I have a PhD in Family and Consumption Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I received it in 1993, so it was a long time ago. It was probably my biggest sacrifice, spending 7 more years out of the workforce.
It didn’t feel like a sacrifice at all. I was self-supporting throughout grad school (although assistantship pay is hardly extravagant). I relished my time with fellow grad students, and I had time to sit on the Quad and watch people. I did have mood swings during this time and spent some of it depressed, but most of graduate school was idyllic.
To me, sacrifices never feel like sacrifices. They feel like life. In one moment, I am earning much less to make my way through graduate school. In another, I am taking time to help someone else with a class. A choice made, the consequences accepted. Just life.
I am not a leader. I am not a follower. I am the person who works the best and fastest on my own.
I have some leadership opportunities, chairing one committee in my department. I don’t feel I do a good job of it. People let me do it, but I feel like (American proverb here) a fish out of water when I do it.
As a follower, I am impatient. Mercifully, my chair and assistant chair believe in short faculty meetings, so following is not
so painful. I do what I’m told, so I’m not a bad follower, I guess, but it’s not my natural state of being.
I really want to be in my own office, completing tasks from my personal checklist. When I have scheduled time, I’m a rockstar, checking things off my list. I prefer brainstorming on my own to sitting in a meeting. And when I brainstorm with others, I prefer they be an equal to either a superior or a follower.
Left to my own, I’m a loner, I guess. If I have to choose between leader and follower, I would be a follower, but it’s not my natural state. I’d rather work on my own, thank you.
I don’t eat healthy enough. I eat a lot of processed food because we don’t have a lot of time or energy to cook at the end of the day. Between Richard’s job and his share of the housework, and my work and writing, we just don’t have the energy to do more than open a jar of spaghetti sauce or eat some faux lobster dip with crackers. It’s a wonder that my stomach hasn’t reached up and strangled me at some point.
It’s not that I dislike vegetables, even. When I eat vegetables, they’re the best thing on earth if ripened well and not overripe or spoiled. I have very good tastebuds and I can tell if a tomato or cucumber is a bit off. Right now I’m craving an Indian vegetarian dinner of channa masala, saag with turnips, and chutney. Or a Thai cucumber salad and some green chicken curry. Or a stir-fry with peanut sauce.
We’re putting in a vegetable garden this year. I hope that entices me to eat more vegetables. I’m also putting in an herb garden for the same reason.
Revamping one’s diet is not a little change, but a big one. Wish me luck.
As an American with progressive leanings and a desire for globalism, the public figure I agree with the most is Donald Trump. I could throw the rest of his cabinet in for good measure, but I’m going to focus on Trump today.
I’m going to spare you readers the commentary on his personal attributes of vanity, venality, and probably narcissism, because this essay is supposed to be about disagreement.
I disagree with Trump’s overuse of executive orders to reshape the government, bypassing Congress. The legislative branch exists for a reason, and is vital to our democracy.
I disagree with Trump’s viewpoint that the purpose of government is as a despotic tool of revenge. There are plenty of examples of this, from revoking security clearances for past Democratic opponents to firing prosecutors for their roles in prosecuting January 6th rioters.
I disagree with Trump’s denial of due process toward people he deems as undocumented aliens. Due process exists for a reason — it’s in the Constitution.
I disagree with Trump’s dismantling of DEI programs, which sought not to favor women and people of color, but to give them equal access. I disagree with Trump’s efforts to rewrite public history, removing these people’s accomplishments.
I disagree with Trump’s every Cabinet pick, as they seem to be chosen as the least competent people for the jobs.
I disagree with Trump’s destructive purge of government employees and organizations, especially those which protect Americans. Cutting government spending can be done thoughtfully, as was evidenced in the Clinton administration.
I do not just disagree with Trump. I protest his heavy-handed, anti-American actions.
I’m 62 years old, an associate professor, and five years from retirement. This is the time where people with careers coast until retirement rather than thinking about promotion-type ventures.
What is my career plan? For the most part, doing the best job I can until I retire. This means teaching, a bit of research, revamping classes, and possibly writing up a new class. There’s going to be a little bit of helping with curriculum revision, and always summer interns. Nothing new or surprising on that front.
I don’t want to go up for full professor because of the stressors of paperwork and worthy research — I have tenure; that was what I needed. I need life balance.
As far as the writing goes (I guess that’s a hobby rather than a career, but I’m going to talk about it anyhow) I am going to keep writing. When I retire, I will have more time to write and will have to write to keep my sanity in retirement. I don’t do nothing well. Maybe I will find the secret to promoting my work. Maybe I will write a best-seller. I don’t foresee anything else unless I turn a hobby into a more considerable operation, such as going professional with my moulage. I haven’t gotten to that quality; it would be fun if I had.
