On the way out of Calc class, I remembered a few words from one of my brother Jamie's songs. Probably somewhat inaccurate, but it goes something like this:
"Don't count your chickens, count your blessings,
Earn your keep, learn your lessons,
Go to sleep after your confessions...
What's so hard about that?"
This in turn made me reflect that my brothers Jamie and Joe and my sister Shelagh (RIP, love--I'll see you on the other side of this vale of tears) were--are? have been?--some of the smartest people I know who (for the most part, although Joe got his degree from this very institution) have never had a full education the way society thinks of it. In terms of the education born of sorrow, misfortune and disaster, though, my brother and sister earned full degrees at the top schools of Hard Knocks. Finally, I decided that, as has been proven many times, a lot of wisdom comes from the hardships we undergo. The scars we bear as the price for said wisdom are the wrinkles and care lines that come with age...the same wrinkles some of us try to cover up. So think about this: if you were a veteran of some war and came out of with scars or perhaps a missing limb, would you try to cover it up with prosthetics and plastic surgery? I wouldn't. I'd want people to know what happened to me, the sacrifices I made to discover what it's like to defend the rights of others over my own. In the sameway , I figure I'll bear the lines of age as the scholar's scars. Since my life will never throw me the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that it did my siblings, I'll settle for the wisdom that comes from perhaps seeking hard and not too wisely the perhaps pyrrhic victories academia has to offer me.
Lest you think I'm waxing melancholy, I suppose I ought to say that I'm doubly blessed here at W & M--I'm in an environment that I love with people that are some of the nicest I've met outside church retreats, and I have a chance to wipe the slate clean in the aforesaid environment. No cataclysm has blasted me into my existential tragedy mode yet, though before I graduate you will no doubt see plenty of that side. (One of my classes is Histrionics 221: Why Can't I Just Die?)
I said I was going to talk about Starship Troopers, so I guess that'll have to wait until after Convocation.
"Don't count your chickens, count your blessings,
Earn your keep, learn your lessons,
Go to sleep after your confessions...
What's so hard about that?"
This in turn made me reflect that my brothers Jamie and Joe and my sister Shelagh (RIP, love--I'll see you on the other side of this vale of tears) were--are? have been?--some of the smartest people I know who (for the most part, although Joe got his degree from this very institution) have never had a full education the way society thinks of it. In terms of the education born of sorrow, misfortune and disaster, though, my brother and sister earned full degrees at the top schools of Hard Knocks. Finally, I decided that, as has been proven many times, a lot of wisdom comes from the hardships we undergo. The scars we bear as the price for said wisdom are the wrinkles and care lines that come with age...the same wrinkles some of us try to cover up. So think about this: if you were a veteran of some war and came out of with scars or perhaps a missing limb, would you try to cover it up with prosthetics and plastic surgery? I wouldn't. I'd want people to know what happened to me, the sacrifices I made to discover what it's like to defend the rights of others over my own. In the sameway , I figure I'll bear the lines of age as the scholar's scars. Since my life will never throw me the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that it did my siblings, I'll settle for the wisdom that comes from perhaps seeking hard and not too wisely the perhaps pyrrhic victories academia has to offer me.
Lest you think I'm waxing melancholy, I suppose I ought to say that I'm doubly blessed here at W & M--I'm in an environment that I love with people that are some of the nicest I've met outside church retreats, and I have a chance to wipe the slate clean in the aforesaid environment. No cataclysm has blasted me into my existential tragedy mode yet, though before I graduate you will no doubt see plenty of that side. (One of my classes is Histrionics 221: Why Can't I Just Die?)
I said I was going to talk about Starship Troopers, so I guess that'll have to wait until after Convocation.
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