I should just pay you to teach me how to dougie

I didn't realize that college was a euphemism for: more pointless classes. Except this time, you have to pay for them.

In high school, I can remember wondering why I had to take pointless classes in so many subjects that I was never going to use in my adult life. Granted, I enjoyed some of them, but let's be honest with ourselves, not one of my future employers are going to ask me to name all of the major rivers in America and demand I draw them on a map to prove that I indeed the best gal for the job.
Yet, these are the tests that I had to study for my Junior year of high school.

But, I muddled through. I pushed, I stressed, I succeeded, I failed, I toiled, I squeaked by, I managed, I survived four years in a cell block prison, following the man's rules and learning what I could from the few exceptional teachers I did have. Mentally rolling my eyes at the one's that didn't want to be there any more than I did, all so I would be rewarded. So I could finally go to college, a place where I was sure I would finally find the intellectual stimulation I have always craved. A place where I could study what I wanted and leave the nonsensical hullabaloo behind.

What a red herring.

Since arriving to my location of higher education, I find myself slipping into the same vicious cycle of mundane, inane, shenanigans. I have to pay for, and take, classes I don't care about. Classes that will never help me get into law school or onto capitol hill. Classes in which I have to do assignments that no one will even grade. Classes that require ridiculously long papers that my professors don't want to read. Papers, that are graded more on how much I agree with my instructor or how many complex sentences I use,rather than my actual grasp of the concepts presented in class. And when I'm sitting in a lecture, asking questions, trying to start discussion, really trying to dig into a concept; I'm more or less brushed off and politely told that I have no idea what I'm talking about because I do not have a PHD. Honestly, I've just had enough.

In this country we push education. We demand everyone go to school until the age of 16 and if you drop-out, you're considered a social deviant that will never amount to anything. We cut arts funding and stifle creativity. We discontinue vocational training, forcing potential electricians and mechanics to wither away in science class, coloring diagrams of cells, wishing they were anywhere else. We create tests to measure progress and find fault, when they really prove neither. We demand that kids become "well rounded", that they break there necks doing hundreds of things they really don't want to do to get to college only to do it all over again and graduate feeling like they still haven't learned anything useful. Still lost. Still wanting to know what they should be when they grow up.

Why is that? Why do we stop discussions in classrooms before they even start? Why do we force kids to take classes they don't want? Why do we teach everything for a test that won't matter when the bills need to be paid and the rent is due? Really, I don't think anyone could give me a satisfactory answer, but here's my suggestion:

Let people learn how to think, not what to think. Let artsy kids create. Give mechanically minded kids an outlet. Put the tests away and connect with a classroom. Indulge kids, let them learn what they want, let them get really good at one thing instead of expecting them to be good in a thousand things that don't really interest them anyway.

In the eternal words of the Beatles - Let it be. Life is too short to waste with all of this bureaucratic red-tape. It's time we started cultivating minds that are content and confident in their abilities. Not hazy mounds of grey matter jam packed with needless information that will just get data dumped to make room for the topics on the next exam.

Good Girls Go Bad

Women, for whatever reason, are always attracted to what society likes to call "bad boys". We do. We love their dominant demeanor, their broody personalities, and of course, their wild, care-free, seemingly invincible out-look on life. They make us feel protected and their wily ways make us feel like we must tame them. They are a challenge, a mystery, and incredibly sexy. They're what we dream about, and, 99% of the time they're the reason we cry ourselves to sleep, become best friends with Ben and Jerry, and question/despise everything we ever loved about ourselves. Because, sexy or not, they're, for lack of a more eloquent phrase, douche bags. And lately, they seem to have multiplied in number,infecting the masses faster than swine flu and breaking more hearts than McDonald's. The cause of this epidemic? A little ol' phrase I've heard muttered by some of the most outstanding men in this world- "Nice guys finish last" (minds out of the gutter please, this is serious business).

Every time I hear a fine upstanding gentlemen tell me they regret their chivalrous ways and kind heart, because girls walk all over them and end up dating/sleeping with/marrying a leather clad *insert foul slang word for male genitalia* I am incensed!
"What is wrong with these women?" I exclaim. "Don't they understand that you think they're perfect in every way and their prick of a boyfriend critiques them into shamed submission?!"

But,as true as my blunt ejaculations are, they make me a hypocrite, because I too continuously chase after the bad boys. I pray, beg, and plead even, for love to come my way. I cry out to the heavens "Dear God! Bring me a man like Bruno Mars who will love me just the way I am! Who will catch a grenade for me even if I kiss him with my eyes wide open!" And now, in hindsight of course because no one ever sees clearly any other way, I see that God has given me many Brunos to fawn over. Attractive men. Strong men. Sexy Men! Men that have lofty goals and ambitions! who are genuinely good people that just want to find a girl and make her happy. To give her the world on a silver platter. They even want to be faithful! I mean, these guys are the real deal, shining armour and everything.

And I always wrote them off, as so many of us do, because they were so easy to love. There was no fight for acceptance, no dysfunction to re-figure, and no guess work. Oh,the money I could have saved on daises with these men! Never having to sit for hours anxiously chanting "he loves me, he loves me not".But time and time again, I walked away from happiness and strode into the steroid assisted arms of confliction and low self-esteem. Because, for whatever reason, our culture has brain washed me and my fellow females to believe that if you aren't fighting, or if you aren't working at it, your relationship is almost, indefinitely broken. So we seek out challenges we never win and, most unfortunately, break the sweetest of hearts.

So this blog is an apology to all the good guys out there. To the white horse riding, armour clad, dragon slaying men who have been fooled, by many women, into believing they "just aren't good enough"; I am truly sorry. You are never given enough credit and always seem to get the short end of the stick. You get cheated on, used, heck, you might even have been abused, and you most definitely finish last. But, only because God saves the best for last. For, after we've had enough of the bad boy blues, we come back, battle scarred and bedraggled, begging you to give us another chance, dying to be rescued from our tower. And, then, after many more apologies and a few dinners before and after a couple dozen movies, you live happily ever after.