Confrontation and How Bad at It I Am

I suck at confrontation.  I know most people don't like confrontation, but some people are better at it than others.  Some people are naturally good at sharing a reasonable account of why they are confronting the other person, and are able to hold their ground and find a good resolution. Those people are not me.

Last week I had to confront someone about a work issue. It had come up before, and it would affect my writing career pretty significantly.  I had avoided this particular confrontation for a long time, months, really, and could no longer.  I had tried, several times, to have a verbal confrontation with this person, but she had skirted me or changed the subject each time.

But that could be no longer.  I thought about what I had to say, why I wanted to say it, and how it could play out.  In a little bit of a chicken move, but more so I could actually get the words out the way I wanted and not be led astray, I emailed this person how I felt.  She responded positively. I was happy with the outcome.

See, writing the confrontation isn't that  hard for me. I can write the confrontation and know the words are getting said the way I intend, and that hopefully, the message is getting across.  Now, before you call me a wimp, know that I have actually fired employees in the past, to their faces. In small, cramped offices.  So though I have dealt with confrontation. I just didn't quite want to face confrontation that way this time around.

My other problem, besides making sure the words are right and not being caught off guard by counter arguments, is that I don't want to hurt the other person's feelings. It doesn't matter that the person has wronged me, that I need to let him or her know he or she has.  I just don't want to upset that other person.  And I am always cognizant that there are two sides to every story.  It's amazing when you go to talk to someone about something how he or she can have a completely different viewpoint, and sometimes, it can be just as valid as yours. ;)

There were a few other times last week that the issue of confrontation came up.  I had a choice to make in each of these.  Should I say something to a friend I thought was out of bounds? Should I tell someone something that might be very painful to hear but would allow me to get something that was bothering me off my chest? In the end, I did neither of these. I simply held it all in, believing the confrontation wasn't worth the cost.

I would love to hear your confrontation stories. Are you good at confronting others? Bad at it? Does it usually work out the way you want? Is there something right now you want to confront someone over but you're avoiding it? Talk about it.

What College Really Costs

I just got the bill for my daughter's upcoming college semester.  I was expecting it, even what it said, but still, the actual dollar amount on that computer screen can sometimes take me aback.  My daughter is going into her sophomore year of college and she loves it.  Since she didn't particularly like high school, I am especially thrilled she likes college. Even though it is expensive.

A lot of people are confused about college costs. Parents assume that in state schools are the most economical choice. For many, this may be true. But for this New Jersey-ite, in state tuition, room, and board at Rutgers, our state university, is about $26,000 a year.  For about that same cost, my kids could go to any of the New York state public colleges, Salisbury University of Maryland, and a number of other colleges as out of state students.

Many people think that out of state tuition, room, and board at public colleges are cheaper than private colleges every time. This also isn't necessarily true. I am paying less to send my daughter to a private college than I would have paid had she gone to an out of state public school at some of the more popular out of state colleges on the East Coast, such as University of Delaware and University of Maryland, among many, many others.

My daughter's college costs $60,000 a year. Now that's the sticker price -- literally the price they stick on the costs page on their web site and in their glossy brochures. But private colleges know that many, if not most, of their students will not be able to afford a $60,000 a year sticker price for college. They have endowments that they use to help bring costs down for individual students, and it's easier to qualify for financial aid at a private college that asks $60,000 a year than a college like, say, Rutgers, that asks $26,000 a year.

Each year, my daughter receives scholarship money and grant money from her school. This is free money that she does not have to pay back. She also has work/study as well as some loans.  But it's important to note that private college is not out of reach for many students.

In the end, you have to do what is right for your situation. But don't assume you can't afford a more expensive school, or that your state school offers the least expensive education or that your state school is the only option.  Investigate, you might be surprised!

The Truth About Parenting Teens

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know by now that I have two teenage daughters, nineteen and fifteen, and that aside from being an author (My first book was published this past March) I stay at home with them.  Many people have asked me why I don't go back to work now that they're older, and aside from some basics -- I don't really have the necessary skills to acquire a job since I left the work force in 1997, and I have a chronic illness that makes it difficult for me to know whether, on a given day, I will have the strength or health to work -- I am convinced that parenting teens requires a twenty four hour a day/seven day a week mentality that we mostly attribute to parenting babies.

Yes, in those long gone days I was up round the clock nursing and changing and soothing.  Yes, my kids had to be with me all the time to be looked after, and I wanted that bond with them.  Yes, as teenagers, they are out of the house for a good part of the day. (My older daughter is away at college nine months out of the year, and is currently working at a sleep away camp for the summer.) But when they are home, when they are in my presence, they need me on a moment's notice. They need to be able to talk about what's on their minds, what crisis or problem or issues they're dealing with and these could be as simple as clothes they need or as complicated as topics like drug use or sex. 

 

If I weren't home with my fifteen year old daughter this summer, she would not be able to participate in a CIT program at her drama camp. It's a good twenty minute drive each way. Instead of telling her no, she couldn't do it, I drive her back and forth, and we talk in the car.  Or, if we're not talking, she's talking to her friends in the carpool, and I'm learning lots of interesting things about their lives as I silently weave through traffic.  Meanwhile, she's building the volunteer hours she needs for high school and college.

