Thoughts and Interesting Stories---Jeff Clark

I have what is apparently a very common name. In grade school I would occasionally be given grades on my report card and disciplinary warnings for someone else which is how I first learned that I was not unique. Throughout my adult life similar things happened with mail, bank statements, etc. I had a sheriff's deputy stop by my home once looking for another one of me and I've had several bill collectors annoy me until I threatened legal action for their lack of due diligence as to who I wasn't. These past few months I've made the headlines because of the January 6 Committee, whose report I am slowly reading. A relatively low-level Department of Justice official with my name actively embraced Trump's attempted coup; at one point a Trump announcement referred to him/me as the new Attorney General.   Quoting from the New York Times (January 24, 2021), confirmed by evidence gathered by the January 6 Committee: " It was New Year’s Eve, but the Justice Department’s t...

  https://www.covingtoninnovations.com/michael/blog/2301/index.html#x230122

As a professor I view my main job responsibility as teaching to the best of my ability; I always have. As a teacher I am asked to be a guide, a coach, an assessor, and many other things. I am not asked to be an investigator nor am I qualified to be one. Students regularly ask for make-up exams. Sometimes they are open about wanting more time to prepare for an exam, not thinking about their colleagues in class who would also benefit from the extra time but instead took the exam as scheduled. Sometimes they are out sick; especially in Winter Term illnesses abound. Trying to offer a level playing field to students about their grades is one of those things I'm pretty serious about. I don't set a high standard about verifying an illness but I do like to see some form of documentation. Every now and then a student does not provide any documentation of seeking medical assistance and becomes more insistent as the semester ends that I give them a make-up exam. This is the brinkmanship m...

I have trouble teaching and not being the one leading the discussion. I'm not proud of this defect; I have many colleagues who are good at supervising group work. I am not. This Winter Term I am regularly sitting as a resource while students work together on projects. It drives me up the wall. I'm not sure what this says about me, the need to be in charge. I am often in situations where I enjoy listening to someone as competent as (if not more) than I. 

I have an older family member suffering from dementia. She has in the past experienced hallucinations and did so again this last week. It is very disconcerting conversing with someone who refers to nonfactual events. On the other hand before my sleep apnea was diagnosed back in 2003 I had gone for a long time without enough REM sleep. I experienced what I can best describe as waking dreams, wherein I would know that I was talking to someone and at the same time I was somewhere else doing something else. So I have some first-hand experience with this. Of course we are experiencing this in our public discourse in this era; folk refer with certainty to political events that have not actually happened. Again, it is disconcerting to converse with someone whose foundation is on shaky ground. It is simplistic but I still use the six W's as my anchor:  who, where, when are the basics of facts. What, how, and why often require a bit more interpretation but are still pretty good ties to real...

It's been 33 years and counting and I still get a bit nervous before a new term begins as it did on Tuesday. Much less now of course. I have my checklists, mental and written, to make sure that if anything goes wrong it is not because of lack of preparation on my part. I can encourage, nurture, and cajole, but I can't control my students efforts or achievements, so I have to just accept what comes my way. Of my two Fall classes one surpassed my hopes, the other let me down. (Absenteeism without communication, leading to abysmal final exam scores.) Pretty much all of my professional work is the same way. I prepare and I do prepare hard these days, not relying on my memory and improvisations as I had as a young man. As I am not a hermit I work with others and along with my encouragement and cajoling I can not control the behavior and performance of others.