I just read an article about people who paid thousands for a Vacation Plan. (I won’t say which one. I might get sued.) Basically, they said, they had been sold a bill of goods. When they went to use it, they found they couldn’t collect on what they thought they’d bought, but they are still committed to the payments they signed for, using up the money they could have used for future vacations.
I’m writing this because it reminded me of the number of people who took out major loans because they were sold a bill of goods that exaggerated the advantages of having a piece of paper that said they had a college degree. It’s like mortgaging one’s future to buy a house unseen and finding it’s a dilapidated fixer-upper. As a former professor, I was dismayed when I saw the sales pitch because I know the difference between correlation and causation. I know it’s true that people with college degrees traditionally have better incomes, even better wealth. But I also know there are many factors involved, including the prestige of the school, the people of power one meets, the problem solving skills one develops, what career skills one actually learns, even what one’s economic position was to begin with. I knew that too many people were going to get stuck paying off loans without the incomes they had counted on receiving.
At one point I was supervising a PhD who was seeking licensing. One thing she was doing for extra money was teaching a psychology course for one of those degree programs advertised on TV. We were both horrified by the syllabus she had to work with – from Pavlov through Freud and Carl Jung, and everything in between, measured by answers to multiple choice questions, all in one semester! I don’t know the data for success of the students who paid for a program like that, but I’m darn sure they didn’t end up making the thousands of a graduate from Yale or Princeton. I hesitate to add, not all such programs are as bad as that one, but it is an example of paying for a bill of goods.
And now there are folks who are stuck with paying for the ramshackle, close to worthless house, limiting their options to start a family, buy a home, even spend money on better educational opportunities. Consider moves to forgive that loan, like the mortgage on an unlivable house. I hear too many people saying things like, “They took out the loan; they should pay it back. That’s what I did when I took out a mortgage. I never asked to have the loan forgiven.” Or something of that self-righteous ilk. But what would you have done if you found you’d been sold a bill of goods? That the house you hadn’t seen before you paid for it was a disastrous fixer-upper? That the promise of possessing a piece of paper called a college degree would put you in league with the top dollar earners and it doesn’t work out that way, no matter how hard you try?
At any rate, I hope it’s obvious that I’m arguing for loan forgiveness when someone has been sold a bill of goods. It couldn’t hurt the economy to have that money freed up for personal, family, and economic growth.
OK. Please have at it in the comments!
I had hit 70 straight wins, setting an ultimate goal of 100 (only 30 more days to go). Then, darn it, came one of those where you get the last four letters right on the third try with lots of possible first letters to make a word. And, guess what, I tried the wrong first letters on the last three tries until I lost. And that was my teaching moment. Well, it’s what I would have tried to turn into a teaching moment if I were still teaching. I could physically feel the energy draining out into a kind of “why bother” attitude.
It was a demonstration of an approach gradient in action. “Approach gradient?” If I could do anything more than just write words on this blog, I’d draw a picture. Or even find one to copy. But I haven’t been good at extra stuff ever since they made the blog system “easier?” a few years back. So please picture this with me. (Or skip the next paragraph if you don’t like imagining graphs, even simple ones.)
First there’s the horizontal axis, the bottom line, representing the distance from the goal, in this case the number of tries (one per day) starting in the left-hand corner. Straight across, 1-2-3-4-5-etc to 100. And then there’s the vertical axis, heading up from the left-hand corner representing the strength of the desire to reach the goal. You might call it the enthusiasm for getting to 100. Intro Psych tells us the enthusiasm measure will rise as one gets closer to the goal (of 100). In other words, the intensity of the desire to reach the goal increases. OK. So now picture that suddenly at try number 71 the line flops down to zero, necessitating starting all over. Enthusiasm drops to zero, or close to it.
