16 September 2014

building birdhouses

so i'm here at starbucks where the people come with their books and highlighters and spirals and whatnot. there's one guy here with a calculator and notebook and his computer open and his noise-cancelling headphones and he just randomly dropped a big pink eraser on the floor and grabbed it back up.

see, that's what i want. books and papers and a big pink eraser that i sort of absently knock to the floor when i reach across the books and the papers to pick up my highlighter, or reach for a sip of coffee, or change the music coming into my noise-cancelling headset.

okay, obvs, i could purchase those items. so it's not simply the having of them. no, that's not all. it's the having of them AND the using of them. but... durr, i could acquire those items and use them. i could get some paper and pencil to write stuff and then erase it and i could get a book in which i could highlight passages. but that's not the point, either, is it? no, it is decidedly not. it's not the having of them AND the using of them for their own sake. the point is to have them and use them for a sake other than the mere having and using.

what's the point of having a hammer if you're not going to drive nails and what's the point of driving nails if you're not going to build a birdhouse? there's got to be something more, something to give meaning to the tools. you've got to have a purpose. it's not about having a hammer and it's not about driving nails. it's about building a birdhouse.

books. paper. pencils. noise-cancelling headphones. a highlighter. a pocket calculator. a big pink eraser. of what purpose are these tools? these are the tools of learning. add index cards, and you have the tools of a good old fashioned research project. a "term paper" as it were.

i wonder if i am capable of this... i once was quite good at it. can i, am i still able, to write a term paper?

i guess the first step is to pick a topic.


Title IX Trickle-down:
How the Summer of '72 Changed Opportunities
for Elementary School Girls
to Play Organized Sports


what do you think?

i think i need to purchase some note cards!

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