Month: August 2018

Remembering

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
portrait of beautiful young woman over white background
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

We’ve all had those moments, the times when we purposefully walk from one room to another only to forget what we had intended to do when we got there. Our memories are rather funny things. We find ourselves recalling instances from our childhood but can’t remember what was said five minutes ago. Our brains are filled with so much information that unless we anchor our thoughts to something significant or routinely repeat sequences we tend to lose those ideas.

I have the strange ability to recall vivid aspects of my childhood, even details from when I was still a toddler. I once described an event to my mother that kept frightening me, but I was unable to place where and when it had happened. I was on a boat with many people who were happy and enjoying the view. I sat on my mother’s lap feeling content until everyone suddenly ran to the edge of the ship and began pointing at an awesome figure standing in the water. My mom lifted me and joined the crowd, pointing out the monstrous steel object with a glee that should have comforted me, but did not. Instead I felt frightened and confused by the dark apparition that I was seeing.

When I recounted this memory to my mom she thought for a moment and came to the conclusion that I was describing our visit to the Statue of Liberty in New York City. She even produced a photo album with old black and white photos of the two of us sitting on the boat that took us out into the harbor. The strangest thing was that I could not have been more than about two years old when we took this trip. It seemed implausible that I would have recalled the event so clearly, and yet somehow I did.

Researchers have now learned that some individuals like myself are truly able to remember incidents from very young ages. Generally such people tend to exhibit obsessive compulsive traits as well. Somehow our brains notice and internalize even small details about particular situations. Most interesting is the concurrent fact that we also may be incredibly forgetful in the course of our daily activities when occurrences are mundane unless we take the time to create memory structures for ourselves.

I’ve been known to lose my glasses, leave my keys in a public bathroom, forget where I placed some rarely used item. Thus I find myself consciously rehearsing my mind to be certain that I don’t neglect something important. I create rigid routines to keep myself on track. The fact is that the vast majority of humans might easily become forgetful whenever their normal schedules are somehow changed. It is as though our brains become rattled, short out so to speak.

In these exceedingly hot summer days we hear tragic stories of children left in hot cars who die. Many times the parent honestly asserts that he/she did not remember that the child was in the back seat. They had become distracted by some chance adjustments to their normal ways of doing things. While such occurrences may seem improbable, those who study the mind say that it is not as unlikely as we may think, and it may happen to any one of us.

I heard a man tell of how he always drove his son to daycare and then he went to work. One morning his wife’s car was in the shop and so he first drove her to her place of business with the intent of taking the child to daycare next. Somehow in the morning rush and because his routine had been disrupted he actually did forget that his baby was still in the back seat. He parked in his usual spot and went to his office where he worked for an hour or so before something niggled at his brain and reminded him that he had never dropped the baby off. He rushed to the parking garage and found his boy in distress. Luckily all ended well, but it might have been the stuff of an horrific news story.

What we are being told is that we have to create artificial reminders for ourselves for even the most mundane tasks if we are to be certain that we do not forget to do them. If we have children in a car with us, we might place something like our purse or shoe in the back seat as a way of ensuring that we do not forget that they are present. We can create alarms and reminders on our electronic devices.  We might even place sticky notes where they will be seen if we need tactile prompts. The point is to understand that it is actually a natural tendency to forget when our minds are preoccupied with so much information. It is up to us to create ways that work for us if we are to keep up with the overload of data that is passing continuously into our minds.

Too much forgetfulness can be a sign of bigger problems, but most of the time our lapses are just part of being normal. So go ahead and create routines, make lists, rehearse ideas, take enough time to be deliberate when in a foreign situation. It may save you from a real tragedy.

Honor the Young

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
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Every single time that I  hear some older person calling young people “snowflakes” I go into a slow burning rage inside my head. It is an epithet invented to cast aspersions on the thinking of  teens and twenty somethings who hold progressive points of view. The idea is that the youngsters are so fragile that they simply can’t bear critiques or differing ideologies. The insinuation is that they are silly, close minded and of little substance.

While there may very well be some young folk who are a bit spoiled and unwilling or unable to accept philosophies that run counter to theirs, the truth is that there are also middle aged individuals of more conservative bent who have the same trouble. Some of them are actually in high political positions and they often tweet their discontent. For the most part, however, I find the current crop of young men and women to be exceedingly hard working, earnest and determined to make a very positive difference in the world. The fact that they are a bit more liberal than their more aged counterparts has little to do with their level of courage or good intent.

