Why I'm not doing the Ice Bucket Challenge (and it's not because I think ALS is peachy keen)

It's possible that you don't know what the Ice Bucket Challenge is. If so, I'm a little jealous of you. The idea is that a person is challenged to participate in the challenge, and must either dump a bucket of ice water on their own head or skip the ice water but donate $100. The cause to which you are supposed to donate is the ALS Association. Although there is some question as to the original mind behind the challenge, one of the earliest people to post about it is Pete Frates, a former BC basketball player who has ALS. Considering that there is already a Frates-inspired charity event every December, the Plunge 4 Pete, where people collect donations then jump into the freezing ocean at Good Harbor Beach, I suspect that Frates was the inspiration for or driving force behind the Ice Bucket Challenge.

The dual goals of the Ice Bucket Challenge are to raise awareness and garner donations to the ALS Association in the US (there are comparable organizations in some other countries with participants, like the MND in Great Britain). Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, is a neurodegenerative disease with multiple causes, including hereditary predisposition and a history of head trauma. Its primary symptoms are muscle spasms and muscle weakness that progresses over time and can interfere with speaking, swallowing, and breathing. Most people with ALS die from respiratory failure within 3-5 years of the onset of symptoms. Stephen Hawking has lived with ALS for over 50 years, an unusually long time. My husband's uncle had a more typical progression of ALS, and passed away earlier this year.

In mid-July, videos starting popping up on social media, especially Facebook, of people participating in the Ice Bucket Challenge. The typical format is that they would name who nominated them, dump the water on themselves (usually to comical effect replete with schadenfreude for us), then nominate up to 3 people in the challenge. The people who were nominated but did not want to do the ice water dump were then expected to donated $100 to the ALS Association.

Here are the reasons that this thing is driving me nuts and I can't talk about it with people:

1. Peer pressure is infuriating. I don't know if it's a holdover from my teenage years or what, but when someone says, "C'mon, DO IT" then I don't want to be around that person. Maybe it's because I don't smoke, don't partake in drugs, and rarely drink, so people interact with me in this mode more often than I'd like. Maybe it's because that kind of pressure speaks to a fundamental lack of respect for my choices. If I say no to something, either drop it or have a conversation with me about it, don't just try to exert your will more forcefully in the hopes that my desire to conform and please you is greater than my desire to fulfill my own wishes (it's not).

2. AND donate, not OR donate. There are a couple of variations of the challenge floating around, and as with any game of Telephone, sometimes the message gets lost. In MANY of the videos I've seen (and explanations on the news I've heard), the two choices are to dump water on your head OR donate $100. Even in the best versions, the post-water-dump donation is still much smaller than $100, usually $10. But here's my question - why is the preferred result the one that ends up with less money going towards a good cause? I mean, I can understand a certain logic there, that the making of a video has the potential to garner more money like some weird goody-two-shoes pyramid scheme, but it's still kind of fucked up, isn't it? "Do this useless gesture or else you have to do something nice, god forbid."

3. "Hey everyone, come see how good I look!" This is probably the thing that irks me the most with the least logical reasoning behind it, and also the thing that is likeliest to offend people I know. Now, I don't know if the blame for this can be placed solely at the feet of the originators of the Ice Bucket Challenge, if it should be spread equally among all participants, or if the truth is somewhere in between...but the goal of the challenge seems to me NOT to be raising money. It's to get people to see how awesome you are while raising money (and from my previous point, raising LESS money). "Look at me! I'm doing something selfless, which is only happening so that I can get attention! I don't really understand what selfless means! LOL" In the age of Facebook and Twitter, when self-importance, self-promotion, and catering to the id are the hallmarks of social interaction, we feel most comfortable doing something for a cause when the context is everyone knowing we're doing it. It's even better if it comes packaged in self-effacing fun-poking, like how funny it is that you swore really loud when you had ice water dumped on your head. I can imagine the shouts now: "That's not me! I just wanted to do something nice, and if it's funny and cute, then all the better! I'm not doing it for the attention; it's for a good cause."

That may be entirely true, but just imagine this. Think of the warm, fuzzy feelings you get when you think about completing the Ice Bucket Challenge and posting the video online with a challenge to your friends. Now think about just donating $10 and never telling a soul. Doesn't give you the same warm fuzzies, does it? Not even close. We are driven by wanting to get credit for the good that we do. We want to be published. We want the "likes" or the retweets. We also are pretty partial to the tiny power trip of nominating 3 friends and making sure they look like assholes if they don't get a bucket going ASAP.

Now, it's easy for me to feel superior here. I regularly donate too much money to various causes, often without posting about it or trying to do additional fundraising - unless it's the Alzheimer's Walk, the time of year where I annoy people for money in a very direct, non-ice-water way. My real issue with the Ice Bucket Challenge here is more of a pet peeve I have about the psychology behind it. It's not that self-importance and fundraising are necessarily mutually exclusive - in fact, they often pair just fine, in ways ranging from subtle (charity walks) to aggressive (ice buckets). This is just a thing that bothers me, probably because it's tied to ignorance. I'm not annoyed that people are motivated by self-promotion when they do this challenge, it's that they don't know that they are. If people posted Ice Bucket Challenges with captions like "The only thing I love more than posting videos of myself is doing so while hopefully raising some money for a good cause" then I'd have no complaints. I know that I get a big ol' charity boner every time I give money, so I don't act like I'm doing anyone a favor if I give a few bucks. If it didn't feel good to give, I probably wouldn't do it, so there's nothing saintly about it. Ditto for the Ice Bucket Challenge.

4. Before celebrities and professional sports teams got involved, the donations were not that impressive considering the social media sensation. In the first few weeks of the challenge being truly viral, by which I mean that the news had heard of it, donations to the ALS Association went up ten-fold. That's awesome, right?!? Yes, it's awesome. However, ten-fold meant that they went from $20,000 (the average this time of year) to $200,000. Given that there are 152 million active Facebook users in the US and Canada, if even 1% of those people had given half of the expected minimum donation of $10, it would have been $7.6 million. If 1% is really the right number (I'm not saying it is) and $20,000 of that number would have been donated anyway, the real donation would be just under 12¢. If all the participants really did give the $10 donation that was suggested, then only 18,000 people participated. Do you really think 18,000 people doing something is enough to make it on the news? According to this article, 6 million people had "joined the conversation" (posting, liking, commenting) about the Ice Bucket Challenge on Facebook by early August, the same time that the $200,000 figure was being thrown around as evidence of the challenge's success. If 6 million people raised $180,000, that means they each contributed 3¢. This means that my 1% estimate was too kind.

So no matter how you slice the numbers, the amount of fuss over the Ice Bucket Challenge did NOT match the donations that came in. All these articles and blurbs kept coming up, oh look how well it's working, what an incredible movement. But the numbers, at least when it was just regular Joe Schmo, were underwhelming to say the least. You can say you're raising awareness all you want, but if you're not also raising money, there's only so much usefulness you can claim. Awareness doesn't fund the labs working on drug trials; money does.

Now, the "not enough money" complaint is becoming irrelevant because, frankly, celebrities and sports teams have made this challenge worth the trouble. $7.6 million has been raised in the first two weeks of August (hilariously enough, the exact number I calculated if 1% of active Facebook users donated $5 each). Some of these donations are undoubtedly celebrities and organizations giving far more than the requisite $10, but many of them are just from people who only give a shit now that Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates and the New England Patriots are dumping cold water on themselves. As soon as famous people started doing it, then it became worth doing. That's a really depressing commentary on our society, but at least it means that this thing is finally raising enough money to be worth it. (For a final down note, though, the same article that said 6 million people had "joined the conversation" about the Ice Bucket Challenge by early August also says that the number was closer to 15 million by mid-August. So if all of those people are potential contributors, they all gave about 50¢. Way better than all previous calculations, but still, imagine if they all just gave $1. Or $5. Or $10.)

5. Dystopian America is coming to pass but we're too busy looking at how cute Chris Pratt is when he is cold. Don't get me wrong - he is. Chris Pratt, as I'm sure you're aware, is cute when he does everything. He was cute when he was average pudgy Andy Dwyer, and he's cute as kinda jacked Star Lord. I enjoyed watching him get water dumped on him. That video would be funny without the context of the challenge, as would many of the celebrity videos.

