Relationships

So it was February of 1991, and I was in Chicago, debating at the Northwestern tournament, and something unexpected happened. We were debating a team from Boston College, Craig Cerniello and Darren Schwiebert, who, to be frank, were better than we were. Not that there was any shortage of teams about whom that could've been said. And I should mention that by "we," I mean myself and Robert Scott McWilliams, current whereabouts unknown to me. We were affirmative. It was an affirmative that Rod Phares had dreamed up over Christmas break, concerning China and ozone depletion. Those details don't matter. My confidence had taken some stout blows from recent events. I don't think that mattered much either. It was round one, and we had a mediocre judge whom I won't name, since I just called that judge mediocre and this is an open blog, but a judge who knew us and had been very good for us before. Still, we were getting pretty clearly thrashed. It wasn't bad to the point of embarrassing, but it wasn't a debate anyone should have a hard time deciding. Something happened between the second negative rebuttal (Cerniello) and the second affirmative rebuttal (me):

I suddenly understood debate.

No angel choirs, no "click" in my head, nothing overt. I wasn't sitting under a banyan tree, and I didn't come up with any eightfold path. I just, all of a sudden, understood that all these zillions of different arguments that I was trying to take care of, like chasing drops of mercury after a spill, weren't zillions of arguments after all. It was all one big argument. It was one coherent whole.

I can put that into words today, and I could've put it into words before that day. Millions of times I'd had coaches tell me that the smart debating was about understanding the relationship between all the issues. I knew that. I could say those words. Doing it, though, was much more difficult. I'd been trying for years, which probably explains why I was such an unsuccessful debater. No false modesty there: year after year, I truly stunk. But in this round, all of a sudden, it wasn't a zillion little arguments anymore: just one. It was something like those Magic Eye 3d pictures, even though I've never yet gotten one of those to work. Maybe tomorrow I suddenly will, and that'll change my life again.

I think that may have been the single lesson that made all of my ten years as a debater (first debate in 1982, last in 1992) worth it. And it knocks me for a loop that I completely left this out of the study I'm currently hammering into shape about the effects that a debate career have on the skill set of someone who goes on to be an educator.

It absolutely changes every conversation. It's especially handy in the classroom, because I can hold an entire lesson in my head as one big set of interwoven claims, held together by relationships. If a student is having trouble with one concept, it's really easy for me to step out, grab the bigger picture, and use it to explain that one trouble spot to the student. It also comes up in meetings a lot: I find that I have an easy time asking, "Is this really where our trouble is? Are we really dealing with the issue, or are we spinning our wheels?" I can do that because I've got a good protection against tunnel vision.

Another study that someone ought to do someday would investigate whether former debaters are inoculated against sound-bite political strategies. In particular, the study ought to examine the relationship between success in debate and resistance to that kind of tactic. Plenty of debaters can handle lots and lots of separate statements, just like keeping lots of balls in the air. But the debaters who take it up a notch have to understand how those statements fit, how they cohere, and I get the feeling there would be an entirely different response from that group of people to the typical political campaign messages.

And the cynical part of me can't make up its mind whether debate coaches could use that to actually promote their programs, or whether it would become vitally necessary that we hide those results, so that elected officials don't get ahold of them.

The other thing I meant to mention is, I'm still struck to this day by how sudden it was. I am not exaggerating when I trace that entire realization, a realization that stuck, a realization that turned me from a mediocre debater into a decent, and occasionally quite good, debater; a realization that's been this turbo-charge to my career, descended on me in about a three minute window. Less than that. I am absolutely sure that there was a second when I couldn't make it come together, and one second later I could.

Other places I've noted my belief that people do not learn until they are ready to learn. That process can't be hurried through any trickery or force known to humankind. People either cannot, or will not, or the entire point might be that the two are not distinct. But when it was time for me to get it, suddenly I got it. And once I understood that about my students, it made many things about teaching make sense, and seem tolerable, that previously didn't and weren't.

Relinquishing

Every few years I lose almost everything I own.

I moved from Georgia to Arizona in 1997, from Arizona to Texas in 1999, and from Texas to Oregon in 2007. Each time, I packed up my books and shipped them, but otherwise took only what I could fit in a Toyota Corolla. A tiny Toyota Corolla.

And on a bunch of occasions I've done this or that stupid thing and managed to wipe out every document I had on my computer. That meant I had to rewrite all my lectures, all my syllabi, all my assignment instructions and activity materials, from a blank page. Sometimes I could reconstruct what I'd done before from memory, but more often I had to just rack my brains and do a total rewrite.

