Huh. I thought I was posting this at my place, and kept hitting refresh over and over trying to get it to appear.
Malformed abomination of a thread, return to the abyss whence you sprung.
Since this comment has something to do with schools, and stupid rules, I consider it not wholly off-topic: Anybody see this very sad story at the Times? This woman has been in Admissions at MIT for 30 years; has advanced and become respected in her field, and 10 days ago somebody shops around the little tidbit that she doesn't have a degree, and today, she quits in shame.
Two quotes really get under my skin:
"In the future," he said, "we will take a big lesson from this experience."
"There are some mistakes people can make for which 'I'm sorry' can be accepted, but this is one of those matters where the lack of integrity is sufficient all by itself," Professor Clay said. "This is a very sad situation for her and for the institution. We have obviously placed a lot of trust in her."
Who are these wankers? What "big lesson" is there to take here? Why the fuck is it so important for an Admissions official who's been doing the job for 30 years to have a degree?
I don't like people.
Wouldn't MIT have a lot of trouble convincing people that it's important not to lie on their applications if the head of their admissions department had lied on their application?
Also, I can't find the Kevin Bacon teacing Chris Penn to dance montage from Footloose on YouTube. This, in combination with Chris Penn's untimely death, makes me sad.
5: No. "If we find out you lied, you'll be fucked" may be (?) good incentive not to lie; "If we find out you lied, you'll be fucked in 30 years is not a good incentive for anything.
6: Wait, Chris Penn is dead? The Kevin Bacon teaching Chris Penn to dance montage is the only likeable thing about that movie. (I liked the gratuitous injustice-to-heroine scene, but that's kind of twisted)
Where's the 'It may have mattered 30 years ago, but after 30 years of job experience, it no longer matters'? I mean, MIT is in the business of selling degrees and pointing out that if you do a job for 30 years, a degree or lack thereof is highly irrelevant might be constitutionally unlikely from their administration. But, still....
8.1: Compare "Don't violate our totally arbitrary policy or, if we happen to catch you, we'll hurt you. But it's super-unprincipled, as demonstrated by the fact that the person who runs the office in charge of your application violated this policy with no consequence" with "This is an important principle that we're upholding here, if you violate it you should feel like a bad person, and furthermore if we catch you violating it we'll hurt you."
From the WSJ:
In a recent interview for a Wall Street Journal article on colleges checking applicants' credentials, Ms. Jones bemoaned what she described as frequent exaggeration of credentials by applicants. "The way the whole college application system is set up now, it really does encourage cheating and lying," she said.
So you think that someone who got their job under false pretenses and who continues to list three fake degrees on their resume, and which are mentioned in promotional materials for the school, should remain in charge of admissions? I'm baffled by that.
Also, I remember the first time I saw the bent over hump on the dance floor a few years ago - it's funny as hell, but come on, learn to mamba or something.
So the Lakers avoided the sweep.
10: "Not lying" is an important principle, but one that is frequently violated and usually with tolerable consequences. "Meeting our arbitrary employment critera" is not an important principle, but is one which can easily have major consequences.
People are pretty good at detecting bullshit, and being an admissions official at a college is not, strictly speaking, something that requires a college degree. A lot of people would be willing to lie without guilt in order to overcome an institutional barrier that they perceive as bullshit. This woman performed her job well enough for long enough to merit promotions, and cared enough about it to become an advocate for a certain point of view, and raised the profile of the college by writing a book. Canning her because she doesn't have a BA is nutso.
Canning her because she doesn't have a BA is nutso.
Insanity. Universities can't have people on the payroll who are admitted credential fakers. First, for the honorable reason that they are supposed to teach kids, by instruction and example. Second, because what kind of university says credentials are no big deal?
12: yes, I do
Lying on your resume: dishonest
Continuing to do so, years after it matters: unethical, lazy
Firing an employee, who is otherwise an asset to your organization, for doing so: wasteful, pointless
If we find out you lied, you'll be fucked in 30 years is not a good incentive for anything.
It's not one lie told thirty years ago and never repeated, it's a lie told each and every time her bio appears and is read, and it's a direct contradiction of her stated values and those of the school.
Firing her is appropriate, burning her at the stake would probably be excessive (tho' not for reporters faking stories).
Universities can't have people on the payroll who are admitted credential fakers.
If credentials are so important, then I assume this is because the exposed failure to verify those credentials is an intolerable humiliation to the institution.
the honorable reason that they are supposed to teach kids, by instruction and example
You have a low opinion of kids if you think this is how they learn. The kids are way ahead on the risk analysis of misrepresenting themselves. If you teach them that 30 years of beyond-competent service is worth less than the credentials they lied about in the first place, then you're just producing more of the grade-grubbing little weasels that alreadly clog the academy.
I don't think it's a horrible offense, but then she didn't lie to me. If I was MIT, I'd have fired her too, but if I was some other university, I'd consider hiring her. Because after all, she does have a lot of experience running an admissions department.
Credentials are important to universities because they are in the business of selling them at very, very high prices. Whether or not it was ethical for MIT to fire her, it's hardly surprising.
For what it's worth, it looks like they also gave her the "resign before we fire you" option.
20-22: hard to disagree
I would just add that, if I'd found, during their first year of employment, that an employee lied to me about credentials, I might fire them on the spot. If I'd found that a recently-hired employee who was not doing a good job had lied to me about credentials, then I'd be grateful for a good excuse to get rid of him. If I found that an employee I'd been happy with for 30 years had lied about credentials, then I might be personally annoyed with the employee, but publically make a ain't-life-crazy comment about the dubious value of credentials.
After all, the whole point of credentials is to help us screen people at the outset, right? If someone does satisfactory work for 30 years, then what is the value of their credentials?
I really think the big deal here is the specific nature of her job and employer; for someone in some company somewhere, an ain't-life-crazy comment about the dubious value of credentials might be the best option, but there's no way a university, especially an elite one like MIT, is going to say anything like that because it would undermine their whole function in society. Similarly, if some person in some random job fudged their credentials to get that job, that isn't a big deal since the degree is just a filter and a (poor) proxy for predicted ability to do the job, but a college admissions department is all about selling the idea that credentials are really, really important and having the person in charge not live up to that concept is a PR nightmare even aside from any ethical issues.
I endorse every word of 24 and add, yet again: one of her department's primary tasks is to evaluate the credentials of others.
Jeebus, you people are wholly disregarding the instinct to woot-woot and otherwise booty-pop this thread. I mean, I'm all for talking about serious issues; but nary a cock joke? At 25+ comments? Shameful.
24: Okay. Imagine if MIT kept this person on, and had to field some shots about hypocrisy for it, say, first in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, and then filtering outward to some other more mainstream venues where you might be able to sell a story like this. In the worst case, it becomes a little snit-storm in the Times Sunday Magazine + the blogs where many conversations like this one ensue.