Oh, hey - have you heard about what's happening in Ferguson, MO? It's probably the most important issue today regarding civil rights, abuse of power/force, and the role of police in American society. Before this, I might have argued that the Supreme Court's endless war on women was the most important rights-related issue in the US today. But something so crazy and outlandish, so over-the-top cartoonishly evil is happening in Missouri that it has superseded many of the other pressing issues of the day. For your enjoyment, here are some graphs on Google search term popularity:

This graph compares the search terms ferguson, mike brown, ALS, and ice bucket challenge. The average mentions over the past 7 days are about equal between the two related pairs. However, you might notice a problematic trend: the ferguson and mike brown search terms are sharply declining in popularity, while the ALS and ice bucket challenge search terms are steadily going up. Granted, this data only goes through Saturday, August 16th and new violence has erupted in Ferguson as of Sunday, August 17th, so these figures are slightly outdated, but it's something to think about.

This graph tracks the search terms ferguson, mike brown, and robin williams. Unfortunately, the Google Trends site won't allow date-to-date search parameters so I had to choose between the past 7 days and the past 30, so this isn't a perfect graph. But still, look at how unbelievably distant the peaks of the search terms are. On this graph, the robin williams search term peaked at 100 on the index, while ferguson peaked at 8. I was very sad to hear of Robin Williams' suicide.  I was not, however, 12.5x as upset about Robin Williams as I am about Ferguson, and I hope most people aren't either, if they even know about Ferguson.

This is not to say that ALS is unimportant. Or that when one problem rears its ugly head, we have to drop the other problems. Or that Americans are only capable of keeping one issue in their heads at a time. Or that social issues are more important than medical ones. However, I do worry that we're focusing on ALS because the way we're doing it right now is fun. You can't dump ice water on your head and save a black dude from getting shot by the police. There aren't a lot of fun ways to stand up against what's going on in Ferguson. ALS is an easy enemy. Nobody is on the disease's side. We can all agree that it's terrible. The issue is as uncomplicated as it gets. Not so with Ferguson. There are sides to choose, and lots of grey areas. There are things that many people, including me, think are absolutely fundamentally wrong while many others don't take that view. There isn't an easy solution where you click "Donate" and you've done your part. People's reluctance to get involved in the complicated and upsetting news out of Ferguson, MO means that it's not making the social impact it could if it had the full force of the like/click/share/comment machine that the Ice Bucket Challenge has. Thankfully, Twitter is blowing up about Ferguson (finally) so hopefully that will mean something soon.

6. The whole thing smacks of upper-middle class privilege and I can't explain why that bothers me. I remember the reaction I had when I first heard about the "or donate $100" consequence for not doing the Ice Bucket Challenge. "Who the FUCK has $100?" I might be paraphrasing, but it was something like that. Now, after I settled my monocle back over my eye and picked up the diamonds I had sent scattering with my shock, I began to think.

Seriously, though, who the fuck has $100? It really made me wonder about the challenge. Are we, as a society, really doing so well that we each have $100 to donate to disease research? Or has ALS become such a common disease that it behooves us as a country to come together to eradicate it once and for all? Or maybe, just maybe, is this challenge not for most people?

A quick check of personal finances in the US reveals the following:

• The average disposable income (money after taxes) is $37,492 for an individual.
• According to the spending percentages here, the money spent on housing (incl. utilities), transportation, food, insurance, medical bills, entertainment, education, and miscellaneous expenses is $33,555.
• That leaves the average American with $3,937 for the year, or $328 a month.
• This remaining money must cover expenses related to clothing, credit card bills, loan payments including student loans, and any contributions to a savings account.

For personal reference, I have $590 in student loan payments due every month, and when my payments shift again soon, that number will top $600. Despite this being in the most dire financial position in my calendar year (the weeks before school begins and paychecks kick back in), I am still okay. Mostly because I have a husband who makes more money than me and doesn't become unemployed for 2 months of every year. But still, I'm fine. I pay my bills on time, I don't have to check my bank account balance when I go out to dinner, and if a sudden expense were to pop up, I would have resources, like the aforementioned husband or necessary evil of credit cards, to help me out. Someday I might even have a robust enough savings account not to need those resources.

If I looked at the $100 donation amount and balked, what about people who make less money than I do? What about people with more expenses than me? What about all of the millions of people at or below the average income? The guilt-trip peer-pressure format of the Ice Bucket Challenge comes packaged in privilege. The people who nominate others with the caveat "but you must donate $100 if you don't do it" don't worry about making their friends feel ashamed of not being able to donate, because of course they can afford it. "It's for a good cause," they say, as if feeding yourself or making rent aren't good causes too.

This is not to say that people with average or lower incomes can't donate money. They do - all the time. This recent video puts forth the argument that sometimes those with the least are the most giving, and I've seen this happen many times in many contexts. But the $100 "penalty" for non-compliance and the guilt format of the challenge suggest that the Ice Bucket Challenge itself is simply not meant for an audience of lower income individuals. More than 60% the Americans surveyed in 2010 were below the income figures I discussed above, and even someone at those numbers would struggle to afford a $100 donation. I don't have a problem with financially-comfortable people telling other financially-comfortable people they should donate money, but the way this does it just strikes me as tone deaf and ignorant.

WITH ALL OF THAT BEING SAID, really what I'm doing is criticizing a social movement that is doing good. Even if the motivations of some people are suspect or the challenge itself is annoying for those of us who take issue with how it's being done or everything from the phrasing of the challenge to the psychology behind it is problematic, it's still raising money to fight a disease that is a shithead, if diseases can be shitheads (they can). I would rather grumble about annoying viral charity trends than not notice when no one is doing anything good about anything. Of all the possible things in this world, it's hardly the worst. If Uncle Paul were still here, he'd probably find it silly and amusing, and thank everyone for doing it, because he wasn't a negative asshole like some of us. But if you nominate me for the challenge (and you have), please consider this post my extraordinarily lengthy "no, thanks."

Diary of a Fat Girl - Episode 26: I Bought the Wrong Donuts

It's been well over a year since I've written an entry in this series, and probably 11 months since I was in peak physical condition. After the marathon and the wedding, I got out of a lot of good habits and replaced them with things like "working more" and "bringing home work" and "maybe going to bed". Depending on the day, I might describe my current health/wellness/fitness situation in one of any number of ways, ranging from "on the up and up" and "clawing desperately at the cliff-face as I topple off the mountain of awesome down into the valley of expanding flesh".

Last Friday, I bought the wrong donuts. It was National Donut Day, which apparently is a thing, but instead of going to a Dunkin Donuts for a freebie, I snagged a box of Entermann's at the grocery store whilst shopping for other, more standard fare. I've never been obsessed with donuts or anything. More than once, I've gotten an emergency chocolate stick (nee cruller) from the kiosk in Government Center, when that T station actually existed, and powdered donuts are one of my convenience store weaknesses, but if you asked me to name my favorite foods, donuts wouldn't even be in the top 25. Nevertheless, I was hungry (never a good condition for grocery shopping) and the donuts looked good. I considered my options with great care, greater than was truly necessary.

In the end, I decided on the tried and true staple: yellow cake with chocolate exterior. I like to dip them in milk piece by piece and devour them soggy and cold. It had been months or possibly years since I had eaten them. I was more than a little eager to get to work on them, perhaps the next morning to kick the weekend off right.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized I had purchased chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. They're delicious, of course, but NOT what I wanted. When I realized my error, I became viscerally upset. Mad at myself, mad at the injustices of the world, mad at the death of the golden-donut-eating dream I had indulged in all the way home from the store. Part of me wanted to hit up the local CVS to get the right ones, but even the fattiest fat kid could feel shame at such a thing. I didn't need 12 donuts before, and I definitely didn't need 24 now. I mourned the fantasy I had created, and I mourned it hard.

I didn't bother eating any of them until Sunday morning, when I ate 3 of them, or 150% of my standard complement. I gorged myself on the wrong donuts. I don't know why. Maybe I was trying to get rid of them faster, whether to erase my mistake or to bring about the appropriate correct-donut-buying time. Maybe I felt the need to punish myself for buying the wrong ones, so I ate an amount that I knew wasn't healthy and would probably make me sick. I haven't had any since.

It's now Wednesday night. I'm still unhappy about the wrong donuts. I know why. In the weeks and months before now, I have been slowly realizing and reconfirming how much my emotions are tied to my relationship with food. I don't know if there's really a term that covers everything, but we'll just say I got me some disordered eating. You name an emotion and I'll tell you why it justifies the most horrific eating you can imagine. I couldn't get closer to eating my feelings if I decorated a cake with emojis.

