Rileys vs. Jakes

Author's Note: So, I wrote this back in November and just left it in my draft folder because a) it was just the ranting of a crazy person, b) I compared myself to a football player I could, in theory, run into on campus (I never have, though I did see Jimmer at Chik-fil-A in the mall one time) which also seemed weird, and c) I didn't want people I worked with to read this. But since then, a couple of things have happened:

• I did not get hired by BYU for a job for which I've been groomed for the last two years. The day after I was told, I had to attend our student interviews, which was slightly gruesome. To introduce ourselves, we were asked to say what kind of collegiate athlete we would be (what was particularly weird about that was that we had an actual collegiate athlete as an interviewee, but that's another story). And this post came back to me.
• Jake Heaps left BYU after being groomed for two years to be the next big BYU quarterback. So now the metaphor just has me all confused. Am I Jake now?
• I realized that no one is reading this blog.  

In a second perfect storm of college football and my regular life, I find myself overidentifying with the BYU quarterback controversy, which, oddly, has now been going on for two years--coinciding perfectly with my time here at BYU. Time that, in the next couple of months, will either be extended indefinitely, or ended shortly. I could go on to have a great career at BYU, or be a placeholder while the person they really want is getting ready to take over the job. In short, these days, I feel like Riley Nelson, which is odd, since I have no idea how Riley Nelson feels.

It is a strange battle between a transfer student from Utah State and a high school phenom. One will most likely end his football playing career at BYU, while the other will probably be like a top-level BYU quarterback and go on to play a few forgettable seasons in the NFL before returning to a job on the BYU coaching staff. One has the arm. The other has the heart, and the respect and admiration of his coaches and teammates. One looks like what we expect from a BYU quarterback-if erratic at times, while the other runs, takes hits, and makes plays, and struggles with the long-bomb passes downfield that BYU is known for. And don't get me started on the fluffy blond hair or the abs with their own Twitter account. Neither of those things fit in this labored metaphor.

So why do I identify with Riley Nelson? It has to do with my precarious position as a second-year visiting professor in BYU's School of Family Life. I graduated with my master's degree at 26, after completing a mission, which has had an important impact on my life. I finished my Ph.D. in a timely fashion-not something everyone does, but nothing out of the ordinary. I understand most of the stats I learned in grad school, but no one thinks I am a whiz. I got a job at BYU partly because I am good, and partly because I am better than the other people who are available. And yet, I can't shake the feeling that, if I don't look out; if I'm not playing my heart out; if I get injured and don't show up to practice with broken ribs; that there is a phenom, four years younger than me, looking to take my place.

It feels, sometimes, like I can be doing everything right and still lose out to someone else's potential.

Here's the thing about Riley Nelson: while he works hard at football, he knows it is not his final destination. Should he find himself not starting his senior year, it will not impact his career plans in any major way. He will land on his feet. And the truth is, if I am, indeed, a Riley Nelson, so will I, no matter what happens to my present job.

Breathe. Get back to work.

Stuck in Texas...Again

So, a few weeks ago, I flew out to Texas for Kim's wedding. It was a beautiful, event-filled wedding. You'd think I would have some pictures of it. I do not. Bad blogger. Here is a link to her blog, though, where the day is documented with beautiful pictures.

It was the first time I had been back to Lubbock since leaving the day after I graduated. Martha and I stayed together at the Hampton Inn less than a mile from my apartment. Martha is one of my favorite people in the world, no less because she is a complete and total germaphobe. She slept in a sacklike sheet that kept her from having to touch the hotel linens, wore shoes anytime her feet touched the floor, and brought her own towels. She says she has learned things about how hotels are cleaned, which I begged her NOT to share with me. I have no pictures of Martha.

I got food at Fuzzy's, Spanky's, Rudy's, Sheridan's, and Cake. I have no pictures of the food, mostly because I am bad at food blogging.

I stopped at the Pancake House the day after the wedding, where Kim and Landon's families were enjoying a wedding breakfast. I immediately decided I liked Landon because he playfully convinced Kim not to wear a giant chunky watch with her gorgeous wedding dress. I did not get to enjoy the food because I was running late for my flight as it was.

Or so I thought.

Because I haven't lived in Lubbock for 18 months, I forgot one of the lessons I learned the first time I visited Lubbock: nothing flies out in a dust storm. I got stuck there. And I was reminded that there are worse places to be stuck in than Lubbock, Texas, particularly at this stage in my life.

In the short span of two-and-a-half days, I saw (without much effort) almost every single person I know who still lives in Lubbock, including my former boss Jason, my former branch president, Chief and his wife, several people I knew from church, the Merrills, most of the people I worked with in the temple, and several people I knew from school.

