In which Piers Ponders Institutional Collapse

Looking around, and I think especially in the wake of some deeply disappointing revelations about things that have happened at Carolina over the past two decades, I begin to wonder what institution, if any, can be trusted.  I know, I know . . . as I write that, I shake my head.  Of course no institution can be trusted completely.  When in human history have we been able to rely on the edifices we construct?  It seems to me, though, that the more "advanced" we get in terms of interconnectedness and dependence on large systems, the more vulnerable we are when those systems break.  From where I'm sitting, I cannot help but notice the following:


1.  My department has a crisis of leadership.
2.  My university has a crisis of leadership and direction.
3.  The state university system that employs me doesn't even pretend to treat its member institutions with equity.
4.  My alma mater, where I spent those eight wonderful years in graduate school, has taken a mortal blow that shows a hollow core.  It breaks my heart.
5.  My academic discipline is intellectually and institutionally adrift, and though the grandees at the top of the heap may blame state legislatures, etc., etc., the damage is almost entirely self-inflicted.
6.  The national and state governments have proven inept in almost every way possible (this last is the least surprising).
7.  Church leadership, both at local and denominational levels, has Macbethitis:  full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.
8.  Knowledge industries like publishing and news:  hollowed out and collapsing.
9.  The education schools that turn out the teachers who are teaching my children:  F

For starters.  These are merely my observations, and I recognize that large-scale trends are always mitigated by individual examples of excellence.  I could name plenty in my discipline, and even in my academic department, who are doing brilliant and rigorous work.  They are generally, however, not the ones in charge.  I have always been a skeptic, though perhaps not a vociferous one.  I look around and see that I have been mistaken to abandon that posture, at least when it comes to trusting the big bureaucratic systems that appear to control more and more of my life.

You know what they say about Knoxville

I remember how about five, maybe six years ago there was a major branding initiative that brought all UT system campuses under the same general graphical representation, complete with logos that were similar across the three major campuses and other institutes:  Knoxville, Chattanooga, Martin.

Now I learn that UTK has decided to set all that aside in favor of its own branding:

If they want to tie the identity of their university to their football program, more power to them.  I trust the boosters will love it.

I guess that means this branch of the university system is also free to choose its own independent logo too, huh?

Among the things I am deciding

1.  Teaching five classes in one term isn't happening again for me. They can't pay me enough to compensate for the extra work, and I am far less effective in the things I'm trying to do.

2.  I'm going to have to do something different--completely different--for my composition classes, because I've had enough of the way I've been doing it.  I am so very tired of the grind of that heavy lifting every week.  I never used to understand the griping about teaching comp . . . I do now.

3.  Withdrawal from some of the other facets of campus life is a necessity for me if I'm going to get the writing done that I need and want to get done.

4.  There are some sacrifices I'm not willing to make for the sake of my work.

41

Getting into middle age has its disadvantages, I will not lie.  I don't have as much energy as I used to, and I'm more impatient with stupid people and stupid things. I have more lines in my face, more gray in my hair, more quirks in my behavior.

On the other hand, being an older man means I don't have much left to prove. I don't get nervous about much any more in public settings. I don't feel the need to explain myself. I have perspective on things that I didn't even five years ago.  A lot of knowledge about myself, hard-won and precious. Also naps.

I was sitting at the bar the other night and some young guys were in there all peacocking for the cute little bartender. She didn't care, wasn't impressed, had a job to do . . . but they couldn't help themselves. I was glad to let them do their best . . . and fail. I just talked to my buddy and minded my own business.

Yup, glad to still be around.

Adventures in Parenting, Vol. 45

or, the closest I've ever been to fisticuffs.

I watched the kids badgering and taunting Number One son as he walked over to the sideline where I had been standing, watching the third of three soccer games for the day, this time of Little Red who isn't all that little anymore but the name has stuck at least for now--that red hair making him instantly recognizable not only to his father but to anyone who has been around this family for more than two or three minutes.

Number one was not doing well, I could see. He was hunched up and had the knit he gets in his brow when he is worked up about something.  So, I talked to him about it. Those kids had thrown a football at his head and had generally been jerks to him.  I wanted to intervene for his sake, but there wasn't anything I could do about it, and what's more, he does need to defend himself sometimes. That all changed a few minutes later when he had to go to the bathroom and had to walk past where those same kids were playing.  I told him it would be fine and I would be watching.  And sure enough, as he tried to walk past them, just as his back was to them, they pegged him with the football. I took off after him and told him to grab the ball.  He did, whereupon they jumped him and kicked him.

At that point I may have shed the usual self-control.  I grabbed the ball, and shouted at the kids to take me to their parents.  Well, they didn't need to, because he had heard the commotion, and as I approached the person it was clear that he was not prone to see things my way.  All he saw was a stranger shouting at his children.  I was hot and righteously angry, though, having watched them size up my son and deliberately target him, so though he leaned heavily on me and tried the whole intimidation-by-implicit-ass-kicking tactic (my thought, which I vocalized, was, "are you kidding me?"), I did not back down.  At that point, the heated voices had gotten the attention of others, and a casual friend of ours, JM, had to step between us and physically usher me away.

It took me a long time to calm down, though on the outside I regained my composure. In retrospect, I should of course have refrained from shouting at the other children--could have easily dealt with the situation without anger. But I saw red when I saw what they did.  I'm not yet so old that I don't have an ornery streak on occasion.  That said, I'm glad a much bigger man intervened between me and the other fellow . . . I would have lost that fight.