This is why, despite several weeks of a revamped effort to run and weightlift multiple times a week, I haven't lost a single pound. Exercise has always been the easy part for me. I enjoy it, genuinely. Yes, I'm often too lazy to initiate it, and if I give myself the option to go home instead of to the gym, home usually wins. But I actually like working out, both for the experience and the results.

The real hard work for me is mental and emotional. It's getting into good habits of mind, not body. I remember this lesson from the first time I learned it, a few years ago when I was pushing 200 pounds and decided that I needed to change some shit. Frankly, the closer I treat my relationship to food to the way an addict views his/her drug of choice, the more successful I am. It's not that certain foods are the enemy - behaviors and decisions are. Giving in to impulses to overeat. Making poor choices when out in the world. Deciding not to care about calories and long-term results. Those are my real addictions.

I remember, years and years ago, I thought that I'd rather be happy and fat than miserable and skinny. But that was a false dichotomy. I have been miserable and fat, and I have been happy and skinny. The happiest I've ever been in my own skin was when I worked on my own health for hours every week, put on a loose-fitting pair of size 6 shorts, and strutted around like I was hot shit (I was).

Now, I'm still down over 40 pounds, but up about 20 from my lowest weight. I don't really care about the number, but I do care about fitting into clothes and feeling good. I have a LOT of summer clothes that fit be beautifully last year but are now sitting in a storage bin because there's no point in taking them out right now. Before marathon training took up the vast majority of my time and energy, I was very close to being able to do a full push-up and a full chin-up. I was excited about the possibilities of what my body could do. Now I'm halfway back to the start, doing 45º incline push-ups and 60lb lat pulldowns. My longest run in the last 10 months is under 5 miles. I don't know whether I feel motivated or discouraged. Maybe both, which is why I can't seem to shit or get off the pot.

I don't particularly enjoy the mental work associated with successful weight loss. I have trained my body to feel happy when I engage in unhealthy eating habits, ergo making smart choices feels like a bummer. "Yeah, I guess I really should just eat a chicken breast for dinner and call it a day. Sigh." "Dessert? I don't have the calories for that." "One cup of milk will have to do because I can't swing one and a half." Calorie counting and portion control sound all well and fine now, but that's because my belly's full. It feels a lot different when I'm hungry and starting at a wall of food.

Even so, I have a Muhammad Ali quote hanging in my classroom: "I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'" The hardest part of this is getting into the good habits. Maintaining them is not nearly as difficult. If I really want what I say I want -- a healthy body capable of feats of strength, the ability to push myself physically and mentally to new heights, a bitchin' silhouette -- then I really need to do the work. I already overcame the fear and uncertainty when I lost 65 pounds over the last couple of years. This is well-worn ground, or at least not entirely uncharted territory. I did so much hard work on so many fronts to get to this point, and it would be a disservice to myself to fall apart now.

So when I buy the wrong donuts and find myself asking, "Why me, God? Why??" what I really should be asking is, "Bitch, whatchoo need 12 donuts for anyway? You got 11 friends coming over tonight?"

Genuine Advice for Buying a Car from a Dealership

Yesterday, I bought a car.  I don't have it in my possession yet because the DMV has not yet become an instantaneous service (ha!) so I won't actually be driving around for a couple of days.  That being said, the hard part is over.  I had to learn a LOT about negotiating, car dealerships, the make and model of car I wanted, and sales in order to make the process happen in a way I was comfortable with.  The entire thing, from first contact with a dealership to signing a sale agreement, took just under a week, and that could have been substantially shorter if Christmas hadn't fallen in the middle of the week.  In the blurbs below, I hope to impart to you the essential nuggets of wisdom I learned in my research, in the hopes that you will have a good car buying experience next time you're in the market.  For curious parties, here is a lengthy article that I found illuminating.

1. Do your research online ahead of time.  Look at what cars have what features, and figure out what's important to you.  Do you want excellent fuel economy?  Top safety rankings?  Something that looks bad-ass?  Find one or more cars that look like they would meet your needs.  If you have access to a Consumer Reports account, that site has valuable information comparing cars within a size class, which I found very useful (read: the most useful thing in selecting a car by a mile).  It can also tell you how the reliability and safety of a car has performed from year to year, which can be particularly helpful in selecting used cars.  Speaking of selecting cars...

2. Select an appropriate price range of vehicles before you go to a dealership. Know exactly what you can afford (consider total price and monthly payments, assuming you are financing), and look only for cars within that range.  If you can't afford a BMW, then let it go, my friend.  Don't test drive something you shouldn't buy.  Cars are expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, and they are a terrible investment, so now is not the time to get vain and fancy.  That being said, it's also usually not wise to buy a $1500 used car if you can comfortably afford something much better; you'll end up throwing $3000 into it in repairs and then getting rid of it in two years, so it's not actually saving you any money.

3. Be aware of your sales person and his/her techniques.  Okay, I'm just going to talk about this person as if he is a male because there's a 99% chance you'll talk to a salesman rather than a saleslady.  Basically, your salesman has two entire personae.  The one you'll see is friendly, attentive, helpful, respectful, a little corny with the jokes, interested in your questions, and always always always looking out for your best interests.  The one behind the scenes might still be a nice guy, but he is 100% ulterior motive.  First off, this guy wants your money.  The more the better.  Never forget that his job is not to save you money or get you a good deal.  His job is to maximize profit because his paycheck is based on commission.  This puts you at direct odds with the salesman, assuming you want to save money (and I'm guessing you do).  The guy will act like he's on your side (which is why all offers and financial decisions have to come from someone else, be it his manager or some other department) but he isn't.  Now, to be fair, both of you want you to walk out of the dealership having purchased a car, but that's about where the common ground ends.  Some common tricks and why they do that:

• Making you wait endlessly.  This occurs mainly before and during price negotiations.  The idea is that you'll get impatient and agree more readily to unfavorable terms as long as you can get the hell out of there.  You can proactively avoid this if, when your sales guy says he'll be right back, you tell him exactly how long he has before you walk out (and you really have to be willing to leave).  You can also do what Dan and I did, and after a long interval, just start standing up and stretching, then looking like you're ready to put coats on.  Amazing how quickly people will get it together when you send the "I'm leaving" signal.
• Using bad penmanship and nonsense scribbles to confuse you.  Watch any car salesman discuss prices and options with a customer, then watch what happens when he gets a blank piece of paper and a pen.  It's kind of amazing to see, provided you have no stake in the agreement.  He will write down every number he says, sometimes more than once, along with terminology and notes that go with these numbers.  They will be arranged on the page in a way that makes no sense after the fact, and will often be so hard to read that you have no idea what's going on.  The idea is for him to sound like an expert and for you to get flummoxed.  People don't want to inconvenience others and they don't want to sound stupid, so instead of asking for clarification, they say "oh, sure, that all seems fine."  While this conversation isn't binding, these terms will end up in a contract that is.
• When financing is involved, focusing on the monthly payment rather than total price.  Car dealerships make good money off of car loans, which is why there are always cash-back offers and other incentives when you finance with them.  The longer the term of the loan (how long you have in order to pay it back), the more money they make.  If the salesman says he can get you a $22,000 car for only $200/month, there's something fishy there.  Look at the loan term, the interest rate, and the down payment before you sign anything.  When negotiating, get the total purchase price to a number you're comfortable with, THEN talk about loan terms.  If you want to skip financing with the dealership, you can get pre-approved for an amount at your local bank, and then the financing terms are not a part of the car negotiation.
• Manipulating your emotions.  Depending on the stage of the negotiation, the salesman will want you to feel different things.  When I took the Fit for a test drive, the salesman asked me what I liked about the car.  The trick is that, by having me say all the good things about it rather than him saying it, I got myself excited about the car without feeling like I was being sold to.  Salesmen will keep pictures of their families on their desks for background guilt trips when you're really pounding them on the price.  I also had several dealerships not-so-subtly accuse each other of unnamed trickery when I would say "well these guys are offering me this price, so can you beat that?"  Rather than saying, "nope, can't go that low" they would say, "I don't know what they're doing over there are Dealership A, but that price is a lot lower than we're able to do, no matter how we crunch the numbers."  The idea is that, knowing that you're basically already a lost sale because they can't hit that number, they hope to plant the seed of doubt in your head about the other dealership, possibly contributing to the deal falling through.

