There is danger in optimism, and yet...

Today's daily blog post from Seth Godin was about the benefits of keeping our expectations low, and thus avoiding lots of unnecessary disappointment and creating space for possible joy.

That was the philosophy espoused by my father, particularly when it came to sports. As my dad would say from time to time, "Keep your expectations low and you'll never be disappointed."

That was comforting through much of my life as an Iowa sports fan, certainly, but I find myself trying to adopt that somewhat stoic philosophy in many areas of life. For instance, I never expected to have much money... certainly no EXTRA money. But here I am with more income in my "retirement" than I ever had working full time. Each month, I find myself marveling over this unexpected situation.

Last night, we were watching the Nuggets' playoff game and Jokic had a miserable game, though the score remained tight throughout. My expectation was that all those misses from our star would doom us to defeat. So the team's overwhelming the Oklahoma City squad thoroughly in overtime produced a thrill that I had not anticipated.

Same with seeing Caitlin Clark in last Sunday's WNBA exhibition game, knowing she had some minor leg issue and expecting her to take it easy and not do further damage prior to the regular season. Then she goes out and hits her signature long jumpers along with some dextrous passes. 

I said to Kathleen, "That Caitlin seems to always rise to the occasion." But deep down I suspected that THIS would be game she would crumble to the court and have trouble rising. 

I saw a video of WNBA great Sue Bird mentioning that she had an ACL tear early in her career (she clearly recovered quite well). I have seen Caitlin get blasted on many occasions, usually due to defenders being out of position but sometimes purposefully, and she always gets up.

Maybe I should just enjoy her good fortune and her unique talents, but for a guy who has thoroughly adopted the "keep your expectations low" philosophy, I find myself holding my breath after each collision. 

On the other hand, I have enough experience in things like creating curriculum or grading or teaching (in general) that I don't think in terms of keeping expectations low... or high. I don't think much about what I do day in and day out. I just assume everything will work out.

The other day I noted that one of my online writing classes was increasingly demonstrating the use of AI to compose simple essays. Well, I am guessing about that, but I've read a lot of student writing and it rarely changes quickly to a sophisticated level... and I never would think my remarks on earlier work would actually lead to more logic, higher levels of diction, etc. 

I made a mental note to rethink many of my writing assignments and even tactics for this fall's classes. I have started browsing the internet for advice and strategies to (somehow) both embrace AI and still get students to produce personalized and even creative work. 

A skeptic might say that my quest is likely doomed and that AI's continuing growth and sophistication will likely lead to courses like mine phasing out. 

My dad would probably counsel me to rein in my hopes that I can create some AI-resistant assignments in just a couple months. But I am not coaching Iowa football or basketball, enterprises I absolutely know will disappoint me in ways both large and small. 

I plan to come up with something that works. 

I defy the Fates.

May Day! May Day! My brain's hard drive seems to be full.

I must admit that I was unaware until I saw it on some site that April 30 marked the 50-year anniversary of the fall of Saigon. I should have known, since I had seen a quiz on the Washington Post site about "how much do we remember about the Vietnam War?" I didn't bother to take it. BTW, in Vietnam that conflict is called "The American War."

Overlooking THAT anniversary reminded me that I completely missed celebrating my own anniversary from that war: my discharge from the Air Force on May 8, 1974. Perhaps I hoisted an adult beverage last year, by accident. But that really should have been a bigger deal.

And THAT reminds me that the entire Vietnam War thing is not that big a deal to most Americans at this point. That really isn't a huge surprise when we look at the math.

The current U.S. population is about 340 million and it was about 213 million in 1975. Some percentage of those alive in 1975 have died and simple arithmetic gives us about 127 million not even born when the war ended. My roughest guess is that a majority of Americans were not alive when Saigon fell and I would also guess that an even larger majority of Vietnamese were not yet born. And many alive in 1975 were too young to retain much in terms of firm memories.

Much like the Korean War (really, a conflict), Vietnam was not a "glorious" war, and perhaps that is why there are relatively few pop culture reminders of those difficult times other than in music. WWII continues to reign supreme in movies and TV shows. I assume that is because we clearly "won." The music of the late 60s and '70s clearly still strikes a chord, so to speak, since it continues to show up in all sorts of movies and TV shows. 

Of course, old timers like myself will shake our heads, annoyed by something so important in our lives being ignored by the wider public. 

That is somewhat hypocritical since we ourselves likely find events from half a century ago tough to keep in our thoughts. Or maybe that's just me.

