I guess I need to figure some things out, for my own sanity.
So, they say that history repeats itself, and that ideals of cultural identity and the political climate in America swing around in cycles. I, for one, am too young to have witnessed many, or any, revolutions of said cycles, but I'm sure it's true. Correct me if I'm wrong, though, but I have to assume that a few scary things that I'm witnessing in the political world today are brand new. They're new due to the evolving nature of the media, which is itself new.
If I was writing a dystopian novel (and I may someday), I think I'd spend quite a bit of time studying the precise rhetorical methods of mainstream media today. Heck, an overly manipulative media was Orwell's greatest fear, and that was in the '40s. Now, I don't like bringing up the subject of media bias anymore, because the issue turns immediately to Fox vs. CNN, left vs. right, yada yada yada.
Ironically, the fact that the discussion immediately turns there encapsulates what actually scares me: Compartmentalization and oversimplification of inherently complex and vital-to-life issues. And nowhere is this more evident than in the infantile pitting, in the media, of the two major American political parties against each other.
It seems like people have woken up to the pitfalls of cable news stations like Fox and CNN, but I wonder if many lessons are being learned. Obviously, the two parties have opposed each other forever, which has resulted in idiotic outbursts for decades (see Preston Brooks). But what's the purpose of the intense polarization that's taking place now between the two parties? No informed citizen could ever honestly say that they believe in every policy of a certain party and loathe every policy of the other. The party stances are completely counter-intuitive to their perceived philosophies on a lot of things. And it's not like one's good and one's evil. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle." The parties themselves aren't that simple, so our responses to them probably shouldn't be either. But I digress.
So why the drama, then? Why are the parties drifting irreconcilably apart? As far as I can tell, it's for the lofty ambition of selling advertising space. Perfect archetypal battles between good and evil are the most gripping stories on TV, and in this case, you can even choose which side is which! The media, for better or for worse, is a business. Each year, in order to accommodate our impatient lives, complex arguments are reduced to smaller and smaller soundbites and simplistic party assignations to the point that no actual knowledge is disseminated on the news. Then we get this:
Dude 1: "The Republicans' health care plan is terrible!"
Dude 2: "What part of the plan?"
Dude 1: "Uh, you know, prices are too high, and they want us to pay for it ourselves."
As if that's the entirety of the issue. MAYBE we understand 10% of it, but no more.
The print media, thank goodness, doesn't always follow suit, but in all honesty, dramatic magazines and newspapers sell better than boring, accurate ones as well. Of course, it's not like this is the media's fault, per se. As a business, they pander to the interests and pocketbooks of the consumers. This phenomenon, to me--the oversimplification and lack of focus on real knowledge and solutions--seems like a product not of the media, but human nature (but what isn't, I guess?).
I guess the scary implications to me is this: that such a culture will continue to affect the way actual politics are done, i.e. increased emphasis on party solidarity and antagonism rather than actual attempts to solve problems collaboratively. Please see this hilarious recent Onion article as a satirical, but all-too-sadly-true example of the same. (PS--you could substitute one party for the other in the article--it doesn't matter.)
It seems to me that it's because of this oversimplification that choosing ultra-adamant opinions has become no longer the extreme, but the norm. Saying something loud has become an acceptable substitute for reasoning out a measured response. This, I suspect, is not entirely new, but I fear that with our technological capabilities at this point, the media isn't going to become any more attentive to those measured responses anytime soon. We're not getting stupider as citizens, but I fear we trample on our own beloved democratic rights by limiting our thinking to only two possible options for each issue--the liberal or the conservative--as if the spectrum really is that one-dimensional.
But then again, what do I know? I'm subject to the same soundbites as everyone else, and this progressive-sounding cynicism of mine doesn't make me any more knowledgeable than anyone else with opinions. When someone says "Hillary Clinton is a ______!" and can't back that up with a single quantitative piece of evidence, it's easy to say they're ignorant. But aren't all of us who aren't on the senate floor or in the intelligence meetings pretty darn ignorant about the actual implications of these issues we care so passionately about? The existence of a whole spectrum of opinions, including a center, is what makes democracy work, and keeps us from the brink of destruction. So why are we so adverse to the idea?
