One thing that I cannot stand is when someone calls someone else stupid because of something they did. Actually, it’s not that I cannot tolerate it, it’s that I find it completely frustrating because the person saying the other person is stupid is usually the one that I think is in fact being stupid.
It’s frustrating because I always have to hold my tongue because I just want to scream, “You’re the one being stupid because you have NO idea how or why that other person made the ‘stupid’ decision.” You are sitting there watching the news with someone or they are reading the news and you hear, “God, how stupid can a person be?” My first instinct is to say, “You don’t know anything about this person in the news, and you certainly do not have all the facts concerning the situation. In fact, I’ve know you for many years and have heard you call 100’s of people stupid but in fact I think you’re the stupid one.” Why are they the stupid one, because they are calling someone else stupid based on very limited information.
Just like intelligence, stupidity comes in many different forms. However, if you find yourself constantly calling people you don’t know stupid, maybe you should think about who the stupid person really is.
Caleb and the NICU
While waiting for our belongings to make their way from Berkeley to State College, my wife and I stayed in Michigan with our family. My wife was pregnant and after two miscarriages things seemed to be going well. Unfortunately, at 21 weeks (of 40) her water broke (premature rupture of membrane, i.e. prom). We went to the hospital and were told that babies born at 21 weeks cannot survive and that she should end the pregnancy. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to do that especially since Rita could feel the baby moving. The doctors transferred her to University of Michigan Medical Center and placed her on bed rest there. They also told us that labor would most likely start within 48 hours and that premature babies born before 24 weeks have very little chance of survival, and if they do survive they typically have many long-term health issues. After being in the hospital for seven weeks (apparently a record at the time) they finally had to induce labor (with very little amniotic fluid it was better for the baby to be out at 28 weeks). Caleb was born on September 18, 1998 and immediately taken to the NICU.
While the nurses tried to prepare us for the NICU, I was completely unprepared for the challenges that Caleb would face. During his first day there we watched his blood pressure drop to the single digits. The nurses started preparing us for him not to make it. Fortunately, the medication started to work and his blood pressure slowly rose. While all the days of his nine-week stay in the NICU were not that rough there were many more ups and downs. It was an emotional roller coaster ride, a big wake up to the real world, and rough welcome to becoming a father and professor. Needless to say, my first semester at PSU did not go well.
While Caleb coming home from the NICU was a huge step forward, it also was a very trying time for Rita and me. He was still in need of a great deal of medical attention and constant monitoring. We hooked him up to a breathing monitor at night which constantly false alarmed. We took him repeatedly to Hershey Medical Center to determine if his retinopathy was improving or worsening. We tried everything possible to get him to gain weight. Nothing worked because I think his ultra-thin build has nothing to do with being premature. We get letters home every year from school alerting us that his BMI is in the 0.5th percentile. That’s the problem with sick kids. You never know what is a problem and what is just individuality. This has been even more of an issue with Amanda.
Cancer and My Mother’s Passing
Not long after Caleb’s health seemed to stabilize and we were less concerned about what long-term health problems he might have, my mother was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, i.e. cancer in the immune system. The thing with lymphoma is that there are a variety of types as well as a variety of stages. Some are very slow growing, extending life expectancy but also reducing the effects of chemotherapy. Some are fast growing and respond well to chemotherapy. If one can survive the chemotherapy and remove the cancer the prognosis is quite good. There are also types with growth rates in between these. It was never quite clear (to me at least) what type my mother had. The doctors treated it aggressively with chemotherapy and for a while it seemed to be working. However, as anyone who has closely followed someone with cancer knows, there are many ups and downs as one test result looks encouraging and the next looks discouraging. After a few years, it became clear that she was losing the battle. She passed away during the summer of 2003. Fortunately, having summers quite free, I was able to spend a lot of time in Michigan with my parents before my mother passed away. I will always remember the morning follow the night she died. Coming out of the house that morning I saw one of the most spectacular rainbows.
