by Jen Logan | Aug 10, 2020 | Life, Screwing Things Up
I do not work well with others. Generally I find people annoying, so having to rely on them to complete a task is a real chore for me. I am in school again, and the program I am in apparently requires me to work with others quite a bit. I have collaborated well for the most part. I haven’t lost my shit on anyone…yet… but some projects are more difficult than others. Group papers are especially challenging. I have come to the conclusion that in any group paper situation, when the group consists of more than three people, you end up with a problematic character.
I had a group paper last semester which was about a consulting situation. It was actually kind of perfect considering the paper was about collaboration and we were collaborating. One of the young women I was working with literally wrote one paragraph of a ten page paper and then kept asking to have zoom calls so we could discuss the paper. When we finally did, she managed to get one of the other women to write her part as she dictated what she wanted to say, which sounded similar to a drunk parrot reciting words out of a medical textbook so had to be revised anyway. I understood why she only wrote one paragraph after hearing her for five seconds. She only had one paragraph worth of information in her tiny little brain.
This semester I was assigned a group paper with three other students, and once again, I successfully managed to identify the problem child right away. Interestingly enough he was the only PhD candidate in the group. We had a couple zoom calls in this class, and this guy appeared for the meeting late both times and then asked to be caught up on what he missed. He also thought that the question “how are you?” was an open invitation to talk about himself at length. When this paper was introduced, his first response was “should we set up a zoom call?” I was not falling for that trick again.
The paper was about diagnosing a fictional character. When our professor suggested that we use a TV character the egomaniac started describing a show that I wasn’t familiar with. I mentioned another show and he said that was the one he was talking about. I am still scratching my head about what season or episode he was referring to. He said the guy lived in a house with a bunch of people and was involved in a school scandal. I figured out that he did live with “a bunch” of people… his family, but I still have no idea what scandal he was referring to.
Since I was the only group member that had seen the entire series, I took on the task of writing the character narrative. Even though the other group members weren’t all that familiar with the character on the show, they had no problem using my narrative to write their parts of the paper. But not Mr. PhD-bag! No, he decided to binge watch the show for a week rather than writing the assignment. And when he finally started working on the paper, less than 24 hours before the due date, it was to edit what we had all written and send us articles that he thought we should all read to start working on the paper. He seemed to be completely unaware that we had created a document and shared it with him a week prior and we had all done our parts.
He finally added one of his two parts literally less than 12 hours before the paper was due and it was a recap of one of the episodes that had nothing to do with what I had written in the narrative. When I mentioned this, he left a comment that I could go back and update my part to include the new character he introduced. Sure buddy, I’ll change what I wrote a week ago to discuss a meaningless character because you just happened to watch that episode.
The worst part about working with someone like this is that he actually thought he was being helpful by editing all of our work. But we never asked him to do this. We asked him to write the part of the paper he was supposed to write. One of the other group members and I ended up texting back and forth wondering what the hell Dr. Dumbass was doing. We were pretty sure we were being punked. We both communicated to him several times that everyone was waiting for him to write his part and that he was holding us up. His response was excuses and assurances that it would be done by the deadline. He completely ignored that collectively we had set an earlier deadline due to our schedules. He clearly didn’t care. He was obviously driving this paper and we should be grateful that he was even lending us his expert opinion on our work.
Our professor was pretty harsh in some of his critiques. I am not proud to say this, but I was happy to get a B on the paper for one reason and that is that I was right. I argued about a few points in the paper, and the PhD-bag insisted on covering a situation that was meaningless and bringing up points that went against our approach. Our professor agreed with me on both points and as far as I could see, the areas where we lost points were all from our self-appointed editor. The paper didn’t affect my grade in the class much and even if it had, it would have been worth it to be right.
**When I am feeling antisocial I like to listen to music that reminds me my people are out there.
by Jen Logan | Jun 6, 2020 | Life
Some days I feel like I am living in an alternate universe. I have often said that the last few years have felt like a Marvel Comic movie where an evil villain has taken over and some dude wearing tights will show up at any minute and save the day. And I just keep hoping it’s Henry Rollins, but maybe without the tights. But the last week has left me flummoxed. So flummoxed in fact that I am using old-timey words like flummoxed. I’m not shocked and horrified by people protesting and causing chaos, I’m shocked that everyone is not joining them. I am shocked and horrified that the same people who are so vocal about the rioting and looting happening around the protests are the same people who didn’t have a word to say about any of the black men and women who have been killed by police in our country. But I shouldn’t be shocked. These are the same people the system takes care of. These people are me, just less mouthy and more comfortable with the status quo.
