Tag Archives: cognizant

Dean’s List

Dean’s List: (n) a list of students of high scholastic standing

I am not sure that I will remain faithful, but I would like to begin to take a moment to speak up when I discover a blatant contradiction.

I think it’s ridiculous to have a Dean’s List.

For that matter, it is equally humiliating to have grade cards at all.

It’s not that I think everybody needs a goose-up or a booster chair.

Other awards are just fine.

Competitions can be very beneficial—as long as we understand we’re actually competing instead of participating to the best of our ability.

I guess I always believed the goal in school was to learn.

In other words, teach the subjects, give the tests, determine the level of understanding, and then either pass the students on to the next grade or ask them to remain in the same classroom and help with redecoration.

What is the difference between an A and a B?

Astronomical. Just ask any child who’s expected to get an A and accidentally “let it B.”

How about between a B and a C?

Please remember that we refer to those who garner a C grade as being “average.” Such a flattering term. (In a room full of C’s, you would be hard to see.)

D: Isn’t that just dumb?

F—failure. Or if you’re emphatic—fucked.

Meanwhile, who’s learning what, and who can translate that knowledge into working life situations?

Are we graduating people from college needing another ten years of adjustment in the “real world,” before they can leave their family home and rent an apartment?

At one time, we tried to avoid teen marriages.

Now we’re recommending “waiting until you’re in your thirties.”

Why?

It’s the unspoken confession of the educational system, admitting it does not know if those who wear cap and gown are cognizant of much at all.

Let’s stop grading—because depending on who you are and where you are—it can be very degrading.

Apartment

dictionary with letter A

Apartment: (n) a suite of rooms forming one residence typically in a building containing a number of these.

When I run across people who appear to like me as I am today, I am certainly cognizant of the fact that if they had met me decades earlier, they would have disliked me totally.

Now, I don’t mean this to be either critical of my new-found friends or myself. I have taken a journey. Because it is a journey, the road was rarely straight and certainly never free of construction.

To a certain degree I can chronicle my progress and my respectability based on just a simple review of my apartment selections.

Graduating from high school and immediately getting married, I had no money, appreciation of money or desire to make money. I was of the firm conviction that high school should continue and all groceries should be supplied, and preferably, food prepared and set before me. Since I did not go to college, where such an arrangement is possible, everyone in my small town felt that I needed to become “responsible.”

I did not agree.

So my family, in an attempt to get me on the “strait and narrow,” rented an apartment for my new wife and myself, where we could live. It was quite lovely. It sat on the second floor in the middle of town and had several large rooms, which continued to mock us due to our lack of owning furniture.

We were able to stay there exactly forty-five days, since we had no money to pay the next month’s installment of rent.

At this point we were forced to go to a cheaper location, which also ended up having previous tenets. Cockroaches.

We had so many in our apartment that they began to be incestuous, leading to mutations and even the development of an albino clan. After a while, it was the cockroaches that evicted us from our apartment, feeling that we were unsuitable roommates.

At this point some success greeted my creative efforts, and we were able to move into a better apartment, and then a better one still. Finally, on about my fourth excursion into this cave dwelling, I was able to occupy an apartment where I could pay the monthly rent. It was larger, also had a dishwasher, and as far as I was able to tell, had no previous hairy-legged dwellers.

So every time I hear the word “apartment,” both a chill goes down my spine and a giggle in my soul.

For I realize that it is a benchmark of being a citizen in this country. And lo and behold, after awhile, I was deemed worthy of escaping apartments and live in a house.

God bless America, strike up the band, John Phillip Sousa is a great composer … and apple pie is the only dessert for a true American..

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Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Afresh

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Afresh: (adv.) in a new or different way: e.g. she left her job to start afresh.

Nobody walks out of the shower and says, “That should take care of that once and for all.”

Much as we are relieved to have our armpits “afresh” and all our other crevices carefully cleaned, we are fully cognizant that the same fastidious care needs to be done again very soon.

Why? Because we get dirty.

Why is it that we understand this when it comes to bodily hygiene, but we don’t recognize the same truth in regard to the other portions of our lives?

Why do we think that politics, relationships, sexuality, intelligence, religion, talent and manners don’t require the same “showering” and “afreshing?”

Why are some things viewed as traditional and therefore etched in stone, and our bathroom time is seen as a temporary solution to a permanent problem?

There is nothing in my life that I am not constantly trying to start afresh.

  • If I were involved in politics, I would leave for Congress a half hour early, and walk through the Lincoln Memorial every day, to remind myself why in the hell I ran for office in the first place.
  • It doesn’t hurt me at all to pull out wedding pictures and memorabilia of when I was younger, a little crazier, but maybe much more intent on romantic interest with my partner.
  • In the church, if we did more field trips out into the world to help people instead of chewing the fat about our opinions concerning the Bible, might we discover that our faith would be afreshed?

Over and over again, in each situation, coming back to the excitement we experienced in the first place is necessary in order to shower us with the blessings instead of having to complain about the rain.

If we don’t become afresh with newness, we will “age out” everything in our lives, leaving our emotions decrepit instead of well-expressed.

I don’t plan on giving up washing myself.

I also have no intention of ceasing to question my beliefs and actions … to find new and better reasons for pushing forward.