Losing my mother was quite hard. She was the one from whom I got my temper, overzealous passion, outspokenness and strong desire for fairness and honesty. Unfortunately, this combination of traits also tends to annoy people if not moderated properly. My mother, who dealt with this with herself and her family, was always the person who would help me with this. Whenever I was overly upset about something and wanting to lash out, I would talk to her and inevitably calm down. There are a number of occasions since her passing when her calming wisdom would have been helpful.
Amanda and Another NICU
After overcoming our fear of having another premature baby (which is much more likely) Rita got pregnant with Amanda. While there were some early indications that not all was right with the fetus (there was a two-vessel, as opposed to the normal three-vessel, umbilical cord and some questions about kidney function), ultimately the doctors expected Amanda to be a normal baby. Thus, everyone was shocked when she was born. Some minor exterior lower-abdomen defects were just a prelude to all the internal defects we were to discover.
Having spent a lot of time in the NICU were there is really no privacy, we learned a lot about the myriad of problems that full-term babies can have. In fact, you really start to realize how amazing it is that the vast majority of babies are not born with birth defects.
Amanda was rushed to Hershey Medical Center after it became obvious that her bowel function was not normal. There we learned that a whole lot inside her abdomen was not normal. In some regards, it is amazing it all works and says a lot about the fault tolerance of biological systems. While an entire listing of all her issues would require another post, she has had a total of 13 surgeries to: remove a section of colon that did not have nerve endings, untether her spinal cord, remove her ruptured appendix, remove her stone-filled gall bladder, replace her nonexistent bladder with bowel tissue, fix her new bladder, open and close a colostomy, and open and close a vesicostomy.
She is now ten years old and reached what seems to be a steady state. Her reconstructed bladder appears to be working well. She has to catheterize herself every three hours (at night too) to empty it, and every few months she winds up in the ER because the catheter channel is blocked. This happens mostly at night when she (for whatever reason) produces a lot of urine but while sleeping does not realize her bladder is overly full. She also still has some issues with her bowels and has an antegrade colonic enema (ACE) every morning. She still gets bladder infections fairly regularly. The biggest issue is that we never know when something else might creep up (like the gall stones). We never know if she is just sick with a stomach bug like a normal kid or if the illness is something more serious. Fortunately, none of her recent ailments have been serious and we are beginning to assume an illness it is just one of the routine ones all kids get.
A House Fire and the Death of Three Nephews
This is probably the worst experience I have ever been through. A year before my mother passed away and a year after Amanda was born on November 15th, 2002 three of my nephews (my wife’s sister’s children) died in a house fire. They were 13, 10, and 7 years old. My wife (especially) and I were very close with the oldest one who we took care of regularly when he was a baby. I can vividly remember being awoken by a phone call in the middle of the night. Neither my wife nor I got to the phone in time to answer it. When it started to ring again we knew something was wrong. I can still remember my wife screaming, “Mark, tell me it’s not true! Please tell me it’s not true!” I first assumed it was something about her mother or father, and it took a few minutes before she was actually able to tell me what had happened.
I am still not completely sure what exactly happened. From what I understand an electrical fire started in a small attic space next to where the boys had their bedroom. They think maybe when the house had a new roof installed that a nail might have shorted some wires. The fire apparently smoldered for several hours during the evening. When it finally burned through the bedroom wall near the top of the stairs there was a great deal of heat built up and now given ample oxygen almost immediately engulfed the stairwell and much of the bedroom. At this point the fire alarms went off but the upstairs bedroom was cut-off from the downstairs where my sister- and brother-in-law were sleeping. They immediately called for help but were blocked from going up the stairs. They then went outside and tried with a ladder to get to the only window away from the heart of the fire. They could not reach the window because the ladder was too short. Once they found something to further elevate the ladder the fire was too hot to even approach the window.
This was a tragedy that one would like to think was caused by negligence so you can think it could not happen to you. However, it really seems like nothing could have been done. Everything that could have gone wrong did.
I hope that they were overcome by the smoke and passed out because they were burned beyond recognition. A number of volunteer firefighters were burned through their protective gear trying to get to the boys. One was the brother of a high school friend who apparently went through many months of therapy trying to deal with what he saw.
The aftermath of this is still an issue for my family. My wife cried regularly for a year, was then depressed for many more years, and was then upset that her memories of her nephews were fading.
