Temple Grandin

by Anita Lesko

  Today, as I work under Temple as one or her graduate students, I feel an unbelievable amount of drive and passion to make a positive impact on the industry just as she has. She took a chance on me, and accepts me just as I am. I never have to change who I am around Temple, she encourages me for my strengths and doesn’t hold me down for my weaknesses. I plan to make her proud and utilize her mentorship as a driving force for my career in the animal agriculture industry.

  Working at 100%

  At Temple’s seventieth birthday celebration, Temple got up to speak. It was there where, for the first time, Temple revealed that she has fully funded eighteen graduate students over the years; their entire tuition, and all expenses. This was very shocking to many, including myself. Later, after the party, I asked her about it. She told me that she uses all the money she earns going to speak to fund her students. I stated that I was extremely impressed, to which she replied, “It’s a lot of money, but you can’t take it with you. It’s the right thing to do.”

  I asked Temple why is it important to her for her students to be published. Her answer logical and to the point. “Well, why bother to do research if you don’t publish it? The whole purpose of research is to advance knowledge and make constructive change take place. It also helps their careers to be published.” I then asked Temple what she does to help them achieve that goal. She replied, “When they write, I immediately read it. In fact, in our department, there’s a new rule. They can’t graduate unless they get papers done and published. It’s not enough to just do their thesis. They’ve got to do research and get it published.”

  One of Temple’s graduate students talked at length to me about the research that she had done with pigs. She had gotten the paper published in a scientific journal prior to initiating contact with Temple. When she finally did meet her, Temple was very pleased that this student had the initiative to have already done that. In fact, when I was in Temple’s vehicle as we drove back to CSU from the farm, I brought up that student to her. Temple was very enthusiastic about her because she had already done the research on the pigs and was published. Temple was very pleased indeed, stating that she knows that student will do extremely well with her career in the future. Like she said, that published article is that student’s portfolio.

  On the topic of the livestock industry, I asked “How do you feel as a highly successful female in a male dominated field?” Temple’s reply was, “You’ve got to be twice as good and work three times harder than the guys. One of the things that was really appalling to me was that I was on projects that guys would really screw up, I’m talking millions of dollars’ worth of screw ups, and they would still manage to have jobs afterward. In one instance, someone was building a meat packing plant that didn’t have enough waste water treatment. It got shut down. They had been told by all the engineers that they didn’t have enough waste water treatment, and the individual responsible for it still had his job after a screw up that big! That’s ego. It overloaded the town’s waste water treatment system. They were told they were going to overload the system. That’s what’s so stupid about the whole thing.”

  Temple continued, “The industry is less male-dominated now, so the females coming out of my program are getting great jobs. A lot of them are going into the animal welfare auditing companies; I’ve got two that have become professors, which is good. When I started in this field, there were no women in the live cattle part of it. The only place there would be females were in the offices as secretaries. You know, I totally agree where Sheryl Sandberg says that a man will take a job at a 60 percent level of competence, and a woman wants to be at 90 percent. When I did that dip vat project it was at the 60 percent level, and I said give me three weeks, because there was a lot on concrete reinforcement I didn’t know. I figured it would take me at least ten days to lay my hands on the drawings showing how to do the concrete reinforcement for the dip vat. Back then, everything had to be done in the mail. Then I got up to 100 percent.”

  You do know who Sheryl Sandberg is, right?

  As you can see, Temple’s students think the world of her, and she maintains the highest of integrity at all times. This brings to my mind something Temple shared with me, an experience from her college days, regarding her view of a college professor that got shattered by his unprofessional behavior. Unfortunately, we see this all too often, and with social media it becomes rampant. It is really sad that the young people of today don’t have the role models of days gone by. Temple is a rarity, as I can safely say she’ll never make a cover of anything for some bad behavior.

  Meeting the God of Psychology

  One day I asked Temple, “Who were you most impressed meeting, who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met?” I nearly fell off my chair with this one; she got pretty fired up recalling this event. Without hesitation, Temple blurted out, “I got to meet B.F. Skinner! I wrote him a letter about my squeeze machine. Then he wrote me back, saying what impressed him the most was the fact that I wrote to him, and that I was ambitious enough to do these projects. I was just a young college student so that was a huge deal, that B.F. Skinner answered the letter I sent him and invited me to come to his office. It was like having an audience with the Pope. I then asked Temple, “Tell me about the day you received his letter.” Temple replied, “I was like, ‘Oh my god! B.F. Skinner is willing to see me!’ I was so excited holding that letter in my hand. I remembered that I went and shared the news with my psychology professor. I was a psychology major at that time. And it was relatively quickly when I went to see him from the time I got that letter. Maybe a few weeks.”

