Musings on a Fall Saturday

Here I am, revisiting the red-brick glory of the institution of higher education I left a hundred years and a hundred minutes ago. Who would have throught as i blearily stumbled up to receive my diploma (and griped about getting cum laude instead of magna) that three mnonths down the line I'd have experienced the intesnity of loss I have-- watching my group of friends go from a crew of innocents to a bereft, grieving family, and watching my family turn from a tightly-sealed insular unit into an openly wounded group?
And on weekdays my new job is standing in front of thrity-five troubled, semiliterate, angry teens trying to explain why learning is worth it (oh, it is!) for their futures.
"Learning is supposed to be fun" they say.
"Engage them!" my superiors say.
Are they going to be engaged in the real world? In college, when they sit in the back of some dimlit lecture hall, penn in hand, and can't take notes because they don't understand how? How are contests and art projects going to help them then?

And yet, to the contests and art projects I go. I have no other choice. My hands are tied.

I miss college like hell, although I wouldn't go back now and deal with the inanities, the stupid, overprivileged, overfed egos that stride down JFK street by the second. But the times we had and have, discussing philosophies of life, gossiping, and letting time slip by in a haze of smoke have become as sacred to me as my sun-kissed childhood...