It has long been a trend for young adults to be on a kind of search for truth and meaning in their world. It is in their natures to question the status quo and seek changes that they deem to be fair and more just.

 

Socrates once said, “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority: they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in places of exercise.” This of course was noted about four hundred years before Christ walked on the earth, and I find it remarkable how it might have been said last week by some pundit making observations about today’s kids. In fact there are many such quotes that are part of our discussions of the young versus the old in political matters. We’ve all heard the quote, “If you are not a liberal at twenty five, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at thirty five you have no brain.” It is a bit audacious in its sweeping assumptions, but we laugh at it because it bears a grain of truth. Indeed we often become more cautious as we grow older, but that does not make us wiser or more righteous. Thus, I find it beneficial to show more respect to the thinking of our younger generation than we generally do.

In 1776, when our Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence their average age was forty four. That being said more than a dozen of them were younger than thirty five and among those some were still teenagers. In fact, the American Revolution as with all such sweeping changes was much more of a young man’s cause than that of older men. James Madison was only twenty five when he penned his name on the Declaration of Independence and the current hero on Broadway, Alexander Hamilton, was a mere twenty one. Young adults are more often than not as passionately concerned about the world as those thought to be more mature.

I enjoy the conversations that I have with my former students and my grandchildren regarding the political conditions of the world today. I prefer listening to them and asking them questions rather than challenging their ideas. I find it enlightening and quite hopeful to hear just how much they have considered the various issues with which we continually grapple. They are far less likely to simply accept a particular way of thinking without considering many different possibilities. Their beliefs are mostly based on a great deal of thought and research. They are involved in internal debates as they search for the best ways of doing things. They have the audacity to think outside of the box and come up with ideas as radical as revolting against the most powerful government in the world to create a new nation conceived in liberty.

I find myself spending hours listening to young men and women who are more than ready to do their share of the heavy lifting in the world. Of course they differ somewhat from me because many of their experiences have been different from mine, but they are not unpatriotic or inconsiderate or lazy or spoiled. They simply look at the challenges that we all face from the vantage point of having an entire lifetime ahead of them rather than having walked through a lifetime. Their youthfulness does not make their thoughts any less valid than mine or any other older adults, but it does tend to make them more inclined to envision new and exciting possibilities. I find that when I listen respectfully the favor is returned when I speak. A rational and fruitful discussion ensues. It is when we disregard the fervor of a young person’s enthusiasm that we create an emotional impasse.

Each of us longs to be heard, to be understood. All we ask is that we be accorded an opportunity to speak our minds with impunity. All too often we create situations by dismissing certain forms of speech before they are even uttered, leaving us in a “them or us” kind of division. Hurling insults without thought only further inflames the situation.

During the height of the Vietnam war when so many of us were protesting what we believed to be a terrible mistake, far too many adults treated us as though we did not love our country. They did not seem to understand that it took great courage and much patriotism to speak out against what we saw as a wrong. There was a great divide that lead to unnecessary violence and clashes that might never have happened if only each group had been willing to sit quietly and consider each point of view. The frustrations came from all of the misunderstandings that came from assigning insulting labels to each cause, and pitting young people against their elders. Sadly we did not seem to learn from those mistakes.

The next time you find yourself wondering what a young person might possibly be thinking, instead of writing him/her off as a snowflake, try encouraging a true conversation with the intent of learning rather than judging. I believe that you will find that we are all seeking most of the same things, we simply have different ideas about how to achieve them.

Honor our young. They will one day be taking the reigns of leadership and helping us in our final days. I for one feel comfortable that we will be in very good hands.

Smart, Nice, Accomplished, Aware

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
photography of person using macbook
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Appraising an individual or a program has always been difficult. We are a nation of numbers and like to use hard cold facts to determine the worth or success of the people and things that we judge. Businesses consider profits, time spent without accidents or complaints. Schools look at the test scores of students and performance on a number of measurable factors such as attendance, quality of lesson plans. Universities look at grades, class rank, scores on exams, extra curricular activities and creativity of essays. Still we have yet to find a system for determining the worth of people in various situations that is a hundred percent accurate because in reality each of us is incredibly complex. We might form close approximations of the value of any one person, but we will invariably find flaws in the systems that we use unless we are very careful.

I use the world of education as an example because it is the environment that I know best. It might be thought that a teacher whose students score particularly high on a standardized test must surely be a better educator than someone whose results appear to be mediocre. The hidden flaw to this kind of thinking lies in knowing where these students ranked before the respective teachers worked with them. It might be that the youngsters whose outcomes appeared to be so spectacular had actually done better the previous school year while those with mediocre grades may have improved by a quantum leap. The question then becomes which teacher is actually the better of the two.

