Waxing philosophical as the year winds down

The constant stream of weather news is a good reminder of the differences between "problems" and "predicaments." Problems can be solved, while predicaments are simply uncomfortable or challenging situations that we just need to deal with.

The vagaries of the weather are good examples of predicaments. There's little that we can do to change the temperature or wind velocity or amount of snow, though we can certainly take certain actions to remain safe, warm, etc. A simple problem might be when we find that the coffee maker is not producing hot enough coffee, with a bit of research and an investment of money can solve that problem with a new, higher-quality device.

Getting old is a predicament rather than a problem to be solved, though many people seem to pretend that age can be overcome. In fact, a lot of money is invested in various "solutions," despite the clear evidence that no one can avoid their ultimate demise. 

Problems arise when we are not certain what we are dealing with: a problem or a predicament. A particular presidency, for instance, might be a problem that can be solved, eventually, by a future election. In the meantime, we might describe ourselves as being in a predicament, basically just trying to ride out the storm and minimize the damage.

It doesn't help that different people define situations differently. A significant number of Americans, for instance, define Trump as a solution rather than a problem, or at least as someone staving off changes that they fear. If they disagree with this evil narcissist in certain respects, they must agree that those areas of disagreement are merely predicaments. Hey, sometimes you have to take the bad with the good. 

Of course, there is a hierarchy of problems and predicaments, however you view any challenge. A sudden and potentially dangerous illness may or may not be curable but most people would raise that to "immediate action needed" in the hierarchy. The illness may not be a problem to be solved. It may be something that is a predicament and is best endured as comfortably as possible.

It's not a strong analogy, but the current political situation could be thought of as a disease, at least from my point of view, where the symptoms are both frightening and frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I have thought that we need some radical "surgery," such as taxing anyone worth a billion dollars to the point that billionaires become extinct. Surely $950 million could be enough.

But then comes the end of the year, when I take a closer look at our financial picture, and contemplate what might happen to the stock market if billionaires were to be eliminated. Almost all the growth in the stock market in 2025 was due to AI investments, and the bulk of those investments came from the very wealthy. A few years ago, I discovered that I am a millionaire, at least in terms of net worth... a situation that I had never thought possible. 

Then I discovered that an estimated 24 million households are worth at least one million dollars. There are about 135 million households in the country, so that means nearly 18 percent of Americans live in a household worth a million bucks. Don't get me wrong... I'm delighted to be among the top 18 percent, but it's not a very exclusive club. 

A major downside, psychologically, is that I have just enough money to have something significant to lose if major changes in the American economy were to occur. If I were struggling in the bottom 18 percent of citizens, my guess is that I would be more likely to support big changes. After all, there's little to lose.

And so I classify myself as thinking of Trump and his Cult as a predicament, awaiting a future solution that is far beyond my powers as an individual. Practically speaking, this means I feel a constant angst about the country and our future while appreciating my personal situation. Nice home and plenty of money and relatively good health, etc. 

I always have faint hopes for something to happen in the coming year that could force some major change in the situation. That change would just force me to deal with whatever is presented and not to "own" any particular position.

Here's to a better 2026 and welcome to the unpredicted (but positive) events to come.

Working smarter, not harder, is more than a consultant's cliche (maybe?)

There was an interesting guest commentary in today's New York Times by Angela Duckworth, author of "Grit," which basically argues that willpower is overrated. 

Her thesis is, simplistically perhaps, to do our best to remove the "objects of temptation" from our immediate vicinity. For instance, she cited a study that showed students who left their phones in another room when studying had statistically higher grades than those who had their phone nearby, even if screen-side down. 

She contrasted this simple tactic of creating the slightest lack of convenience in grabbing the seductive device with exhortations to "just do it" or to simply try harder. 

It occurred to me that I will likely share this article with my college students this coming semester, coupling it with some direct advice about finding a quiet location to read and write (not to mention doubling down on my regular advice to create a personal schedule for our course work).

I also thought of how much I like to enjoy some candy after lunch, if the candy jar is full and not far away. It's probably not a great idea and I certain know it's not a good idea, but what's the harm in a mini-chocolate or two? Kathleen's "fix" was to simply stop buying discounted bags of candy. Not surprisingly, when the candy jar sat empty, I managed to continue my life without those little chocolate "hits."

Shockingly, with lots of tasty Christmas cookies currently in the house, my lack of grit has returned with a vengeance. My only hope is that the cookies eventually will be eaten, thus removing the temptation, if not my excess pounds.

I likely am not remembering all the subtleties of "Grit," which I read some years ago, but my impression was basically that the quality of grit had at least as much to do with someone's success as any other factor, including raw intelligence or physical strength. Students who stuck with it - whatever "it" was - saw a pay off, for instance, and that implied that willpower was essential.

