In Dallas I had a professor who taught two of the classes I had to take. She had just successfully defended in the second semester I had her and was new to the staff. She taught in the school of management but certainly belonged in the Humanities dept. (Her dissertation was something about womenâs role in christian literature during the victorian era, or something of that sort.)
   She had a story that she liked to tell. It was about when she was working as a writer at some newspaper and she had missed a deadline. Her editor apparently unleashed hell upon her in a berating verbal assault. She always shared the anecdote as a teaching tool, stressing the importance of professionalism, meeting deadlines, and as an explanation why she would not accept late work. (Of course, unless you went to see her during office hours and pleaded your case. The work would often be accepted with the score slightly docked.)
   The story always resonated with me because when she told it one got the feeling that it was a terrible moment for her. Both her rhetoric and general body language would suggest this when she told it. (Mind you, I heard the story twice, almost identically told, in two separate semesters.) It was clearly one of those distasteful moments that stuck with a person and that a person would share in the hopes of saving some young persons from a similar horrible fate. But this isnât why it would resonate with me. In fact, because my own experiences, although similar, indicated a completely opposite take away lesson than hers.Â
   I was new to the ship and had just mucked up some piece of bureaucratic paperwork. This incident annoyed one of my leaders, who was probably tired and had innumerate reasons to be mad in general and not just mad at the mucking up of some document. The leader gave me a verbal whipping similar, I imagine, to what my professors had experienced by her editor. I left the space with my tail between my legs.
   Walking in the passageways of the ship I ran into one of my senior guys. He was an intelligent goofball and disliked all of the new sailors that had recently shown up. Despite his distaste for new people he stopped me and asked what was wrong. I told him about the paperwork and the screaming. I was expecting some sort of sympathy but instead all I got was laughter. He asked;
âWell are you hurt?â ...no
âDid you get fired?â... no
âYou still going to get paid and get to go home at the end of the day?â... yes
âThen why are you sad? You still get paid, you have job security, no one hurt you, and you donât have to stay late. If getting yelled at is the worst part of your job then you have a pretty good job.â
   He was absolutely right. I went from being bummed out to feeling absolutely silly. Silly I even let it get to me in the first place. That experience stuck with me my entire time in the Navy and itâs stuck with me ever since. I actually mentioned this to my professor during an office hours meeting. Told her my story and how I had a completely different take away than she did, despite the similarity in experience. She mentioned that maybe if she had had the kind of support structure I did, the mentoring from someone more senior than things would probably be different. I guess after she was yelled it she felt ostracized by her fellow employees. Everyone heard the yelling and when she left the office no one even so much as looked up from their desk at her as she made a shameful walk across the room and back to her desk.Â
   Sometimes all it takes is being there for someone. In a human way.Â
















