Chase Financial Services Crosses My Line

Apparently, Chase is offering a new financial service to those of us who pay our mortgages a month (or more) ahead. The twist to the new service is that it's a surprise: they don't tell you that they have taken your advanced payment plus and applied it to the principal, rather than as a payment plus, because they figure (ha-ha-ha) that you are too stupid to know how to manage your own financial resources.

Case in point: I am three months ahead in my mortgage payment; thus, when I sent in my March payment, I used the payment coupon for June (because I had already paid April and May). I was recently on-line checking my accounts and realized that I had not received my next mortgage statement from Chase, so I checked to see how to send the payment without a coupon. Imagine my surprise to learn that my entire last payment plus amount was credited to the principal, rather than to the payment coupon I had included in the envelope. Instead of continuing to keep 3 months' ahead of my mortgage payment due date, I am now back to only 1 month ahead and that only because of my call.

Well, I called to talk to a person about the logic behind the Chase decision, and after going through endless menu options that had nothing to do with my issue, I pressed the 0 several times until Victor answered. When I asked why I have not received a payment coupon, he explained to me that I am already "paid up" and do not owe a payment this month (May).

"Really?" I asked him. "How did you arrive at that conclusion?"

Victor schooled me: when I sent in the payment coupon the first of March, it was for June, which was not due, so it was applied directly to my principal. I will receive a payment coupon this month (May) to pay for June, but I currently do not owe anything.

Isn't that amazing?

I am ecstatic that Chase caught this egregious financial error on my part and fixed it for me! Imagine in these tough financial times anyone sending money to a mortgage company for a payment due a month or two or three down the road!! It must be a mistake! I could be spending that money on shopping, on credit card bills, on summer vacations, but I (idiot that I am) decided instead to send it to Chase to apply to my mortgage.

The only action on Chase's part that could possibly have made me angrier than I am is if they had credited my "over-payment" to a debit card and told me to go forth and stimulate Obama's economy with all this extra money I seem to have or re-distribtue my wealth to those less financially fortunate than I seem to be!

I have asked for a payment coupon to be sent to me immediately and instructed Victor to add to my account notes that in the future, when I send in a payment, it is to be applied to my account the way I direct -- not the way someone in their corporate structure determines it should be applied. I will over-look the obvious error of their ways once, but I will take it to them if it happens again.

The Sandy Standard

The world knows how low we can go, but we seem unable to find the bottom and continue to plunge into the grunge of life's worst. For a public figure, that grunge has restorative properties: no matter how ugly the mess, wallow in the grunge for a few weeks and careers are revitalized. If you're a person on the fringe of fame, grab ahold of a famous person and leap into the pit, dragging the famous one with you. Wallow in the grunge and you may no longer be on the fringe, but at the center of the evening news and the centerfold of a star magazine.

You will have made it to the top of your world by wallowing at the bottom of what the rest of us believe is the worst of the real world.

Along comes Sandra Bullock, a principled woman whose private life was violently torn from her by excruciatingly public exposure by fringe people who used her stardom to create a career. Jesse James was not by anyone's wildest dream an "ideal" mate for Sandy, but she saw something in him no one else saw. After waiting privately for her Mr. Right to come along, she chose Jesse. She knew his past but believed in his future. On the heels of her awards season triumphs, the fringe people gathered at the grunge pit, waited for the right moment, grabbed ahold of Sandy and jumped in.

It was really not about Sandra Bullock, but about the whores and hookers who survive on the coat-tails of someone else's public life. They sell themselves to public figures with an ulterior motive, and that motive is always about me, me, me.

Sandy, however, pulled herself out of the filth: immediately. She took care of her personal commitments, not her publicity. She left the public venue and went private, an unusual H'wood coping mechanism. Endless speculation was just that: speculation. No one saw her, no one knew what was going on, and there were no publicity releases either to justify or explain the personal situation between Sandra and Jesse. Questions shouted across a school parking lot went unanswered; accusations splashed across the pages of the tabloids were ignored.

Sandra Bullock stayed home and took care of her personal life in private.

Perhaps we can use Sandra as the new standard for appropriate conduct. Perhaps other public figures can realize that nothing is gained by public confrontations, accusations, justifications. Stay home and take care of personal problems personally and privately. Make decisions based on what is best for yourself, your family, and the other people in your life who are important to you. When you arrive at your decisions about your life, do it and move on.

