The Adventure Begins

So I'm back...with a brand new invention.

After much soul searching, a year of diving into the murky depths of academic administration and meeting with many, many professors and administrators and maintenance personnel; after buying a house that I am convinced was the wrong one for me and my family; after spending the year wallowing in budget reductions, work place drama, higher education literature which strongly suggests the end of higher education as we know it, and coming close to losing what was left of my post-dissertation brain, my wife and I put our collective feet down.

It began this way:

PT. I

I was asked by the chair of a committee that reported directly to the president to join him and a few others on a team that looked at the ins and outs of our university.  We explored the literature on the rise and failures of higher education, many folks calling for a technological takeover, the pricing bubble, and falling value of the degree coinciding with the rising costs of the degrees, etc.  And then we met with literally hundreds of folks in and off campus...professors, adjuncts, administrators, board members, etc. As you can imagine, the members of this team were not popular on campus - more than once I was asked, "Does your own mother even like you?"  But in this, one fact resurfaced over and over and over again.  And that is this:  the sticker price for four years of college for my young child, at a measly 5% annual tuition increase, would be upwards of $350,000 for four years.
As such, I am all but positive that there will be a disruptive intersection within the next 2-10 years.

Pt.II

My wife and I were driving home from church a few months ago and out of the blue she said, "we are no longer allowed to pray for poor people, hungry people, or orphans until we are giving money to the poor, feeding the hungry, and in the process of adopting a child."

Really profound spiritual moment for me.

Pt. III

After working through that profound statement, I began to be highly reflective, looking for ways my actions were not congruent with my actions.  One of the most glaring was in regards to my student loans.  Owing other people money.  I counseled students on the horrors of debt and I looked up to those rare souls who do not owe other folks a nickel.  I ranted and railed to anyone who would listen about my own educational loans and the financial burden that they put my a young family (our minimum payment is right at $1000 a month) but I simply wasn't doing anything about them.  We were paying the minimums each month while also eyeing new vehicles, a better houses, etc.  Oh yeah, and my loans were on a 30 year note.  Seriously.

So my wife and I sent our little one to my folks house and headed to a local coffee shop.  While there, we focused on two truths:  We owe a high five-figure number in student loans between the two of us.  Besides our home, that was the only money we owed someone else.  Knowing that higher education - where we both work - will continue to be highly unsettled in the very near future, it is incredibly irresponsible to carry so much debt baggage.  Additionally, we both come from houses of high debt and we felt that this was a golden opportunity to put a stick in the ground and say "from this point forward, we're going to live differently."  

So we made a plan.  I signed a part-time faculty contract to help with extra money.  We sold our house and we're moving into a student housing complex on campus.  We've committed to having these loans gone in a year.  We're calling it our Opportunity.


Part IV

Another sense has take over.  Our original conversations were about getting to good financial footing.  Not owing anyone anything.  But the further along we have swam out from shore, the more something equally important has emerged.

I got into my work with college students for just that: to work with college students.  And as many student affairs workers lament, the longer you work in student affairs, they less and less time you spend with students and the more and more time you spend romancing spreadsheets, assessment, running from meeting to meeting, and the like.  This has become my my mission for carrying through with this plan.  I am looking forward to interacting with students once again.  Laughing at their crazy ideas.  Lifting weights next to them in their fancy new gym.  Being annoyed at 2:00 am when their parties really get going...extending their learning outside of the classroom as they watch me be a father and a husband.

I'm a pretty introverted guy.  I'm really looking forward to calling my own bluff.  To move in with hundreds of neighbors that I don't know and that I've never met and get to know them on a personal level.  I know that this upcoming year will be long, difficult, exhausting, and a significant challenge.  But I can't think of a better person in the world to have on my side in this adventure than my wife and I can't think of a better place to be launching out on this adventure.

So here we go...    

 
 

Everybody

The end of the semester is very near.  Folks get a bit nihilistic in their thoughts and actions...fatigue will do that to you.

My good friend texted me this today and I laughed out loud.  Not an "lol" or an "LOL" but a good old fashioned, hearty laugh.

Good stuff.

With all due respect...you're dumber than me.

