September 4, 2008

• Breakin the rules

  My name is Michael, and I break the rules.

   

  But I may not be as bad as you think I am.  I think that some rules, they’re okay to be broken.  If your spouse was having a heart attack and you were driving them to the hospital, is it okay to go over the speed limit?  How about run a stop sign?  Or hijack a vehicle?

   

  The rules that I break are what I like to refer to as “optional rules”.  They’re rules enforced upon us by society because someone somewhere thinks that we cant handle ourselves otherwise.  Whoever did that, is a wise person and is very very correct.  Without some limits upon humanity, total anarchy would reign supreme and it’d be every man for himself.

   

  But here’s a couple of the rules I break.  For one, the legal drinking age is 21, and I’m only 19.  I’m not much of a drinker, but I am not at all afraid to waltz into a bar with a fake ID and order a drink.  And if I get caught, I really dont care, because it was a stupid rule anyways.  I dont and wont feel a bit bad about what I did.

   

  Here’s a little something-something I like to do.  When the cafeteria in my dorm serves lasagna, which I swear is some of the best lasagna I’ve ever eaten, I like to stock up and have some more left over for later.  So is it wrong for me to fill up in the cafeteria, but go back for seconds and then take the plate back to my room?  How about two plates of lasagna?  Two plates and a tall glass of skim milk?  What if I wash the dishes and return them promptly?  Would it be worse to do that than to steal a few empty plates from the cafeteria and never return them?

   

  Another example.  I’m not book-smart, so I cheat on my exams.  All the time.  Do I think that plagarism is wrong?  Yes.  Do I think that people should know what they’re doing in their field of profession before they’re allowed to practice said profession?  Hell yes.  Am I going to have to know the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow when I’m drilling holes and filling cavities in peoples’ teeth?  Well unless an unladen swallow has a bomb attached to it’s body and is about to perform a jihad on my private practice dentistry, I sure fucking hope not.  Who’s it going to hurt if I save some Calculus equations on my calculator and refer to them on the test?  I’m not going to remember all of those equations if I’m an engineer, and even if I did remember them I’d be double-checking to make sure they’re the correct equations anyways.  Certainly, if someone cheated on their driver’s test, or in flight school, that’s wrong.  That person should not be on the road.  But the expected curriculum is filling our students’ minds with so much excess crap, useless information that they’re paying for and affects their overall GPA yet will forget over the course of the next semester.  What a waste, why should I need to take Physics and Organic Chemistry and 4 semesters of Spanish in order to be elligible for dental school?  Goddamn, leave me alone, I’m trying to fix teeth here.  Y’know, in Australia there’s a 3 year program for people straight out of high school that lets you become a full-fledged dentist.  So let’s compare 8 years of US school, costing me an arm and a leg the entire time, versus 3 years as soon as I get out of high school.  I would love to be a dentist by the time I’m 21.  That way I can open up a private practice dentistry office that serves alcohol and lasagna.  Since such a huge percentage of the population has a fear of going to the dentist, dont you think a nice stiff drink and a relaxing meal in the waiting room would help ease their worries while I’m busy crunching numbers in order to protect the building from religious extremist unladen swallows?

  • 5:47 pm
  • 11 Comments