Happy Halloween

Another Halloween, but not much to say this year as I've already written about it a couple of times.  But as I see the costumes this year (Does anybody make their own costume anymore?), it makes me think about the costumes I wear almost every day, as do many people.

Each night/morning I take a gander at the emails before I start getting ready for work.  I answer the important ones and leave the others for when I get into work, but I also look at my calendar to see what appointments I have.  This tells me what I should wear to work.  Yes, I look out the window to see the weather, try and guess how broken the HVAC system will be in the office, but really focus on whom I'm likely to see that day.  Perhaps oddly, other than no meetings, which rarely happens, the lowest fashion priority is for meeting with faculty.  Business faculty, with the exception of economists, of course, are pretty good dressers compared to the rest of the college, but that is a pretty low bar, as college faculty are not exactly known for being fashion forward. The Arts and Sciences (a cheap sports coat with jeans is "formal") and Social Work (hush puppies and peasant dresses) faculty are probably the worst, with education (clothes older than the students) not far behind.  Professional schools do a little better, usually coming in around "bargain-bin business casual," more or less. Of course I'm exaggerating in the vain attempt to be mildly amusing, but in general faculty do tend to live up, or perhaps more accurately live down, to our refugee-fashion stereotypes.

There is a lot of difference of opinion about the importance and meaning of wardrobe for faculty, but most professors do give it some thought. For example, many professors try to connote images about the course and themselves to students through dress.  Those desired images might be, "I'm approachable," "I'm serious about this class/my job," or any number of "non-verbal messages."  Students unquestionably respond to these cues.

Faculty also react to their "corporate climate" in using their colleagues as reference points.  You usually don't see a faculty member wearing torn jeans, a tee shirt, and flip-flops (unless it's the old guy with long, gray hair and the Grateful Dead shirt) if everyone else is in suits, and vice-versa.  While there is a lot of conformity, there are those who delight in non-conformity.  Just as so many artists try way too hard to project an image of the "artiste," so too do many academics work at cultivating the image of the iconoclast.  Of course, academia does tend to be a haven for some rather odd ducks anyway.

Faculty dress for success doesn't work in the usual dress-for-the-job-you-want-to-have manner. In business, the farther up the hierarchy, the better the dress, but in academia, the higher the faculty rank, the poorer the dress.  In other words, it depends on what side of the Great Divide (tenure) one is on.  In working towards tenure, dress like everyone else, or maybe a touch above, but with tenure, do what you want.  Adjuncts (the great unwashed) just want to keep their abusive jobs (or sometimes suffer from the delusion that they may be hired full-time, which is, sadly, usually just a pipe-dream if you don't have a doctorate), and ironically typically are the best dressers.  Perhaps this is simply because they're coming from work at real jobs, or more simply aren't members of the nerd class that so many of us faculty members are.

Oh look, three meetings tomorrow.  Better wear an ill-fitting suit.

Hugs

There's not enough good huggin' happening, which is kind of surprising since there's so much hugging going on.  Even more surprising is that it's the between-gender hugging that's the problem.  Women hug each other with no self-consciousness whatsoever and everything seems natural and fine.  Men hug each other with total self-consciousness and are perfectly  fine with the awkward cross-armed back slap, secure in the knowledge that awkward is perfectly fine, if not desirable, between men.  But it's the between-gender hug that is the problem.

A hug has three major components:  tightness, duration, and location, which are constrained by the perceived relationship between huggers, the situation, and the attitudes towards hugging. As this is just a blog and the topic one in which interest may wane in proportion with length, though capable of lengthy treatise, the treatment will be mercifully brief.

Tightness is generally not a problem, as most people can gauge the degree of mutual affection relatively accurately, the exception being the young, flirtatious, or lecherous.  Duration is only slightly more problematic and occurs when there is an imbalanced assessment of the closeness of the relationship, a lack of understanding of the social situation, or differing attitudes about hugging in general.  However, it is the hug type that is the real problem.

So while most can successfully navigate the appropriate grasp and duration of a hug, are aware of the social situation, and share similar perceptions about the relationship and attitudes about hugging, the most difficult dynamics may the for the hugs exchanged between the genders.  I don't think that most people have trouble with relatives, as we've been hugging parents and siblings for most of our lives and pretty much have it down.  It's hugging friends and those that are more than friends that's the problem for many.  One of the most difficult hugs is the spouse/significant other of a friend, or the friendly-but-not-too-friendly situation.  Maybe there is some jealousy potential, but it's really a matter of balancing the respect for the friend and his/her relationship while showing welcoming, acceptance, and platonic affection for the spouse, and vice-versa if you're the spouse.  But like a first kiss when dating, once you've done it, it becomes easy and comfortable.  Like most situational hugs, they are learning experiences and quickly solved, if not mastered.  But what about those who just don't know how to hug appropriately?

The tendency is to think of "overhuggers" (too much grasping) as the prime offenders, which is probably true, but there are a lot of "underhuggers" (backsides pushed too far back requiring too much lean in) out there as well.  To understand each of those, we have to understand the proper hug between the genders.  Of course, an improper hug is any hug that communicates something other than what is intended or appropriate, with the closeness (location) of the hug the primary offender.  In general, the closer the relationship, the closer the hug, situation permitting.  This refers primarily to the southernmost point of contact as well as arm/hand positions.  For friends and spouses of friends, shoulders are fine, with elbows at the sides, and hands up high towards the back and sides of shoulders, with perhaps a one-armed light pat across the back.  For close friends and relatives, chests may touch lightly, with hands meeting or patting at the middle or upper back. For spouses and significant others, navels may touch, chests touch more tightly, and arms may wrap around with hands as low as the waist, with some pulling towards each other.  It is not appropriate in public to press pelvises together or have hands below the waist.

As an aside, there are some promiscuous huggers out there, who will hug people they barely know.  I guess if they meet another serial hugger it's OK, but for the rest of us, hands off- you've got to earn that hug.

Simon Says

Training sessions for most computer learning tend to be adult versions of Simon Says, where the trainer clicks things and the trainees try to copy the clicking so that the same images appear on their screens, not really having much appreciation for how the images appeared. Should anything actually be learned, it will certainly be forgotten by the time the software actually has to be used.  Of course, you might get a 20 page handout of instructions and screen shots, and it's possible that the answer you seek a month after the training session might actually be in there somewhere.  Equally likely, though, is that the system will have changed by then.

User-Unfriendly

Who was the genius who put the save button next to the undo button?

Ore-nos

Golden Chocolate Creme Oreos. A bad idea.  I can understand trying to squeeze out a little more market share at the fringes, and can tolerate coloring the filling for Halloween, Christmas, etc.  But those things that don't taste or look like Oreos shouldn't be called Oreos.