I’d recommend East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I liked it. That’s my book review. I liked it. But the ending sucked.
I finished reading East of Eden a couple months ago and immediately thought that the ending sucked, but I didn’t want to say anything about it right away. I wanted to think about it a little bit. After all, it’s a famous John Steinbeck novel. I want to treat it with respect.
When I read the first page of a current best selling novel and can tell it sucks, I know that I don’t need to wait. I don’t even have to explain why I don’t need to wait. In fact, I can proclaim that a recent bestseller sucks without reading it. Do you know all those new books that just came out this month? Yeah, most of them suck. Oh yeah, those award-winning novels probably suck too.
I’m not being bitter or cynical. I’m saving you precious time.
At any rate, the end of East of Eden sucks for a couple reasons.
1. It was predictable.
Maybe East of Eden wasn’t predictable in the 1920s. Maybe plot twists (I won’t reveal what they are) were new in the 1920s. It’s not John Steinbeck’s faulty that shocking plot twists in 1920 are predictable in 2020.
2. It felt rushed.
Most of East of Eden moved deliberately. The descriptions were plentiful without being out of control. And then the last 50 pages, it was event, event, and then event. The descriptions were gone. Maybe John Steinbeck got tired of being deliberate. Maybe Steinbeck had a deadline to meet. Maybe he thought of a new idea for a novel.
Don’t get me wrong. I’d still recommend East of Eden. The book itself doesn’t suck. Maybe the ending is better than I think it is. I just don’t think the ending holds up with the remainder of the novel.
*****
What do you think? Did the ending of East of Eden suck, or am I overstating it? What other great novels have endings that suck?
*****
After more than ten years of blogging, I’ve finally written a novel.
A grammar-obsessed English teacher falls in ‘luuuvvv’ but discovers how chaotic and dangerous ‘luuuvvv’ can really be.
The Sunset Rises: A 1990s Romantic Comedy is now available on Amazon and from the trunk of my car at various local bookstores… until parking lot security kicks me out. Buy it now while supplies last!
Even though this might be the most boring title I’ve ever written, the topic itself is kind of interesting.
*****
The Department of Justice this week filed suit against Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former friend of first lady Melania Trump, alleging that she violated a nondisclosure agreement by publishing a tell-all book, Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with The First Lady.
Continue reading at DoJ Sues Author of Melania Trump Tell-All.
*****
I don’t know the real (unreported) details of this situation. Did the author really violate a nondisclosure agreement? Was this book a blatant, shallow money-grab? I don’t know.
When I met my wife, she had just finished working for a local politician who has since become somewhat of a famous public figure.
My wife has a lot of old dirt of about this politician. It’s more about bad personal behavior than corruption, but it would still make for an entertaining book.
My wife would never write that book. She’d see it as a violation of trust, even if she personally despises that politician. I agree with her, but I also agree from a practical standpoint. If she wrote that book, there’s a good chance she’d get hurt in a bad car accident or “commit suicide” (if you know what I mean).
I don’t want any of those things to happen to my wife. Even if retaliation weren’t an issue, I wouldn’t want my wife to write that book.
What do you think? In what situation would you violate a nondisclosure agreement to write a book? Would disliking a person be enough? A hint of corruption? Lots of corruption?
Politics and race relations are two things I don’t want to talk about , but sometimes that stuff just gets right up in your face.
I was going through my old beat up comic books, and I found this issue of Captain America and The Falcon from 1971. Sure enough, it’s about race relations and politics. All that’s left out is religion and abortion.
Even though things seem crazy today, reading stuff from the past reminds me that things have always been crazy. Maybe we weren’t inundated with the craziness as much because we didn’t have access to social media and 24-hour news/commentary/fear mongering, so we didn’t see it as much if we weren’t looking for it.
When you read stuff from the past, however, you can see that, yeah, things have always been weird.
Here’s a quick video review of a comic book from 1971.
The American Library Association just put out its top 100 banned and challenged books of the last decade, and I have to admit, 100 is a lot of books.