My often-cynical buddy Blaine came home from a congressional internship last year with a renewed faith in the people that actually make our decisions. I've always had a probably-unwarranted faith in our politicians and the fact that they're the right people for the job, but it's a faith I continue to cling to. They know the issues, and due to our own apathy, we only pretend to. One one hand, it's good that they know the issues more intimately than others. On the other hand, though, doesn't increased knowledge and participation on the part of the populace theoretically lead to greater freedom and prosperity? I fear we may never know.
These are extremely nebulous and fairly simple issues I'm treating here, but to me they're fascinating. And I suppose they're issues I don't hear talked about a lot, so I thought I'd try to help fill the void, at least to a small degree. But I'd love to hear your opinions on these things. What is to be done about the oversimplification and shrouding of real issues in America? Should anything be done? Do these things affect real politics already, or just cable news politics? Am I crazy to be worried about this? Please weigh in and let's talk about this--if for no other cause than my sanity.
I've been thrown off. I haven't been writing as much lately, and I've been wasting time in the interim. This is a sorry state of affairs for me, and one that can be attributable to one thing and one thing only: one of my organs has exploded.
Yes, nature's li'l whiner, the appendix, paid me a nasty visit last Saturday. It decided it was done doing whatever it is it's been doing for 24 years, and it burst, sending toxic fluids into my abdomen and onto the benevolent residents thereof. This was, by far, the worst pain I have ever felt. For you ladies out there, the level has been compared to that of childbirth, so you can hold your high horses about that. Anyway, fortunately, this occurred at home on a Saturday afternoon, and Sarah was home, so she was able to take me to the emergency room.
Between throbs of screeching pain, I asked her to take me to InstaCare instead, since my health insurance ran out a month previous, after a lifetime of expensive inactivity. (In fact, I'd never had any health problems to speak of in my entire life--no broken bones, no stitches, hospital stays, or even unscheduled doctor visits.) Had I been in my right mind, however, I would have recalled that InstaCare is worthless. I brought in my buddy Erik who was near death when his lung collapsed, and all they could figure out was that his rib was broken. Anyway, at about 1:00, Sarah drove me to the emergency room.
At about 5:00, I was informed that Mr. Appendix was in fact the culprit, and it was removed (with lasers!) about an hour later. They didn't know it was the appendix, or even particularly suspect it at first, because I had zero pain on my right side, where the little turd is known to hang out. It turns out mine was in the middle. So anyway, they took it out, yada yada, I can't wear pants now.
I'm sorry, I can't do this anymore.
I hate hospital stories, which is possibly because I never had one. I've been obligated to relate this one numerous times over the past week, but I am done. I'm ok now, and that's all that matters. My printing of the story here signifies the end. Sorry if I bored you with it. I realize its complete lack of literary merit. If I was a freshman, I'd make this my personal narrative for English 1010, thereby confessing to a totally meaningless existence, but fortunately, that stage has passed (inside joke). Maybe that's what made me a good writer in college--I never had any stupid hospital stories to fall back on. I had to flail about for meaning when being a frightfully austere WASP with no injuries and a loving family quashed my chances for an easy out.
So here's the question: is my writing going to get lame now that I've been an inpatient? This posting isn't exactly a harbinger of doom for the future, but it's not real promising, either. This was pretty much just a series of ad-lib Dave Barry-esque jokes and simple, fairly obvious observations. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but...
Having an excuse for laziness sucks. It's actually breeding more real and abiding laziness. There's something to think about.