The same difficulties occur when attempting to compare students who are applying as undergraduates to universities. It has long been known that kids who attend high schools like Bellaire or Clear Lake in the Houston area have an exceedingly difficult time landing in the top ten percent of their graduating classes because so many of their classmates are making all A’s. These schools are not easy, quite the contrary, but the students are intensely dedicated and bright. On the other hand there are campuses with terrible reputations where a reasonably hard working pupil will easily earn a top standing in the class.

We also know that there are some individuals who panic over high stakes standardized tests. Their scores rarely align with the capabilities that they exhibit day in and day out. Others whose study habits may be marginal at best have a talent for blowing the lid off of the one and done assessments. Comparing the two very different types of students sometimes requires an unproven leap of faith.

The question becomes how to determine who is most deserving of a job or a slot in a particular program. How can we be fair and still come close to making the right decisions? What criteria are useful, and what may mislead us? It is a conundrum that plagues virtually every aspect of our society and we have yet to create a foolproof methodology that takes all of the necessary factors into account. Our attempts to be fair and objective invariably end up unwittingly relying a great deal of subjective reasoning.

Recently I was somewhat amused and befuddled to learn that the Tucks School of Business at Dartmouth University has made a few changes to its admissions requirements for the MBA program. In an effort to find well rounded and diverse individuals they have decided to search for four particular qualities in their applicants. They have proclaimed that they intend to find students who are smart, nice, accomplished and aware.

Being smart means that the prospective students must have good grades and test scores that reflect written and verbal communications skills along with a good sense of numbers. Nonetheless the school emphasizes that potential candidates should be humble as well, a profoundly important life skill, but one that is ridiculously difficult to determine either in an interview or through references. Who among us chooses references that we do not believe will be rock solid in our favor? How many of us assume a kind of persona during interviews that does not adequately demonstrate who we really are?

Accomplishments appear to be relatively easy to determine. It is unlikely that someone will continually advance in a workplace if they possess many negative habits and yet there is always a possibility that accolades may not be as well deserved as they may appear. Additionally a listing of different activities gives little insight into how well those things were actually done. We all know someone who joins a number of groups but has little dedication to any of them.

In looking for students who are aware Tuck notes that reflection is mandatory. They insist that students be able to think about their character, their past and their future. This is a noble goal indeed. Still I wonder if a well spoken individual gregarious enough to share inner thoughts is in actuality more aware than someone who is circumspect but a bit more reserved with regard to revealing personal insights. It seems that even with essays, reviews and a psychological assessment it may be difficult to know who is aware and who is not. I’ve seen many a person who is masterful at blowing smoke only to later be viewed as a fraud, and others who rose to challenges with a quiet strength that surprised everyone.

Finally there is the matter of being nice. Tuck states that this is the quintessential quality that they want their students to possess. By nice they mean someone who celebrates and supports the success of others, is willing to ask for help, shares and respects different opinions, is both strong and vulnerable. They want students who possess a set of moral principles to which they hold fast even as they are being challenged.

While I find the desire to find such nice people laudable I also wonder how in the world  it is even possible to determine such a thing. The word nice is perhaps one of the most subjective ideas that there may be. What does it actually mean to be nice? That definition varies greatly from person to person, situation to situation. Nice often means having to be very tough. Sometimes it requires being firm rather than flexible. It is an ever changing concept that is far too nebulous to use as a measurement for determining who earns a slot at in a prestigious graduate program.

The university insists that they possess sound methodologies for determining which prospective students possess each of the four aspects that they have outlined. With respect to niceness they appear to believe that student essays and reference instruments will reveal the presence of nice qualities. I beg to differ. The concept itself is far too ill defined to be worthy of such an important decision making process. It’s bound to result in exaggerations and even falsehoods from those seeking admission. It is on its face a very unreliable albeit worthy quality to use when assessing strangers.