My son and older daughter are now the age of the older two boys who would be 22 and 19 now. However, it is like they are frozen in time and my children have caught up to them.
My wife recently filed for divorce (that will likely be another post but not the topic here) and one of the summonses I get in the mail says that I have to attend the Education Program for Separated Parents. At first I’m thinking, “Okay. I can see how this would be useful for the majority of people (me not included).” However, as I read more about it and see the registration form I start to realize the whole thing seems more like a shake-down than anything else. Let me explain what I’ve learned.
The program is run by a 65-year-old retired Penn State associate professor named Jennifer Mastrofski who developed it with a local judge while working at Penn State. The class was initially offered through Penn State but is now offered by a consulting company owned by Mrs. (I’m not going to give her the respect of referring to her as Dr.) Mastrofski. The classes offered at various county courthouses around central Pennsylvania and it appears there is only one person/company that offers them.
The cost of the program is $55; although the letter from the court says it’s $50. Apparently Mrs. Mastrofski increased the price without notifying the court.
The letter from the court says that anyone filing divorce or custody documents that has children under the age of 18 must register and attend the class within 60 days of filing. Thus, at first, since I have not filed anything, I didn’t think it applied to me. However, that seemed really odd so I called and indeed anyone involved in the filing must attend.
After I complained a little bit and the person I was talking to at the courthouse acknowledge the whole thing seemed a little shady, she told me that I actually had another option. This option was to take the class online at http://online.divorce-education.com. It turns out this costs $40 and is much more convenient than driving 20 miles to spend four hours in a little conference room in the middle of a weekday. I asked why they didn’t mention this in the letter and she said, “They didn’t want us to.” Hmm?
So, in summary, Jennifer Mastrofski has convinced the courts in central PA that nearly every person involved in a divorce must pay her $55 to watch video tapes she’s made of children talking about their separated parents. It would be interesting to see the financials of Mastrofski’s consulting business to see how much she makes off this.
My take on this: it’s a scam that governments around here have fallen for in the name of the children. What if I wanted to start a competing consulting firm? Would that be allowed? I am utterly flabbergast by this entire thing. I can certainly see that it would in general be a good idea for most parents and it would be hard to determine which parents could possibly safely opt out. However, to advertise only one option to complete this requirement that puts money into the pocket of someone who worked to make it a requirement is really shady. Honestly, I cannot imagine having this requirement and not making the financial information of the sole-source available has got to violate some rights.
The other thing that I just cannot fathom is that the courts require this but not any kind of counseling to try to save the marriage. Isn’t that what would be best for the kids, trying to save the marriage. What seems to have happened is that the marriage counselors are not as savvy as Jennifer Mastrofski (who is also affiliated with the PSU business school) to realize the way to guarantee your business thrives is to force people to use it through corrupt politics.
If you read any of my previous posts, you might guess that I’m not a huge fan of the NCAA penalties placed on Penn State. As someone that teaches vibrations regularly it’s interesting to watch the pendulum swing back and forth, never seeming to reach an equilibrium. In this case, the NCAA wanted to flex its muscle to show the world that it has more power than it actually does. People (not me) had been saying that penalties it has handed out in the past are too weak, so it needed to stand up and grab some headlines by overreaching its bounds. What happened at Penn State had nothing to do with exploiting the student-athletes the NCAA is there to protect. It has now deemed itself a watchdog for anything remotely related to collegiate athletics.
Regarding the specific penalties, the only one I have a real problem with is the fine. Sixty million dollars is a lot of money. While I’m glad it will be put to good use, I wonder if it will come only from the athletic department. I sure hope so because it’s now going to be even harder to argue against state budget cuts that are always proposed. Tuition was already going to increase because of this indirect loss of state funds.
Another thing I keep reading about is the need to change the culture and the organizational structure that led to this situation. The thing is the organizational structure is not what caused the problem. PSU has much the same organization structure as any other university. It’s not like back in the day at Auburn where the football coach (Dye) was also the athletic director. It’s also not like a former coach or player (here here NU, UM, et al.) is the athletic director. People seem to have the impression that PSU’s organizational structure somehow gave Paterno, et al. too much power. While I agree entirely Paterno had too much power, it was not the organizational structure that gave it to him.