It was announced to the world yesterday that my friend John just won the Norman Mailer College Writing Award. For those of you that are thinking "that's cool," no. It's not cool. It's absolutely incredible. It's possibly the biggest writing award in the country for a college student, and it comes with $10,000, a summer fellowship to the Norman Mailer Writers' Colony in Massachusetts, and a presentation in New York with a number of the world's best writers, including Toni Morrison. And he gets a trophy, as I understand. So not only are he and his wife tremendously better off financially for a while, he's basically going to be able to write his ticket to any MFA program in the country. Beyond that, he could veritably have publishers lined up at his door for years. Basically, he's got it made.
I hope it doesn't look like I'm hitching a ride on his glory, or embarrassing him, as he is a frequent reader of this here blog, but I'm just really excited about this--possibly more so than is necessary. So in order to assuage that awkward over-excitedness, I'll just start talking about me instead. Once I found this out yesterday, my own writing career has taken a slight turn--hopefully, anyway. I've been woefully negligent about my own creative writings since graduation. I submitted a couple things for publication at the beginning of the summer, but I've done very little since. Yes, creative writing is a huge part of my job, but that's completely different.
When I found out about John's good fortune, though, it really hit me all at once how lazy I've been lately. In fact, I became so obsessed with such thoughts that I made an excuse and left work (at about 10:30) and came home and spent the entire rest of the day polishing up an old essay and doing massive research on a few possible target publications for it.
I was happy to discover that, while I'm naturally envious of my friend's life-changing opportunity, the wonderful news has served mostly as a swift kick to the pants of hope. If he can do it, so can I. That's not to say I'm as good of a writer as he is (though we do share a number of similarities and tastes), and I've certainly never written anything as profoundly beautiful as his winning essay "Final Cascade," but let's just say I'm optimistic. Local boy makes good. I guess this is why we need those stories, to remind us that it could happen.
And at the very least, maybe he can put a good word in for me with Norman Mailer. Oh, that's right--he's dead. Thanks for nothing.
(Most of all, congratulations.)
You might have guessed that part of the reason I haven't written for a while is the U.S. Open, and you wouldn't be wrong. During Wimbledon, I tried to combine my loves of writing and tennis, but when I penned a piece about the thinly veiled arrogance that characterizes Roger Federer, I got a bunch of hits worldwide, and a few good reviews, which bolstered me up until I realized that the best one by far was from a Nadal fan site. Sigh. So anyway, it's either tennis or writing from now on--not both. Right now, it's writing.
I'm on the job hunt again. True, I have a couple of jobs already, but I want more. I hope that you, dear reader, have a job of your own, because I'd feel bad going about jealously trying to amass jobs like acorns for the winter, if you didn't have any at all. The problem is that my principal employment is only 20 hours per week. My other one, the freelance writing and editing, gives me work here and there, but it's not consistent. Though I'll be spending a serious amount of time this season on grad school application preparation, I certainly feel that I have the capacity to provide my little family with a few more bucks per week. And if I have the capacity, I have the responsibility.
For the past couple of weeks, I've been working, in my role as a freelance writer, with a good gentleman from New Jersey, helping to build content for his website. The site is hireangel.com (don't look at it yet--it's not up), which is his job search consulting business. The man, with whom I'm working rather closely, is a professional job search consultant with a wealth of knowledge and over 20 years of impressive experience. He, the very Hire Angel himself, imparts this knowledge upon me, and I gather it up and make it sound pretty, for that is my calling. This past two weeks, I have literally spent hours upon hours of time staring at, and even writing, expert job search advice so perfect and simple, it's almost as if poured in from beyond the veil.
You know where this is going, don't you? I'm not using the advice myself--at least not well. Me, the very writer of said advice. I know what to do, and I don't do it. I think I'm somehow an exception, just like everybody else. Despite the angelic presence of an expert on my shoulder, I persist in making only cursory attempts at getting another job. Why do I do this? All the resources one could ever want, and instead I elect to fall back on the same shotgun approach that's never won me anything. I suspect this isn't such a rare tendency, but it is baffling.
