Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! So… I gave a finance exam on Thursday. I don’t feel like I talk about the specifics of my teaching all that often - more in generalities - because I truly love my job, and the teaching component is the best part of it. But, as Jeff Bezos talks about in the video below, even jobs you love are going to have components that you don’t like. I don’t like giving exams or grading papers. This exam went particularly poorly. Many of you who are reading this letter are former students, so you know I do a lot to help students prepare for exams. I won’t list all the helps I try to give - the course is hard because the material is difficult. But I give them access to the last 5 years of exams, I do multiple reviews, and other things as well. It frustrates me when I don’t feel like the students have met me half-way. To be fair to them, the exam was the Thursday after Thanksgiving, but really that’s life. I’m teaching future healthcare leaders - healthcare doesn’t shut down just because there’s a holiday, as those of you in the field know.
I always feel I at least partially own my students’ failures when it happens en masse. But in this case, I think it was mostly a lack of reaching out to use what was provided them. This train wreck of an exam has made me think of a story I have heard in a few different shapes over the years. Here is my version: once upon a time word came that there was a massive hurricane coming. A man decided he would not evacuate because he was a good Christian and he had faith that God would take care of him. The storm began to rage and he stood watching out his front door. A neighbor in a big pick up truck pulled up in front of his house. The water was already rising almost to the level of the cab. The neighbor called out for the man to get in the truck so they could escape the storm. The man refused, saying that God would protect him. The truck drove away. Soon the water had flooded the man’s first floor, so he stood in his bedroom window looking out over the rising waters. Now a man in a power boat came by and shouted that he should get in the boat. The man refused, saying God would protect him. Eventually the boat left, with the pilot shaking his head. The water continued to rise, and the man had to retreat to his roof. A National Guard helicopter flew over and they shouted down to him to grab the rope and get on board. The man responded that God would protect him, so the helicopter regretfully flew away leaving him on the roof, alone. Eventually the flood swept away the man’s house and he found himself standing at the Pearly Gates. When he got to St. Peter, he was quite resentful. He barked, “I was a good Christian my whole life, and when I needed God, he didn’t come through!” St. Peter looked up from his book, raised one eyebrow and said, “Who do you think gave you early warning, then sent the truck, the boat, and the helicopter?”
So the lesson is not that I have a God complex, but rather that the universe conspires to help us, if we will only help ourselves. I often reflect on my own arrogance, like the man in the parable, that I feel I am somehow owed something, and yet I am not seeing the gifts that are laying all around me - all I have to do is open my eyes, and bend over and pick them up - instead of being rigid about what I think the world should be.
I’ll be giving my students a second shot at the exam next week. They are undergraduates, after all. By definition they have poor judgment. Taking responsibility for young people requires the willingness to give second chances. They usually do the right thing once they have exhausted all the other choices. Kind of like the rest of us.
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Enjoy the links!
(photo is my 335th of 365 sketches this year. Hard to believe there are less than 30 days left to that project)
Read
What: Propublica, Here’s Why Rapid COVID Tests Are So Expensive and Hard to Find
https://www.propublica.org/article/heres-why-rapid-covid-tests-are-so-expensive-and-hard-to-find
Why: Here comes the Omicron variant, and COVID testing is still expensive (you have to go to a clinic or you have to pay a lot for a home test).
“I actually have been saying that for months and months and months, we should be literally flooding the system with easily accessible, cheap, not needing a prescription, point of care, highly sensitive and highly specific” tests, White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci said under questioning from Schrier in a hearing on March 17.
Fast, cheap, imperfect testing is generally regarded as more effective than slow, cumbersome, more accurate testing. We need a combination of vaccination and testing to stop this virus.
Oh - to steal the punchline, it’s the FDA and their overly conservative approach.
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What: Evil HR Lady, Interview Questions Candidates Want You to Ask
http://www.evilhrlady.org/2021/10/interview-questions-candidates-want-you-to-ask-2.html
Why: Sample -
“Here are the problems with this job,” and then she listed several serious issues, “do you think you could work with that?” I loved this question because I knew my boss was going to be straight forward and I knew the challenges coming into it. I took that job and stayed there for 9 years, so clearly, being honest didn’t scare me away. I was grateful to not be shocked when I started.
More like that, with some good discussion.
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What: Forbes, Many Big Companies Are Splitting, But Conglomerates Are Here To Stay
Why: “Conglomerate” describes a parent company with multiple (perhaps many) businesses that are not necessarily related to each other. General Electric makes jet engines, x-ray machines, and solar panels, among many other products. Often these businesses operate quite independently of one another. Conglomerates make sense when there is some synergy benefit to investors for the conglomerate to operate multiple businesses. Sometimes conglomerates are just big.
General Electric will separate into three listed groups. Each will focus respectively on aviation, healthcare, and energy. Johnson & Johnson will spin off its consumer products. Even Toshiba can’t withstand the relentless pressure. The Japanese conglomerate will split into three firms.