More public figures need to learn to be more private and stop believing that any publicity is good publicity. No one makes a lasting career from exposing another person's private pain, but that lesson needs to be retaught to Hollywood. Keep your private business private. Please.

Just Ring My Bell!

Lucy and Ethel shared a friendship song in a long-ago episode of I Love Lucy that featured the lyrics that if one of the two were ever to be down a well, the other could just "ring my bell." That's friendship, a perfect blendship, assured the off-key duo.

One of my friends came down the night before the surgery, chauffeured me to the appointment and was the first face I saw as I stared dazedly from behind the veil of anesthesia. She provided me with excellent after-care that included propping up the knee, learning how to use the "ice pack" machine (which I highly recommend to anyone who has to keep icing an injury), fixing my meals for a few days, and sharing the couch afghan with Daisy. She did the shopping, picked up my mail, removed the dressing and did the first cleaning and rebandaging. And, she barely chastised me when I said I had to take a shower even though it was a full 24 hours ahead of schedule.

Maggie has headed home for the weekend with her hubby, but I thank her for the wonderful care, the positive attitude, the love she showered on my dogs, and the constant smile and humming as she went about her tasks. I am back on my feet and getting a bit antsy to also get back on schedule. It's the end of the semester and there are things to do, people to teach, papers to grade, and ... the most important task of all, dog poop to scoop.

The surgery is a mild memory, I'm pain free, and life is good in this neighborhood.

Sinatra Surgery: Doin' It MY Way!

This was a piece o'cake: arrived at 6 am and departed the surgery center by 9 am. The surgeon told Mags that it went well and I should be fine to return to work Monday. I won't know details until my appt next week for the post-op check-up, but obviously he didn't find anything he didn't expect to find.

What's weird is that the pain is gone ... absolutely and really gone. Not only can I take a gentle step (with the walker) and not feel the stabbing pain, but my knee cap is not flopping or locking and causing me even more pain. After so many months of constant pain, this is truly a blessing.

Mags is going to stay until about noon tomorrow and will return if I need her. She's off doing the errands of checking the post office box, picking up the pain pill refills, and buying a few groceries to take me through Sunday so I can stay in and baby the surgery site a bit before resuming my schedule. She is a wonderful friend for so many reasons, but add "primary care-giver" to the list.

PS: Daisy, being the good hostess to our guest, slept with Mags last night, while Mia snored with me. The wind howled all night, but the dogs were quiet, so we're good.

Do Cheaters Ever Prosper?

It’s crunch time at the college. After a semester of instruction, it’s time to see if the students not only can get the homework completed correctly and participate in class discussions, but also to determine whether the student can apply the education in a practical application. In math, calculate correct responses to complex computations; in science, develop the hypothesis, then design, conduct, and evaluate the experiment; in composition, write an analytical essay with a clearly defined thesis that is supported by credible evidence from legitimate sources. Do it and move on; don’t do it and repeat the course; but copy an essay from an on-line source and be held accountable for cheating.

Google the word “plagiarism” and the list of well-known public figures attached to that key word confirms that far too many individuals take the written words of other authors and make them their own. Many people think that making a few changes here and there avoids the issue of plagiarism, but that’s not true. Citing the original sources of information “covers” the use of another author’s content at the college level, using in-text cites at the site of the source material. Back in the day, however, it was easy to plagiarize because the odds of anyone recognizing the stolen words were slight; however, today’s internet can find the phraseology in mere seconds.

There are world-class plagiarists, those writers who find obscure sources of information and rewrite the original text in their own style to fool readers into thinking the ideas are original. According to writer Jonathan Bailey, searching for well-known plagiarists reveals that “… five men on the list, Stephen Ambrose, T.S. Eliot, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Richard Owen and H.G. Wells are all well-known cases in plagiarism circles” (www.plagiarismtoday.com). Alex Haley, in the seminal TV series Roots, was caught by the still-living author of the 17 pages he stole word-for-word from her published book. The case went to court, Haley’s reputation was tarnished, and the original author accepted a financial settlement. Perhaps if Haley had contacted the author, conducted an interview, and invited her to participate in the process of his own writing, he would still be basking in the glory of his authorship, but that is not the choice he made.

