I’ll be taking my brother to the airport tonight since he has completed his first year in college. I have very fond memories of my first year at college. I learned a lot but a great deal of what I learned was outside the formal classroom with a professor lecturing to us. I have mixed ideas about formal education and how it could be improved. It’s hard to know exactly what would work and it’s far too simplistic of me to suggest that I have all the answers given that years of experience have brought us to what we have today. I don’t agree with the philosophy “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” because of the subjectivity of what being broke is. What works for some is a blatant failure for others and generalizing something to fit everyone seems like a mistake in my mind.

I’ll have some time to think while I’m driving down to pick him up but I doubt I’ll have any major epiphanies about how to improve our educational system. Ralph Waldo Emerson had some thoughts on the subject, much of which I agree with. Everyone has their own interests. If they had time to explore those thoroughly they could become experts in that field. While the argument that you can’t dislike something until you’ve tried it is valid to a certain extent, you can’t try everything. If you find something that gets you excited, learn all you can, satisfy your curiosity on the subject and let the dice fall as they may.

Time for another friday poem:

Grapes are round and juicy too,
Greens and reds, but why not blue?
The seedless ones are good to eat,
No pesky seeds stuck to your feet

Why speak ye of grapes I hear you say,
Well why the heck not, it is Friday,
The weekend approaches, you can have fun,
And the project I’m doing is almost done

So kick back, relax and enjoy the break,
And if you feel so inclined, go jump in a lake,
You might want to exercise to stay in good shape,
And if you get the urge, help yourself to a grape.