I often think back to students that I have known, some of whom appeared to be fabulous on paper and others whose performances, accomplishments and character seemed lackluster at best. The lesser candidates often nonetheless possessed extraordinary capabilities that might never be noted in today’s world of electronic and highly  specific measurements. I think particularly of a remarkable student who by all appearances was almost subpar. When all of the measurements failed to note was that he was literally financially and emotionally responsible for his family from the time of middle school. He attended his classes during the day but worked long hours every single night, rarely having the time to complete homework assignments. He often missed days at school to drive his disabled brother to appointments with doctors. His time was filled with major responsibilities of which he never spoke. Somehow he still managed to pass all of his classes and complete all requirements for graduation from high school. By the time he walked across the stage he had been working forty hour weeks for years. He had no extra curricular activities to list nor did he seem to have completed any community service, and yet he was already operating as a very responsible adult while his classmates were still immature by his standards. Not even a carefully crafted and objective admissions packet would have indicated that he was a worthy candidate for a prestigious program and so he instead chose a college with open enrollment and with sheer will eventually earned a degree while still being the breadwinner for his family.

I wish the Tuck School of Business well, but something tells me that their admissions process is still as fraught with problems as most of our systems are. There are just so many variables about humans that we have yet to quantify.

Flip or Fly Away

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
black claw hammer on brown wooden plank
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I’m addicted to HGTV. I love watching the transformation of homes from rundown and ugly to bright and beautiful. Chip and Joanna and the Property Brothers make the whole process seem so quick and easy, not to mention affordable. It’s like watching a sweet fairytale unfold in under an hour. Of course I get inspired and think of small changes here and there that I might make inside my own home. That’s when reality rears its ugly head and I realize that what I have viewed on television is little more than fantasy for most of us.

The first thought that I generally have once I’m pulled back down to earth is that the people who seek the home improvements and upgrades are certainly well heeled financially. They reel off budget figures that make my head spin like someone in need of an exorcism. I mean who walks around with an eight hundred thousand dollar home purchase budget with one hundred thousand dollars set aside for renovations? What do these young thirty somethings actually do for a living that allows them to throw around money like that? How realistic is it for the rest of us to watch their homes being created with seemingly limitless income flows when we might be lucky to have a few thousand to devote to a project.

As I’ve reported in past blogs we recently had a bit of damage from a faulty hot water heater in our house. The estimate of the damage was in the range of about eight thousand dollars. Of course we have a high deductible so we did not receive that amount but the figure actually did represent the reality of the situation. What we got for almost ten thousand dollars was the replacement of most of the walls in an upstairs bathroom and a great deal of ceiling work in the kitchen. In addition those areas were freshly painted and we replaced an outdated light fixture. Since much of our carpet was ruined we decided to replace all of it and luckily got a sweet deal since manufacturers had reduced prices to help the victims of hurricane Harvey. Our nephew provided us with the electrical work that we needed and we did a great deal of the painting ourselves. Still the cost ate up what to me was an enormous amount of money, so I found myself wondering if those of us devotedly following the dream house episodes on HGTV are deluding ourselves into believing that with a few dollars and a hammer we too might transform our homes into nirvanas worthy of a photo shoot.

I laugh at those programs on another level as well. The designers react in horror to the wear and tear that they often discover in homes. They cringe at the crayon marks on walls and the scuffs on wooden floors caused by the children who occupy the spaces. They hint that the parents should take the little ones away and teach them how to be more orderly and respectful of property. They sneer at the everyday items that crowd closets and lurk in corners of rooms. They seem to want the occupants to tread lightly, not really using the house as a real home.

Let’s face it. Most of us actually sleep in our beds, eat food on the sofa, and purchase big televisions to watch our favorite programs. In other words we live in the buildings that protect us. They are not just showplaces staged to appeal to the masses. They are our very own and sometimes that means that there will be a puzzle on the dining room table, books piled next to the bed, dirty dishes in the sink, clothes tossed on a chair or even the floor, signs of life everywhere. We, the viewers of these programs, know in our hearts that nothing that we are watching seems real.

I used to truly enjoy following the guy who flipped houses in San Antonio. He’d find a bargain for well under two hundred thousand dollars and fix it up for maybe thirty or forty thousand more. The places weren’t perfect but they were definitely nice and clean and affordable for the common man. I suspect that this fellow was instrumental in starting a trend of regular folks buying an ugly house, doing a few repairs and then attempting to sell it at a profit of maybe ten or twenty thousand dollars. Along the way they no doubt found that the process was fraught with way more problems than they might ever have imagined. It took longer, cost more and brought in less gain than they had hoped.

I suppose that I will continue watching these shows if for no other reason than to get a few decorating ideas, but after having spent my traveling budget on my home this year I realize as I’m stuck in my four walls that seeing new places is a much better investment. Decorating trends come and go. The house continually needs repairs here and there. The joy of spending money on paint and flooring is soon gone, but those fabulous trips to exciting places pay back dividends again and again. The memories never fade or become thread bare. Even years later they bring smiles.

