Interesting, But Useless

By: UnrepentantNewDealer

I am typing this on my new Dell Inspiron 5150 laptop from my college dorm room at UNC-Charlotte with a Seinfeld rerun playing on my roommate's tv. That's right--I am now in college. Well, actually, my first class isn't until Tuesday, but I've been down here 24 hours now, so I'll consider myself collegiate material. People often say high school helps prepare you for the real world and your chosen career. But more often than not, academically high school seemed like a joke. Ok, that might be a little harsh. Not that it was all easy, either. But rather than getting harder with each passing year, Mrs. Ward's English class and Mr. Johnson's ELPSA (civics) class were the most challenging classes I had in high school, and they were just honors classes, not AP.

In addition, my interests (politics, history, science, literature) were already well established by the time I was in 5th grade and haven't changed much since. I did narrow my career interests (the planetary geologist idea had to go, due to my dislike of math) to working for the State Department and fighting against genocide (my chosen crusade), then retiring to become a full-time writer (fiction and non-fiction (histories)) when my writing can support itself (like John Grisham was a trial lawyer till he found where the real money is!). That's my life's plan, but high school played no role in its formation. Anyway, I'm no longer sure where I was going with all of this...Oh, yes! The point I wanted to make is that for the past four years, I have been waiting to go off to college and gain experience that would further my career interests and high school didn't seem to help much. However, for some people who didn't have a clue of what they wanted to do as a freshman, maybe high school helped. But now, I can begin focusing on what will really matter to me.

For something completely different, read Akerman's response to my last post. Interestingly, Michael didn't refute my arguments that Bush has screwed up the War on Terrorism from start to finish. Instead, he chose to question weather Kerry could win--an issue I promised to address in a future post. ( For the record, Kerry had a five point lead according to the latest polls I've seen, and Bush has lower approval ratings than any incumbent in recent history. In the twentieth century, Harry Truman was the only incumbent who managed to come back and win after being behind in the summer before the election.) He also wrote about the Iraq war, something I have not criticized--yet. So, apparently my specific criticism of the Bush administration's incompetence and mismanagement of the War on Terror will be allowed to stand, unrefuted. An auspicious start to my "Electoral Elucidations". I will post another entry soon. After all, I did promise to post an "Electoral Elucidation" weekly, so I'll have to post later on.

In Peace,

Michael J. Smith