I'm in more of a reading mood than a writing mood today. I've just started Salman Rushdie's "The Enchantress of Florence" and just finished Kelly Link's "Magic for Beginners." On my MP3 player is Ken Robinson's "The Element." I listen to it when I'm waiting for a theater performance to begin or sitting in a $tarbuck$ knitting my funkadelic stripey tabi socks. I've just dropped the Ministry of Magic's Mini Cooper off at the dealership and am awaiting a call from them concerning the yellow engine light that came on the other day.
I live in a portion of the world where I'd be lost without my car. In less than two months I will be driving back across the fly-over states to Washington State where I normally live when I'm not gallavanting off to Europe or the East Coast. I like road trips. The one to get back home is a little over 3,000 miles.
I have other reasons for leaving, but one is I cannot afford to continue my degree at Stony Brook. Even with a stipend and scholarship, living in this area is simply too expensive for me. I just don't want to go any further into de.bt right now. So I will continue my education piecemeal, a year here a year there, paying off debt and saving money in between bouts at university.
One thing I notice about SBU is that the cafeterias and snack shops seem to be run by outside interests who gouge students with their high prices. The sad thing is, the students just keep racking up more and more debt over staples like food and supplies and books. Kids who live on campus and have little access to shops in the area are cash cows for those outside interests. Perhaps that has always been the case and I am completely out of the loop. Is it all worth it, I wonder? Since the 60's we've treated college as 13th grade, complete with remedial writing, maths and sciences courses many newcomers expect they'll have to take because they didn't learn those subjects in high school with any sort of proficiency. If they are still playing catch up, how can we prepare them for the real world?
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