Remarkably, I have two interviews next week, and they're both pretty decent jobs, at least as far as I can tell. How I landed these interviews, I'll never know. It's almost as if I've been granted mercy that I don't necessarily deserve. Man, I'm the best...
All I'm saying is, maybe we should use our resources.
Many people have inquired lately as to what exactly it is I'm doing with my life now that I've graduated college. Many of you who read this blog know me personally, so for those of you, and any others who have some sort of twisted interest not in my prose, but in the actual details of my personal life, allow me to illuminate. I'll warn you, though. If you don't know me, this won't even be the slightest bit interesting, and even if you do, that still may very likely be the case.
Anyway, Sarah has now begun her senior year and will graduate in May with a BA in history. She's still working at RISE, with people with disabilities, and is quite well. Meanwhile, my job at the university (PR Office, Utah State Magazine) will blessedly continue throughout the school year. I may still be searching for more hours elsewhere, however, and I'm also now a freelance writer and editor through iFreelance.com. That's been fun. Anyway...
I took the GRE on Thursday, and man, does it feel good to have that behind me. Fortunately, I did well--which doesn't guarantee anything, but my scores won't close any doors either. So that's good.
The GRE, for outsiders, is the Graduate Record Exam. For greater understanding of this test's nature, I have constructed the following analogy question.
1. GRE : graduate school
A. MCAT : medical school
B. GMAT : business school
C. SAT or ACT : college
D. political litmus test : good standing with Utah "intellectuals"
E. LSAT : law school
If you guessed the secret sixth option, which is "all of the above," you're right. So by taking the GRE, I am hoping to be allowed entry into grad school. But in what field? Ah, yes. I graduated with an English degree, and for a long time, assumed I would continue with an MA and then a PhD in literature. My course deviated about six months ago, though, when I finally realized once and for all that I won't be academically fulfilled in this life unless I instead opt for an
MA in Russian and Eastern European Studies.
Now, that's "studies," mind you. Not language. And then maybe back to Comparative Lit for my PhD, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In a way, this Russian MA allows me to keep as many doors open as possible (thereby further procrastinating precise career decisions). More importantly, though, it affords me the opportunity to work for a few years doing exciting things--possibly for the government--before settling down and writing and teaching about things for the rest of my life.
I love it. I think I can do some good as a diplomat, or at least some sort of glorified US-Russian PR agent. Besides, there's just nothing more fascinating to me than Russian/Soviet anything. Plus, it's probably my best chance of getting into a great grad school. I have a long list I'm still considering, including the following. In the interest of confidence, I'll name them here in alphabetical order.
Arizona..........NYU
Columbia........Oregon
Georgetown....Stanford
Harvard..........Washington
Indiana..........Wisconsin
Michigan........
Any suggestions? I'll be applying this winter. Obviously, some schools are more attractive than others, for a wide variety of reasons. There are also other great schools out there, but most of them don't offer this sort of program. Anyway, I just thought you'd like to know. If you aren't even acquainted with my long personal history with Russia, (which for some reason I never write about here), I'll save it for another time and say this:
I can't believe you're still reading. Go outside.
Sarah and I attended the Sun Valley Writers' Conference this weekend with my family. For those who haven't heard of this, it's one of the world's elite writers' conferences, where mortals like me sit around and quaff in the brilliance of geniuses talking about their specialties. Ironically, it's those mortals that I wish to speak about in this post, but not before putting in a plug for the conference, and some of the fantastic talks we heard there. You don't have to read the list if you don't care.
--"Writing About Wrongs" with Philip Gourevitch, editor of the Paris Review, staff writer for the New Yorker, and author of We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families.
--"The Ideals of Medicine, Unchanged Since Antiquity" with Dr. Abraham Verghese. A heartfelt and scientific call for better bedside manner and patient-physician relationships. I'm not into medicine, but this was one of the best anythings I've ever heard.
--"Can Good Writing Redeem Bad Faith? Fiction and Historical Trauma" with Nam Le, winner of the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize and author of The Boat.
