I'm generally pretty selective when it comes to connecting with other people on social media. I have about 400 Facebook friends (and shrinking), 170 or so Instagram followers (and holding), and I don't do Twitter. The exception is LinkedIn. In my own mind, I am a LinkedIn whore. I hate using that term, but this is how my brain has labeled it, and it's an inside joke with myself (and now anyone reading this blog), so as my brain states it, let it be known. I also share the least of myself on LinkedIn. There is a photo and the laundry list of jobs I've had and companies I've worked for, the college I attended (more on that later), and a couple of volunteer positions. In the work world, you're encouraged to be extraverted, to connect, to *network* as far and wide as possible. It's expected. "Get comfortable being uncomfortable," and all that. So, along those lines, the more connections you make, even virtual ones, with people you may never meet in real life, the better. Right? Right.
I have over a thousand connections on LinkedIn (and growing, admittedly at a very slow pace). It's to the point that my profile says "500+ connections" instead of getting specific. Even when I, the account holder, check that list of connections, the description at the top says "About 1,000 results." A thousand-ish. This is not me bragging, but illustrating how decidedly unpicky I am when it comes to connecting on LinkedIn. I don't post there, I mostly lurk, and if you and I have one connection in common, I will most likely accept your request to connect. It's just good business, right? Right.
What surprises me is how unprofessional certain posts are on LinkedIn. I don't want to hear about political opinions, or birthdays, or memes. That's Facebook territory. Holidays are a mixed bag. Veterans Day is a big one. I'm a veteran and many of my connections are as well. It's not something to be taken lightly. I will always value the experiences I gained during my service. It opened my eyes to a life I would not have known in different circumstances. That said, I didn't give all that much. There will always be a ranking among veterans: those who deployed in peacetime, those who served in war, those bearing physical, mental or psychological scars from their service, and among all of us, we personally know those who sacrificed their lives. There is always a feeling that you could have given more, done more - that someone else had done the most. Maybe it is survivor's guilt, or being hard on yourself in the way military life always asks for more of you, to the point that you don't feel you've ever given enough. So when I saw one of my connections post a photo in celebration of Veterans Day, it raised my eyebrows.
Aside from the ridiculousness of this message and its complete irrelevance to veterans, I realized, I don't know this person. I have plenty of LinkedIn connections that fall into that "I don't actually know them" category, but what I felt inside was, I don't know this person and I don't think I want to know this person. She and I had several connections in common and I'm fairly certain she sent me the request to connect. Given my very lax (nonexistent) vetting process, and my lack of having this individual on my radar, I decided to look deeper.
Ignoring the idiocy of Jodi Pliska, Ph.D's post (from the message that a bad attitude is one's only disability, to using a dog in its wheelchair as some kind of surrogate veteran (?!), and finally to "double TAPPING an image to show vets some love, which does what, exactly?) I noticed something incredibly fishy in her message. I had to ask myself if it was worth making a comment. Did I really want to be the one pissing in the post with little dogs (with one in a wheelchair, no less!)? Did I really want to be *that* person?
After finding myself unable to just ignore it and keep scrolling, as we are so often advised to do, I decided that, yes, I did want to be that person. I needed to say something.
That was it. I left my thoughts there, in as neutral a way as I could muster. No feelings, no insults, no fuss, no muss. Just the facts, and in fact, a very easily Google-able fact at that (yes, I Googled, which is ridiculous, because if by some miracle after 218 years of existence, West Point suddenly did offer a Master's program, I would have known!).
Inside, upset was brewing, on multiple fronts.
First, why would someone lie about something so obviously disproven? I went to her profile (okay, stalked) to see how thoroughly she perpetuated this mythical West Point Master's degree.
At the top level, it looked like this:
Given this information, one would have the impression that she attended the United States Military Academy at West Point. It says it right there. I knew that was incorrect, but I also suspected she was bending the truth by being deliberately misleading.
If you click on the education portion while looking at someone's profile on LinkedIn, you will get another screen with more detailed information (I did not know about this feature until I had the opportunity to use it). This is where you can read the fine print:
Here, things come into focus. Ignoring the other two schools listed, at the bottom of the description, it says "WEST POINT through LIU."