Admittedly, many of the people who were dear to me when I lived in Texas no longer live there, but I found ways to remedy that.

I ended Sunday night the way I often did when I lived there--with a long conversation with Stephanie.

I spent a good portion of that Monday in various airports hanging out with Maddie Kimball, who I didn't know before, but instantly felt the bond of Lubbock and Kim and Texas Tech.

It reminded me of everything I miss about Lubbock, and why I love Friday Night Lights, and why I get nostalgic for Texas. After the craziness of my life the last few weeks, those days in Lubbock mean even more. Being there with those people was like coming home.

And home isn't a place where you think to take pictures.

A New Year

I realize that, in a couple of days, it will be February, and the New Year thing will be remarkably late, but I feel justified in whining that this month has been crazy, and I do not feel guilty for not blogging during January. I do not have the same excuse for the other months in which I have not blogged.

Some day I will add posts for some of the recent happenings in my life: a trip to Lubbock, a concert, a trip to Park City during the Sundance Film Festival. However, all of these things occurred the short span of a week, along with a pretty important job interview. So those will have to wait.

For now, I want to talk about my New Year's resolutions because I feel like it is a good way to hold myself accountable to accomplish them. I only had one resolution for myself for 2012, which goes something like this:

Quit messing around. (I know, it sounds like something my dad used to say to my brother Shane when he was a kid, accompanied by a good-natured shove to the back of Shane's head).

It seems like, since my mission, I have been looking forward to accomplishing some big goal in my life: graduating, getting into a masters' program, finishing classes, getting hours, taking the licensure exam, defending theses/dissertations, getting a job, keeping a job. You get the idea. Sometimes, I use these things as an excuse not to do other things in my life--the little things.

Consequently, I do not exercise regularly, my temple attendance has gotten spotty, and there are perpetually dishes in my sink. And I let these things slide because of the bigger goals, and think, "I'll have plenty of time for that stuff after (fill in the blank)."

Well, I am running out of these big goals/excuses, and it's time to fix some of these little things in my life.

Happy 2012!

A quote, revisited

Casey: Hey, you want to get involved with this?
Dan: I so don’t.
Casey: Didn’t you used to care about these things? And it wasn’t that long ago that you did.
Dan: No.
Casey: I mean, it was like yesterday.
Dan: Right.
Casey: Now, when I say yesterday, I’m not speaking metaphorically. It was yesterday! What happened to your values?
Dan: I find that maintaining them is a lot of work. I take a day off now and then.
Casey: You take a vacation from doing the right thing?
Dan: Yeah. I don’t loot store fronts or anything, but once in a while, when I consider the effort it takes to diligently adhere to a moral compass I take myself out of the line up and I rest for the next game.

I don't write much on this blog anymore. And even when I wrote pretty consistently, I never said much about politics, religion, or, to be truly honest, anything that is really important to me, except for my family and friends. But this week, the intersectionality (a nonexistent word that comes up in my profession) of my undergraduate family violence class, my employment at a university, my position as a mandated reporter, and my love of college football have caused me some unrest.

I have linked this timeline of events to my blog because, for those three people who read this who may or may not be college football fans, I don't have the energy to relay all of the events that have gone down at Penn State this week. Suffice it to say, a football coach (defensive coordinator) for the program was arrested on Saturday with 40 counts of sexual abuse of eight boys he had access to through a charity dedicated to helping "troubled" boys from "dysfunctional families." Forty counts. The man has been retired since 1999, but has continued to enjoy the perks of Penn State football, a storied program with a head coach who, until yesterday, had been there for 46 seasons and brought the school much glory and honor.

Then, yesterday, the head coach got fired. This has brought many mixed reactions from fans, sportswriters, NCAA officials, and those people who comment on internet stories. The reactions do not have to do with whether or not it is wrong to sexually abuse a child: people are pretty unanimous that child sexual abuse is okay. Score one. The unrest has to do with what a head football coach-a person in a position of leadership, and, if I'm not mistaken, a mandatory reporter under the Clery Act-should or should not do if it is reported to him that one of his colleagues has been seen on molesting a child on school property. There is also unrest about the person who witnessed the child being molested-a man who, at the time, was a student assistant, but is now also a coach at Penn State. In the case of the student, he reported the incident to the head coach, who, in turn, reported some version of the incident to the university's athletic director, who elected to handle it internally.