People aren’t out protesting because they have nothing better to do. People are protesting because they have had enough and they want their voices to be heard. And now they are being told that their voices are too loud. They are being told they are free to be angry, just in a way that is more pleasing to white middle class America, and that is bullshit. This is an abused child throwing a tantrum because that is the only way he is heard. This is the consequence of a broken system and the masses that were kept comfortable by that system don’t want to be disrupted. Apparently when a tantrum is thrown in the form of a white man marching up to the state capitol with a gun to protest a stay at home order, it’s okay, but when it’s the disenfranchised demanding justice it’s a threat. A bunch of entitled brats can protest not being able to get a haircut, but God forbid anybody hold up a Black Lives Matter sign and march down the street. Let’s just keep ignoring injustice and hope it goes away (or not).
It’s sad to me that things haven’t changed much in terms of racism in our country. I think if anything the racists have crawled out of their holes more in the past several years since they have felt protected by our current administration. And when they first started coming out I thought it might be a good thing because it’s easier to fight a known evil than one in disguise. But now I see that it’s kind of like turning on a light in a cockroach infested apartment. You just want to turn the lights back off and close the door. The problem with that is the cockroaches are still there. And what that light is shining on more and more is the systematic discrimination that our country has perpetuated throughout history. We feed the prison system young black men like Hitler feeding Jews to the gas chambers. It feels like trying to stop the gears of a machine by shoving a toothpick in between it’s teeth. But I am reminded that if all of the toothpicks are lodged into the machine, it will jam and break. So today I am a toothpick, along with all of the other toothpicks, trying to jam the gears of this broken system.
I don’t want to preach, but I will. Silence is complicity. If you want to see change, use your voice.
by Jen Logan | Apr 8, 2020 | Lemonade out of Lemons, Life
This social distancing thing has been really eye opening on a lot of fronts for me. I have learned that some people just don’t understand what combinations of words like “social” and “distancing” mean together, much like “self” and “checkout” at the grocery store seems to confound people. I have also learned that people have spacial relation issues and do not understand the difference between six feet and six inches. And worst I have discovered that I may actually be a rule follower deep down.
Let me start by saying I am not a catastrophizer, I am also not a joiner. But when I heard that we could avoid spreading an illness and give our healthcare workers the space they needed to help the sick simply by staying away from other people, I hopped on that bandwagon, and quick. I promptly took off my pants and crawled under a blanket on the couch. This kind of social action is right in my wheelhouse. It took me a full two days to realize that my family would also need to stay at home putting an end to my month long pants-free marathon of Jaws and Taxi Driver on repeat.
Luckily the weather has been beautiful, and I am taking advantage of it when my house gets too peopley for me. I have been going for walks at the nature center up the road which is where I have been learning all kinds of things about nature of the human variety. There are usually a handful of people walking the paths, but for the most part people are pretty respectful of the distancing rules. We see each other coming and both parties walk out to the far edges of the path to allow about 8 feet between each other. I have seen plenty of teenagers wandering around, reeking of weed, holding hands and climbing on tree stumps, that I can only assume are not from the same household, but they stay away from the other pedestrians. I have seen old people, young people, moms with their littles and dads with their older dads.
But a week ago I saw something that made me wonder what the hell is going on. I was approaching a little bridge and from about 50 yards away I saw what I thought was a punk rock mom with turquoise hair and a baby stroller standing at one side of the bridge headed my way. I calculated the time it would take me to get there and assumed they would be across by the time I got anywhere near them. As I came closer to the bridge I realized that the figure I saw was not in fact a young mom with a stroller but an elderly blue haired woman with a walker. She had only made it about halfway across the bridge and as I approached she started yelling hysterically “give me 6 feet please! Stay back! Give me 6 feet!” I was at that point about 30 feet from her but I stopped where I was. I watched as she hobbled with her walker closer to me. I was wondering why she wasn’t at home seeing as she was elderly and clearly worried about coming in contact with other people. I was also wondering why she chose to take her walker for a stroll through wood chips and tree branches instead of the sidewalk. I was wondering if she would make it up the hill ahead or if they would have to medivac her out once the sun went down. I was wondering if I should warn her that the entire trail was engulfed in mud a little further along. I wondered if the wild turkey would have a run at her seeing that it’s mating season. I wondered about a lot of things. Mostly because I had about 40 minutes to wonder as she crossed the bridge. I may have taken a short nap as well. It’s hard to say now. She finally passed and I headed back down the trail. I have yet to encounter her dead body or discarded walker so she somehow managed to make it out by the following day. I’m just thinking if you can’t distance yourself from other people and you have to rely on others to make room for you as you are out and about, maybe you should not be out and about. Just saying.