--"A Talk and Reading by Ian McEwan" Absolutely incredible talk and reading by possibly the greatest living writer in the world, who's suddenly somehow friends with my family. Leading us to...
--"WASPs in Literature, in America, and in my Family" with Tad Friend of the New Yorker.
--"The Hemingses of Monticello: Beyond Tom and Sally" with Annette Gordon-Reed, author of a new book on that subject.
Also talks by Roy Blount, Jr., Jan Morris, and Vernon Jordan, and I could have seen this year's Pulitzer-winning poet W.S. Merwin had my priorities not been out of wack.
Anyway, whether or not you're into writing and literature, it's fun just to be surrounded by such brilliance. I could go on forever about the things we learned and experienced. I sure owe my family a ton for helping to provide such wonderful experiences like this for me. But anyway, back to the audience.
I've heard this generation of mine called the "look at me" generation, and what with Facebook status, YouTube, and especially Twitter, you can see where that comes from. In a way, I think it's kind of a shame, and I hope we as a society eventually outgrow the sentiment that everything we have to say deserves to be made public. (Nam Le discussed this phenomenon as well.) But in another way, I have a blog. So I guess it works out for everyone.
It just became sort of tiresome, honestly, to be around large audiences for two days. And I don't mean the crowds. I mean this: Quite frequently, when an expert in his/her field was up on stage calling down rays of glorious wisdom upon us, various members of the audience would do their best to ensure that ample attention was instead turned upon themselves, at least among the few people nearby. Most often, this attention was attained through a cacophony of asides about the audience members' own literary conquests: "Ah yes, of course--Somerset Maugham. Brilliant."
But what got me more than that were the political clappers. Allow me to explain. A political clapper is one who absolutely must make his/her personal political views known to the remainder of the crowd, at whatever the cost to dignity and decency. It's become so that in some venues, one can't even mention certain people or issues without eliciting claps or boos before the sentence is even over. Not long ago on TV, I heard a comedian mention something about our previous president having ruined the nation, and the audience exploded into raucous applause. Were they glad that such an event took place? Is it so important that our petty partisanship be made known that we're willing to applaud a tragedy?
Anyway, I guess we all do it. We all love attention, and that's why we all have blogs. I don't know how or when or why this trend took off. All I know is that if you're reading this, you should tell all of your friends to read it too, and tell everyone they know. These distinct opinions, and no one else's, might save your life, or at least your soul.
It's not because I want to look smarter, though many have said that I do. In fact, I think it does just the opposite. It's called giant papillary conjunctivitis, which is a fancy way of saying that for the past five years, I haven't changed out my contacts frequently enough. The "giant" refers to the papillary, by the way. Not the conjunctivitis. Anyway, I wear some glasses for two weeks and take some drops and then I'm fine, especially fine considering I've saved hundreds of dollars by not changing my contacts very frequently. A small price to pay.
I bring this up simply because I've always been concerned about how I look--more concerned than I care to admit, in fact. It's not so much as how I look physically, though, as how I'm perceived by others. I constantly wonder what categories I fall into in other peoples' perceptions. We all profile others to some degree, which practice has its uses, but sometimes I fear the effects.
Just tonight, I ran into Marla, an old friend, at the grocery store, and this subject was called into my mind once more. She and I used to share long discussions on the topic of personal stereotyping and how people consciously choose to categorize themselves and others. She mentioned tonight about how tired she is of people liking "indie" bands, movies, etc. just for appearances--a sentiment I've always shared. The thing is, Marla, like me, is a great appreciator of a fair amount of indie-type things. She just loathes being pigeonholed, stereotyped, and confused with those, well, posers.
My own personal history with stereotype paranoia is rich, much of it having been inherited from my dad. For as long as I can remember, he's been on a crusade to make people around him think. His role as persistent devil's advocate is one that frustrated me at times growing up, but in hindsight has taught me a great deal. There are no stock characters in life, and there's always a minority report, so to speak. If I spoke up in fervent support of a cause, he'd attack. If I attacked, he'd defend. It was never malevolent, and it was never to make me change my mind--only to ensure that I was, in fact, using it.
