The other side of the coin

The last post, UBU, considered those striving too hard to be individuals. But what about those with a strong need to "fit in?"Everybody wants to be unique, but when I look out into a class room it's typically a sea of jeans. The symbol of rebelion has become the hallmark of conformity. Whatever the peer group is, whether piercings or preppiness, religion or drugs, conformity reigns. Now I understand that there are certain tacit "rules" to which one must adhere in a culture in order to get along. That's part of the social contract, just as there are norms in the workplace (I'm pretty sure I don't enjoy wearing s suit to work, for instance), but I'm talking about an inordinate need for social acceptance. Yes, railing against peer pressure is a familiar theme, but my point is that it may not be so much about peers, but an internal insecurity driving this conformity. Granted, it is not always easy to be yourself. Advertisers, organizations, and conventions (and yes peers) are telling you who to be. Yet there is a fair amount of latitude within these norms, and you do not have to spend a few hundred dollars on a purse that has little value beyond its name, have sex at 16, or disparage others, for example, in order to find acceptance. If you need to do extraordinary things to be accepted by others, you need a new set of others, or better still, a new sense of self. So without further belaboring the obvious, this attempt to fit in is really much the same as the attempt not to fit in, the mirror reflection of the attempt to cultivate image. And once again, it will be much more genuine and gratifying (and a lot less effort) to just be you. Don't worry so much about being accepted by others, worry about accepting yourself.

UBU

There was an ad campaign years ago- was it for Reebok?- that was geared to a younger audience in attempting to appeal to individualism using esoteric images and the slogan "UBU," which of course stood for "You Be You." However, most teenagers of the time apparently didn't understand the images and wondered "What's an ubu?" and the campaign flopped. On a deeper level, I wonder whether a lot of people, particularly young ones, understand the difference between being an individual and trying to present the appearance of being one.

Are unorthodox self-expressions, now so orthodox, thinly-veiled attempts to create outward personae to draw attention or, relatedly, cultivate a desired image, or are they the natural outcomes of individual character? I don't really know, but it seems that many will color or style their hair, pierce or tatoo, dress or act in unusual ways so that people will notice and think of them in particular and unique ways. A lot of people play these roles; you see these affectations all the time. And it's all harmless enough, but it sometimes saddens me to see people trying so hard. (With the exception of those that play the role of the "artiste," who is sensitive and creative beyond what we ordinary pitiful Philistines can possibly fathom. The artiste and his superior soul must suffer for his art/music/whatever, but in reality is just a self-absorbed and annoying bore.)

It seems that a lot of people so overtly self-expressive say they don't care what others think of them, when actually these are some of the people that seem to care the most. Everyone wants to be special and unique, but it's not cool to try to be cool, or try not to be cool. What's cool is not to try, to just be yourself, which assumes that you've taken the trouble to find out who you are (and, hopefully, want to be), and not worry so much about what others think of you. "Validation" comes internally, not externally. It's cool to be you.

More about grades

"Evaluative instances" are supposed to be learning opportunities, but are they really? We spend hours reading and then communicating comments, questions, corrections, information, etc., and what happens when the paper goes back? It's right to the last page to see the grade, then never will the paper be seen again. That is if the paper was picked up at all. When we hand back exams and papers for review, we think of it as the last real learning opportunity for those concepts. You look at it as an opportunity to get more points. When you come to the office before or after a test/assignment, we hope that we can help you learn something. You look at it as an opportunity to get more points. When we conduct a class, it is with the hope that some knowledge and/or skills may be improved. You look at it as an opportunity to get more points. For many of you, then, we seem to be at cross purposes. We entered the professional to help people learn things we care about. Some, maybe many of you, entered college to get the highest grades with the lowest effort in order to attain a degree that will make you more money. Cynical? Perhaps.

We really don't care about your grades. We just sometimes pretend to. I suppose they do serve as tools in the carrots-and-sticks sense, and there are dimensions of equity, closure, and tradition involved. But in general, they take away from what we really want to do with our teaching, yet we understand that "the man" needs a scorecard. Too bad, as it would be so much better if the students would leave the temple only when they have snatched the pebbles.

451

It has gotten to the point that at some public schools, the costs of the books may rival and even exceed the costs of the class. Many instructors in choosing texts will now consider the cost to the student as a primary selection criterion, but still it may be difficult to find even a paperback for under three figures. Why does this happen?