Really, though, it is healthy to forget (though I would argue that younger people should have SOME familiarity with major historical events and eras). 

I hope that my grandchildren will eventually find current political events equally forgettable, despite the seemingly existential pain at least some Americans are feeling right now, and likely will continue to feel for years. I am relatively confident there will still BE an America in fifty years and equally confident that our grandchildren will be somewhat close to my current age at that point... 

And it is comforting to imagine them sitting at a dining table with their own children and grandchildren and reminiscing about the whole Trump thing. "Tell us about the days when civil liberties were simply assumed, gramps."

One thing I will predict is that our current political era will NOT produce great movies or TV shows that future generations will come back to again and again. And I'm not too confident about the music this time.

At some point we just need to check the cable connection

I "enjoyed" another hour online today listening to a First Year Writing program faculty meeting from Metro State. It was a hybrid, with some "live" in the room on campus and most online. The topic was basically how to be more effective with our online students. Too many of them are not being "retained," which is ominous for a university that is facing increasing challenges with enrollment.

The good news is that we are being taken back to "hard times" economically by our Fearless Leader and his lackies (THAT'S good news?) and experience teaches us that more students will dip into higher education as jobs dwindle and things stagnate.

The not so great news was that the organizers had a tough time simply getting the Teams meeting going. In the end, it appears that the HDMI cable from a laptop to the Internet had been pulled out. So, a good lesson there was that it's hard to get everyone on the same page technologically and that something we likely need to do more of is simply teach students how to use the course management system, called Canvas. 

A PowerPoint was eventually shared that summarized a 2020 book on online learning that advocates for PARS: personal, accessible, responsive, and strategic. 

The research suggests that online instructors need to make themselves more "human" and that students need to know that they are welcome to contact us, to ask for help, etc. Instructors are to respond, as kindly as possible, but also in a timely fashion. And, finally, instructors should have clear strategies in mind when constructing courses and assignments. Things should build logically to a goal.

Today was another great reminder that most college professors haven't labored in secondary schools (well, not after enduring them, of course). To me, all the advice sounded like "Teaching 101," and, as usual, a few in the Teams meeting were eager to share their insightful and practical strategies engaging students.

Honestly, to hear most online instructors tell it, there simply cannot BE any problems with retention. Everyone is just so darn skilled and creative. 

And yet online courses are under fire. Some college administrators support simply eliminating online courses, particularly for first-year students. After all, when it all comes down to money and total enrollment, we must do what we must.

On the other hand, many of our online students are somewhat older and nearly always balancing work and family with "going back to school" with an eye on bettering their financial positions. 

So far, online remains. 

One of the things I like about teaching my first-year writing course for Metro is that I control everything about it, beyond some mandated skills and policies the university insists upon. Every reading and video and link and handout comes from me. 

Of course, the last ten minutes of the meeting were led by a rep from McGraw-Hill, extolling their amazing program of e-books and online analysis and testing and writing support. All for the low low price of... 

The powers that be will likely, once again, mandate some commercial program as they flail about for answers to the retention problem. 

My advice would be to compile some actual data on particular students and which instructors they had for their online courses. We might discover some common strategies.

Oh, and then we might consider paying all the adjuncts more money as they struggle to improve student writing and thinking while keeping them happy enough to come back next semester.

Yay! College!

Best catch there is

Joseph Heller's 1961 novel Catch-22 focused on the absurdities of WWII in Italy and I think I have read it at least four times (and enjoyed the movie and the TV series). It's hilarious but that is not what sticks with me; it's the darkness that underlies the entire story.

In the novel, the "catch" is that a pilot cannot be relieved of flying more combat missions by claiming insanity, since the mere act of claiming insanity to avoid the dangers of flying those missions proves that the pilot is sane.

You don't need to have read the novel to have heard about Catch-22, of course, since the phrase has been part of our lexicon for the past 60 years. Briefly, a catch-22 is a situation where people are trapped in a loop, so to speak, because of a rule or circumstance that denies them a way out.

Kilmar Ábrego García is living a current version of Catch-22 after being spirited away to a notorious prison in El Salvador due to an administrative error. He entered the country illegally as a 16-year-old fleeing from the threat of violence in his home country. He became a transportation union apprentice, married an American, and they have three children, all with disabilities. 

Life has not been easy for the guy. 