4. Watch a lot of Pawn Stars (or similar shows).  I wish I were kidding, but this was one of the most important factors for me.  I watched a lot of negotiations and learned, by example, what good and bad deals looked like.  Never take the first offer.  There is always room for negotiation.  Know ahead of time what number(s) you find acceptable.  Know what other people are paying for the same thing.  Keep your guard up until the deal is final.  Be aware of how you are being manipulated.  Walk away if anything is dishonest or suspect, or if you smell bullshit in any way.  Being willing to walk away is one of the most important aspects of any negotiation.  If you're not willing to sink a deal when it no longer meets your needs, you are giving up a great deal of leverage.  Remember that you're the one with the money, which puts you in a position of power.  You've got the upper hand, so don't give it up.  If you're buying a new car or a widely available used car (or if you're not married to a particular car), you don't need any specific dealership nearly as much as they need you.  A salesman will act like he's doing you a huge favor by entertaining your request for a car, but the real arrangement is that you're doing him a favor by allowing him to offer you a car.

5. Read every line of every piece of paper.  Ask a question about literally everything.  Bring someone with you for support and a second pair of eyes.  Don't let a salesman rush you through anything, encourage you to sign something without reading it, or tell you what something "basically" says.  You're not signing what they're saying out loud, you're signing a piece of paper, so be aware of what you're agreeing to.  Dan and I considered tanking the entire sale when a question we asked got two opposing answers from two different people at the dealership.  It ended up being a difference of about $40, but if we hadn't gotten clarification on it, we could have ended up owing an extra $500 simply because the first guy answered our question incorrectly, either because of a language problem or old fashioned dishonesty.  Ask questions, be clear with your terms, and make sure the sales people are clear with theirs.

6. Contact multiple dealerships in whatever way you're most comfortable.  I had two distinct rounds of car pricing.  The first time, I called half a dozen dealerships in the area, told them I was looking for a quote, received their initial offer, told them I wanted a price more like x, waited for them to call me back, and kept going like that.  By the time I realized that the first offer I had gotten was the best, the dealership, like the bag of dicks they were, pulled it off the table and said that they didn't have the flex cash (bullshit sales incentive) to offer it at that price anymore.  Suddenly I was back to square one and it was Christmas.  For the next two days, I sent online inquiries to many of the same dealerships, plus a few others I hadn't contacted before, and started negotiating over e-mail.  This system was much easier for me for a number of reasons (not the least of which was having everything in writing already, plus the fact that I can't hear for shit over the phone).  I ended up making a great deal over e-mail, then just finalizing things in person at the dealership.  Using e-mail allowed me to be more thoughtful in my responses, wait for other offers if I wanted, ask questions as they arose, and forward quotes from one dealership to another.  Because I had already gone for a test drive and I knew a rough range of prices that I could expect, there were absolutely no drawbacks to doing negotiations over e-mail.  So whatever way you want to negotiate, go for it.

7. When you're finally ready to visit a dealership, be prepared for a lengthy stay.  Both times I went to a dealership, it took about an hour longer than I thought was necessary.  I test drove a Fit and got a quote from a place down the street, and was there for well over an hour, nearly two.  I was starving.  I was grumpy.  I wanted to leave.  When Dan and I went to make my actual purchase at another dealership, I came better prepared.  I ate shortly before we went, brought snacks, and mentally readied myself for a long, boring visit.  We were there for exactly two hours, and about an hour of that was wait time between various things.  Waiting for the online guy to come over and "say hi" to pass off the sale to the in-person guy.  Waiting for the car to be ready for a test drive that we didn't need to take because we had already done that.  Waiting for things to get photocopied.  Waiting for the finance guy to be ready (this was the wait where we got ready to leave and then were served more or less promptly thereafter).  Basically, if you are going to a dealership for any reason, bring something with 3G service and probably a snack.

8. Don't worry about the stuff they seem to focus on in movies from the 80s.  A firm handshake and eye contact might help you in the business world, but ultimately your negotiating tactics and your emphasis on price will be the largest factor.  You don't have to dress fancy (your credit score speaks volumes more than your shoes), you don't need to have good posture, and you don't need to call everyone "Old Sport" like Gatsby does.  If you remember what I said in #4 about you being the one with the power, then obviously there's no need for you to put on a show for them.  They are the ones putting on a show for you, so let them run around like maniacs while you sit comfortably in your jeans and sneakers.

9. Know what you're getting for the money.  You don't need a warranty beyond the one that comes with the car, but if it makes you happy, then okay.  The finance guy at the dealership wanted to sell me a paint sealant and a fabric coating and an anti-theft system (the car already has one, but this one would be, like, totally awesome) and a seven year service warranty and and and...the bottom line is, if you add up the amount that the warranty costs you and then add up how much you can expect to pay out of pocket without the warranty, the numbers almost always work out in favor of skipping the warranty.  If it makes you feel better to have the warranty, especially if you don't have AAA or anything like that, then go for it.  But just be aware of what you're getting and for how much money.  Know what the warranty does and does not cover.  In addition to that, understand all of the elements of the purchase price and get this number up front ("What is the number I would have to write on a check to drive the car off the lot?").  For example, in addition to the cost of the car itself, I paid for the taxes (6.25% in MA), the registration/RMV fees, and documentation fees, which all together were nearly an additional $1,500.  This process was pretty straightforward because, whether it's just Honda or how many dealerships operate these days, there was no attempt to slip in unmentioned costs in the sale right before I signed anything.  Sure, they wanted to sell me warranties, but there was no high-pressure push to switch to buying the more expensive Sport model or adding options or the dreaded "undercoating".  Granted, you should still keep an eye on every item on the bill, but I did not find this part to be as full of bickering and itemizing as I dreaded.

10. Be aware of timing.  Dealerships have sales quotas for each month, quarter, and year.  I chose to buy a car at the end of the year not just so it could be a birthday present from me to me, but also because I knew dealerships would be particularly desperate to make sales.  With new 2014s coming in (although, surprisingly, Honda isn't putting out a 2014 Fit), sales numbers getting wrapped up for the month/quarter/year, and the low volume they do over the holiday season, I knew I would be more likely to make a good deal now than any other time of year.  It also helped that I was becoming increasingly desperate to shorten my commute from ~90 minutes round trip to more like 45 minutes - but don't tell Honda that!  Basically, if you can wait for the right time to buy a new car, try to hit them when new model years are coming out, when quarters or years are wrapping up, or any time sales are slow.  Also, dealerships are much busier on weekends, so go on a weekday if you can.

This won't help much if you're doing something drastically different from what I did, which was buying a new car with no trade-in.  When you get the trade-in involved, negotiations become complicated (one article I read suggested breaking this up into two steps and doing the trade-in in a private sale).  For used cars, you run into problems of people buying the car you wanted before you make a deal, having trouble comparison shopping because there are rarely identical used cars, and spending a lot more time inspecting individual vehicles and doing test drives.  Hopefully, however, my advice on research and negotiation will help regardless of the sales situation in which you find yourself.

If you're interested in the numbers involved in my purchase, I'm happy to share the information upon request. Once I actually have my car in my possession, I will also happily tell you whether or not you should go to the dealership I went to, but the Yelp review will have to wait!  Fingers crossed for a timely RMV process (har har!).

On Turning 30

The impression I get from the world is that I'm supposed to have very strong negative feelings about turning 30.  My twenties should represent my youth, my blossoming into adulthood, the time when I am free and doing whatever the hell I want because I'm a grown-up now wooooooooooooo.  Therefore, because apparently all change must be a) comprehensive in every realm and b) bad, the progression from twenties to thirties represents the death of everything fun, youthful, carefree, exciting, and unrestricted.  The thirties, they say, is a time of bleak, hopeless responsibility.  You no longer have options, you have obligations.  Your partner becomes the ol' ball and chain.  Your exciting career is now just an endless string of identical days with no chance of advancement.

Suddenly, things on the "to do list" get removed, not because they've been completed, but because they are considered no longer applicable.  You didn't go to grad school yet?  Looks like that's not going to happen.  Not married or even engaged?  Enjoy your life as a spinster.  Fat and out of shape?  Start buying stock in the Big and Tall store because you have selected this body for the rest of your natural life.  Haven't had kids yet?  Well, I hope you enjoy years of expensive IVF with your poor-quality eggs.

I know this sounds exaggerated, but the societal pressure to "achieve" before 30 is really a bit insane.  As you move through your twenties, you realize that almost all athletes in their prime are younger than you, sometimes by a significant margin.  People you looked up to when you were younger had already done amazing things by the age you are now, and you're still just high-fiving yourself when you pay all your bills on time.  As humans, we feel compelled to compare ourselves to each other.  It's the thing that makes the single person enraged upon seeing engagement photos on Facebook.  Or what makes someone seethe quietly at their younger sibling's party celebrating a big promotion.  We judge ourselves by those around us, often rather unfairly so.  Not only do we ignore the different circumstances that we all face, which fundamentally alter the paths we're on, but we also fail to examine the practice of this comparison at all.  We don't ask Why am I even worried about someone reaching this life milestone before me?  Instead we get jealous, or worried, or self-conscious, or all of the above.

