On the 8 Spot

One guy got hung up on the notion that Whitman was gay, and therefore refused to discuss the work and made a point of asking me, at the end of class, whether he needed to keep the poems for any reason, and when I told him no, he made a big point of tossing the poems into the trash in front of me. That was depressing enough, but the truly depressing part wasn’t that my “students” (I use the term very loosely) didn’t appreciate Whitman. The truly depressing part was that many of them, nearly all of them, could not comprehend Whitman. And I don’t mean they didn’t understand the imagery. I mean they could not read the sentences and parse them for meaning. They could not understand, from line to line, what was going on in a poem. These students had graduated from high school and were attending university. It was terrifying. Worse yet, they were obstinate about their ignorance, determined to cling to it, resistant to any attempts to help them understand how to read sentences in their own native language. In short, they liked being ignorant. They were proud of it.

Real Dan Lyons Web Site » Blog Archive Quite possibly the greatest high school English paper of all time «.

Read the whole thing . I’d have to say after a 12 hour work day, with only a 30 minute lunch and a couple of breaks I felt a surge while reading this. Although I am not working for a startup.

Dear _________,

I’m writing to express an interest to interview with your company. I may need to leave my current situation. I know its against convention to trash my last employer when applying for a job. If you read this, I think you’ll understand and excuse my behavior.

For six months I’ve worked under the promise of an eventual pay off. To date, I’ve received minimal compensation for my efforts. The past three months, I’ve worked 12-14 hour days six days a week and my boss expects me to “stick it out” for success that may or may not come. I know the hours for a fact. When I had trouble getting things done he made me account in writing

Dashnine Media » I (may) need a new job because my boss is a jerk.