Thoughts from Rose Avenue

The Wheel Goes Around

A colleague of mine happened to walk by while I was in the middle of a conversation. As he passed, he heard me say, “The thing that bothers me most about teaching is the profound effect I can have on my students’ lives.”

That was enough for him to abandon any pretense of not eavesdropping. He stopped abruptly, stared uncomprehendingly, and said, “That’s the thing that bothers you?!”

Of course, what he heard me say was the opposite of what any teacher is supposed to say. Let me add, in case your reaction is the same as my colleague’s, that I also value, respect, and take seriously the opportunity that teaching presents to change students’ lives for the better. But I also have to recognize that I’m not perfect, and that’s where the problem lies.

I was raised and educated by people who meant well, who wanted nothing but the best for me. And yet, they misunderstood me so profoundly that I was seriously broken before I even left elementary school. (My parents sent me into psychotherapy when I was nine years old, and that therapy continued, on and off, for another fifty years.) When I eventually took a job as a teacher, it was at the college level, where I was at much less risk of causing lasting trauma to my students. Still, I was constantly aware that the decisions I made could have lifetime repercussions. My giving a student a bad grade could make it impossible for him to be accepted into another school. My dropping a student from a class could end her eligibility for financial aid. My criticism of a student’s work could discourage that student from pursuing a career that might eventually have been rewarding and successful.

We teachers, of course, strive to be impartial and neutral. We assure ourselves that we didn’t give that student a bad grade; the student earned that bad grade. We didn’t criticize a student’s work because of our own biases; we did so because the work had clearly been done carelessly. Without those rationalizations, I wouldn’t be able to go in each day and do my job. And yet, I always felt an underlying uneasiness about the power that I held.

What provokes these thoughts right now is a file I just found in the depths of my hard drive, mysteriously called “Wheel.” It turns out to be a transcript of a dream I had in 1996, a time when I was in turmoil about the meaning and value of my life. I almost never write down my dreams, so this one must have felt especially powerful and significant. In it, I’m a student in an elementary school class. I’m pretty sure this scene never happened in real life, but here’s the way it happened in my dream.

TEACHER: Okay, class, we’re going to play a game now. This is a wheel with numbers on it, from 1 to 36. Before I spin the wheel, I’m going to ask each of you to tell me what number you think the wheel will land on. Whoever predicts the right number will win a prize. Are you ready? [Points to the first student.] What’s your guess?

STUDENT: Six.

TEACHER: Good!

She writes the number on the blackboard next to the student’s name. As she works her way around the room, recording each student’s answer, I’m frantically scribbling on a piece of paper, trying to figure out the best way to predict which number the wheel is going to stop at. I quickly realize that the math I know doesn’t allow me to solve the problem, so I start to think about whether there’s some way at least to approximate where the wheel is going to stop. By the time the teacher calls on me, I’ve just about concluded that the task is impossible.

TEACHER: Mark, what’s your guess?

MARK: I don’t know.

TEACHER: What do you mean, you don’t know? Give me a number.

MARK: You didn’t give us enough information.

TEACHER: Information for what?

MARK: To solve the problem. It’s as if I said, “I have 18 apples and I give some of them to you. How many do I have left?” There’s not enough information there to answer the question.

TEACHER: But this isn’t a math problem. It’s a game. You’re just supposed to guess.

MARK: Based on what?

TEACHER: Based on nothing. Just say any number that comes to mind. Pick a number you like. Pick a number that feels lucky.

MARK: So I’m just supposed to pick a number out of the air, and if the wheel lands on my number, I win — even though I didn’t do anything to figure out the right number?

TEACHER: That’s right.

MARK: What’s the point of that?

TEACHER: There’s no point. It’s a game. It’s fun.

MARK: But my opinion of what number’s going to come up doesn’t matter. It’s worthless; it doesn’t mean anything. What matters is what number is actually going to come up.

TEACHER: Mark, you’re wasting everybody’s time. I don’t know why you think you’re so special that you have to get an edge over everybody else.

MARK: [Starting to cry.] I don’t think I’m special. I’m just trying to understand the game.

TEACHER: I can’t believe you’re being a crybaby over something so simple. Everybody else in the class has given me a number. If you can’t give me a number right now, I’m going to send you to the principal’s office.

They say that when you have a dream, you’re not just the “me” character; you’re every character. The events in this dream perfectly encapsulate what school felt like to me as a child. But I fear that now, in adulthood, I could just as easily be that teacher.

Posted October 13, 2020 by Mark S
Category: Education

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Game / Show

The tenant in my next-door neighbor’s house apparently likes to watch “Family Feud.” For hours at a time, as I sit at my desk next to an open window, I hear Steve Harvey’s voice echoing contestants’ answers, followed each time by the drone of a buzzer or the rapid striking of a bell. Eventually, one of the two competing families wins a round, at which point the team members cheer, the audience applauds, and a celebratory fanfare plays.

