Sometimes, I wish I was ok with not knowing. I imagine ignorance truly is bliss.
Category: Random
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If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?
Be kind, even if you don’t feel like it.
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Sometimes, the energy expenditure involved in being a responsible adult is simply not worth it. 😆
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As soon as I woke up this morning, the first thing to pop in my head was Hatebreed lyrics. Specifically, a song called Something’s Off. Once I got my morning started and logged into work, I’ve had my Hatebreed collection on shuffle. It’s a nice start to a Monday.
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“There’s a beast in every man who breathes. With him from birth until beside him in the grave. A hideous presence just aching for release. Its chains aren’t as strong as its memory.”
– Hatebreed, Something’s Off
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I saw something the other day that reminded me of the movie Multiplicity, and couldn’t help but wonder…. What would I do if I had a clone?
Now, of course, the movie included some interesting caveats – each clone had a… specialty, I guess? Certain elements of the original being that were heightened – work focus, family focus, whatever. But. What if, in this situation, for hypothetical purposes, the clone was an exact copy of me at the time of the clone’s creation? Would do and say exactly as I would in any given situation? What would I do if I could perfectly duplicate my existence for everyone impacted? And, let’s add in the additional condition that I gain/retain the memory of both me and the clone, so I don’t technically miss out on any given experience, I just don’t have to endure said experience myself. My clone would retain both sets of information as well, for continuity.
Now, if all these conditions were true, and I could gain the experience and insight of my clone’s activities, but still be off doing something else? Holy shit, batman! Bonus life! I would spend all of my time reading and writing, and let my clone experience humanity and the world for me, drawing on this experience for said writing… I mean, how perfect can hypothetical circumstances be?? It would basically be the ability to be in two places at once. I am very intrigued by this idea.
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My favorite thing about snowstorms is the silence.
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What colleges have you attended?
I have been enrolled in four different colleges, actually graduated from three of them. These include Alfred University, SUNY Orange, DeVry University, and Walden University. The most important thing I learned as a result of my time at various colleges is the fact that a piece of paper is just that – a piece of paper. A degree in no way, shape or form says anything definitive about what or how much you know about a given topic. It says everything about how well you perform on tests for that knowledge, but doing well on a test absolutely does not signify long term retention.
I have learned and retained far more from experience. In life, learning takes many forms. If you spend hours and hours in a class, take the exam, do well, great! But it is quite possible that in six months, a year, five years from that exam – you’ve forgotten half of what you remembered in order to do well on the exam in the first place. If you fuck something up that you are doing, you will learn more from that than you will from any number of hours spent in a classroom. Why? Because when you fail, you don’t forget why.
College is awesome, I learned a lot of things during my time in college, but only about half of it (and that’s generous) is related to the degrees I obtained. For example, I took an acting class as an elective, and learned more from that and the resulting experiences than I did from some of the “core”, required classes for the degree I was pursuing.
My father was a working man, a laborer. He grew up on a farm. He got horrible grades in high school, from an academic standpoint. But at the same time, he was one of the smartest men I have ever known. He asked me one time how long it would take to flood a field of some dimension to have a certain amount of standing water with a pump that had a flow rate of whatever it was. I was 11 or 12. I had no clue, but he explained me how to figure it out. It wasn’t until 10 years later, and about 6 years after he had passed, that I realized, when sitting in a Calculus 2 class, that he, an uneducated man by most standards, had explained calculus to his 12 year old daughter. My father did not know calculus. But he knew how to solve that problem.
I guess what it boils down to is that the best, most prestigious education that you can receive is from living life, doing things, trying things, failing, and persevering.
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I have a newfound appreciation for teachers, what they do and what some of them may experience.
I was in a CPIM class recently, as was someone I work with. My boss had asked me to help this other person with studying and understanding class materials and whatnot. I realized through various conversations with both of them that this was just as important a goal to them as it was to me, so I did my best to make sure we were both prepared for the exam.
I took my test first, and passed. I was relieved for sure, but there was another test to be done. Another week full of study and review sessions, and finding ways to explain things in relatable, plain English. And that last part could sometimes be difficult, because we all know how verbose and indirect textbooks can be, especially with topics that are complex to begin with.
She passed her exam yesterday, and I was so happy for her. She called me and I could hear the giant smile on her face. I was almost as nervous for her as I was for my own exam, it was insane. Last night, I slept so good knowing that I helped someone achieve an important goal for themselves.
I got to thinking… what do college professors or high school teachers go through during midterms or finals week? Do they experience the same anxiousness beforehand and the same relief once it’s over? And how do they react if a student doesn’t pass? It’s just this whole other mini-cosmos in the world that I had never really considered.
If you are a teacher, either by trade or by circumstance – thank you.
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Why does some weather, like rain or snow, have a smell beforehand?
A Peculiar Cerebral Tangle 