A Boring Entry

Yesterday was an important day for me. I grew as a person, I think...or maybe I died a little bit. I dunno. Anyway, it feels alright.

Here's something I think is funny...which in one way (not in all ways) relates to the aforementioned growth. At the musical I saw someone who I hadn't seen in a long while (although a lot of people fit that description) and never really got to know that well. After a brief hello this person immediately directed me to the supposed location of another person without asking me a single question. Now, you should know that I wasn't even looking for said person at the time. However, I think this person's words reflect a little bit on the man I was and the impression I was giving to people (especially those people who weren't always around me).

Anyway, I apologize to myself and all other concerned parties. I can't promise it won't happen again, but I'll try.

PS I also apologize for any inconvenience my ambiguity here may cause.

Hmm?

I want to say that today has been a rough cuts day...but it hasn't. I've just been really really bored with, honestly, nothing to do. There was no procrastination involved.

Tomorrow I'm going to Yellow Springs...or somewhere. I need to get away; I need to take a vacation.


I need to find something.

Far enough, far enough wasn't far enough...

So...hello. What can I say that might interest you, the discerning reader? I haven't posted in a while, mostly due to exams, partially due to a lack of inspiration. Tonight I could talk about anything from religion, to politics, to relationships...even my life. I just don't know what to say. Well hey, how about the next person who comments tell me what to write my next entry on? I'll write about anything and give it my best effort. I promise to give my honest opinion too. Too many times people censor themselves on their blogs...I am not going to do that to save face anymore. So fire away, if you wish. If I get no comments, I'll just pick something again, or never update (not happening, though I bet people wonder).

You know, I could be really emo tonight (I'm feeling it) and do an entry about why I dislike myself, or how my relationships never work out...but I think that would just feed into my problems and I promised this blog would be a new beginning. So I will try something more constructive.

I think I am a pretty lucky guy. I have a lot of grand friends who care about me and I somehow manage to get good grades in most subjects...I am fortunate enough to be a good problem-solver. Ahhh, there's a topic!

My future and past as an engineer. I can satisfy a part of my emo-self by prefacing this by saying that I once wrote a huge letter about this to someone that I decided to make very important to me in the past...and never sent it because it felt silly (probably because I can't believe that person would care-maybe that is part of my problem). An aside to be random: I wrote David three letters and never sent them because I take too long to write them and the beginning of the letter became old news. *ahem* Back to the topic.

Onward! I decided as a small child that I wanted to be a chemist. I had a golden vision of my small self in goggles and a lab-coat, mixing chemicals in a fancy lab. It was a fun choice for me. As I grew up, I changed my mind and wanted to work for NASA as an aerospace engineer. I envisioned myself wearing dress casual clothing and wide-rimmed glasses (in fashion nowadays, I hear) gazing with a cool demeanor over a computer console as a rocket blazed upward in the distance. I wanted badly to send something into space and I truly wanted to make a mark on the future of mankind. I decided in 8th grade I would go to MIT to reach my goals. However, around my sophomore year of high school, I realized I wasn't really smart enough to work for NASA or go to MIT and that physics was not something I really enjoyed doing...so I put my old dreams aside for a big fat "undecided" label.

Then, and I'm not afraid to admit this, along came a fair maiden. This particular person soon convinced me that chemical engineering was a good field to get into...ah the amazing power of suggestion females can have. But I am a logical person! I would not continue on a path just because of a single person...right? Right! I soon realized that I loved chemistry and was pretty darn good at it. I did research and saw how broad chemical engineering was and that it could provide enough flexibility to make me happy one way or another. Materials engineering was especially attractive to me, but I considered it enough of a sub-division of CHE that I wouldn't narrow my prospects by majoring in it...and I so was decided.

Now that I am actually majoring in chemical engineering, let me talk about where I want to go with it. I have two absolute "dream dreams"...things that I don't believe possible but would love to do. The first dream is me working as a Chemical Engineer for NASA, either trying to colonize the moon, Mars, or just working with the future of space-travel...because, in my humble opinion, we can't stay here forever. If humanity doesn't want to become extinct from a freak accident or stupid act of war (but aren't they all stupid) we need a second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. base away from here. The second dream is me working as an engineer or college professor in Japan. I already plan on an international co-op and Japan is my first choice. I think the culture there would suit me better than too. We'll see what happens though.

Here's what I think will happen. I'll work this summer on base and at the end of the summer they will ask me about my plans for co-op (i.e. am I working for them). I won't be able to say no to them because it is a very solid job and a great path to the future...plus I feel like I owe them a bit. So, I'll co-op on base while living at home, miss out on going to Japan, graduate high in my class, and be hired non-competitively as a civilian at Wright-Patt. I will move out of my home to somewhere in Fairborn and visit frequently Huber while becoming part of the base sub-culture. I may find someone I want to date, but it isn't likely. So, I'll be well-employed and marginally happy with my life while working close to home. Finally, when I'm a senior engineer (if I'm not married), I'll pull so strings and get transferred to Egland base in Florida until I retire to a quiet beach home and try to live out my days in peace. I'll probably have cats and write poetry (it will likely be bad...I'll have been an engineer for quite a while). Then I'll die and some people back home will be sad for a little while.

Not so bad, eh? Nothing ever goes as planned though. This point is illustrated pretty well by my bracket...I have a solid general idea of where things are going, but I could never hope to get it right.

Wow, this entry got pretty long. I'll end it now with my best wishes to all my friends and anyone who might randomly stumble onto my blog. I'm rooting for you all. Don't forgot my comment request!