I’m OK with most of this. The part that irritates me, though, is the fanfare. Unlike Groucho Marx’s 1950s game show “You Bet Your Life,” where there was an actual band on set, “Family Feud” relies on recorded music. Hence, every time that piece of victory music plays, it’s exactly the same, down to the last little tag-note. Just as a spoken word, when repeated sufficiently, begins to lose its meaning, this snippet of music feels increasingly arbitrary. Cheering is a natural response to winning; repeatedly playing a canned music clip is not.

My reaction to “Family Feud” reminds me that I often don’t perceive things the way I’m supposed to. I’m presumably intended to experience a team’s win as a single, heightened moment, with the cheers, applause, and music constituting an integrated whole. Instead, what I perceive is two essentially unrelated events happening at the same time — the team celebrating onstage, and a technician in a control room mechanically punching a button on an audio console.

Another example of my failure to perceive things the way I’m meant to is makeup. People use makeup to alter the way others see their face. They may use concealer and foundation to smooth out their complexion; bronzer and blush to enhance their bone structure; eyebrow pencil to fill in and shape their brows; eyeliner, mascara, and eye shadow to accent their eyes; and lipstick to emphasize and perhaps reshape their lips. I know I’m supposed to view the result as a single, integrated face, and consider that to be the person’s appearance. But what I actually see is two separate things: a living human face, and a layer of cosmetics that obscures parts of it. Essentially, I’m seeing a person wearing a less blatant version of a Halloween mask. Of course, I have nothing against Halloween masks — it can be fun to change one’s appearance and take on a different persona — but I can’t go so far as to look at a mask and take it to be who the person is.

(A seemingly unrelated side note: When I teach Photoshop classes, I caution my students that, despite featuring a whole category of filters called “Sharpen,” Photoshop can’t actually sharpen anything. True sharpening would require Photoshop to have information that it doesn’t have — that is, to know what the fine details look like that are blurred out in the image.¹ Instead, Photoshop gives the illusion of sharpening by looking for edges and increasing the contrast on either side of them. In explaining this, I offer the analogy of people who use eye makeup to make their eyes appear bigger. The makeup doesn’t actually increase the size of their eyes; it can only create the illusion of larger eyes. In both cases — Photoshop and cosmetics — the illusion becomes less convincing the more closely you look.)

As in other situations I’ve described, I don’t know whether this inability to mentally merge a face with its makeup is just my own, or whether it’s shared by other people. For anyone like me who perceives makeup as an artificial barrier, however, there’s a sad irony: Presumably the person applying makeup is doing so to appear more attractive, and thereby increase the possibility of human connection. But when I meet someone who appears to be hiding behind a mask, it diminishes my ability to feel a connection with them.

I can’t leave the subject of makeup without mentioning a longtime source of bafflement: colored nail polish. If people painted their ears red or their nose green, we would consider that quite strange; but if they paint their nails red or green, it’s considered attractive and normal. In short, humans are weird.

Posted October 6, 2020 by Mark S
Category: Perception

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Boom!

Colorful chemicals in a lab, with one of the beakers emitting green smoke

When I was a precocious little preschooler, adults always used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. At first, I would say the usual things: “a doctor” or “a fireman” or “the president.” At some point, however — much to my father’s delight — my standard answer became “a scientist!”

I’d never actually met a scientist, but I knew what they did from watching TV. Scientists spent the day in a laboratory, surrounded by oddly shaped glassware containing various liquids. From among these liquids, they would choose two or more to mix together. Sometimes the mixing required an elaborate patchwork of tubes, wires, and flames. More often, however, the scientist would simply pour the selected liquids into a test tube or beaker and stir them with a glass rod. And then — magic would happen! Something entirely new would be created, something the world had never seen before. I could imagine no more satisfying way to earn a living.

A few months after this idea took hold, I suddenly realized there was a problem with it. I went to my father and asked, “When a scientist mixes chemicals together, isn’t it dangerous? What happens if the stuff in the beaker explodes?”

He calmly assured me that there was little danger of an explosion. “The scientist already knows what the chemicals are,” he said. “He has a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen when he puts them together. So if there was a chance that a certain combination of chemicals might explode, the scientist would be very careful. He’d probably start out by mixing very small amounts, and he’d use special equipment to protect himself.”

My father meant this to be reassuring, but to me it was utterly deflating. As a scientist, I’d already know what the colored liquids are? I’d be able to predict what was going to happen when I mixed them? Then what’s the point of mixing them at all? Where’s the joy of discovery? Being a scientist suddenly lost all its appeal.