That being said, I've had a helluva run these last couple of years.  I fell in love, bought a condo with this person, put two stupid dogs in that condo, accepted my partner's proposal, and married him.  I earned two degrees in a field I care deeply about, worked for 7 years in one school, then took a new job (for much better pay) at another.  I lost 60-odd pounds, taught myself about nutrition and exercise, deadlifted my own bodyweight, then trained for and ran (shuffled?) a marathon.  Despite my insane anxiety about it, I also learned how to drive (with the help of several patient friends) and finally got my license at age 29.  In fact, I'm in negotiations as we speak to buy my first car, a brand new one at that.  That being said, I'm not a flawless person.  I haven't gone to the gym since starting my new teaching job four months ago, so my weight isn't as low as it was in the spring.  Despite being financially secure and well-paid, I still handle money like a poor person who never expects to have a savings account -- there's no sense in having a rainy day fund if every day is rainy, eh?  My increased workload and lack of free time means that I've been an even worse friend than usual, rarely thinking to initiate social outings or connect with a friend just to see what they've been up to.  In fact, with a birthday party planned for tomorrow evening, I dread having the reality of my poor social engagement reflected in the short list of guests who will be attending.  I can tell myself that it's hard for people to get to these things with all the travel around the holidays (especially teachers who have this whole week off, so they often stay out of town the entire time), but I can't help but think that if I were a better friend to them, they'd make the effort.

I like to think that I have a pretty healthy view of this non-transitory transition into my thirties.  I have a great career I'm passionate about, an awesome husband who got me Star Trek: TNG pajamas for Christmas, two dogs who love me almost as much as they love carrots, a happy and healthy(ish) family who all like each other (more or less), a home that I co-own, friends who are amazing even though I take them for granted sometimes, a body I'm more in tune with and happier with than ever before (and the knowledge, willpower, and skill to shape it how I want), and I'm still pretty good at Rock Band even though I don't get to play as often as I'd like.  I still have a lot of work to do, in both my personal and professional spheres, but I also know that my 30th birthday is neither the beginning nor the end of anything.  It's an arbitrary date, nothing more.  Maybe I'd feel differently if I hadn't done so much with my twenties; it's hard to say.  All I know is that, for the next couple of years anyway, the battle will now move from "by the time you're 30" to "before it's too late to have kids."  You ever notice how, once a woman gets married, it becomes everyone's business when (or whether) she'll begin gestation?  Not sure my wedding invitation also included an invitation to my womb, but apparently it was implied.  The average age of first births to women with college degrees is thirty.  And that's the average, which means half started above that age.  So cool your jets, people.

An Analogy

Over the past decade or so, the prevailing movement in American education has been a multi-faceted corporate approach focused on accountability, test scores and data, and disrupting the status quo that has too-long maintained an ineffective education system.  The No Child Left Behind Act, often seen as the beginning of this new movement (although really it was brewing for many years before), went into effect five months before I graduated high school.  All of my experiences as a public school student occurred under the "old way", while all of my experiences as an educator have taken place under the new paradigm.

The philosophical underpinnings of this new paradigm are deeply rooted in corporate thinking.  Any educators reading this can understand the initial logic -- look at what works in other fields and then try to apply it to your field to replicate that success.  Teachers do it all the time.  If the math teacher is seeing more engagement using group projects centered on local issues, couldn't those kinds of projects make their way into the social studies classroom?  If the second grade teacher used a reward system that happened to motivate this particular group of students who are all coming to your third grade classroom next year, wouldn't you consider using something similar?

The idea behind businesses informing educational policy, however, has one fatal flaw: schools have fundamental differences from for-profit organizations and have vastly different goals.  The reason that transferring ideas and strategies works in the first place is that the goal is the same between all parties.  The second and third grade teachers in the aforementioned example both want better behavior and more engagement from their students.  Businesses and schools, however, have very little in common and do not want the same thing.

Let's examine an analogy.  Now, it's far from perfect - so think of it as more of an intellectual exercise rather than a scientific study, and we'll be just fine.

You are a hospital administrator.  Your hospital is in an urban setting where you see a variety of patients from all walks of life and treat just about every kind of injury and illness known to man.  A recent national movement to reform healthcare has been shifting attention to hospitals and doctors, and a new federal mandate has just been handed down outlining the requirements that all facilities are expected to fulfill.  Your new requirements are as follows:

• All subgroups of patients (traumatic injury, cancer, neurological disorders, obesity, mental health, etc.) must see improvement in scores on the brand new MED (Medical Examination Diagnostic) test, which is being used to assess all patients during their hospital visit.  All patients are taking the exact same test and are expected to meet score benchmarks no matter what.
• Patient mortality will be reduced every year and will reach 0% by 2024.
• Hospitals not showing sufficient improvement will either be taken over by the state or shut down entirely.
• Doctors' job security will be tied to their patients' MED scores.

As the top administrator for your hospital, you are required to get all departments to comply with the new regulations, some of which require significant changes to daily routines and fundamental elements of the practice.  In protest, several of your doctors leave the hospital to start private practices or go into another field where the regulations aren't in effect.  As you hire replacements, you are forced to consider not only the talents of your applicants but also how willing they will be to work within the new structures of the field.

Two months after you begin collecting data to align your hospital with the new standards, you realize that you are not seeing improvement in MED scores or patient mortality.  The highest fields of concern are the trauma center and the palliative care/terminal ward.  If the hospital reduced the size of the terminal ward by 40%, the overall statistics of the hospital would improve dramatically.  Given that the MED test and data collected by the overseeing agency don't distinguish between deaths that occur due to negligence or malpractice versus those that would have occurred with or without hospital intervention, any and all fatalities must be avoided in order to improve the data coming out of the hospital.  It would be in your facility's best interests to stop admitting terminally-ill patients altogether, but that is not permitted by the medical board.  Although it is against your morals to do so, you find several loopholes to allow your hospital to gradually reduce the number of hospice/terminal patients in order to improve your numbers.  While some of these patients find care at other hospitals, some of them receive no care at all.  You justify your decision and the suffering of those few by thinking of the thousands of patients you are still able to treat because your facility is allowed to remain open.

The ER is the other primary area of concern and is a much tougher fix.  Nearly a third of the patients your hospital treats are seen first in the trauma center, and yours is the largest such facility within 100 miles.  You can hardly shut down the ER or stop seeing patients, but many of the fatalities counted against you in the statistics stem from this wing of the building.  A large percentage of these fatalities are victims of traumatic injury or sudden illness who would die no matter the medical interventions used.  Given your location in an urban center, you see many victims of violence who perish long before they even reach an operating room.  Your service area also has a much higher percentage of obese patients than the national average, and although you do your best to push preventative care and health initiatives, you still see many victims of heart attack and stroke (among many other diseases) who arrive in the ER too late to recover.  Your hospital increases its efforts to encourage obese patients to lose weight, but with a fast food joint on every block and the price of healthy food at the grocery store more than double that of the less healthy alternatives, there are many outside factors working against you.

Your trauma center staff begin to feel the pressure of repeatedly failing to meet the benchmarks under the new system.  The operators who communicate with ambulance companies and 911 have begun fibbing to them, rerouting serious trauma cases in which a fatality is likely to other local hospitals.  The operators use excuses of full rooms, staff shortages, equipment failures, and anything else they can think of in order to avoid influxes of patients that will ruin their data.  Someone finds out about this practice and leaks it to the media, at which point your hospital is embroiled in a huge scandal.  You are forced to fire several staff members in the ER and retrain all staff in acceptable practices.  Although you and your office were unaware of the actions of those individuals, you are suspected of ignoring or even encouraging the behavior, and you are in danger of being sanctioned by the medical board.  You are now under even closer scrutiny than before.

After a six-month data review of your hospital, it is determined that several of the hospital wards are not meeting the expected numbers on the MED test.  The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, the terminal/hospice ward, the trauma center, and the psychiatric ward are all holding relatively steady in their numbers or jumping all over the place, rather than improving steadily as mandated.  As someone who interacts with these departments on a daily basis, you can understand why: the NICU uses a test on premature infants designed for adults, the hospice patients have a mortality rate of 100%, the trauma center hardly sees some of the patients long enough to get a full medical history much less run the MED test, and the psychiatric ward is one of many departments focused on on-going outpatient care where "holding steady" is often the best case scenario.  The overseeing body, however, does not find your justifications convincing and points to other hospitals where improvements in similar departments have been seen.  The federal government threatens to cut funding to your departments if they do not improve within six months.

