![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[D2 wakes up fairy early to go to the dentist. On the way back, he drives by the Beard Elementary, the grade school he attended from fourth to sixth grade. On a random whim, he parks his car out front.]
[D2 pauses, then opens the door and walks out. He walks toward a set of doors. Locked. He has to go through the main door. The instant he walks in he is flooded by so many faint memories. He cannot remember how many times he has walked these halls. They all seem smaller now, though. Of course, D2 is now twice as tall as he was back then. And you know what they say about relativitiy.]
[D2 walks into a classroom. The location is familiar, but the decorations are not. There are a few computers at the back of the room. He smiles as he walks in. He taps an elderly teacher on the shoulder.]
D2: It's been a long time, Mrs. Houston.
Mrs. H: Oh my Lord, it's so good to see you!
D2: You remember that one time I wrote an essay on respect in fifth grade, and I wrote about you and I won a T shirt for both of us?
Mrs. H: Yes, and I still have mine.
D2: As do I, except that it doesn't fit anymore.
Mrs. H: Well, you've grown up to be a wonderful man.
[D2 then explains about his depression and how he's figured out he wants to be a high school history teacher. Mrs. H nods but says she must attend to business. D2 nods and says he will go visit Mrs. Orler and Mrs. Castleberry.]
D2: Hello!
Mrs. O: Why, it's good to see you!
Mrs. C: Is that Daniel Tu?
D2: Yep. Guess you can't forget about a guy like me.
[D2 then explains about his depression and how he's figured out he wants to be a high school history teacher.]
Mrs. O: That's great! I know you're going to make an excellent teacher.
Mrs. C: And Lord knows we need every teacher we can get, especially people like you.
D2: Yeah, people who don't care about big houses or fancy cars.
Mrs. O: I think the Lord has blessed you then. Is there anything else you want to ask?
D2: Actually, I wanted to know if I got certified to teach in Oklahoma, what would I need to do to teach in Arkansas?
Mrs. O: I don't know, but Mrs. Walden would. She was a principal in Oklahoma before she came to teach here in Ft. Smith. Mrs. Walden!
Mrs. W: Yes?
Mrs. O: You need to come here and help answer a question.
Mrs. W: What is it?
D2: Hi, I want to become a teacher. I will be getting my major from Tulsa and will likely want things to remain relatively the same.
Mrs. W: They have reciprocity. If you get certified to teach in Oklahoma, they'll accept you to teach in Arkansas as long as you take an Arkansas history class. And seeing how you were born and grew up here, that should be no problem. I wouldn't worry about it.
D2: Alright!
[D2 then hears the lunch bell. He hurries back to Mrs. Houston to tell her something.]
D2: I just wanted to thank you, Mrs. Houston. It's people like you who care enough to stay after school and deal with punk kids that allow us to grow as people. It may have been inevitable that I would be interested in history and politics, but I was blessed to have you create that spark in me when I was very young. You stayed after school to help us study for geography bees. I won three years in a row here at Beard because of you. I won the school geography bee as a fourth grader thanks to randomly knowing that Czechoslovakia (which I did not know how to spell then) randomly split into two countries...due to a random line I remember watching from the 1992 Winter Olympics. I qualified for state in fifth and sixth grade and my parents couldn't take me because they had to work. You and Mrs. Holland, the principal then, took the time out of your own schedules to drive me. I didn't really understand then how much you believed in me.
Mrs. H: We knew you were a really smart guy. You can't hide that. But we were worried about you, since you were so quiet back then.
D2: Yeah, I thought people talked too much back then. Still do, in fact.
Mrs. H: (laughs) Oh dear. But you seem to have cured that problem. So was it high school or college?
D2: College. And it was because of things I never thought I would be doing. In high school I was fairly antisocial so I could concentrate on my studies. But then I came to the BSU in college and they really opened me up. God has blessed me with some really awesome friends. The other part was that I got involved in student government, and student senate especially helped me be more vocal. I really tried to be polite and speak softly in senate, except that people trampled over me. So I learned to state my opinions in clear terms, often crossing into bitterness.
Mrs. H: Why's that?
D2: Because too many people love to hear themselves talk, including me. And we're a pretty stubborn bunch in senate. For the most part I have gotten over the fact that people are stupid. But I left senate over one matter that I publicly said I accepted but privately rejected. You see, I was chair of the money committee for a year and a half. We help oversee a large budget, about third of the $600,000 dollars that our student association got to play around with. As you know, with money, everybody complains.
