Day: November 28, 2023

Once upon a time I worked at a college hours from home and far away from the main pulse of the city. I cared. I cared about the students. I cared about my co-workers. I cared about the perception of me. That last bit is what got me in so much trouble. I spent a long time caring about what people thought of me. I was shocked, disheartened, and to be honest, angered and nearly destroyed by outside impressions of me that fell short of reality. For example, I once spent time fending off a discrimination charge because an LGBTQ co-worker with a hard grudge decided to bring charges against me (with no evidence, which is apparently okay) while I was the faculty co-advisor of the LGBTQ club. I was mad enough at the attempt that it played a large role in my leaving that place. Save for one specific outcome, leaving was in fact most regrettable–as I was told it would be by my then advisor.

Regardless, I found a home in my new job and got a little better about caring less about what people thought about me. Well, I thought I did. Yesterday I faced a tough emotional challenge when I learned that perceptions of me were out there both in my work and personal lives that were contrary to reality. The personal stuff is promoted by the ex-wife, which is to be expected. Someone who once memorably said, “I wish I wasn’t married to you so I could take advantage of you.” is going to be awful enough to make said attempt on anyone. What hackled me there was twofold: 1. She has her family convinced that I am selfish and do the bare minimum for my kids, which is laughable. 2. She is promoting these lies to my kids, which is dangerous given the relationship that some of them have with her. The other shoe to drop was a faculty member questioning my qualification to teach creative writing. That is as absurd as the selfish bare minimum dad stuff. However, the confluence of such things during a time where I feel overwhelmed was just too much.

I need to not care about what people think. I need to focus on what I think. That is where the truth of self comes from.

Part of my work as a professor is to observe other professors teaching in the dual enrollment environment. I’m often assigned locations on the fringes of the sprawl where people have moved to create/recreate idealized versions of what they think utopia should look like. In fact, on the way to the school today I saw a personalized license plate that read ‘Lvnnoz’. The thought that some dusty part of Arizona on the edge of a recently opened freeway built in the shadow of a retired military base could be Oz is, well, silly. That being said, that is being done.

What I notice most about these makeshift Oz’s are the homogeneity of the space (mostly white with a smattering of Asian) and the prevalence of corporate run ‘public’ schools. I’m in one such school as I speak, though it is of a smaller corporate footprint than most. Within that are high-standards built around structures that favor a particular type of teaching and learning meant to simulate AP standards in all classes. In other words, these students are treated like they are in specialized high schools, and every high school is treated like a specialized high school when none really really are.

As I watch I am watched. These students are curious about me—a black man sent in to observe them and the environment they’ve had created and have created for themselves in a false utopia at the edge of the desert. I am, as an observer, an intruder and that makes them curious. I’m curious. How these lives are so different than my own only 10 miles away is interesting. It reminds me of New York in a way, where the differences are far more condensed, but also far more disparate. Here, we are dancing through the many different shades of middle class and going nowhere.

Some Thoughts:

1. Honestly, just being outside of the normal drone of my daily space was so invigorating that, as you can see, even the blog is impacted in a positive way. Dang. I need to get out more…
2.