Tag: dailyprompt

Be kind, even if you don’t feel like it.

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.

I don’t know about this one…

I was never really one to play. Explore, maybe. But even when I was little, I wasn’t into sports or long sessions of playing tag outside. Games, sometimes, but I would lose interest pretty quickly, especially when things got predictable. There was a point where my mother would literally beg me to put my books away and go outside to play. In my teens, I would play table top RPGs, but that was sorta like reading a book, so I’m not sure that counts. 😉

As an adult, I’ll play silly games like Cards Against Humanity, but rarely. And I will always play with a dog if they are feeling frisky!

Mid to late 80s Ford Escort, hatchback, 5 speed.

It’s what I learned to drive stick in, it is little, fun to drive, minimal to maintain and easy to fix if something did break.

Close second was an early 90s Dodge Shadow. Also pretty easy to maintain, though good luck if the fuel pump takes a shit! What a pain to get to!! I tell you what though, it’s a freaking tank in the snow!

😝

This one is interesting.

I write, though it’s mostly professional and philosophical at this point. I don’t know if that would be considered creativity. I mean, yes, it is creating something, but i generally associate being creative with art, and I don’t consider professional or philosophical writing to be art.

Art, to me, has to have some sort of emotional significance or impact. I suppose some of my writing has met that criteria, though. I have used both writing and drawing to to communicate emotion. So, back in the day, that’s how I was creative.

Now? I basically solve problems for a living, and that sometimes requires some creative thinking to come up with effective solutions, but again, it is done in a professional or functional capacity, and so doesn’t fit into my definition of art.

I don’t think I would consider myself to be creative in a traditional, artistic sense anymore, though I used to be. If we’re talking about “analytical creativity”, then yeah, pretty much everything I do is creative, but that’s more of a critical thinking type thing. That’s not really creativity.

I don’t know. This is a lot of words to basically say, “I’m not.” My brain is in overdrive right now from too much studying, and I think it’s starting to malfunction. And for that, I apologize.

Thank you for tolerating my nonsense, and have a good night!

Well, depends on what you’re asking,

What do I know about the world or world events from the year I was born? Not much. Ronald Reagan was president. East and West Berlin were still in existence.

What do I know about events of my life from that year? Plenty. My mother was in hard labor for 39 hours straight to bring me into the world. (This is a fact that was drilled into my head, especially if I was being difficult!) The first time my father held me, I fit perfectly on one arm, and that amazed him. I slept through a couple of flights on a C5, which, as I was told, was basically a miracle once, not to mention multiple times. In the words of my father, all I did for the first half of the year was “eat, sleep, and shit”. I had a scream that could wake the dead, supposedly. My first word was “shit”. I was walking at about 10 months. I had my first taste of bourbon at my first birthday party – the adults thought it adorable that I wobbled around on my unsteady legs visiting people and would have a sip of a random drink, make a face, squeal at them, laugh, and go teetering off to visit the next guest.

So yeah, that’s what I know about the year I was born.

Yogurt

Cottage cheese (but not for me – can’t stand the texture!)

Half and half

Coffee

Agave

This one is potentially very easy, especially as a grown-ass “daddy’s girl”, but I’m not going to do that. I’m not even going to go for the almost equally easy answer of “my husband”. For this prompt, I am going to describe my mentor.

He’s a good guy in general, though because of his position in business, he sometimes has to be a hard ass. He even sometimes pretends that he is a flat out asshole. There were times early on that I would have agreed with that assessment, but I know better now. He is a good man, but not always a nice man. There is a distinct difference, and I would rather deal with a good person than a nice person if I had to choose between the two.

He is smart – he knows his shit about his job and his industry. Is he a genius? No, but most people aren’t. We can’t all be Einstein or Hawking or Da Vinci. The key thing about this is that he knows he doesn’t know everything and actually strives to surround himself with people who know more than he does, so that he can learn from them and build an effective, successful team.

He is fair and generous but also has an immense amount of backbone. He stands up for himself, and for others. He values the loyalty of his team, and reciprocates that loyalty. He admits when he is wrong, and will sincerely apologize if he steps out of line. He is genuine.

I have learned a great deal from him, professionally and personally. He has taught me things that were sometimes a bit painful to learn, but that I believe have helped to make me a better person and more effective professional. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

Not at all.

As a general rule, I have gotten to a point where I have accepted that life generally happens regardless of the dreams and plans we have for the future. Yes, those dreams can still happen if you put the work in, but the timeline is not at all certain. I don’t usually think about what I want my life to be in a year or two or five, because, well, who the hell knows? Don’t get me wrong, I still have long term goals, but don’t assume that they will be reality at any specific point in time.

At the same time, I do still make assumptions that certain things won’t or can’t change that much. This past year has been an example of how wrong I can be about life and myself. Things on both fronts are very different than what I assumed would be my status quo.