Interestingly, I have no memory of any career fantasies after that. As I grew up, I lacked any vision of what I wanted to be as an adult. This condition lasted all through college. As a graduating senior, I went to the Career Services office for help in figuring out what sort of job I should look for. I took the standard battery of aptitude, personality, and interest tests, with no clear conclusion or direction. The career counselor, defeated, finally said to me, “Have you considered seeing a psychotherapist?”

Amazingly, I’ve made it to retirement without ever having had a real career. I always had a knack for assessing whatever skills I had and then finding a way to get someone to pay me to use them. I treated any employment I had as an opportunity to learn new skills, and then used those skills as a step toward doing something else. Over the course of my adult life, I’ve been hired to work as a writer, editor, producer, actor, animator, designer, composer, web developer, photo retoucher, and community college professor. I had no formal training in any of those things, but somehow I managed never to starve. Looking back on it, though, my life much more resembles my father’s version of a scientist than that of my childhood imagination. I always carefully assessed what seemed possible, what the likely outcome would be of trying this or that, and how to protect myself if anything bad happened. The people who follow a conventional career path are the ones I find amazing. When someone says, “I want to become an X,” and then invest years and money into learning how to be an X, and then they come out at the end and they’re an X, I wonder how that was possible. How did they reach such certainty about what they really wanted to do? How did they know that they really had the capacity to be good at it? How did they know that their investment was going to pay off financially? In other words, how could they have embarked on that path without knowing how it was going to turn out? For me, that seems like the equivalent of mixing chemicals together and seeing what happens. I have nothing but respect for the people who do it.

Posted October 4, 2020 by Mark S
Category: Careers

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People Say Things

A colleague of mine at Chabot College once asked me for a favor: He wouldn’t be able to attend the annual open meeting of the Faculty Association, at which the union officers would update us about their most recent negotiations with the college administration. Could I please attend the meeting, and then let him know afterwards what happened?

I saw him in the hallway late that afternoon, and he asked me, “So, what happened at the meeting?”

“Well,” I said, “Charlotte got up and said some things, and then she introduced Tom, who said some things. Then Dave said some things….”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “What did they say?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably nothing important, or at least nothing significant enough for me to remember.”

He looked at me as if I were an imbecile. “I thought you were going to tell me what happened at the meeting!”

“But that is what happened at the meeting,” I said. “Charlotte said some things, and then Tom said some things….”

Needless to say, he never again asked me for a similar favor. But I learned something from that conversation — namely, that he and I had different definitions of the word “happened.”

In retrospect, I admit to having been in the wrong in that situation. But I think my mistake was understandable. People say things all the time, and hardly ever does the content of what they say matter more than the fact that they said it. Think of graduation ceremonies: Apart from the handing out of diplomas, the only thing that happens is that people make speeches. The school administrators make speeches, the valedictorian and salutatorian make speeches, and a special guest VIP makes a speech. Looking back on the graduations you’ve attended, do you remember anything that any of those people said? Most likely you don’t, because what they said doesn’t matter. What matters is that oratory was delivered, preferably with an air of great significance. If nobody gave a speech, there would be no ceremony.

What is true of graduation ceremonies is true of much human interaction. Our society offers very few ways to connect with people, other than through conversation. As much as I might want to, I can’t reach out and physically touch you unless we already know each other well. I can’t gaze into your eyes or project telepathically into your mind. I can’t even sing in close harmony with you unless we both happen to be musicians who know the same songs. All I can do is talk with you, and the fact of our talking matters much more than whatever we happen to be talking about. I have been known to claim (admittedly with some hyperbole) that the true subject of any conversation is “I love you.“

There are exceptions, of course. There are plenty of interactions whose primary purpose is the transmission of information — getting directions, for example, or listening to a news report. (Clearly, the union meeting I attended should have fallen into this category.) And even in ordinary conversations, the meaning of the words has some importance. But — like the cat who ignores the fancy pet-bed you bought in favor of the cardboard box that the bed came in — I find much more satisfaction in the vessel that contains the words than in the words themselves.

I’m not sure how much of this is universal, and how much is just me. I’ve long known that my brain is wired funny, and one symptom of the miswiring is difficulty with processing spoken language. If someone is talking, I can concentrate on parsing the words for meaning, or I can relax and experience the energy of the person who is speaking, but I can’t easily do both. As you can imagine, the more I like a person, the more I tend to savor the feeling of being in their presence — which means that I’m less likely to take in the literal meaning of what they’re saying. This often proves embarrassing later, when they assume that I’ll remember something significant that they told me, and I don’t.

