I know what you’re thinking. Scientists like me probably aren’t always easy to live with.
Jai handles me by being frank. When I’ve gone off course, she lets me know. Or she gives me a warning: “Something is bugging me. I don’t know what it is. When I figure it out, I’ll tell you.”
At the same time, given my prognosis, Jai says she’s learning to let some of the little stuff slide. That’s a suggestion from our counselor. Dr. Reiss has a gift for helping people recalibrate their home lives when one spouse has a terminal illness. Marriages like ours have to find their way to “a new normal.”
I’m a spreader. My clothes, clean and dirty, are spread around the bedroom, and my bathroom sink is cluttered. It drives Jai crazy. Before I got sick, she’d say something. But Dr. Reiss has advised her not to let small things trip us up.
Obviously, I ought to be neater. I owe Jai many apologies. But she has stopped telling me about the minor stuff that bugs her. Do we really want to spend our last months together arguing that I haven’t hung up my khakis? We do not. So now Jai kicks my clothes into a corner and moves on.
A friend of ours suggested that Jai keep a daily journal, and Jai says it helps. She writes in there the things that get on her nerves about me. “Randy didn’t put his plate in the dishwasher tonight,” she wrote one night. “He just left it there on the table, and went to his computer.” She knew I was preoccupied, heading to the Internet to research possible medical treatments. Still, the dish on the table bothered her. I can’t blame her. So she wrote about it, felt better, and again we didn’t have to get into an argument.
Jai tries to focus on each day, rather than the negative things down the road. “It’s not helpful if we spend every day dreading tomorrow,” she says.
This last New Year’s Eve, though, was very emotional and bittersweet in our house. It was Dylan’s sixth birthday, so there was a celebration. We also were grateful that I had made it to the new year. But we couldn’t bring ourselves to discuss the elephant in the room: the future New Year’s Eves without me.
I took Dylan to see a movie that day, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, about a toymaker. I had read an online description of the film, but it didn’t mention that Mr. Magorium had decided it was time to die and hand over the shop to an apprentice. So there I was in the theater, with Dylan on my lap, and he was crying about how Mr. Magorium was dying. (Dylan doesn’t yet know my prognosis.) If my life were a movie, this scene of me and Dylan would get slammed by critics for over-the-top foreshadowing. There was one line in the film, however, that remains with me. The apprentice (Natalie Portman) tells the toymaker (Dustin Hoffman) that he can’t die; he has to live. And he responds: “I already did that.”
Later that night, as the new year approached, Jai could tell I was depressed. To cheer me up, she reviewed the past year and pointed out some of the wonderful things that had happened. We had gone on romantic vacations, just the two of us, that we wouldn’t have taken if cancer hadn’t offered a reminder about the preciousness of time. We had watched the kids grow into their own; our house was really filled with a beautiful energy and a great deal of love.
Jai vowed she’d continue to be there for me and the kids. “I have four very good reasons to suck it up and keep going. And I will,” she promised.
Jai also told me that one of the best parts of her day is watching me interact with the kids. She says my face lights up when Chloe talks to me. (Chloe is eighteen months old and is already talking in four-word sentences.)
At Christmas, I had made an adventure out of putting the lights on the tree. Rather than showing Dylan and Logan the proper way to do it—carefully and meticulously—I just let them have at it haphazardly. However they wanted to throw those lights on the tree was fine by me. We got video of the whole chaotic scene, and Jai says it was a “magical moment” that will be one of her favorite memories of our family together.
Jai has gone on Web sites for cancer patients and their families. She finds useful information there, but she can’t stay on too long. “So many of the entries begin: ‘Bob’s fight is over.’ ‘Jim’s fight is over.’ I don’t think it’s helpful to keep reading all of that,” she says.
However, one entry she came upon moved her into action. It was written by a woman whose husband had pancreatic cancer. They planned to take a family vacation but postponed it. He died before they could reschedule. “Go on those trips you’ve always wanted to take,” the woman advised other caregivers. “Live in the moment.” Jai vows to keep doing just that.
Jai has gotten to know people locally who are also caregivers of spouses with terminal illnesses, and she finds it helpful to talk to them. If she needs to complain about me, or to vent about the pressure she’s under, these conversations have been a good outlet for her.
At the same time, she tries to focus on our happiest times. When I was courting her, I sent her flowers once a week. I hung stuffed animals in her office. I went overboard, and—when I wasn’t scaring her off—she enjoyed it! Lately, she says, she’d been pulling up her memories of Randy the Romantic, and that makes her smile and helps her get through her down moments.
Jai, by the way, has lived out a good number of her childhood dreams. She wanted to own a horse. (That never happened, but she has done a lot of riding.) She wanted to go to France. (That happened; she lived in France one summer in college.) And most of all, she dreamed as a girl of having children of her own someday.
I wish I had more time to help her realize other dreams. But the kids are a spectacular dream fulfilled, and there’s great solace in that for both of us.
