Passion and Gratitude

“Sixth grade,” I said. “Twelve years old.”

Outside it was cold. A gray, relentlessly dismal rain fell. I watched out the window, enjoyed the misery of the day. It matched my on-going depression.

“Mr. Moore’s social studies class. In the old annex. Droning voice. Sagging shoulders. Dismay.”

Teaching as defeated as the failing building, I thought.

The coffee at the Cafe Caliphate was the best. Rich and aromatic. Hot, black coffee in a substantial ceramic mug. I savored the touch and taste.

“There was an old analog kind of clock, remember those? With an hour hand and a minutes hand and a sweeping seconds hand. Tick. Tick. Tick.” I wagged my index finger back and forth in cadence. “The seconds hand twitched with every tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Mesmerizing.”

Funny how that clock stuck with me. It hung on the wall above the blackboard in the front of the class, above Mr. Moore mournfully calling out gum-chewers and daydreamers.

Hal waited patiently. Our conversation was usually crisp, no nonsense. Other times, like now, I rambled.

I stared hard out the window at the unhappy rain. Inside it was coffee house kind of humid. Relaxed, languid. Warm.

“That’s when it hit me,” I said. “There had to be a better way than poor tired Mr. Moore in that poor tired old building with clanking radiators and bad lighting, with creaking floors and students captured in conforming lines of angular uncomfortable desks staring at that miserable clock that ticked like pain.”

Hal grimaced.

“That’s the first time in my life I felt a mission, a passion to do something,” I said. “That’s when I decided to be a teacher.”

***

Hal was an investigative reporter. We first met when I became a source. He was good at long silences, listening.

“At twelve years old I loved reading and thinking and learning,” I said. “It was mine. Something I owned.”

We sat at our favorite table in the back of the cafe. It was comfortably private. We could talk without people lurking.

“The school system acted like they owned learning. The law forced me to consume their offerings,” I said. “But I made sure the learning was mine. It was always mine. They were more interested in regimen and control and conformity and rating children on oddly contrived scales of measurement.”

“Let’s talk about tomorrow,” said Hal. Truth is there wasn’t much to talk about. It was all closed down. Jobs lost. Careers ruined. Dreams shattered, given over to the domain of lawyers. 

“Where is my passion now, I wonder?” I said. "I wanted to write a novel. Why haven't I done that?"

“Are you ready to testify in front of The Committee tomorrow?” said Hal.

“Hot air too late,” I said. “What’s the point?”

“Hard to say.”

“From poor tired Mr. Moore to sworn testimony,” I said. “Bookends of my life’s work.”

“You are being too hard on yourself,” said Hal.

“This is not how it was supposed to go,” I said.

On cue the rain shifted to a driving, punishing deluge to match my anger. Bitterness seeped into my bones. I wanted to hate, but at that I stepped back. I lapsed instead into the miserable funk of well-rehearsed self-pity.

“Your opening statement ready to go?” said Hal.

“Sure.” I shrugged. I had no opening statement prepared. I’d figure it out when I had to.

***

The hearing room was large but felt too close, heavy and suffocating. A congregation of lawyers settled in watchfully, vigilant representatives of all the completely blameless people who engineered the catastrophic collapse of a billion dollar organization that once employed thousands and stretched coast to coast.

I was ushered to a table with a microphone and a pitcher of water. I wished it were hot black coffee. The Honorable Mr. Ed Earnest, Chair of the Committee, announced my presence and gave me the floor for my opening statement.

“Between the years 2006 and 2018 I witnessed the systematic and deliberate degradation of a higher education system that once boasted of more than one hundred sixty thousand students on thirty college campuses across the nation.”

I paused for a sip of water. I had their attention so far.

“Ultimately, the attitudes and behaviors of a few top executives dictated the ruination of the many. Tens of thousands of students were left without degrees, burdened with significant debt. Thousands of faculty and staff were rendered unemployed, careers devastated.”

Petulant defiance filled the room. It pressed on me relentlessly. From behind, attorneys rehearsed their well-practiced deflections and distractions and denials. Opposing factions within The Committee tightened ranks, prepared their rhetorical rebuttal. My words had no meaning for them. I was just the starting gun, the inciting incident, the provocation. They were all too busy crafting their retaliation to listen.

“In order to generate billions of dollars of revenue, Education Management Corporation capitalized on public subsidies—it's hard to say how many millions or billions—in Federal student loans and grants. Some of this financial aid never reached the student, ended up in the corporate coffers. Student financial aid converted to crippling student debt following the collapse of the organization.”

The room leaned into this, rattled spears, chambered rounds.

“The greed was long-standing. The disdain for students and employees routine,” I said. “Long-term systemic fraud ended only with the successful lawsuit brought by the Attorneys General of thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia, which resulted in a settlement of nearly one-hundred million dollars against Education Management Corporation.”

Hal was scheduled to testify next. I was setting him up perfectly.