It's a lesson that has sunk deep. Easy-on labels for people (granola, victim, hero, Republican) undermine the complexity that individuals inherently possess, and what's worse, they cause us to shop around for labels to affix on ourselves. Then we start making decisions such as "I can't like Rocky IV because I'm supposed to be indie," or "I have to believe in the death penalty because I'm conservative." Worse yet is the further consolidation of labels into ready-made packages such as "indie/liberal/rebellious" and "Christian/mainstream/conservative/sheep". Choice in music somehow leads to choice in politics (as if there were only two), and soon you're so adamant about your adopted views, you can hardly see.
The thing is, even while I spurn these labels, I still find myself thinking about them, and I often fall into the terrible trap of doing just the opposite of the behavior I hate. That is to say, I make conscious decisions about myself and go out of my way in order to AVOID labels. This is just as despicable. I'm still allowing people's perceptions to guide my own decisions, rather than simply doing what I want.
In Mere Christianity, the brilliant C.S. Lewis was speaking of totalitarianism vs. individualism when he said the following, though it seems that the same could be applied to indie vs. mainstream and liberal vs. conservative, among other dichotomies:
"I feel a strong desire to tell you--and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me--which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs--pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one."
I like this. And whether or not you ascribe this to the devil, you have to admit it makes sense. It's why extremists are rarely right. And so this: I like Van Halen AND Radiohead. I'm opposed to abortion in most cases and the death penalty in all. And I'm wearing glasses because my giant papillaries are conjuncted, and for no other reason.
Does that answer your question?
on Tuesday. Well, we bought a boat. I never wanted to be one of those guys--you know, one of those guys that spends so much time talking about his boat, polishing it up, leaving it in the driveway even though there's room in the garage, always saying "hope it clears up by the weekend, so we can take her out on the lake." The truth is, many boat owners are jerks. They'd have you believe that nothing in your pathetically landlocked plans could possibly measure up to spending a day on the water.
It turns out they're right. But I digress.
Our dear friends Rob and Vienna (whose apartment we had toilet papered less than a week before) suggested on Tuesday that we go buy some inner tubes and float the canal up in Logan Canyon. This is a fairly common pastime for students here, but for some reason, in four years, I had never gone. Neither had Sarah, nor our friends. So we got in our swimsuits and went shopping for watercraft, which is evidently a little like grocery shopping when you're hungry. Inner tubes were $11 each, so $22 per couple. But this majestic vessel of inflatable plastic, 
complete with oars and seating for two, rang up at only $25. Ridiculous. Rob and I each grabbed one up immediately.
It didn't take long to convince our wives it was a good idea. Once we shoved off down the narrow canal, snaking through the mountains toward the sunset, the general consensus was that the boats had paid for themselves within the hour. Also, they double as air mattresses. With that and the exercise ball we bought last month, we now have living room seating for up to seven.
Rob and Vienna christened their boat Steamboat Willie, despite the marked lack of reliance on steam. Sarah and I had a harder time deciding on a name for ours. I suggested the Andrea Doria, the C-word, the Edmund Fitzgerald, and then, the Gordon Lightfoot. Vienna threw in the Minnow. The names seemed like fine choices, until we realized that each of those boats is only famous for having sunk, with the exception of the Gordon Lightfoot, which never existed.
That maiden voyage down the canal was fraught with poor oarsmanship and some inadvertent 360's, but our trusty vessel steered us safely down the canal. When we reached the end of our journey and returned to land, however, we were left at the mouth of the canyon without car keys. While Rob and I were preparing to hitchhike for the first time in our lives back to the other car up the canyon, a kindly gentleman named Jose Chavez noticed our plight from nearby and offered us a ride there. Having no other way to thank this dear stranger, we elected to name our boat the Jose Chavez in his honor.
