1982
“Life’s not fair.”
That’s what I thought in late spring 1982. It was a Friday, after lunch, and I was exiting an elevator on the 16th floor of Patterson Office Tower at the University of Kentucky, when I ran into Lee Sigelman, Department Chair of Political Science.
Lee told me the department had just decided to limit financial aid to PH.D. program graduate students to three years. I was finishing up my third year at Kentucky after arriving in Lexington in 1979 with an MA from Iowa State. I had completed all the course work, had passed the qualifying exams, and was one year into a dissertation that would take another year to complete.
Earlier on Friday, I had turned down a phone interview for a three-year position at Illinois State University thinking I could stay at Kentucky to finish the dissertation. The Department’s policy up to that point had been to find money for an additional year for graduate students making steady progress. When Lee told me about the new policy, I thought “that’s not fair.”
I went back to my little graduate student cubicle and called Sherry, the Illinois State Political Science Department’s PA, to see if we could re-schedule the interview. Sherry Stiegerwald, who would become a good friend over the three years I would spend in Bloomington/Normal, Illinois, chuckled, said “yes” and so later that afternoon I had the interview and the following Monday would accept a job offer. I would learn a few months later that Sherry’s ‘chuckle’ came from her knowing just how desperate the Department Head Hibbert Roberts was to fill this position this late in the school year.
2020
I think of all the people I would not know had Lee and I not talked outside that elevator door on that Friday afternoon in 1982. An ‘unfair policy’ set in place a chain of people, places, things, and experiences that have brought me to this chair, typing these words, on this MacBook, sitting next to that chair Rebecca will be sitting in when she gets up around 7AM. Looking back from 2020 is so different from looking forward in 1982.
It is easy to think of life in categories. “Life is unfair” is one of the ways we label something that captures a bit of the truth in the moment. But it is only part of the truth, even in the moment. Looking back to that “unfair” moment in the late spring of 1982, its momentary truth is overwhelmed by the people, places, and things I would not have experienced were I to have stayed at Kentucky for another year.
Yesterday
Rebecca and I power-walked through Decorah’s Palisades Park. Two older humans swinging their arms up and down the winding road through Palisades wanting to finish up in time to hear Jon Lund, Director of Luther College’s Center for Global Learning, Zoom talk on “Twenty Years of International Students at Luther.” Back at 409 East Water Street with one minute to spare, Paul opened up his computer only to discover Jon’s talk is next week. “LIFE IS NOT FAIR,” darted across my mind.
FOLLOWED BY:
LIFE IS; THAT IS WHAT MATTERS.
AND
LIFE IS ONLY UNFAIR WHEN IT IS OVER