Does anyone see the application numbers to MIT changing at all? Does anyone see the value of an MIT diploma decreasing at all?
I'm largely with Teo and Ogged on this, but there's a part of me (the criminal part) that thinks if she got away with it for 30 years, man, she deserves that job.
I think it's shitty. She's been doing a job for which a B. A. is ostensibly "required" for 10 years, and by all accounts doing it very well. If anything, it's evidence that universities and other employers should stop pretending that not graduating from college is an irrecoverable sin. I'm sure there are plenty of very bright autodidacts out there who would be better at any number of jobs than the people doing them.
Why she wasn't immediately given an honorary doctorate and promoted to University Press Liaison is beyond us all. Girl could sell anything, and she'd proven it. I think less of MIT today.
Also, as someone who has good, solid experience doing business software dev, but can't get a job in Seattle 'cause I don't have a degree, and thus just this evening applied to go back to college and get a CS degree, I find this amusing and horrifying.
Also: http://www.xkcd.com/c125.html
She wasn't asked to leave because of the quality of her work; she was asked to leave for lying about her credentials. MIT took a principled stand and said, in effect, "We don't care how damn well you do your job; we have standards of honesty in our community, and you violated them." Yes, the original act happened 28 years ago, but as #18 points out, she was in effect telling the same lie every day.
For MIT to look the other way on this one would be to say that the ends justify the means -- which presumably is not a message it wants to send to its students, professors, and prospective applicants.
If anything, it's evidence that universities and other employers should stop pretending that not graduating from college is an irrecoverable sin.
Like teo said, it's bizarre to expect this view to be pushed by a private university.
34: Well, if it wasn't an MIT education they probably think it was worthless anyways.
32: That's annoying. Considered moving to the SFBA? Lots of smallish startups down here that will overlook the absence of a degree, or even not going to college at all.
Jake: My 'good, solid experience' was gained in the SFBA. The instant my contract wasn't renewed and another wasn't dropped into my lap, I fled back to my adopted home of Seattle with a visceral loathing for every single part of the SFBA except for Frisco itself.
Also, I'm pretty stoked about going back to college.
"This is history, baby, this is history," said Noriega McKeller, a 19-year-old senior. "Somebody had to do it. Why couldn't it be us?"
Noriega? Sorry, what?
Nbarnes, I'm sorry to hear that. I wonder if that's unique to Seattle, since I've never had trouble getting jobs without a CS degree in New England.
On the other hand, I too am stoked to be going back to college, so rock on.
And if I may bitch and moan selfishly in this thread, how irritating is it that after I decide to quit and go back to school, my douchebag manager quits and I get offered his job and a raise. Grr!
Isn't the offensive thing about high school dirty dancing that they're doing things that are supposed to look like sex, but don't?
True! But, come on, it's a bunch of educators chaperoning these things. They should stop scolding and start educating.
...in the arts of love, you mean?
Does anyone see the value of an MIT diploma decreasing at all? It's down by a small increment but I'm giving myself one anyway after I fire Photoshop up. I almost went there in the late 50's and worked with a guy who did, so I deserve one.
#4 really is a pathological example of the fierce way in which the certification people protect their racket. My sister is recognized as pretty much the best rehab counselor in her place of work (she's developed a regional reputation and people have started referring clinets with her in mind), but there's a lot of pressure on her, because her certification in one state didn't carry over to the state she now lives in.
...in the arts of love, you mean?
In the fuck of sex, Clownae.
Perhaps there should be a class-action lawsuit by everyone who was ever refused admission by MIT in the last 30 years. The loss to some people who ended up with inferior credentialization could run in the millions. Perhaps we should just sell off MIT and divide the money between the rejectees.
Unless there has been a problem with MIT admissions, what the woman showed was that a degree was not necessary for her job. Shit, Steve jobs doesn't have a degree. I'm not sure Bill Gates does. Degrees are a fetish. To a degree it's true that this kind of thing devalues the credentialization product, but that's only true to the extent that protecting the cartel is the main thing, rather than educating students.
My advice is for people to lie to the extent that they can get away with it, but have a backup life plan in case they get burned. I wouldn't give this advice to people in genuinely technical fields, but even there (e.g. computer engineering) there are a lot of self-taught whizzes.
Self-taught bridgebuilders, an engineer once told me, are common enough that it's a topic of discussion. They build very safe bridges out of caution. The Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster was an expert credentialled bridgemaker's virtuoso disaster. If his bridge hadn't collapsed, he'd be a hero today.
I think that there's a healthy midpoint between having self-taught doctors practicing medicine and the diseased system we have today.
It's interesting how often the "you didn't really complete your degree" story turns up in the real world for something that is a standard element of nightmare, fiction and urban legend.
Of course, in the urban legend version (as in Vonnegut's "Player Piano") what the person failed to meet was usually the (oddly strenuous) PE requirement, so he has to go back to school decades later and demonstrate that he can run a mile and swim ten laps in the allotted time interval...
What are the odds? I agree with Emerson.
I can't blame MIT at all for firing her, on the 'evaluation of credentials, rewarding dishonesty, and so forth' front. But shutting the door to people without degrees is shitty and pointless. My father hasn't got a college degree -- he's just old enough that you could get and stay on the professional track as an architect without one. (He did attend an awful lot of colleges, just never finished any.) And it's had no connection whatsoever to his professional capacities.
I've got a set of nieces -- one 22 or so, one 16, and one 14, who grew up broke and with non-degreed parents. I didn't manage to sell the 22 year old on a four year college (well, she got a two year degree, and is now maybe working on a four year degree) and I'm trying like hell to convince the sixteen year old. It's so hard to get it across that it's vastly important, because for the rest of your life people will treat you differently in terms of the jobs you're eligible for, but that it's not difficult or out of reach in any way other than the straight economic difficulty of going into debt for it. The kids seem to think that the importance of the degree must make sense, which means that it must be substantively something they couldn't do.
Come the next morning, I see I totally, egregiously, hijacked this thread. How rude. On the other hand, all you people who think the admissions official had it coming, had it coming.
I really didn't know Chris Penn was dead.
I think 48 gets it right, both that MIT was not unreasonable in firing her and that it is unfortunate that many doors are closed to people without degrees that need not be.
30: Fortunately, MIT doesn't give out honorary degrees, to anybody, ever.
Marilee Jones has been in the admissions office for 28 years, but has only been director since 1997. She was not well-loved by students of the era; there was a perception that she was changing the composition of the student body in undesirable ways. She also wrote a profoundly patronizing article about "kids today", aka Millennials, which also went over like a ton of bricks with the student body.
... under the observation of the football coach that you, as an alumnus, had criticized....
