This is the first time in 20 some years where I haven't had a summer break. This is the first time in 20 odd years that I've had a year break, but that's a different situation.
It's weird knowing that all these people are done with another semester and that I am no longer in school.
They have half-way houses for people getting out of jail.
What about the people who have been in school their entire lives?
What do we get?
Unemployment?
Where is our transitional place?
They're both institutions that instill rules and regulations that force us to behave, one is supposed to prepare people for the job market and the other is supposed to repair people for the job market.
One makes a person pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to read books and write papers, the other one gives a person the opportunity to read books and write papers and not have to pay a dime + food and lodging.
I think I may have chosen the wrong path.
Or maybe that's all just proof that our system is severely out of whack.
In any case, the kids are on break which makes me want to break but I know I've already breaked year after year after year. But don't we all need a break? Wouldn't people who work 9 to 5 need a longer break that people who just go to classes a few nights a week? And what about the people who are unemployed? Don't we need a break from our break? I mean it's exhausting trying to find ways to not be on a break any longer. (applying for jobs is a full-time job)
But, what do I know? Obviously I was not the designer of this society, if I was it would look much different (and all bathroom stalls would open outward instead of back into me, but that's a whole other structural problem).
I think it is the system! The whole scenario you explained is a vicious circle! A society such as the American society, which is almost always blindly following "argumentum ad populum" needs a complete overhaul, but who will bell the cat? The rich, who seem to be single-mindedly focused on distancing themselves farther away from the have-nots? What is in it for them? Or will it be the ever-thinning slice of middle-class in the social pie chart? How? They are barely trying to exist! Or will it be the poor, who are in a quicksand of complacency and hopeless romanticism - who live their lives one day at a time? Based on what? It is hard to put up a fight when your hands are tied behind your back! So just wishing for a utopian dream to come true while empowering ourselves and our fellow kindred spirits seems like a good way to start, a baby step!
ReplyDeleteAgreed on all counts but especially the part about the bathroom stalls. What is the deal with that?? This bugs me on a daily basis because all of the stalls at work open inward! So I have to fall back onto the damn filthy toilet just to get out of the stall! Very irritating.
ReplyDelete@Jeet agreed, empowering ourselves and those around us is an important first step, ideally those ideas would spread and a paradigm shift would occur but again, that's idealism.
ReplyDelete@ Cortney... thinking I should have become a public bathrooms engineer since very few people have figured out how to get it right yet.