Mrs. H: (nods)
D2: The first year, I spent my time under the tutelage of an outspoken senator. He taught me that you just have to have a tough skin when it came to dealing with money. And that the rules exist for a reason. The executive branch never liked the idea of senatorial oversight on what they did with their money, despite the fact that one-third of all the committees in Congress have to do with legislative oversight. People need to learn how government works. This is why I would love to teach AP American government, Mrs. Houston.
Mrs. H: You would do an excellent job at that!
D2: The one matter that I was extreme disappointed in was a change in the policy of our student allocations. When I first came up to Senate, we had something called confidential criteria. Nobody knew how we figured out the allocation amounts for each organizatione except for the money committee. This gave us the freedom to adapt the system to that year's allocations. It was pretty hard to cheat the system because only a few people even knew what the system was.
Mrs. H: But that would be very suspicious.
D2: I concede that. But I also knew it worked. People are people, Mrs. Houston. Say you tell people to write down what they need for an event. Then you tell them they can get a maximum of $100 for that event. What are the odds of an organization figuring out they need $100? Pretty good, in my humble opinion. But let's say they don't know what the maximum is. They either overshoot to try to get more money, or they put down honest amounts.
Mrs. H: That makes sense, to a degree.
D2: But then some of the morestupid liberally-minded people went for a motion for open sunshine without fully realizing what they were about to do. Fine, I understand it cleared FAC (my money committee) of any wrongdoing in allocations. But I happened to think it was more coincidence that organizations that FAC members were part of did better on allocations because 1) The obvious thing that the FAC members kept them informed 2) FAC members were part of established organizations (FAC totally got together and said, "Let's give each of our organizations $500 more dollar than everyone else. Nobody will know! Except for the rest of us, and the fact that we have to report our allocation methods to Senate. OH SNAP!). You would hope people would push for a change with the idea that they were doing some good. It gave new organizations a chance to compete with the older organizations who were more familiar with the rules. But you know what else, Mrs. Houston?
Mrs. H: No, what?
D2: It didn't solve the main problem. Each year more organizations are created, but the amount of money stays the same. People look at the fact that they can get more money each year within allocations but fail to realize that so can everyone else. Hmmmm, more organizations and the same amount of money to spread around just might mean that you might get less money! All open sunshine does is comfort people's suspicions about what the problem is. Except, the problem itself is not solvable without having everyone understand simple math.
Mrs. H: (laughs) That's kind of harsh, don't you think?
D2: Harsh but true, Mrs. Houston. The sad thing was that there were people on my own committee who did not realize this basic principle. So I was undermined in my arguments to senate. I was the senior chair of the committee, the person with the most experience with allocations, and people did not listen to me. I take blame for arguing too bitterly instead of actually trying to come up with a coherent argument. I knew that once you go to open sunshine, there ain't no going back to confidential criteria. The muckrakers identified the problem without a solution. Oh, wait, they dumped the solution on my hands. I left it to my junior chair, because I'm pretty sure I would have done something stupid if I had been charge of allocations.
Mrs. H: Sounds like you learned a lot.
D2: Indeed. But to change the subject, I want to tell you about this new phenomenon in media. Have you heard about blogs?
Mrs. H: Afraid not, Daniel.
D2: Well, the term comes from writing online, or weblogging. As people on the Internet are apt to do, they shortened it to blogging. Blogs are a curious creature because most of them are funded on a private level rather than a corporate level. So they're less inhibited by negative feedback. Oh yes, you can gather feedback quickly due to the commenting feature. Let me show you.
Mrs. H: Okay.
D2: Hmmmm, I wonder...
[D2 goes to the LiveJournal homepage. He's surprised the blockers haven't gotten it yet.]
D2: That's strange. I would expect them to block something like LiveJournal.
Mrs. H: Dear, they probably don't even know about it.
D2: Hehehe, you're probably right. Anyways, let me show you the commenting thing. Ah, yes, see this Ferrett guy writes about how there's a war on the word "Christmas". He's already gathered 183 comments at this point.
Mrs. H: Wow!
D2: Yes, blogs are extreme useful for gathering comments. This can be bad as a lot of them can just be calling you names. The good is that you can get a lot of good suggestions about how to improve your knowledge of the subject you are writing about.
Mrs. H: Fascinating.
D2: Indeed. I also applied to be the opinion editor of my school newspaper next year. I want to try to set up a liberal vs. conservative column on the same topic. The trick will be to gather a pool of writers on both sides so no one person feels obligated to come up with a weekly column. I wrote a weekly column last year during the election and it was very difficult towards the end of the semester.
