Our Minds/Brains

My daughter told me after she had graduated from college that she had a photographic memory that all she had to do was read something and she would remember it.

I knew a person in college who had a photographic memory and he never went to class because when it came time for mid-term exams or final exams, he would just read the chapters and ACE whatever test was put in front of him.

Are people who have that skill and/or ability smarter than the rest of us?

Is having that skill and/or ability the only key to a successful career?

Personally, I had no problems remember stuff about which I was interested and that is fine as long as one has a wide range of interests which I did not have at the time was in college and to this day still don't have a wide range of interests.  But, I still had a successful career although I guess it really depends on how one quantifies success.

I suppose one could study the information and through that process remember information but I always found studying to be boring, especially those classes that were totally based upon memorizing the data.  For me, memorizing is not learning.

BUT... for what other reason have we been given a brain or mind depending upon which word sound better to you.  And, are our minds clearly our own...  that is to say do we really control our own thoughts, beliefs, and dreams?

Does the person with a photographic memory have the ability to daydream and believe that their daydreams are their own and nothing something that they read about somewhere along the way?

The same holds true for one's ideas.  Are they their ideas or someone else's idea about which they read along the way?

Does it really matter if their bosses accept their ideas and are never aware that they came about from reading another person's ideas?

Success is success I suppose no matter what the capability of one's brain/mind is...  as the key to life is getting to that point where you can retire or continue working.

Reflections of an Educational Nature

 Kodachrome by Paul Simon

"When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all..."

I have often wondered about this even though it was never articulated until Paul Simon composed the lyric...  yet, I remember countless hours spent in classes from which I learned very little and very little was ever used by me in my 45 year career...  not even to impress my peers or work associates as we engaged in play banter...

UNFORTUNATELY for us all, the classes we took in high school were never intended for us to use that information directly in a work environment...  NO...  those classes were specifically designed to SEND US TO COLLEGE...  and, our undergraduate classes were again not designed to give us information for a possible work career, but to send us to GRADUATE SCHOOL which in turn would send us into a DOCTORAL PROGRAM...

THIS IS WHY EDUCATION IS FAILING...

10-20% all high school graduates should be directed towards pursuing additional education like that which is found in a Community College or a 4 year College or University...  The rest of us are the ones that are going to be actually doing all the GRUNT WORK and don't need additional education.

NOW...  don't get me wrong...  I am not opposed to high schools pushing us in the direction of technical education...  and, it would appear, at least to me, that their FOCUS should be on technical education as opposed to college education.

Who really cares about:

History

Geography

Social Studies

Science

Biology

Chemistry

Physics

English

Advanced Math

IF...  what you are planning to do is open a restaurant, build computers, write computer programs, or drive a truck, or work in an auto parts store, or for that matter join the military or become a professional athlete or musician...

There is no high school course that I know about that teaches students about investing their money for retirement or about balancing a budget or about the pros and cons of having debt or whether they should lease or buy or how to balance a check book or if life insurance is really necessary...

Teaching students CRITICAL RACE THEORY is not going to help them find a job after their high school education other than understand why they cannot find a job...

THIS EDUCATIONAL DIRECTION IS STUPID...

However...  proper communications:  writing, speaking, presenting is a good education to have regardless of what one plans to do with their lives...

Going to College

Average cost of a College Education is about $40,000 for tuition and another $12,000 for room and board making the total cost about $50,000 a year and it takes 4 years to complete a college degree so the final cost would be about $200,000...  or about the cost of an average home.  The average salary for a college graduate is $50,000 annually or after taxes about $3,334 each month.  And, the average cost of living about $2,500 to $3,500 depending upon one's location and their style of living.

NOW...  if one were to borrow $200,000 to buy a home and agreed to payments for 30 years, the monthly charge would be a little over $1,000.

If you are a single college graduate earning $50,000 a year and living with monthly expenses of $2,500, you would still not have enough money to pay $1,000 on your student loan debt.

However, you have choices:

• Find a job where you would earn more than $50,000 a year
• Extend you student debt loan to greater than 30 years
• Share your expenses with a roommate

Of course, there are other ways to make the financial burden of college work.  You could first spend time in the military and use the GI Bill to attend college.  You could work during the day and go to college at night either in the classroom or online.  You could go to a Community College for your first two years and attend a public college near where you live where the in-state tuition is much less.

In TN for example, if you attend a Community College, you pay no tuition for your first two years which can save an enormous amount of money and then transfer your credit to another College or University for the last two years.

OR...  you could select a profession where you do not need a college degree at all...

OR...  you could join the military after high school and spend 20 years there where you could use the military to help pay for your education...  If you joined at 18, you would be 38 when you could retire and either use your military training or education or both to work another career for 20 years, retiring a second time at 58...

The point is that a College Education is not always the best direction to take...

Living in The Sixties

I graduated from high school in 1966 and after traveling through Europe for a couple of weeks because I had been living in Cairo, Egypt, I settled in the State of Maryland working road

construction at Regal Construction Company until entering College as a Freshman in the Fall.  After attending college for two and a half years, I left college because I suddenly realized that I just did not want to be there.

So, without my draft deferment for being as College student, I had to do something or else I was going to be drafted and possibly sent to Vietnam which is the last thing that I wanted to do with my time.  Therefore, after securing a full time job with a local company, I enlisted in the US Navy Reserves which allowed me to work for 12 months before going on active duty for 2 years.

Dealing with the DRAFT and the fact that OUR GOVERNMENT could send young men to WAR was not just a huge FEAR for people like me but caused us to have a SOLID RESENTMENT for our country into which we had been born.  It just did not seem right to us that our Government could force us to do something that we did not want to do...

One of the songs that reflected our feelings during this time was "For What It's Worth," by Buffalo Springfield.  Buffalo Springfield was a Canadian-American rock band active from 1966 to 1968 whose most prominent members were Stephen Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay.


For What It's Worth

There's something happening here
But what it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look - what's going down?
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking' their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look - what's going down?
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly saying, "hooray for our side"
It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look - what's going down?
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the man come and take you way away