The Jose Chavez and Steamboat Willie have since enjoyed the serene Hyrum Reservoir and another trip down the canal, yesterday. Disaster struck as Steamboat Willie ran aground on some sharp rocks halfway down the canal and sprung a leak, but after collecting ourselves and our belongings in the freezing rapids, Vienna boarded with us, and Rob gallantly rode the half-deflated boat the remainder of the way down on his own. It was quite the adventure, the likes of which I haven't had all summer.
And now look. I've gone on and just talked and talked and talked about my boat like some suck who's trying to show off his lavish possessions. Well, let me assure you--we're not wealthy. Remember how I mentioned the boat and the exercise ball as living room seating, and you laughed? Yeah. That was serious.
I've mentioned that I'm from Idaho. For the geographically disinclined, that's in the northwest, bordering Oregon. Before this past week, I had never been to Oregon. I had been to 33 states and some wacky countries, including Kazakhstan, Estonia, and Mozambique. I had even been to each state bordering Oregon multiple times (and about 12 trips to Boise) without ever crossing the border into the Beaver State.
Now I have. But that's not the story. Almost all of my wife's extended family on both sides lives in Oregon, and we just returned after spending nine days there, wherein I finally got to meet them all. But that's not the story either, even though a lot of them are crazy (their words, not mine).
The story is about driving in Oregon. There are a number of unique idiosyncrasies about being on the road there that are very indicative of what the state embodies. Mostly, it appears as though they're ultra-paranoid about accidents, maybe because of all the bicycles. Anyway, Sarah and I spent an average of probably 4+ hours per day in the car over the past nine days, but it didn't take that long to notice the following:
Speed limits: 10mph lower than the entire rest of the western United States, even in the deserty parts. 65mph max on all freeways, and 55mph max on all state and federal highways. This was terrible.
The roads themselves: Like sandpaper, only bigger. It was a nine-day-long deafening, vibrating butt massage that was fun for about twenty minutes.
Road signs: This, to me, is by far the most interesting part. The vast majority of Oregon highway road signs demonstrate impressive economy by exhibiting only one word. Common examples include "DEER", "CONGESTION", "ROCKS", and "TRUCKS". The first two are fairly self-explanatory, the third a little hazy, and I never figured out the fourth. What am I supposed to do with the trucks? Pass them? Fear them? Give 'em a shout out? (TRUCKS!) But this isn't all. Speed limit signs don't even say "SPEED LIMIT 65", as they do in the rest of the country. They just say "SPEED 55".
I'm guessing that the idea behind this policy of abbreviation is to keep drivers' eyes on the road, and not spending so much time reading signs. The really funny part to me is that this same format pervades other types of Oregon signs as well. One morning, we saw a family setting up for a garage sale in a neighborhood in Salem. When we drove back through a couple of hours later, there was a homemade posterboard sign on the corner that pointed in the direction of the house and simply said--you guessed it--"GARAGE". A couple days later, my brother-in-law mentioned that he saw a Christian billboard which plastered a singular word: "JESUS". Not "Jesus saves" or "lives" or any of the other common variations. Just the one word.
Oregon's an extremely laissez-faire liberal state, though, which is why they can never decide on their electoral votes, so maybe they felt that making any sort of conclusive statement about the Savior would be better left to the interpretation of each individual passer-by. Similarly, why only draw attention to the falling rocks? We wouldn't want to limit the perception of all rocks to their common stereotype of being fallers. There are some very lovely rocks in Oregon, and there's no need to fear them all. Many of them wish to be recognized for their stability on the mountainside, not the proclivity toward gravity that gives them all such a bad name.
All in all, it was a lovely trip all around the state to some of the most gorgeous sites I've ever seen. But maybe it's for the best that it took me 24 years to get there. Without a background in more explicit signage, I don't think I would have known exactly how to react. I never did figure out what to do around trucks.