It’s tough to keep track of 100 books; you can read this (ALA Releases List of Top 100 Most Banned and Challenged Books) if you’d like to try.
I don’t really care what the ALA thinks about these books right now. Most libraries are closed. When libraries reopen, then maybe I’ll care what the ALA thinks.
Lists of banned or challenged books are useless anyway because the list by itself doesn’t provide context. The list doesn’t say whether the book was removed from a public library, school library, or simply challenged. The list doesn’t explain why the book was banned or challenged in the first place.
Years ago when I needed to keep an audience’s attention in an earlier career, I learned quickly that the best numbers to use were 3 and 5. I know Top 10 Lists are popular, but when you’re talking about ideas or concepts, anything greater than 3 is pushing it.
Explaining each of 100 books could give a reader a headache (at least it would give me a headache), so I’ve chosen five books from the list and am defending the ban/challenge for each one.
With that in mind, here are the Top 5 Books That Should Be Banned or Challenged (and why):
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
No school library should accept a book with a misspelling in the title. The public education system has enough problems without allowing books with glaring mistakes. When students see that such an obvious mistake is acceptable, they think that it’s okay not to proofread their own work too. How did this mistake make it past the editors anyway?
Go The F*** To Sleep by Adam Mansbach
Profanity in book titles is a sign of author desperation, but putting profanity in a children’s book title is despicable. Why would a library want to put out a children’s book with profanity in the title? That’s just poor judgement on librarians all over the country. Maybe the ALA should get banned for poor judgement.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
This is the gateway book for perverts. Yeah, it’s billed as literary fiction with its fancy words and so-called deep thoughts. I don’t care how smart the narrator pervert is; he’s still a pervert. Plus, the title is named after the victim, implying that the fault lies with the underage girl instead of the pervert old man. If they changed the title to The Pervert Old Man, I might be less likely to ban this book.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
Holden Caulfield is a whiner, and he says hell and damn a lot. I don’t mind him saying hell and damn. Those are mild terms. It’s the whining I can’t take. If you’re going to ban a classic American novel, ban the whiner. He’s a bad role model for today’s youth. Tom Sawyer, a true fictional American hero, had it way worse than Holden Caulfield, and you never saw Tom Sawyer whine (though maybe he cried in his pillow every night when Mark Twain wasn’t looking).
1984 by George Orwell
This is a very misleading, confusing novel. I lived through 1984, and 1984 was nothing like it’s described in this book. I’m surprised that history teachers haven’t condemned this book for its historical inaccuracy. The fact that this book is taught in school curriculum shows how far the public school education has fallen. If it’s any consolation, 2001, A Space Odyssey is just as bad.
It’s not easy deciding to ban or challenge books. I don’t want to force my opinions onto other people, but we live in a period where if we don’t get involved then we’re accused of being part of the problem, so here are my opinions.
I don’t know. Maybe the people who say I should get involved would be better off leaving me alone.
*****
What do you think? What books do you think should be banned or challenged? What are some good reasons for banning or challenging books?
According to The Rules, women weren’t supposed to do this on the first date. (image via wikimedia)
My wife Heather called me two hours after we’d finished our ice cream. I was surprised because I had just met her that evening and didn’t know that we would get married in a couple years. I was also surprised because she had mentioned reading a book called The Rules, which was a huge dating bestseller in the 1990s.
We had talked about The Rules during one of our initial phone conversations before we met in person (you can get more info here at Awkward Moments in Dating: I Met My Wife and Didn’t Know It ). The Rules suggested that women return to some dating traditions that had been declining since the 1960s (ugh… the 1960s) and 1970s (ugh… the 1970s).
One of The Rules was that the woman wasn’t supposed to call the man back for three days. I could understand that. Calling too early made a woman look too eager.
I didn’t have Heather’s phone number. I didn’t trust women’s phone numbers anyway. When I was In college, a couple women (not at the same time) had given me pizza-delivery phone numbers. I had even recognized one of the numbers when the college girl gave it to me. I had almost said to her “Your name is Dominoes?” But I didn’t want the girl to know that I’d memorized pizza delivery numbers.