I have often criticized the common advice from my own past teachers and coaches to "try harder," since I never could quite figure out how to do that. Should I squint more or create some tighter muscular intensity? Finding no answer tended to lead to me experimenting with something different... to not just doing more of what was clearly not working very well. Such experiments are hit and miss, of course.

A related idea might be to "wish harder" or "pray harder." No one really knows what those mean, either, beyond investing more time on the task. But more time on task can lead to simply repeating the same actions or thinking over and over... leading to frustration. There is an old teaching cliche that boils down to "some who have taught for 30 years have simply repeated one year over and over..." and I have actually seen some teachers who fit that description, with 30 years of service but one year of experience.

I long ago decided that the time between semesters is where I can reinvent curriculum and specific lessons, gather new readings or online resources, and generally try to find better ways to help students develop as thinkers and writers. 

I know this: for my college students, simply repeating "try harder" is not working. 

Something in vogue in college instruction currently is being "radically transparent," which basically seems to mean that instructors should provide specific roadmaps, explaining all steps along the way, and providing extensive models and "scaffolding," all building to the outcome that the course demands. 

In other words: no surprises.

That seems a bit too much like a cookbook approach to me, with the goal of education to follow a recipe for success. True education should lead to something new, while training leads to uniformity. Well, that's been my advice to students for decades now. 

What I am always looking for in student writing is to be surprised, at least a little. 

Here's hoping that I find create courses that support more surprises in 2026.

The past is never really past...

I continue to intermittently go back to my research and writing about the history of St. Luke's UMC, and I feel pretty good about the first dozen years plus, encompassing the founding minister and his successor, taking the story to mid-1995. Between the text and some photos, that coverage takes up 70 pages.

I have interviewed two retired pastors in some depth and multiple times, plus a retired president of Iliff School of Theology who attended St. Luke's for that period and who seems to know pretty much everyone in the Rocky Mountain Conference. He and his wife happened to host the bishop about ten days ago and they were discussing St. Luke's and he happened to mention my little history project. So, to be brief, the bishop now has a copy of those 70 pages, though I haven't heard anything specific back from her at this point. 

Interestingly, the closer I get to when Kathleen and I arrived at the church in 2002, the harder the task seems to be. There are quite a few people around who were members in the 1990s, which means there are many more sources and many more opportunities for eventual readers to disagree with my take or even my facts. Two things are certain: churches are not very good at keeping clear records, and it doesn't help that most documents were not electronic in the 1990s.

I have had at least five people promise me copies of printed church newsletters and other documents, but digging through file cabinets and boxes does not seem to make it to the top of their to-do lists. I occasionally will send a reminder text or a quick conversation with them, but I hate to be a pain. 

I also hate the idea that this history project will just never quite get done. I would love to wrap up the story through 2003 or so (when the third senior pastor left) in the first half of 2026. I would guess that the "book" will be well over 130 pages by then, with nearly a quarter century of various church drama and events and growth and challenges still to come.

It remains to be seen whether I will "rest from my labors" with those first couple decades or not. Never say never, I suppose. But my goal is to produce a printed, hardcover book in the next year. 

People being, well, people, I assume that as soon as I publish something there will be all sorts of people sending me corrections or questioning how I missed something or otherwise suddenly being full of information.

I'll be sure to call it a first edition.

Last Thursday I interviewed a woman who is now the chaplain at CU Hospital in Highlands Ranch about her time as youth director at the church from about 1996-2001. Her perspective is that Columbine, which occurred in April, 1999, was pivotal for the church, something I had not really considered in any depth. Two of the slain students had connections to the church and I have some anecdotes about how the church responded and tried to help the community through the shock and pain and, let's face it, questions about how God might figure into the tragedy.

She was still emotional describing that week, where she opened the youth room the night of April 20 and 40 young people gathered to talk and grieve and cry and question. The church seemed like a safe space for those kids, I assume, though up until that very day most would have testified that their high school was a safe space. 

We know that is not the case now, but I do remember that day, watching from City High in Iowa City on a little black and white TV we had in the journalism lab area. Watching such tragedies on TV is a near-weekly event these days as society seems to increasingly turn to violence when people feel aggrieved or angry or entitled or whatever. It was shocking in the extreme in 1999.

I certainly would have been a teacher thinking "that could never happen here" back then. In fact, I made it a point to not obsess over Columbine. That interview brought a lot of things back, but also reminded me that proximity to such murders makes a difference.

That means I will be investing some hours in researching and finding some of those then-students (and their parents) who are now in their 40s to talk. 

And maybe I will find a way to find some meaning from the sad and chaotic experiences of the time. 

Turns out that writing a history is about far more than raw facts or about the church itself. The research and writing is more about me and about trying to see patterns and meaning and truth. 

I will try to return to my history project in this blog from time to time. It helps me process, I guess.

There are no clear winners in the gender wars

A column in the Washington Post last week sounded the alarm about the rapid decline in the past 40 years of the percentage of girls saying they hoped to marry. The percentage of boys planning on marriage was basically unchanged. 