I suspect that what we really need is more Rick Steves or Anthony Bourdain. A great trip is a bargain and its profit is priceless. The average Joe doesn’t need a million bucks to live like one as long as he/she leaves home now and again to see the rest of the world. Instead of flipping a house, maybe we should just fly away.

Flip or Fly Away?

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment
black claw hammer on brown wooden plank
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I’m addicted to HGTV. I love watching the transformation of homes from rundown and ugly to bright and beautiful. Chip and Joanna and the Property Brothers make the whole process seem so quick and easy, not to mention affordable. It’s like watching a sweet fairytale unfold in under an hour. Of course I get inspired and think of small changes here and there that I might make inside my own home. That’s when reality rears its ugly head and I realize that what I have viewed on television is little more than fantasy for most of us.

The first thought that I generally have once I’m pulled back down to earth is that the people who seek the home improvements and upgrades are certainly well heeled financially. They reel off budget figures that make my head spin like someone in need of an exorcism. I mean who walks around with an eight hundred thousand home purchase budget with an extra one hundred thousand dollars set aside for renovations? What do these young thirty somethings actually do for a living that allows them to throw around money like that? How realistic is it for the rest of us to watch their homes being created with seemingly limitless income flows when we might be lucky to have a few thousand to devote to a project.

As I’ve reported in past blogs we recently had a bit of damage from a faulty hot water heater in our house. The estimate of for the repairs made by the insurance adjuster was in the range of about eight thousand dollars. Of course we have a high deductible so we did not receive that amount but the figure actually did represent the reality of the situation. What we got for almost ten thousand dollars was the replacement of most of the walls in an upstairs bathroom and a great deal of ceiling work in the kitchen. In addition those areas were freshly painted and we replaced an outdated light fixture. Since much of our carpet was ruined we decided to replace all of it and luckily got a sweet deal since manufacturers had reduced prices to help the victims of hurricane Harvey. Our nephew helped us with the electrical work that we needed and we did a great deal of the painting ourselves. Still the cost ate up what to me was an enormous amount of money, so I found myself wondering if those of us devotedly following the dream house episodes on HGTV are deluding ourselves into believing that with a few dollars and a hammer we too might transform our homes into nirvanas worthy of a photo shoot.

I laugh at those programs on another level as well. The designers react in horror to the wear and tear that they often discover in homes. They cringe at the crayon marks on walls and the scuffs on wooden floors caused by the children who occupy the spaces. They hint that the parents should take the little ones away and teach them how to be more orderly and respectful of property. They sneer at the everyday items that crowd closets and lurk in corners of rooms. They seem to want the occupants to tread lightly, not really using the house as a real home.

Let’s face it. Most of us actually sleep in our beds, eat food on the sofa, and purchase big televisions to watch our favorite programs. In other words we live in the buildings that protect us. They are not just showplaces staged to appeal to the masses. They are our very own and sometimes that means that there will be a puzzle on the dining room table, books piled next to the bed, dirty dishes in the sink, clothes tossed on a chair or even the floor, signs of life everywhere. We, the viewers of these programs, know in our hearts that nothing that we are watching seems real.

I used to truly enjoy following the guy who flipped houses in San Antonio. He’d find a bargain for well under two hundred thousand dollars and fix it up for maybe thirty or forty thousand more. The places weren’t perfect but they were definitely nice and clean and affordable for the common man. I suspect that this fellow was instrumental in starting a trend of regular folks buying an ugly house, doing a few repairs and then attempting to sell it at a profit of maybe ten or twenty thousand dollars. Along the way they no doubt found that the process was fraught with way more problems that they might ever have imagined. It took longer, cost more and brought in less gain that they had hoped.

I suppose that I will continue watching these shows if for no other reason than to get a few decorating ideas, but after having spent my traveling budget on my home this year I realize as I’m stuck in my four walls that seeing new places is a much better investment. Decorating trends come and go. The house continually needs repairs here and there. The joy of spending money on paint and flooring is soon gone, but those fabulous trips to exciting places pay back dividends again and again. The memories never fade or become thread bare. Even years later they bring smiles.

I suspect that what we really need is more Rick Steves. A great trip is a bargain and its profit is priceless. The average Joe doesn’t need a million bucks to live like one as long as he/she leaves home now and again to see the rest of the world. Instead of flipping a house, maybe we should just fly away.