Was It Something I Said?

We are fostering this little cat until he gets adopted.

I used to think that the people who finish their tests and leave the room first are the smart ones who know all the answers. But I have come to realize that more often the opposite is true. The student making an early departure is likely to be one who has simply given up. He doesn’t know the answers, so why spend time struggling with them? It doesn’t take much time to mark some random guesses on the answer sheet, and there’s no need to go back and check for mistakes when you wouldn’t be able to recognize them anyway. These guys usually look happy when they turn in the tests, and why not? They aren’t worried about how well they did; they already know.

Illustration from Clipart.com

I can’t remember which political conference it was that introduced the concept of the “Free Speech Zone”. That is, a zone designed to prevent free speech from being heard. It caught on rapidly and now it is my understanding that all major political events in the U.S. use this device. Still, I was a bit surprised to encounter this on the campus of Pierce College, whose newspaper proudly (if somewhat enigmatically) proclaims itself to be “a first amendment publication”.

Photo by Rosemary West

Beach pebbles, Camano Island

Photo by Rosemary West