Ogged and Jake get this exactly right. The woman's good at her job, and with any luck (and a clean resume), she'll be picked up immediately by another school on the basis of her stellar work experience. But not only is MIT in the business of selling expensive degrees (this is a weak point; universities hire lots of people with less prestigious or non-existent degrees), as a university, it already pays a lot of lip service to honesty and integrity. It would be hard for an insitution that presumably frowns on plagiarism to keep her on on the grounds she didn't get caught.
I've known several people, often mothers of children, who topped out on their jobs because of credentialization issues. I've also known credentialed people who were not very good at what they did but were good at explaining how things should be done, and excellent at justifying their actions.
Note that the collapse of American journalism came at the very moment when journalists became credentialed professionals with a college career track. Several interviews are out there where important people in journalism talk about their defects as though they were abstruse technical points of expertise which ignorant bozos like Brad DeLong can't understand. "It would be politicizing the story to point out that every word that Cheney said has been shown to be false." "Our job is to report what people say, not to judge its truth". They really believe that.
The degree that credentialization is expanding is hard to believe. For example, a lot of teachers have to keep paying into the system all their lives in order to maintain their credentials. A lot of very low-level entry-level jobs require not only community-college schooling, but schooling in a specialty.
One victim is the humanities BA, who isn't specialized for anything even though he/she as a degree. Coffee shops and copy centers, that's it. A lot of places discriminate against BAs, assuming (probably correctly) that they'll either be dissatisfied or else short-term.
The Man sent Nathan William's link down the hoohole. But what would you expect? No coincidences.
The kids seem to think that the importance of the degree must make sense, which means that it must be substantively something they couldn't do
This always saddens me, and I often forget about it until reminded. With all the anti-intellectualism in American life, it's easy to overlook how much (exaggerated) respect many people have, particularly for advanced degrees, particularly if those degrees are from elite institutions. I sometimes think we have the worst of both anti-intellectualism and credentialism in a witch's brew.
On the other hand.
I was musing the other day that what we offer at my small, unimpressive liberal arts school is basically a very rigorous high school education, the kind that's idealized in romantic notions of international boarding schools. The kids are expected to learn to express themselves clearly and think symbolically, and to gain a bit of depth in some area of their choosing.
Most of these kids really did not have these skills coming out of high school. These kids are not the kids that Unfogged commenters are referencing. They are not the autodidact stringed quartet of self-reflection and rainy days at the library.
If you reinterpret "a college degree" as "a very rigorous high school degree", then it is meaningful for jobs to use it as an easy proxy. Not an end-all be-all. But meaningful.
In the nonprofit/social services world, credentialism usually works to institutionalize poverty and racism. Say you have a social service provider which does health advising and social work for a community that's mostly black and poor. Typically, the very entriest-entry-level positions will be staffed by non-credentialed people, many of them people of color. But those positions don't lead to anything, they don't pay enough to support going back to school--in short, they allow the institution to talk about how they hire people of color, but end up leaving most of the upper-level decision-making jobs for nice, upper middle class passive-aggressive-with-steely-cores white women.
Now, the institution may try like hell to recruit people of color for those upper level positions, but there aren't enough people of color with the the credential to go around--and honestly, while it's good to recruit upper-middle-class type people of color for top jobs, it would be even better to steer the talented, working class people of color into some of those roles--just so that the institution doesn't make typical, bone-headed/patronizing/ineffective decisions based on ignorance of class matters. Also, when you steer working-class people into jobs that pay well and carry authority, you are (in the aggregate) almost certainly setting money circulating in working class communities. Instead of shipping it off to arty-boho-inner-ring-suburbs where the usual nonprofit directors live. And also, you set a tone of "working class people are capable of making good decisions about major stuff" instead of "nice white ladies will make all your life decisions for you because you, o working class person of color, are not unlike a child".
You know, though, that sort of education is personally valuable and a wonderful thing to have. For someone who's reasonably sharp going in, though, it's not going to make them a much better employee for the sort of managerial job we're talking about like admissions director. The college education is a valuable thing in itself, but it's a stupid required credential. (Oh, it's probably a useful sorter in that everyone, for values of everyone that excludes all sorts of people on a class basis, knows the four year degree is essential, so that if you don't have one it's a good marker of either being a fuckup or of being Not Our Kind Of People. But that's nothing to do with the degree, just with the knowledge that it's required.)
For someone who's reasonably sharp going in, though, it's not going to make them a much better employee for the sort of managerial job we're talking about like admissions director.
Picture the kid who wrote (or recieved) AWB's found note. I bet they'd make a better manager after going through a few years at an easy liberal arts college.
"Someone who's reasonably sharp" actually means "someone whose parents inculcate them with a basic level of reading, writing, and arithmetic, or who was intrinsically motivated to learn these things."
I'd say 50% of kids coming out of an average high school are " potentially reasonably smart" but need training to get there.
Frowner's point is really important.
A lot of non-profits (not just the kind Frowner is talking about) have an elite management responsive to the big donors, and a lot of ill-paid, unbenefitted, insecure peons who do the work. Often the donors expect staff to donate by accepting low pay, because after all the donors are donating their spare change.
Non-profit peons tend to be humanities BAs from lesser schools, or even humanities BAs from quality schools who didn't network effectively there.
One reason that the MIT admissions case is important is that that is one of the very few kinds of jobs that humanities BAs can do. So if someone uncredentialed does it, a rather defective credential becomes even more defective.
62: Again, sure, if the college is functioning as a remedial reading/writing course. But for someone who comes in with strong enough basic skills to make it through the first month of an entry level job, the college degree isn't going to tell you anything more.
64, I would add that (especially here in Minnesota) the non-profit world is HUGE--hospitals, social services providers (and there's a huge network that's invisible to people who are lucky enough not to need it: halfway houses, mental health, support for people with serious illness, drug addiction, vision loss...), education, etc. Policy issues nonprofits are what everyone thinks of--with the poorly-paid, stressed out and uninsured post-BA flunkies and fundraisers--but there's actually a whole world of low-level social workers who put in crazy amounts of work for under $30,000 a year and sometimes under $25,000.
66
I think the first two years of most colleges are basically remedial. But I think this thread is underestimating what a gigantic percent of the population is served by these colleges.
Another point: I went through a very bizarre, noticeable mental growth spurt in the last two years of high school.
I sometimes think that we're making a rigorous high school education available for kids who might not have been sufficiently developed for it at ages 14-17.
This is rosy-colored, and I'm not immune to the other points. I just think there's an important remedial-ish function being served by fair-to-middling-podunk-colleges.
67: Yep. That's actually the world my 22 year old niece is working in in upstate NY -- her associate's degree is in human services, or something like that, which seems to qualify her for no-advancement cannon-fodder jobs caring for disabled children. Someone's got to do it, but there should be a career ladder and decent pay.
Part of the reason for remedial education in college is that a lot more people go to college now. About 28% are college graduates and probably another 20-30% have some college. A century ago my guess is that it was about 5% graduates.
