39 Changing Perception of Betrayal

For years I've been telling people that two members of my graduate committee betrayed me in their letters of recommendation.  But last week I pulled those letters out of a manilla file folder titled "Absolutely Illegal Information" and discovered that my perception of them has changed. My work as a faculstrator and a member of several hiring committees helps me to see these letters in a new way.

But first I should say something about the title of the file where I've kept these letters.  It has to do with the fact that when I asked the University of Utah placement service to create a packet for me, I signed a form agreeing that the letters would be confidential.  So why do I have copies?  Well, during my 1988 job search I kept getting these form letter rejections.   My running buddy, Professor Fox, asked me one day how the search was going and I told him about the regular rebuffs.  He suggested that I should violate my agreement with the placement service and have my letters sent to a friend.  He said that he'd known someone who had found out that he'd been screwed over by the letter writers.  When I questioned him about the ethics of violating my agreement, he made his usual argument that the system was rigged and that when one is a graduate student in a powerless situation it's not a violation of ethics to find out what stumbling blocks have been put in one's way by those who have far more power in the situation.  I, of course, accepted his way of seeing the situation.  We shared the vision that "one doesn't owe truth to power."

So I had the packet sent to a friend and I read the letters.  At the time I read them, I perceived certain comments as left handed compliments that were shaded to present me as someone who would not actually be a good scholar/researcher.  But now I see them as accurate assessments of my goals, interests, and skills.

For example:  "First of all, Karen Huck is a committed and highly-motivated teacher and citizen.  I say this not to slight her intellectual capabilities and accomplishments -- which are fine -- but because I have rarely seen a graduate student (or colleague) so devoted to the possibilities and responsibilities of public education.  I had prior to her written and oral qualifying exams thought of her as a critic/rhetorician whose interest in advanced theory and in what is often described as nontraditional subject matter made her a challenging 'young turk.'  What is now apparent to me, however, is that her interest in such work, while not superficial, is actually in the service of traditional ideas toward the profession."  

I've highlighted the sections that led my younger self to feel as though my qualifications were being undercut.

This same writer went on to mention my "improved writing style" he said that I seem to be growing out of "what I consider her only area in need of improvement, which is a tendency to think in dualistic terms and thus neglect to consider the qualifications and refinements present in any body of material."

Well, this was honest.  Yet it still bugged me when I read it.

The other male letter writer said, "However, research is not her strongest attribute or interest."  And really, for 25 years that's all I remembered about his letter.  As I reread the letters last week I noticed that the paragraph above that sentence ended with this sentence:  "Karen is a bright and creative thinker who will be successful and a publishing scholar."   And in the paragraph that followed his denigration of my research abilities he wrote, "Most of all she is a dedicated teacher.  She has been successful in our most demanding courses, those with the greatest student anxiety because they are screening courses for admission to the major.  She receives strong student ratings even though she sets high standards."  He also mentions that I have provided lots of service to the department and "She is always one of the first to volunteer. . . . She deserves serious consideration, particularly in an institution with a strong commitment to teaching."

Of course, I also have a new view of the two letters I considered highly positive, both by female faculty.  I now see that one of them ends with a sentence that at this point in time seems to be the sort of thing that could be said about any communication teacher -- but with fancy words.  She recommends me "not as the paradigm of the academic ideal, but as an indicator of a new kind of communication professional:  one who substantiates her restless interest in social influence and change with an unbending commitment to understanding the power of discourse."  This means that I care about persuasion because I'm committed to caring about persuasion.  Sigh.

It was fitting that I reread these letters last week when my online interpersonal communication class was covering the concept of perception.  Perception is variable and subject to influence from our past and present experiences.  When I first read those letters I was looking for betrayal and I found it.  Now I'm looking through the eyes of two ad a half decades of being a teacher, community members, and occasional researcher and seeing that the writers weren't trying to hurt me but help me.

(The illustration at the top of the page is the world famous "duck-rabbit.")

What does being 12 years old mean?

You see, we were talking about the parlous nature of our past relationship. 

And I said, “I’m fifty-effing-seven years old.”*  By this I imagined that I was indirectly sending the message that I no longer have the energy or the inclination to go all intense just to jack up my norepinephrine levels.

I don’t know what my friend’s internal interpretation of my statement was.  We are two very different people. 

