If The Glove Don’t Fit….

Last wednesday I was summoned to the San Diego Superior Court House as a prospective juror – the first time in my nearly ten years of being eligible. As such, I was obviously selected to serve as juror 10 in Department 51 -also known as the criminal fraud division. I had mixed feelings from the start on my assignment. On one hand, no one wants to sit through testimony and evidence regarding a rape or murder, but one wants to be mildly entertained. Maybe a nice car-jacking or armed robbery. Instead I got a $600 contested workers compensation claim that resulted in criminal charges filed against a 25 year old kid. 

So I spent 4 days listening to workers compensation attorneys testify about the mundane boring details that make up their days, roofers talking about proper accident proto-call, and doctors talking about “vertical fall trajectories”. It was more boring that it sounds. Even more amazing was the fact that the case was essentially a he said – she said. The kid claimed he was injured on the job. His father, who was also the foreman, wrote a letter three years ago following the accident stating that he did not. The prosecution had no concrete evidence, just the vague recollections of 50 year old roofers and a claims adjustor who testified that they denied the claim strictly because the roofing company (the insurance company’s client) asked him to. The verdict was simple. Based on the evidence it was certainly reasonable he was lying. But  it was also reasonable he is/was telling the truth. As such, in keeping with the satisfaction of reasonable doubt I figured we would all quickly agree that he would be found not guilty. 

Of course, our first straw poll displayed a room divided, a fact that would later result in the case being ruled a mistrial. Regardless of what was the correct verdict I took away a few things from this brush with our legal system that I wanted to share:

1.) The wisest decision I ever made was to not attend law school.

2.) Our trial and jury system may in fact be the best system in the world (as it is advertised) but that in no way means it is the best we can do. I don’t have a better solution here but I walked away from this experience terrified to ever find myself as a defendant in America. At least 3 of the 12 jurors in my panel could not get past the idea that just because he was charged does not mean he is guilty. I had more than one juror tell me that the reason behind their decision was that “he just looks guilty.” I also had a woman in her 80’s who spent the better part of our deliberations coming up with other things that may have happened – including the idea that maybe he snuck out and went to a “drive-thru and got his feet run over”. She also seemed to base her decision on a 1967 paper she published on the falls of infants. I am not joking. We also had one who voted not guilty because he always “sticks it to the man” when given the chance- the man in this case being the DA I suppose. My point in all of this is that the majority of the jurors in this room did not do what court expected them to do. They did not weigh the evidence impartially, they did not apply the standard of reasonable doubt, nor did they display the “common sense” that is the mythical foundation of our jury system. They were people. They were biased, stupid, bored, uncaring, and flawed. Myself included. Frankly, had the room come to an 11-1 guilty vote with mine being the abstaining vote, I would have switched just to get out of there. Again, I understand the idea behind a jury trial system – but all I know is that if I end up a defendant some time I hope to God I get a less representative jury.

3.) This was also a broader experience with the state – that lovely beauracracy that has earned so much ire the last few years. I mean no offense to state workers at the individual level. I am sure many are hard working and innovative people but my four days was basically a seminar on inefficiency and poor planning. Of the four days I served as a juror, I would say I spent only about 8 hours in the court room. One and half to two hour lunches, fifteen minute breaks every hour, and frequent recesses to allow the judge to see her doctor kept us waiting in the hallway most of the time. This is not mentioning the hour commute each way. In a nutshell, the state  basically dropped thousands and thousands of its own dollars, pulled 14 people out of their jobs, and called  doctors, lawyers and other private employees out of their jobs over a $600 dispute. To make matters worse, they couldn’t even put together a thorough enough investigation to warrant a conviction (or an acquittal for that matter). I get that it is a noble service etc., but that duty goes both ways. You want me to participate, then please do your job and let me get in and out. Otherwise my tax dollars (the ones that help fund this little excercise) get placed in jeapordy. And frankly, any private business that spent thousands of dollars to recoup $600 would be bankrupt – just like California. 

So overall I would have to say this was not a positive experience. In fact I would call it an eye-opening and even scary experience. Fortunately, my service buys me three years until I am eligible to be called again. I better get started on my excuse….

On Grit.

Many moons ago, I sat in my 5th grade classroom on the first day of school and listened with delight as my teacher shared with us that she would not be responsible for assigning grades to us at the close of each semester. We, the 11 year old students, would be the final judges of our own academic performance, an idea that for obvious reasons delighted me. I had seen several changes to our grading structures throughout my short academic career, all of which seemed to fit a certain pattern. First our school had switched from the standard ABCDF scale (would love an explanation why there is no “E”) to the OSU scale – Outstanding, Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory. The train of thought here was that there were stigmas attached to any letter grade below an “A” and that this new scale would protect the feelings of lower grade recipients by gently reminding them that while their work fell short of special recognition, it certainly was satisfactory. In other words, little Jimmy feels better about getting an “S” then a “C”, and the parent still gets the report that their boy needs some work in math. Pretty quickly after that the OSU scale was changed to OSN – Outstanding, Satisfactory, and Needs Improvement. It seems that the term unsatisfactory was a little a harsh and that it was impacting some of the children’s self esteem. This was the early nineties after all, when numerous psychologists and educators had begun to develop curriculum and rules to teach self esteem, arguing that it was as important as education itself. 

