Both the local ABC and Fox station did stories about the Sanford Student Impostor, Azia Kim. It was big news that a girl pretended to be a Stanford student for almost a year. My first reaction to this story was, good for her. At 18 years old someone can make a mistake like this without it ruining her whole life. I think that she has to be admired at least a little for trying this.
I am hoping that she does not have too much legal problems from this. I hope it does not hurt the rest of her life. From reading and watching stories about her the school wants to come down hard on her. I guess they think they look bad and do not want other kids to try this. I can see why Stanford does not want to be seen as an easy mark.
If Azia Kim's life was a movie, it would end with Stanford admitting her after her impressing a dean or students holding a rally for her. This is not a movie and I doubt she will set fort on Stanford's campus for long. If I was a college looking for a little publicity I would offer to admit her to my college. I doubt that will happen either. I hope things work out for her. I know that ethics are important, but You can see her as someone who is willing to think outside the box to get what she wants. there are lots of people who see that as a good thing.
I went to college with a women named Izzy Benzick. Izzy was her nickname, but it is how I always think about her in my mind. I think her first name was really Isabella, but I cannot be sure. I cannot find her when I search on the web for her. I post this entry so that one day she will find it and get in touch with me.
If you happen to know Izzy let her know that I am wondering how she is doing.
The oddest thing happened to me last night. A woman walked up to me and said she knew me. I looked at her and drew a total blank. She said that we went to Millersville University. together. At that point I totally remembered her. Ok, not totally, I drank way too much beer in college.
I never run into people I went to college with. Milliersville has about 7000 undergrad students, putting on the small side of medium. It is a state college and the type of place where you go to and come back to your hometown. You might end up in Harrisburg, Philadelphia, or Baltimore. It is news when someone ends up in NYC. The last time I saw an alumni map there were 50,000 alumni in Pennsylvania and Maryland combined, 47 in California.
We talked for a little while. She said that she grew up in the Bay Area and she knew she was going to live here again someday. She is working for atom films. When she sends me an e-mail I will update this entry. I can remember her name, but I cannot spell it.
Since I have moved out to San Jose she is only the fifth person I have seen from Millersville. I think I have only seen twice that number people from Millersville since I left school. I have never seen it as a place in my life that I need to keep connecting to. Being on the west coast makes that easy.
This week I will be seeing my first college roommate. I had three that lasted any length of time. We are still good friends. We will talk about college and the people he still keeps in touch with. I have a really bad memory about college. There are lots of stories that I do not remember at all. It will be good to see Jimmy, but I do not care all that much about reliving the past.
Every year or so I see a story like this updating the state of men and women in college. The jist of the story is that women are doing better in college. It is getting to the point where women are doing much better.
Professors interviewed on several campuses say that in their experience men seem to cluster in a disproportionate share at both ends of the spectrum — students who are the most brilliantly creative, and students who cannot keep up.
'My best male students are every bit as good as my best female students,' said Wendy Moffat, a longtime English professor at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. 'But the range among the guys is wider.'
From the time they are young, boys are far more likely than girls to be suspended or expelled, or have a learning disability or emotional problem diagnosed. As teenagers, they are more likely to drop out of high school, commit suicide or be incarcerated. Such difficulties can have echoes even in college men."
This does not surprise me. My experience in college and high school was like this. Men were at the top of the class, but women made better grades on average.
There is also an economic rationale for men to take education less seriously. In the early years of a career, Laura Perna of the University of Pennsylvania has found, college increases women's earnings far more than men's.
"That's the trap," Dr. Kleinfeld said. "In the early years, young men don't see the wage benefit. They can sell their strength and make money."
I am not sure what to make from this? I think it is good for America that grades to not equal income. School might help you get ready for work, but it is not the same thing. I am not sure what this will say for the future.
I wonder if I am going to hear NPR shows about this topic? What do feminist think about women doing better in college? What does the average liberal think of this? Will I see this story in the next week on the 24 hour news network? How will they treat the story?