What does that mean, you ask? "LIU" is Long Island University, which has campuses around New York, and the school does in fact use some of the
classroom space at West Point. And, there were uniformed students who attended, because they needed to earn a Master's degree to prepare for the positions they would hold at West Point, and it's very convenient to attend those classes when you are already stationed there. So, you could
say you attended classes at West Point because you were physically sitting there, in a classroom, at West Point. Her Veterans Day post could be viewed as being true if you cock your head and close an eye, but it is an extremely stretched out truth.
The irony is that she's lying about having earned a degree from a place known for placing a high importance on honor. "Honor" is at the center of our school motto. We have an Honor Code, which can result in a perfectly stellar student being removed from the academy for lying, cheating or stealing. A large part of the honor investigations deal with determining whether a cadet conducted him or herself with the intent to deceive, to gain an unfair advantage. Yes, there are people who lie on their resumes, and it's done with the intent to deceive, to gain an unfair advantage over others. This is an expanded way of doing that, but to lie about attending a school that prides itself on producing graduates of high integrity, seems especially egregious. In doing so, she is slapping the face of some of the veterans she's trying to honor in her (admittedly lame) post.
These were not my initial thoughts. I had to stew over it. By the next day I was angry for so many reasons. I am a West Point graduate. I can say that without hesitation, without an asterisk, without anyone clicking through my profile to see that I went to classes there but my degree is actually from an entirely different school. I went there, and it was not easy for me. I went there and struggled, all four years, to earn my Bachelor's degree. I went there, I wore the uniform, and graduated, and then served in the Army, as graduates are expected to do. I went there, and still have the occasional dream that I am at the bottom of the second semester, my senior year, and I have skipped an entire class. It's the dream of those suffering from
impostor syndrome. The dream of those who, despite their achievements, and despite what they have to offer the world, feel it still somehow isn't enough. Then you have an
actual impostor, staring you right in the face (or, you know, from their profile photo on LinkedIn), boldly staking claim to something they had not done the work to earn. It's
stolen valor, academic edition.
That is not to say a Master's degree is not hard work. Or that I'm looking down my nose at anyone who attended Long Island University. I'm saying, claim your school, claim it proudly, and tell the truth. With a few alterations, she could have edited her post to reflect the whole truth. More and more, I think of
the Cadet Prayer, which, like so many things, has gained personal significance to me as I've grown older. I don't know the entire prayer by heart, but one line with forever stick with me: "Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won."
The following day I commiserated with friends (women who had graduated with me from West Point). I peeked under the rock for her post, and noticed that my comment had been deleted. How convenient, I thought. And those were my kid gloves. I posted again. I don't need to look to know that it's gone the way of my first comment. I was a little less gracious and a little more angry (and a lot more verbose).
My disappointment in the world seeps through. It seems that those who are the loudest, or the most proficient at promoting their "brand" are the ones who get ahead. Even if you scrape the most basic layer of this person's claimed credentials, the facade crumbles. But how many are doing that? How many people is she "life coaching" to success when the image she shows people to see is false? Is authenticity and integrity part of this coaching? I sure hope not.
The claim that she attended West Point was not the only bold faced lie (shocking, I know!). Witnesses, for exhibit B, I'd like you to look at the Ph.D credentials - in the detailed section, she states "PhD minus dissertation." *Insert record scratch here* Isn't completing the dissertation the entire point of the Ph.D? (Answer: yes.) One of the friends I commiserated with is in a Ph.D program now. When she saw this, she added a comment of her own, which most likely was also deleted.
Is this the world we want? If you give the illusion of being the thing, is that every bit as valid as doing the work it takes to become the thing? If you don't like when someone calls you out, you can tidy away their response like it never happened (and hope that not too many people saw). What the Cadet Prayer misses, is that the wrong that initially appeared to be the easier option, becomes hard. "Wrong is hard, too" a friend of mine told me, and it stuck. When that person who hired you decides to verify your claims and discovers you are not who you say you are, when you have to jog your memory for which version of the story you told someone, when you have to look at yourself and know that what you are showing the world does not match what is happening inside of you, the lie becomes exponentially harder than the truth.
No, the truth is not always shiny, or cool, or easy, but it is always right.
