Another character flaw, which I see as being closely related to the one I discussed last time (not being very good at standing up for myself), is that of naivety.
When I speak of naivety and how it's affected my life in a Greek tragedy sort of way, I mean it affected aspects of my life after my two years with the Vienna mission too, but I don't want to get to far ahead of myself here, so I'll focus mainly on how it affected my life up through my Vienna years.
For starters, it was naive of me to not be aware of my father's work, and then extending that knowledge to realize it might affect me and my career interests. I don't remember dad talking about his work, at least not with me or in my presence. We always had dinner all together as a family (of course, with the usual occasional exceptions where one or the other of us might be missing), but I don't remember him ever talking about his work then. And I don't know that I did much alone with dad, although I remember him a couple times trying to encourage me about something and giving me an example from his life. But those were generally examples from his youth or childhood. When we had company I do remember him talking about his work some, but I only remember him talking about the commercial airplane side of Boeing. I do remember that he gave my brothers posters from Boeing's aerospace program though. I actually remember more about mom's work as a nurse as she'd talk about various recent events either about staff interactions or interactions with the juvenile inmates.
And my interest in international things developed in a fairly logical (I think) sequence from about 6th grade on. In 6th grade I remember selecting international newspaper articles, for current events class, then I started taking French as an elective in 7th grade, which is when foreign language was first offered during my school years. I continued with that through 10th grade, when school levy failure had meant cut back in classes, so I had to chose one to drop, and I chose French. (In Washington state schools are mostly financed via local elections.) Then in college I picked up the French again and was intending initially to study international business until it became clear that I didn't have the acumen for the math end (accounting, statistics) of that subject, so I decided to change to European Studies and minor in Russian. I was interested in Russian because of my Ukrainian heritage (on my maternal grandmother's side) and having the most exposure to that part of my background.
Early cues that there may have been a conflict between my interests and my dad's work were memorable enough that they stuck out as being unusual, but not enough for me to make the connection that I might be in for quite a ride if I stuck to my interests. The first cue did happen more than once, but it wasn't direct and forceful enough to cross my naivety barrier. In my undergraduate Russian studies I enjoyed sometimes playing with the language - such as our rendition of the famous French children's song "Frere Jacques" that we Russian students would pull out at the end of the quarter when we were all burned out with studies. Our rendition went like this:
Ya ne znayu, ya ne znayu
nichego, nichego
Ya ne ponimayu, ya ne ponimayu
Vsyo ravno, vsyo ravno.
Which translates as something like this:
I don't know, I don't know
anything, anything
I don't understand, I don't understand,
I don't care, I don't care.
(I'm not using a standard transliteration format, but the words should be recognizable to anyone who knows Russian.)
Along those same lines, I enjoyed from time to time reminding my brothers that the Russian word for brother is "brat" (although it's not pronounced the same as the word "brat" in English, but I still took liberties in making that connection).
And I also at least a couple times mentioned how my name in Russian, where use of the patronymic for everyday interactions instead of the last name was common, and necessarily included my father's name with the -ovna at the end to indicate "daughter of", which would come out something like this: Meg Mikhailovna. When I did that, however, my dad never seemed pleased, which was very uncharacteristic of him. He might say something like, "Do you have to do that?" but more likely, he would just sort of tense up and his face might show some displeasure. But he never explained his reaction and I never asked.
The other early clue, if I'd picked up on it or asked for more clarification (or both), was when a scientist that had worked under dad (they always re-organized work groups with each new proposal) told me that I should have studied Italian (instead of Russian), which I took at the time to be a reference to my ethnic background (on my paternal grandfather's side). I think I mentioned this in an earlier post in my chronological discussion. This man was the head of the U.S. side of a French-U.S. sister-city association organization, of which I was a member and I was a citizen representative on the first exchange group to France.
During my undergraduate years I did start to become a bit more aware of what my dad did, but I still didn't understand much about military things (he was in a military industrial complex position). It wasn't until I moved to another city after my undergraduate studies ended to go to Bible school in the same city where I'd done a short-term summer mission stint working with Russian emigants that I began to feel that something about my dad's work was affecting me. At that point, though, it was more of a gut feeling than anything.