I would also guess that the top 5% of American students are much better in science and math than they were a century ago, significantly worse in foreign languages, and much, much worse in classics. But the devaluation of classic was deliberate.
I've read that 75% of the population has some college.
What if all college instutions offered both aa's and ba's/bs's? The price would be less ominous, and the prestige would vary with the prestige of the univesity.
If only the lower-tiered schools did it, it would carry a stigma. But if everyone did it, I think it would be an excellent way to broaden people's options and make a reasonable amount of reading/writing/rithmatic widely available.
I just mean, lots of jobs are snooty about community colleges. This would give a lot more gray area.
I've suggested several times on the internet that instead of (or besides) hiring Ivy Leaguers at loose ends to work for a year or two, and **especially** instead of hiring interns whose families will support them, Democrats should hire promising kids from traditionally Democratic non-elite communities, and give them decent jobs and career development (e.g. tuition help).
I was mostly talking to bright college kids involved in Democratic politics, and they almost unanimously argued that the Democrats have a limited budget and should rely on unpaid interns and low-paid Ivies killing time during a break from school.
ctd 72:
I know, I know, there's no incentive for Harvard and MIT to go along with this and it's riddled with problems. Just pat me on the back and go about your business, okay?
74 - eating peanut butter straight again, eh Joe?
Again, yep. Left-wing politics should be a possible career for bright poor kids, and it really isn't.
Heebie is cute when she has ideas.
That's because I'm talking out of my ass!
Currently, the only real way young people from low-income families get recruited into activism is through labor unions. Which is a fine thing, but only 12% of Americans are union members, so it's still not too likely that most kids will grow up in a union household.
77, but nobody will fight this harder than nice white upper-middle class kids who are expressing their will to power through "helping" their inferiors. They don't really deep down want equality and social justice; they want classy yet "socially responsible" careers for themselves helping an ever renewed client population. Poverty pimps, that's the phrase. That is, when it's not "party boss".
81: Yes, and very well put. It's been like this for a very long time, I think. I certainly encountered it during my own activism in the seventies, and it was probably what I hated the most about it.
I hate the rich as much as anyone, but 81 is pretty damn unfair, I think.
I've said before: pay the damned interns, because it's a little ridiculous that anyone from a low-income (where "low-income" means "parents can't afford an apartment in DC or NYC for their kid", not actually "low-income") family can't get into politics or journalism to change things that might conceivably affect people they know.
It's a Power to the People thing, Joe. You wouldn't understand.
I.e., if AlternateUniversCala, from a respectably moreorless middle class home wanted to go into politics, the Republicans would pay her. The Democrats would offer a nice unpaid internship. Hmm.
83: Give an example?
I'm completely serious. I've heard LOTS of middle/upper-middle class white kids explain how they are more qualified to make policy decisions about working class people of color and working class people generally than those people could ever be. I've heard not one but two non-profit directors explain why everybody over entry level was white and middle class and how that didn't reflect even the most general, structural, not-their-fault racism. I went through a very expensive teacher-training program full of nice white kids like me and it was my own questioning of my motives (as well as observation in the remedial program where I was teaching along with other white middle class people) that largely led me to my conclusions. I've also watched a genuinely working class friend struggle to move from a really crap social-worker job to a better one and now I've seen the challenges she faces if she goes back for an MA. And she works for a very unusual place that will allow her to take a leave for the three months of intensive training that the MA requires.
People who want to change the world owe it to themselves to examine their own motives closely and then to keep the unsavory ones in check. Everyone's motives are mixed for everything, and if people believe that they're helping others out of pure unmixed radicalism they will generally just screw things up.
I may have overgeneralized, but what I say is based on its frequent occurance in my life.
Well, I've worked in politics too, Frowner, and I met a bunch of rich young interns, but I honestly can't think of a single one who "don't really deep down want equality and social justice." That's a pretty harsh accusation.
There's a routine in a lot of job in which the uncredentialed worker trains the credentialed one hired to supervise him/her.
I don't want to overstate the case, because the credentialed guy may have genuine strengths that the other one lacks. But if there's someone stuck in a terminal low-level position who is personally capable of moving up the ladder, non-profits who hire inexperienced, credentialed outsiders to fill the upper slots should just admit that equality isn't one of their concerns.
That's one of the changes in American life in the ast 2-3 decades, I think: career development is more and more up to the individual, with an advantage going to the more prosperous families. Apprenticeships are down, on-the-job-training is down, college aid is not keeping up with college costs, and (I think) fewer companies provide educational benefits.
The point isn't "only the poor are good"; the point is that decisions made by upper middle class white people about how to fix problems in the lives of working class people of color are unlikely to be the most effective decisions. Therefore, perpetuating a "social justice activism" system where working class people and people of color generally don't have any decicion-making power is likely to cut down on the amount of actual social justice achieved.
Also, a secondary point would be that if you yourself come from a comfortable, educated background, you are unlikely even to notice some regular life stuff that's commonplace for people without money and without much education. You're also unlikely to weight it high enough. This is not because comfort and education are themselves bad.
And there are things--like homelessness among Native people--that are viewed and dealt with very differently by Native people than they are by white people. Not only are you unlikely to get that if you've grown up white and middle class but even if you know intellectually it can be really hard to act helpfully.
88, I just tend to feel that if you really want something deep down, and there's a serious, substantial critique of your actions by the very people you purport to help--well then, insisting that your way is still best and making a career in it is a little strange. And there's ample, ample critique of the non-profit system from outside it by a very broad range of people.
It's worth noting, though--just like last Friday's purple underpants question--that we're probably talking about very different people in very different environments. I don't know much about the policy-wonk stuff that Cala is describing, for instance, but I know a reasonable amount about teaching and health-care/social work.
I wouldn't really get into criticisms of individuals from a sincerity POV, but I've known social activists who naturally assumed that a fairly decent social activism job would be there for them, while not noticing that such jobs would never be there for either a.) the people they were helping or b.) anyone working on their staff. Maybe they decided on social activism and sacrified med school for that, so a $40,000 job is a big step down for them. But for about 1/3 of the population, $40,000 is a big step up.
When a non-profit starts being frugal, just as with for-profit businesses, staff is where the pinch will mostly be, the more so if the donors expect staff to be self-sacrificing.
I don't know if I'd put it as harshly as Frowner, mostly because I don't have a lot of direct experience with the industry, but there's a deep sense in which for some Ivy League grads, doing social work or political volunteering is just a wanderjahr that makes you feel good about yourself. You spend a year or two doing that before you get a real job or go to law school.
That's not a wholly bad impulse, but it does mean that you have a stream of clueless 22-year-olds working for a short term for no pay on serious social problems, not a bunch of people in it for the long haul.
I don't disagree with anything you're saying, Frowner, other than the blanket accusation of disingenuousness. And I'm a white guy, but lest you accuse me of being one of these poor-hating hypocrites, I was also raised by a broke-ass alcoholic three-job-working single mom who nearly had to move me and my brother and sister into a homeless shelter on more than one occasion.
