Time has gone on but pain stays around--so much for time healing all wounds

It is difficult to come to grips with the reality that summer is already over. Well, it is not really over in terms of the calendar. (There are approximately three more weeks give or take a day until it is the first day of autumn.) Part of me is looking for my maturity and character in this time.

One of the difficulties in acting mature is that emotions still have a sense of childishness to them. You want to be able to put things behind you, but it can be just too difficult at times when you are thinking about your pain.

I spent most of the winter and spring waiting for summer. I was waiting for the days when all I had to wear was a t-shirt and shorts and no socks. (Yes, I like the beach bum look. I could wear it all year.

Why has the summer gone too fast? I have a number of thoughts amongst my feeling of pain. First, as you get older, you have had more experience of time and so it seems to go faster. Second, I have been been very busy with work. Third, my wife's medical condition has made my nights seem even more busy. Thus, I have been tired and I have had little time to do anything that I really wanted.

Regardless of the answer, I still lament the summer having gone so quickly. We did not go anywhere, nor could we go anywhere. I am still sad that the money went for hospital bills and not for a trip back to the Midwest or Disneyworld. I somewhat soothe myself that even if I had the extra money, my wife was not able to travel. However, for all my hard work as a social worker due to being understaffed, and do not feel any further ahead for a newly minted PhD. I honestly have had to deal with resentment in the mix. This is again difficult when trying to act mature.

I am still resentful of the University of Louisville administration short-changing my graduation in December 2008. They gave only 72 hours notice that we were not going to be recognized at commencement but would be graduated at the hooding ceremony. (well they gave advance knowledge for the spring commencement that it would be the same way for May 2009 Ph.D graduates, but at least they got to have a reception months in advance)

Furthermore, the hooding ceremony was not catered, not rehearsed, and undignified, with profanity used on stage by the faculty member in his opening comments. (Given the public circumstances at the time I felt that we were the expendable group and our achievement was cheapened to save the University any more P.R. expense for the Felner/Deasy catastrophe and its 'anonymous crap'). The president himself was not there, although it the story was that he had the flu.

There was no apology when I gave my feedback to the university's e-mail—they have not cared. I continue to feel short-changed for all of the work I put in and all the abuse I tolerated from a particular, dysfunctional faculty member who alone held my dissertation process up for two additional years—I deserved more recognition, like the 300 PhD graduates got in the when I graduated with my bachelors in May 1987 -- I sat through watching them walk across the stage over 90 minutes. (They got the privilege of public exhibition where we merely stood in our places).

Consensus of the Graduate School Senate that it should be this way? Yeah right.
Sometimes, at least writing or verbalizing it can at least help me get it out for now. Should someone of faith really have these resentments? I would say yes. People of faith have beliefs and practices, but they at least have a faith resource that can help them cope with the vicissitudes of life and give them more hope than they would either have. Also, they can eventually remember the perspective of their faith about depravity and the fall and how they themselves have hurt others and others hold resentments against them. Thus they can put it on the shelf.

I am still resentful of the vice president who I wrote about in the spring. Her management decisions lately have been quite bone-headed, which only remind me of her behavior that I have blogged about earlier this year. My cynicism has increased despite my other recent efforts to keep it in check.

So, part of me has times where I struggle with all three of these matters in my head. You would think that it should be easier to deal with these things. However, pain is pain and time does go by slowly when you are remembering the painful experiences.

Part of me says “Buck up soldier, this is life.” No one really cares about your pain except for you—and people will only think you are stupid for dwelling on it as they have their own lives to worry about. You are not going to get any kind of expected restitution from the University administration, nor from that poor excuse for a vice president. They are not going to believe they did anything wrong (especially the vice president).

Another part of me, says, “Yes, life is not fair and your expectations are not met, so cry, you're at least entitled to do that.