Anyway, I think one of The Rules was that the woman wasn’t supposed to give out her phone number to strange guys. I don’t know; that might have been one of my own rules. I’ve always thought women should have the phone numbers, if possible. Yeah, a female friend of mine back then was a stalker, but that was more legally acceptable back in the 1990s.
Since Heather and I had met on a Saturday, I wasn’t expecting her to call back until Tuesday. I was hoping she would call. I was expecting her to call, not because I was a hotshot but because I hadn’t gotten any negative vibes from her while we had been hanging out.
When she called me late that Saturday night, I was surprised.
“You broke The Rules,” I said.
“I know.” She didn’t sound concerned.
“The authors would be very disappointed in you.”
“I don’t think they’ll find out,” she said.
“I won’t tell them, ” I said. “Unless they ask. I won’t lie about it.”
“So… what did you think?”
“About what? The ice cream was pretty good.”
“No,” she said. “About me.”
“I think you’re breaking a rule again.” She paused, so I thought that I’d better lay of The Rules references for a while.
“I had an idea,” she said. “I think I want to see The Lion King tomorrow night.”
The Lion King had just come out a few weeks earlier and had a good reputation, even back then. It wasn’t considered a classic yet, but almost everybody liked it. I enjoy cartoons, but I despise musicals, so I knew I’d get fidgety during the songs. I have to admit, though, I had liked one song in Alladin a couple years earlier.
Both of us were silent. I had heard somewhere that sometimes women leave hints for guys to suggest that the woman is interested but the man has to take the initiative. I wondered if this had been such a hint. I didn’t have much time to overthink it. I decided to act like she had just left me a hint.
“I just had an idea,” I said. “There’s this movie that came out a few weeks ago, The Lion King, I think. Do you want to go see it with me tomorrow night?”
“Sure,” she said. “We can even call it a date.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” I said. “The Rules say you should hold out for a Saturday night date.”
“I wanted to see The Lion King tomorrow night.”
“You don’t follow rules very well, do you?”
“I want to see the movie,” she said. “I was going to go, whether or not you asked me.”
“Do you want to get something to eat too?”
“No, just the movie. We’ll keep it short.”
Good, I thought. I didn’t like eating on a first date. The ice cream earlier that evening had been acceptable only because ice cream usually doesn’t stick to your teeth.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t a fan of the Sunday date, even without The Rules. I’d have to work on Monday, and my job was stressful, so I usually used Sunday nights to get everything ready for the week and psych myself up. As Heather and I were talking, part of me was thinking about whether or not it was a good idea to go to a movie on a Sunday night.
I didn’t care if it was breaking one of The Rules. It was breaking one of my rules.
Then again, you don’t meet your wife for the first time every day. If you do, you either have a lot of personalities or a lot of wives. Looking back, I’m glad I asked her to go see The Lion King, and I’m glad she said yes.
But the story isn’t over yet.
To be continued (for at least 25 years, hopefully more)!
*****
Enough about me! If you’re married (or about to be), what did you do on your first date?
Is this Ruth Bader Ginsberg, or is this RBG? (image via wikimedia)
A famous Supreme Court Judge died a few days ago, and I normally wouldn’t care, but I live with a political junkie who is trying very hard to reform. Unfortunately, this celebrity Supreme Court Judge’s death has added a bunch of fuel to political fires, and this country’s political/cultural climate could get uglier because of it.
I’m calling this judge a celebrity because I’ve seen a bunch of media stuff celebrating her recently. Before her death, she had been celebrated way more than any other Supreme Court Judge that I’ve ever seen. Her fans don’t even use her real name. They referred to this Supreme Court Judge by her three initials.
If I ever have to appear in court again, I hope my judge doesn’t refer to himself or herself by his/her initials. It seems a bit informal for a judge. I’d rather have a judge who stands proudly behind his/her several middle multisyllabic names. It’s tough to take an abbreviated judge seriously, but I wouldn’t say that to the abbreviated judge’s face.