I'm not talking about the nonprofit world, either; my experience is from working on campaigns in general and the Dean campaign in particular. So yes, the rich white interns in the nonprofit world may actually hate the poor deep down.
83: Unfair in the overgeneralization and harsh rhetoric, maybe, but not in the substance.
There's a general problem where being involved in trying to do something good gives you more opportunity to be a shithead, so it feels as though people are being penalized for making an attempt. No one that I interact with blames me personally for working in a pretty fucking white law firm, because I've already sold out, and I'm not the one making the hiring decisions. The affluent white kid who rides the glass escalator up to the management side of a non-profit, on the other hand, gets personally blamed for getting hired, when from his point of view all he wants to do is do good.
That's not a reason to let up on talking about the injustice, but maybe it's a reason to moderate the rhetoric.
I think that not realizing that $40,000/ year can be a big step up for a lot of people is sort of the nub here.
Ahem. If you can't be unfair in generalization on Unfogged, where then can you be unfair? Or has everyone else been being serious and literal all along?
There's an art to unfair generalizations, Frowner.
97: True. However, the flip side is that if you can't be touchy and easily hurt in the comments on Unfogged, where can you be? We've got hurt feelings that have been batted around for ridiculous amounts of time.
I do get sympathetic here, though, because it's wrong that I should get less shit as privileged than someone like Sausagely, when I'm a real sellout and he's parlayed a privileged position into a chance to do some valuable political work. Just because someone else wouldn't have had his opportunities, doesn't mean that what he's doing isn't a better thing to do than working in BigLaw.
Nonetheless, the structural critique is still perfectly accurate.
LB is just begging for us to start attacking her. I hate trust fund bitches like her, you know.
I guess my feeling is, everyone should be welcome to experience progressive activism. We need everyone we can get. The answer is to be more aggressive about reaching out to people of all backgrounds, not to dismiss the people who are currently the bulk of those working for change.
Hey, if you think my rhetoric is harsh, you can always read some William Upski Wimsatt--speaking of white guys--or even a little bell hooks. Never mind some of them there blogs. Recollect that funny "White Teacher Lady Saves The Day" thing on You-Tube a couple weeks ago? That's funny, but it's kind of saying the same thing--a lot of white folks and rich folks want to see themselves as heros who are down with the people while still retaining their special-wecialness, since they just want to be down with the people; they don't want to be the people.
I am dead serious when I say that people need to examine their motives. Wanting to change the world is laudable, but it's also often a channel for ego, greed, self-doubt, that feeling-like-a-fake-all-the-time thing, etc. In this, it's just like any other career. But the difference between being a social justice type and being a tax accountant is that social justice types aren't just working a job for themselves (and their families). They have to hold themselves to a higher standard--if they're substantially motivated by a martyr-complex or a big ego, they need to get wise to that and get it under control.
One reason I am not a teacher is that I don't trust myself not to work out my own issues in the classroom. That's not because I think all white teachers (or all teachers for that matter) are awful, but because I know that there are a sizeable percentage like me who do in fact lack the boundaries and self-control needed to do the kind of teaching I want to do.
Who fucking cares about motives? Not me. Bill Gates is a selfish, evil motherfucker, and he also might end up as the savior of an entire continent. It's not who you are inside; it's what you do that defines you.
I learned that from Katie Holmes in Batman Forever, my friends.
White people from rich backgrounds can't be activists? Tell it to John Edwards. Tell it to FDR. I mean, honestly.
101, not to be all vanguardy, but I tend to feel that some kinds of help are the kinds of help we all could do without! You should see the bookstore collective where I volunteer....five people who work, ten who complain and another ten who just make messes and talk about how great they are.
The thing is, the kind of help you get determines the kind of actions you take.
But in the interest of minimizing the crabby-bitterness, I would add that political campaigns seem like they'd be totally different because they're focused on a fairly clearly-defined, short-term goal. It's not like you're sitting there brainstorming "we'd sure like it if Howard Dean had some kind of role in national affairs...I wonder how we should go about it and who should be involved? And just what should that role be?"
I just think it's ridiculous to heap disdain on the class of people who make up the vast majority of those committed to social change. You want them to take their sense of entitlement and go home? I sure don't. By all means, bring some people in from other backgrounds, but don't subtract from the numbers we have. Christ.
Joe D has clearly been co-opted by the Rich White Guy power structure. As was the original Joe D. It's only a matter of time before we see Drymala selling out and doing Mr. Coffee commercials.
103...oh, I'm going to say more crabby things, I can feel it coming on....
...because motives determine results, that's why! If I am motivated by the desire to be important and have everyone pay attention to my least word, I will be attracted to different methods and different programs than if I am not. Consider protests, to take a simple example. How many really stupid, badly-run ones have you been to, how many unneccessary arrests have you seen, just because people have a need to grandstand? Or how many formulaic ones have you been to because the people running them just like the feeling they get from being at a protest, even if it accomplishes nothing? Those are people whose motives control them, and who are not wise to themselves.
Seriously, I can't know the motives of random rich people who give money to foundations; I can't control the motives of John Edwards or Barack Obama. I don't even know anyone at all like those people. But I do know a lot of common-or-garden activists, and I know myself. If you want to do good work in social justice, you need to examine your motives and you need to be able to step back from things when someone else is better for the job. White middle class people generally could do a lot more for education if they organized politically to get more teacher-training opportunities for low income people and people of color, for example, than by spending a couple of years out of college working out their racial anxieties in inner city classrooms.
You mean that every time I lose data to a computer crash, a starving African is fed? You have framed a cruel paradox indeed, Joe.
I agree that focussing too much on individual motives and judgements is wrong. I think that there's a real problem with that glass ceiling separating the helpers and the helped, and that helpers' experiential blind spots might make their help lss effective, or sometimes coutnerproductive.
It was really an eye-opener when an internal dispute within the board of my son's music-education group gve me a bried introduction to the donor class. I saw doctors and lawyers in the $100,000 range being servile, because the big players were people who could casually write $10,000 checks.
I don't even know anyone at all like those people.
They're all sexual animals. In the good way.
I think we're missing each other's points a bit, Joe.
I'm not talking about white people packing up and going home; I'm talking about people from priviledged backgrounds being very cautious and modest about acting and speaking for others. I'm talking about being aware that your background and unacknowledged motives may drive you to do things that work against the motives you consciously espouse.
Why else, frankly, would we have so many disappointing examples of former left-wingers? Doris Lessing, for a non-controversial example--someone who wanted purpose and drama and a sense of being embattled, and when marxism and feminism didn't provide those she switched over into being a little bit of a fascist.
Free associating on salary eye-openers: My brother pays his nanny more than I make as an assistant professor.