It's surprisingly liberating. I don't necessarily look forward to that ruthless culling that precedes a move, but once I get started, it's actually pretty painless. I tend to find out that much of what I've accumulated is just junk, and that when I'm rid of it, I feel proud of the accomplishment.

Same thing with the computer disasters. I'm convinced that they're a big part of why I've never fallen into a rut in my teaching. Instead of doing the same thing over and over again, I get to reinvent a lot of things, and put to work the lessons I've learned from teaching prior classes. And if I weren't forced to do it, I would never exercise enough initiative and discipline on my own to get it accomplished. It takes a catastrophic wipeout to make it happen.

That's been on my mind lately as I hear news about the floods through Illinois, Iowa and Missouri. I do feel a good deal of concern and compassion for people who are in danger, who are afraid for their lives, but I really have a hard time having much empathy with people who lose a lot of possessions, and then say something like "My entire life has been destroyed." Really? Your life is made of stuff? Stuff is just stuff. Stuff gets tiresome and can always be replaced. Even when they're talking about things like photos, I don't really get why they treasure them quite so much. I've been fond of a few pictures in my life, and have even managed to lose one or two that I really wanted to keep, but it's not the kind of thing I lie awake at night and stare at the ceiling about. In most cases, I can remember in great detail what the photo looked like, and that's good enough.

So I can't decide whether that's a failure in my own heart, or a distortion in other people's values. But I do know I'm not wedded to stuff, and to date it's been a pretty good way to live.

Recherche

So one of the things I get to do with my three months of vacation is work on my academic research. College professors try to write and publish in their academic fields for a few reasons:

• It keeps us up-to-date, both by putting us in touch with the outside world and by forcing us to read other scholars' research;
  
• It enhances the school's prestige;
• It gives administrators a way to measure performance, for purposes of hiring and promoting;

So over the past several years, I've submitted a lot of academic papers to conferences in the field of Communication. Most have been accepted, and a few even got what we call "Top Paper" recognition. Now, however, what I need to do is beat these projects into shape, which is to say that I need to improve them, tighten them up, and submit them to academic journals for publication. The standards that journals apply are a lot higher, so I need all the help I can get.

That's where you come in.

Honestly, I need fresh eyes. I've been working on some of these things for so long that I've stopped noticing details. I don't need other academics to comment on the finer point of this or that theory; I need someone to read what I've written and say, "You know, that makes me think of ..." no matter how tangential.

I've got a separate blog on Blogspot, this one set to private, which I'm using to develop three old conference papers in particular. Well, two conference papers, and the third project is actually my doctoral dissertation. If you'd be interested in reading up on what I do as an academic researcher, and giving me your reaction, then send me an email, ideally from a gmail account, and I'll send you an invite that'll let you read the blog.

One more time: what you reply with doesn't have to be lofty or academic in tone. It could just be "Here's something funny that popped into my mind while I read this." That could help a great deal.

Hope you're having a good summer.

Refresher

Okay. Apparently a big ol' segment of the human race needs a review of the flippin' obvious.

The sidewalk is for two-way traffic. That means that even though you've selected a direction, believe it or not, other people are permitted to choose to walk in the other direction. Almost all sidewalks are wide enough to accommodate this. Stay on your right, and they'll stay on their right, and everything will be fine. No, your right. Your other right. Get over on the right. The RIGHT! There you go.

But, yes, of course, how heartbreaking, you're walking with a friend, and the two of you really really really enjoy walking side-by-side. You enjoy it so much that you can't do without being abreast of one another for one single footstep. You've got to be able to see your BFF out of the corner of your eye, or the universe might explode. You can't even move closer to each other; you're the optimal distance apart! How dare these other people meddle in your perfect spacing?

Except that you need to. The typical sidewalk is wide enough for one person walking each direction. If you're walking side-by-side with a friend, and someone approaches from the other way, then you need to move over. It's not their duty to step off into what in Oregon is squishy and full of goose poop. You need to make room. You can go back to walking abreast one entire second later. You'll live.

No, no dirty looks. No, no indignant huffs. Just move the flip over, and be on your way.

No, no exemptions just because you're absorbed in a deafening conversation via your phone. Your joke stopped being funny the fifth time you had to shout the punchline. And even less so if you're texting. Instead, try being aware of the world around you. Yes, I left the word "revolves" out of that sentence; that was intentional.

These aren't difficult rules to live by. If you fail to, one of these days you're going to get shoved into traffic or thrown under the wheels of a thundering Schwinn. Get it together.