The external interpretation was in the response given to my statement.  This response suggested that my claim to being well aged and mellow (like Laphroig) wasn’t a legitimate guarantee that my relational performance in the future would be of sufficient difference from that of the past.  (Yes, dear interpersonal communication students, I am NOT a perfect practitioner of all I teach.  I understand the concepts.  I just can’t always do the skills both efficiently and effectively.)

My friend’s response was, “(Inside?) We’re still 12 years old” in a “gestural” vocal tone accompanied by a sweep of the arm. 

While I could not see my own face, I think it may have been registering confusion or disagreement because after a couple of beats of silence this phrase was added: “Well, 13 years old.”

What does it mean to be a 12 years old thought pattern inside of a 57 year old body?

How was I at 12?  I was in 7^th grade which means that I hadn’t yet learned and then purposefully unlearned how to use John Kennedy’s assassination, just two year’s passed, to make myself cry.   That year I spent several months talking in a faux-Liverpudlian accent that went with the three cheap plastic rings I wore on each hand.  My two girlfriends, Robin and Julie, pretended to be Paul and John.  I don’t think we had anyone to play George. 

Were we crazy or simply 7^th graders in the throes of the hormonal disruption of adolescence?

Also, by the age of 12, I had flunked and continued to flunk the gender test.

Oh yes.  One of the games kids played in 6^th grade was to ask someone to do some common behavior:  “look at your fingernails” or “sit down and cross your legs.”  And then, whatever you did, they explained it as either a “girl” or “boy” behavior.  And if you responded as the wrong sex, of course you got picked on.  Yeah, yeah.  Not as rotten as kids today have it and . . . HEY YOU KIDS, GET OFF OF MY LAWN!  Dag nabbit!

Anyway.  Oh, yes.  Well, of course you must have guessed as soon as I learned what the list for “boy,” was, I performed THOSE, not the “girl behaviors.”  I looked at my nails with the palm curved inward, facing me.  As soon as I got into pants each day, I sat with my ankle crossed at the knee.  Those are the only two tests I remember but I’m sure there were more.

Now, what was my motivation?  To be different?  To BE a boy?  To show that there was no difference between boys and girls?  To annoy the living Bjeezuz out of my Mom?

Whatever answer I give at this age and this point in time has a lot more to do with the audience who is in front of me and what I think they need to get from the story than with any accessible “truth.”

So, was I interested in boys at thirteen? Thirteen was eighth grade, when most of my girly excitement was taken up with following the careers of Bobby Kennedy and Ilya Kuryakin I had a chance to see the former on the University of Santa Clara campus in a smallish theatre and acted (with the other 8^th grade girls) much as though he were a Beatle – our cheers too much like screams.  I joined the latter’s fan club.**

So.  What was my friend’s experience at age 12?  Deep interest in politics and government?  Excessive hormonal discharge resulting in parasocial relationships?  Looking forward to serving our country?  An interest in becoming rather than being with the opposite sex?  And what about at age 13? ***

All sensemaking is retrospective.  We give explanations after we do what we do. I know that whatever story I’m giving must by its nature be an attempt at audience adaptation.

Unless of course, Kenneth Burke was right that that it’s possible, it’s conceivable, that people may sometimes, though far more rarely than we imagine, speak expressively rather than rhetorically, to the universe instead of to (an) Other(s)

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*Note to new VPI:  I don’t use profane or  obscene language in front of my students (unless it’s the focus of part of a lesson or a comment to be published in The Broadside) but the blogosphere does, I believe, have different standards of speech than the classroom.

** And have thought about the actor David McCallum’s aging often since becoming a fan of NCIS and catching the episode of Madmen in which he was Sally Draper’s pre-teen heart throb. 

*** Speaking of Thirteen, aren’t you glad she came back to House?  I know I am. 

Implanting Memories about Fritalians

I made my Interpersonal Communication students watch the Dunkin Donuts commercial as part of our discussion of perception. We watched the ad (on youtube) in class and then I asked them to describe two characters and make inferences about them. I also asked them, "which character was wearing a red shirt." After they wrote notes individually, they interacted in groups. As I circulated among them, I kept asking, "Who do you remember wearing the red shirt?" Different people had different memories.

There is no red shirt in the ad.

Yet, they became, with my insistance, sure that they remembered.

This is the best classroom activity I've ever performed concerning the flexibility of memory. It also afforded an excellent example of how perceptions vary. A fun activity.