Update

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 Once upon a time , someone asked me if I would be happy working a job that was not at the university. Since my position at the university closed in 2020, I found myself doing exactly that— working in jobs not at the university. It has been a very difficult transition.  Recently, things shifted quickly and in unexpected ways. The short version is that I am leaving the hotel which I am currently working, having taken a position at another.  The longer version of the story is that I stopped by to see my good friend and former GM at his new hotel. While I was visiting with him, one of the owners came out and introduced himself and we got to talking. After a few minutes, he said he wanted me to meet his brother. Our conversation turned into a job interview and 48 hours later I accepted a new position as front desk, manager and assistant operations manager. After some negotiating, we reached an agreement and I start my new position on April 9. It’s a much nicer hotel and these...

Mental and Ethical Jellyfish

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“We are sending forth graduates with diffused minds, scarcely fit to take command of their own lives or to co-operate in the development of a social state; drifters into conformity and essential human futility; easy victims to specious crowd psychologies; followers of what seem easy ways out . . . . They esteem themselves only creatures of their environment and so they tend to become just that. They have little or no perception of standards—of truth, beauty, or goodness; they have no goals or purposeful perfection with which to estimate values or by which to gauge achievement. All things are to them relative—relative not to absolutes but to expediency. Truth means to them little more than a body of observable facts; beauty, conformity to fashion; goodness, doing the things that will make one comfortable or popular. Out of our most able youth, capable of high adventure, we are manufacturing mental and ethical jellyfish.”

President Stephen Bell, of Saint Stephens College. Quoted by W.A. Harper, “Character Building in Colleges.” New York: Abingdon, 1928.

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