This happened years ago, and the details are just coming out as a result of one of the victims going to the authorities. Like I said, the head coach was fired yesterday, and many people in the town of State College protested this decision. Others, while supporting the decision to fire the head coach, are wondering about the former student assistant, still employed by the Penn State football team, and calling for his termination, as well. Again, the unrest seems to stem from whose responsibility people view it is to handle these things, and whether or not they are handled in the proper way.

The bottom line is this: the man who abused these children-children who were already vulnerable coming from poverty and absent homes-needs to be punished for his crimes with the stiffest penalties the law allows. But, as for those who knew and didn't say anything, or tried to cover up what had happened, it gets a little fuzzier. There's the university piece: what is the university protocol? There's the mandated reporter piece: do I have a responsibility to report something to an official?

Having worked in a university, I understand that there is a chain of command that must be followed. Universities have reputations to protect, and they like to have control over how things are handled. When I see something happen with my colleagues, or my students, I tend to have this thought process: is this something I can talk to the person directly about and leave it at that? If so, I usually do, and it dies there. If not, I ask myself, who is the person I need to inform next? If it is a student, the answer is typically either that person's clinical supervisor or their thesis/dissertation chair. However, if the matter is serious enough, I typically talk to my immediate boss-the program chair. I have a lot of faith in my boss, and expect her to do the right thing. I find that she does. As a student, I depended on the faculty around me to do their jobs, and if I had a concern, I would leave it with them. But I recognize that, as I type this, I have never had a situation come up that involved any of my colleagues or students abusing a child.

However, I am a mandated reporter, which means that, if I see or hear of anyone abusing a child, I HAVE to report that. I could lose my license and my job. I take that pretty seriously. I met with a student for supervision today, and told her twice that she needed to report an instance of child abuse, for the safety of the kids, for her, and for me. As a therapist, it is something I struggle with. After meeting with clients for a few sessions, I begin to have a relationship with them. If I find out in the course of therapy that they have been abusing their children, reporting them becomes tough, even though I know it is the right thing to do, and even though I always tell them at the beginning of therapy that I have to do it.

Then, there's this piece I don't want to talk about that is sort of nagging at me: I love college football. I originally heard this story on a sports talk radio show that I listen to every morning as I drive into work. I have season tickets to BYU football, and I have cable TV expressly so that I can watch college football games on Saturday. College football scandals drive me crazy, particularly when they are related to recruitment, and the teams involved get to go to BCS Bowls. And while I truly believe that, when a scandal goes down in a college sports program, there should be ramifications, I know that it is a little bit harder to swallow when they happen to my team, and my team is poised to compete for a national championship. And, for the record, I do not think that violating university or NCAA policies are in the same universe as pedophilia, but I do think that when we break rules, we need to expect consequences, even if they interfere with our sports teams.

That said, the bottom line for me is that child abuse is wrong. It is wrong when it happens in families; it is wrong when it happens in institutions. There are times, as a therapist, a professor, and a human being, when I weigh the costs of a battle and decide it isn't worth it. However, reporting child abuse should never be thought of as "not worth it" for any reason, be it institutional ramifications, because it should be someone else's responsibility, or merely because I don't want to get involved. If I as a bystander take the position that it is not my responsibility to make sure that something is done, than whose responsibility is it? At some point, that only leaves two people: the victim, or the perpetrator. Obviously, perpetrators are unlikely to report themselves. Putting the responsibility on a child victim to report abuse sends a message that, once again, society has failed to protect him-a lesson he already knows too well.     

Summer Wrap Up

In the course of the summer, there were a few highlights that probably should have merited an entire blog post, but didn't because I never sat down and turned them into one. But here were some of the ways in which I spent my summer vacation:

...my first-ever trip to the Stadium of Fire to see, among other things, Brad Paisley, David Archuleta, and the guy from the BYU Library/Old Spice Commercial...

...visiting the Salt Lake Japanese American Citizens' League's obon festival...

 ...eating sushi and gyoza unlike anything we get in a restaurant...

 ...going back to watch the taiko drummers...

.

...and the dancers...

...visiting Shane's family in California and watching Lisee eat rice and noodles in Little Tokyo...

 ...taking Kevin and Sammie shopping in Park City...

...and watching them ride the merry-go-round...

 ...seeing outdoor movies and plays with the girls...



...growing a garden...

 ....periodically forgetting to pick the vegetables for long periods of time...

...and basking in the beauty of one lone sunflower.

All in all, not a bad summer.

And now for something completely different...

Three days after the Lea Salonga concert, I found myself in the BYU Broadcasting building watching the BYU/Texas football game with Melanee and George.

