Grinding School Quotes

What grinds me the most is we're sending kids out into the world who don't know how to balance a checkbook, don't know how to apply for a loan, don't even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world` With that said, I'll admit even I can see how looking at the equation x -3 = 19 and knowing x =22 can be useful. I'll even say knowing x =7 and y= 8 in a problem like 9x - 6y= 15 can be helpful. But seriously, do we all need to know how to simplify (x-3)(x-3i)?? And the joke is, no one can continue their education unless they do. A student living in California cannot get into a four-year college unless they pass Algebra 2 in high school. A future psychologist can't become a psychologist, a future lawyer can't become a lawyer, and I can't become a journalist unless each of us has a basic understanding of engineering. Of course, engineers and scientists use this shit all the time, and I applaud them! But they don't take years of theater arts appreciation courses, because a scientist or an engineer doesn't need to know that 'The Phantom of the Opoera' was the longest-running Broadway musical of all time. Get my point?

The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks. The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.

There certainly are some women who treat their male partners badly, berating them, calling them names, attempting to control them. The negative impact on these men’s lives can be considerable. But do we see men whose self-esteem is gradually destroyed through this process? Do we see men whose progress in school or in their careers grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are fleeing to shelters in fear for their lives? How about the ones who try to get to a phone to call for help, but the women block their way or cut the line? The reason we don’t generally see these men is simple: They’re rare. I don’t question how embarrassing it would be for a man to come forward and admit that a woman is abusing him. But don’t underestimate how humiliated a woman feels when she reveals abuse; women crave dignity just as much as men do. If shame stopped people from coming forward, no one would tell.

When was the last time you used the words 'teach me'? Maybe not since you started first grade? Here's an irony about school: The daily grind of tests, homework, and pressures sometimes blunts rather than stimulates a thirst for knowledge.

We are all made of broken glass. The school grinds along on grief and anger.

Fun is at the core of the way I like to do business and it has been key to everything I've done from the outset. More than any other element, fun is the secret of Virgin's success. I am aware that the ideas of business as being fun and creative goes right against the grain of convention, and it's certainly not how the they teach it at some of those business schools, where business means hard grind and lots of 'discounted cash flows' and net' present values'.

But that's just the way it was surviving in America's public schools. Every day was a struggle. Every day was psychological warfare, and if you didn't stay sharp, the system would grind you into human pencil shavings.

In the words of Mr Thierry Coup of Warner Bros: 'We are taking the most iconic and powerful moments of the stories and putting them in an immersive environment. It is taking the theme park experience to a new level.' And of course I wish Thierry and his colleagues every possible luck, and I am sure it will be wonderful. But I cannot conceal my feelings; and the more I think of those millions of beaming kids waving their wands and scampering the Styrofoam turrets of Hogwartse_STmk, and the more I think of those millions of poor put-upon parents who must now pay to fly to Orlando and pay to buy wizard hats and wizard cloaks and wizard burgers washed down with wizard meade_STmk, the more I grind my teeth in jealous irritation. Because the fact is that Harry Potter is not American. He is British. Where is Diagon Alley, where they buy wands and stuff? It is in London, and if you want to get into the Ministry of Magic you disappear down a London telephone box. The train for Hogwarts goes from King's Cross, not Grand Central Station, and what is Harry Potter all about? It is about the ritual and intrigue and dorm-feast excitement of a British boarding school of a kind that you just don't find in America. Hogwarts is a place where children occasionally get cross with each other—not 'mad'—and where the situation is usually saved by a good old British sense of HUMOUR. WITH A U. RIGHT? NOT HUMOR. GOTTIT?

What made Einstein special was his impertinence, his nonconformity, and his distaste for dogma. Einstein’s genius reminds us that a society’s competitive advantage comes not from teaching the multiplication or periodic tables but from nurturing rebels. Grinds have their place, but unruly geeks change the world. (Walter Issacson, Wired)

So I telled her my 'maginin's o' places from old books'n'pics in the school'ry. Lands where the Fall'd never falled, towns bigger'n all o' Big I. an' towers o' stars'n'suns blazin' higher'n Mauna Kea, bays of not jus' one Prescient Ship but a mil'yun, Smart boxes what make delish grinds more'n anyun can eat, Smart Pipes what gush more brew'n anyun can drink, places where it's always spring an' no sick, no knucklyin' an' no slavin'. Places where ev'ryun's a beautsome purebirth who lives to be one hun'erd'n'fifty years.