He has been swept up in the Trump administration overreach on immigration ("overreach" is applicable to nearly everything the Current Occupant, a convicted felon, does). He has never been arrested or convicted of a crime. The government admits it was all a mistake.

The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that Mr. Garcia needs to be returned to the United States, but the Trump administration claims that since the man is in the custody of El Salvador, the U.S. has no power to force his return. The dictator of El Salvador claims he can't return Garcia because that would be like smuggling a terrorist into the country.

The U.S. is paying El Salvador $6 million to house about 200 supposed gang members in their most secure and dangerous prison.

Yesterday, a U.S. Senator was able to meet with Garcia briefly in El Salvador, and the good news is that he appeared unharmed, at least physically. 

But Garcia was then returned to the lock up. He shouldn't be there, but the catch is that since he is there, no one can help him. 

Catch-22... best catch there is, as Major Major would remind us.

Of course, Trump and his goons are also brazenly defying clear court decisions in this case... and so many others. Native-born citizen will be next. After all, once someone the government wants gone is out of the country, nothing can be done. 

Yes, it was in "error," but what's the most powerful country on earth to do? 

They may be paying but college students are often not engaging

I "lurked" during a CSU journalism department meeting on Monday which included an option to join on Zoom rather than driving up to Fort Collins. It was clunky, as these things often are, and those of us on Zoom were soon forgotten as the discussion ebbed and flowed. Most of the time, I had no idea who was talking but I could hear most of what was said.

And what was said was somewhat surprising, honestly. I mean, Colorado State is a major university serving over 30,000 students and one of the flagship state institutions. Journalism and Media Communications majors occupy thousands of positions in media organizations of all sizes and types.

But the topic that produced the most discussion was basically, "What do we do about students who seem intent on doing the least possible amount of work?" That included attendance problems for those on campus. 

There was some confusion, but the consensus was that the university had a rule or policy that instructors can only penalize for lack of attendance up to 10 percent of the final grade. This may be a campus myth or may be communicated in informal ways, but there is no clear university published policy that I can find. The department chair had no data to refer to but said that if your syllabus spells out attendance policies, you can do as you wish with grading. She said she would check with the higher ups and get back to everyone. And she might... just not yet.

It reminds me of the Metro State English department policy that is communicated to faculty that no more than a 10 percent penalty for even egregious grammar and spelling errors can be applied to any essay score. Again, I am not sure this is published or just "faculty expectations." That policy makes sense to me as many Metro students are English as a second language students, and many are what I might term "non-traditional" college students... often the first in their families to attend a university.

On the other hand, I can make a strong argument that an essay so riddled with errors as to become incomprehensible (and I had one of those this week) ends up being marked down mostly due to failure to make any clear argument. The errors might not be needed to provide a very low score for some essays. 

I often wonder how a dispute over this might be adjudicated. "May it please the Court, I deducted 3 percent for the student having a dozen misspelled words that Word or Google should have flagged..."

But back to the faculty meeting: there were a series of stories of individuals who have pushed the limits, missing up to 80 percent of classes, and one tale of a large lecture class that featured 8 in attendance, in a class with 86 enrolled, during a nasty weather day. Again, that seems possible, and if it's just a one-off, who cares? The professor proudly proclaimed that he had posted the lecture using the university's online video system and that he "knew" that 60 students had seen the class online since he uses some online quick quizzes to check for understanding. 

Interestingly, the people who speak up during these discussions rarely admit to being completely list as to how to get students to attend or participate. In fact, there are so many stories of successes that an observer in Highlands Ranch (like me) might begin to wonder if there really is a problem after all.

My sense, though, was that many in the room were having trouble not only with attendance, but with submitting assignments, meeting deadlines, and a general lack of engagement. 

In other words, college students are not much different from high school students in being less and less engaged in their learning and in education, generally. 

I read today that about 30 percent of Americans read at or below the expected reading level of a ten-year-old child. Think about that. College students are not in that group but the effects of phones and the pandemic have combined to create a huge population that doesn't read and sees no reason to do so.

After all, AI will take care of all that.

The end of the American era

Apparently, the entire 330 million American population plus the rest of the world, in varying degrees, are now at the whim of one old, tired, and angry man... a man who appears almost entirely divorced from reality and likely in some stage of dementia.

The Dow Jones is in free fall, dropping over 3400 points in two days. Other markets are just as bad. The reputation of the country among the 190 nations we share the planet with is shot, and it will likely take a decade to recover. And that supposes that we will eventually be rid of Trump and his cult.