Usually, when a celebrity dies, people feel sad, but since this celebrity Supreme Court Judge is also viewed as a political figure, everybody went straight to anger. People got mad at her for dying at this moment in future history. People got mad at her for not retiring early. People got mad at politicians for their plans now that she’s dead. Some people are mad at others for getting mad.
And then you have some who are always mad so her death didn’t really matter.
The family of the dead celebrity Supreme Court Judge must feel weird. They have to be aware of all the enraged political arguing over their family member’s death. Nobody even pretended to grieve for this dead judge. Everybody went straight to anger and political maneuvering.
There’s nothing new about instant political maneuvering, but that should be left to the politicians. Everybody knows that politicians are despicable. Now you have normal people acting political. I don’t want to see normal people acting political. It makes normal people just as unlikeable as the politicians, and I don’t want to be around them.
Even though I’ve been emotionally connected to politicians before (and that was a mistake), I’ve never gotten angry (or cried) when any of them passed. I’ve never even watched a political funeral. Now celebrity politicians get multi-day funerals. I’m trying to get to the point where I don’t care what politicians do, either way. I want to be aware but not care.
Even this tribute doesn’t seem right. I’ve written the occasional vague celebrity tribute, but I’ve never written a tribute to any deceased relatives. Several of my deceased relatives deserve a tribute. Maybe all of them do. Maybe instead of writing a tribute to a dead celebrity Supreme Court Judge whom I’ve never met, I should write a tribute to relatives who have had an impact on my life.
Maybe I’ll do that. Maybe I’ll write a tribute to some dead relatives. I have a small list to choose from, and I hope it stays that way. I’m hoping that particular list remains static for a very long time.
I don’t think I’ve ever even met a famous politician. My wife worked for a famous politician before that politician became famous. My wife couldn’t stand that famous politician on a personal level but believed that the politician was effective. When it comes to politics, I guess effectiveness justifies horrible interpersonal behavior. That’s why I don’t like politics.
That politician for whom my wife worked is still alive and still in office. When she dies (and I hope it’s not for a long time), I probably won’t write a tribute to her.
*****
What do you think? Do you care that the celebrity Supreme Court Judge died? If you care, is it because you value her life or because it might change the political landscape?
Oprah has promoted this book, so it’s probably a scam.
People complain about how bad 2020 has been, and book publishing this year might be a part of that. Books published in 2020 have been so lame that I’ve stopped reviewing them.
Even so, 2020 needs book awards, no matter how lame this year’s crop has been. So here is the list of nonfiction books up for the 2020 National Book Award (complete list can be found at Here Are The 50 Books Nominated for 2020 National Book Awards ):
- Is Rape a Crime?: A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto by Michelle Bowdler (Is rape a crime? Yes… This should have been a very short book.)
- The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. (This book should have been called Some Undocumented Americans because the book probably doesn’t talk about every single undocumented American.)
- If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore. (This book title is nonsense. The future was invented way before Simulmatics came around)
- The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne (First of all, Les Payne is a fake name. Second of all, just read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Nobody knew more about Malcolm X than Malcolm X)
- Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt (At least the title used the word Republic instead of Democracy, but then the publishers used the word Indian. Aaaarrrgh! Sensitivity readers, where were you?)
- My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland (Haha! The author doesn’t understand what an autobiography is)
- Owls of the Eastern Ice: A Quest to Find and Save the World’s Largest Owl by Jonathon C. Slaght (If the world’s largest owl wanted to be found, it would let you know. LEAVE THE OWL ALONE!!)
- How to Make a Slave and Other Essays by Jerald Walker (In today’s tense political climate, teaching people how to make a slave is a really bad idea.)
- Afropessimism by Frank B. Wilderson (Aw, quit being pessimistic! At least you got a book deal and an award nomination.)