You don’t really need to picture an “approach gradient.” Just see that, having made my way steadily and eagerly toward 100, I was suddenly – thud — back to zero. I failed. It didn’t help much to blame the game creator. I’m the one who didn’t get the right answer. My upward journey was stopped. And I could feel my enthusiasm drop. It really felt like a physical thud. Oh yes, I played Wordle again the next day, but I was in a “don’t-really-care-very-much-if-I-don’t-get-it” mood.” That “thud,” and the “I don’t really care that much,” reminded me of the many people who don’t find energizing success anywhere. Like kids in school whose interests and skills are not identified or encouraged. What a loss! I’m talking about the failure to encourage some among us to appreciate the gifts they can use and give. And then we’re surprised that they just kind of “hang out” their lives, or, worse still, revert to socially undesirable things like drugs, or bullying, or violence of other forms.
And that’s just referring to people who aren’t encouraged. Worse still are the kids who live in atmospheres where punishment and shaming are used in the attempt to drive them to socially acceptable behaviors. Ridiculous, really, when the function of punishment is to stop action, not to encourage it.
I lost on Wordle and was reminded of the approach gradient and its importance in encouraging the living of life. I’ve been fortunate to have abilities appreciated for most of my life, so I find it fun to try again. But that’s not true for too many people. And then we call them lazy. I don’t believe in lazy.
Do you remember it? Talks, workshops, bumper stickers, T-shirts?
If you do, or even if you think it sounds interesting, please send me an email at forgivenessoptions.com with “Healthy Woman” in the subject line.
Thanks,
Mona
Most addiction results from attempts to self-medicate isolation, social disconnection, psychiatric disorders, trauma and severe economic distress. It’s not coincidental that the exponential rise in overdose deaths has occurred in tandem with a profound increase in income inequality. Punishing people for trying to feel better in a world that doesn’t seem to want them doesn’t help. (From New York Times Opinion Page, “How Fentanyl Drove a Tsunami of Death in America.” By Maia Szalavitz. Saturday, September 28, 2024
p.s. On a completely different note, who, reading this, remembers “A Healthy Woman is a Crazy Person?”
liOh, I do know the data, so in a scientific way I do understand it. But the real, human, caring me has trouble making sense of it. I don’t get human cruelty. I don’t get why folks refuse to accept some science/technology and angrily reject other science/technology. How come the same people who eagerly keep track of the local weather predictions (i.e. accept the science) don’t seem to give a hoot about the way folks are suffering around the world from heat and destructive storms, leaving some dead and others homeless. Why? What is gained by ignoring that suffering and future danger even to ourselves. Even if it were true that climate change is not a result of the actions of certain profitable industries but simply the effect of nature, what stops us from doing everything possible to mitigate the effects of that “natural” change? Why aren’t we throwing our energies into understanding what we can do to make life better?
Just sayin’
REACTING TO A DEPRESSING DEBATE
I wrote the following in response to a friend’s reply to yesterday’s blog entry. Having put time and effort into it, I thought I might as well post it here where more people might see it. “Yes, the debate was awful, and I was about to jump on the dump Biden wagon when two things happened. (1) A friend sent me a link to Lawrence O’Donnell on “The Last Word,” for June 28th. Indeed, an important pick-me-up. But more important I recognized that awful feeling of heaviness in the chest and remembered experiencing it a couple of times when I was teaching, and even also when I was doing private therapy. That awareness that I’d been a total flop –and deserved to flop. But then, after the initial “poor me” — “I was a failure; I’ve always been a failure; and I’ll always be a failure,” — and the appreciation of my husband’s futile efforts to say something encouraging, I decided to learn from it. And by my next lecture (or session) I was ready with a “brilliant” save. I’m encouraged to think that may happen by the next debate, and in between. I just wish I could be there when Biden practices for the next one, I would suggest he never respond to Trump. Listen attentively, then ignore, and answer the next question asked by the mediators. Maybe he could spike it occasionally with “I didn’t really understand your answer, but … ” before giving that good answer to highlight what he’s already accomplished and how he’ll move on.
But then, why would they listen to me?
A few days ago I promised to talk about handling my morning depression. I thought then that I was finally going to write every day in my blog. Obviously I didn’t succeed. (Remember, there’s a rule against saying “I failed.”) I’m not sure why I didn’t manage to get that done, but I have a few suggestions. Maybe I’m getting involved in too many things; maybe it’s because I’ve reached the “I need a nap NOW” age; maybe I’m engaging in that form of putting-things-off-until-tomorrow called “productive procrastination;” maybe I’m too involved in trying to write a good query letter to find an agent/publisher who’ll be interested in my manuscript On My Way Out: A Psychologist’s Personal Tale; maybe it’s because I do stupid things like watch the presidential debates.
