Why Freshmen Fail: Addendum

A couple of years ago, I wrote a series of posts exploring some of the many reasons that college freshmen fail academically. As I approach the end of my third year of undergraduate advising, I've realized that this series was incomplete. Here are two more reasons freshmen may fail.

1. Substance abuse. I should have thought of this one well before now, especially after one of the 18-year old students I taught during my very first year quipped--in all seriousness--that he was giving up alcohol (and, presumably, the underage drinking that would accompany it) for Lent. The following year, one of my advisees was dismissed--from his second college in a row--for marijuana possession. But the first student was an honors student who earned top grades and the second had a helicopter parent who bailed him out of all his scrapes, so I guess I attributed his failure to other factors. This year, however, I had an advisee who came to college with a near-perfect verbal SAT score and very good high school grades. She promptly began missing classes and failing to turn in assignments. When I met with her, she told me that she had "difficulty with transitions" and that she had lost her wallet, keys and phone over the weekend. She then mumbled something about having been arrested, too. In the spirit of "unconditional positive regard" that reigns in advising, I filed that tidbit away for the future, asking her instead if everything was OK and had been resolved. She said she needed a new ID and a way to get some cash, so I connected her with those resources and suggested that we meet weekly to make sure that this transition went a little more smoothly. That was the last I heard from her until shortly after midterms, and I didn't succeed in meeting with her one on one until she finally came in to get a tutor for one of her classes. In the meantime, I began hearing from her instructors about her chronic absence and tardiness. When one instructor reported that she appeared "disheveled" when she came to class at all, I began to suspect that something more was going on. I pressed her for more details about her absences, but all she would say is that she was sick (vomiting and dizziness. hmm...) a lot. At this point I figured she was either pregnant or on drugs, and I reported my suspicions to the Dean's office. To make a long story short, this semester has been no better for her. She finally admitted to abusing drugs and alcohol--though not to me--and is now failing two of her 4 classes. Unless she takes a term withdrawal, she will flunk out at the end of the academic year. Other students manage to hide their substance use better than she did, I'm sure, but her story illustrates the impact that substance abuse can have on a person's ability simply to function and meet obligations.

2. Intentional failure. I'll admit, this one is still a head-scratcher for me. In hindsight, I probably had a student in this category my very first year, but I didn't recognize it for what it was. Only this year, when one of my colleagues commented that she'd had a student admit to failing his classes intentionally, did the light come on. These are the students who either don't want to go to college or who didn't want to come to this college, and who now feel trapped here by parents who filled out the admissions applications for them, paid their tuition, packed their U-Hauls, and dropped them off on campus during orientation. Rather than finding their adult voices and trying to explain to their parents why they don't wish to follow this path at this time, these students  figure that flunking out is the only way out of their predicament--and for some, maybe it is. These students ignore or refuse all offers of assistance. This year, my coworker finally asked her advisee point-blank if he was intentionally trying to fail. He admitted to it, and she then had to work to convince him that wasting his parents' money in this way was not the adult thing to do. I'm not sure how she left it, but it got the rest of us wondering how many of our worst cases might be in this category. I don't think I have any this year, but my first year I had a student whose high school transcript indicated a high level of involvement with the local volunteer fire department and as a lifeguard with advanced training at a local pool. His admissions essay also addressed the satisfaction and personal growth he'd derived from these activities. He wasn't a stellar student in high school, and he didn't do any better in college. I could never reach him for meetings, and in fact the first in-person meeting I had with him was on the deadline to take a term withdrawal to avoid potentially flunking out. And he only came in because the Dean succeeded in reaching his mother, who persuaded him to meet with me. I remember wondering at the time if this student really wanted to be a fireman or an EMT instead of earning a college degree, but there was no time to explore the topic at that meeting. Still, it never occurred to me that he might not even make an effort, or that he might be trying to flunk out just to get his parents off his back about going to college.