Mrs. H: Sounds like you've got everything figured out. But hey, I've got to run, I do have duties to my kids. I just want to warn you that they're making everything harder on us. We're not even supposed to have time to be doing this, talking to old students. You could say I'm being a rebel by talking to you know.
D2: That's why I respect you, Mrs. Houston.
Mrs. H: (smiles) Well you take care now. And God bless!
D2: May the good Lord bless you, too.
[D2 pauses, then opens the door and walks out. He walks toward a set of doors. Locked. He has to go through the main door. The instant he walks in he is flooded by so many faint memories. He cannot remember how many times he has walked these halls. They all seem smaller now, though. Of course, D2 is now twice as tall as he was back then. And you know what they say about relativitiy.]
[D2 walks into a classroom. The location is familiar, but the decorations are not. There are a few computers at the back of the room. He smiles as he walks in. He taps an elderly teacher on the shoulder.]
D2: It's been a long time, Mrs. Houston.
Mrs. H: Oh my Lord, it's so good to see you!
D2: You remember that one time I wrote an essay on respect in fifth grade, and I wrote about you and I won a T shirt for both of us?
Mrs. H: Yes, and I still have mine.
D2: As do I, except that it doesn't fit anymore.
Mrs. H: Well, you've grown up to be a wonderful man.
[D2 then explains about his depression and how he's figured out he wants to be a high school history teacher. Mrs. H nods but says she must attend to business. D2 nods and says he will go visit Mrs. Orler and Mrs. Castleberry.]
D2: Hello!
Mrs. O: Why, it's good to see you!
Mrs. C: Is that Daniel Tu?
D2: Yep. Guess you can't forget about a guy like me.
[D2 then explains about his depression and how he's figured out he wants to be a high school history teacher.]
Mrs. O: That's great! I know you're going to make an excellent teacher.
Mrs. C: And Lord knows we need every teacher we can get, especially people like you.
D2: Yeah, people who don't care about big houses or fancy cars.
Mrs. O: I think the Lord has blessed you then. Is there anything else you want to ask?
D2: Actually, I wanted to know if I got certified to teach in Oklahoma, what would I need to do to teach in Arkansas?
Mrs. O: I don't know, but Mrs. Walden would. She was a principal in Oklahoma before she came to teach here in Ft. Smith. Mrs. Walden!
Mrs. W: Yes?
Mrs. O: You need to come here and help answer a question.
Mrs. W: What is it?
D2: Hi, I want to become a teacher. I will be getting my major from Tulsa and will likely want things to remain relatively the same.
Mrs. W: They have reciprocity. If you get certified to teach in Oklahoma, they'll accept you to teach in Arkansas as long as you take an Arkansas history class. And seeing how you were born and grew up here, that should be no problem. I wouldn't worry about it.
D2: Alright!
[D2 then hears the lunch bell. He hurries back to Mrs. Houston to tell her something.]
D2: I just wanted to thank you, Mrs. Houston. It's people like you who care enough to stay after school and deal with punk kids that allow us to grow as people. It may have been inevitable that I would be interested in history and politics, but I was blessed to have you create that spark in me when I was very young. You stayed after school to help us study for geography bees. I won three years in a row here at Beard because of you. I won the school geography bee as a fourth grader thanks to randomly knowing that Czechoslovakia (which I did not know how to spell then) randomly split into two countries...due to a random line I remember watching from the 1992 Winter Olympics. I qualified for state in fifth and sixth grade and my parents couldn't take me because they had to work. You and Mrs. Holland, the principal then, took the time out of your own schedules to drive me. I didn't really understand then how much you believed in me.
Mrs. H: We knew you were a really smart guy. You can't hide that. But we were worried about you, since you were so quiet back then.
D2: Yeah, I thought people talked too much back then. Still do, in fact.
Mrs. H: (laughs) Oh dear. But you seem to have cured that problem. So was it high school or college?
D2: College. And it was because of things I never thought I would be doing. In high school I was fairly antisocial so I could concentrate on my studies. But then I came to the BSU in college and they really opened me up. God has blessed me with some really awesome friends. The other part was that I got involved in student government, and student senate especially helped me be more vocal. I really tried to be polite and speak softly in senate, except that people trampled over me. So I learned to state my opinions in clear terms, often crossing into bitterness.
Mrs. H: Why's that?