Here is my plea to all administrators.  I am speaking to those within the academy specifically but this message also extends to those who work in real jobs in industry and commerce.

In short, trust your people and their expertise.  Don't let your default setting be dismissive or condescending.  In thought industries like higher education, you hire folks for not only their ability to process and render data, but also to interpret it, look at it in new ways, operationalize it, and distill it down in easily digestible chunks (usually called high points or executive summaries).  When you ask someone with expertise in an area to run reports and give you a recommendation based on the confluence of the data and their expertise, don't let your first response be, "....ummmmm...naaa.  I don't think so."

If you don't trust someone's expertise in the area they were hired for, do the right thing by both them and the institution and move them somewhere where they will be more effective.  But don't be dismissive.  Or even more importantly, if you have an answer to a question that you want found, point your team in that direction as their task.  Make the answer you want achieved the goal of the exercise and not the mystery.

I'm a qualitative researcher by trade so I tend to have a significant bias...but often, the story is in the details.  When the details are pressed and filtered and regressed down until they are flat (that was my biased "gotcha" toward some types of quantitive analysis), there is often no longer a story to be told.

And I'll take a narrative over a number any day.

Be respectful and remember that trust works both ways.

Dizz.    

40 Hours in Heaven

I'm always fascinated at our inability to revere or trust the past.  The newest, latest trends/research/way of doing things cycle in and out and if history serves us correctly, we have a habit of forgetting why we are doing the things that we are doing.

In the case of higher education, I think that now is an appropriate time to be looking at why we are doing what it is we are doing and how that is translating to our actions.  For instance, Super College might be interested in educating students towards critical thinking, a broad understanding of the liberal arts, and service to others.  I think an interesting and important question that must be asked then is whether or not a 128 hour degree plan is the best way to get there.  And so forth...

Anyway, this is tangental to the purpose of today's post.  My good friend James sent me this article today and it was both fascinating, true, and ironic.  It was fascinating in that I am currently wrestling through one of the more difficult seasons of burnout I have ever had.  Not totally uncommon for this time of year for anyone who works in education, but this year was especially long and full of challenges.  It makes sense that the research would suggest that because of the pace and schedule I've kept this year, i'm professionally and personally useless right now.  My wife would probably agree.

Circling back to my first paragraph, it is amusing that we seem to work insane hours and work even nuttier life styles, abandoning the traditional work week.  One step removed, it would suggest that 40 hours and five days a week were either arbitrary or for lazy folks.  Yet the research seems to be pretty strong in opposition to such hubris.

So in honor of this article, I'm heading to bed.

Dizz.
       

Providence is shenanigans.

It's probably been the weather...the overly hot pre-summer days.  Folks here in Texas are still scarred from last summer's screening of "Hell: The Movie" and I think most are a bit weary of another summer of 90 or so days of triple digit heat.

As graduation approaches both the high school and college crowd here in my little college town, the feel good verse of the bible is really being taken for a ride.

Jeremiah 29:11 reads:
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

It is on seemingly every graduation card, used in every end-of-program speech, and popping up on email signatures of both young and old.  And quite frankly, I find it's use annoying.  

A quick story.  

I was a bit of a romantic back in high school - I loved writing good letters, poems, songs, etc.  This was before email and the twitters and so letters were more than just letters...done well, they were works of art.  I took great pride in the crafting good letters, perfect mix tapes, and writing overly dramatic plays (that I never seemed to finish).  Fast forward to now, where I have been married for many years to the love of my life.  I still write now, just not nearly as often.  Would it be fair for a stranger off the street to pick up one of these letters, read it, and begin telling the world how much I love them?  I would think not...the letter was written to a specific person in a specific time frame and with a specific purpose.  

As such, I'm annoyed at how often folks adopt the Lord's statement to Jeremiah.    Quite frankly, it has nothing to do with them.  In fact, think how different the starving child in Haiti must read that verse.  Or how the aging abuse victim reads that verse.  Or the young cancer victim.  It's almost insulting to adopt that verse as a universal statement of God's plans to make - insert yourself here - wealthy and give you hope.  Quite often, it doesn't work that way.  

