Rant - Pure and Simple

Lately I find my life full of situations where people say something, act a certain way, or perform a specific duty, and then they are surprised by the outcome of their own choices. Cue insanity music. My two year-old understands the basic idea of actions have consequences: flip a light switch, there will be light. Turn the faucet, there will be water. Open the back door, there will be dogs. In all her godly ways, she understands the ripple effect of her own actions. Why, oh why, is this so hard for the rest of the world? I'll start with the nonpersonal (for me).

Rachel Uchitel had an affair with David Boreanaz. Then she had an affair with Tiger Woods. Both of these affairs have since received a great deal of public attention, and, as a result, she has been smeared up one side and down the other with adulterous mud. People around the world are hurling names at her about how she is a mistress, prostitute, and more, and she, circa the Great Protector of All Adulterous Females that is Gloria Allred, is amazed and offended that people would call her such names. Um, Rachel, sweetheart? When you see a spade . . . But that's besides the point. She acted a certain way and people are calling her on it, full stop. However, the truly ironic part of all of this is the offense she and a dozen other mistresses/flings/whathaveyou have expressed to the media because each thought SHE was the ONLY one because that's what HE told her. To recap: you're having an affair with a married man. He has a very public relationship with his wife, yet he sleeps with you on the side. And you're surprised that you're not the only one? He's already cheating! Exactly what did you expect and how on earth could you call it cheating on you when he slept with the others? Is that what you called it when he slept with his wife? I can't keep up.

I have the same frustration with my students. We have class; I assign a paper. I give you two months to research said paper. We have activity after assignment after sample writing to make sure you fully understand what you are doing. We have class after class to explain how to research, how to write, and, most importantly, how not to plagiarize. You take this class and these assignments, and then you sit down to write your paper. In the process, you copy and paste sections of articles from all over the internet into your paper. That's right. You highlighted, copied, and pasted text from a source into your paper. You throw in a few transitions, a couple of polished claims against the downfall of society, slap on a works cited page, and happily submit it to turnitin.com (a website whose sole purpose is to detect plagiarism) and go on your merry way. Two days later finds you wailing in my office because you can't believe I am doing this to you. After all, you didn't mean to plagiarize. Again, let's recap: you copied and pasted someone else's writing into your paper in order to avoid writing it yourself. I'm sorry, how is that not intentional plagiarism? Why don't you write a paper on that and get back to me? When you retake my class next semester.

So there are the many problems of acting and accepting consequences in celebrities and college kids; all's well that ends well, right? Except, of course, that now this same problem is occurring in my daughter's education, and I refuse to accept that. Let's see, you admit my daughter to your school. You label her as "gifted" and put her in a room above her age because she is too advanced for her own age group. You design each room to hold a child for six months before moving them up to the next level, and then you don 't understand when I don't want my child held in the same room for a full year? You tell me - again - that she is obviously gifted, but you just don't have room for her in the proper room because you commited to having other children in that room. You tell me she has obviously advanced beyond all of the other children in her room, but she is helping the other kids? Let's be clear here. With all due respect, I don't care about the other kids. I care about my kid. I care about my kid conversing with other children who are able to converse rather than having her speak in full sentences to a child whose most eloquent response is "bah." I didn't say gifted, you did. I didn't say advanced, you did. I didn't even make a judgment on which room she should be in, you did. This is not the case of an overly-anxious mother who is convinced her child is the greatest ever. This is a very basic case of: we pay for you to educate our daughter, and that is not what's happening. We talk to you about this problem and how we are all now facing the consequences of you commiting to too many children in a single room, try to come to a solution, and then we go on our merry way. Your solution, however, also appears to involve a card from the teacher in the advanced room offering thanks for our (now regretted) Teacher Appreciation gift along with a little note about how she looks forward to seeing my daughter "in the fall." Congratulations, your solution is now just a little behind the maturity of a solution my two year-old could design.

Actions have consequences, folks. This is not a tough concept. Yet each of these examples shows people who are apparently surprised to see that not only do their actions have consequences, but people might actually be displeased by the consequences that come! If this is the kind of logic that educated adults use on a daily basis, my two year-old is much more gifted than her school realizes. Perhaps Rachel Uchitel, my student, and the director of her school should go back and try the light switch again and then build from there.