I started thinking about this a few weeks ago during one of  my numerous “what the hell is wrong with this world/country” rants that have escalated in number recently. In the midst of this I came across a study by a psychologist named Angela Duckworth, who in a nutshell found that self-esteem in the United States has gone way up while achievement has not. Apparently self esteem is one of the few topics that has been studied pretty in depth over the past 40 years or so so there is  a great deal of data that allowed Dr. Duckworth to arrive at her conclusion. Her background as an education specialist kept her preoccupied with kids but I think it is fair to say that much of her findings could be expected to apply to older generations as well – specifically the  generation of 25-40 year olds, a group that has contributed to the mess we are in now. Duckworth found that over the last 40 years there has been a massive uncoupling between one’s perception of their own competence and how much one likes themself . This obviously coincides with the “self esteem at all costs” mantra of parental and educator groups throughout the country, the same group that pushed the grade yourself agenda that I experienced above. 

What does this have to do with anything you may wonder? Simply put, I believe that the proliferation of self-esteem boosting institutional behavior has had perhaps the greatest role in us landing in the predicament we are in today. We have been programmed to believe that results do not matter anymore, that the only underlying notion of success is that we feel good in our own shoes. Now this in a vaccuum is not the worst concept. I could certainly argue that a society measuring success and happiness by win-loss metrics would create a host of problems as well. But the truth is that self-esteem should be earned, and there is nothing wrong with being humbled and taking your lumps. Duckworth goes onto mention her conclusion that parents today never want to say anything critical of their children. They organize soccer leagues that do not keep score, lest their children begin to feel down on themselves for not winning. But we all know that the reality is that winning and losing is perhaps the most valuable  concept that organized sports teach our children. Learning to never get too down with a loss or too high with a win is a critical and valuable life lesson. Learning that life does not end with a loss is important, and having coaches and teammates that demand that you stand up to play again breeds resilliency and toughness. Most importantly, we learn that life is not always fair, that sometimes despite all of our efforts others are better than us, that others cheat to win, and that sometimes our heads get too big for our bodies and we embarrass ourselves.

These are all lessons that in my opinion should be serving us all well as we face what must be some of the most trying times for people throughout the country. Our country needs grit right now, not people who are so inexperienced with failure and loss that at the first sight of it they quit. We seem to have spent the last few decades just congratulating one another, certain that we as a people and as a culture were on the right track – I mean look how happy we were. But that sort of blew up in our face and we are all taking our lumps now. It is a humbling feeling and I can certainly understand, especially under the context of the feel good 90’s, how the daunting task of re-building America could force weaker people to quit. That is the scary circular logic here. Our collective values have weakened us to the point that we cannot fight the very problems the values created. 

When I coached high school water polo we always had a week before the season to push our kids hard to help us guage who could most help us be succesful as a team. We ran a number of drills – swimming drills, ball handling drills, shooting drills – all that were intended to display the various levels of talent comprising the team. I never viewed these as the most important indicators of value though. For that we used a drill where we wore the kids down through swimming and then unbeknowenst to them assigned them a partner that was to dunk them underwater when they came up for a rest. I watched this drill hard, looking for signs of fight in the kid. The best players – and usually not the most talented kids – were always the ones that fought back; that showed heart. A kid who could swim fast but had no heart was useless because eventually he would find someone faster, lose his edge and quit. But a kid with heart, well he is always ready to go and never backs down.

I think of that drill as I hear our leaders today shouting that we need the best and brightest of minds to take us out of this mess. Well brains are nice, but brains without heart do us no good. I think instead, all of us need to be reminded of the virtues of grit and fight our way out of this thing. It will take each and everyone of us to take our losses and be reminded that we can always get up. Now is the time to earn our self-esteem, to behave in a way that we can all be proud of for generations to come. I just hope that the damage has not already been done, that enough of us can remember that losing just brings with it the challenge of a rematch. After all, it is important to remember that great accomplishments are by definition arduous – otherwise they are simply accomplishments.

Away We Go…..Again.

Why does it seem like so many of my posts are apologetic in nature? I suppose a follow up question would be who am I apologizing to? But once again I look back and see that it has been 5 months or so since my last post. I can’t really explain this break. Sure I was busy for a while with work but a big part of this exercise for me is learning to write around my work schedule so that is not really a valid excuse. But I suppose if I had to come up with a reason I would guess that it has something to do with the broader world and not feeling too much inspiration to write.

Things have been a bit melancholy lately – for everyone – so maybe I just didn’t feel like contributing to the negativity and writing about how frustrating things are. But during some recent thinking I made the decision that I need to really start approaching all aspects of my life with a better attitude and some blind optimism. I am going to just assume that things will approve and try to live “as if”. As if everything is exactly as I would like it to be. As if I am in total control of all the external factors that impact my daily life. Lumped in to that line of thinking is the removal of my self-created excuse to not try and write everyday – so whether or not I meant to, I got to get going. I may fall short and write once a week, I may write five times a week, but most importantly I am going to try and write when I feel I have something I want to share and in a manner that puts me in the custom of watching my thoughts appear in font on my computer screen. I already have a few thoughts I want to get out there so I will post those in the coming days. 

I look forward to all of your challenges to keep me up to this and I of course look forward to any responses you all may have.