At this point, who wants to bet his 401K on that?

A lot of Americans are outraged or puzzled or confused or just terrified. A significant percentage is blissfully unaware, and I envy them right now. Life goes on as most people know that they can't make much of a difference as individuals in anything the government is doing. 

There is frustration with elected Democrats and assorted rational leaders, but there is only one small group of people who can exert any meaningful pressure on the Fearless Leader: Republican senators and representatives. 

Anyone want to bet the aforementioned 401K on that happening?

It's a strange feeling, sitting in my comfortable home, watching Opening Day for the Rockies on TV and going about my day of judging and critiquing and grading... while the economy is tanking and the secret police are spiriting college students off the street and congress pushes for tax breaks for the fabulously wealthy. 

The world is metaphorically on fire and I just sit and type. 

I read that the tariffs were calculated using AI and that they are based on all sorts of erroneous assumptions. Trump has lied for his entire life but his latest lies are now producing enormous problems that are difficult to even wrap our heads around. 

Big law firms, big universities, and big journalism are all cowering in fear of Trump and his Cult Army, but no matter what you do to appease a bully, there will always be more demands. 

The only good news, from my perspective, is that true change doesn't happen until things get REALLY bad. 

Maybe we are approaching that point. 

Yay!

Sometimes panic and despair are the only logical choices

Two months into the second Trump presidency and we can safely state that Americans have never seen anything like it. I don't say that lightly, having many times mentioned just how bad the "good old days" could be and just in my lifetime. 

But what makes our current situation special is that we have a relatively small number of elected and appointed officials who are determined to tear down any institutions that don't suit them and to impose their will on millions and millions (well, BILLIONS, if we think of the global ramifications). 

After seeing several international students spirited off to Louisiana (why there?) by masked ICE agents, I am now seeing posts on the JEA listserv about high school journalists suddenly wanting published opinion pieces taken down from student news sites. It's hard to imagine the feds coming after a 17-year-old who suggests that something may be wrong with the nation, but...

My assumption is that students feel uncomfortable in normal times when publishing possibly controversial views, but adding in even a remote possibility that they might be arrested, attacked, or otherwise silenced by the federal government will be quite effective in silencing student voices.

Universities and state K-12 agencies are buckling under after mere threats. The Republican Party has revealed itself to be the "anti-American" political party (basically opposing anything that smacks of progressive thought and shrugging off unlawful abuses of power). A dangerously cruel man is decimating the government... well, more than decimating. That would be eliminating 10 percent of government jobs and that would seem extreme in itself. 

That so many self-described "leaders" have hopped on the Trump Train with not a shred of shame or guilt or personal pride is what strikes me as most alarming. I assume most of the them are willing to watch the chaos without complaint, reasoning that among all the cruelty and craziness from the Trump nuts, they are getting something they wanted.

Republicans have not liked the Department of Education, so having that starved into irrelevance is fine with them. They don't like science (or at least to pretend not to like it, since so many of their voters are anti-intellectuals), so breaking up departments that oversee and fund science research is OK. They don't much care for poor people in Africa (or American, for that matter, though they rely on their votes to retain power), so ending foreign aid is fine. 

Sure, they also need to accept the sunsetting of Congressional power and even their personal irrelevance when it comes to exercising power. But as long as they are on the "winning team," all is well.

My guess is that the Always Trumpers assume that life will return to something approaching normal once His Majesty steps off the stage. They want to grab whatever they can while the getting's good.

The Republican Party is mostly white and mostly angry and vengeful. Prove me wrong. 

The party is also mostly old, led by the aged and doddering. It starts with an increasingly confused and clueless president, of course. But I often think of Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, who is 91 and who has long ceased to have any interest in compromise or even logical thought. There was a time when he at least pretended to be tough-minded and willing to work with a wide variety of constituents. Now, he's just an empty vessel and a certain vote for a man whose sole purpose is vengeance. 

Sorry. I exaggerated. Trump also simply gets a thrill from dominance over others and now there is nothing holding him back. He can't break a law, according to our benighted Supreme Court, can can't run again, though he will likely try. 

Enough of our neighbors are enjoying being "fellow travelers" that nothing will be done to end the reign of terror until the 2026 midterm elections (and maybe not even then). 

Trump and his minions are well aware of things likely turning against them but for now their strategy is to burn it all down. I can smell the smoke even in my sleepy neighborhood.