The model used by publishers is broken. If you need proof, look at the profitability of the textbook divisions and the consolidation of the industry. Textbook publishers are bleeding, so they raise the price of texts and shorten the cycles, and now new texts are coming out in as little as two years (and often "predated," so that you may see 2010 copyrights released early in 2009). There are a number of factors here. Importantly, a book may be resold many times to reappear frequently as a used copy (I'm told a book averages 9 turns). Add in borrowing (and now renting), legal or more typically illegal copying, and the publishers are lucky to supply 10% of the demand for texts with new books. Granted, publishers themselves obtain used copies and will resell them, but this is only modestly beneficial for them. Now factor in the small production runs not only for reduced demand but for "special interest" classes (as opposed to the big lecture, multi-section broad appeal classes), as well as the costs involved in personal selling, promotion (including promotional and free desk copies), distribution, administration, warehousing and handling, publishing costs (writers, editors, permissions, printing, graphics, etc.), overhead, etc., and these publishers are on hard times.

So they try other options, like on-line versions, which are very inexpensive to distribute and may be offered at perhaps half the price of the hard copy, but students want their hard copy because of the portability as well as the easy of reading (Who wants to read a computer screen for hours at a time?) Online distribution won't work, in my opinion, until an appliance makes it attractive for readers. So if somebody comes up with an iPod device for print, maybe. (And I'm sure there must be lots of people working on this. If not, there's another billion-dollar idea I just gave someone) Publishers also offer professors "a la carte" versions of a text that can be built to order, where only certain chapters may be included to reduce the cost. Some professors do this, but it is not a popular option yet.

So the price of books keeps going up, and students then seek lower-priced options on Amazon, eBay, and cheaper options than the school bookstore, so the bookstores and publishers then increase their mark-ups, impelling students to seek cheaper options, and before you know it it's heading up toward a thousand dollars a semester to buy new books for a full-time student.

Now don't even get me started on the you-need-a-car-to-get-to-work-and-need-to-work-to- get-a-car thing.

Quitters Sometimes Win

It's the beginning of the semester, and hope springs eternal. The class looks OK, you guess, and you should be able to get a good grade. But for some of you, and it may be you, somewhere along the line things go awry. Maybe it's not your fault, but of course it is, but no need to face that demon now. The immediate need when confronted with the possibility of failure is what to do about it.

You may treat it like the funny noise in your car: turn up the sound system so you don't hear the funny noise anymore, i.e., ignore it and hope/assume it will go away. A lot of students do that and show up at the instructor's doorstep at the 11th hour inquiring what they can do to pull out of the skid. The professor is likely to spend half an hour with you going through the typical checklist of things that will lead to improved performance, spouting reassuring platitudes along the way, and a minority may actually get back on the highway. But for the majority, it will be crash and burn.

There is a fascinating subset of those that fail that seem completely oblivious to the fact that they are failing. They simply never hear the noise in the car, and seem to assume that everything will turn out fine (the instructor is too nice to flunk me, nobody gets an F, I'll come through at the end, etc., I don't know what they're thinking.) The most mystifying of these magical thinkers are the ones that disappear for most of the semester and reappear at the very end. Now you might think that they would approach the instructor with their particular sad story, and we've heard a wide variety of these, some of which have validity, to somehow make-up or account for the lost work/grades. But these Polyannas just show up at the end of the semester, having missed most of the tests and assignments, and blithely complete the final tests/assignments, with no real chance of passing the course. Part of me admires the stalwart and stoic march to certain doom. Mostly I just scratch my head in wonder.

However, for most that fail, there comes a time when you hear the noise in the car and realize that something is wrong. While the obvious advice is to see the instructor or take other remedial actions as soon as possible, I'd like to offer another perspective. Everything is trade-offs, costs/benefits, expected values, etc., it seems. In this context it means that you should ask yourself what is the cost of doing what it takes to give yourself a chance to get through the class successfully (however you define that), what is the probability that those efforts will be successful, and what are the costs/benefits to be gained by doing other things. In simple terms, sometimes it's better to quit something that probably won't work out to do better on something that will. And here's the payoff to all of this: don't quit at the end, quit at the beginning. We don't like giving out bad grades, but it's really a shame when someone has put a lot of time into it. After all, you could have stayed home and done nothing to get an "F." So my point is, when you hear the noise, fix it immediately or sell the car right away.