Courtney sent me the link about The Passion of the Morrissey. I told her not too long ago that I used to be a Morrissey fan. Along with my friend Andrew Nock, I was the guy who in college did a radio show during spring finals playing four hours of just Morrissey and the Smiths. I was the guy that would drive two hours to find an our of print single. My guess is that I am not going to surprise anyone by writing this.
It is funny. That was a long time ago. I had one of those moments where I could stop being a fan. A had been such a big fan for a long time, but it seemed to all wash away in a single moment. I still have some old Smiths and Morrissey albums. I still tell people that How Soon Is Now is my favorite song of all time. I just do not conceder myself to be a fan anymore.
Sometime I will write about the time I met Morrissey and why I am no longer a fan. I will save that for some other time. What I do know is that Morrissey is all Aura. It was a little heartbreaking when I found out he was not the person on his albums.
I just sent an e-mail message to a person that I have not been in contact with for years. He was one of my old college friends. I had totally fallen out of contact with everyone I knew while I was in college. I actually feel like I have been excommunicated from that crowd of people. Maybe I am taking it a little hard. I currently speak to no one from Millersville. I wonder what that says about my college days.
One of the guys in my office has recently tipped me off to his cover song website. I was really happy when I saw this site. I used to be the king of cover songs when I was in college. I would end every fall semester with a four hour radio show of nothing buy covers. By my senior year I could only play about 10% of the covers I had found.
I have nowhere near the record collection I used to have in college. A lot of those cover songs are never to be seen again. I am going to make a CD of songs for this web site. I might have enough songs to get my own section on the site. That is one of my projects for this weekend.
Taken from the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary Pathos- Function: noun Etymology: Greek, suffering, experience, emotion, from paschein (aorist pathein) to experience, suffer; perhaps akin to Lithuanian kesti to suffer Date: 1591 1 : an element in experience or in artistic representation evoking pity or compassion 2 : an emotion of sympathetic pity
When I was in college a guy gave me the nickname Mr. Pathos. The nickname says something about the way I view art and how I feel about creating art. It was my sophomore year in college. Most of the people in the broadcasting department knew me by this time. They had seen most of the broadcasting projects that I had done. I was starting to build a reputation as a reliable person to have on a video shoot. I had technical skills and I knew how to solve problems. These were important skills at a University where the equipment was out of date and never seemed to work.
I was also starting to build a different reputation also. I was taking Advanced Television production. My first two projects were very emotional. They were not like the projects being made by the rest of the class. the first project was one minutes about having an ear infection. The second was a poem that I had written. Most of the people in my class where playing with comedy. I was making one minute art films.
At the time I did not feel that I was good at being funny. I did not feel that I could make a good project that was light-hearted. I felt the best project I could make was too turn the emotion way up. I felt that I could make a really good project if I tried to get to peoples' hearts. It applied to my artist sensibility.
I received the nickname Mr. Pathos for an editing project. Everyone in the class was given the same footage of our professor kicking a 50 yard field goal. I took the score from Born On The Forth of July. I read a script of the kicker reliving past glory. It was best described as sappy. This guy Chris called me Mr. Pathos after that. I found that nickname both to be a but of an insult and a badge of honor at the same time.
I tell this story because I feel that I still have many of those same artist sensibilities It might be a little worse now because I am mostly writing about myself. I am not hiding the way I feel about things behind the veils or fiction. Everyone who reads Sad Salvation knows it is about me. There is no other persona for me to hide behind.
I feel good when I write something really emotional. It excites me to spill my worst emotions out on a page. Maybe I am using this web log when I should be going to therapy. It still feels good to get all these things out. I am not going to write about the times I feel happy. I do not understand those moments as well as I understand the things that make me upset.
With a title like Sad Salvation, how can I be anything but Mr. Pathos. I am going to keep writing things where my emotions spill out all over the page.