But it can’t all be me. Think about the last time you went to a movie with someone, and how different that was from going to see a movie by yourself. You and your companion don’t converse during the movie — at least I hope you don’t — and yet simply having that person in the seat next to you changes the nature of your experience. That impalpable element, I believe, is what gives most conversations their flavor. Writing about this makes me sad, because we’re in the midst of a pandemic in which most human contact is off-limits. Conversing by phone or screen feels empty, because information is the only thing those media can transmit. Even meeting in person falls short, because it’s hard to feel the visceral presence of someone who is masked and sitting six feet away. All we have to offer each other is words, and words are inherently unsatisfying. I long for the return of a time when meaningful things don’t just get said, but happen.

Posted October 3, 2020 by Mark S
Category: Communication

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Preface

About twenty years ago, having written a number of educational and technical books for hire, I decided that I would write a book of my own — my own thoughts, in my own voice. It would be a book of critical and philosophical essays, describing pivotal points in my life and what they led me to believe is true about the world. I had majored in philosophy in college, and I had an unusual variety of life experiences to draw from, so I felt that I was reasonably prepared to translate the lessons I’d learned into a series of entertaining but edifying personal stories.

Since you haven’t seen my name on the New York Times best-seller list, it should be obvious that the book never got written. Believe me, I tried. My problem wasn’t lack of discipline — I had been self-employed for most of my adult life, and I was in the habit of devoting my days, and most of my nights, to work. Rather, the problem was my inability to say anything that stood up to scrutiny. I’d spend a day crafting a few pages of compelling prose; then I’d read it the next day, cry “This is bullshit,” and delete nearly all of it. After a couple of months of this, I found myself with a folder full of fragments that seemed worthy of non-deletion, but nothing that cohered into a meaningful essay. I reluctantly concluded that I hadn’t acquired enough wisdom to write a book.

Well, it’s twenty years later, and a couple of things have changed. First, I’m in my mid-60s, and I’ve had a chance — I hope — to accumulate a bit more wisdom. Second, there’s now a socially acceptable place to publish fragments that don’t necessarily cohere into anything meaningful. It’s called a blog.

I was understandably hesitant to start a blog. Many talented people maintain them, and much of what they have to say is at least occasionally interesting and enlightening. Given the sheer volume of blogs out there — and even accepting that much of their content is worthwhile — my natural reaction is to retreat, and not to read any of them. Putting myself in the shoes of my potential audience, I can assume that no one is likely to read mine, either, no matter how much effort and care I put into it. In that case, why bother?

The answer begins with the long-ago death of my father. (Yes, I’m about to describe a pivotal life experience and tell you what it let me to believe about the world. Book or no book, that’s still my M.O.!) Aaron Schaeffer, a lifetime smoker, died of metastatic lung cancer at age 61. He had been born in the Bronx to impoverished immigrants who had never quite adapted to life beyond the shtetl. (His first language was Yiddish; he learned English only when he started attending school.) He had leanings toward being an artist, but chose to become a mechanical engineer because he knew that was the only way he’d be able to support a family. When he married my mother, it was generally accepted that she was “marrying down,” and he was never quite able to live up to her expectations. His son — that is, I — proved to be something of a disappointment, and our relationship was never close. But when I went to Florida after his death to help my mom sort through his things, I discovered that he had boxes and boxes of memorabilia stacked in the garage — records of engineering patents he’d acquired, commendations and awards he’d won after his midlife career change to educational administration, minutes of meetings he’d chaired during his tenure as president of our local synagogue, articles he’d written, news clippings he’d appeared in.

I looked through it all, and then threw it all away. As much as they must have meant to him, none of these mementos had any value to my mother, my sister, or me. As I heaved the precious contents of his boxes into the dumpster, I was left with a deep sense of the futility and meaninglessness of life.

But then a funny thing happened: I got old. I’ve passed the age that my father was when he died, and I’ve outlived my mother and sister as well. And as it turns out, I have boxes and boxes of memorabilia that mark the milestones, events, and achievements of my life. As irrational as I know it to be — and even knowing that after I die, all of it will be tossed into the dumpster just as my father’s things were — I can’t part with them while I’m alive. To keep going, I need this tangible evidence that my life has meaning, even if (as I strongly suspect) it doesn’t. I accept that need — call it self-delusion, if you will — as part of being human. And here’s what I’ve lately come to realize: I have mental boxes that are every bit as prized as the physical boxes. I have memories, thoughts, and ideas that feel tremendously valuable to me. Whether they actually are valuable is beside the point. I feel the need to make them tangible — if not in a book, then in a blog. If you read it, and if you get anything useful, enjoyable, or thought-provoking from it, then I’ll be extremely happy. But ultimately, I’m not doing this for you; I’m doing it for me.

Posted October 2, 2020 by Mark S
Category: Writing

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The Wheel Goes Around

Game / Show

Boom!

People Say Things

Preface

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