A few days later I was back out in public, avoiding being around people. I had a few large envelopes that needed to go in the mail. I figured going at night and using the kiosk would allow me to avoid people, but I was mistaken. I pulled up and saw two other cars in the parking lot so I waited to enter. As I waited, another car pulled up and a woman jumped out and walked in with no mask or gloves. She emerged a few minutes later, as did another person. Only one other car sat in the parking lot so I went in. Of course the car belonged to a woman who was using the one operational kiosk in the building. I took my place in line about 10 feet behind her and waited as patiently as I could. She had been in there for at least 5 minutes prior to me walking in so I assumed she was near finished. I was again mistaken. It took her another 7 minutes to finish her transaction. I know this because I timed her. I’m not sure what she was doing, but she only mailed out one package in the end. During that time another woman walked in and jumped in line right behind Molasses Sally. She turned to see me standing there, made an uncomfortable shrug and proceeded to walk right over and stand next to me. Not 6 feet next to me, not behind me, but directly to my right. We could have held hands. Said woman was not wearing a mask or gloves or anything. Although she was wearing pants, so she had that score on me. I was in fact in pajamas and flip flops. I stepped away from her as she jabbered at me about how she had been to two other post offices already and just had one envelope to mail but couldn’t get it done. I looked around and backed away like she was holding a bomb. She clearly was unable to judge 6 feet or was one of those people who just didn’t understand what is going on right now. I literally doused myself in hand sanitizer when I got back in my car. I try to view all people as if they have a really bad case of head lice. That’s how far I stay away. If I can picture one of those little bastards jumping on me from someone else’s head, I back up. Maybe that’s how the media should be explaining the six foot rule to people.
I told my husband the other night that I have seen a lot of people who are treating this whole pandemic like it’s end days or something. I’m watching people have no fucks left to give and it’s kind of pissing me off. Mostly because it’s making me be a rule follower and be all church lady about the lawlessness going on. I saw a young couple walk into the nature center the other day with a dog. They stood in front of the giant “no dogs allowed” sign discussing it before they entered, and apparently made the decision that rules don’t matter in a crisis. I was livid. Like, unreasonably angry about their brashness. And this was not the first time I have seen such guffawing at the law. People are riding their bikes down the middle of the road in my neighborhood, people are getting in the express line with 11 items and people are unashamedly jaywalking. Jaywalking, I tell you! I saw a guy smirking at me as he strolled across the road the other day while I was driving. I said right out loud “Yeah, keep smirking. I’ll run your ass over!” God help me, I’m not only following rules, I am disgusted with the people breaking the rules. I have turned into one of those assholes. I came home, told my kid to quit doing her homework and go play in the street just to prove everything was still okay. Tonight I am going to drop a Henry Rollins book in her hand just for good measure.
The world may be a little upside down right now, but I’m confident we are going to come out of this a little better than we were as human beings. I’m going to give the hysterical old lady twelve feet instead of six. I’m going to just let the clueless lady cut in front of me instead of breathe on me next time. And I’m going to try my hardest not to mow down any jaywalkers. I can’t make any promises, but I have been getting away with breaking the rules my whole life, so I am going to just let that shit go.
**”Waiting Room” has been in my head since my husband started singing it to me last week. Put it in your head too!
by Jen Logan | Dec 20, 2019 | Being Awesome, Parenting
It’s amazing what you can learn on a seven minute drive. Every morning I feel like I gain a wealth of knowledge from my 8 year old passenger. Most of this knowledge is about the best books in the orange dot level at the library or which girl’s feelings were hurt because another girl didn’t want to sit with her at lunch. I get the gossip about who may or may not have had lice and who is telling people she is related to Beyonce (she isn’t).
