A declaration

Los Angeles has an even more monotonous weather forecast than Santa Fe:
Tonight: low 59.
Tomorrow: High 70, low 59.
Tuesday: High 71, low 59.
Wednesday: High 70, low 58.
Thursday: High 72, low 59.
Friday: High 72, low 58.
Saturday: High 72, low 58.
Sunday: High 72, low 59.

*yawn*

Red matter

Another lesson I have learned in my time at St. John's is that yes, it really is worth spending the extra thirty seconds to find the scissors to cut the packing tape, and not just grab the sharp pocketknife.

And if you must, for the love of god, sharp side goes away from the finger.

Thoughts on my history of math and science.

So I'm graduating on Saturday. St. John's being St. John's we don't have finals and it feels much more like we're just kind of gliding to a halt than anything else. They've given us, as they do, copies of our original admissions essays for our consideration.

I'm finished with my tutorials, which is interesting because it means that, unless I go back to school - which I hope to, though I'm not quite sure in what - I'm done with formal study of, well, everything, but especially math and science. I've taken four years of math and three of science past high school.

When I was in high school, first looking at colleges, I wasn't sure what I wanted to study (I'm still not, for what it's worth). Journalism was a possibility, as were English, poli sci, international relations. In any of the programs I was looking at, at any of the schools, I would have needed maybe a semester or two of economics or statistics, sociology or psychology. I would not need geometry, algebra, calculus, physics, chemistry, biology - none of that.

Then I found St. John's, and while I was hesitant at first I couldn't shake my interest. It looked like there would be no way I could avoid a challenge, which was appealing, and it looked absolutely nothing like high school. That really appealed to me. In high school we sat at individual desks with text books and listened to the teacher talk from the front of the room. At St. John's there were no desks and, really, no discernible front of the room, and the first class I sat in on, a Greek class at Annapolis, the teacher sat at the table along with all the students, they addressed each other as equals - and the only people to write anything on the board were students. This was someplace that was not about furthering professor's careers or producing the best statistics or training students to do something in the future. This was a place that was about learning, all sorts of things, solely for the sake of learning. Study was the end, not the means, and if what you studied didn't land you a dream job right after graduating, that didn't matter, because that wasn't the point.

So I ended up here, and it didn't work out too well at first, because I hadn't figured out the above. I knew St. John's appealed to me, more than other schools, but I hadn't figured out why, because I had no idea what I wanted to do in life. Two of the most important events of my academic career happened between May 2005 and December 2005: I interned at a newspaper (and realized I didn't want to work in journalism), and I got kicked out of school. It's not quite technically true but practically speaking, I flunked out.

So I went, and ended up in London - which was fantastic - and I did lots and lots of thinking about why I liked St. John's, and what I wanted to do with my life. And then I came back, and it wasn't really smooth sailing, but it was smoother, and eventually I found my footing again.

What have I gotten from St. John's?

Well, there's the numbers. Four years of my life. A huge amount of debt. Too many books.

I've gotten a grounding in evolution and genetics, general and special relativity, quantum physics, electricity, mechanics, ancient Greek, literature, philosophy, French, music, chemistry, theology, and anatomy. Will I ever use any of that? Maybe. Will I use the skills I learned along the way? Definitely.

I think, ultimately, the most that I've gotten out of the whole experience is doing it. I've studied Einstein. I've spent three hours on a Saturday trying to get a science experiment to work. I've slogged through ridiculous Greek verb conjugations. I've sat and had serious discussions about the Bible, about Dante, and about philosophy texts that need to be broken down word-by-word to be understood.

Honestly I don't know what that adds up to. I know it adds up to something, some significant change. Maybe I would have gotten it at any other school but I doubt it; I certainly wouldn't have studied Gregorian chant and quantum mechanics elsewhere. I was scared of a lot of what I studied, but I studied it, and usually I learned it, and there's something to be said for that.

Those graduation articles

They run them every year - quite possibly the same exact ones - in just about every newspaper and magazine. The 'advice for the new college grad' column, in which some two-bit journalist coughs up a bunch of hackneyed advice about how you should do what you love, and travel the world, and wear sunscreen, and do things that scare you, and Always Follow Your Dreams.

Speaking, for the first time, as a member of the allegedly targeted audience*, I would like to comment on these articles, and say: SHUT UP.

What's that? You think I should follow my dreams and work to live not live to work, and travel abroad? I'd love to, really. I'd also love to get a job doing what I love. But you know what? Your generation did everything they could to destroy the American economy because you followed your dreams of having a charmless McMansion in suburban upstate New York and two cars. While I was sitting in 10th grade history you guys were eating KFC and cheering our honor killings in Afghanistan, and when I was deciding what college to go to you were half-heartedly wondering if this war against Iraq was really a good idea. And as I was doing what you've said I should do - follow my heart, do things that move me, get a degree in something I like rather than something immediately profitable - you were giggling as you engaged in the Sisyphean task of using your credit card to buy crappy houses and make them unaffordable for those who really need affordable housing.

So. How about you all shut up with your incredibly pointless 'advice' for people who have yet to take a massive crap on society? Yes, I really would love to spend a year in Americorps, and I in fact have the opportunity to do so. But I also have spent almost forty thousand borrowed dollars on my degree, and those kind lenders would like that money back ASAP, so there are some obvious problems in spending the next year working for four hundred dollars a month.

How about, instead of annually masturbating about the Hope and Future Ahead, you all put that energy into making education affordable?

*Assuming that it's not just some writer who regrets his decisions in life talking to himself.

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Tangentially, crappy job market aside, I am unspeakably, unimaginably glad to have two weeks (to the day!) left at this school. It's been swell, but the swelling's gone down.

"This legislation keeps me from hitting kinky people!"

My god, the Republican party has been hilarious lately.

Here's a Congressman who apparently thinks that the cure to gay-bashing is that the gays just shouldn't show affection in public, or let people know they're gay. Also, he's apparently upset because the proposed law would make it a crime to hit someone who's into asphyxiophilia. Because as the law stands now in crazytown, we're apparently totally fine with beating up people with relatively weird kinks.

Now, I agree that there may be a problem with hate-crime laws in general, because punishing people for what they're thinking is a little bit...dubious. But to argue that the law is not acceptable because it makes it illegal to hit people kind of misses the point, doesn't it?