Nearly a year into the new regulations, it becomes apparent that the hospital is running into several problems.  The staff burnout rate is climbing at an alarming rate, and it has become very difficult to find qualified doctors and nurses to replace the ones who have quit.  Many of your new residents are frankly less skilled than what you would like, and the doctors training them are limited to those who have not yet been defeated by the new reforms (rather than those who are passionate about teaching new doctors or those who are the best in their fields).  On the national scale, college enrollment in the field of medicine has experienced a decrease, and the numbers of students entering the fields of cardiology, oncology, and trauma are all reducing drastically.  Many more medical students are choosing "safer" areas like pediatrics, general medicine, dermatology, and physical therapy.  In a few years, you fear, the pool of candidates for jobs in the highest-need, highest-mortality areas will be too small to even run the hospital, while there will be a glut of applicants for jobs to remove moles and diagnose the flu.  You have absolutely zero control over this and can only watch the ripples propagate.

In another city, a hospital similar in size and patient demographics to yours gets shut down due to poor performance on the MED test and noncompliance with expected patient mortality rates.  Many of their existing patients are transferred to hospitals much further from home, where it is much harder for loved ones to visit patients regularly.  Patients not considered "high-risk" are sent home with instructions to make appointments at their primary care doctors' offices.  Because the hospital also housed a general medicine/ENT department, several of the patients no longer have a primary care doctor to visit.  Much of the laid-off staff move to areas of the medical field not affected by the new regulations, while some are hired at hospitals experiencing staffing shortages due to high turnover.  This hospital's numbers were only slightly worse than yours, and you can feel the overseeing body breathing down your neck.

In an effort to improve doctor and nurse quality, and to keep hospitals accountable for hiring competent staff, the overseeing body introduces new staff evaluations to be conducted at each hospital every year.  All staff, from sanitation workers to you, the chief administrator, must comply with these evaluations.  Although it is touted as a self-improvement tool, the vast majority of the hospital staff view it as a way to use data to fire people.  The burden of paperwork on every single staff person ranges from 30 minutes to 3 hours each week, on top of keeping up with patient visits, updating charts, staying current with the latest medical literature, taking a class to hone skills, attending endless staff meetings, and collecting/analyzing data from the MED tests.  After the first round of staff evaluations, many staff members quit in protest.  You struggle to replace them, as the pool of applicants has been shrinking for months.

An outbreak of measles temporarily overwhelms your hospital for several weeks.  Your area is one of several in which so many parents are refusing to vaccinate their children that diseases once considered to be in the past are reemerging.  A staggering 65 children get sick, an unheard-of number since vaccination began 50 years ago, and 9 of them die from encephalitis or other complications.  Although it becomes clear that the mortality rate of these patients is related to their living conditions, as nearly all of them were also malnourished or had severe vitamin deficiencies, the overseeing body sends a representative to examine practices at your hospital and conduct an investigation.  Once the measles outbreak is over, your mortality rates return to normal, but the representative stays.  Your staff secretly refer to him as "the spy" and practice passive noncompliance with his requests.  The representative believes you have encouraged this behavior and puts you under further scrutiny.

After two years of the new system and several threats from the overseeing body to take over or close your hospital, a new president is elected.  He says he will drastically modify the system that was put into place two years ago.  In reality, he changes several of the exact figures and statistics (easing the burden somewhat) while keeping the regulations and punitive measures associated with failing to make adequate improvements in your data.  The MED test stays, but now hospitals are offered significant budget increases and no-cost staff trainings if benchmarks are met or exceeded.  The threat of closings and takeovers remains the same.  Although you felt initial relief at the change in policy, it becomes immediately apparent that the day-to-day functioning of your hospital will not change very much.  The emphasis on data is the same, and the reliance on assessments like the MED test hasn't changed.

You start looking at hospital administrator jobs elsewhere, particularly in areas that have seen improvement under the new system, but all the vacancies are in hospitals exactly like yours, or worse.  You decide to stick with it and do your best under the regulations.  Your staff has come to resent you, as you represent the authority handing down these regulations, and the overseeing body still doesn't trust you after the ER operator scandal, the measles outbreak, and the subsequent staff noncompliance with "the spy".  All of the ideas you come up with to improve the hospital and raise your numbers are subversive at best, and some of them are outright rebellious.  Given your tenuous position, you acknowledge that now is not the time to innovate yourself right out of a job.  You follow the prescriptive doctrine to the letter, and watch your hospital deteriorate over another year before you are unceremoniously fired and the hospital is shuttered for good.

Hopefully this scenario sounds ridiculous.  I mean, who would expect patient mortality to drop to 0% ever?  Who would administer the same exact test to every patient, and then punish the doctors and hospitals who have lower scores?  Who would structure a system that so clearly discourages talented individuals from taking on the toughest cases and working in the hardest fields?  Except these are exactly the things that have happened in American education, starting with No Child Left Behind and continuing today with Race to the Top and psychotic implementation of the otherwise-pretty-reasonable Common Core standards.

The problem with how America is approaching education right now is that it is applying business practices where they don't belong.  While it may make sense to close branches with the lowest sales numbers or pay salesmen salaries based on their numbers, those concepts don't work in education.  If my success is determined by my students' scores on a given exam, I have two very practical options: teach them exactly what they need for the test or work somewhere that the kids will automatically do well.  Neither of those are great options (even though both of them happen all the time).  Who would choose to work with special education children, students from low-income minority neighborhoods, or kids who don't speak English?  All of them are less likely to perform well on a test than their white, middle- and upper-income, without-disabilities native English speaking peers.

The goal of a business is to make money.  That is its whole purpose.  It identifies an area in the market ripe for tapping, offers a product or service at a price that the market will pay, and then tweaks the business over time to maximize profits.  This is not the goal of schools and it is not how they function.  Schools do not have customers - the entire nation is the only customer.  You may disagree, but seeing students or parents as customers is a flawed comparison.  Students often do not want the product that schools are "selling" which is why schooling is compulsory.  This compulsory schooling is also part of why parents are not the customers.  Although parents may see themselves this way, ultimately teachers and schools answer to the district and state, who often work with parents on school boards, but who do not defer to parents for any major decisions.  While education does improve individuals and serve them in a very real way, compulsory schooling was designed to and still serves to improve the entire country.  The real customer is the greater good of society.

Also, obviously, schools do not make a profit - the mark of a successful school is not a single number but rather a complex matrix of graduation rates, long-term student outcomes, test scores, enrollment in post-secondary education, and the general improvement/support of the socioeconomic status in the neighborhood where the school is located.  If a business found that their flagship product had declining sales over the past year but that the customers were really, really happy with the product, the happiness of the customers wouldn't mean anything.  Sales are the bottom line.  With schools, however, a drop in test scores and four-year graduation rates might be caused by increased enrollment of at-risk and previously dropped-out youth who are trying to reengage with the system and get back on track.  Serving more students and helping them stick with their education is a wonderful thing for a school, but the numbers don't make it seem that great.

The point of all of this is to draw attention to false correlations and misguided comparisons between education and corporations.  Cities and states would never dream of running hospitals, police and fire departments, or government offices the way that schools are currently being run.  Although there is a larger movement to corporatize essentially all fields and services because America is entirely run by its richest citizens, who want everything to work like the businesses they've run for decades, this movement has made its greatest strides in education, perhaps the only public service constantly looking to reinvent itself and reform everything (although, to be fair, not everyone in education likes the idea of reform).  The constant shifting between policies, guiding principles, and requirements has also degraded the quality of education across the country by keep the ground beneath educators' feet ever-moving.  The only thing worse than sticking with a terrible set of policies is rapidly switching from one terrible set to another and another, and so on.

Before you dismiss the concerns of teachers (or, far more easily, the concerns of the teachers' unions), examine what the real effects are of any educational policies and reforms.  What will these look like in the classroom?  What will students' experiences be like?  Will this improve learning?  And once you've answered these questions yourself, ask someone who is actually in the field of education.  I assure you, they'll have an opinion to share with you.