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (The caste system the author refers to doesn’t seem to apply to the publishing business.)
As you can tell, 2020 was a lame year of carelessness in the publishing industry. And these are the books that are up for awards! Just think how lame the books NOT nominated are. I should know; I tried to read a few of them.
*****
What do you think? Have you read any of these books nominated for the 2020 National Book Award? Have mainstream nonfiction books always been this lame, or am I just now noticing it?
(image via wikimedia)
According to conventional wisdom, what should you do when you have a ghost in your house?
Leave.
Second question: When you sell the house, should you tell potential homebuyers about the ghost?
Of course not! You don’t want to hurt your property value.
That’s probably bad advice. I don’t mind moving when you have a ghost in your house, but I think you need to confess about the ghost. To me, omitting important details is just as bad as bad as lying because you’re still not speaking truth and you usually have bad intentions when you omit crucial information.
Getting back to the ghost, I admit that my ghost story is different from other ghost stories. Most ghost stories are about living humans trying to figure out the ghost, or defeat the ghost, or help the ghost find its true path. I didn’t do any of that. I just left the ghost.
Yeah, sometimes my stories are anti-climactic. That’s how life is most of the time.
At any rate, we had lived in our house for almost three years (you can get more details at Childhood Ghost Story- The Prologue ), and it was time to move. My dad was finished with his job in the rural town (I might go into more details about that job another time), and we already knew who was going to move into our house. We had rented/leased the house, so we weren’t going to profit from the sale. I wonder now if the owner had known about the ghost and had never told anyone.
The only other thing I remember was that a kid five years younger than me would take my bedroom. I think his name was Timmy, but I’m not sure. Timmy seems like such a generic name for a kid that I think my mind has to be making that up. I know that the brain fills in gaps with details and that the details can be wrong, so Timmy’s name could have been Fred and I’d never know.
I’ll never know what Timmy’s real name was. I’m okay with that, not that I have a choice about it.
My dad didn’t like Timmy, and I thought it was funny that Timmy was about to be terrified by a ghost, and my dad would have thought it was funny too, but I couldn’t share the joke with him.
Even if we’d liked Timmy, there was no way I could have warned him about the ghost anyway. If I’d done that, all the parents would have thought I was just scaring him. One time I imagined that night the ghost would make its first appearance in Timmy’s bedroom. I laughed out loud over Timmy’s possible reactions. I think I was by myself when I laughed about it. If you’re laughing at something you can’t share, it’s better to be by yourself. So I stayed silent.
Nowadays, they say silence is compliance. Back then, silence was a survival skill. When you’re taught that certain behaviors are survival skills, it’s tough to reprogram.
Anyway, my parents weren’t involved with this lie by omission because I had never told them about the ghost in the first place. If a future family ever found out that small house was possessed, it wasn’t my parents’ fault; it was mine.
Maybe I was selfish for not telling anybody about the ghost. I didn’t want any backlash from my parents. That’s not the worst reason for omitting information, but it’s still selfish, maybe.
I never said goodbye to the ghost. First of all, I didn’t know which appearance would be the last one for me because he showed up maybe once every couple months. I kind of wanted to tell the ghost to scare the crap out of Timmy for fun, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t want the ghost to then scare the crap out of me for having bad intentions.
I still don’t know how ghost stuff works. Up to that point, the ghost had been benign (unless it was a pervert ghost who liked staring at boys), and it was still in my best interest to keep it that way.
The ghost wasn’t that big of a deal because the move itself was much more important. I was leaving friends behind. Back then, I actually had a lot of friends (and had no idea that was about to change).
And my hound dog was far important than the ghost. We had to leave my hound dog with a neighbor that the dog trusted because the hound would have been miserable in our new town. The hound dog was used to roaming freely through the rural community and the surrounding forests, and there was no way to keep her locked up in a house with a small suburban yard. She’d dig her way out or howl all day.
Plus, she got car sick, and it was going to be a two-day drive to our new location. That might have been the real reason my parents wanted to leave her. If so, I don’t blame them. Nobody likes dog vomit in the car.
