcomes or solve all social ills. That's a straw man some of my conservative friends have tried to pin to all liberals, as though being a liberal is the same thing as being a Maoist or Soviet, and that's inaccurate and unfair. However, when the government can make a system, especially a system of its own, more fair, it should do so.

My conservative friends do not believe this. They tell me that they believe in personal responsibility. They tell me they believe equality will best be produced by the free market. They detest systems like Affirmative Action because they see it as government intrusion.

Except in this case, the remedy the complainant is proposing is that government should step in (when conservatives disagree with this form of government intrusion they call this "judicial overreach") and make this system more fair. Personal responsibility, it seems to me, would dictate that Abigail Fisher could have earned her way into the University of Texas at Austen by working her way into the top ten percent of her class. Problem solved. Or she could take advantage of the free market and go to school somewhere else, and if enough disgruntled white students did this and the school took too much of a financial hit, they would adjust their admissions policy. Problem solved. But Ms. Fisher is blaming the system and trying to change it. She wants it to conform to the ideals presented by the conservative right, but the mechanism she's employing theoretically belong to the left.

Of course, it doesn't belong to the left. Conservatives are just as willing to go to court as liberals, just as willing to try to sway government to enforce their vision of a more just America. I have no problem with that. What bothers me is that, when people advocates for a more just tax policy, something that is more firmly in the sphere of government than a public university's admissions policy, they are dismissed as dirty hippies who need to get a job and stop expecting the government to solve their problems.

The practical consequence of this double standard is that when poor people and minorities, or even middle class whites struggling against a rigged economic system, go to the government for a redress of a grievance, they are dismissed by conservatives, but when a white person does the exact same thing at the expense of a poorer minority applicant to the same university, that's peachy, and yet the conservatives bristle at being called plutocrats or racists.

Pay close attention to the way this issue gets reported by the conservative media, and to the way Republican candidates comment on it when it gets a bit more attention. If you hear a noticeable absence of condemnation of Abigail Fisher as a communist, a welfare queen, a nanny-state liberal, or any of the other slurs hurled at those participating in Occupy Wall Street, ask yourself, What should we call people who only compromise their principles when it benefits white people?

Student Wish List, Teacher Heartbreak

I'm in the midst of a marathon essay-grading day, but I have to stop and write about this immediately, because it has to be one of the saddest things I've ever come across.

This year, one of the classes I'm teaching is Language Arts in Spanish. It's not a Spanish class, but a class on reading and writing skills taught in Spanish for students who are learning English in other classes but also need language arts credit. For the semester final, I gave the students a collection of prompts taken directly from the state's example state test writing prompts, just translated. One prompt asked students to imagine they could switch places with anyone in the world and tell the story of what would happen. This student lost track of the prompt during the outlining process and ended up turning in a list of things she wished she could change about herself. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

She starts by saying she'd like to be taller, because she's sick of being called a midget. Then she says she'd like to be prettier, because she's sick of being called ugly. She capitalized Ugly, as though people use this in place of her name. Then she wished she had blue eyes, that her hair weren't so black, and that it weren't so straight. She also wished she could be a bit fatter so people would stop calling her Skinny. She wished she could do well in school so that someday she could become a lawyer. Then she wished she were more intelligent. She wished she could speak English better so she could speak to more people at school. Finally, she wished she could get a job so she could help out her family and contribute more to her household.

