College is a Scam

I am so god damn sick of hearing about how it's so hard to get into college.  It's not hard.  Graduate high school, and you can go to almost any (local) state college.  The problem is not GETTING INTO college - it's PAYING FOR college.  Rich people can pay for it - poor people can't.  That's what we read every, single day in the newspaper.  But that ridiculously simplistic sentence I just typed doesn't encompass the people like myself who aren't rich and aren't poor.  We live paycheck to paycheck, hoping shit doesn't go off the rails in some way, because if it does ... we're fucked.  If I didn't get a paycheck next month, I'd lose my house, my car, get reported to credit agencies for outstanding debt, and not be able to feed my family, yet I'm considered solvent (according to the FAFSA).

One month.

But somehow, I don't qualify for student financial aid.  According to the federal government, I can pay for all my children's tuition, because I make X-amount of dollars per year.  Ignore the fact that my family is still reeling in debt from a failed business three years ago.  Ignore the fact that my son blew out his knee and cost me upwards of $10,000 in medical bills.  Fucking ridiculous.  What happened to admitting students and offering scholarships based on their academic record rather than how much money a university can extort from parents?!

I'm still paying my own college loans, and now I'm on the hook for the Parent Plus loans from the first child who graduated college, and next year, I'll have another one entering college.  If the American Dream is to go to college and better yourself, why is the struggling middle class getting fucked all the time in favor of other demographic groups?  I'm just trying to keep it together and pay the bills.  So I am punished, because I'm not poor enough.

Why are people on public assistance?  Because it's more convenient that working a 60-hour week, nose to the grindstone every day, just so you can (maybe) go into life-long debt to pay for your children to ... dig the same financial hole for themselves.  What a dream.  Makes me want to take out a loan for $50,000 and just hand the money to my son.  Tell him to blow it however he wants.  He'd probably end up equally successful after four years.

School's in Session

We're back in.  7am til 4pm, five days a week.  Nights and weekends too, when you count Open House, extra duties, grading papers, and then trying to have energy for family activities.  All day, every day, there's something either going on or about to go on, and when the odd moments of down-time occur, I just collapse in a heap on a piece of furniture and wish I was asleep.  When I do sleep, it's fitful and short, not restful and energizing.  I think my missionary position as a teacher is over.  I think I'm hanging in there out of habit, indecisiveness, poverty, and fear of the future.

I used to take special pleasure in looking out into the seas of faces each period and finding the students who are half-asleep or glaring at me, so that I could find a way to reach them - to show them that learning can be  applicable and fun and even necessary.  Those people just make me sad now.  The ones who don't care are not going to be suddenly converted by a tired, sad, aging lady at the front of the room, who's droning on about history and literature and philosophy.  Sometimes I can't even stand the sound of my own voice.  It's like I'm up there, and I suddenly hear myself like an outsider might, and I just want to grab a few of my favorite things, head for the door, and never come back.

Reality is rarely what real - it's only our perception of what's going on; and my perception is that I've hit the proverbial brick wall.  It's not that I need to find a different path; it's that the path has ended.  There's nowhere else to go.  I'm standing here shouting into the abyss, hearing only the rapid thumping of my own, defective heart, muffled inside my fluid-filled ear drum.  Thumping, beating, skipping, and then ... nothing.

Mork

"I used to think the worst thing in life is to end of alone.  It's not.  The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone."  -Robin Williams

Robin Williams is dead.  This guy entertained me my whole life, making movies that were wonderful and that sucked and that lived somewhere in the middle - the story of every person's life.  Sometimes we're amazing, and sometimes we aren't.  The worst part is that while he was making the rest of us laugh, he was struggling to even keep it together.

I feel his pain.  Every, single day ... I feel the same way.  I don't really want to hang myself with a belt, but that's only because I'm a female, and women tend to choose less violent ways to end their lives.

But Robin, let me tell you - I chose to marry someone who makes me feel all alone every single day.  And I can't get out of this muddy shithole.  Being alone when you're with other people is the worst thing ever.  And I get it:  Robin Williams just said that line in a movie, but sometimes the dialogue in a movie (as delivered by an amazing actor) is more real than the everyday conversations I get with the people who surround me every day.

Life is strange.  People are strange. I'm in a losing battle with myself.

Critical Thinking 101

I just asked my 13-year-old daughter to take the recycle bin from the back yard and dump it in the recycle bin out front.  Easy, right?  There is, in fact, an enormous, red trash can from the sanitation company out front, which is labeled RECYCLING.  

She came back inside and said it didn't fit.  Understand that the bin she took out front was about the size of a large suitcase, and the trash can outside is a HUGE TRASH CAN.  I was like, "what are you talking about?!  They picked up all the trash yesterday!"

A few minutes of total miscommunication ensued, until I realized that she had simply dumped one small container into another small container of the exact same size, which happened to be sitting directly next to the HUGE TRASH CAN LABELED RECYCLABLES.  Wtf?

She's not stupid - I mean, she's 13 and all, so there's the regular teenage stupidity factor happening, but she is generally an intelligent, critically-thinking human being.  So this makes me wonder how we are supposed to teach our kids how to think, and then (more importantly) how we know if we've done that job properly.  Obviously, I did something wrong, because even someone who's not very bright would have just left the full container out front and brought the empty container to the back!!  It doesn't make any sense, and thus I am worried for the future of all humankind.