That’s my career in a nutshell. At my age, it’s not exciting.
The last concert I’ve been to was the Gesualdo Six, a British a cappella group who performs vocal music from medieval to modern compositions. Mostly older.
The concert was held in McCray Auditorium, which is housed in an older building whose lobby looked like a courtyard. Very English Gothic, I’m told. Not a bad building for the Gesualdo Six.
The Gesualdo Six were fabulous. I have an eclectic taste in music, but one of the things I love is good harmony. I can’t play-by-play the concert like I was a music critic, but the soaring harmonies are what I will remember.
The concert I saw before the Gesualdo Six? The Hu, a Mongolian heavy metal band. Did I mention I have eclectic taste in music?
In my undergraduate years, my major was Foods in Business, a major designed to position people into the food industry. This was not what I ultimately did with my life, having discovered Family and Consumption Economics, and my life’s work, my junior year. But as an undergraduate, I wanted to work in a consumer affairs position, or even better, in a test kitchen.
I took a class my senior year called Food Science, where we spent the first half of the semester learning the chemical and physical properties of food, and the second half of the semester testing hypotheses about food. Mine was testing for substitutes for butter in baking poundcakes — margarine, butter flavored shortening, and regular shortening with butter buds flavoring. (Note: people preferred shortening over everything, including butter.) I fell in love with test kitchen work and, if it weren’t for the fact that I loved the thought of graduate school more, I might have gone into test kitchen work.
So, if I had a choice of any job to step into for a day, I would walk into a test kitchen. I think I remember the basics 40 years later — standardized recipes where one weighs all the ingredients on a scale (including a very sensitive one for small amounts like baking soda and seasoning), tasting rooms with good ventilation, white walls, and neutral lighting, testing of texture, crumb, and viscosity using simple and complicated testing. I think I can do it for a day with very little coaching.
The person I most admired has been dead for a number of years. He was my friend, surrogate father, and confessor. He got me through some of the most difficult years of my life. He was also the most interesting person I’ve ever met.
Les had a series of experiences that I could only dream of, and he would let them slip in conversation. “When I was in the Navy,” or “When I was in graduate school in Scotland,” or “When I was a pilot” … there were quite a few of these over the years. He was a combustion expert, and one of his sidelines was building controlled explosions in coal mines to burn off dangerous gases. He also studied religion on the side, and held a concert of his original compositions at age 80.
Les gave me a lot of advice over the years. Everything from grad school advice to life advice. I was going through considerable trauma and bad breakups in the time I knew him, so I know I did a certain amount of crying over the phone. Never did Les judge me.
He always held that, if I found the right person to have a relationship with, I would heal. It was scary, but he was correct. He knew I would marry Richard when I had barely met him, and he was (as always) right. I never got him that bottle of Talisker (Scotch) I owed him for that bet.
He died at 95, which is fitting for someone whose life was that full. His memorial service was filled with all the people whose lives he’d touched over the years. We had lost touch with each other, but we reunited for him. It was a fitting send-off.
On work issues, what gives me direction is what needs to be done. There is a cycle of grading, classes to be taught, topics to cover, research to be done, etc. That determines the direction of my work.
With leisure time, several things influence the sense of direction. One big thing is goals. I have small goals and Big Audacious Goals. I have not had a Big Audacious Goal in a while, which is part of why writing has been so hard. Another is my energy level — if I have little energy, my sense of direction points toward rest above anything. Finally, there’s a tug between established routine and emergent wants — do I go to Starbucks to write or start working in the garden?
I wish I could say some divine force gives me direction. I don’t know if I believe in God, although lately I have been praying. I pray that I get done the things I need to get done. But it still doesn’t help me get to the garden tasks.
These are the Four Agreements, from the book written by dom Miguel Ruiz, and I live my life by these.
Being impeccable with one’s word, to me, means not to speak unless one can speak truth. When we lie, we do not speak truth. When we say ‘yes’ when we mean ‘no’, we are not speaking truth. When we say negative things about ourselves or others, we are not speaking the whole truth.
Not taking things personally is exactly that — realizing that when someone says something, whether negative or positive, about you, they are speaking about their view of the world. They are speaking about themselves.
Don’t make assumptions — this, to me, is the easiest one to understand. I teach it in my case management class when we talk about clients, especially cultural diversity. Ask for clarification. Observe the other. Be careful to distinguish between facts and assumptions.
Always do your best. I make it a point to do this, understanding that my best during times of stress and distress is not the same as my best during good times. I can rest knowing that I did my best.
I know that The Four Agreements are considered New Age wisdom, and I reject a lot of that. But these four rules make so much sense in life and have made me a much calmer, more empathetic being.
Words Like Me 