This generation of kids...

[1961MJS]

I think the solution to the sports revenue problem is simple -- let's admit they're profit making, professional athletic enterprises, and operate them as such. The notion that college football and basketball are in any way anything but minor-league feeder systems for the NFL and NBA is ridiculous. ...

And then colleges can get back to what they're supposed to do, without the obscene price-gouging.

Hi Lizzie

I agree with you up until you get to the "without the obscene price-gouging." Unfortunately I believe that they'll continue to gouge because they simply can. American's firmly believe that a college education is the ticket to a better life, and they'll pay whatever it takes to go get one. They're wrong, and they're paying far too much, but like a gambler on a binge, they won't quit until they're broke. I'd LOVE to be wrong about this too.

Later

 

[W4ASZ]

I think the solution to the sports revenue problem is simple -- let's admit they're profit making, professional athletic enterprises, and operate them as such. The notion that college football and basketball are in any way anything but minor-league feeder systems for the NFL and NBA is ridiculous. Major League baseball subsidizes its minor league system, which operates as a series of professional leagues. Why should football and basketball be any different? Let the NFL and NBA pay stipends to the colleges to support the sports programs, pay the coaches and staff out of league funds, and take the whole thing right off the back of the schools.

And then colleges can get back to what they're supposed to do, without the obscene price-gouging.

We need not hold our collective breath.

 

[AmateisGal]

Doesn't your football program actually generate a huge profit ? The one at my alma mater (U. of Georgia) does, and a good chunk o'change is used to run the non-revenue sports and some even goes into the academic coffers.

If you mean to denounce generally that false God, Sports Culture , that would be another kettle of fish, and I would be in agreement.

Oh, I'm not denouncing the huge profit they bring to the university, and to our state. Like I said, it's pretty beneficial for both. It irritates me a bit because so much more money is thrown at the sports programs than at academic programs, but I understand the reasoning.

I think we're in agreement on the false god of Sports Culture, though.

 

[ScionPI2005]

Then again, perhaps this provides testament to which basket our society is comfortable dropping its eggs. Why go to a school that offers an excellent education when you could go to a party school with a cool football program? Shameful.

It does seem like this is where society has placed its priorities. University sports teams and their mascots seem to be the elements that define the identities of colleges; not their academic programs or because they have specific professors who have done such and such in their lives. Generally, I think sports teams are used to market and advertise, thus an insane amount of money is spent. It just doesn't make sense.

 

[Pompidou]

The means justify the ends, I think. Sure, the sports get all the attention, but only because no amount of attention could make the latest Treatise on the Phylogeny of Dictyoptera: Isoptera, by Bunsen Honeydew, Ph.D, a crowd puller. Sports programs make kids want to go to college. That's a good thing. I believe most college athletes are required to have some real major, and there aren't any majors that don't require a well balanced foundation of general education. It's making people smarter who wouldn't have been driven to do so otherwise. If they had a direct high school to big leagues ticket, they'd end up in the same place, just dumber. A losing proposition all around. Hopefully, in a perfect world, the degree they get helps them get a job when they damage the Achilles' Tendon or something. Sports careers are anything but secure.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Tonite is the trick-or-treat night for my neck of the woods. Our porch light was off & the drapes closed. It still didn't stop kids from ringing our doorbell or beating on the door. :eusa_doh:

 

[Michael Carter]

I've had jobs that started at 6 a.m. and others that started at 3 p.m. In the Air Force, I sometimes had to get up a 2 a.m. for one thing or another. Not all of these schedules suited me, but it really did help to get to bed in time to get a certain amount of sleep.

I'm completely in favor of thinking for oneself, but you must know some basics first. (This is the same thing I pound on in the Learning to Dance thread: first, learn good basics.) Therein is one of the biggest frustrations I've had when trying to train coworkers: their inability to follow directions--i.e., the basics of how we do things at the office. They insisted on doing things their own way. (They weren't youngsters, either.) There was one in particular who couldn't follow a checklist of written directions. Another one did numbered steps in random order and wondered what she could be doing wrong. I'm open to suggestions, but it has to be better than what we're already doing--and they didn't even know what we were already doing.

When I think about people who are at the top of whatever they do--dancing, medicine, admin work, accounting--yes, they have opinions, most (not all) are passionate about what they do, but to a person, they know the fundamentals backward and forward.

