I’m a phenomenal notetaker. Legible, too. There was never a professor who talked faster than I could write. My scribing made lectures enjoyable; all I had to do was sit and write what I heard and what I thought. It was a meditation.
The only problem is note taking is entirely useless in the real world. Just download https://otter.ai and you’ll never need another notebook.
What I thought was a valuable skill was only as valuable as it made me feel accomplished. The act itself was replaceable. It served its purpose of helping me learn, but aside from that is futile.
You are spending a lot of time crafting a replaceable skill. What is it?
We should be like dogs: curious, present, accepting, able to be trained, and satisfied with little.
We should not be like dogs: blindly obeying the master, easily triggered, distracted, rolling around in shit, overprotective of possessions.
Dogs can teach us a lot. Even more if we see both sides of them.
Most of us forgot what going out to eat was like. It’s been a while since someone took our orders, served us, and made our meals more enjoyable.
The next time you go out to eat, remember that your server wasn’t making money for a few months. Now, servers are working harder than ever, communicating more diligently and clearly than ever. With a sweaty mask on.
20% should be the minimum allowed for servers. 30% should be standard.
Covid showed us that we don’t need servers to eat restaraunt food, but dining is far less enjoyable without them. Let’s be generous to those who curate experiences for us, who set the table for us, who make us feel at home.
Let’s start tipping like whatever we don’t tip would be left in our bank accounts when we died. Which it will be.
I’m trying to make sense of my wild life so I don’t get caught in the busy. New job, new home, graduate school, long term relationship, 3 podcasts, writing a book, while trying to stay healthy and grow closer to God.
Overwhelm is around every corner. It’s easy to be anxious and hit a wall. Not enough sleep, too much bad food, lack of energy.
It’s hard to be grounded. To be certain about my principles and the change I can make in my life today. To put my head down and create something meaningful of my life.
Ambition plus anxiety is a disaster.
Ambition plus rituals, habits, and routines is unstoppable.
Wake up! Slow down, drink wine.
The conventional response to an increasingly unfamiliar, de-normalized world is more standards. More uniformity. Rules and regulations help the hierarchy feel like there is still order.
But the world is in utter chaos.
An alternate solution would be to do away with standards for the year and yield to the destabilization. Let teachers be generative and let students learn to be generous. Invent new ways of doing things instead of hanging on to old models.
Call it creative destruction or call it progress. Cab companies tried to sue Uber. Things change, and leaning into the change is the only way to stay alive.
History is called social studies in K-12 education to focus people over facts. Social studies teaches kids how the world works so that, one day, they can make it better. Regardless of titles, content is king.
Imagine if we spent less time learning about how the world works and more time learning about how we work:
What we like
What we’re good at
Why we do the things we do
Where fear comes from
Why I can’t get over my grandfather’s death 15 years ago
If class was designed to help students learn about themselves first and how photosynthesis works second, maybe they would be set up for future success instead of a future test. Educators have the chance to change this. Now is the time.
Now is your time.
One focusses on helping, ministering to, and advocating for the dispossessed, the outcast, the marginalized. By doing this, the downtrodden feel more worthy and more whole. More human.
The other tries to speak for the oppressed. To do this, self-proclaimed allies silence people who don’t agree with their viewpoint, creating echo-chambers of like-minded people. They want the world to look a certain way, a certain color. They use the indoctrinated public to leverage politicians to create more “equity” for all.
One works for justice by building others up. The other prefers chaos by burning the system down.
There are two kinds of social justice. It’s important we start distinguishing them, because they are not the same.
I find myself attracted to large collections of books.
When I heard Fr. McNally’s library was going to be donated, I offered to help. Sorting, photographing, listing, and selling his personal collection of art books has been one of my summer projects.
The moment I saw the library at the school I’ll be working at, I knew I had to do something about it. Remember the Dewey Decimal System? Me neither. But I’m piecing the collection back together, book by book. Fiction. Reference. Biography. Pop Culture.
Maybe, one day, a student will break into the now welcoming library and feel invited to borrow a book. Perhaps the proper arrangement will help them find the book they need.
Also, maybe not. Most of the books I’ve handled this summer will never be read again. Most likely, I’m wasting my time. Books are ancient history anyways, right?
But there’s always a chance, and I’d spend countless hours creating the right set, setting, and place for that chance to happen.