These are, without a doubt, the most difficult cases I've had to deal with. Chronic absence is a warning sign in both, and it can be difficult to get students to come clean about either substance abuse or intentional failure. And it's difficult to watch a suspected substance abuser who isn't yet ready to change his/her lifestyle spiral downward. These are the low points of my job. Lest I leave us all on such a depressing note, my next post--whenever I get time to write it--will highlight some success stories.

Small Boy, Big Disease

Imagine voluntarily giving up your favorite food for forty days. If you are one of the millions of Christians worldwide who observe Lent, this is likely a familiar exercise for you. This has been my experience for the past 10 years or so, and it’s a challenge that I have come to look forward to most years.

Now imagine giving up multiple common foods for an entire year or so, not for your own benefit but for the good of someone else. Eating just to maintain your own well-being becomes exponentially more challenging and often requires careful advance planning. Social eating—at restaurants, parties, and staff meetings—becomes almost impossible. This has been my experience for the past five months, since we discovered that our daughter has sensitivities to dairy, soy, wheat, and possibly corn—the four most common sources of the additives that are found in most prepared (grocery and restaurant) foods. I’d like to say that I have handled this challenge with the grace and equanimity that Lent seems to inspire, but I can’t. Even knowing that it’s for my daughter’s good, and, in the grand scheme of life, is only for a fleeting moment, it’s been a long, tough road—and it’s not over yet. Only after meeting with a feeding specialist a few weeks ago have I begun to make peace with this reality.

NOW imagine having to give up eating anything at all for the rest of your life. Nothing by mouth ever again. You can go out with your family and friends to a restaurant, but while they get to choose anything they like off the menu, the only thing you’ll be enjoying is the conversation. And this reality will be your new normal—it will never be otherwise. How would you feel? Sad? Angry? Bitter? Finally, imagine that the recipient of this diagnosis isn’t you, but your young son or daughter. What other emotions would you add to the list? This is my two year-old nephew’s experience, and the experience of thousands of other children who have gastro-intestinal complications of mitochondrial disease.

Mitochondrial disease is actually a blanket term for a number of chronic, genetic conditions and complexes--some of which haven’t even been named yet—that involve the failure of not just organs but entire systems of organs within the body. These organs fail because the mitochondria—the parts of the cell that convert the proteins, fats and carbohydrates in food into the energy needed for the cells to perform their various functions—fail, causing injury and even death to the cell they occupy. Mitochondrial disease is difficult to detect, in part because it is so poorly understood, and in part because doctors understandably focus their attention on the secondary conditions the disease causes.  Typically, mitochondrial disease is considered when three different organ systems appear to be affected, or when a secondary disease presents with atypical symptoms, but even then it can take years for a diagnosis. For up-to-date, reputable information about mito, check out Mito Action and the UMDF website.

My sweet, smiling nephew, Taavi, has struggled with a host of health issues since his birth nearly two years ago. He has had severe GERD (reflux) from the beginning, and it ultimately had to be treated with a surgical (“Nissen”) procedure and the placement of his first feeding tube at 8 months. At nine months, even with the addition of extra calories to the formula fed to him via the g-tube, he stopped gaining weight and was diagnosed as failure to thrive. A gastric emptying test a few months later determined that his digestive was essentially paralyzed and therefore unable to digest food and absorb the nutrients needed for life and growth--a condition known as gastroparesis, for which there is no cure. Taavi has been dependent on his feeding tubes ever since, and he will remain dependent on them for the rest of his life, unless a cure is found. In addition to his digestive troubles, he has also been diagnosed with hip dysplasia (corrected surgically at 5 months of age), gross developmental delays that began to be apparent as early as his first month, thrombocytopenia (a low platelet count that caused a minor brain hemorrhage at birth and left him with two lesions on his brain), Sandifer’s syndrome (seizure-like spasms related to severe GERD), hypotonia (low muscle tone), conductive hearing loss and mastoid disease, dysphagia (difficulty swallowing), feeding intolerance, intestinal dysmotility, ataxia (lack of control over muscle movements), apraxia (hard to describe; read this page for more information), an inability to regulate his body temperature, increased sensitivity to pain, and strabismus (crossed eyes).  About a year ago, his doctors began to fit the pieces together. They suspected a metabolic disorder of some kind and eventually diagnosed him with mitochondrial disease. He has spent much of his short life so far being poked, prodded, tested, and operated on. Yet he has a ready smile for those he interacts with.

