I’m not apathetic about everything, mind you, because if I were then you’d be reading someone else’s column right now; mine would have surreptitiously disappeared. Worry not, though. Writing is one of the few things I cling to that holds my ever-hurdling-out-of-control life into some semblance of gravitational normality.
That and the puppies, of course.
What do puppies have to do with anything, you say? Well firstly, how dare you? If Earth was a college student, then puppies are the equivalent of God wiring the planet money. Puppies are what make the bad things go away. Puppies are like bubbles. Only with fur. And alive. And not made of soap.
Secondly, I went directly to puppies (and the subsequent tirade) to illustrate a point: Just when you think something is going to go one way, it often goes in a completely different direction. Sometimes that direction leads you to a place you didn’t anticipate but are totally cool with—like puppies.
But sometimes the course of life can send you on a detour to a little place I call, “And tell me why the cluck I should care?”
I am only two college courses away from receiving my associate’s degree. Yes, I’ve already been here a long, long time. But the fact is I have been blessed with talents in some areas, and horrible deficiencies in others—namely math and pretty much any physical science.
God may have given me puppies, but I think I must have said something really insulting to him in the life previous because I sometimes think this is his cruel little joke.
“Hmm,” I probably said to Him. “And you decided to make all the planets round, huh?”
Yes, I’ve taken my math classes over and over, and I think it’s going to be the same story, more or less, with my physical science class. But I suppose this could be my fault more than any other’s. There just comes a point in the course when I start to wonder where and why I’m going to use this stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, alluvial fans are all well and dandy, and I guess I’m glad they exist. But if I ever find myself in a place where I’m writing a Skewed Review about alluvial fans, then something tells me I’d be failing so horribly that even the term “epic” and 400 million hits on YouTube wouldn’t do it service.
So am I halting my own learning by admitting to myself that I don’t need to know this stuff?
I know I’m not the first to question the sanity of the person who decided that in order for us to get jobs we have to know even the stuff we don’t have to know. That person, whomever he or she may be, gets the rating of retroactive punishment: burial under an alluvial fan until someone with a little more common sense comes along to change history itself.
Even my math instructor agreed with me, although I hadn’t said a word of this to him to begin with. I distinctly recall the day when he told the class we probably wouldn’t be using this type of math in our day-to-day lives. I remember it so well because I not only agreed with him, but I was also furious that I was throwing away my time and money on something I wouldn’t use.
It’s like going to Las Vegas and losing all your dough on gambling, strippers and drugs—only you don’t have a good time losing your money.
Now I’m not feeling bad for myself, of course. I’m feeling bad for E! Network, “Rolling Stone” magazine, and Fox News. These three entities might just be losing out on their next biggest entertainment commentator: me! And why? Because I don’t understand why knowing the subzero polynomial of whatever is important to my reading, writing and living in the entertainment world.
I don’t know about you, but I could use a puppy right now.
So I’m sorry, Salt Lake Tribune, and forgive me San Francisco Chronicle. My own realization of the obvious has impeded me from saving the newspaper industry. Until I can convince myself that knowing the Fujita Scale is important to my being fabulous and funny, then I don’t if I can even let myself graduate. I just have that much self-dedication, I guess. I’m not going to give up my beliefs for some silly math class.
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