Finding My Place (and Myself) in a Test-Obsessed School

Front-Matter Addendum: a colleague of mine has suggested that, however unlikely it may be, it's possible that someone who would take offense to this post would come upon it and that I could avoid an unlikely google search by omitting the actual name of the school/district in which I teach. Given that my last name is no where on this blog and run-of-the-mill google searches do not bring it up, I don't really see any reason to be additionally cautious.  However, I have changed the name of the school and district to something very silly, which I think improves the piece dramatically.  Please enjoy.

I just finished my 29th teaching day at my new job.  Now 16% of the way through the school year (a figure that raises the simultaneous questions of "already that far in?" and "only that far in?"), I am starting to get a real read on the deal with Plumberville High.  I suspect it will take me many more months to have a true understanding of the climate, culture, and actual operations from top to bottom, but at least I can say that I am no longer completely ignorant and in the dark.  If this were the Allegory of the Cave, I would be like a third of the way out of the cave, at least aware that there was a world beyond it.

Plumberville High School (and, either as a cause or a result, the entire district) is obsessed with testing.  Although I don't think this is a positive characterization, I doubt that even the administrators there would wholly disagree with me.  PHS spends an inordinate amount of time and energy (and therefore money) on preparing students for tests.  The biggest and most critical of these is the MCAS, or Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System.  Although it is slated to be replaced by the hopefully-but-probably-not-that-much-better PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) test, the MCAS is still the be-all and end-all for 9th and 10th grade students at PHS.  English 1 and 2 courses could easily be called MCAS Preparation 1 and 2, and that would not be entirely inaccurate.  This is not to say that these classes have no value outside of the tests, or that the teachers of these classes are not doing wonderful jobs - neither of those are true - but it is apparent from a single curriculum development meeting or even a glimpse at the unit and lesson plans of these courses that the ultimate goal is for all students to score Proficient or Advanced on the MCAS.

Fortunately for those of us teaching 11th or 12th grade, this pressure is non-existent because the 10th grade MCAS test is the final one for both ELA and Math.  There is, however, now an increased focus on raising student performance on the SATs, typically taken late in junior or early in senior year.  Although the time and attention devoted to preparation for this test (which, by the way, was originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test but now the letters stand for...get this...nothing) is far less than that which is devoted to the MCAS, at least in the English Department, there has still been a push from administration to get students prepared for this college entrance exam.

The problem with the angle the school is taking, which is the problem with all teach-to-the-test curricula, is that the ultimate goal is never to better students' learning, impart unto them valuable skills which they can use in a variety of career paths or educational settings, or even get them ready for college (a goal which, in itself, is fairly short-sighted and should be addressed at an appropriate scale).  The goal is to raise test scores.  Full stop.  Period.  The end.  If students' learning is increased and they build skills, that's great, but those outcomes are not necessary for the school's plans to be considered successful.  If students scored Super-Mega-Opposite-of-Dummy Advanced on the MCAS and all subsequent standardized tests, yet were unable to discuss a book in a thoughtful way or count correct change at a cashiering job, the teachers themselves would likely be rather concerned, but the administration at large would consider this a speed bump, not a major problem.

To be fair, I did know to some extent what I was getting into at Plumberville High.  Any public school in Massachusetts with such a diverse population and an iffy academic record is going to be focused on test preparation because of a number of factors, Race to the Top/No Child Left Behind not being the least of those.  I became aware of just how key MCAS was at PHS when I concluded by initial job interview with a written task.  My assignment was to examine the assessment data from a theoretical class, read through and score an open response writing sample (one of the two types of writing done on the MCAS), and then design a lesson to supplement the class' learning based on what I thought they needed help with.  The whole thing stunk of MCAS prep, and there was no effort on the part of the interviewer to disguise this fact.  I completed the task, apparently to the satisfaction of the department head, and after another interview I was offered the position.

After I was officially hired and began attending professional development sessions, my first impressions were only confirmed, especially after I sat in a classroom for two hours after school one day and essentially observed the 9th and 10th grade teachers making lesson plans directed at improving students' performances on the open response section of the MCAS.  At least, I'm pretty sure that's what was happening; it was hard to keep my attention on the conversation at hand given that it a) didn't apply to my practice and b) was yet another conversation about how better to prepare students for assessments.  The broken record of "let's raise those scores!" was beginning to wear on me.

The problem - as I see it - is that Plumberville's plan is working.  Their MCAS scores have gone up by huge leaps and bounds the last couple of years.  The goal is being met, and even exceeded in some cases.  The plan, approaching areas of the test with the greatest potential for improvement, is actually a very good method if the only thing you care about is raising test scores.  It's like practicing "Smoke On The Water" over and over again on guitar...eventually you'll be really good at that song, but if someone asks you to play a whole set at a gig, you're fucked.  These kids get absolutely pounded into the ground with drills for open responses, but half of them don't know what they're talking about, and I daresay that more than half of them crumble when writing outside the very prescriptive and static confines of such a writing environment.

I consider it rather unfortunate that Plumberville has been honored and awarded repeatedly over the past month for these achievements.  The increase in MCAS scores is one of the primary reasons that Plumberville High went from a Level 3 school (considered low-performing but not bad enough to get taken over by the state) to a Level 1 school (highest possible rank) in the Massachusetts school accountability ranking system.  The administration's collective reactions to the MCAS scores and subsequent student growth percentile (or SGP, a number that indicates individual student improvement on the MCAS in Math and ELA) was nothing short of orgasmic.  The English department head came around to classes on the day the MCAS scores were officially released and joyously congratulated the students on their data.  The kids had no idea what SGP was or what it meant to be a Level 1 school, but the department head was happy, so it must be good news.

The reason I consider this delight to be unfortunate is that it's only reinforcing a shitty direction of curriculum and instruction.  The emphasis on open responses and test preparation did, indeed, allow PHS to achieve its goal of raising test scores, but there is no "and then..."  The test scores were the end point.  My response to the gleeful announcements of success is an internal So fucking what?  The delight with the test scores comes from a deep, willful misunderstanding of the purpose of assessments.  It's not Plumberville's fault (see these articles, many by Diane Ravitch), but they are going with a flow that is not a good flow with which to go.  Public education in America is jumping off a bridge and Plumberville, heedless of its parents' warnings about peer pressure and mindless social conformity, is jumping too.

If you ask any educator about the purpose of assessments (in theory, not in practice as in the case of the MCAS), you'll probably get an answer like, "to see how we're doing, to see where we're succeeding and where we could improve, and to make our instruction better."  This rationale has been so twisted and perverted by policy-makers and heads-too-busy-being-up-asses-to-be-in-classrooms top-level administrators that the spirit of education and assessment's role in education has been discarded in favor of a completely new reality: selectively-collecting data that doesn't necessarily represent good teaching or good learning, but it's data we know how to work with, and then using that data to make huge generalizations about every student, teacher, classroom, and school which then means huge decisions get made based on those generalizations.  Because the data from assessments is being used to drive instruction and all decision-making from top to bottom, the raising of test scores becomes the goal rather than a measurement tool.  It's like keeping your car's engine topped off with motor oil so that you don't disappoint the dipstick.  The logic is completely backwards.

I can't blame Plumberville for being this way, at least not with anything more than some frustration in my heart.  The fucked up assessment-is-the-goal point of view is not only common among public schools across the country, it's being actively encouraged by both state and federal programs and mandates.  Instead of improving the school in order to improve the test scores, many schools (generally those with a history of low performance on standardized assessments and not a lot of money in the coffers) don't bother taking a holistic approach, instead targeting the test - what appears to be the simple solution to the proposed problem actually kind of ruins everything forever.

It is with all of these thoughts and feelings roiling around in my head that I find myself carving out a space at Plumberville High School for little ol' me.  Given the rhetoric and cult-like obsession with test scores that was so aggressively transmitted in every encounter I had in my summer professional development, I worried that I had left one flawed tiny alternative program to end up in a just-as-flawed huge high school, and that I may not have chosen the best place to work.  My personal education philosophy, or Every Education Grad Student's First Paper, conflicts so directly with the emphasis on assessment and top-down micromanage-y mandates regarding what is taught and how (particularly in grades 9 and 10, where the classes within each grade level are so uniform that one could almost rotate the teachers and hardly tell the difference between them), I figured I wouldn't last a year at Plumberville.  Either they would find my alternative-education whole-student tests-are-just-tests-man approach to be inappropriate for the setting and would can me in June or I would become so disillusioned and my delicate sensibilities would be so offended (I do declare!) that I would leave after a year.

