Now's As Good A Time As Any

My factory-fresh Dell Inspiron B120 is on its way! $200 off…yes, my laptop ship has come in.

I hate being put in a position where there is pressure on me to lie. That’s one big reason why I hated Appellate Advocacy, and why I always hated writing papers for things like English classes. “Write a five-page paper about why Toni Morrison is so great.” What if I don’t like Toni Morrison? “Write a report on how such-and-such educational theory is crucial to the future of the American educational system.” What if I think the theory is not only not crucial, but complete crap?

I got a fundraising call from the U of C and I somehow had to tell them that no, I would really rather not give them even $1 because I had such a bad time there. I don’t know…I just don’t feel like giving them money because I feel like I left a big chunk of my soul back there. Not that I didn’t get something in return, but there are a lot of other causes I would contribute to before that place…OSU, for example.

Now what was it I was going to do for Spring Break? Write 12 lesson plans a day? Or sleep 12 hours a day? I…yawn…forget…

WHAT? WHAT DID YOU SAY? CAN’T HEAR YOU! LISTENING TO “METAL MACHINE MUSIC“!

P.S. I think “Loud Reed” would be a good band name.

There’s a physics job opening at Roberto Clemente High School, a tenth of a mile from the Empty Bottle in the heart of Chicago’s Awesomeland! I mean Humboldt Park! Or Ukrainian Village, if you will.

I’m on Spring Break!

Pickup lines for girls!

Thank goodness!В  Lou Dobbs is not a natural-born U.S. citizen.В  Can’t run for president (so long as Ahnold can’t either).В  Ha!В  So he wasn’t born in this country either!

…if they’d let me teach physics half the day and economics half the day…hmmmmm…that would make that humongous high school in Florida a little harder to pass up.В  In Florida, I’d be qualified to teach either!В  Or both, maybe!

It’s in sunny Orlando…that’s pretty far away, and thar be hurricanes, but at least I have that if nothing else comes along.

WOOT!

I hope when my journey to real adulthood and independence is complete that my curiosity and love of learning come back.В  I used to be eager for intellectual challenges and was capable of taking on several of them at once.В  When someone would try to tell me I wasn’t smart enough to do something, I was always positive that it was they who were just too dense to appreciate the depth of my brilliance.

Maybe what’s really happened is that I’ve grown up.В  What’s really more important: that I learn Sanskrit or complex analysis or programming in FORTRAN or read Finnegans Wake (I still want to do that, actually)?В  Or is it more important that I make it infinitesimally less likely that such-and-such a kid doesn’t wind up in jail?В  There have certainly been, and still are, Great Minds for whom the former is arguably more important than the latter.В  Galileo or Newton or Darwin or Einstein probably could have helped little old ladies cross the street all day, every day for their entire lives and not done as much good as they did in their ivory tower-type work.В  I think I once fancied myself as one of those Great Minds, or at least someone with that kind of potential, but I was thankfully (I think) disabused of this notion during college when I discovered how many people are much, much, much smarter than me.

I think the most important thing I’ve learned, or that I think I’ve learned, is that you don’t have to be great to be good.В  Most people who set out to be great fail.В  Some become mediocre or even evil.В  And many of the great people didn’t get that way intentionally anyway.

You have very limited control over whether you turn out to be an important or famous person, but you have every opportunity to choose to be a good person.В  Great people may be more celebrated and visible and remembered when they’re gone, but it’s good people that really make the world a good place to live.

Boo!В  Boo, I say!