Just received word that my essay "Anne Frank and Decline of Heroism" is going to be published in September in England in New English Review. That's publication number 51, and it's the first since I started teaching in New Mexico.
Monday, August 12, 2019
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Read Rage
At the Buddhist meditation center in Santa Fe, every week we talk about the problems of life and the remedies that Buddhism offers for those problems. One week we were talking about the problems of impatience and anger. One of the people in my small group said, "Well, impatience is why people get road rage."
I said that I never really get road rage. For most of my life, I didn't have a car. Now, I do, but I live in a small town where traffic is never really a problem. So, anger at my fellow drivers has never really been an issue for me. However, I do experience another kind of anger:
Read rage.
Read rage occurs when I'm grading a set of papers and I come across the same mistake seventeen times in two paragraphs. My colleagues outside my office will hear me muttering and then, on the eighteenth occasion of the mistake, start yelling at the computer screen.
They just shake their heads and say, "He has the read rage." Read rage affects English teachers, instructors, and professors of all types: from Mrs. Jones in Grade 5 to, presumably, professors at Harvard.
Nobody in English escapes read rage. Tragically, the condition doesn't respond to medication or surgery.
My first bout of read rage happened right after college, when I was a copy editor at W.B. Saunders. In the days before computers, I edited medical articles using pen and paper. Once, I had edited an article and had come to the reference list. I looked at the list with a sinking heart. There were two hundred items, and they were in the wrong style. I would have to re-do the entire list. I think my hands shook I was so pissed. I hoped the doctor who wrote the article would get sued for malpractice.
Read rage.
I said that I never really get road rage. For most of my life, I didn't have a car. Now, I do, but I live in a small town where traffic is never really a problem. So, anger at my fellow drivers has never really been an issue for me. However, I do experience another kind of anger:
Read rage.
Read rage occurs when I'm grading a set of papers and I come across the same mistake seventeen times in two paragraphs. My colleagues outside my office will hear me muttering and then, on the eighteenth occasion of the mistake, start yelling at the computer screen.
They just shake their heads and say, "He has the read rage." Read rage affects English teachers, instructors, and professors of all types: from Mrs. Jones in Grade 5 to, presumably, professors at Harvard.
Nobody in English escapes read rage. Tragically, the condition doesn't respond to medication or surgery.
My first bout of read rage happened right after college, when I was a copy editor at W.B. Saunders. In the days before computers, I edited medical articles using pen and paper. Once, I had edited an article and had come to the reference list. I looked at the list with a sinking heart. There were two hundred items, and they were in the wrong style. I would have to re-do the entire list. I think my hands shook I was so pissed. I hoped the doctor who wrote the article would get sued for malpractice.
Read rage.
Sunday, July 14, 2019
U Penn and Donald Trump
This week I laughed a little bit when I learned that President Trump's brother was best friends with Trump's UPenn admissions interviewer. The episode, of course, smacks of yet more Ivy shenanigans.
The episode is interesting to me for several reasons. Like Trump, I went to Penn. Unlike the Donald, the Douglas did not come from scads of money. I would like to think that I earned my admission to the University of Pennsylvania based on my talents and my abilities. Because I do come from the lower middle class, I always want the doors of Ivy admissions to remain open to people who are not the children of the elite.
Now, in addition to having gone to Penn, I am an alumni admissions interviewer for the school. As a volunteer, I've interviewed about 85 candidates for admission to Penn. Very few get in. I think the admissions rate now is around 9 percent. Now, I can say that I've never known any of the students I've interviewed. If I had recognized any name that popped on my interview list, I would have declined the interview.
Admission to these kinds of schools should be based on merit and achievement not on connections. Now, of course, there's an argument to be made that you won't be able to do the studying or extra curriculars that you're going to need if you don't come from money. And there's truth in that claim. So, even if there isn't outright hanky panky going on with admissions, one could argue that admission to such an institution is always already kind of predetermined through parental finances.
This is argument is somewhat true. I've always recognized what an anomaly I was in terms of admissions. I was from Erie, PA, a geographic hook. I went to a relatively inexpensive Catholic school that historically sent kids to Penn (not a lot, but some). While my parents were teachers, I was an only child. We didn't vacation around the world, but there was always money for things that were important. My parents were married until they died. That's unusual today. Thus, there was both financial and emotional stability in my household. You really don't have to come from bucket loads of money to get into an Ivy, but you probably need a family that can provide stability and money for opportunities.
I'm very lucky I had both.
The episode is interesting to me for several reasons. Like Trump, I went to Penn. Unlike the Donald, the Douglas did not come from scads of money. I would like to think that I earned my admission to the University of Pennsylvania based on my talents and my abilities. Because I do come from the lower middle class, I always want the doors of Ivy admissions to remain open to people who are not the children of the elite.
Now, in addition to having gone to Penn, I am an alumni admissions interviewer for the school. As a volunteer, I've interviewed about 85 candidates for admission to Penn. Very few get in. I think the admissions rate now is around 9 percent. Now, I can say that I've never known any of the students I've interviewed. If I had recognized any name that popped on my interview list, I would have declined the interview.
Admission to these kinds of schools should be based on merit and achievement not on connections. Now, of course, there's an argument to be made that you won't be able to do the studying or extra curriculars that you're going to need if you don't come from money. And there's truth in that claim. So, even if there isn't outright hanky panky going on with admissions, one could argue that admission to such an institution is always already kind of predetermined through parental finances.
This is argument is somewhat true. I've always recognized what an anomaly I was in terms of admissions. I was from Erie, PA, a geographic hook. I went to a relatively inexpensive Catholic school that historically sent kids to Penn (not a lot, but some). While my parents were teachers, I was an only child. We didn't vacation around the world, but there was always money for things that were important. My parents were married until they died. That's unusual today. Thus, there was both financial and emotional stability in my household. You really don't have to come from bucket loads of money to get into an Ivy, but you probably need a family that can provide stability and money for opportunities.
I'm very lucky I had both.
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