I had an irratic schedule in the Air Force. It would have been nice to say, "Well, you'll just have to schedule this off alert MMII until I can make it out of bed and get to briefing." Our dispatches were scheduled from Job Control at 0400, 0500, 0600, 1000, 1200, and the 1600 standby team.

It didn't matter one iota what the hell you were doing whether it was sleeping, or eating lunch or dinner. When you were scheduled or called for standby you went to work. Plain and simple. If you were already scheduled on one of the aforementioned teams you showed up. There were no arguments and you didn't call in sick or say you had a 'personal problem', your dog died, or your toilet backed up. You reported for work to go fix that missile and get it back to Strategic Alert. Whatever the hell was going on in your life didn't matter two scheise's compared to that missile being off alert. There wasn't anything more important, and there still isn't in the Air Force, than getting that missile back up to Strategic Alert.

I guess if you've never been there you'd never understand.

Children and young adults today need a crash course in responsibility. I really wouldn't care where it came from as long as they took the first step in being responsible for doing it themselves or making sure their parents were responsible enough in making sure their children were..

 

[jamespowers]

Tonite is the trick-or-treat night for my neck of the woods. Our porch light was off & the drapes closed. It still didn't stop kids from ringing our doorbell or beating on the door. :eusa_doh:

That happens to me every year here so don't feel like you are the only one. Its like the Mongol hoardes at the door. Don't people get it? This even happens with the parents there. :eusa_doh: We would not have done that when we were children---because we knew it would waste time going to easier---better pickings.

 

[Michael Carter]

Childen and especially young adults never 'get it'. If they did, parent's jobs would be much tougher and the governments job would not exist.

 

[jamespowers]

Childen and especially young adults never 'get it'. If they did, parent's jobs would be much tougher and the governments job would not exist.

I know exactly what you mean.

 

[Puzzicato]

Tonite is the trick-or-treat night for my neck of the woods. Our porch light was off & the drapes closed. It still didn't stop kids from ringing our doorbell or beating on the door. :eusa_doh:

I'm not looking forward to tonight. Our house got egged last year despite the lights being off and the curtains closed.

 

[Tango Yankee]

Definitely - both types are needed. It's perfect because they challenge each other and everyone wins. The concept of "getting a fresh set of eyes on a problem" is probably the one thing I took away from my last job. You can't afford the time to reinvent the wheel for every problem, but the only way to break out of plateaus is to look at things from a neutral perspective for opportunities. Vets get things done quickly and efficiently. Newbies right out of college with their book theories and whatnot can see what eyes beset by routine can't. .

I attended the USAF Senior NCO Academy in 2004. Towards the end of the school our flights were merged with flights of second lieutenants for a few days. It was quite interesting, watching the differences between the senior NCOs and the relatively new officers. It wasn't necessarily a case of those with degrees (the officers) compared to those without (the SNCOs) because many of the SNCOs had degrees as well. It was a case of experience, both "life" and professional compared to inexperience.

One of the exercises we did together was one of those physical team-building challenges, where your team is given a challenge and has a limited amount of time to complete the task. When given the go signal the officers would jump in, seemingly randomly trying this and trying that, to no avail. In the meantime the SNCOs stood back and sized up the challenge and came up with the solution--but the officers were too busy trying things that didn't work to listen to them.

As one SMSgt said later, the officers were all thrust, no vector.

As an intended consequence of these flight mergers, the officers learned to trust and listen to their NCOs and their experience.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[Charlie74]

Growing up, we were taught to say please and thank you, Yes Sir and Yes Maam. When addressing adults is was always Miss Sally or Mr. John. I still address coworkers and others as Miss or Mr. Guess the lesson stuck.

And yes, the parents are the ones to blame for the childrens lack of basic manners

 

[Fletch]

I'm going to plant a bug in the ears of some of you "older folk" and suggest that the problem is
a) the younger people want to know the "why" of anything they commit to, and
b) we their mentors grew up without the right to ask such questions, so
c) we don't tell them, and we resent having to.

Too many people frame the issue by recalling job or military experiences where command was everything, as if having the questions is the whole problem. The lesson that suggests is: learn first to obey authority, then to respect it. Can you see how that might lead to trouble?