All knowledge that takes special training to acquire is the province of the Magician energy. Whether you are an apprentice training to become a master electrician and unraveling the mysteries of high voltage; or a medical student, grinding away night and day, studying the secrets of the human body and using available technologies to help your patients; or a would-be stockbroker or a student of high finance; or a trainee in one of the psychoanalytic schools, you are in exactly the same position as the apprentice shaman or witch doctor in tribal societies. You are spending large amounts of time, energy, and money in order to be initiated into rarefied realms of secret power. You are undergoing an ordeal testing your capacities to become a master of this power. And, as is true in all initiations, there is no guarantee of success. [Magician energy]

In the expectant quiet, there were only the usual sounds of the night. Wind in the big trees out past the school wall, starting to rise as the sky darkened, Crickets beginning to chirp. Then Sabriel heard it--the massed grinding of Dead joints, no longer joined by gristle; the padding of Dead feet, bones like hobnails clicking through necrotic flesh.

My mom was a sayyed from the bloodline of the Prophet (which you know about now). In Iran, if you convert from Islam to Christianity or Judaism, it’s a capital crime. That means if they find you guilty in religious court, they kill you. But if you convert to something else, like Buddhism or something, then it’s not so bad. Probably because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sister religions, and you always have the worst fights with your sister. And probably nothing happens if you’re just a six-year-old. Except if you say, “I’m a Christian now,” in your school, chances are the Committee will hear about it and raid your house, because if you’re a Christian now, then so are your parents probably. And the Committee does stuff way worse than killing you. When my sister walked out of her room and said she’d met Jesus, my mom knew all that. And here is the part that gets hard to believe: Sima, my mom, read about him and became a Christian too. Not just a regular one, who keeps it in their pocket. She fell in love. She wanted everybody to have what she had, to be free, to realize that in other religions you have rules and codes and obligations to follow to earn good things, but all you had to do with Jesus was believe he was the one who died for you. And she believed. When I tell the story in Oklahoma, this is the part where the grown-ups always interrupt me. They say, “Okay, but why did she convert?” Cause up to that point, I’ve told them about the house with the birds in the walls, all the villages my grandfather owned, all the gold, my mom’s own medical practice—all the amazing things she had that we don’t have anymore because she became a Christian. All the money she gave up, so we’re poor now. But I don’t have an answer for them. How can you explain why you believe anything? So I just say what my mom says when people ask her. She looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her and she says, “Because it’s true.” Why else would she believe it? It’s true and it’s more valuable than seven million dollars in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and ten years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home, and the best cream puffs of Jolfa, and even maybe your life. My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise. If you believe it’s true, that there is a God and He wants you to believe in Him and He sent His Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side. That or Sima is insane. There’s no middle. You can’t say it’s a quirky thing she thinks sometimes, cause she went all the way with it. If it’s not true, she made a giant mistake. But she doesn’t think so. She had all that wealth, the love of all those people she helped in her clinic. They treated her like a queen. She was a sayyed. And she’s poor now. People spit on her on buses. She’s a refugee in places people hate refugees, with a husband who hits harder than a second-degree black belt because he’s a third-degree black belt. And she’ll tell you—it’s worth it. Jesus is better. It’s true. We can keep talking about it, keep grinding our teeth on why Sima converted, since it turned the fate of everybody in the story. It’s why we’re here hiding in Oklahoma. We can wonder and question and disagree. You can be certain she’s dead wrong. But you can’t make Sima agree with you. It’s true. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. This whole story hinges on it. Sima—who was such a fierce Muslim that she marched for the Revolution, who studied the Quran the way very few people do read the Bible and knew in her heart that it was true.