But enough about me. Oh yeah, that’s supposed to be my theme for this blog. What do I do about the morning depression? Well, first off, two years of excellent therapy several decades ago gave me the awareness that the morning depression I experience is best called “situational depression.” And I’ve learned that there isn’t much I can control about the situation in this crazy world, so it helps to point my neurosis toward things I can do something about. That certainly shrinks the area of concern. Then I focus my attention and emotions on the tasks ahead. Obviously that gets me to focus on the present and the nice awareness that I am, indeed, on my way out. Also, the recognition that, as my daughter puts it, “My personal problems are first-world problems” and therefore, by definition, really blessings. How’s that for thought manipulation? By that time I’m ready for the biggy – opening up the well of gratitude, joy, humor, and love that flows because of all that other stuff I’ve mentioned. How could I feel anything else? So I open my door to join the interesting, often delightful people I’ll be connecting with. Okay, is it icky to say I focus on spreading joy and love? Well, so be it. That really is my goal. You’ll have to question the people around me to evaluate my success.
I had planned to write about how I handle the morning depression I mentioned a couple of days ago, but something else is demanding my attention. Something that makes no sense to me. How is it that people believe Jesus, an olive-skinned, semitic, Palestinian Jew who preached love and equality decided that white-skinned American men with roots in Northern Europe were superior to everyone else? And to die a terrible death to guide those very same men to Heaven if they would be violent enough to impose their rule over women, non-whites and Jews.
Just wonderin’
Actually it more often hits at night, but it does indeed drag down the morning. It’s the same old thing, really. I just can’t get over the cruelty of forcing children to be born into a world that, by definition, doesn’t want them. Which means, of course, that they spend their first nine months housed in a uterus washed in stress hormones or other toxic pressures. Their lives from then on are not, by definition, predictably healthy. What can be predicted is that society will be paying the price in eighteen years or so for the damage done by the circumstances of their lives – very likely poverty. And the sad thing is, folks will blame it on the individuals instead of the system that created the problem in the first place.
And yes, my heart aches for the agony of women forced to suffer any number of possible agonies at the behest of politicians who have little or no understanding of the complexity and potential complications of pregnancy and birth. And for their families suffering the consequences. Beyond that, it horrifies me to see the movement toward branding women as criminals should circumstances lead them to avoid inappropriate pregnancies.
Is all this a variant on animal husbandry?
For several weeks I’ve been reading sources on “How to write effective query letters,” preparing to search for an agent for my Mandala: A Jigsaw Puzzle of a Psychologist’s Life.(My original title was On My Way Out but too many people found that a downer though I haven’t reached for the door knob yet.) All agree the first sentence must grab the potential agent’s attention or it will go into the slush pile, so it’s important that I come up with a template to which others respond favorably. But the same opener is seen as a grabber by some and a turnoff by others. I’ve made many changes along the way, but I realized yesterday that I have to be careful to preserve my own voice. It kind of smacked me up the side of the head when a kind reviewer suggested I should fact check the dates. Since it’s my own life I’m talking about I realized I’d better be clear that I am correct about those dates.
Yes, having been born on the day the stock market crashed in 1929 I am indeed approaching the middle of my ninetieth decade. Yes, psychology has been in my life for pretty much seventy-seven years if we include the early years in college when I got hooked. Yes, I began my college teaching career when I was twenty-two and never really faded completely from my identity as a professor. Yes, during those years I did serve as department chair. It’s also true that my career in private practice overlapped the last of my academic years and culminated at the end of May, 2024, when I voluntarily gave up my license. It’s also true that I have published books on psychological stuff, sort of biblical stuff, and personal family memoir stuff. And I have two really neat adult children, one of each, and two adult grandchildren, also one of each. Now I’m pushing my down-to-earth story of life and times over the past seventy plus decades. Lots has happened, most of it evoking shared history with the [potential] reader.
For further validation you can check out my website at www.forgivenessoptions.com.
Thanks
monagustafsonaffinito 