It’s curious why famous individuals borrow from others without crediting the original source, but it’s understandable at the college level: the clock is ticking on the semester, the student has fallen way behind in completing the requirements of the course, and a sense of panic develops that leads many students into believing that it’s okay—just this once—because the teacher probably will never know that it’s copied from an on-line source. It’s not a good decision, and it’s made on flawed logic, but it’s a coping mechanism that far too many people use. Whereas the societal expectation back in the day was that it’s always wrong to lie, cheat and steal, today’s operating system is situational ethics: it’s okay as long as I am not caught and/or don’t hurt anyone. I have to pass this class, and I'll do whatever it takes to get a passing grade, including lie, cheat and steal.

What many writers don’t get is that each writer has a unique syntactical rhythm, a way of selecting words and forming them into thoughts that are expressed as sentences. Readers recognize their favorite authors by the style and know immediately if/when a co-author comes on-board or the author has gone public, writing far too many commercial products to support a lavish lifestyle. The original vocabulary of the writer reflects his/her generation: older writers have more archaic words in their vocabularies, while younger writers develop a kind of linguistic short-hand that incorporates street slang, conversational catch-all phraseology, and limited academic language choices. For instance, an inexperienced movie review writer may capture an idea by writing that a character “... comes across as a no-B.S. mother with a strict agenda, but just as [another character] goes through a complete change, so does she” (www.cincemablend.com), an opinion that is not just expressed in a modern slang syntax, but says nothing of an analytical nature about the main character's, mothering, a strict agenda, or the process of complete change for either character. Whereas most readers know what B.S. is, that abbreviation would never be used in an academic environment. A complete change indicates that an individual no longer is any part of what s/he was before an inciting incident caused a total transformation, such as an individual who is critically injured in an accident and no longer is the same person physically, mentally, or emotionally. Using an example from the vernacular of today’s culture, Chas Bono has truly gone through “a complete change.” Simply inviting another person into one’s life does not cause a “complete change” of the individuals involved in the new relationship, but it can begin a metamorphosis from what one is to what one becomes, often referred to a transformational process.

Additionally, there are standards for academic writing, which include no acceptable use of contractions (they’re instead of they are, for example) and no instance of analytical analysis using the word “you.” The focus is reflected in the thesis statement, and every word of every sentence in every paragraph is carefully selected to present the analysis of an idea captured in the thesis. Concluding a movie review with the challenge to “Do yourself a favor, don’t get too picky, take the film for what it is—an inspirational sports movie—and you’ll win big” is not a conclusion, but a cop-out (www.cincemablend.com), and a poorly-written one at that.

Students say they don’t get it, they don’t understand, and create their own version of an assignment and present it with the expectation that doing anything is better than doing nothing. If the student is held accountable for not meeting either the criteria or the standards for the assignment, it becomes the result of "bad teaching," rather than "bad learning." Students rely on the kindness of the academic community to accept whatever they present as valid, as well as valuable, but that is simply not the case, especially when some of the students do get it and actually submit quality written work. No one ever says to a math professor, “I couldn’t figure out how to do the problem your way, so I did it this way – and I think my way is good enough to earn me a passing grade in this class.” An analytical error in math results in a nuclear disaster as there is only one way, the right way, to compute mathematical problems. In written expression there is some leeway, but analysis is analysis is analysis, the same way that a person’s ethics should prohibit anyone from first, thinking, and then deciding that passing off someone else’s source material is okay as long as the student who makes this choice is either not found out or not held accountable.

In the legal system, ignorance of the law is not a reason not to follow the law; in the classroom, “I didn’t know” is simply an excuse that demonstrates an individual’s inability to accept responsibility for all the decisions s/he makes, not just the ones that are not exposed. Do cheaters ever prosper? Certainly, as evidenced by the Jonathan Bailey article (plagiarismtoday.com), but perhaps more certainly as evidenced by the fact that few students think that copying to get a grade is a problem. Cheaters do seem to have the upper hand in defending their actions as acceptable, rather than illegal. When our role models, our authors, our politicians, our ministers, our teachers, our family and friends lie, cheat and steal and get away with it, why would any reasonable person not do likewise, especially if the chances of being caught are minimal.

A society is only as strong as its most honest citizen, and a lack of morality indicates a crack in the fabric of honesty. When I cannot participate in the ages-old trust exercise, falling backward into the arms of those who claim to have my back, I know that contrary to the claim that “no man is an island,” I am, indeed, standing alone.