It’s a title

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve been very lucky.

Given that start I could go on to talk about a number of things: My wife; my children; my job.  It could be quite a long list.

But what I am thinking about right now as I write this is my education.

I went to a high school that was small enough that you could know just about anybody, and more than you wanted to in some cases. The universities I attended were not the most prestigious in the country or even the state, not even the state of Oklahoma, but they were places where I could be successful and not get my ego crushed.

I read somewhere that was very important.  I don’t remember where, because I only went to small schools, but that doesn’t bother me.

When I went to graduate school, I was lucky enough that school was my entire life.  I got up in the morning, ate breakfast, and went to teach.  There were mornings when I taught classes at 7:30am. I then went to the classes I was taking the rest of the morning, and I worked on my homework throughout the afternoon and evening.

When you transition from masters’ work to doctoral work, your classes get smaller and smaller until you are the only one in them.  Then, working with your advisor, who is in some sense your only teacher, you choose one homework problem which neither you nor your advisor know the answer to.  You then work on the problem, not knowing whether it even has an answer, until you are done.

This changes you. Not necessarily in good ways.

I do have a doctorate, but I don’t introduce myself that way because a doctorate is a wall. I am already an introvert, so I don’t need another wall around me.

But, like I said, it changes you.  Not the degree, the process. It’s like boot camp in the military, but spread out over a long time.  I don’t mean to say that at any point we had someone like Louis Gossett Jr screaming at us like he did to Richard Gere in “An Officer and a Gentleman,” but some of us have our own little personal Louis Gossett Jr in our heads because of it.  It was laid on in thin, semester-thick slices.

I am in a profession that has titles.  Those titles carry meanings with them: Professor, Doctor, Dean, Chair, Provost. They come down to us from medieval times.  They carry with them expectations accreted over the intervening tim, and when we come into them, we bear the weight of those expectations.

Or maybe, I should say, we try to.  Or some of us try to.

Some try to take advantage.

But there are negative expectations that come along with titles as well.

When people change the way they act around you--one way or the other--because of the title, you have to remember that it’s not about you.  It’s the title.

I’ve seen this in a number of different areas with a number of different titles: Father, Reverend, Doctor, Colonel, Professor.

I listed “Father” first because it is the oldest of those listed. It’s been around for a couple of thousand years and comes with a couple of thousand years of expectations. If a writer introduces a character with the title “Father” there are numerous expectations that are set up which can either be met or subverted.  This is true with the protestant “Reverend” as well. This evokes expectations which are different, sometimes subtly, sometimes not.

The same is true to each of these titles.  The human being steps into them though some sort of rite of passage, but having done so they get the rights, benefits, and responsibilities that have been created by the collective of all who held the title before them.

It’s like a little mask you put on.  The Romans had a name for the little masks that actors used in the theater of their time: Persona.

I can use this as a teacher.  When I am in front of my classes, they react to me according to that persona, that title. I am smarter/weirder, wiser/bigger jerk because of it. It builds a set of expectations that you can either try to inhabit or try to subvert as is best for the teaching process.

Along the way, one of the things that has given me insight on this is attending the ROTC commissioning ceremony. This ceremony is brilliant in its simplicity.  There comes a point where the newly commissioned officer receives his first salute.  He gives a sergeant a coin and receives a salute in return.

The sergeant is paid to do it. It’s his job. He is not saluting you; he’s saluting the rank.  No doubt many an officer goes on to earn the respect through his actions, but the respect he (or she) is given to the thousands before who’ve inhabited the rank.

One of the benefits of growing older is learning that everyone at base is just a human being. Title or no title, you grow-up, you grow old, and you go on.

And if you’ve been as lucky as I’ve been with my wife, my children, and my job, you get to be happy and learn a few things.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.