I have found myself thinking less and less this way in the last few weeks.  I have two things to thank for this.  First, my students are fucking great.  I don't mean that they are all high-achievers or even universally kind-hearted and motivated beyond belief.  Frankly, some of them are shitheads and some of them don't care very much and many of them are not trying as hard as they could.  But that's not what I'm talking about.  They are interesting.  They come to class.  They ask and answer questions.  They smile and laugh when things are funny, get outraged when things are unfair, and feel pity for fictional characters going through a hard time.  They show depth and range as human beings that I admire.  Sometimes I want to beat them half to death for making bad decisions or not demonstrating the thing I taught them all week and then we have to do it over again...but if I didn't like them, I wouldn't give a shit if they made good choices or learned anything.  I'm already deeply invested in their learning and success, as whole people, and I want them to do better, to shoot for their maximum potential even if they never quite reach it.  It made me a little sad when they got their MCAS scores and announced with delight "I'm advanced!" and "I'm proficient!"  Labeling these kids does absolutely nothing for them.  It's borderline toxic, but we do it anyway.  I want so badly for them to get beyond those useless labels and call themselves things like "driven" or "skilled" or "improving".

The other factor that has shifted my thinking was a brief meeting I had with my department head a couple of weeks ago.  Before school began, one of our many staff meetings addressed the issue of reading aloud in classes.  Apparently PHS used to do what I did at EDCO, which is to read aloud almost all of the novels together in class.  Students either struggled with the reading at home or didn't bother to do it, so it was done in class.

[If you're discussing and exploring the text as you read aloud, it takes about 4 minutes to read a page of a novel written at the high school reading level (an estimate I came to confirm many times over when reading 10 pages in a 45-minute class at EDCO) - this number is less when you don't bother to discuss, explain, or question as you go, but I'm talking about maximum depth and coverage as you read.  If this number is our basis for calculations, a 250-page novel would take 1000 minutes to read aloud, or 18 55-minute class periods (the length at PHS), assuming you read from bell to bell.  Given that classes only meet 36 times per quarter and the general rule of thumb is one novel per quarter, that means that literally half of class time would be spent just reading the text.]

The English department head found this kind of ridiculous, which I agree with, and she decided that much more reading needed to be done at home.  At the end of last school year, against the wishes of many of the teachers, she dictated the appropriate percentages of at-home reading based on course level.  Honors classes would read 100% of the text at home, standard levels would read 75% at home, and the lower-level skills courses would work up from 25% to approach 75% by the end of the year.  If those numbers seem fine, I guess, but totally arbitrary to you...well, you're not wrong.  As soon as I was presented with the percentages, ever fiber of my being rebelled at the idea of being told exactly how many pages of a novel are permitted to be read in class.  Their Eyes Were Watching God, the first novel for juniors, is 193 pages.  Does that mean that 48 pages may be read in a standard class, but 49 is unacceptable?  And which 48 pages are we talking about?  For honors, is reading even a single page verboten?

When I (and my colleagues) raised these concerns to the department head, she acknowledged that there would, of course, always be appropriate times to read in class.  The first page of a chapter, the very beginning of a novel, a pivotal scene, or anything for close reading of a small section...these are all reasonable things to read together, regardless of level.  So with these figures in mind but the ever-present voice of reason urging me to make good instructional choices independent of the numbers, I forged ahead with my plans and lessons.  The first time my department head came to observe, she did so while we were reading the first few pages of chapter 2, the first "real" chapter of a novel told as a frame narrative (story-within-a-story) and a crucial scene where some wacky shit happens under a pear tree.  As soon as she walked in, I knew exactly what conversation we would be having later.  I changed nothing about the lesson, delighted when my students put two and two together ("you mean that 'ecstatic shiver' and 'limp and languid' are sexy words?!?"), and went on with my day.  My expectations were met when my department head later reminded me of the percentages we had discussed and warned me of the dangers of "getting caught up in the reading" as if this were antithetical to good instruction, like, at all.

I nodded politely and left the meeting feeling as though all of my negative assumptions and impressions were correct, and I was doomed to hate this job, get fired, or both.  A short time later, the aforementioned department head sent out a survey to all the ELA teachers with general questions like "Do you have any classes or students that you're concerned about?" and "What could the department be doing to help or support you?" and so on.  It was not anonymous.  I figured that there was no reason to play games with my thoughts, and I answered the questions tactfully but honestly, making sure to mention in particular that I felt as though my instruction were being micromanaged with the reading percentages.  Later, when my department head asked me to meet with her, we discussed the variety of topics in my replies, including this.  The exchange, if you'll forgive a crude foreshortening of a paraphrase, went something like this:

Department Head: You expressed some concern about the reading percentages and everything.  Well, you know, those are really just guidelines.  You know best how to teach your own classes.
Me: Well, that's basically the opposite of the message we've been getting from you.
DH: Yeah, but, you know, the percentages are just to get people to move in the right direction.
Me: Yeah, except when I followed your precise instructions for acceptable exceptions to the read-less-in-class guideline, you still gave me feedback that instructed me not to read in class with them.
DH: Yes, I did.  But..well...if I were worried about you, I would tell you.
Me: Um...okay.

And it was in that moment that I realized several things: first, my department head seems perpetually confused about reality, perception, perspective, and communication.  So I should listen but take things with a grain of salt unless all the other teachers give me the "no, really bro" signal.  Second, despite administration in general and my department head in particular appearing to have no faith in the abilities of the staff they themselves selected, apparently I am being trusted to teach, in a manner of speaking, so I should just do that, and do it well.  Third, and perhaps most importantly, my job is not to please my department head.  My job is to teach.  Me trying to get my department head to give me good feedback is just as stupid as PHS focusing on raising test scores.  You might get what you want, but you're missing the point.  If I do a good job, and try really hard, and am always improving, and I can stand by my work and say, "yes, I did these kids a service and I am proud of what I've done," then my department head's opinion is secondary.  If I'm proud of my work and she's not, then it's not a good place for me to work.  If I'm proud of my work and she is too, then all the prescriptive bullshit doesn't matter.

It's a little ironic that the conclusion I've come to, and the perspective I have now taken, is one espoused by administration with words but subverted with actions.  The headmaster, who interviewed me in the second round of the hiring process, paid a great deal of lip service to putting the kids first, building rapport with students and fostering a community of learners, so on and so forth.  The test obsession is NOT doing any of those things, but I don't think he or any of the other PHS administrators truly understand this conflict or are doing anything out of malicious intent.  They want the kids to do well, and they see test scores as the indicator of that, end of story.  For me, test scores are a piece of a complicated puzzle, and I will celebrate my students' successes in that area as I celebrate their other small victories -- coming to school on time for the first time in several days, finishing a particularly hard assignment, grasping the elusive figurative meaning of a passage in the novel, remembering a tricky literary device and how its used, getting a job at a place they've always wanted to work, performing well in a soccer game, or whatever else is important to them.

At an all-day professional development session before the recent long weekend, the day ended with a rousing chorus of the school song (which I had never heard) and the distribution of t-shirts that read "PHS WE'RE #1".  I felt the familiar doublethink conflict of simultaneously feeling inspired/energized by the proceedings and remaining cynical about the whole thing.  I made the active decision to let the former feelings win.  I like liking my school.  I changed into my new (very large) t-shirt before I left and wore it proudly about town.  It has already become my go-to bum-around-the-house shirt.  I wear it with pride, but also with the knowledge that the intention behind the shirt is good, even if the rationale and execution of the ideology ("we're #1" referring to our MCAS scores and Level 1 status) is fairly shitty.  It serves as both a positive symbol of my workplace and a cautionary tale about what happens when you aim for the wrong goals.  Pretty important for a stupid shirt.

There are a lot of reasons that Plumberville High could be really good for me.  The environment, job expectations, day-to-day tasks, and complicated inner-workings are all challenging in a way that I find productive and useful.  I'm learning every day, improving my practice and honing my skills, and hopefully becoming a better teacher with each class.  My vain and pompous hope is that, if I'm there long enough and I get good enough, I can be really good for Plumberville High School too.  Not as a subversive secret agent who defies the administration's edicts and gives the kids the real scoop but rather as a community leader who pushes for positive change and open communication to improve every class and the working and learning environments for everyone in the building.  We'll see if I survive my first year, and if PHS likes me enough to keep me.  I'm still finding my place, learning the ropes as they say, so it's too early to tell.  But I'm in a hopeful, positive place, mentally.  It's like being adopted by a dysfunctional, fucked up family.  It may be totally crazy sometimes, and there's a stranglin' or two, but at the end of the day, you're home.