“This settlement may have signaled the end of one thread of fraudulent behavior, but it was the catalyst for all that came next. Following the catastrophic implosion of the organization, top executives simply repacked their parachutes and moved on to different venues, to new and more promising threads of deception.”

This statement was met more evenly by the congregation. After all, deception fueled the billable hours that summer homes and trips to island resorts were made of. Just good business.

“Ladies and gentlemen, for-profit education in America is a disease, a cancer that diminishes the vital cause of education, corrupts all it encounters. Institutions of for-profit education do not provide opportunity, or access to dreams and better lives. These people value the dreams of an individual only as a commodity to barter and trade. They shamelessly exploit the vulnerable, while profiting at public expense. The principal culprits—criminals—walked away from this debacle unscathed.”

I sat back, finished. The congregation hated me and because of that they loved me. It was to be a feeding frenzy, like sharks in chum. I noted it was nearly time for the scheduled lunch break. By the looks of The Committee, it would be a long afternoon.

***

“Peace,” I said. “That’s what I want more than anything in the world.”

I met the gaze of my walking companion, a long-haired German Shepherd named Dog.

Dog was sure he heard me say steak.

“I’m tired,” I said. “The world is exhausting.”

Dog peed on a log. He looked up at me.

See, said Dog’s eyes. That’s how we deal with the world.

"As a kid I dreamed of two things. Teach, and write a novel. Somehow I've been too busy to write that novel."

We walked quietly through a somber, cathedral-like forest of Douglas fir. I always felt something special in these forests. Something magical and mystical. It calmed my busy mind.

The Committee had put me through it, for sure. They asked who I was, where I came from, how I came to work for Education Management Corporation at a small design college in the Pacific Northwest in the first place.

Funny, because I was asking myself the exact same questions.

***

“My employment at the Art Institute of Portland began in January of 2006—”

“To be clear, the Art Institute was owned by Education Management Corporation at the time, correct?” said Mr. Earnest. He peered with a scowl at his shuffled notes.

“Correct,” I said.

“Continue,” said Mr. Earnest.

“When I started working at the Art Institute we had sufficient—I would say generous—resources and staff, enough to fulfill our mission—”

“To be clear, this was before the investment firm Goldman Sachs acquired Education Management, correct?” said The Honorable Ed Earnest.

“A year prior,” I said.

“Continue.”

“At the time our campus president was a champion for excellence in academics,” I said. “He inspired a powerful teaching and learning community genuinely committed to student success. I’d never before experienced anything quite—”

“Tell us about the Admissions department,” said Mr. Earnest.

“Admissions technically was not part of our campus community,” I said. “They were isolated from the rest of the campus population. Admissions was centralized, run out of Pittsburgh by Education Management executives, independent of other operational units.”

“To be clear,” said Mr. Earnest, now reading from his sheaf of worn notes. “Education Management was running a high pressure boiler room where admissions personnel were paid based purely on the number of students they enrolled.”

I remained silent. It appeared that Mr. Earnest wanted to talk for a while.

“To be clear, a consortium of state Attorneys General successfully prosecuted Education Management for numerous consumer-fraud violations involving deceptive and misleading recruiting practices,” said Mr. Earnest. “Education Management agreed to pay nearly one-hundred million dollars in penalties.”

“As employees, we were provided a recorded video of our CEO, Mark McEachen, assuring us that it was really a partnership—not a penalty—with the various Attorneys General and the Justice Department,” I said, with a smile. “Apparently, they hugged it out over brunch and we were all fast friends.”

The Honorable Mr. Ed Earnest smiled back, but I don’t think he got the sarcasm. I was tempted to explain the word gaslight to him.

“Continue,” is all he said.

“Uh, the entire organization shifted,” I said. “It became more centralized, micromanaged by the Pittsburgh office. Inadequate budgets, resource limitation and staff shortages became the norm. Mind-deadening bureaucracy, disconnected and unresponsive leadership, lack of transparency, dishonesty, downsizing—”

“Yes, thank you,” said The Honorable Ed Earnest. “That's all for today.”

***

"Loss of identity," I said. "I was not prepared for it."

Dog and I were back walking through the fir forest, beneath a towering canopy that filtered all but a few twinkles of sun out. It was a busy place, but not like the business of the human world. The human world was full of stress and pressure and hard angular feelings as everyone pursued meaningless, temporary gratifications. The forest was graceful and smooth, and the creatures there lived their lives and died their deaths and that was that.

How could it be that life and death were so elegant, so rhythmic? How was it that momentary trifles could be so needlessly coarse and carry with them such remarkably disproportionate importance?

"After it all collapsed it was like walking out into a vacuum," I said. Dog was listening attentively in case I mentioned something about treats or rides in the truck. "I was empty. Those final years were dense with emotion and anger and fear. The worst happened. I was still upright, thinking and walking. But I had lost myself in the titles and battles and the narratives I created to cope with the fear. I was empty."

Dog's eyes said: You should just be who you are. That's enough.

He cocked his head, his ears flipped around picking up stray sounds around us.

His eyes continued: Sometimes a cheeseburger helps. Let's try.

