New title for any ramblings. From here on out, any ramblings will be titled Pardon our ramblings: and then the topic of the ramblings.Rants just might be retitled to Pardon our rants:, too.
Feel free to avoid them. It's your dime.
I've been thinking a lot about consequences lately.
Every decision that we make...every decision that we don't make...they all have consequences, both positive and negative. There is simply no way around it.
Last Friday, two of our students -
I say our students because they're Princeton students and because they're honors students. I had one of the two in class a couple of years ago, the third of three sibling, both of the older that I knew far better. He wasn't the best student I've ever had or the one to whom I was the closest. The other wasn't a student I had, but he was a student who had helped out with Pasta for Pennies last year and seemed like a nice guy. He probably is.Two of our students showed up at a road football game drunk - or high - or drunk and high.
I wasn't there. I can't say for certain. My knowledge pretty much all comes third hand - from a person who was there and saw them get caught, from a teacher who heard from a teacher, from somebody else.
Either way, they were certainly caught and might've admitted to being drunk - or high - or drunk and high. At this point, they're both suspended for ten days pending expulsion. It's pretty likely that they'll serve their full ten days and then come back to school. If other similar situations are any indication, they'll have to do some diversionary training - out-patient, class kind of stuff.
This week I heard some students talking about the fact that it wasn't fair because other students had been at the same game in the same condition but hadn't gotten caught, that the now-suspended students told the truth when asked about their condition and got in more trouble because they admitted their transgressions.
It's a tough time of life, the teenage years. It's a time when you look to the world to be just, to be fair, to be right, and when it doesn't live up, you curse the world, you look for answers, you search. And it's the time to do that. I have no problems with that.
Most of the teenagers that I work with have - generally - their crap together and are really in training to be adults. They've passed the simple tests of getting to high school, navigating youthful rituals, and they're ready to see how the world starts treating them as young adults. They're ready to see if the world will act the way that they want it to, they way they think it should when they start making their decisions.
And sometimes it doesn't.
Which sucks.
But I feel like there's a bigger lesson here, something about consequences.
Every time you do something, we can reasonably judge what the consequences will be. And every time we do something, we need to look at how likely those consequences are.
And every time we do something, we need to accept the consequences if and when they come.
Yes, those students likely looked at their actions and saw a possible outcome in which they broke the rules - the laws - and then went to the game, enjoyed themselves, were hidden by their friends, and headed home without any significant negative consequences.
They also likely - whether consciously or not - saw a different outcome in which they broke the same rules, went to the same game, enjoyed themselves equally, weren't hidden quite as well by their friends, and found themselves facing expulsion and an extra year at PHS. Added to that consequence, they could have seen themselves suspended from all sports for the year. They could have seen themselves disappointing their friends and teammates, their parents, their teachers. They could have seen themselves doing damage to their reputations - something that will likely stay with them far longer than any sports or academic suspension ever could.
They should even have seen a far worse consequence in which their choices lead to deaths on the road to or from the football game - held half a hour or more from the school.
Yes, those last two sets of consequences were less likely than the first. They were far more likely to get away with their decisions than they were to get caught. But the cost of the consequences
If they're lucky, the long-term consequences with which they'll come away is a lesson learned about bad decisions and their consequences.
Every time I choose to write for you instead of cutting my grass, instead of grading my papers, instead of setting up for a lab, instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour, I accept consequences.
And I would like to think that I'm far enough along in my understanding of that fact to not place blame for those consequences on anyone's shoulders but my own.
Every time I stop by The Cone on the way home for a pumpkin milkshake (which is, admittedly, far too often), I recognize that my consequences will come in the form of breathing more heavily than I should when cutting the grass, a bellyache when I don't tell The Girl about the milkshake and proceed to eat a normal full dinner like I hadn't eaten since my 9:30am lunch, likely a shortened lifespan, heartburn, clogged arteries.
And yet I keep stopping.
Just because I know the consequences - sometimes when I know that those consequences are ridiculously horrific and horribly likely to happen - doesn't mean I always make the right choice.
It just means that I don't get to pass the buck when and if those consequences come to pass.
I made decisions all the time knowing full well that the consequences are too high, that the consequences are too likely, and I in some cases I keep making the same decisions.
Everyone - big, small, rich, poor - has consequences.
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.Sometimes that weighing of the consequences are really well worded.
A world without consequences isn't a world in which I would want to live...
We ignore negative consequences
- because the consequences are too far in the future to seem real
- because the consequences are too unlikely
- because the consequences are too small to worry about
- because we're stupid and think that just because somebody else got away with it, we'll get away with it, too
- because the positive consequences (often guaranteed) outweigh the negative consequences (often hoped to not be guaranteed)
It's amazing how often we don't realize just what the consequences of our actions are likely to be.
Every time Calen and I work with students at a Pasta for Pennies event, we try to impress upon them the consequences of their actions. Every time we do anything, we have to recognize that anything with a possible consequence of us losing our campaign - every time a student says "oh, send the black kid to the cops with a gun" (it was a starter's pistol for the race, I swear)...every time a band behaves badly in rehearsals...every time one of our students is anything but over polite to a possible donor...every time we push a little too hard on a teacher to get his or her class involved - we risk losing the entire campaign, having to scale it back, not being able to help the LLS as much as we always have been able to.
And those consequences simply are too high to ever risk, no matter how unlikely they are.
I know a teacher who admitted to me once that she missed doing some of the illegal things that she did when she was in college. She specifically mentioned partaking of a particular illegal substance.
She doesn't miss it often, but she admitted that if there wasn't the possible consequence of losing her livelihood - her teaching license, her job, her profession - she probably would continue to partake.
But she knows that the consequences are far too high, no matter how unlikely those consequences may be.
A times B times C is way higher than X for her.
She knows that.
She doesn't regret her decision.
She doesn't lament her decision.
She doesn't blame someone else.
She accepts her decision and knows the consequences of that, too.
To quote Steve Martin, [f]inally, I can't overstress the importance of having a powerful closing sentence.
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