In reality, there's a time and a place for "why's." That's not always, of course. But preparing young folk for times when there isn't requires a very big and important "why" - and a real answer that has meaning past "because we say so." You give them that answer and they will respect your authority and do you proud. Withhold it and you'll have a million problem individuals on your hands - and you'll be the "why."

 

[Yeps]

Growing up, we were taught to say please and thank you, Yes Sir and Yes Maam. When addressing adults is was always Miss Sally or Mr. John. I still address coworkers and others as Miss or Mr. Guess the lesson stuck.

And yes, the parents are the ones to blame for the childrens lack of basic manners

As one of the young folks.... I was taught this too, (it is a rather Southern thing, and one of the Southernisms that stuck around in Baltimore), but I find it is not so much the kids who won't give the respect but rather the adults who insists on being called by their first names since "Mr." and "Ms" make them feel old.

 

[Fletch]

Of course that's a show of respect. But many of us who were brought up traditionally believe that is respect - it's an act, not a principle that makes one act.

 

[Pompidou]

I'm going to plant a bug in the ears of some of you "older folk" and suggest that the problem is
a) the younger people want to know the "why" of anything they commit to, and
b) we their mentors grew up without the right to ask such questions, so
c) we don't tell them, and we resent having to.

Too many people frame the issue by recalling job or military experiences where command was everything, as if having the questions is the whole problem. The lesson that suggests is: learn first to obey authority, then to respect it. Can you see how that might lead to trouble?

In reality, there's a time and a place for "why's." That's not always, of course. But preparing young folk for times when there isn't requires a very big and important "why" - and a real answer that has meaning past "because we say so." You give them that answer and they will respect your authority and do you proud. Withhold it and you'll have a million problem individuals on your hands - and you'll be the "why."

This is a great post. I agree with all of it, and if I tried to say the same thing, it wouldn't have come out as well.

In regards to the forms of address issue that came up in the posts that followed, I'll call a person by whatever s/he wants to be called. If there's no stated preference, I try and use some judgement, for example, what's the name on the person's name plate/tag. If there's still no clear choice, I default to the least formal address. For example, if I went to the bank to speak to the manager, and I saw the name plaque, "Michael Smith" on the desk, I'd probably say, "Hey Mike, ..." In my experience, when you treat someone like a good friend from the start, they often reciprocate. The one or two exceptions tended to be uptight regardless of how they were addressed, so I didn't allow them to ruin a perfectly good protocol.

 

[Tango Yankee]

In regards to the forms of address issue that came up in the posts that followed, I'll call a person by whatever s/he wants to be called. If there's no stated preference, I try and use some judgement, for example, what's the name on the person's name plate/tag. If there's still no clear choice, I default to the least formal address. .

And that, in a nutshell, is the difference between what was considered good manners in "the Golden Era" up until the '60s or so, and now. It used to be the default was to the more formal form of address. You would call the person "Mr. Smith" until he said something like "Please call me Mike."

Having spent half my life in a more formal organization I find it a trifle odd to be working in a company where everyone, including the CEO, is addressed by their first name.

Regards,
Tom

 

[Femme Fatale]

I call everyone by their last name until like tango said they asked to be referred to as something else. The only time I veer from that is if I am speaking to a friend of my parents or someone I have a casual relationship with but is older than me, then I refer to them Mrs. or Mr. their first name. According the Emily Post that is a big no no unless you're in the southern part of the U.S. not sure if that rule is still true today but I follow it.

 

[Smithy]

In regards to the forms of address issue that came up in the posts that followed, I'll call a person by whatever s/he wants to be called. If there's no stated preference, I try and use some judgement, for example, what's the name on the person's name plate/tag. If there's still no clear choice, I default to the least formal address.

This is an interesting discussion and it is intriguing how different people choose to act in manners of addressing others.

No doubt there are cultural and national differences in this regard but I will default to formal if I am in doubt. I went to a rather strict, old fashioned British style school where we were always addressed by our surnames by the teachers and it's funny but it's stuck. Whenever I see old school mates, we often address each other by surname (even my user name here is the nickname which has stuck with me since school days and obviously comes from my surname). Many times I either can't remember - or even don't even know - somebody I went to school with's first name!

If I am addressing somebody that I do not know, and especially if it is somebody older than I, then I will always use "Mr So-and-so" or "Mrs So-and-so", etc.