Well-meaning people, on learning of Taavi’s disease, will often comment on how good he looks. No doubt they hope to encourage his parents by their remarks, but as the mother of a slow-gaining refluxer myself, I can tell you that these comments actually have just the opposite effect—they make you doubt your own instincts when you know things aren’t right, and they can make it difficult to get your child the help s/he needs. Taavi may, indeed, look good at times, but he is still a very sick little boy. He has retained the failure to thrive diagnosis, as he has difficulty taking in the volume of food that he needs to grow and develop even through the feeding tubes. The food just sits in the stomach until there’s no more room. A few weeks ago, the surgeons recently replaced his g-tube (a tube that goes into the stomach) with a g-j tube (a tube with multiple ports that go into the stomach and intestines) in hopes that bypassing the stomach would enable him to take in a larger volume of food, but his muscles are thickened and his intestines were impacted, causing the inner tube to be forced up against the bowel wall.  This caused an immense amount of pain, and since he could no longer tolerate his feedings, he quickly became dehydrated and ill. So, only a few days later, Taavi had to be readmitted to the hospital to have another procedure done and another tube—a j tube—placed.  We remain hopeful that the doctors will find a workable solution to ensure that Taavi can tolerate his feedings and receive the nutrition he needs to grow and develop, but the sobering reality is that without a functioning feeding tube, Taavi will die of dehydration and starvation. And even without the gastroparesis, the nature of mitochondrial disease means that he could be fighting for his life at any time.

It’s hard to write this post. It’s hard to think about the possibility of losing someone dear to you, and even harder to think about that person being so young a child. Hardest of all is realizing that your own brother-in-law, sister-in-law (OK—technically Taavi’s mom is “my brother-in-law’s wife” but that sounds way too distant and unfeeling for someone I hold dear), and niece may lose a beloved son and brother if a solution cannot be found. And right now, there is no cure for either gastroparesis or the mitochondrial disease that has caused it.  The medical community has only recently begun to understand the function and importance of cellular mitochondria. Yet, the latest statistics estimate that mito occurs as frequently as cystic fibrosis or childhood cancer—and claims more lives. And these are only the confirmed cases. Many others go undiagnosed.

As I write this difficult post, it is the end of Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week. Taavi is in the hospital, recovering from his latest, emergency, surgery. His parents and others who love him are waiting on the latest round of test results and praying for some answers and solutions, and, ultimately, a cure. And that’s where you come in. Unlike Taavi’s father and uncle, I am not a runner and cannot participate in a charity run. But I can write, and I can use this blog for something more important than my usual ranting about the deplorable state of our educational system. Now that I’ve made you aware of this debilitating disease, would you join with us in praying for this special little boy and thousands of others like him? Would you take a few minutes to pass on this post or the links to the mitochondrial disease websites to just one more person, to help spread the word? Would you consider making a donation (through the websites above) that would fund some much needed research? It’s not just about my nephew—if you consider the statistics, there’s a good chance that someone you know personally is or will be affected by this disease. Massive fundraising and awareness campaigns have resulted in great strides toward treating and curing childhood cancers and other debilitating illnesses. They are all worthy causes. Let’s get busy and add mitochondrial disease to that list. Thanks for reading. And if you would like to keep up with how Taavi is doing, please check out his website at Caring Bridge.