  “I remember when I went into that building and looked up, it was like the temple of psychology, and I was going to meet with the god of psychology! I can also remember going into his office and he had a plant that was growing all over the place. He was an older, gray-haired man, and he motioned to sit in a chair, so we were about four or five feet apart from each other. The old letch asked to touch my legs! I told him he may look at them, but he may not touch them. I had on a dress, a really conservative dress, and he wanted to touch my legs! Just recently I was telling someone about that whole thing, and they said, ‘Oh, that was typical B.F. Skinner!’ When I started reading all the stuff about Harvey Weinstein, it made me think of B.F. Skinner. Anyway, after I told him that, he backed off and never tried it again. I was alone with him in his office, in the daytime during business hours, at the Williams James Psychology building at Harvard. It was very quick into the conversation when he asked if he could touch my legs!”

  Temple continued her story, “I can remember walking up to the William James building, which was a very impressive building. I can remember standing in front of the front door and looking at the size of the building, like it was the monument of psychology. I was going to the epicenter of psychology. Well, that’s how I felt as I went into the William James building. I felt a little different coming out. Oh, and when I went to my car it had a ticket on it. I was pretty disappointed when he asked to touch my legs. I mean, he wrote all these psychology books, he was just on the cover of Time magazine. He instantly wasn’t a god anymore, just a guy. Then I remember walking together to his rat colony, and I said to him, ‘If only we could learn about the brain.’ He said, ‘We don’t need to learn about the brain, we have operant conditioning. In fact, I’ve written about this in Animals in Translation.’ Those were the things I remember we talked about the most. I guess I just thought everything would be more impressive, then I saw that it was just an ordinary office, with an ordinary-looking professor in it. The outside of the building was impressive, like ten stories tall. But that was it. And then, after he asked if he could touch my legs, he instantly was just a regular person, and not a god.”

  “I had another really creepy psychology professor like that when I was at Franklin Pierce College,” she went on to say. “Yes,” I commented, “it’s really sad when someone of that magnitude does something like that to shatter their image and reputation.”
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br />   Being a Good Role Model

  Temple truly has a commanding sense of responsibility for maintaining the highest of integrity. I thought back to the evening of August 29, 2017 when I was in Temple’s vehicle going over to Cheryl Miller’s house for a small gathering after the big celebration. I was personally overwhelmed from the big birthday event, and I asked Temple how she feel about the party. I said, “Temple, tell me how you feel right now after experiencing all of that! People flew in from all over the country to be here for your seventieth birthday. How does it feel to have just experienced it?” Temple looked right at me with an extremely serious look on her face and said, “Anita, I have this strong sense of responsibility, because a lot of kids look up to me. I’ve got to make sure I don’t do something wrong, like all these movie actors, and like Weinstein. A lot of people look up to me and I’ve always got to be at my best. People often ask me how I like getting all the attention at the airport and I say, ‘It’s a responsibility. I’ve always got to behave because I’m always on display.’ The higher you get, the further you’re going to fall if you mess up. It’s my responsibility.”

  I felt extremely overwhelmed in that moment, and I told her how proud I was to know her, someone who does maintain that sense of responsibility. Temple went on, “At that party, they had that beer named after me, but I had to drive so I only had two sips. There’s no way I want to risk getting a DWI, so I certainly wasn’t going to drink that and then drive. If I was staying at a hotel I could have had more than two sips and then just walked up to my room. I certainly would never do anything crazy like drink and drive, and get arrested and have my picture on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper.” I ask myself this one question: why can’t others be like Temple?

  CHAPTER 26

  Temple’s Big Message

  During the many long conversations I had with Temple for the writing of this book, I asked her to share her biggest message that she wanted to convey. What was the most important thing to her? I already knew what she was going to say. “I want to convey something that’s going to get those kids (those on the autism spectrum) out there doing something to be successful,” she said. “There was a lot of stuff I did that was creative, where I had to figure out how to get in the back door for something. In the movie, they show that I went up to the editor to get their card. I actually did that. And you learned how to do that stuff too, and that’s how you got to be successful. I think that’s really important to convey. It’s important to get out there and actually do things. Like when I got that press pass, that got me into a lot of really important meetings.”

  Sell Your Work by Having a Portfolio

  Temple proceeded, “I also figured out that if you meet the right person, it can open a lot of doors. I learned early on that you need to have your portfolio readily available. I think today it’s a lack of resourcefulness, maybe related to a lack of hands-on things. I think people just don’t think of it. But they need to start thinking of alternative ways to get into things. I’m sure Bernie Rollins told you how I called him up when I wanted to get into Colorado State University. That’s how I got in; Bernie helped me a lot. He helped get me tenure there, and I appreciate that.”

  Temple continued, “A lot of people just don’t think to try and get in a back door. For example, I meet so many moms, and I’ll ask them if they have any of their kid’s artwork on their phone. They’ll have maybe one piece, not even a good one. I tell them they need to get all the good stuff on the phone. Then it’s like a portfolio! I think the fact that they took out a lot of the hands-on classes in school is a real problem. It took away a lot of the problem-solving opportunities. I learned to sew in school, then I took sewing classes at the sewing machine store. Then I got a job helping a seamstress, using my skills to sew. I didn’t like the cooking classes at school!” Temple isn’t joking about not liking her cooking classes. She doesn’t even make coffee at home; nothing!