Leaving that dog was emotionally brutal. I had been the first person she trusted when she’d been a stray, and she’d been with me during a couple tough times that I barely mentioned in the story. Like I’ve said, there was other stuff going on that was more important than the ghost.
But the ghost was unusual. Not everybody can say they had a ghost in their house. The other stuff that I went through was bad but not that unusual in the 1970s.
I remember saying goodbye to the hound dog and petting her one last time . She chased our car down the highway as we drove away. That doesn’t mean she knew we weren’t coming back. For three years she’d always chased us down the highway, and we’d kind of laughed because we knew we’d be back in a few hours.
It was always cool to see that dog sprint along the highway shoulder. I think I smiled a little bit through tears as I watched her fade away for the last time as we drove off. I didn’t laugh, though.
I hope our old neighbors took good care of that hound dog. And I hope Timmy (if that was his name) wasn’t too scared by the ghost. Looking back, I think I should have warned him.
This scene looks chaotic, but it kind of makes sense. You might, however, want to stay out of situations like this. (image via wikimedia)
I’ll keep this short. Otherwise, I’ll end up rambling and sounding like a mad man.
A lot of people think the world is crazy right now, but I think the world has always been crazy. If that weren’t true, there would be no reason to follow history. Crazy is what makes history interesting, but most people don’t really want to live through crazy interesting times.
Unfortunately, when I thought the world was crazy, I was anxious, frantic, maybe even borderline depressed. Whatever you go through when you think the world is crazy, it’s probably not good.
So here it is. The world is not crazy. The world makes sense to me now. I feel pretty good about things. I was going to keep quiet about my realizations, but maybe, just maybe, if this makes sense to me, it can make sense to others.
Here are three realizations that have made life much easier for me. And if I sound like a mad man, at least it’s on my own blog.
1. Every institution is corrupt.
God is great (say it with me, everybody!), but religious institutions are corrupt. If they weren’t, why would they hoard money (and sometimes hide pedophiles)?
Military defense is important and noble, but the military as an institution is corrupt. The Civil Rights movement has a lot of important ideas, but the organizations and their current leaders are corrupt. Education is important, but the system is corrupt and teaches weird stuff. The list goes on indefinitely.
Now that I see everything big as (probably) corrupt, the world makes sense. It’s the institution and (maybe) the people in charge who are corrupt. Most non-powerful people working for the institutions are probably decent people, and it’s possible to work in these systems and do some good.
I worked in one of these systems for 30 years and did some good, but I saw some corruption as well (that’s for another blog post).
2. All famous public figures are con artists who scam normal people.
This is especially true for politicians. Donald Trump is a scam artist (and probably always has been). Barack Obama is a scam artist (but maybe didn’t start off that way). Joe Biden WAS a scam artist (but probably doesn’t even know what he’s doing now). The organizations that are pretending that Joe Biden is mentally fit are all proving they’re corrupt (as if we needed more proof).
The 2020 election intensity probably isn’t going away after the ballots are counted because each side has supporters that think their candidates are honest/sincere and that their opponents are evil/stupid/racist. Those supporters have fallen for the scams.
That’s important because whoever loses will be really angry, and whoever wins will be angry at the loser for being mad. I won’t be mad, no matter who wins or loses. I have a plan if one side wins, and I have a slightly different plan if another side wins, but I’m not emotionally attached to either side.
My wife thinks I’m cynical. I think it’s a relief. Everything around me makes sense when I see con artists deceiving normal people.
I’m not even angry at the scam artists, whether they’re celebrities or political figures. They see it as my responsibility to see through their deceits, and I kind of agree with them. We normal people have to agree to the scams in order for them to work.
When enough normal people recognize the politics (and other stuff) as money-making schemes, the normal people won’t act as crazy… unless the normal people decide they want vengeance against the con artists. Vengeance-seeking can cause huge problems. Just so you know, I’m not into vengeance.