That brings me to the culture. The football culture here is as distorted and twists as it is at most major universities. It does not seem any worse than it was a UM; although it is certainly worse than it was at Cal (Berkeley). I would think it’s actually not as bad as many other schools (Texas, TAMU, UF, FSU, Auburn, Alabama, LSU, Notre Dame, Nebraska, Oklahoma, USC, Miami, et al.). These schools seem to have cultural issues at least as serious as PSU. Ultimately, it seems to me to be more a cultural issue of our society.
So why did this tragedy happen at PSU and not someplace else? Mostly it was just bad luck and could have happened at any number of schools. We brought someone (Sandusky) on campus (as a student-athlete) that happened to be a very clever sociopath. Unfortunately he was also a good player and coach, and smart enough to not get caught during his early years. (Note, I’m assuming he did not become a pedophile in his later years and had been abusing children for much longer than we know.) The other piece in the puzzle was that we hired a coach that would turn into an arrogant old man that had nothing else to do besides coach football and, thus, wouldn’t retire. I also believe Paterno truly felt that he was the only person good enough to coach the PSU football team.
The problem was he was just hear for so long (current students may have grown up with their parents and grandparents idolizing him) that he slowly turned into a dictator. Unfortunately there was never really any good reason to get rid of him (until the end). Sure he had some losing seasons but then you’re basically firing someone for not winning games. PSU alumni and administrators thought he had sacrificed too much for the university to fire him for not winning. It’s really hard to fire a legend unless they do something bad. Unfortunately, very few people knew about the bad things he did until the end. He did do a lot for the university by living a very modest life, earning a modest (relative to other coaches) salary, and donating much of his endorsement income back to the university. However, I will stick by my early Facebook comments that in the end he will have cost the university more than he gave it. His “I’m a simple man trying to teach young athletes to be good people.” was probably true to start. However, as the years wore on, I think that was more of a front to continue to garner alumni support. I read someone suggesting we have term limits on football coaches. That’ll never happen but you have to be mindful that at some (tipping) point a coach has too much power.
The thing that people outside PSU don’t seem to see is that the culture changed the minute Paterno was fired and this new culture was cemented when he died. The NCAA punishments are not going to change the culture. In fact, I worry that they’ll make it worse. There will be even more of an ‘us against them’ attitude that will insulate the university from the world. Maybe forcing the football team to be terrible will help change the culture of the blindly devoted PSU alumni that are the ones that really enabled this mess. Unfortunately, its hard to punish such a large group of people, most of whom had nothing explicitly to contribute to the situation. What I would like to see is the university try to pay this fine by using a true supply and demand system for ticket prices. The alumni are still likely going to fill the stadium–for most of them it’s a tradition that won’t end because the team stinks–so let the ticket prices climb until profit is maximized. Then the people that truly enabled this situation will be penalized.
As I have read more and more speculation about what punishment the NCAA will hand down to PSU, I have started to think what might be fair and what might fit with all of what has been leaked.
One suggestion I have always liked is for the athletic department to essentially be run as a non-profit and donate all proceeds to a charity (likely for abused children). The problem with that idea is that a non-profit (and least a fake one like this would be) can always make sure to spend all the revenue so there appears to be no profit. I.e. the athletic department could just make sure it spends everything it earns so there’s nothing left for charity.
Another thing that I’ve read about is the NCAA taking over the athletic department. At first this seemed quite strange but it fits with the idea of running things as a non-profit. With the NCAA overseeing things, the athletic department could not spend frivolously to burn all the revenue. If this were the reason for the NCAA taking over (or having oversight) then I think it’s not a bad idea.
The last piece to the puzzle is the fine the NCAA appears to be planning to levy. I’ve read that it’s somewhere between $30 and $60 million. That seems pretty excessive to pay all at once. If this were taken from the athletic department over a year or two it would devastate non-revenue sports, not the football program. Like they do at almost all large universities, football and basketball pay the way for almost all other sports. Thus, forcing the athletic department to run at a loss would be punishing a lot of ‘real’ student-athletes.