A third part of me says, find the balance. “Don't cry for long or nurse your resentments for long because you will only be dwelling on it to your own ruin.” Nursing grudges takes your energy. I am trying to forgive the University of Louisville administrators. I am trying to forgive the vice president. I am trying to pray and wait. Begin looking for another ship to come in that you can get on and move away.

Anyway, despite my emotions and attitude, the time has passed. My kids are back in school. The Halloween candy is already in the stores. I predict that in about six weeks from now, just before Halloween, the first Christmas candy will be out. On November 1, my local Walmart will have Halloween candy in carts up front and the Christmas stuff will be out in full-force.

By December 1, I will have been told by my kids 10 different things they want for Christmas because they have seen them on TV. The difficulty will be that 90 percent of those things will have been sold out due to black Friday and black Monday (that cyber-shopping day). The second difficulty will be evaluating what we can get because the hospital bills will still have balances.

There will be other things to occupy my mind. There will be other life business that must get done. People who dwell too much on their pain waste opportunities and the energy to look for those opportunities.

This is the difficulty of life in tough times when opportunity is sparse. The emotion is still tough in light of solutions that are simply stated or maybe just too simplistic. Life goes on even when your emotions continue to exist.

The intensity of your feelings makes you want to discount any kind of glib soothing comments from well-intended but (well okay stupid) individuals. The person who tells you to count your blessings (well, it is an achievement that you have your PhD) takes their life their hands.

Well, as I have bared my soul this labor day, my pain will have to be my responsibility. Just as your pain will be your responsibility. Time does not heal all wounds if the person holds onto the pain.

Yes, the pain will come back from time to time, and it will be each our our own jobs to deal with it and put it away when restitution never comes. Sometimes my resources will be better than others for dealing with pain. Sometimes I can tolerate the exhortations to count blessings than other times.

Coping is sometimes of varying quality. Getting by is till coping when the pain stays around.

Character and values—It's happening here?

(Note--this is a very different post than what I have done--it has my interest at this moment and I will probably write more along some of the themes in future entries.)

There is a local story going on in the city where I live at the University of Louisville. The former dean of the ”School of Education” is currently under federal investigation as to how he spent grant money.

Today (24 August 2008), the Louisville Courier-Journal ran the closest thing to an editorial that is not an editorial—a personality piece starting on the front page of the first section. It was more than a personality piece . . . it was actually an expose' of the guy's history and behavior. I conclude that this is the newspaper's not-so subtle statement that the guy should be ran out of town and fast.

The guy in question is under investigation for how he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants. Apparently, the grants were for the University of Louisville, and a big chunk was not spent at the University of Louisville, but the guy in question has reportedly spent them elsewhere.

I make the disclaimer that I am drawing my facts from the Courier-Journal and I am going to choose not to use names. I also am making the disclaimer that I am going in the order of the facts as they have usefulness to me in this blog (you can read the story for yourself if you want—your public library should have access to the story though its web-based database).

The former education dean was reported to have been emotionally abusive. The story said that he humiliated faculty publicly. He was also reported to have stood out in the hallway and mimicked the faculty member who had applied for his position but lost to him. (That faculty member moved on to another school). The story reported that a student got up and shut the door to the hallway. That is childish behavior if it really happened.

The story also had reports of the former dean engaging in sexual harassment at U of L and at one of his former places of tenure. Why is this surprising in light of this next piece of information?

The former education dean was married four times and is being divorced from his fourth wife. I think that secularism downplays how many times people get married. I want to say that it does matter. It takes maturity to stay in a marriage. Even if someone is not book-smart, they can be mature enough to be in a marriage and do just fine. I think that four marriages is indicative of someone's lack of maturity. (And this guy is a doctoral-level clinical psychologist?)

While I am not going to tell an abused person to stay with an abusive and tyrannical spouse, I have had numerous patients who have been married several times. In hearing their stories, I repeatedly found that they had tremendous abandonment issues and jumped from marriage to marriage impulsively without realizing that they were repeating the same mistake again and again. They needed to be good consumers of the person they were dating—and fight the negative thoughts that they were never-ever-ever-ever going to find someone again . . . and thus jump into bed and get married to the next person that said hello to them.