General Electric at one point was like a mutual fund. By owning GE, you owned a portfolio of businesses, and corporate management managed your portfolio. Now it appears the synergy for some of these 20th century conglomerates no longer make sense. But Amazon, Microsoft, and Tesla are all conglomerates, too, with multiple business lines. And they are some of the most valuable companies in the world. What makes sense to hold as a portfolio changes over time.
The whole article is interesting.
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What: MacLean’s, Extending scholarship to oral traditions through podcasting
https://www.macleans.ca/education/extending-scholarship-to-oral-traditions-through-podcasting/
Why: Peer reviewed podcasts? It’s an interesting take. I started podcasting five years ago for a multitude of reasons including a desire to contribute to the stock of knowledge in the field. I also saw it as an extension of the classroom and of my teaching mission. Also a great way to meet senior leaders. And of course, it was a fun way to play with a new technology. But peer review takes podcasting down a different path.
Peer review means that a research product, usually a paper, is submitted to an academic journal, and the editor assigns other academics in the field to read and review the paper and determine if the paper contributes something new and useful to the field.
As a tenure-track professor, I am expected to teach, provide service (which is a catch-all that includes providing support to my department, college, university, profession, and academic discipline, such as providing peer review to journals), and produce peer-reviewed research. Research is broadly the process of knowledge creation, but it is typically measured for tenure purposes by a very narrow set of products for a given discipline. In healthcare administration, as I noted above, research is measured by the number of peer reviewed journal articles you produce. Other fields require peer-reviewed books (common in history). My podcast, the Health Leader Forge, in case you are not familiar with it, is an interview-based podcast where I talk to healthcare leaders about their careers, organizations, and leadership styles. It creates new knowledge, but it is not peer reviewed. I publish it independently and without peer review. It will be interesting to see how podcasts move into the academic world - especially beyond the arts.
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Watch
What: Jeff Bezos, 5 Minutes for the NEXT 50 Years of Your LIFE (5 min)
Why: I like his discussion about gifts, and the risks you choose to take to use those gifts. This is a good 5 minutes of inspiration.
**
Listen
What: Freakonomics Radio: Is Venture Capital the Secret Sauce of the American Economy? (45 min)
Why: Over the last couple of RWLs I’ve featured pieces that involved private equity. This week I came across this episode on venture capital (VC). I think the title of the podcast is exactly right - VC, and the entrepreneurial spirit - are exactly what distinguishes the American economy from the vast majority of other countries. We (collectively) need to ensure that VC continues to exist. Private equity is like the older brother of VC. Where VC focuses on (very) early stage companies, private equity comes in and identifies companies that have gone wrong and fixes them. They are both very important. One gives funds to bring companies into existence; the other brings funds to resuscitate companies that are dying, but should not be. They both couple that funding with advice and professional management.
**
What: Radiolab, The Great Vaccinator (41 min)
Why: Great bio-sketch of one of the great medical heroes of the 20th Century whom I had never heard of.
Until now, the fastest vaccine ever made - for mumps - took four years. And while our current effort to develop a covid-19 vaccine involves thousands of people working around the clock, the mumps vaccine was developed almost exclusively by one person: Maurice Hilleman. Hilleman cranked out more than 40 other vaccines over the course of his career, including 8 of the 14 routinely given to children. He arguably saved more lives than any other single person.
They make a bit too much of his proclivity for profanity - who doesn’t find some relief in dropping an f-bomb every now and then? I mean, not me, but some people might… ;)
If you’ve saved that many people, you have a right to talk however you want as far as I am concerned.
**
What: The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan, Michael O'Loughlin On AIDS And The Church
Why: I’ve come to really enjoy Andrew Sullivan’s interviews. Sullivan is the gay activist who is broadly credited with leading the fight for marriage equality, but his podcast tends to be quite wide ranging. In this case, he comes back close to home to talk with author Michael O’Loughlin about how the Catholic Church (Sullivan is a practicing Catholic) responded to the AIDS epidemic (hint: poorly). There is both some good discussion of public health, but also the consistency of the Catholic Church (I was raised Catholic). How does the Church create inclusion as social mores evolve? Slowly, I gather. But given how many priests are gay, it’s interesting. Has the Church always been an outlet for gays in society? (men and women?) A way to be gay, but not out? This is not something I have read much about, but I kind of assume.
Thanks for reading and see you next week! If you come across any interesting stories, won't you send them my way? I'd love to hear what you think of these suggestions, and I'd love to get suggestions from you. Feel free to drop me a line at mark.bonica@unh.edu , or you can tweet to me at @mbonica .
If you’re looking for a searchable archive, you can see my draft folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jwGLdjsb1WKtgH_2C-_3VvrYCtqLplFO?usp=sharing
Finally, if you find these links interesting, won’t you tell a friend? They can subscribe here: https://markbonica.substack.com/welcome
or
See you next week!
Mark
Mark J. Bonica, Ph.D., MBA, MS
Associate Professor
Department of Health Management and Policy
University of New Hampshire
(603) 862-0598
mark.bonica@unh.edu
Health Leader Forge Podcast:
http://healthleaderforge.org
“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” – Pablo Picaso