New and Important Post Coming Soon

Today is the fifth day of Mitochondrial Disease Awareness Week. My nephew is currently in the hospital recovering from a surgery related to complications from this disease. I will be departing from the usual themes of this blog in order to address this more important topic, but I need to let his mother preview and correct my draft first. Stay tuned. In the mean time, may I suggest you get a head start by reading about the disease at one or both of the following excellent websites: Mito Action and the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation.

What's Your Major?

Thanks to my husband, who is an avid reader of the XKCD webcomic, I have discovered the real reason so many students in this generation list their major as "undecided." Enjoy!  http://xkcd.com/1052/

Handel's Messiah: A (very amateur) Listening Guide

A week before Thanksgiving, my husband and I had a rare free evening. He was working on a computer project in the office and decided to listen to Handel's Messiah as he worked. I had planned to do the dishes and then play a game or do some reading, but when I heard the familiar opening chords, I sat down and listened, too.

I've always liked the Messiah, but it's usually playing in the background while I clean, write, or drive. The last time I actually sat down to listen to the entire piece was about 5 or 6 years ago, when the ladies from my Sunday School class all went to a live performance at the National Cathedral. The company was enjoyable that night, but the venue was so drafty that the instruments had to stop several times to retune, including right before the Hallelujah Chorus and. I'm not sure which would have been worse: allowing the instruments to play the pieces out of tune (and potentially confusing the chorus), or interrupting the flow of the piece. In any case, the choppy performance was highly distracting.

So this time, as I listened with my full attention, I noticed several interesting things about the piece that I hadn't before. I'm not sure how many of them were intentional on Handel's part, how many of them were the result of the conductor's interpretation (for reference, the version we have is the Neville Mariner/Academy of St. Martin in the Fields performance of the original 1748 score), and how many are simply the result of the soloists' diction. But I heard a number of "musical jokes" or references, and I therefore offer this amateur listening guide. I won't claim any profound level of insight into the piece, but I am curious if others hear the same things I do, or if there are other references I have missed along the way.

"Comfort Ye My People:" the first time the soloist sings the word "iniquity," the chord structure of the music changes as if to convey the dissonance of sin itself.

"The People That Walked in Darkness:" this piece starts off with heavy, almost plodding, chords, and "lightens" as the light "dawns" on the people ("have seen a great light").

"Glory to God:" the string technique used here (I'm not a string player and so don't know the technical name) gives the impression of the fluttering of the wings of the angel chorus. Steve pointed out that the contrasting quiet of "and peace on earth" in the men's sections could be the echo off the hills.

"His Yoke Is Easy:" compare the lightness of this piece to the heaviness of "The People That Walked in Darkness."

"All We Like Sheep:" there's a lot of "turning" in the music itself in this piece.

"He Trusted in God:" one of my favorites. I can just imagine this refrain spreading through the crowd watching the crucifixion. It has the feel of gossip spreading through a large group of people.

"Thou Shalt Break Them:" the soloist in this version sings "thou shalt dash them into pieces" in such a way that you can picture something being thrown violently toward the ground.

And finally, note the difference in harmonics between "Behold the Lamb of God" and the final piece, "Worthy Is the Lamb." The former quotes the announcement of John the Baptist in John 1:29 ("Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of world!") and is in a mournful minor key, as if to foreshadow the crucifixion for which the Messiah came into the world. The latter quotes Revelation 4:11 and is in a joyous major key, as if to celebrate the work accomplished by the Messiah who now sits at the Father's side in heaven and reigns as Lord of all.

Happy listening, and Happy Christmas!

On Board Games and Tenure

When we lived in Columbus, we were introduced to the wide world of what I'll refer to as non-traditional board games. These games--often but not always European in origin--aren't your typical "roll the dice and move around the board" games like Monopoly and Life. These games frequently involve more strategy than luck and usually have an original twist to the game mechanic that makes them interesting for more than their social value. "Games night" has never been the same for us since.

