Negative Nancy

There exists in this world people who cannot find anything good in anything, who will be the first to point out the faults of people or things, who will not like anything.

People like them make me seek that much harder to look for the good in everything. I have encountered a few of these people within my educational career, both in classmates and in professors. They make me try to find something to like in the books and articles we read.

I had one professor who had nothing good to say about the book he had assigned us to read (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it was a computer ethics class). But if he didn’t like the book so much, why did he assign it? If he didn’t think it really addressed what he wanted it to, why would he have picked it? He set the curriculum. Hearing him basically bash the book class after class for the few weeks we had to read it, I was determined to like the book. And I did. It wasn’t one I’d put on my list of favorites, but it wasn’t bad either. But at least he wasn’t that way about everything we read that semester.

In my graduate work, I was in a class with one person over more than one semester. I never, ever, heard this person like anything we read. People won’t like everything they read, I haven’t liked all the ideas I’ve read about. But I don’t feel that way every week. This person could not find value in anything, we ever read. All of it was bad and wrong and I got sick of watching them roll their eyes and criticize everything.

The way I look at it, even a bad theory or a bad research design, can help us see what was understood then and what could be different now. We should analyze and see where they went right, and then look at where they went wrong and make different choices next time. The studies we were reading did get some things right. Without making mistakes and falling down, you can never get up and do better.

The way this person looked at things though, if a study could not be perfect and take into account every single variable and produce a theory that could be generalized to every situation throughout the world; it was completely worthless and deserved only scorn and ridicule. Especially if the results of the study did not match up with her personal experience.

What is this person even doing in a department they obviously hate so much? How can a person live with so much negativity in their lives all the time? And why does this person have to take classes with me?