D2: Because too many people love to hear themselves talk, including me. And we're a pretty stubborn bunch in senate. For the most part I have gotten over the fact that people are stupid. But I left senate over one matter that I publicly said I accepted but privately rejected. You see, I was chair of the money committee for a year and a half. We help oversee a large budget, about third of the $600,000 dollars that our student association got to play around with. As you know, with money, everybody complains.
Mrs. H: (nods)
D2: The first year, I spent my time under the tutelage of an outspoken senator. He taught me that you just have to have a tough skin when it came to dealing with money. And that the rules exist for a reason. The executive branch never liked the idea of senatorial oversight on what they did with their money, despite the fact that one-third of all the committees in Congress have to do with legislative oversight. People need to learn how government works. This is why I would love to teach AP American government, Mrs. Houston.
Mrs. H: You would do an excellent job at that!
D2: The one matter that I was extreme disappointed in was a change in the policy of our student allocations. When I first came up to Senate, we had something called confidential criteria. Nobody knew how we figured out the allocation amounts for each organizatione except for the money committee. This gave us the freedom to adapt the system to that year's allocations. It was pretty hard to cheat the system because only a few people even knew what the system was.
Mrs. H: But that would be very suspicious.
D2: I concede that. But I also knew it worked. People are people, Mrs. Houston. Say you tell people to write down what they need for an event. Then you tell them they can get a maximum of $100 for that event. What are the odds of an organization figuring out they need $100? Pretty good, in my humble opinion. But let's say they don't know what the maximum is. They either overshoot to try to get more money, or they put down honest amounts.
Mrs. H: That makes sense, to a degree.
D2: But then some of the more
Mrs. H: No, what?
D2: It didn't solve the main problem. Each year more organizations are created, but the amount of money stays the same. People look at the fact that they can get more money each year within allocations but fail to realize that so can everyone else. Hmmmm, more organizations and the same amount of money to spread around just might mean that you might get less money! All open sunshine does is comfort people's suspicions about what the problem is. Except, the problem itself is not solvable without having everyone understand simple math.
Mrs. H: (laughs) That's kind of harsh, don't you think?
D2: Harsh but true, Mrs. Houston. The sad thing was that there were people on my own committee who did not realize this basic principle. So I was undermined in my arguments to senate. I was the senior chair of the committee, the person with the most experience with allocations, and people did not listen to me. I take blame for arguing too bitterly instead of actually trying to come up with a coherent argument. I knew that once you go to open sunshine, there ain't no going back to confidential criteria. The muckrakers identified the problem without a solution. Oh, wait, they dumped the solution on my hands. I left it to my junior chair, because I'm pretty sure I would have done something stupid if I had been charge of allocations.
Mrs. H: Sounds like you learned a lot.
D2: Indeed. But to change the subject, I want to tell you about this new phenomenon in media. Have you heard about blogs?
Mrs. H: Afraid not, Daniel.
D2: Well, the term comes from writing online, or weblogging. As people on the Internet are apt to do, they shortened it to blogging. Blogs are a curious creature because most of them are funded on a private level rather than a corporate level. So they're less inhibited by negative feedback. Oh yes, you can gather feedback quickly due to the commenting feature. Let me show you.
Mrs. H: Okay.
D2: Hmmmm, I wonder...
[D2 goes to the LiveJournal homepage. He's surprised the blockers haven't gotten it yet.]
D2: That's strange. I would expect them to block something like LiveJournal.
Mrs. H: Dear, they probably don't even know about it.
D2: Hehehe, you're probably right. Anyways, let me show you the commenting thing. Ah, yes, see this Ferrett guy writes about how there's a war on the word "Christmas". He's already gathered 183 comments at this point.
Mrs. H: Wow!
D2: Yes, blogs are extreme useful for gathering comments. This can be bad as a lot of them can just be calling you names. The good is that you can get a lot of good suggestions about how to improve your knowledge of the subject you are writing about.
Mrs. H: Fascinating.
D2: Indeed. I also applied to be the opinion editor of my school newspaper next year. I want to try to set up a liberal vs. conservative column on the same topic. The trick will be to gather a pool of writers on both sides so no one person feels obligated to come up with a weekly column. I wrote a weekly column last year during the election and it was very difficult towards the end of the semester.
Mrs. H: Sounds like you've got everything figured out. But hey, I've got to run, I do have duties to my kids. I just want to warn you that they're making everything harder on us. We're not even supposed to have time to be doing this, talking to old students. You could say I'm being a rebel by talking to you know.
D2: That's why I respect you, Mrs. Houston.
Mrs. H: (smiles) Well you take care now. And God bless!
D2: May the good Lord bless you, too.
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}