Finally, the last I heard the athletic department has an income of roughly $15 million most years. (I’m not exactly sure what they do with that money but it’s separate from the academic budget.) Thus, say the NCAA forces PSU to run the athletic department as a non-profit for four years. If income stays as it is, that would make for a $60 million fine. If income drops as one might expect, the number might be closer to $30 million.
By simply taking the income the athletic department might have made, the NCAA will avoid punishing other athletic programs. Some athletic department projects might be put on hold (hopefully the new ice rink is already paid for), but cutting back on the lavishness of the facilities for the football team will probably be a good thing.
If the ‘credible sources’ are correct the NCAA will be announcing ‘severe and unprecedented’ penalties to Penn State athletics tomorrow. While I have long thought the football culture around here needed to change and think that the past leadership should be criminally charged, when I hear about the NCAA wanting to impose sanctions to punish the university it always seems wrong. I have thought a lot about why it ‘feels’ wrong and have gone back and forth between thinking my gut feeling was correct. I like to trust my instincts but I had a hard time developing a rational argument for why I feel this way.
At first I was thinking the NCAA was overstepping its bounds because this is more of a failure of leadership than a failure to abide by NCAA policy. I will be very interested in what infractions are cited in support of the penalties and if Penn State has the guts to appeal. The problem to me is that I don’t really like this argument. While the problem was indeed more a problem of leadership it was enabled by the athletic department and a lack of control from our leadership. Thus, in that regard I feel the NCAA should be involved.
However, even after dismissing this argument, I still just felt like the NCAA should butt out of this. Today I think I finally figured out why I feel this way. Hopefully I can articulate my feelings in this post.
First, I have never been a fan of the NCAA or how college athletics seems to overshadow academics at some of the nation’s best universities. The entire system needs to be blown up. And in some regards I feel shutting down PSU football for a year might actually be a good thing in the long term. However, the real problem I have with the NCAA getting involved is the stated mission of the NCAA. According to their web site:
Founded more than one hundred years ago as a way to protect student-athletes, the NCAA continues to implement that principle with increased emphasis on both athletics and academic excellence.
Besides wondering if the NCAA really has the interest of student-athletes in mind, they are supposed to be protecting them from abuse by universities. Again, while they seem to be more about enabling universities to abuse student-athletes than anything else, there were no abuses of NCAA athletes in this situation. The NCAA is not here to protect coaches or children, or to punish coaches or universities that do not protect children. The judicial system does that. Hopefully, the judicial system will continue to punish the people that committed these crimes.
In my mind, the real problem with the NCAA getting involved is that in many ways they are acting like the PSU leadership, overstepping their bounds to preserve public perception. They seem to be all too willing to continue to enhance the public perception that they are an organization that oversees entire universities not just the athletic programs at universities.
I have asked many colleagues why it matters to them to be promoted to ‘full’ professor (from associate professor) because, at this point in my life, it just does not matter that much to me. The vast majority of full professors I have talked to really could not give me a concrete reason for what motivated them but said that I should be striving for this promotion. A few suggested that I not worry about being promoted and do what I enjoy. The main reasons I have been given for why I should feel this is important are: prestige, salary, accomplishment, and respect. Ultimately, while no one came out and said it explicitly, I think most are interested in the power and influence that it affords them.
And this is also why it just does not matter that much to me. Sure, a more prestigious title might be nice but I doubt anyone in my extended family even knows the difference between an assistant, an associate, and a full professor. Thus, I would essentially have more prestige in a small community that I do not really feel a part of anyway. Having a larger salary would be nice but I make more than my parents combined ever did (adjusting for inflation). My kids pretty much have everything they need. In fact, I worry that they have too much. The sense of accomplishment that comes with a promotion would probably make me feel good for a few months but then I would just be back to feeling terrible about getting proposals rejected. I suppose having more respect from my peers would be nice but it’s the kind of respect I really don’t want, i.e. respect for a title not accomplishments, contributions, or opinions.
While all of these benefits would be nice, I have to think of the cost of the time and happiness I would need to sacrifice to get them. At this point in my life I just do not think the benefits, which I do not see as all that important, are worth the stress, my time with my family, my mental health, etc.