***

"Teaching and learning are profoundly human attributes," I said. "Evolutionary adaptation not just for survival, but for growing, thriving in a complex society. Freedom. Democracy. Nothing less is at stake. We cannot give over human learning to the domain of profiteers and grifters."

The Honorable Mr. Ed Earnest seemed supportive, but confused.

Mr. Earnest said: "Education Management brokered a deal to sell all of its holdings to Brent Richardson, who subsequently formed Dream Center Education Holding Ltd. Tell us what that looked like from the campus perspective."

"Reorganization. Downsizing, Staff terminations. Resources and infrastructure degraded," I said. "We were under a lot of pressure to increase billable credits. We were supposed to sign students up for full course loads, but at the same time we were required to cut course sections from the schedule. Every academic term was a nightmare, trying to make it all work."

A conversation—it appeared contentious—broke out among the Committee members. I paused until I had their attention.

"I sat in on terminations where individuals I worked with for years—talented people committed to students and the college mission—were impersonally read the requisite paragraph by an unknown representative from human resources, as if worn-out carpet in the hallway was to be removed, the trash taken out. They were given ten minutes to vacate the building."

The Honorable Mr. Ed Earnest nodded distractedly, his attention on aides whispering over his shoulder.

"At the end, when nothing of the college remained but an empty echoing shell, our latest and last sycophant President predictably quit. Cronies arranged a new job for him, because he knew what was coming down. He supported the policies and behaviors that led to the end point, but never demonstrated any sense of accountability, never displayed a real moment of conscience."

The congregation shifted uncomfortably at this, but they were understandably bored. This wasn't where the money was. None of this was illegal. Ethics and morality weren't on the program.

"I was sixty-five years old when my position was eliminated, when the entire system finally dropped to its knees, defeated and exhausted from the continuous mayhem of insensible greed and incompetence and disconnection."

Mr. Earnest looked relieved. It must have sounded like my big finish. He put on his concerned mask, nodded in support. Glanced at his phone.

"I was grateful to leave it all behind. What had been a healthy, wholesome community of achievement was now reduced to smoke and ashes. It reeked of the toxic residue of arrogance and sycophancy."

I sipped some water, glanced around the room. The congregation were busy on their phones. The Committee members were shuffling papers. Apparently I was forgotten, no longer relevant. My voice soaked into nothing.

"It was my dream. My passion," I said. "To teach, to inspire achievement. To show individuals they could reach for more, that they could do things they never imagined they could do."

The day was nearly over. All around me people were packing up, texting and nodding and making plans for dinner and drinks and who knows what.

"Twelve years old," I said. "Sixth grade. That's when my dream started. All my life I worked for it."

The Honorable Mr. Ed Earnest said: "Yes. It's good to have a dream. Keep up the good work."

"I had it, you know," I said. "For a year, maybe a few months, before the greed took over. I had it. It was real. It was really quite beautiful."

But the Honorable Mr. Ed Earnest was half out of his chair, aides gathering his belongings, and he gaveled a close to the proceedings.

***

"Be thankful for your devils," I said. "They keep you on your toes. Keep your attention."

Devils? said Dog's eyes. Say the word. I'll bite 'em.

"I was lost for so long. Suddenly I was seventy years old," I said. "Imposter syndrome, doubt, fear. I didn't know who I was, what I wanted to do with my life."

Dog put his paw up on my leg. Listen, his eyes said. You are my friend. That's what matters. I'd be lost without you.

"Right back at ya, my friend," I said.

We watched the birds and the tree tops swaying in the breeze and tried to spot the mysterious rustling—Dog was particularly interested—in the undergrowth on the edge of the clearing.

"You know, Dog," I said. "It was the best thing that could have happened to me. Remember what they said? I was non-essential, that's what they told me. No longer welcome in their world."

Steak? Cheeseburger? said Dog's eyes. I suspected he wasn't following the flow of the conversation.

"Non-essential. Irrelevant," I said. "Free."

Dog whined.

"Want me to read to you?" I said. I pulled a dog-eared manuscript out of my backpack. My first novel, just finished, entitled The Final Performance. I picked up from where I left off last time.

"Danni stood, prepared to leave—" I read, and stopped.

"Dog, you remember who Danni is right?"

Dog loved Danni. She was his favorite character. Tell me what Danni said, said Dog's eyes. His tail wagged.

“'My friends, I do not know how to resolve the actions, what others do to us and what we do to others, with the person—the child—that lives inside all of us and sometimes, I think, this real person might be very deeply buried. I do not know what lies beneath the misshapen masks we wear, the truth of who we are.' She was gone, leaving them to consider the possibilities."

Dog nodded knowingly. His eyes said: I see you.

I wrote my first novel to regain my voice, to feel love and kindness and beauty in the world. To confirm to myself who I was inside. To imagine what grace looked like, what gratitude for life felt like.

My dream to teach came true. Not for long. It fell like dust before the callous onslaught of greed. But it was real. I held it. I did good in the world, for a while. That's more than a lot of people will ever get in their lives.