3. We can’t save the world.
I know people are taught that they should want to make a difference in the world. Unfortunately, that kind of well-intentioned narcissism leads to anger, bitterness, and frustration when our efforts don’t mean much.
Instead, I focus on my family, friends, and neighbors. When stuff hits the fan, anonymous people with similar political views won’t watch my back. It’s my family, neighbors, and true friends (who don’t care if I’m an amateur conspiracy theorist) who will look out for me (and vice-versa).
Life has become easier and much more relaxing since I’ve come to these realizations.
I’m not trying to convince anybody else to agree with me. I’m just thinking out loud and working through ideas. Plus, I had to see it for myself. And once I saw it, I thought, “Oh, now I get it. Now it all makes sense. Well, most of it makes sense.”
I’m telling you, man! You gotta believe me!!!
I hope I don’t sound like a madman.
*****
What do you think? Which of the three statements/steps do you agree (or disagree) with the most? Which one needs the most clarification? Most importantly… AM I CRAZY?????
(image via wikimedia)
A couple days ago my daughter proclaimed that she might not go to college next year.
This would be a big switch of plans. My daughter is starting her senior year of high school next week, and for the last couple years, she has been making lists of colleges she might want to attend. We’ve toured the campuses of of a bunch of universities within 500 miles of our home. She’s been writing essays and taking practice College Board tests. She’s been stressed.
But now she’s mad at college.
My daughter has been watching YouTube videos of current freshmen students being quarantined on major college campuses, and her favorite is a YouTuber going to New York University. My daughter knows that we can’t afford NYU, even with financial aid, but she’s still fascinated with the university.
From my point of view, NYU is also too far away, and it’s New York City (which is a huge negative), but almost every high school student loves New York City.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), New York isn’t even New York anymore. A bunch of businesses have shut down. A lot of people with money have moved out. Crime is skyrocketing. Even if my daughter wanted to go, I wouldn’t send her there. Not even if it was free. Not even if they paid me.
To make things worse, college isn’t even college right now. Students are quarantined. Classes are online or limited. Social contact is very limited. Everybody is walking with a face covering outside, outside even with social distancing.
I’m glad my daughter has come to this conclusion on her own. I’ve kept my mouth shut about this while watching the COVID-19 stuff over the last few months. I haven’t kept my mouth shut about much, but I have for this.
I’m not a big believer in the college system right now. Yes, I graduated college, and so did my wife. I went into the field my degree prepared me for. My wife did not. I accumulated a little bit of debt that I paid off within a few years. My wife accumulated a lot of debt that we paid off after we got married.
I don’t want my daughter accumulating a lot of debt. We’ll help her out, but she’s going to do a lot on her own. It’s not a bad situation. If we were capable of paying her way completely, my daughter would be less careful about her decision. I like that she has some financial stake in her college decision.
At any rate, the College Board has ticked her off with the way they handled Advanced Placement exams last spring and the way they keep changing standardized test dates. She thinks that since grocery stores can figure out how to distribute food without spreading COVID-19, College Board should figure out how to do tests.
(She might have gotten that previous thought from me, but that’s okay because I agree with it.)
Plus, if she can’t have the full college experience, my daughter doesn’t want to pay the full college price. She might not even want to go.
My daughter has other options. I don’t mind if she stays home and works and saves money. She could take online classes part-time and still work. She could work while getting certified in something like real estate or insurance.
I’m not saying those are all great options for her, but they’re options.
Even if college goes back to normal next year, she still might consider these other options. She doesn’t miss taking classes all day long. She likes working (she’s been working two part-time jobs during the pandemic).
The scam tendencies of the university system aren’t going to go away with COVID-19 fears. I’m glad that my daughter recognizes the scam-like tendencies of college, the piling on of debt, the unnecessary rules and expenses. I didn’t even have to tell her.
I know my daughter isn’t the only potential future college student who recognizes this. If the university system doesn’t get its act together, it might find itself short on students.
At least, it might not get my daughter.
Dysfunctional Literacy 