110 -- I have a bunch of Doris Lessing on my bookshelf at home that I have not opened. Should I? I liked The Golden Notebook, at least as far as I can recall I did, more than 10 years ago.
I think we're missing each other's points a bit, Joe.
Sounds like it.
Remember, Frowner doesn't like fun underwear, either, IIRC.
111: It is important to my mental health not to read things like that.
112--I love Doris Lessing. She's one of my favorite writers. I even get suckered into re-reading her conservative later books every so often. She's also kind of the poet of spite....
I am amazed by her career, actually, the way she's been able to produce good quality work over so many years. Her later stuff (like, since about 1990) is a bit weaker, but I like the first part of Mara and Dan a lot. Giant scary mutant lizards! Eeek!
Of course, she's not the most gifted prose stylist ever, but I'm known as Ms. Tin Ear, so it doesn't matter to me.
You know which ones I had overlooked and was just amazed by? Diary of a Good Neighbor and that Jane Somers one. Those are amazing.
A few things on what Frowner is saying: I've definitely seen the landscape she's talking about, with such organizations sometimes described derisively as "plantations."
And I can't count the number of times I have seen funders genuinely perplexed as to why they can't get highly qualified people of color for lousy salaries. No matter how many times you say "Being able to work for $25K a year is often a luxury that is being subsidized by a spouse/parent/wealth of social capital," that's just not a shared reality.
That said, Billy Wimsatt, as Frowner notes, has written pretty passionately about this stuff, including a fair bit on what he calls Cool Rich Kids. Which - not to put too fine a point on it - Billy himself is, IIRC. And to get back to Joe's point -- heck no, I don't want to kick anybody out. But a little self-awareness wouldn't come amiss.
Case in point: Screening of a very moving film about Cambodian-American deportees. Small crowd of activists and nonprofit staff. Q-and-A period at the end? Almost entirely questions from old white guys. Hey dudes, you're 5% of the audience. Sit down and listen a little for once.
Skimming, because I'm on an hour of sleep, but so far I'm with Joe. And not just because I'm a middle class white guy who's setting out to try and change the world.
Frowner, you seem to be a bit all over the place. We've got "five people who work, ten who complain and another ten who just make messes and talk about how great they are" and "I'm talking about people from priviledged backgrounds being very cautious and modest about acting and speaking for others".
On the former, sure, no question: if you're setting out to do good in the world, don't be a jackass. But the assumption that "rich white guys" are all unaware that "your background and unacknowledged motives may drive you to do things that work against the motives you consciously espouse" seems borderline insulting. Are rich white guys statistically likely to be jackasses? Yes. Is being a jackass counterproductive if you're trying to change the world? Yes. But "nobody will fight this harder than nice white upper-middle class kids who are expressing their will to power through 'helping' their inferiors" really rubs me the wrong way.
114, after the revolution the people's underwear will be made of felted goat hair! Or hemp! And no elastic; the people wear drawstrings! And all underwear will be inspected for sufficient scratchiness (to mortify bourgeoius pride, you know) at the People's Democratic Underpants Factory Number One.
I may have, in retrospect, somewhat overstated my case on the fun underwear. Although I contend that everything I said holds true for the the ones with the retro seventies pattern.
118, wait, I don't understand your second paragraph! I was holding up my dreadfully constituted collective as a bad example of what I'm talking about! If you think that because I'm in it I think it's paradise writ small, well, er, I don't and it's not. A little modesty would do wonders for our collective, although we'd need a regular twelve fairy gifts to really fix things up.
118: Eh. If the worst thing that happens to affluent white people in social services is that it's noted that they're statistically more likely to be counterproductive jackasses, I figure they'll bear up under it.
Heebie, associate professors don't usually offer sexual favours.
Again, let's get away from blaming individuals and talk about helping organizations with glass ceilings whose upper levels are closed to the people being helped.
My story is a strange one. I grew up thinking I was rich, but it turned out that small town doctors with seven kids are poor. But I already had the attitude.
99: Thank you, LB. I could come up with some arguments, and quite good ones, about how I can help the causes I believe in more with my money than with my time, but those would be smokescreens for the fact that I've sold out.
Also, I find it almost impossible to blame most NGOs for their low salaries, since they do rely on the kindness of strangers and the good ones are trying to shunt as much money into programs as possible. But of course this situation is going to lead to a lot of very low-qualification people with poor backgrounds and qualified people with overprivileged backgrounds who can afford to work for a pittance. Most of my friends from lower-class backgrounds who got great qualifications through my amazing free high school and top scholarships are trying to get rich themselves, not sit in poverty at a small non-profit while feeling kinda warm and fuzzy.
This discussion has also made me realize part of why I tend to like international NGOs so much more than America-based ones. Due to language barriers, very obvious cultural barriers, occasional regulatory barriers, and the costs of placing an ex-pat overseas, most good international NGOs have a lot of local employees at each project. And since even their pittance salaries are quite large in the developing world, they can attract very competant and well-educated locals as managers and top-level advisers, which makes for a more effective program.
And we never worried about money for a day in my life, and yet I grew up thinking I was a scion of the organized working class. (It's funny -- part of what kept me out of more political activity than I've ever engaged in was class anxiety; feeling out of place as someone without personal connections to powerful people. This is more neurosis that anything that actually excuses my political slackness.)
122 - What makes you think I haven't offered my brother sexual favors?
I was going to speculate, HG, but people around here are very negative about sccandalous insinuations. Is he hott?
Well, he was voted Best Butt of 1988 by his high school. (He really was. When I got there, a teacher told me this.)
So this is a whole family of primo butts. How is his wife's butt? Will the next generation keep the tradition alive?
120: In fairness, I'm not sure I understand my second paragraph. I guess I just want to make a distinction between a criticism I'm comfortable with ("don't be a jackass!") and one that makes me defensive ("white guys are often jackasses!").
That said, LB is right, and I can shoulder the burden of being a part of the jackass class. I was just reading Frowner as saying something stronger than that.
No matter how many times you say "Being able to work for $25K a year is often a luxury that is being subsidized by a spouse/parent/wealth of social capital," that's just not a shared reality.
Moreover, the $25K is a luxury because it's just a short-term stopping point on the way to bigger and better things. It's sort of like the difference between graduate students and the actual working poor; it's a temporary status chosen because of the great opportunity it affords, and chances are mom or dad is around to help with the car insurance, or to co-sign an apartment, or to send money now and then. Two years at $25K is nothing when you're 22 or 23 and your parents are subsidizing you.
It's not bad that young wealthy kids want to volunteer, or that their parents want to help them but if the model is rich-kid-slums-it-for-a-while-and-then-moves-on, the 'voice' that helps make decisions is very far removed from anyone who ever has to deal with it. And we're not just talking poor kids; we're talking, well, anyone who had to take out a significant loan to go to college. That's an awful lot of people who can't get involved in (say) politics.