One of the more unusual games we played was a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the academic tenure process called "Survival of the Witless." It took hours to play, and we never successfully completed an entire game. This was partly due to complexity of the game--there were many components to keep of track of--but mainly it was because the objective was so difficult to attain.

I now believe that the impossibility of the game's goal was intentional on the part of the game designers. That goal was tenure, and I think the designers wanted to convey the impression that tenure was impossible to achieve through normal channels. More on that idea later; in the game, players tried to reach tenure status by publishing a book and earning the approval of each of the half-dozen diverse members of the tenure committee. Book publishing was the easier of the two tasks, and was accomplished by drawing a book contract card and a set number of chapter cards from the deck. There were a limited number of contract cards in the deck, though, so in larger games one or more players were unlikely to complete the publishing requirement. Influencing the tenure committee was also determined by card draws, and was tracked on a score board. Six committee members were randomly selected from the committee deck, and each committee member was biased in a different way. Other (non book-related) cards in the draw pile influenced the committee members favorably or unfavorably toward a player. For example, a player might draw the "hereditary academic" card, which meant that from that point in the game, the player represented a tenure candidate who came from a family tradition of university professors. Some committee members were favorably disposed toward hereditary academics and others were not. Other cards caused players to lose favor with all committee members through activities that made already-tenured professors look bad (for example, the "teacher of the year award" card, because no one on the committee wants to be upstaged by a mere associate professor) or to gain favor with one or more committee members (the popular "butt-kissing" card). Favor was tracked on the big score sheet on a scale of 1 to 10 and was constantly in flux, and only when a candidate had an approval rating of 10 with 4 or 5 (I can't remember) members of the committee AND had completed his or her book contract could s/he win the game.

We only played "Witless" twice. The first time I think we quit after about six hours of play. The second time was at a New Year's Eve party, and when it became clear that this game would also drag on interminably, my husband decided to try and win the game the other way. The rules stated that at any time, a player could choose to "go postal" and roll a die in an attempt to kill off, one at a time, the entire committee. If s/he succeeded, new members would be drawn from the deck, and the players would pick up where they were, hopeful that the new committee members would be more favorable. It almost worked. Steve rolled the die and successfully killed off four or five of the committee members. But the new committee wasn't any better, and we decided that we were more interested in popping the cork on the Ukranian red champagne as the new year approached.

In the real world of academia, if there is such a place, tenure is the ultimate goal for most graduate students and junior faculty. Tenure means a guaranteed job, a respected identity in the community, and--the holy grail for most of us--the freedom to teach what you wish, however you wish. It represents an arrival of sorts, because what the committee is saying is that you can now be trusted to teach your subject without having to submit your syllabus for approval and without having to submit to periodic evaluation. And although tenure isn't as impossible to attain as it is in "Witless," the process is lengthy and can sometimes be political.

But tenure is not the normal track for new hires anymore, for two reasons. First, the economic downturn has taken a toll on university budgets. To be sure, many tenured professors' salaries are funded by endowments, thus reducing the cost to the school, but it's more expensive to pay a new hire at associate or assistant professor rates for 10 or 20 years than it is to pay them as adjuncts, contractors who receive a flat fee for each course they teach. Adjuncts have to teach more classes than associate professors in order to earn the same money, and a heavier teaching load cuts into the research time needed to meet the publication requirement for tenure. The second reason for the decline of tenure is a shift in the general population's attitude toward it. In recent years, the concept of tenure--the idea that an institution can't fire a professor if s/he makes politically incorrect or unpopular statements--has come under fire, as a result of several widely-publicized cases of tenured faculty saying outrageous and objectionable things (e.g., the University of Colorado professor who compared the financiers in the World Trade Center to Adolf Eichmann). The notion of teachers who aren't accountable to anyone doesn't sit well with modern students or the parents who pay their tuition bills, either. A recent edition of "Inside Higher Ed" reported the case of Steven Maranville, who was denied tenure by Utah Valley University for using teaching methods that his students disliked. The case is troubling: the "objectionable" techniques--group projects and Socratic dialogue--had been observed and approved by Dr. Maranville's superiors, who described him as a "master teacher." Only the students, who apparently just wanted to be lectured and left alone, complained. Additionally, the university had all but promised Dr. Maranville, who had already earned tenure at another institution, tenure within a year of his hiring. After being fired by Utah Valley, Dr. Maranville took a considerable pay cut to start at the bottom at a third school.