I certainly can't reveal this student's identity, but I think I can share this essay because there are a half a dozen girls in that class who could have written this list, and dozens of boys and girls in my other classes who could have written a variation on it in English. Here's what I can't figure out how to say to her, and to all those students, male and female, carrying around all this self-loathing: "These values you aspire to are cultural constructions. You want to be fatter because you get called Skinny, and some of the other girls are risking their health and maybe their lives because they are so afraid of being called Fattie. You want blue eyes because that's the color of the contact lenses the models plop in before the photo shoot. You want curly hair while the girls (and boys) with curly hair want straight hair. And those desires to reach an unattainable standard of beauty (a standard that has been intentionally designed to be unattainable so you will buy lots of expensive and unnecessary beauty products to look any way but the way you were born to look) will eat away at you on the inside until you are filled up with anger and pain. And then you will lose the best thing you had going for you, your kindness. That warm smile you wear when you come into my classroom will fade and be replaced by a sneer. That great, quiet, nervous laugh you have will become a derisive snort. And someday you will see someone who looks just like you, or just the opposite, or anywhere in between, and you will call her Ugly. Please, oh please don't let that happen. Do not accept the behavior of the kind of asshole who would even consider calling you Midget or Skinny or Ugly or anything other than your given name, and don't replicate that behavior yourself. And don't internalize that kind of person's judgement, or you will find yourself in relationships with people who hold just as low an opinion of you as you do. Don't let that happen. Please. I'm begging."

But I can't say that (and only partly because I shouldn't be using the word "asshole" when talking to my students, even when I'm referring to someone that fills me with rage). I'm going to try to get her an appointment with one of our school's counselors, and I'm going to have a talk with one of her other teachers, a smart, successful Spanish speaking female teacher I think this student will more readily accept as a mentor. But I also can't have the conversation because there are two competing voices in my head, and they both make me so angry that I'm in no position to calmly share my fears with this student. I hear these voice coming out of my TV, I read them in the comments sections online, and now I can't get their echoes to stop. Here's what I'd like to say to those two voices.

"Hey, doofy, naive, post-millennial 'liberal' voice, shut up. No, I'm not going to tell her that she'll be a super model one day. No, I'm not even going to tell her that she can be anything she wants to be, and that, if she tries really hard, she can become a lawyer. She can hardly speak any English, and unless she stumbles on a pot of leprechaun's gold, she's going to go to work to help out her family rather than continue her education long enough to make up for the deficiencies in her English skills. Your ridiculous notion that everyone can be exactly what they want to be is well-intentioned, but also hurtful and stupid. I'm not going to tell my kids to settle, but I'm also not going to tell them that they will have it all. Self-esteem like hers is a real problem, but a self-concept that is out of touch with reality is just a gateway to narcissism, or to a crushing disappointment when she finds out that the people who told her she was perfect were liars. She is good and kind. Why isn't that enough? And why do you want me to lie to a good person?"

"And you, callous, privileged "conservative" voice, you can just shove it. I hear what you're muttering under your breath. One minute you're saying poor people need to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The next you're whispering about illegal immigration and English-only education. I know nothing about her legal status, and neither do you. The difference is that I don't want to know, because I know that we're all better off if everyone in our country is educated, while you want to pass moral judgements based on an over-simplified view of a deeply flawed system you don't understand. I do know a bit more than you do about teaching people English, and I know that if I'd dropped you into a Chinese or Iranian school when you were a kid you would not have been a big fan of Chinese-only or Persian-only education. Guess what? You probably wouldn't have learned Chinese or Persian as quickly in an immersion model, either, but you would have been so focused on learning Chinese or Persian that you would have fallen years behind in science and math and never caught up to your Chinese or Iranian classmates. So don't tell me my business. Now, as for your pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps BS, here's a perfect example of why that's garbage, and only somebody who starts out with some advantages (white, male, intelligent, or wealthy) can possibly let those words come out of his mouth without sarcasm. She's right in front of you. She's a human being. She has all kinds of disadvantages, and she won't just catch up no matter how hard she yanks on her bootstraps. Don't you look away from her! She's hurting right now, and your entitled disregard for her pain is disgusting."

So you can see why I'm the last person in the world who should try to console this poor kid. There's too much shouting going on in my own head. But she handed this wish list to me. What does that say about the rest of her world?

Abraham Lincoln Occupied Wall Street

I'd never seen this before, but this is an excerpt of a speech President Lincoln gave 150 years ago today to a joint session of Congress. Want to know what the Occupy Movement is all about? Abraham Lincoln knew 150 years ago.