From 1993, the numbers for women dropped from about 80 percent to about 60 percent. Boys are at about 70 percent. The article basically said that the "war on boys," whatever that means, is also a war on girls, who will eventually find that the raw number of acceptable or suitable mates prohibits many from marrying.

Political views of boys remain relatively unchanged while girls are now at 40 percent identifying as liberal or progressive. I had read some coverage claiming that young males are an increasing problem, but their views are basically the same as always. 

It all adds up to some discomforting new realities in dating and marriage and (potentially) having babies. I suppose some of the mismatch can be solved by non-college women marrying non-college men, but even non-college women are a bit put off by the lack of earning power and culture of their counterparts. 

It feels weird even to think about marriage and relationships this way, as if individuals are swept away by massive demographic shifts, but even weirder is to subtly blame young women for the problem.

No reasonable person can wish for girls to somehow regress and give up all the hard-won educational and economic and cultural gains of the past 50 years or so. What society needs to do is find ways to elevate the socio-economic status and accomplishments of males. 

My sense is that, right now, there is a lot of despair and self-pity among young men. Past performance, it turns out, is no guarantee of future performance, particularly for males. 

I believe in the value of education, from paying attention to current events and history to facility in reading and writing, but I also can value non-classroom skills, from trades to all sorts of essential services that society needs to thrive. Everyone should be able to find their niche, so to speak, and just as many marriages once were fine despite the males possessing the education and jobs and status, we likely will see the reverse of that. There is no logical reason that wives can't be the top earners, with higher education. 

But that flipped status will demand that males give up on the sense of being entitled to more. That will not be quick and easy, as any number of young Republican males demonstrate.

Biology cannot be denied, of course, so there will always be women who desire to have babies. Modern life means that those mothers don't necessarily need a male to provide economic and emotional security and support. They may just need sperm donors.

There used to be a lot of sci-fi books that were built on the idea that society only needs so many males to maintain the population. If I were a young male, I would at least have to consider going to college and doing all I could to be a "good catch." 

It's simple supply and demand, at a basic level. 

In sports, the goal is not to bring other teams down to a lower level to guarantee more success. Athletic teams strive to improve, to become more competitive, to analyze what is missing and provide fixes. 

That's a truth a high school graduate can grasp.

We approach the end of term thinking about the next one

As we approach the end of yet another semester, I am reminded of several things. 

One is that there is no clear logic to choosing 16 weeks as just the right number of weeks to study a particular subject. With writing, for instance, becoming better at it is never-ending... or maybe it's just time to stop studying in favor of doing more of it.

Another is that I can never find the right balance between praising student work and being compelled to point out obvious errors and silly typos. I know that I mostly focus on what can be fixed or improved and don't do much with "oh, that opening personal anecdote you used really set up the transition to your wider thesis." It's not that I never type that in a response, but it's not common. 

Or maybe students just don't provide me with enough examples of great thinking and writing?

And another is that grades are mostly bogus. Honestly, if my college students simply read the material, submitted their assignments on time, and demonstrated that they understand the need to always provide support for their claims... well, that would be an A for the vast majority. 

I have never had a student who "earned" a failing grade through consistently turning in low-quality work. This probably says more about my grading philosophy than anything else, but the several Ds and Fs I will be awarding in a couple weeks are due to students simply not completing assignments... and usually quite a few assignments. 

Every person has a different story, I assume, and I have personally bombed college classes in my misspent youth. I hope things turn out OK for the 2025 version of the doofus I was at age 18. Hey, they did for me.

I have many other thoughts as a semester ends, from wondering why my course structure is so clunky to promising myself that I will do much better next time around. NEXT semester will be the one where I figure out how to write and edit compelling videos that inspire people I will never meet in person... when I will unlock the secret to inspiring student writers to value spell check or complete sentences. 

But one final worry nags at me, and I assume this will just get worse. It's been a slow build, but more and more students are clearly choosing to submit essays that have been heavily influenced by AI, if not entirely generated by the robots. 

On-campus instructors can ask for hand-written, in-class essays to avoid all the em-dashes, excessive use of "delves," etc., that AI churns out. They can create insightful seminar discussions, complete with Socratic dialog and engaging presentations.

But online-only courses are sort of stuck with those typed essays and discussions and memos, all of which can be created by the robots... and most of the work could be characterized as OK. 

If I were a scheming undergrad looking to do the least possible work today, the key would be to fully commit to relying on AI, right from the start. Then the instructor would not be surprised to suddenly encounter an organized essay, with tightly written paragraphs, and lots of triplets for examples. See what I did there? Used my own triplet of examples. 

As it is, students seem to start out the term wanting to express themselves, warts and all, and only when the work starts piling up and time is slipping away do they resort to the AI shortcuts that are waiting for them, patiently.

But when mid-January rolls around, I am certain I will have recharged, with optimism and some updated class readings and clever and appealing assignments for those new courses.

You could argue that I'm a slow learner.