The Maranville case illustrates perhaps the biggest difference between the way the designers of "Witless" portrayed the tenure process in the late 1990's and the new reality that today's tenure-track faculty face (excepting, of course, the existence of the "go postal" option in the game). In the board game, the receipt of an award for teaching excellence counted against you; in the real world, student evaluations are taken seriously--sometimes too seriously. On one level, the desires of teachers and students are perfectly compatible; students want to take interesting and relevant courses as much as teachers want to teach them. And no teacher enjoys failing a student, no matter how poor the student's work. Good teachers want their students to be engaged in the material and successful in the course. But we also don't to give easy A's. We want to challenge students to wrestle with difficult material, to think and solve problems, and to do their best. Sadly, many of today's college students are used to earning top grades with minimal effort, and they expect their university experience to be no different. They resist instructional methods that are new to them, and they think they know how to teach better than the teacher does. Saddest of all, some university officials and tenure committee members seem to agree with the students, forgetting that a teacher is, by definition, an expert. Dr. Maranville's case is, alas, not the only one of its kind.

I'm not saying that a Ph. D. in a non-education field bestows a professor with the ability to teach well. In my 20-plus years as a student, I've been taught by some obviously brilliant men and women whose lectures were boring, unorganized, and delivered too quickly to take notes from-professors who would probably never win a "teacher of the year" award. So although I note the current trend toward weighting student evaluations heavily in a tenure decision with alarm, I am also not advocating the do-as-poor-a-job-as-possible-in-the-classroom approach found in "Witless." But at the end of the day, teachers, not students, generally know best how to structure a course and guide students through its content and toward its goals, and that reality needs to be upheld by faculty supervisors, whether or not the institution of tenure survives into the next generation of academics.

An A-Z of DC Traffic

This one's for my friends who have moved away and who may be feeling a bit nostalgic for DC life (you know who you are), and for those of you who have never lived in this area. Full disclosure: I had a lot of help from my husband on this one. The germ of the idea was mine, about one third of the alphabet was mine, and the annotations are mine, but the rest is his. This week, we present to you an A-Z of DC traffic.

A is for Accidents, which seem to be especially problematic on the north stretch of the Beltway, around Georgia, Connecticut and New Hampshire Aves. I can count on one hand the number of times I've driven that stretch and not encountered an accident along the way.

B is for Beltway Chaos. Ordinarily sane drivers can become quite aggressive once they merge onto the Beltway. I'm not sure why, unless they're trying to minimize the amount of time they have to spend on it. Or maybe its design was the work of demonic forces (read Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman if you don't get this one).

C is for Construction. Lots and lots of construction. Whole sections of roads and interchanges are unrecognizable now because of a massive "high occupancy toll lane" project that won't be finished until next December. It's a mess.

D is for Diplomats. They have immunity, and many of them drive like it. Fear the State Department license plate!

E is for Emergency Lights. Don't misunderstand me--I'm grateful for our first responders. But pulling over for an emergency vehicle is more difficult when the road is four lanes wide or more and being in the wrong lane after having to merge over means taking a detour or risking your life trying to get back to where you were.

F is for Frightened by Precipitation. I am terrified of winter driving now, not because I don't know what to do, but because most of the other drivers don't know what to do. I've seen cars spin out on half an inch of snow here.