When Jai and I talk about the lessons she has learned from our journey, she talks about how we’ve found strength in standing together, shoulder to shoulder. She says she’s grateful that we can talk, heart to heart. And then she tells me about how my clothes are all over the room and it’s very annoying, but she’s giving me a pass, all things considered. I know: Before she starts scribbling in her journal, I owe it to her to straighten up my mess. I’ll try harder. It’s one of my New Year’s resolutions.
22
The Truth Can Set You Free
I RECENTLY GOT pulled over for speeding not far from my new home in Virginia. I hadn’t been paying attention, and I had drifted a few miles an hour over the speed limit.
“Can I see your license and registration?” the police officer asked me. I pulled both out for him, and he saw my Pittsburgh address on my Pennsylvania driver’s license.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You with the military?”
“No, I’m not,” I said. I explained that I had just moved to Virginia, and I hadn’t had time to re-register yet.
“So what brings you here?”
He had asked a direct question. Without thinking very hard, I gave him a direct answer. “Well, officer,” I said, “since you’ve asked, I have terminal cancer. I have just months to live. We’ve moved down here to be close to my wife’s family.”
The officer cocked his head and squinted at me. “So you’ve got cancer,” he said flatly. He was trying to figure me out. Was I really dying? Was I lying? He took a long look at me. “You know, for a guy who has only a few months to live, you sure look good.”
He was obviously thinking: “Either this guy is pulling one big fat line on me, or he’s telling the truth. And I have no way of knowing.” This wasn’t an easy encounter for him because he was trying to do the near-impossible. He was trying to question my integrity without directly calling me a liar. And so he had forced me to prove that I was being honest. How would I do that?
“Well, officer, I know that I look pretty healthy. It’s really ironic. I look great on the outside, but the tumors are on the inside.” And then, I don’t know what possessed me, but I just did it. I pulled up my shirt, revealing the surgical scars.
The cop looked at my scars. He looked in my eyes. I could see on his face: He now knew he was talking to a dying man. And if by some chance I was the most brazen con man
he’d ever stopped, well, he wasn’t taking this any further. He handed me back my license. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Slow down from now on.”
The awful truth had set me free. As he trotted back to his police car, I had a realization. I have never been one of those gorgeous blondes who could bat her eyelashes and get out of tickets. I drove home under the speed limit, and I was smiling like a beauty queen.
IV
ENABLING THE DREAMS OF OTHERS
23
I’m on My Honeymoon, But If You Need Me…
J AI SENT me out to buy a few groceries the other day. After I found everything on the list, I figured I’d get out of the store faster if I used the self-scan aisle. I slid my credit card into the machine, followed the directions, and scanned my groceries myself. The machine chirped, beeped and said I owed $16.55, but issued no receipt. So I swiped my credit card again and started over.
Soon, two receipts popped out. The machine had charged me twice.
At that point, I had a decision to make. I could have tracked down the manager, who would have listened to my story, filled out some form, and taken my credit card to his register to remove one of the $16.55 charges. The whole tedious ordeal could have stretched to ten or even fifteen minutes. It would have been zero fun for me.
Given my short road ahead, did I want to spend those precious minutes getting that refund? I did not. Could I afford to pay the extra $16.55? I could. So I left the store, happier to have fifteen minutes than sixteen dollars.
All my life, I’ve been very aware that time is finite. I admit I’m overly logical about a lot of things, but I firmly believe that one of my most appropriate fixations has been to manage time well. I’ve railed about time management to my students. I’ve given lectures on it. And because I’ve gotten so good at it, I really do feel I was able to pack a whole lot of life into the shortened lifespan I’ve been handed.
Here’s what I know:
Time must be explicitly managed, like money. My students would sometimes roll their eyes at what they called “Pauschisms,” but I stand by them. Urging students not to invest time on irrelevant details, I’d tell them: “It doesn’t matter how well you polish the underside of the banister.”
You can always change your plan, but only if you have one. I’m a big believer in to-do lists. It helps us break life into small steps. I once put “get tenure” on my to-do list. That was naïve. The most useful to-do list breaks tasks into small steps. It’s like when I encourage Logan to clean his room by picking up one thing at a time.
Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things? You may have causes, goals, interests. Are they even worth pursuing? I’ve long held on to a clipping from a newspaper in Roanoke, Virginia. It featured a photo of a pregnant woman who had lodged a protest against a local construction site. She worried that the sound of jackhammers was injuring her unborn child. But get this: In the photo, the woman is holding a cigarette. If she cared about her unborn child, the time she spent railing against jackhammers would have been better spent putting out that cigarette.
Develop a good filing system. When I told Jai I wanted to have a place in the house where we could file everything in alphabetical order, she said I sounded way too compulsive for her tastes. I told her: “Filing in alphabetical order is better than running around and saying, ‘I know it was blue and I know I was eating something when I had it.’”