And that brings me down the path of some thoughts I've been having for some time.  I'm somewhat of a recovering Calvinist.  In two sentences (or less), I always identified with Derek Webb's notion that God is not some "cosmic janitor," racing around cleaning up people's messes while simultaneously trying to get some of his will done.  I've never really taken to the message that we have much of a say in what God chooses to do...because he's God.  Pretty simple.  If he chooses to predestine a few and torture the rest, so be it.  Not a whole lot I can do about it.  Now obviously, this view does not fare well, especially here in the United States where any successes we have or do not have are theoretically tied to our desire, fortitude, work ethic, and "want-to." 

 I have found in my own faith tradition, we like the idea of God having plans for us as long as they match our own desires, hopes, and dreams.  When all is well, God is planning for us.  When things go askew, we have somehow managed to mess it up. 

I've been talking to students who are on the eve of graduation and one of my favorite questions to ask is, "So now what?"  To a person, nearly every student at my faith based university says that they are really praying for God's wisdom and direction on what they should do next.  Take a job or go go grad school.  Work a summer job and chill or start something new next Monday.  Interestingly, I live very much the same way.  

Several years ago, I was the finalist for a wonderful job in a new city far away.  Dream job.  My wife and I prayed that God would just make things clear.  Make them easy.  So we would know beyond a shadow of a doubt.  After much prayer, we just knew that we would get either a mega-offer or that I would get turned down and God would be "letting us know" what he wanted for our lives.  We got neither.  I got a medium offer.  Good, but not great.  Good enough in theory...not good enough to pack up and head across the country for.  So I turned it down and we were left with some lingering questions as to what God wanted us to do.  Had we done the right thing?  Was I being a snob?  Was God calling us somewhere and I had just thwarted his will?  Blah, blah, blah.  

Several years, and many important decisions later, I think that I am losing belief in the idea of providence.  This idea of God having a stake in all major decisions in our lives.  I believe that lightening strikes...but I'm beginning to doubt whether God throws the bolts.  

In fact, I've come to believe that this idea of praying for God's providence in certain situations, i.e.: 

    "We found a great deal on our big new house...it was a total God thing!"

    "We're just praying on whether or not we should move to a new college."

    "I just don't think God wants me to go to grad school right now..."

and so on is passing the buck at best, and at worst, a total lack of willingness to be accountable for our own decisions and actions.  See, I've found that I'm quite the wimp when it comes to making big decisions.  Should we buy a house?  Should I take that job?  Should I_____?  Those decisions are so much easier to stomach when I can pawn them off on some cosmic deity carrying out a big game of chess.    

I think at the end of the day, God cares much less about the college I'm working for but instead cares that I'm serving him.  At work.  In the drive-thru.  At the dry cleaners.  And he would probably like me to quit co-opting his message to Jeremiah for my own sense of feel-goodness and placation.  Instead, I can make hard decisions, frightening decisions, and sometimes family-tree changing decisions...being prayerful the whole way.  And then taking personal ownership of the rewards/consequences.  

God never told me he would prosper me and not harm me.

So I forge on, praying for his guidance and blessing...hoping that I receive them.  And using prayer as a reminder to continue to be Christ-minded when making major decisions.  And remembering that God may just not care what I'm doing or where I'm doing it...but how I'm doing whatever it is I'm doing.  

                    

The Ragamuffin

About 10 years ago, I had a pretty heavy infatuation with the band Caedmon's Call and one of their chief song writers Derek Webb.  I continue to be highly influenced by Andrew Peterson, a singer/songwriter who is a highly gifted writer and performer.  If I was to reflectively traverse backwards into the deepest echoes of my mind, I believe I would find that Derek and Andy have served as pillars to my much of my personal/philosophical/epistemological foundation.   (Phil Anselmo of Pantera and Mike Ness of Social D are probably pretty thick back in there as well, so most of the time, I like to leave the caves to the spiders, bats, and sparrows).

Early on in my obsessions with Derek and Andy, they both often cited Rich Mullins as one of their most important influences.  Naturally, I checked out some of his music and writings.  Turns out Rich Mullins was a one in a million, modern-day prophet who seems to have grasped - and most importantly lived - the message of Jesus better than most.

