Ep. 102 College Senior Moron Minor- You cant have too much perspective

Welcome to an… episode of the Modern Moron.  Wow.  Long, long time since we’ve done an episode.  A lot of water under the bridge, a lot of swabs up noses, needles in arms and a lot of masks being worn and NOT being worn.  So… why?  Why do an episode and why did we quit?

Why I quit… seemed like it was getting stale, I was told it was getting stale, listening to the Senator and me bickering over the same old political issues and politicians mainly.  It seemed like I became more interested in my opinions than my curiosity.  And this podcast.  Podcast?  It’s more like a one way conference call, but with over 1 million podcasts, think about that… 1 million podcasts, I’m sitting down behind a microphone with my big fat ego and all of it’s opinions… and I don’t want that.  I don’t want to have opinions.  If anything I’d like to lose opinions.  My opinions are like the crap you stick in your garage or a storage unit.  It’s a bunch of worthless crap.  If it had any value, it wouldn’t be in a storage unit or collect dust in your garage.  That is what I think of my opinions and my ego keeps trying to sell me these worthless opinions as if they have value.  They don’t.  My goal is to evaporate my ego and lose all of my opinions.  This podcast doesn’t really do that.  So why this episode?

I have a bit of a problem.  Not a huge problem but it’s something that is on my mind daily and it’s something I worry about as I’m sure you worry as well.  It’s our children.  I have a soon to be teenaged daughter that is soon to be going into high school.  She’s got some issues as all kids do and her grades are not currently “the best” and she doesn’t particularly like school.  Some kids like school and some don’t, mine doesn’t, at least not right now.  And like many kids this age, not all, mine doesn’t look to me as a source of wisdom.  In fact, based on the tone of her responses and the receptiveness to my advice, she thinks I’m an idiot, or rather a moron.  I have to bear some of the responsibility for that.  First off I put the word Moron in the name of this podcast and I am also known to use self deprecating humor from time to time so I have not done a lot to garner a ton of respect by my own hand.  Still, there are many parents who find themselves in the same boat.

So, grades are not the best right now and her small group of friends seem to be getting better grades and after next year will be heading to the local private Catholic high school to which she now wants to attend.  However A) she may not have the grades to get into that school and B) the private catholic high school she wants to go to is even more expensive than the private shool we’re sending her to now and I’m not sure I want to pay that kind of money for a kid who doesn’t like school.  Again, I’m sure I’m not alone in this situation but I have chosen to talk to a sort-of expert.  An expert in high school and college preparatory school because she recently went to one, in fact the same high school as my daughter has her eye on.  She is now a senior at a liberal arts university in New York.  We’ve talked to her before, she’s the Senator’s daughter and we talk about post pandemic academic life and how that was just as hard to get used to as it was to go into quarantine.  We talk about post graduate work and the perspective on high school advice from a college senior.  Maybe you will find some similarities in the changes to your routines as well.

We start our conversation by talking about what it was like to come back to college.  I thought she was going to say rainbows and unicorns but it wasn’t.  It was hard and like most change it took some adjusting.

It’s a Re-egowakening with a college senior and a Moron minor on the Modern Moron…

CLOSE - What she said at the beginning of the episode, “the weird thing about time is when you’re in it, it feels like forever but once you’re out of it, it doesn’t feel long at all.”  The wisdom of perspective.  And I love the ease with which she was able to discuss her mental health going through high school and in college.  I don’t know how another college kid would ever end up listening to this episode but wouldn’t it be great if one found it that needed to hear that message of not being alone in feeling alone, or feeling anxious or nervous.  You never know.

Next episode, whenever that is that I just show up in your headphones, we’ll continue our discussion about writing papers for college, breakups and therapists and good luck finding a therapist since the pandemic, because they ARE ALL BOOKED.  Seriously, if you feel you need some therapy right now, and who doesn’t, it just isn’t available at least in the health care systems I’m familiar with. 

We also spend some time talking about what it’s like to study art and art history vs. creating art in college.  I hope you’ll check it out, thanks for listening to the Modern Moron.