Higher education is crawling with norms. Our students are awash in spoken and unspoken expectations for social, academic, and career success. In my post Crossed Wires, I wrote about the subset of them that needs to take their comparisons down a notch, the “CHILL OUT! group.”
As professors, we have our spoken and unspoken norms, too. I recently attended a professional society conference. I wish more of the social norms were genuinely tied to the ideals of the profession, devotion to discovery and learning. Instead, my experience is that too many interactions are driven by a norm I would describe as the “pecking order vibe.”
If I had to pinpoint the problem with norms, it’s this: Norms Imply Comparison.
For some people, comparison and competition probably foster healthy motivation. But judging from the overall stress of the junior colleagues at this conference—assistant professors and graduate students—I am hard-pressed to see comparisons as healthy.
In other Norm news, recently Norm died. Norm of the sitcom Cheers (1982-1993): George Wendt, 1948-2025.
Watching Cheers in the 80s, we could count on “Norm!”, the warm and familiar greeting. The hearty acclamation was the ultimate symbol of belonging. It was a ritual that brought to life the catchy Cheers theme song: “sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” RIP Norm.
Not so recently, a comic actor with the real name Norm died, Norm Macdonald (1959-2021). I knew him from Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live (SNL). “Chef’s kiss” to this tribute from SNL colleague Seth Meyers.
[H]e loved, or I should say he just didn’t care, if he was bombing. If he thought the jokes were good, he had exactly as much fun telling them to a dead audience than to one who appreciated them. And I think for so many of us, we came up watching Norm, and we thought that you were on the inside with him when you were watching him tell these jokes that you thought were great, and no one in the room thought was good and you just felt this connection to him — and that ability to just stare into an audience, unblinkingly telling the jokes that — that you believed in.
I love that these two Norms perfectly capture ideals of norms. From the Norm of “where everybody knows your name”: let’s have a norm of building belonging. From the Norm of “just didn’t care…if he was bombing”: let’s have a norm of bringing down the volume around us so we can hear our inner voices.
Images from Pinterest. Related posts: A Rather Fabulous Sense of Insouciance, Wolves, “Today, I Made A College Student Cry”.