Over the holidays I was visiting my folks house and my mother was cleaning out her home library.  In a cluttered pile on her kitchen table was an old copy of Rich Mullins biography An Arrow Pointing to Heaven.  It is a truly remarkable story and contains many of the most profound and powerful quotes from Rich's writings, speeches, and concerts. I read it many years ago and it became the seminal work of Christian thought in my mind (yes, I know...seminal is a rather dramatic word...but it has been that important to me in my faith).  I started re-reading it this past week and it may mean more to me know than it did back then.

Here are two powerful quotes that I have picked up thus far.  

     To a group of Christian Writers:
   
     I would like to encourage you to stop thinking of what you're doing as          ministry.  Start realizing that your ministry is how much of a tip you leave when you eat in a restaurant; when you leave a hotel room whether you leave it all messed up or not; whether you flush your own toilet or not.  Your ministry is the way you love people.  And you love people when you write something that is encouraging to them, something challenging.  You love people when you call your wife and say, "I'm going to be late for dinner," instead of letting her burn the meal.  You love people when maybe you cook a meal for your wife sometime because you know she's really tired.  Loving people - being respectful toward them - is much more important than writing or doing ministry (or being a professor or doing the business of higher education...)...if you are a Christian, ministry is just an accident of being alive.  It just happens.  And I don't know that you can divide your life up and say, "This is my ministry" and "This is my other thing," because the fruits of Christianity affect everybody around us. (175)

and

The biggest problem with life is that it's just daily.  You can never get so healthy that you don't have to continue to eat right.  Because every day I have to make the right choices about what I eat and how much exercise I need.  Spiritually we're in much the same place.  I go on these binges where it's like "I'm going to memorize the five books of Moses."  I expect to be able to live off the momentum.  The only thing that praying today is good for is today.  So...it's not what you did, and not what you say you're going to do, it's what you do today. (28)

Awesome.

Be excellent to each other,

Dizz



   
  
     

Here We Go

One of the more important skills in professional fighting is the cover up.  It is not as flashy as fancy kicks or as slick as a ju-jitsu transition but many times, it is the skill that allows you to survive.  Literally.  When you get your bell rung, when you're out of gas, or just out of synch and need the round to be over to reset your bearings, the cover up is key.

But it is a reactive posture and to the average viewer, it is chicken.  Why cover up?  Punch your way out of trouble or get knocked out like a man.  Wimps cover up.  Too many fighters cover up way to much because they are scared of getting hit and when you're covering up, you can't be offensive.  You can't damage your opponent.  You can't win.

I feel like I spent most of 2011 covering up.  Not being offensive.  Not throwing any punches.  Complaining.  Whining.  Letting the world dictate my mood, my work, my passion, and my responsibilities.  Up against the fence, hands over my face, waiting for the round to be over.

But the bell rang, I survived the round, and I'm back on my feet.    

Here we go.  2012 will be an awesome year.  I'm determined.

There will be many changes to the blog this upcoming year - I will be detailing them in the coming days/weeks.  There are some pretty exciting things on the horizon and I am looking forward to sharing them!

A few quotes to start the New Year:

"Finally, if we want to be at peace, we will have to waste less, spend less, use less, want less, need less.  The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful."

Wendel Berry Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, p. 92

"Trying to draw the line where we are trying to draw it, between carelessness and brutality, is like insisting that falling is flying - until you hit the ground - and then trying to outlaw hitting the ground."

Wendel Berry Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community, p.141. 

"Institutions all too frequently choose a timid course of incremental, reactive change because they view a more strategically driven transformation process as too risky.  They are worried about making a mistake, about heading in the wrong direction or failing...many mature organizations such as universities would prefer the risk of missed opportunity to the danger of heading into the unknown."

Richard DeMillo, Abelard to Apple, p. 264

"Like the Bisho of Perugia in 1558, every university administrator in the world would not be faced with a modern-day version of the Jesuit priest Nicholas, whoudl would point out that "if we use Sasso's book, they will say what our students have learned, they have learned from Sasso, not from us."  MIT ushered in the era of open courseware."

Richard DeMillo, Abelard to Apple, p. 179

Welcome to the Jungle, 

Dizz