None of this served to divert my interest in missions in Eastern Europe, however, and I was slow to understand the seriousness of these clues as well as the seriousness of other clues about the nature of Eastern European missions. So in this way my continued naivety affected my choices.
Also, I think that my naivety is probably to a large degree from mom being my role model, whether conscious or otherwise. She certainly wasn't the only female role model I had available to me, but she was arguably the most influential one. Whether or not she is as naive as me, I'm not sure, but she had (and has, despite her health limitations for living this out now) an adventurous and outgoing way of looking at life that seemed to believe the best about most every situation and person. If she got wise about something, it was not in a proactive way, but reactive to something usually pretty egregious. So I think I picked this up from her, although I'm sure I gave it my own twist in as much as I'm a different personality from her in many ways.
[4/8/11 comments: In hind sight, I think my dad might have had some naivety also in that he believed the best in people and institutions. So in this way both of my parents could have influenced me.]
So there you have it, I am mostly not good at defending myself and I am naive to boot.
***
Returning to our text in the new section, "The Second through Fourth Year".
"Stage two might be termed the performance stage. For Nougaim and Hall (1968), it was signaled by a shift in emphasis from safety and security to a concern with achievement, the making of a mark. For Schein (1971a), the stage began with the transfer of the individual to an assignment that embodies his first genuine responsibilities. The desire for achievement and for the recognition that goes with it suggests the experiences most likely to influence commitment during this intermediate stage. Most influential will be those that reinforce the fledgling manager's sense that he is making a real contribution, carrying his own weight. This class of experience is labeled personal significance reinforcement or personal importance. Managers who believe themselves to be making significant contributions and who sense that their contributions are appreciated are likely to develop commitment." (p. 536-537).
It's possible that the mission intended it's sending me on mission trips to be something along the lines of how this transition is described here. I did like these trips and I think I did okay on them, so I don't think there was a problem in that respect. But the thing is that my primary reference group was still the secretaries and for day in and day out my secretarial work was anything but fulfilling (probably most of my temp jobs back home have been more challenging than the office positions I held with the mission), and I still didn't feel like I had much in common with the other secretaries. In addition, I only went on one regular women's ministry trip and the other one-day trips were for English teaching and were done by the secretaries, which just reinforced my being identified as a secretary. And by that time I'd learned enough that what I did day in and day out was what was most important career-wise, and I still disagreed, anyway, with the group norms.
***
The author continues describing other characteristics of managers in this point of their career. (I'm disregarding the fact that the discussion is specifically about managers.)
"Another characteristic of managers in the middle of the second stage, particularly before achieving significant accomplishments, will be uncertainty regarding the suitability of the career choice... Another potentially influential experience is fear of failure." (p. 537)
I didn't see my experiences in Vienna so much as indicating whether or not I was in the right field, because I still saw the field (the calling, really) as bigger than the organization itself. That is organized mission work was not the final word on what mission to Eastern Europe was, was like, or entailed. That's because, I thought I had enough background to believe that 1) they didn't have to go to the lengths they did to let security concerns morph them into something only tangentially recognizable as Christian, and 2) I didn't think they should, based on biblical teaching, go to such lengths.
So I didn't question my suitability for mission work to that part of the world, but I did certainly question whether or not I could work with mission organizations, and eventually decided that I couldn't.
As to fear of failure, I think I did feel like a failure, especially at the end. That's because I had finally begun to absorb some of the mission's actions towards me and interpret them as failure on my part. If this had happened the first few months of my time with the mission I probably would have come through the debasement exercise and been integrated into the mission more in the usual manner. But this is assuming a lot and I come to this conclusion this with much confidence.
***
"Organizations vary in the degree to which they encourage commitment norms among their managers, but those who expect commitment seem more likely to get it (Selznick, 1957)." (p. 537)
The Vienna missions demanded total commitment, where the mission was virtually the final word for everything the whole duration of your time with them, and even, to a certain extent, afterward for a while, in that you would be expected to respect security issues as relevant. For example, the mission wouldn't be there to read your prayer letters any more, but you'd know how to censor yourself in communications with others about the mission.
***
I didn't get very far in the discussion of the text, but I need to get on with my day again, so I'll just have to pick up where I left off next time.
