CommenTerry

Should Everyone Go to College?

I recently had a reader take umbrage with me over a remark I made in a previous post that not everyone is college material. He seems to believe that all high school students are indeed college material. I can't help but wonder if this gentleman is living in the same world with the rest of us. If he is, then he certainly needs to get his head out of the sand as soon as possible.

At least 30% of all high school students have neither the aptitude nor the desire to get even an Associate's degree or some kind of certificate. Many of those kids, of course, won't even finish high school. As I said in that previous post, some kids are more suited toward learning a trade or attending a technical school. Obviously, we don't want kids dropping out of high school, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with either of the latter options.

Besides, it wouldn't be too practical for everyone to get a college degree. We would still need people to pick up our garbage, clean our public buildings, fix our cars, and pave our roads, for example. If everyone had a college degree, who would be willing to do these kinds of things? Maybe those who believe that everyone is college material should support the concept of open borders between the U.S. and Mexico. Somehow I believe many of them do.

Now You Know When to Go

In case you don't have a DVR that can perform live action pauses, the best time to take a potty break during an NFL broadcast (other than halftime) is right after the first score (touchdown or field goal) of the fourth quarter. There will be the obligatory TV timeout right before the ensuing kickoff, and then, immediately after it and before the next play from scrimmage takes place, there will be another one. Therefore, you can take your time and still only miss one play!

Search Engines as a Writing Aid?

Here's another great use for search engines: They can be used to find the most commonly used phrase or expression, when choosing from one or more that are similar. For example, when choosing between "different from" and "different than," I could search on both of them in a popular search engine to see which one gets the most hits. When I use Google, the former gives me 61,600,000 hits, whereas the latter gives me only 4,430,000. In this case, I would go with the first one.

Cowardly Grudge Holders

People who hold grudges against others for something they may or may not have done are acting cowardly, in my opinion. If there's not quite enough evidence against someone to be completely sure that they have committed a perceived offense, then you should confront that person and give them a chance to defend themselves and tell their side of the story. If don't have enough nerve to do that, then, by all means, don't go around carrying a possibly baseless grudge against someone. Don't risk allowing someone who has never done anything to you to be left wondering why you are giving them the cold shoulder.    

Random Rants and Raves #151

Don’t blame someone for thinking you’re lazy, untrustworthy, dishonest, unreliable, etc. if you have given them a reason to believe such a thing.        

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That 401(k) from my previous job has now has decided on its own to roll over – and play dead.

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Why does everything seem to be made for short people? Even in my full-sized car, I can’t get the driver’s seat to go back far enough to feel like I’m at a comfortable and safe distance from the steering wheel – and I’m only slightly more than six feet tall!

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The louder a pitch man talks, the less likely it is that the product he’s pushing is any good.

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The more you learn from the mistakes of others, the less you’ll need to learn from your own.

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You’ll often hear teens say they are 13 going on 14, but you never hear adults say they are 43 going on 44.

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Some people pick out the part of the Bible they like the best and then try to force everything else in the Scriptures to conform to it.

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You know someone isn’t pulling their own weight when they have time to sit in the peanut gallery and take pot shots those who are doing the heavy lifting.

Oh, How Priorities Can Change!

Young people need to realize that many of the things that are so important to them now may not be such a high priority for them when they get older. With the passage of time, those things tend to get replaced with new priorities. Circumstances change (especially after one graduates from high school and has to face the world on his own) and priorities usually change with them.

I'll use myself as an example. From the time I was about 11 until I was 18, I was crazy about sports, especially the NFL. I didn't just like it -- I was in love with it! It became an obsession for me. I can remember sitting in church every Sunday morning during football season and thinking exclusively about the afternoon's gridiron match-ups and wondering if the Redskins would win on that particular day. Church on Sunday was merely part of my pre-game ritual.   

Back then, the first round of the NFL playoffs coincided with last-minute preparations for Christmas, as they usually occurred on the last weekend before that holiday. So bad was my obsession that I began to mentally associate Christmas with the NFL playoffs. To this day, when I hear certain Christmas carols, the first thing that comes to mind is the recollection of given playoff games from that era.