Rethink the telephone. I live in a culture where I spend a lot of time on hold, listening to “Your call is very important to us.” Yeah, right. That’s like a guy slapping a girl in the face on a first date and saying, “I actually do love you.” Yet that’s how modern customer service works. And I reject that. I make sure I am never on hold with a phone against my ear. I always use a speaker phone, so my hands are free to do something else.
I’ve also collected techniques for keeping unnecessary calls shorter. If I’m sitting while on the phone, I never put my feet up. In fact, it’s better to stand when you’re on the phone. You’re more apt to speed things along. I also like to have something in view on my desk that I want to do, so I have the urge to wrap things up with the caller.
Over the years, I’ve picked up other phone tips. Want to quickly dispatch telemarketers? Hang up while you’re doing the talking and they’re listening. They’ll assume your connection went bad and they’ll move on to their next call. Want to have a short phone call with someone? Call them at 11:55 a.m., right before lunch. They’ll talk fast. You may think you are interesting, but you are not more interesting than lunch.
Delegate. As a professor, I learned early on that I could trust bright, nineteen-year-old students with the keys to my kingdom, and most of the time, they were responsible and impressive. It’s never too early to delegate. My daughter, Chloe, is just eighteen months old, but two of my favorite photos are of her in my arms. In the first, I’m giving her a bottle. In the second, I’ve delegated the task to her. She looks satisfied. Me, too.
Take a time out. It’s not a real vacation if you’re reading email or calling in for messages. When Jai and I went on our honeymoon, we wanted to be left alone. My boss, however, felt I needed to provide a way for people to contact me. So I came up with the perfect phone message:
“Hi, this is Randy. I waited until I was thirty-nine to get married, so my wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don’t have a problem with that, but my boss does. Apparently, I have to be reachable.” I then gave the names of Jai’s parents and the city where they live. “If you call directory assistance, you can get their number. And then, if you can convince my new in-laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter’s honeymoon, they have our number.”
We didn’t get any calls.
Some of my time management tips are dead-on serious and some are a bit tongue-in-cheek. But I believe all of them are worth considering.
Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.
24
A Recovering Jerk
I T IS an accepted cliché in education that the number one goal of teachers should be to help students learn how to learn.
I always saw the value in that, sure. But in my mind, a better number one goal was this: I wanted to help students learn how to judge themselves.
Did they recognize their true abilities? Did they have a sense of their own flaws? Were they realistic about how others viewed them?
In the end, educators best serve students by helping them be more self-reflective. The only way any of us can improve—as Coach Graham taught me—is if we develop a real ability to assess ourselves. If we can’t accurately do that, how can we tell if we’re getting better or worse?
Some old-school types complain these days that higher education too often feels like it is all about customer service. Students and their parents believe they are paying top dollar for a product, and so they want it to be valuable in a measurable way. It’s as if they’ve walked into a department store, and instead of buying five pairs of designer jeans, they’ve purchased a five-subject course-load.
I don’t fully reject the customer-service model, but I think it’s important to use the right industry metaphor. It’s not retail. Instead, I’d compare college tuition to paying for a personal trainer at an athletic club. We professors play the roles of trainers, giving people access to the equipment (books, labs, our expertise) and after that, it is our job to be demanding. We need to make sure that our students are exerting themselves. We need to praise them when they deserve it and to tell them honestly when they have it in them to work harder.
Most importantly, we need to let them know how to judge for themselves how they’re coming along. The great thing about working out at a gym is that if you put in effort, you get very obvious results. The same should be true of college. A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror.
To that end, I’ve tried har
d to come up with mechanical ways to get people to listen to feedback. I was constantly helping my students develop their own feedback loops. It was not easy. Getting people to welcome feedback was the hardest thing I ever had to do as an educator. (It hasn’t been easy in my personal life, either.) It saddens me that so many parents and educators have given up on this. When they talk of building self-esteem, they often resort to empty flattery rather than character-building honesty. I’ve heard so many people talk of a downward spiral in our educational system, and I think one key factor is that there is too much stroking and too little real feedback.
When I taught the “Building Virtual Worlds” class at Carnegie Mellon, we’d do peer feedback every two weeks. This was a completely collaborative class, with the students working in four-person teams on virtual-reality computer projects. They were dependent on each other, and their grades reflected it.
We would take all of the peer feedback and put together a spreadsheet. At the end of the semester, after each student had worked on five projects, with three different teammates on each, everyone would have fifteen data points. That was a pragmatic, statistically valid way to look at themselves.
I would create multicolored bar charts in which a student could see a ranking on simple measures such as:
1) Did his peers think he was working hard? Exactly how many hours did his peers think he had devoted to a project?
2) How creative was his contribution?
3) Did his peers find it easy or hard to work with him? Was he a team player?
As I always pointed out, especially for No. 3, what your peers think is, by definition, an accurate assessment of how easy you are to work with.
The multicolored bar charts were very specific. All the students knew where they stood relative to their forty-nine peers.