When you just have something to say...

So tonight I want to talk about something more philosophical. Not extremely philosophical, but more so than the previous few entries have been. Tonight I want to talk a little bit about public schooling versus homeschooling. Now, I know it seems a silly thing for a college student like me to bring up, but I've always had an opinion on it and I think tonight I'm going to share it.

It is my opinion that, although public schools cannot provide the same quality of or degree of personalization in a child's education as a home school experience can, the social benefits it gives outweigh any losses this can bring about. I feel that the social experience of public schooling is extremely important for the proper growth an individual. I'm not saying homeschooling makes becoming a functioning member of society impossible or that it makes you a bad person (I definitely don't think that at all)...it just seems to be a social handicap. When a person who has not been exposed to the social arena of public school/real social situations with a diverse group of peers (and all of the dangers such a situation entails) is suddenly thrust into it, things are just awkward and it takes a while for them to properly adjust. *shrugs* Maybe this is worth it to some people, but I don't think so. I feel like the kid loses out on becoming the individual they could have been...and on a whole other type of learning.

This whole thing ties into another belief I have. I feel like a lot of kids movies today are not giving all of the right messages. It seems to me that kids need better villains and they need to see scary situations in their media. Even movies for children (I'm not talking babies here, that would be silly) need to have some reflection of reality in them. Let's take some older movies and analyze them...you can compare them to newer movies (now I could be wrong here, okay, I don't watch many movies) ;-) Sorry, this gets even more biased here...but it is my blog! "The Great Mouse Detective" is and was one of my favorite movies because of its great hero vs. great villain scenario. In addition to that, it also has great moments of comedic value and songs that no one will groan to hear. I love everything about that movie; but on to my point. In "The Great Mouse Detective" we have a truly evil villain with a rough cuts sidekick to boot. I mean, come on, he feeds another mouse to a cat and captures a toymaker forcing his daughter to go out on her own. Everyone should be able to see he is an evil dude. That movie is a more like real life good vs. evil (despite the characters being rodents...personification takes care of that though) and not in the silly fantasy way...the viewer can understand why one character is "evil" and needs to be taken down by the "hero". I think that's important; kids need to see 1. that bad things do exist, 2. the real reasons that bad things are actually bad (coming from scary moments) and 3. that heroes are imperfect but try to do their best...and sometimes it doesn't work out. In a lot of movies that kids see today they don't get messages like that. As I see it, kids get three basic types of messages from their media exposure today: 1. There are absolute forces of good and evil that are self-evident and come not from real situations but as a result of their very natures...and good always wins because it is good or 2. There are no evil forces in the universe and they are completely safe (note: this is a FINE message for younger children!!)or 3. The universe is a very scary place where adults control every it is time to withdraw. Basically, kids see movies meant for adults and pick up things too soon or they see silly children's movies and are not properly prepared for the world...which I'll admit is kinda a silly thing to say, they are just movies after all. Harry Potter is a decent exception...I'll give the world that...perhaps that is why it is so well received.

Anyway, back on topic. How about I tell a story then? One day this past summer as I was working at my job, two of my co-workers and I suddenly got into a discussion about public schooling versus home schooling. It should be noted that I respect both of these individuals as highly as I respect anyone in the world, they are both kind and highly educated individuals who work hard. But I digress, both of these gentlemen had younger children and were on the verge of deciding to home-school them. I did not try to tell them how to parent their children, mind you, but my opinion on the subject was requested. So, I told them that I felt public school was an important social experience for children and that a good solid parent (which I knew them both to be) should be able to raise their children to be excellent people without dictating every influx of information their children received as home school often results in. You see, my co-workers did not want their children exposed to any of the negative elements of society with their supervision. They wanted total control. This is of course admirable but, in my humble opinion, both impossible and detrimental to the proper development of a child. I believe that especially during the pre-school and elementary years of a child's life they have to be exposed to other individuals and the outside world without the barrier of a parent so that they can learn "how things are". Perhaps I'm just ignorant, but I feel strongly about this. The discussion ended there though, because they respected my feelings on the subject as a recent graduate of a VERY public school and I completely respected their feelings as parents wanting to raise good children.

So there's no conclusion here really...I just wanted to rant a bit. I hope you maybe enjoyed it and weren't to offended or anything.

Some distractions

So, I don't have much time nowadays because of everything that I have to get done but I thought I should let you know, in true blog fashion, of a couple things. First off, I'm really excited about this coming weekend. Jess is coming to Cincinnati for a visit and as if that wasn't enough I was able to secure two tickets for the Flogging Molly concert at Bogarts...which just so happens to be a five minute walk from my dorm! I think it is going to be absolutely epic.

The only downside is that I have an insane amount of work to do. Agh! It will be okay though...I'm sure it will.

My second and final point is this: I just have to share this video/song. It's one of the strangest things I've heard and seen in a long time. I kinda like it because it makes me a bit uncomfortable. Well, check it out if you like. *EDIT* Broken Link Removed!
Cheers, gypsies!

A New Poem-for the gypsies who care for such things

A multitude of ants
Marched forward and around
The silent stalks of maize
That rose up from a seemingly parched
Plot of soil.

Headstrong,
They gazed without anticipation,
Walking the well-tred columns
That were laid down before them,
In times unknown.

No will will stoop low
To tell them of the coming rains,
And the coming cold,
The inevitable for changes,
The commonplace apocolypse.

Perhaps it's because they would not listen;
Perhaps it's because they already know.