A Perfect Example of Why You Should Home School Your Children

This is so wrong on so many levels.
If this was my child I would NOT post it for all the world to see.
If this was at my child's school, I would be homeschooling her at the start of the next semester.
This is a perfect example of the indoctrination by the public school system (Thank you NEA) of our young children who innocently believe that adults are honorable and that what they say is right. You know that they are serving the PC Koolaid in the school lunch program!
So bring on the SCHOOL HOLIDAY PAGEANT so that we can all enjoy this WINTER FESTIVAL!!

The Morning After

Last night I watched Jesse Jackson with tears streaming down his face (were they happy, was he thinking of his castration comments, or was he thinking that he was now a victim, too) ate comfort food, and ruminated on the fate of the world. The I went to bed, prayed for our nation and without the aid of anything at all, I slept a peaceful and sound sleep. Today, the sun is bright, the leaves are beautiful and the world is still there. Nothing CHANGED overnight except that there is one less bull and one more national holiday in Kenya and President-Elect Obama has already put in his bid for his second term during his acceptance speech.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term.

Being pragmatic, realistic and having the benefit of years of past experience, I know that our country will survive and that there are 55 million voters who did not vote for the winner in this election. I lived through the awful presidency of Jimmy Carter and know about gas lines and extremely high taxes and interest rates that were just short of usery. Abuse us for 4 years and we will unseat you just like we did President Carter. President-elect Obama, you have just placed yourself in the same position. We will be watching everything that you do and holding you accountable for the things that you screw up. I can put on a sweater and keep my tires inflated. I can use those dim lightbulbs that require a hazmat team to clean up if you break one. I can retreat into a position of economic inactivity if I need to and stop my personal spending... God knows that I really don't NEED any more stuff. I can outlast you and there are a lot of people that are of like mind, not to mention a lot of people that will be very disappointed if you can't deliver the CHANGE that they thought they would be getting.




As President-elect Obama so eloquently stated in this acceptance speech last night, the CHANGE might not really happen.

There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Sorry Peggy, guess you'll have to keep writing those checks and filling your tank yourself.

All of those 55 million voices that did not vote for the winner in this election need to sit down and look at the reasons that this election ended as it did.
1. We need to do some serious soul-searching.
2. We also need to welcome and forgive any disillusioned conservatives who strayed from the fold yesterday.
3. We need to learn from what did happen right and where we fell away from our guiding principles and went wrong.
4. We need to look at the strong conservatives who did triumph in the face of adversity last night, such as Mitch McConnell and Michelle Bachman and take a page from their playbook.
5. We need to remember that Sarah Palin (if she would ever have us again) and Bobby Jindal and other fresh faces are still there on the horizon as they garner more experience and build their conservative resumes.
6. We also need to look at the Senate and Congressional seats that are at risk in 2010 and either start to rally around strong conservatives so that they keep their seats or else look for strong conservative faces to unseat moderates in the primaries and take back what we believe in.
7. We need to fight battles on principled arguments without name calling or vilification.

As Vice President-elect Joe Biden has urged all of us, we will need to gird our loins and get ready for the struggle. In the bright light of a new day, the challenges are clearer and our determination should be even greater.

Life's Winding Road

I recently participated in a career fair put on by my college alma mater. They looked for alums who had been successful in their careers who would be willing to share advice with students who were studying in the same area of interest. My college is a small liberal arts college where the student body is still relatively small and more dedicated to education than science. As a student, I was an anomaly as a biology major. Nevertheless, I am very fond of my college and I was flattered that they thought of me as successful, so I agreed to go, with the thought that I could make a difference in the life of some student somewhere.



Several of my best friends from college also attended and it was more like a reunion weekend for me than a working weekend. I was a part of the Math and Science panel. We all presented a bit on "how I got to be what I am today." I was very interested to hear how we all got to be where we are today and the thing that was MOST interesting was that none of us started out to be what we are today!



One of my friends is a patent attorney for a major telecommunications company. She started out a math major who went on to grad school in applied mathematics and somehow ended up working for telecommunications in their research and development area. Over the years she acquired an MBA and a JD, both of which are used in her present role, but now she has a comprehensive view of how the applied math can be used in new product development and she understands the business rationale and application of these new products AND she can research the patents on new technology more efficiently because she understands how the new product came to be.



Another of my friends started out as a Sociology major and wanted to into the foreign service. There was only one graduate program in foreign service at that time, so competition was brutal and the school was downright snooty about their monopoly. One of her advisors missed a deadline for a letter of reference and when she went to interview for the graduate program, she was summarily dismissed as having an incomplete file. Having no recourse, she went home with tears in her eyes and no plan in sight. Her father, a small town doctor, suggested that she return to the metropolitan area where she went to college (because she really liked the city) and go to nursing school as it would provide her with a Plan B until she could reapply to the foreign service program. She ultimately never reapplied to the program and finished nursing school. She became interested in oncology nursing and worked at several major teaching institutions throughout the country, working with cancer treatment protocols. She is now employed by a major pharmaceutical company working in the area of clinical trials for new cancer treatments. Her path took her from foreign service to pubic service.



My own road to being a physician was equally quirky and circuitous, starting out as a high school biology teacher who got influenza which resulted in losing my voice. By the end of that school year, I had nodules on my vocal cords from strain and a throaty scratchy speaking voice! My ENT physician suggested that unless I wanted to sound like Andy Devine (for those of you who are too young to remember Wild Bill Hickock and his sidekick, google it and watch it on YouTube) I needed to get another job that was not so dependent on talking. I got a job in a research lab at one of the local medical schools and worked there for a couple of years with the idea that I would go back to graduate school and get a PhD in biochemistry. Somehow while I was surrounded by the physicians and research fellows in the lab, I was bitten by the thought that medicine would be a good melding of all of my interests. I applied (in spite of warnings not to get my hopes up because the competition is brutal), was accepted and here I am! My twisted rationale for spending the time and money to apply to medical school was so that when I was 40 and having a midlife crisis, I would not be looking in a mirror and wondering what my life would be like if I had applied. Today my love of teaching runs through my practice and extends to lecturing nationally, regionally and even at our community college.



None of us took a year or two off to "find ourselves" and all of us had a path in mind after graduation. All of us had student loans to pay off. All of us took lowly jobs and worked our way into our present situations. All of us were grounded in a good work ethic. Our best advice to the students was to keep your eyes open and watch the world around you. While you are working toward the goal that you have in mind, take off the blinders and look around. Have hobbies that introduce you to people that you would otherwise never meet. Take a menial job just to see another aspect of life. Get off of your high horse and realize that everyone puts on their pants one leg at a time. See the commonality that binds people together in all aspects of life. Ultimately, do what you love and love what you do.

This can apply to all of us, not just students who are starting out in life. There are myriad opportunities "out there" and the world is made smaller by social media and the internet. Today, you can network with a total stranger or collaborate with someone on the other side of the world in your jammies! The road to success may be crooked and it could well be rough. You need to listen to your heart and follow where it leads you. Do what you love and love what you do.