Now, as I walk through the isles of my church (the same one I attended back then), the sights, sounds, and smells still remind me of those days when I was so crazy about the NFL. I'm still a big fan of the NFL, but I can't for the life of me understand why it was ever that important to me. Once my sheltered public school days were over, I had to re-focus my attention on getting a post-secondary education and beginning my career. I suppose that once I realized I was solely responsible for making my own living, that specific responsibility shot to the top of priority list and enthusiasm for sports was permanently displaced.

Of course, my priorities had been altered several times in the ensuing years, such as the emphasis I have placed on my health after surviving cancer 11 years ago. In addition, with advent of the Internet, I have developed an interest in writing that just wasn't there before, and have made it a priority in my life. Actually, it might have already existed within me, but I just never developed it because it was too inconvenient before. Now, with any reference item I could ever want just a click away and the ease-of-use that's inherent in blogging, exercising my writing skills is a breeze.

Classic Rants and Raves #86

I can easily identify a piece of email as spam when its subject line addresses me as "Mitchell, Terry" or as one of my common user ids like "TMitchell001."         

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I oppose the government increasing the minimum wage because it is nothing more than an unfunded mandate, i.e., the government dictates that it must be done, but businesses (and ultimately consumers) have to pay for it.

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Every once is a while, I'll see, hear, smell, or taste something that will cause me to have a brief flashback to an earlier time in my life.

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The only times when the U.S. federal government can have a scheduled holiday on a day when mail is delivered are Fridays immediately before Saturday occurrences of New Year's Day, Independence Day, Veteran's day, and Christmas.

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Although I find most of the current crop of TV commercials to be quite annoying, there are some exceptions -- like those for Geico, NASDAQ, and Target.

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We've all seen message boards on the Web that have been so overrun with spam that they have been pretty much abandoned by serious posters. I call these boards "spam graveyards."

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Professional traders are parasites who prey on honest investors. When traders put in orders to execute their trades, they should be executed instead!

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Show me a person who does not have the discipline to delay gratification and I'll show you someone who will never amount to anything.

Is Inclusion That Much of a Concern?

I was taken to task by a reader several years ago for assuming that the cross was removed from William and Mary's Wren Chapel because non-Christians might be offended at it. She wrote in her comments that the real reason for such a move was an effort to make non-Christian students at that college feel included. That's an interesting thought, but why doesn't inclusion seem to be much of a concern in other areas of college life?

Let me illustrate my point. Drinking is a popular activity on college campuses at frat parties and other social events. However, there are some students who do not drink. Naturally, those students are likely to feel awkward and left out when they attend these events. Yet I'm not aware of a single initiative on any college campus to remove drinking from such events to make those students feel included. If the real reason for removing crosses from chapels was to make students feel included, then why not apply that same logic to drinking and other things as well?

The answer, of course, is that inclusion is not the real reason crosses and other Christian symbols are being removed from public places. I still contend that it is hostility to Christianity on the part of a very small number of unbelievers, for the reasons that I have previously discussed.

Does the Year End at Christmas?

This year, pay close attention to the media during the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. If you do, you might actually be convinced that the year ended on Christmas Day. Each year, during this time, they act as if the year has already ended. That's when they typically start running their year-end reviews and listing the top stories of the "year that was."

However, I believe they should wait until the year is actually over before running such retrospectives. If nothing else, they should wait for the sake of accuracy. It's quite possible that one or more of the year's top stories could occur between December 26 and 31. The "big one" could hit California, another war could get started, a major world leader could be assassinated, etc.

Wouldn't stories like those be among the top stories of any given year? I should think so. When such events happen in the last week of a year, after a media outlet has already announced its top stories of that year, how does it handle that situation? Does it tack that story on to the top stories of the following year (which would be factually inaccurate) or modify the current year's list of top stories and recant the list it originally aired? That's a dilemma the media should never create for itself.

How to Predict if a President Will Be Re-Elected

When trying to guess whether a given U.S. President will be re-elected, check to see if he has previously served as vice president. If he has, the odds are against him. If he has not, then he's got a decent chance.

Presidents who have previously served as vice president don't have a very good track record of staying in office very long. In fact, Thomas Jefferson is the only U.S. President to serve two full terms after having served as vice president. Richard Nixon is the only other man to be elected to a second term after having previously served as vice president. Of course, the Watergate scandal forced him to resign before his second term was half over.