Why are people not abusing LB as she obviously wants us to? No one ever listens to women. Remember, women never speak directly but always just leave subtle hints that men are supposed to pick up on.
No, no, actually I'm good with not being abused. Honest.
(I am having bouts of guilt, particularly given that I hate my job, about not finding work with an advocacy organization that's compatible with paying my mortgage. Is there some sort of clearinghouse listing of leftwing organizations I could look through to see who might be hiring litigators? I tried Planned Parenthood's advocacy arm a year ago, but never heard back.)
131, to totally probably trash the relative amiability of your comment, I'm afraid I have to say this: One of the responsibilities of being in a position of relative priviledge (let's just say "white" since that covers us both) is be able to hear "White activists are often jackasses about race", consider our own behavior for ourselves and be open to the fact that we too may be jackasses about race.
A bunch of people left my collective two years ago about, essentially, race. I stayed. They were right, as I've come to realize. My collective has a number of jackasses-about-race in it, and I myself was a jackass about race in that I didn't take seriously what the leavers said. I didn't take it seriously because they way they said it was kind of annoying and there were also interpersonal issues involved. So I don't entirely blame myself, since they were contributing to bad communication and clouding of the issue. But I do partly blame myself, because I'm old enough and smart enough and have read enough books about racism that I should have been able to figure out what was going on even if I didn't like the way things were said. That was my responsibility, and I blew it. More, I think that if a couple of us stayers who sort of sympathized with the leavers had taken it more seriously, we could have avoided the split.
I had my doubts about things at the time, but several of my friends and one person I wanted to impress were part of the stayers, and so I decided to side with them.
This is the kind of thing I mean about personal motivations and self-awareness. It could be that I am much, much more base than most people, but I would rather believe that other people too sometimes make activist decisions for reasons that contradict their principles.
That said, though, it's certainly the responsibility of the jackass-cryers to be, maybe, a little less crabby than I usually am.
136: Thank you. (It's so sad when I ask for help on a life-changing kind of thing, and reveal that I haven't had the energy to Google.)
I didn't google that; I knew about it from my own idealistic job searches ten or so years ago. I wasn't even sure the site still existed.
134: LB, take this with a grain of salt, because I know the nonprofit field really well and the litigation piece of it not at all. But IME once somebody is mid-career and wants to make a lateral move, it happens almost exclusively through personal commitment and/or connection. In other words, you either pay your dues by donating your time/energy, or you know somebody who already respects your skills in the for-profit world and is far-thinking enough to want to pay you (kind of) what you're worth.
There are relatively few well-paying jobs in the n.p. sector (maybe this is not as true in NY, I don't know) and most folks have worked long and hard in the sector to get them. To be one of the folks who comes in from elsewhere to get such a job, it helps tremendously for your bona fides to be established. No, you don't have to have gone to Big Fancy School with Executive Director X, but it sure does help if you put your self where your mouth is, and do some prep work before sending out resumes.
Idealist.org, which Ogged linked above, is an excellent way to get entry-level jobs and to find out about interesting organizations which you can then research on your own. IME it's not a very good way to get high-level jobs.
I'd suggest researching this as if it were a case you have to brief: Where are the decent-paying nonprofit litigator jobs hiding, and do I really want one? Call alumni from your school who are working in the public interest field. Have lunch with people. Do some pro bono work on your own time. Who knows if this is practical -- maybe you have to keep your search low-profile and maybe lawyers aren't allowed to do pro-bono work that their firms don't approve. But those are my suggestions.
Geeze, I wrote a book. Sorry. Should have put this in e-mail, probably.
Do you know anyone who works on activist projects you support? (I mean "activist" very generally--not just puppet-wielding hippies) Some of the much-maligned-by-Frowner nonprofit directors might be able to give you some advice.
From a volunteering-on-stuff standpoint, I bet there are small projects that could sure use free legal help--'round here, if you want a subpoena you can ask one of only two or three radical lawyers to help you prepare it for free (which can be really important in police brutality cases)...and that's something that any lawyer can do, right? Or I'm sure there are things where you could give advice or look at documents a few hours a month and really make a difference. Probably a tenants' union or immigration support organization.
142...Is this...is this...the comity they speak of ?
I know this is all true, and the sort of networking that I need to do to find a non-profit, or indeed anything but another law firm job, is something I know about, and the sort of project I find immensely defeating (due to my personal shortcomings. I'd rather have my fingernails removed with pliers than do anything that could be described as networking). (Law firm jobs, on the other hand, happen through legal recruiters and are very easy to find if you have a fairly statusy looking resume, which I do.)
This: "Do some pro bono work on your own time. " particularly, is dead on. I need to suck it up and do this -- find a job I want and stalk the organization for a couple of years volunteering for stuff. Again, while I know I have to do this to get anywhere, the prospect is incredibly depressing.
Networking IS exhausting, which is part of why I asked if you have to keep this quiet. Because the easiest thing is just to send a short note to your acquaintances and then let the ideas come to you.
Also, it may help to be bite-sized about it -- Idealist lets you sign up to see when new volunteer opportunities or job listings are posted, as well as upcoming local events, and if you get that little reminder in your e-mail every morning it can be a good way to say "Oh, I'm free for three hours on Saturday to do X."
It doesn't have to be precious family time given up, either -- there are plenty of nonprofits that you can scope out while Sally and Newt are running around the park doing a streamwatch program or cultural diversity event or whatever.
Um, the first paragraph of 146 s/b:
LB, don't sell yourself short. Somebody out there has already watched you in action and envied your skills and would snap like a shark to get you on their team. But they won't ask if they think you're lifetime committed to BigTobacco.
LB, maybe you could consider working in labor. Private union-side labor law firms pay fairly well. Not like what corporate law firms pay, obviously, but an undisputably comfortable living nonetheless. A friend of mine just joined a place in NY that she likes pretty well, and the AFL-CIO keeps a bulletin board of job opportunities that you could subscribe to, if you're interested.
Plus, LB, as much as I can judge your personality from these innertubes, I think you'll be a smash hit with a lot of mid-sized left-leaning organizations. I think people will be thrilled to death that you're looking to do some pro bono stuff with an eye to finding a long term actual job. (Of course, a fraction of that is that you are neither crazy nor an older guy looking to score with the interns, but not all of it)
Yep. This is all a 'suck it up and do it' issue. I just need to get off my ass. Life is hard for the lazy.
149: You are neither crazy....
Elsewhere I wrote the following, referencing myself:
They came for the clearly mentally disturbed people, and I said nothing.... and then they came for me, because there weren't actually a lot of intermediate statuses to go through one by one.
Now I want to make that the new mouseover text for the masthead.
Skimming the thread, I heart Frowner.
In particular this seems like a stereotype that is all too frequently accurate:
Typically, the very entriest-entry-level positions will be staffed by non-credentialed people, many of them people of color. But those positions don't lead to anything, they don't pay enough to support going back to school--in short, they allow the institution to talk about how they hire people of color, but end up leaving most of the upper-level decision-making jobs for nice, upper middle class passive-aggressive-with-steely-cores white women.