G is for "Greenbeepers," my husband's term for those drivers who are second in line at a green light and honk at the car in front of them the instant it turns green.

H is for HOV, or High Occupancy Vehicle. During rush hour on certain major arteries, you must have at least 2 or 3 (depending on the road) people in your vehicle in order to drive on the road. Violators are fined, and the enforcement can seem predatory at times (like the easy-to-forget-about .10 mile shortcut that connects one of the roads to the beltway).

I is for Increased Blood Pressure. I know I've become much more irritable since we moved here, due in large part to the traffic.

J is for Jerks Everywhere. Seriously, people honk at student drivers here.

K is for Killer Bus Drivers. Think I'm making this one up? Check out this link.

L is for Long Lights. A recent traffic survey revealed that DC area drivers spend in excess of 70 hours each year idling their vehicles in gridlock and at traffic lights, some of which take 4 minutes or longer to cycle. The national "idling" average is 34 hours per year.

M is for Motorcades. When the President, Vice President, or visiting dignitary needs to travel between downtown locations, police cars block key intersections so that the motorcades can pass through. This can take a while, and can happen for any reason, including taking the Vice Presidential dog to the vet for a check-up (Sorry about the source; it was the only one I could find that referenced the original, and apparently unarchived, news article).

N is for Night Milling and Paving. Lots of road work gets done during the overnight hours here.

O is for One-way Streets. Every big city has them, but what makes DC's grid even more frustrating is how many two-way streets turn into one-way streets during rush hour.

P is for Parking Tickets. Steve got one for parking in space that was clearly marked as an acceptable location. The other side of the street was clearly marked as unacceptable. Now we're trying to navigate the contesting process. Fun!

Q is for Quirky, Inconsistent Signage. The signage where Steve parked was clear, but that's not the case everywhere. Check the picture in this article out as an example.

R is for Rush hours...and hours. Morning rush hour here starts around 6:00 and tapers off between 9 and 9:30, although you may still encounter heavy traffic as late as 11. Afternoon rush hour starts around 3 and tapers off around 7. Did I mention we spend 70+ hours a year idling?

S is for Sudden Slowdown. For any reason or sometimes no reason. It makes me appreciate having the sound system controls on the steering wheel, where I don't have to look at them.

T is for Towing. Towing is such a fact of life here that one of our friends actually factors several tows a year into his budget as part of the "cost of living." Towing companies can be predatory, too, hauling your car away within minutes.

U is for Unpredictable Traffic. One local radio station broadcasts traffic reports every 10 minutes. I thought that was ridiculous until we got stuck on I-66 at 11 PM behind an overturned semi. You just never know.

V is for Vans of Illegals. I'm not trying to be racist here, but we have a fair number of hit and run accidents on our roads. Sometimes the person is drunk or oblivious or just can't be bothered to stop, but frequently the offending vehicle is a an older model van with few windows, and the driver doesn't stop because most of those in the van are illegal immigrants who fear deportation if stopped.

W is for Weaving Across Multiple Lanes. Enough said.

X is for Xenomanic Drving Tendencies (we didn't want to resort to the standard X-tra cop-out). Very few people in the DC metro area are actually from this region. Most of us are transplants from other parts of the country, or from other countries, here for a few months or few years. Everyone--New Yorkers, New Englanders, Californians, etc.--drives according to their local road culture. And everyone thinks their way is best.

Y is for Yield! Yield! Look, I'm going to have merge onto this road. We can do this the easy way, with you slowing down just a bit to let me over, or we can do this the hard way, by forcing me to come to a complete stop and really messing up the traffic flow. Oh, I see that you prefer the hard way.

Z is for Zero Room for Error. I've always had quick reflexes, but now my flinch reflex is on permanent hyperdrive. Just ask Steve--I know it drives him crazy.

What are some of your own local traffic quirks? I'd enjoy reading about them. Stay safe out there!