My nineteen year old came home for a day and night off from college Sunday into Monday. If I were working, I wouldn't have been able to spend Monday with her cuddled up next to me, telling me about the stresses she's finding as a camp counselor, talking about her campers and her supervisors and what she wants to do next summer, talking about her fall classes and upcoming new job and financial aid. I'd have been at work, and she would have been sitting on the couch, by herself, unable to process all of the thoughts going on in her head.

So yes, I'm alone a lot while they're off working and volunteering and playing.  But when they need me, unequivocally, I am there.  And who knows what time of day or night that could be.

Friendship

There are so many different kinds of friendships -- childhood friendships and high school friendships, college friendships and lifelong friendships, friends we have coffee with and friends in the office. But I have a special friendship with a group of women, some of whom I've never met. When I tell most people about this friendship, they look at me like I'm insane.

Sixteen years ago, when I bought my first computer, a snazzy desktop model that sat in my small living on an old desk and connected me to the Internet via my phone line, knocking me off constantly, I was playing around on AOL -- let's face it, that's one of the only sites there was to play around on at the time -- when I found a public forum dedicated to women having babies in January, 1998. It was July, 1997, and I was about three months pregnant with my second child.

I read some of the posts and then got off the computer. A few days later, I went back on and read some more. Then I started posting, too.

We were an eclectic group -- we came from all age groups and backgrounds, from all parts of the country, we had varying political and social views and economic situations. There were single pregnant women, married pregnant women, women having their first, second, third, fourth, and in one or two cases, fifth babies. There were women having twins, women having scheduled csections, women having home births.  It was fascinating to me.  I'd never met some of the types of people I met in this group.

We shared the typical pregnancy woes. We shared our scares with bad test results. One woman delivered her baby so early she was barely viable. (She lived and is now the oldest Janbaby, even though she celebrates her actual birthday in September.)  As the group shared more, we got closer. And I lamented the day that we would deliver the babies and no longer have a group, because it appeared that AOL only had groups for pregnant women until the month they delivered.

But then AOL continued the group for parents of babies born in January 1998.  And then we were parents of toddlers born in January 1998. And then kids.  We grew as our kids grew, discussing controversial topics (sometimes more successfully than other times) and we leaped into issues surrounding our school aged kids. We retained a private site so we wouldn't be stalked.   Our pregnancies were the thing that originally brought us together, but despite our differences, our kids weren't what kept us together.

There have been tough times in our group.  We've fought, left the group, come back, split up, come back, split up again, come back together.  Many of us have said things to one another we regret. But we've made up, again and again.

Now it's sixteen years later.  We're a tight group, and I visit our private message board throughout the day. We send hopeful thoughts to those in the group who are having a difficult time, and we cheer on the exciting moments, too. We support each other through our kids' sometimes challenging teen years.  Some of us have older children in college, or married, and our first member became a Grandma to her older son's baby a few months back, while we have one member who is pregnant with her ninth child right now. We always like having a new baby to get excited about.) So while I have many friendships IRL ("In re(al life", as we say) one of my most favorite groups of friends is JanMoms98.  Wouldn't change them for anything.

On Jealousy

My 15 year old daughter and I were discussing jealousy recently.  Her friend was there, too, and she said she didn't like talking about jealousy.  I told the girls that jealousy is a normal human emotion and that everyone experiences it at some point in life.  I then told them what I was jealous of: writers whose careers are going better than mine right now.

I thought this was an interesting topic so I brought it up with some friends.  Several remarked (or agreed with the remark) that jealousy is a wasted emotion and they chose not to say anything further.  I thought that was fascinating. First of all, I'm not sure that jealousy is a wasted emotion. Jealousy can motivate you to make better choices, or work harder, or force you to confront issues in your life that you weren't so sure you wanted to confront before.

A few friends commented on being jealous of other women's better bodies.  I thought that was interesting too, because the kind of jealousy I'm talking about isn't the "Oh, she weighs ten pounds less than I do," thought that runs through nearly every woman's mind at some point or another. One friend commented that she had occasional "envy" and it was fleeting and short lived.  (I noted that she used the word envy rather than the word jealousy.)

The topic was dropped quickly; I was disappointed. It seemed that in this tight circle of friends, no one really wanted to talk about jealousy -- the deep seated kind -- or what they were really jealous of.

I think to many people, jealousy is a taboo subject, much like what we weigh and how much we earn for a living.  I wonder, why?  Why don't we talk about this thing, this big green eyed monster that sits in our brains and can sometimes eat us up, sometimes spur us on?  I know my jealousy over other writers has spurred me on -- to try to figure out how to be as successful as they are, to see what they did -- could I do that, too? -- and strangely, to give me hope that someday I could be that successful as well, because if it happened for them, it could happen to me.

So what are you jealous of?  And what do you hope for? Are the two emotions, jealousy and hope, interwoven, or are they completely separate?  Is jealousy just a wasted emotion and is it possible never to be truly jealous of anyone else? I would love to hear from you.  Let me know what you think. judymwalters@gmail.com