The more endearing part of the story is that two people I used to go to church with were quoted about how shady and hypocritical this guy was. These two people are of high character in my opinion—which had me all the more mindful.

Anyway, this guy was allowed to stay for awhile by the University. He was a “high performer.”
University administrative officials were quoted a number of times. The university president called the earlier complaints '”anonymous crap.”' The provost's comments were interesting as to how she dismissed early complaints because she took the view that faculty members were rigid in their ways and being naturally resistant to change. She also said that most organizations give '”high performers'” time to change their ways.

The term “high performer” then stuck with me. The guy had an appearance of being a high performer. He had done some good work earlier in his career. He worked fast and slashed and burned quickly. In his slashing and burning he was abusive and ruthless. He had enough success in bringing in the money, which likely bought him time and the appearance of being a high performer--but then he has had a number of short-term jobs in the process.

Money covered a multitude of character defects and sins . . . until the sins became too great to be covered by the money. The University of Louisville is striving to become a leading research university—something encouraged by the powers in Louisville and Kentucky. The University strongly encourages pursuit of grants and has some pretty verbose rules about spending the money.

Nevertheless, as I am learning from academia, many people are there who cannot function in the regular work world. I have had a number of professors who have few if any people skills—and would probably not make it past the 90 day probationary periods of a regular job because they cannot work well with others (clinically these are called narcissistic and borderline personalities).
I think that the University of Louisville has a number of them.

These low-emotionally intelligent types are protected by political correctness. They know how to invoke political correctness when it serves their interests—but will violate it in like manner too. What you get is a cloud of emotional dysfunction that ironically masquerades as acceptance. However, political correctness is really emotional and intellectual tyranny—academic freedom and freedom of thought on most campuses does not exist.

An example in the form of “a rabbit I want to chase” was when I was at Iowa State University back in the 1980's. The dean of students was a black lady who appeared to be a controlling borderline personality. Since I was a journalism student at that time, I had heard the story from the white “Iowa State Daily” editor who did the story himself. She wanted him to read back the quotes—which he did. However, she then reached across the table—grabbed his notebook—and read them for herself. I had one other second-hand encounter which told me something was not right with this woman—when I got into Clinical Social Work—she was one of the first that came up on my scope as a past example of a Borderline Personality who is a paranoid control freak.

All that being said, my gestalt is that the provost was thinking along these lines. The former education dean could hide in the cloud of emotional dysfunction until it became clearer and clearer, that the former dean was a problem. The story hinted that more and more complaints were made and insinuated that the former dean was leaving for such a reason. The elephant in the middle of the room is that he was leaving to take a job that paid $50,000 less per year than what he made at U of L. It appears that his high performance was not mattering anymore and his heavy-handed methods were bringing diminishing returns.

After the recitation of some of the details of the story, I have thoughts about leadership and character. There are multitudes of people in leadership around the world with bad character, little emotional intelligence and little moral fiber. I might have a little sympathy for the former dean given the details of his upbringing and my understanding of how personality disorders happen.

However, it comes back to me how this guy brought in money and made changes. It did not turn out until five years later how he spent the money and made the changes that something was supposedly done. Character took a back seat for such a long time.

I think that money will always replace character as the first standard in judging performance. It is becoming more evident that way in academia and in most work places--even with corporate statements of purpose and value.

Given this push for grant money it seems that the biggest message outside of the money piece is that universities are not proving to be places where character is nurtured and practiced. There are two many personality-disordered faculty members who can provide cover for the even sicker personality disordered faculty and administration who accidentally know how to manipulate situations under the cover of research grants and political correctness.

The story tells me that it is questionable whether the University of Louisville can honest say that character “is happening here.”