Category Archives: General Posts

Sports, relationships, parenting, literature, education, and more. If it catches my interest that day, I’ll write about it.

General Posts

Wednesday Morning Ramblings

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Here’s an update on my venture into running:  When I first started, I could barely complete 1/6 of a mile.  Now, my routine has become walk a mile, run 1/3, walk a mile, run 1/3, walk a mile, run 1/3, for a total of four miles.  Currently, I complete this routine in about an hour and five minutes, which averages to walking a mile in 19 minutes and running each 1/3 in less than 3:45.  I know these times are still really slow, but I feel my endurance coming back and some strength returning to my legs, so I hope to get the walking down to fifteen and the running to around 3:00.  Ultimately, my goal is to build up to three consecutive miles running in thirty minutes.  It will take me a little while to get there, but I will do it.

So far, I’ve lost a couple of inches around the waist, but my weight hasn’t come down any, so I’m hoping that I’m just building back some muscles.  My blood pressure is still too high, so I really need to get this weight off me.  I’m making some adjustments in my diet and will continue running as often as I can.  Overall, I feel pretty healthy, but the blood pressure is still worrying me.

Also, the farm is still progressing forward, albeit slowly.  This semester has been so brutal that I barely have time to get there and do anything, but I hope to stay on schedule and get the first test crop started in January.  I’m very excited about the possibilities there.  We shall see.

General Posts

Wednesday Afternoon Ramblings

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Once again, the life of a professional educator has me pushed to my absolute limit of frustration.  We had another record setting attendance level this semester, and because of that, many of us had to take on overload courses.  Between the overload and dual enrollment, I’m teaching the equivalent of seven full courses this semester.  It’s too much.

Literally, I hit the ground running on Monday morning, and I barely have time to use the bathroom until Friday afternoon.  I’m either teaching, preparing, or grading all day, every day.  Physically and emotionally, it’s as exhausting as working two full-time jobs.

If I were fairly compensated for my efforts, I might not feel so bitter.  However, I have more education than many other professionals and put in as many hours as most executives yet am paid about what a fast-food entry-level manager makes.  Somewhere along the way, this system got severely fucked up, and my generation is the one being punished for it.  I can assure you that many of us cannot and will not continue to teach your children for these wages, and you will be left with teachers who are fast-food quality.

That’s the cold, harsh reality of America’s future.  Our education system is going down the drain and going down faster every day.  Between the demands of our initial qualifications, professional development, teaching load, and additional duties, too much is placed in our laps.  On top of that, too little is returned to us in the form of tangible wages.  As if that weren’t bad enough, every year we are given less and less to work with in terms of student talent.  Yet we are expected to be held accountable for their apathy and lack of attention span.

I do not have many more semesters of beating my head against this wall, and while I do have my flaws, I’m a good teacher.  I’m not so certain that the people who will follow me will have the same sense of professional pride.  They might, but I seriously doubt it.

One last thought: even though this semester is difficult and demanding, I would rather have this schedule than have to deal with that bad half of a group of students at Seymour last year.  I hope some of them are learning some tough lessons this semester.

General Posts

Tuesday Morning Ramblings

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Never let facts get in the way of a good hate.  Nevermind that all indicators point to the fact that under the current administration’s leadership, the recovery from the Bush Era Recession has been faster and stronger than the recover from the recessions of 1991 and 2001.  Nevermind that after a couple of years of losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month the economy has been creating jobs again for the last few months.  Nevermind that things in this country are slowly moving in the right direction.  The people who hate President Obama are going to hate him no matter what the facts are.

And even though many of those same people often let the N-word fly when they mention black people, their disdain for the president has nothing to do with his race.  And even though many still cling to the same tired, dis-proven campaign smears about his citizenship, his religion, and his patriotism, in their minds their hate is perfectly rational because the deficit has grown.  Nevermind that during the previous administration’s two terms the deficit grew by record increases year after year after year.  They weren’t steeping in the streets because that president was “one of them,” even though his father is an oil billionaire and a political insider.  He sure sounded and looked like them.

After 9/11, President Bush had a 90% approval rating because many of us who disagreed with his politics set aside our partisanship and backed our leader.  By the end of his second term that approval had fallen to 27% because of his incompetence, not because of blind obstructionism.  The opposition to our current president cannot claim any form of objectivity.  There is nothing, and I mean nothing, President Obama could do to sway those people that he is doing a good job — no matter that the stock market has increased by 25% since his inauguration, no matter that the housing market is slowly coming back, no matter that the facts say the economy is moving in the right direction.

Hate is hate, and fear is fear, and they will not listen to reason or rational argument.  They need a shit-kicking cowboy who spits backer and don’t take no lip off them lily-livered Commies, not some educated ni…uh…spear-ch…uh…spa…uh…socialist.

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