  Teaching Work Skills

  Temple still had more to say, “I recently had a teacher come up to me and tell me that they have a great program getting the non-verbal kids to talk. But then when they get older, they want to stay on their computers playing little games. She was affiliated with a big medical center in Boston, so they were doing great at early intervention, but dropped the ball on the transition to young adulthood and work. People need to limit the time these kids can be on the computer! It has to start at age eleven. Get them walking dogs, working at a church, volunteering at the old folk’s home, or a food kitchen. Be a volunteer at many different things! Now what you don’t want to do, is what I recently saw. A mother took her eighteen-year-old daughter, who lived a very sheltered life, and got her a job as a cashier in a busy clothing store at the holiday rush season. That was a mess. The girl got totally overwhelmed. I talked to that girl and her mom and said that was a big mistake. You need to get back on the horse, but that was a retail bucking bronco. You need to get on a gentler horse and do that store in the summertime. That’s like throwing her in the deep end of a pool. You’ve got to start them out slowly. They must start learning how to do jobs outside the home! They have to wean them off the video games gradually. You can’t do it suddenly, it has to be done gradually. But it needs to be done! I’m seeing so many kids graduating from high school, and they haven’t learned one work skill. I want to get rid of the transition to work. The kids that are in the pipeline now need to start volunteer jobs at eleven, and the second they’re legal age, get summer jobs and learn how to work. This is something that’s a big part of my talk. I’m seeing two kinds of outcomes. Where the parents push the kid to get out there and do stuff, they are able to work and get jobs. On the other hand, the ones that let the kid stay on the video games, it’s really bad.” I chimed in, “Parents need to avoid letting the situation get to that point. It’s up to them to get those kids out there doing stuff: socializing, and yes, making blunders—but they’ve got to do it.” Temple replied, “Yes, they do!”

  I knew Temple was on a roll here, as this is her favorite topic … even more than anything about NASA or astronauts. “I met this boy: thirteen years old and fully verbal. He had never been in a store by himself to shop.” I said, “There again, whose fault is that? The parent(s) can go in the store with the kid, but let him pick out the items and go to the register. They can be right behind him for safety purposes, but get him used to doing those tasks.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Temple replied.

  “I think it’s really important that I still have my career in the cattle industry. I see too many kids getting hung up on their autism diagnosis with that becoming their entire identity. I like to think about resourcefulness. In today’s society, people don’t make things. There’s no resourcefulness. People will ask me things like how to find a good college for their kid. Well, you just get online and start searching for colleges that have programs for students with autism. Times have changed so much. I heard this story the other day about an eight-year-old boy who kicked the principal. They called the cops, and the kid ended up in court. When I was that age, I’d do bad things, and I’d get in trouble for it. Mother would have to come and pick me up from school and take me home. I’d have a giant meltdown. So once home, there would be no television that night.”

  Don’t Get Stuck on Labels

  “I’m seeing too many people getting that ‘handicapped’ mentality. I do believe there needs to be accommodations, but I think there’s a point you can over-accommodate. It’s getting to be too much medical model. All that medical model is just a bunch of gobbledygook!” (Did you know this is a real word in the dictionary? I started laughing when I heard Temple say it. To be sure I had the correct spelling, I looked it up.) Temple continued, “People are getting trapped in the mindset of the handicapped mentality. I can remember years ago at an autism conference meeting a mother and her son. He had just been diagnosed with autism or Asperger’s, and had an IQ of 150 or 160. Back then, they called these kids gifted. Now, it’s getting so mu
ch into the label that they can’t even see what the kid can do. See, as a visual thinker, I don’t see the label. This is especially a problem with the fully verbal kids, and it’s gotten worse since they changed the Asperger’s into the autism. It’s made everything worse. The parents tend to over-protect, so the kid isn’t learning anything.”

  “That’s why I started talking about ‘work-arounds’ at my presentations. Working memory issues? You make a checklist that has a sequence in it. Temple continued, “Parents come up to me, and they’re so hung up on diagnosis. I always have some basic troubleshooting questions, and I’ll use engineering terminology. Let’s get down to basics on your kid’s age. Is it a three-year-old where we’re going to do standard intervention, or elementary school age, teenager, adult? Next, I need to know speech level. I need to get some idea where the kid is at. If they’re at an age where they should be able to read, can they? At what level? What kind of problem are they having? If it’s a kid over five, I need to have a lot of information—is it bullying, can’t sit still, won’t do their homework, can’t stand the noise in the classroom? I need to know all this before I’ll offer any advice.” I replied, “Yes, obviously you need to gather all of this first.”

  Temple still had more to add, “Then, we talk about executive functioning. My speech teacher taught me executive functioning, it was called ‘wait to take your turn’ when we played the board game. She put a lot of emphasis on that. Stand in line and wait your turn, don’t cut into the line, wait your turn. You had to learn to wait your turn!”