BYU, as some of you may know, declared their independence last year. However, this season marks the first season that will be affected by that change. Much like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy, just saying it is not enough. It meant that, while BYU's football team would no longer be bound by the constraints of a conference (specifically the Mountain West Conference) the rest of the sports had to be housed somewhere (specifically the West Coast Conference). It means that BYU is now responsible for scheduling its own season and finding teams willing to play during weeks of the year typically devoted to conference play, as well as some .

What does this have to do with my Saturday night? One of the major factors in BYU's decision to go independent has to do with their TV station. In their deal with the Mountain West Conference, the conference controlled BYU's football TV exposure, despite the fact that BYU has some incredible TV facilities. Now that they are independent, they have more freedom to show football on their own station. That said, the game was broadcast on ESPN. But we got there early to watch the pregame show live in the studio.

After the pregame show, we stayed to watch the game on a giant screen.

Here are some things that I observed about the game with a large group of fans in a small space:

• In the space of a stadium, you can't hear all of the things fans are shouting, like, "He's got all day to throw!" or, "Who were you passing to?" In a small theater, you can hear all of it.
• Regardless of what the small squad of cheerleaders who do not go on the road with the team and instead have to cheer at the pregame show say, I did not feel motivated to join in cheers, do the wave, or any of the other things that I would have done if I had actually been in the stadium.
• The vending machines in the broadcast building, while more moderately priced, had nothing on stadium food.

Also, the Cougars suffered a heartbreaking loss to a still-rebuilding Texas team, which would have been worse if I'd gone to Austin to see it.  Of course, I would have been in Austin, which is always a plus.

On My Own

Have I mentioned how much I love Broadway musicals? Yes, yes I have. Also Here, here, and here. Whew, that's a relief.

I have neglected to mention that this summer, I saw the same production of Aida three times in the same week, as well as a production of Singing in the Rain that was only worth seeing once. And, as much as I enjoy the local theatre, I wish I could take more trips to big cities to see more Broadway-quality productions.

So, I was very excited to hear that Lea Salonga was performing at BYU.

Who is that? you may be asking yourself. She is probably more familiar to you than you might think. She is the singing voice of Princess Jasmine in Aladdin, as well as Mulan. Additionally, she was the original Kim in Miss Saigon, and the first Asian Fantine and Eponine in Les Miserables. In fact, she has appeared on both of the Les Miz specials that have aired on PBS. You could think of her as the Filipina Kristin Chenoweth, if that helps you. She ranks up there with Ming Na and Keiko Agena in terms of Asian/Asian American entertainer heroines of mine.

But I didn't decide until the last minute that I wanted to go, so I went alone. I bought my ticket online 2 hours before the show started and just stayed at work until it was time to go over to the HFAC where the show was.

The show was AWESOME! She sang some of my favorite Broadway songs, from "On the Street Where You Live," from My Fair Lady, to "I Dreamed a Dream," from Les Miz, to "For Good," from Wicked, and even a little Sondheim.

But she didn't stop there. She sang the songs she sang in Disney movies and invited an audience member to sing the part of Aladdin in "A Whole New World." She sang a song in Tagalog, and covered the Beatles and Lady Gaga (in English).

At that performance, BYUtv was filming a segment for a show called "The Song That Changed My Life." For that segment, she sang "On My Own," also from Les Miserables. In high school, this was probably my favorite Broadway song, and her performance was so incredible. Neither of these is the reason I had tears in my eyes. I became very conscious of the fact that they were filming, and my throat got dry, like I needed to cough. While I held it in for the entire song, my eyes started to water.

Some other thoughts I had about the performance:

• I had awesome seats. I think I was 10th row, dead center. The problem (that I often forget) with me being in the center of an audience is that I am shorter than just about everybody, and, invariably, someone really tall will come sit down in front of me just before the performance starts, blocking my view. That was exactly what happened. The seating was tiered, but this guy had to be 6'3" or something, with a head the size of my brother Danny's.

        I have added this picture of a doll to give some perspective. Imagine the cake part is actually               someone's head, and that the doll is the part of Lea that was not blocked by the aforementioned head when I was sitting tall in my seat. There has got to be a better way to arrange seating. If they had a box to check that asked if you were under 5' and would have trouble seeing, I would happily check that box and be moved further away in order to be able to see.

• I have never seen so many Asians in together in Provo before. Where do they go the rest of the time?
• While I think, in this case, she definitely deserved it, people at BYU are not very discriminating in who or what they will give a standing ovation.
• There were a lot of older people in the audience who seemed really confused by "Poker Face." As I was trying to leave for home, I waited while a car full of these same people backed out of their space an inch at a time, and then made a 50-point turn.