Yes, it was a fine time, but I'll admit I breathed a sigh of relief when on I-84 back in my home state of Idaho, I was greeted by the comforting sign "OCCASIONALLY BLINDING DUST STORMS". I know just what to do when that happens: move to Oregon.
Disclosure: I have not attended a business school, but am a recent graduate of a college that competes for funding with one, and wallows in mighty defeat.
I've talked about the subject of business school here in brief, but never known exactly how to approach it more comprehensively. But most of my closest friends are graduates from business school, and they're wonderful people. I don't look down my nose at their degrees or anyone else's. In fact, some of the very smartest, most driven people I know are among them. I guess I'm just trying to figure out for my own sanity if, in the grand scheme of things, business schools actually do anything. Let me explain where this comes from.
My experience with our business school in my current position has been less than pleasant. Every other college on campus is consistently helpful and professional in meeting with me and contributing to my efforts. Almost all of the staff help I've solicited so far at the School of Business, however, has shut me down hard, each time in a very belittling fashion, as though they're too important to take time for me in my job (which is to assist them). It's almost as if they need to put on an air of superiority to mask the fact that many of them are still, in their hearts, undeclared.
In fact, at my university, and I suspect many others, majoring in "business" is often just a less embarrassing way of saying "I'm undeclared." It's a tiny bit different, though. It actually means "I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I'd like to make some money and maybe go on some cool business trips." There's nothing dishonorable about this indecision, of course. It usually doesn't stick, anyway. A colleague of mine who deals with freshman recruitment told me that a very high percentage of high schoolers enter college as business majors, and within four years, the majority have transferred to other departments. Presumably, they've figured out their lives' ambitions and left to follow them.
I'm guessing that most of those that stick around are of some more specific persuasion than simply "business." They are accountants, economists, and so forth. But no doubt, many virtual undeclareds do in fact slip through the cracks and attain degrees. Then, when these graduates grow up and still don't know what they want to do, they decide to work for business schools, in lifelong attempts to legitimize their own degrees. They stand guard at the years-old facade that business school is in fact productive, wary of outsiders who tread near the palace to which they've dedicated their lives, lest an outsider discover that the palace is empty.
An Englishman I knew in Russia, and one of the most successful men I know, told me that if I want to make it big in business, don't major in business. He explained that it takes specialists in other fields not only to come up with the big ideas, but to bring them to fruition as well. It made sense to me. After all, if I'm selling a product, I want engineers developing, building, and testing it. Most everything else, including sales and management, doesn't require any credential other than experience.
The point is, those engineering majors go to school thinking, "I'm going to use my degree to improve people's lives," and certainly, most budding scientists, artists, lawyers and others often feel the same way. Conversely, the very purpose of the business management degree is simply to make the bearer money. Now, I love capitalism as much as the next man (probably more), but I think it's a shame that we're actually spending countless dollars and awarding degrees by training people to increase revenue through self-serving sales and marketing tactics, rather than by building better products and services to aid humanity.
In the long run, wouldn't it make more sense to have the 2000 (estimate) students in our business school each specialize in some sort of beneficial other field, and let those who are eventually going to run a business learn the ropes via apprenticeship and experience, or maybe a cheap book and a community ed class? Friends from the palace tell me that business degrees are essentially useless once you get that first job, anyway--from then on, nobody cares whether you went to Harvard or ITT Tech. Everything in the actual workforce is learned and gained by experience.
I guess what I'm really wondering is this: how many millions of dollars have to be spent on educating students who won't even use their degrees, much less for anything useful, while so many scholars with aspirations in other, often more intrinsically beneficial fields receive fewer resources as a result?
By the way, obviously, many degrees under the business banner, i.e. accounting and economics and whatnot, are actually in and of themselves specialized and useful. In addition, those who want to will go on and do great things. I'm guessing that the palace guards that have been so impertinent and unhelpful to me are in fact those who have yet to decide what they really want to do in this life. I guess, at their age, I'd be pretty defensive about that too.