I rarely get information I can share at a dinner party. I am always looking for this type of data since I suck at small talk. My conversation starters are usually “So, who is your favorite serial killer?” or “I used to have to wear leg braces to sleep at night when I was a kid. Weird huh?” So, this morning when my daughter asked me if I wanted to hear all about Walt Disney, I was like hell to the yes I do!
Unfortunately after reading all about Walt’s life, her knowledge consisted of three things which she listed for me. He was born in 1901 and died in 1966 of lung cancer. He married a woman he worked with named Lilly. They had a daughter named Diane but they didn’t like her so they found another baby. When I asked her to elaborate on the part about the children she said she forgot what the story was but they had a baby and they didn’t like her so they got another baby. I asked what they did with poor little unlikable Diane and she said she had no idea. She did wonder how parents couldn’t like their own baby though. I had so many questions and she had so few answers.
Unfortunately we arrived at her school before I could dig a little deeper into this story, so I had to go home and google the whole Disney child situation. The story as presented led me to believe Walt and Lilly had a child and gave her up for adoption and then later went on to have another child. This was not at all the case. They had a biological child named Diane in 1933 and then adopted a child named Sharon in 1936. They loved both girls and doted on them. Apparently Diane made them love parenting so much they expanded their family and gave her a sister. I was happy to know that Walt and his wife were not the type of people to dump their kid and trade her in for a new one. That would be like learning Mr. Rogers was also the Zodiak Killer.
I guess I am going to have to share with my kid what I discovered. It’s these little bits of useless information that nestle into your brain and I wouldn’t want her sharing that Walt and his wife traded in their first child for a better one at a dinner party with her boss twenty years from now. Either that or I just tell her all about the little girl we were thinking about adopting next time she acts like a little asshole. I haven’t decided yet.
*I wrote this while listening to some good old fashioned Christmas music!
by Jen Logan | Oct 30, 2019 | Life
There are few things I enjoy talking about more than traffic. I would be a great traffic reporter with my added commentary on how badly people are driving all over the city. I think a lot of people would be interested to hear about the asshole driving too slow in the left lane of the freeway or the guy who ran the red light in front of Starbucks and almost took out a gaggle of teenage girls in the crosswalk. When I talk to my husband on the phone while I am driving he often has to tell me to shut my pie hole about all of the horrific drivers surrounding me.
I am by nature a people watcher and I am fascinated by how much people struggle with simple things like spacial relations. In my mind, this kind of stuff is interesting to other people as well. I know I am mistaken, but I keep sharing my observations. Unfortunately, when I am not providing commentary on the highway happenings to my husband, I am sending him photos of cars parked askew as if they let their dogs attempt to drive. He gets pictures of the old men parked at the gym halfway between a handicap parking place and the sidewalk and the soccer moms at Target with their minivans overlapping two spots. The best photo I even sent him was a car on the front lawn of a home near my parents’ house. It looked as if the car was dropped from the sky or rolled into the yard. I had all kinds of crazy stories going in my mind to account for how this little blue car came to rest in the middle of a front yard.
My daughter is also a driving critic. She was backseat driving before she could talk. She has called out things like “green means go buddy” and “that lady can’t stay in her own lane” more than I would like to admit. She notices the same kinds of things I do and has almost as much commentary on it. One day a few months ago we witnessed one of the funniest driving incidents ever. We were at the library where they held a farmer’s market every friday sitting on a bench sharing some grapes as a car pulled into the lot and attempted to park about 20 yards from us. We watched as the female driver pulled into a handicap spot but instead of parking she drove directly over the sign standing at the front of the spot. Strangely, the sign sprung back up after she flattened it down into the pavement. The base of the sign was literally a spring so when the car passed over it, it flattened out and popped back into place. This was accompanied by a screeching sound as the metal sign scraped the bottom of the car. The woman proceeded through the parking lot and into another space as if nothing had happened. The only evidence that she was aware of what she had done was the flush of her cheeks as she walked past us into the farmer’s market. She looked around her as she got out of her car and saw about 50 people staring at her. I think I would have had to say something like “did you see that sign jump right out in front of me?” or something similar, but this lady just went about her business which leads me to believe it was not an unusual occurrence for her.
The best part about seeing this incident with my daughter was that she could go home and tell her dad all about it. She bounced in and giggled her way through the whole story. Not once did he tell her that he didn’t want to hear the traffic report like he does to me. He laughed along with her. I think we have a new traffic reporter in the house.
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