To LB: I would be wary about "social justice-y" law jobs. Having had one in NYC representing tenants for free, there is good and bad. I suspect that the most impactful stuff would not happen at a sexy non-profit (and certainly not at a labor union) but providing reasonably priced, basic legal services to poor and working class people -- an option few consider. E.g., wills, L&T... think the legal equivalent of tax preparers in poor neighborhoods -- know why there are so many? To get people thousands of dollars thru the earned income tax credit.
Re the larger debate, I agree that the best-intended white Ivy-league-ers pose the problems raised at times, but careful of the dichotomy (whites in charge, everyone else a peon). If you go to any major city -- New York being the best example -- and if you put aside the major private non-profits, you realize that the public service sector is overwhelming staffed and run by working class people of color with a middling education.
Does the blog need a lawyer? Should we libel someone and have a fundraising drive to pay LB's salary? Seems like a win in many ways.
Hell, who needs the libel. Howzabout everyone just chips in to support me in the style to which I would like to become accustomed, and I'll eat bonbons and post.
I could live with that.
One charismatic stay-at-home freelance blogger around here is enough, LB.
Recollect that funny "White Teacher Lady Saves The Day" thing on You-Tube a couple weeks ago?
Missed it, and YouTube search isn't being helpful. Got a link?
156: The trick is just to figure out some way of getting a tiny little percentage of the population--less than a million people--to send you five or ten bucks each. And then, once you figure it out, share.
Unfortunately it seems that the best way to get rich quick is to write and market a get rich quick book. The marketing, not the writing, is the key. Which is too bad, because there's no shortage of ways to get rich if you have the talent (and the shamelessness) to be good at marketing.
So are other people reading the title of this post to the tune of Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's song "Poodle Rockin'"?
150
Or maybe you don't actually hate your current job as much as you claim.
Getting back to the MIT admissions director I would have fired her and I wouldn't hire her someplace else. One thing about cheaters is that they tend to cheat more than once. Who knows what MIT would discover if they start looking under rocks? For example admissions departments look at how students do after admission in order to improve the process. Would I trust her to do such studies honestly? No I would not.
Wow, Jimmy, that is insightful. Maybe I just need to look around me and appreciate the wonder and magic in the job I already have. Thanks for helping me turn my frown upside-down! :-D
163: I can't imagine Frowner likes that too much. Are you trying to steal her change or something?
Frowner doesn't talk much about her childhood career as a competititive gymnast, but let me assure you that she's no stranger to inversion.
Life is hard for the lazy.
Not to be all, "omg being an underworked lawyer is so harrrrrd!," but don't underestimate how much energy a bad job can take out of you.
life is much too short to read 167 comments. Did anyone else point out that it is ironic that apparently CharlestonM that has decided to have a go at risque dancing?
This thread's not about dirty dancing, is it?
Fuck. Now I'm going to have to find some time to go back and read it.
167: Perceiving that as ironic would require first perceiving the Charleston as an erotic dance. The British are stranger than I realized. (And no, no one talks about dirty dancing at all in the thread.)
(And no, no one talks about dirty dancing at all in the thread.)
As well they shouldn't, because Kevin Bacon is just flat-out better than Patrick Swayze.
D^2 seems to have insufficient respect for the miracle that is Unfogged. We didn't talk about dirty dancing at all, Taffy, we talked about weighty political issues. So there!
Did I mention that i had a chance to meet the starlet of "Footloose" when she was crawling on the floor at age 2? Little did I know what I was passing up!
Shearer, "One thing about cheaters is that they tend to cheat more than once" is tautological, since "cheaters" effectively means "habitual cheaters". I doubt that there's a rule such that someone who cheats once cheats all the time, which is what you tried to say.
LB, I assume from this thread that the recent gov't interview didn't pan out? Sorry to hear it.
Also, Frowner is right about everything.
171
I think someone who fakes resumes repeatedly is a bad risk for other misconduct.
I understand that you think that, but you stated it as an obvious truth. We don't even know that she faked resumes repeatedly.
If we're back to the original threadjack, I agree with those who say MIT really had no choice but to fire her once the resume fraud had been squarely brought to its knowledge. Yes, her performance says far more about her ability to do the job than her resume does, but she's in the business of judging other folks' credentials and there's no way she can continue to do that credibly once it's known that she faked her own. It's the kind of thing that a good administrator really would rather not know about and wouldn't go looking for but can't ignore when someone makes it known.
163: Oooh! This sounds like "It's a Wonderful Life -- the BigLaw Edition." You just need the angel to come and show you how the world would spiral into decay if you left the firm.
Getting back to the MIT admissions director I would have fired her and I wouldn't hire her someplace else. One thing about cheaters is that they tend to cheat more than once. Who knows what MIT would discover if they start looking under rocks? For example admissions departments look at how students do after admission in order to improve the process. Would I trust her to do such studies honestly? No I would not.
Because you're an idiot?
134, 136, et al: I fucking hate idealist.org. Twenty or thirty resumes off to various ngos, many for jobs where my previous experience and skills and so on are directly relevant: not a single word (aside from some autoreplies) from any of them. Fucking SIX queries sent to random businesses advertising on craigslist: 2 interviews plus a phone interview. NGOs can blow me.
NGOs can blow me.
Now that's a fundraising strategy I could see being effective.
181: they'd have to broaden their customer base a bit, I think.
182: No, no, that's the "NGOs can ass-fuck me" campaign.
167
dsquared, like OPINIONATED GRANDMA, will swoop into the thread to make a comment.
OPINIONATED GRANDMA, however, will usually be more topical.
184: Yes well you yanks are so focussed on being "topical," now, aren't you?
Social service non-profits are similarly hungry for work. I also think they would be totally inept at getting help via an Internet service. Find a Community Action Program or similar, and present yourself in person. Like the advocacy places, it seems, they like to give high-ranking jobs to inexperienced, middle-class credentialed types who'll accept way-below-market wages. And those are really hard to come by, so if you're one, you should have no problem!
DR. HAING S. NGOS CAN BLOW ME
111, 115: Nannys ought to be paid top dollar. So should professors, mind, but the proper response is "good for your brother."
188- Well, maybe B. But we're about to hire one and it's absolutely making me gag. It's not that easy for everyone just to pull a spare $50k out of their annual budget. Unless you're quite wealthy, that's a lot of money. And it's disturding to me that we'll be paying the nanny a lot more than either of my parents ever made at their jobs...
(In other words, yes, or course nannies should be paid top dollar. But we need some gov't subsidies or something... you know, because of all the benefits we bring to society by having kids.)
Turns out she did have a BA, in biology. Which makes her false credentials even more baffling, since she didn't even technically need a BA to get the original job to which she was applying.