"It is not needed, nor fitting here [in discussing the Civil War] that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effect to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

“Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Can someone, anyone, who is more concerned with the plight of labor and with promoting the general welfare of We the People please run for President? (And I'm sorry, President Obama, but just because you're more concerned about working people than the Republican train-wreck-of-a-field does not mean you give higher consideration to labor than capital. Not after 7 trillion to the banks.)

Or will I need a time machine so I can vote for someone as progressive as a guy who's been dead for 146 years?

Help me, Doc Brown!

Squirrel!

Petty political attacks aren't a big deal in-and-of themselves. They go both ways, and sometimes they're funny. But this week alone I've come across a couple that just knock my socks off. First, there was the "Obama doesn't mention God on Thanksgiving" hullabaloo on Fox. (*Check out Jon Stewart's reaction to that below.) And then, a conservative friend of mine named Derek called my attention to this one: "Another Gaffe? Obama Calls British Embassy ‘English’ Embassy" Derek actually called me out for not posting it to my status on Facebook, as though I was too ashamed to share it. Quite the opposite. As I told Derek, this is a great illustration of just how petty the Right has become. Now, like I said, the pettiness goes both ways at times, but the context is important here. This is the kind of ridiculous criticism of the President that's coming out of the Right at the exact same time that congressional Republicans are shooting down legislation to create thousands of good jobs for Americans. Moreover, the proposed jobs bills are actually paid for, something the modern Republican party likes to preach but hasn't practiced in my lifetime. So what's their beef? The bills would raise taxes by a couple percentage points on people who earn more than a million dollars a year. Note, this is on their income. It cannot make rich people poor, because it is only calculated on the next MILLION dollars they make. (Oops. I got that wrong. It's actually even less than that. Millionaires would not pay an added two percent on their income, only on their income after the first million dollars. In other words, 1st million at current, historically low rates, 2nd and 3rd million at rates still lower than they were under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Oh, and since the jobs bill was broken up, this portion is the part that provides a payroll tax holiday for working people. Historically, Republicans have treated any vote against cutting taxes as a tax hike. If that's the case, then they are refusing to hike taxes on millionaires but, by their logic, are hiking taxes on everybody else. Where does Grover Norquist stand on that?)

Ah, the Republicans tell us, but that will prevent these wealthy people from giving the rest of us jobs. Well, they haven't been doing that when they are making a million dollars. Why is it assumed they would stop doing what they aren't doing because they're miffed about a small tax increase? Isn't it possible that, if the rest of us do better, then buy products from the companies owned by the rich, making them a heck of a lot richer, they'll create more jobs than if they dodge a tiny tax increase?

Republicans love to toss around the word "entitlement" to criticize people who expect to receive benefits like Medicare and Social Security which they have paid for through through their taxes during a lifetime of work. They also like to vilify any attempt by the government to "pick winners and losers." Well guess what, folks: tax breaks for the rich are government handouts just as much as welfare checks, and they cost the rest of us a lot more than keeping a family from starving to death. Choosing to line the pockets of millionaires rather than creating more positions for firefighters and police officers is "picking winners and losers." Anybody who gives this even a few seconds thought can see that.

So the Republicans are trying to make sure you don't give it a couple seconds thought. They'd much rather you count the number of times the President mentions God, or laugh at him for mixing up "British" and "English."

Petty political pot-shots are fun, especially when they are funny. But in this case, they're not only lame, but obvious distractions meant to focus our attention away from what the Republicans are actually trying to do to those of us who don't make a million dollars a-





*Jon Stewart on the "Much Ado About Stuffing" scandal:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Much Ado About Stuffing
www.thedailyshow.com
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A Writer's Quest for Quality

I love the Demotivators from desprair.com. Tonight, while gathering my thoughts before beginning Chapter 9 of my current novel [read: Procrastinating] I came across this one on another writer's blog (Lily White LeFevre's blog, here) and just had to re-post it. Okay, enough procrastinating. Let's get marching!