Helping teacher leaders come to understand their gifts is the first step in developing a specialty. Some leaders are great coaches and should focus on instructional leadership in a district or network where that is valued and supported. Great conceptual thinkers are good in startup mode but the daily grind of leading a school doesn't suit them. Other leaders thrive on the turnaround challenge. The dynamic blended future of education will allow more role specialization.

Watching her, I remembered a girl I'd known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her strained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul--desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step that took small notice of those cliffs at the left.

The shooting doesn't end. Nor does the grinding poverty. Or the deeply rooted segregation. Or the easy availability of guns. Or the shuttered schools and boarded-up homes. Or the tensions between police and residents. And yet each shooting is unlike the last, every exposed and bruised life exposed and bruised in its own way.

How old is she now?” “Oh, she’s twenty now.” She hesitated. She was obligated to end our little chat with a stylized flourish. The way it’s done in serial television. So she wet her little bunny mouth, sleepied her eyes, widened her nostrils, patted her hair, arched her back, stood canted and hip-shot, huskied her voice and said, “See you aroun’, huh?” “Sure, Marianne. Sure.” Bless them all, the forlorn little rabbits. They are the displaced persons of our emotional culture. They are ravenous for romance, yet settle for what they call making out. Their futile, acne-pitted men drift out of high school into a world so surfeited with unskilled labor there is competition for bag-boy jobs in the supermarkets. They yearn for security, but all they can have is what they make for themselves, chittering little flocks of them in the restaurants and stores, talking of style and adornment, dreaming of the terribly sincere stranger who will come along and lift them out of the gypsy life of the two-bit tip and the unemployment, cut a tall cake with them, swell them up with sassy babies, and guide them masterfully into the shoal water of the electrified house where everybody brushes after every meal. But most of the wistful rabbits marry their unskilled men, and keep right on working. And discover the end of the dream. They have been taught that if you are sunny, cheery, sincere, group-adjusted, popular, the world is yours, including barbecue pits, charge plates, diaper service, percale sheets, friends for dinner, washer-dryer combinations, color slides of the kiddies on the home projector, and eternal whimsical romance—with crinkly smiles and Rock Hudson dialogue. So they all come smiling and confident and unskilled into a technician’s world, and in a few years they learn that it is all going to be grinding and brutal and hateful and precarious. These are the slums of the heart. Bless the bunnies. These are the new people, and we are making no place for them. We hold the dream in front of them like a carrot, and finally say sorry you can’t have any. And the schools where we teach them non-survival are gloriously architectured. They will never live in places so fine, unless they contract something incurable.

I was surprised how sad it made me to leave the hospital, to see the people hurrying to work, the men in their dry-cleaned suits, the women driving their kids to the public school, cursing because they missed the light at Montgomery and Morris Ave and now they were going to be late. Knowing that when you’re gone the grind will go on. No one is special enough to stop it.

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side, and light on skepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'. But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder and gained very little skepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they are willing to accept inadequate answers, they don't pose follow-up questions, the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. They come to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in. Something has happened between first and twelfth grade. And it's not just puberty. I'd guess that it's partly peer pressure not to excel - except in sports, partly that the society teaches short-term gratification, partly the impression that science or mathematics won't buy you a sports car, partly that so little is expected of students, and partly that there are few rewards or role-models for intelligent discussion of science and technology - or even for learning for it's own sake. Those few who remain interested are vilified as nerds or geeks or grinds. But there's something else. I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. 'Why is the Moon round?', the children ask. 'Why is grass green?', 'What is a dream?', 'How deep can you dig a hole?', 'When is the world's birthday?', 'Why do we have toes?'. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation, or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. 'What did you expect the Moon to be? Square?' Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science.

The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any ‘naturals,’ musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any ‘grinds,’ people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder. The idea that excellence at a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of excellence. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

Have you ever been a member of the Communist or Anarchist parties, Mr Mortdecai?’ ‘Good Lord no!’ I cried gaily, ‘filthy capitalist, me. Grind the workers’ faces, I say.’ ‘When you were at school?’ he prompted gently. ‘Oh. Well, yes, I think I did take the Red side in the debating society at school once or twice. But in the Lower Sixth we all got either religion or Communism – it goes with acne you know. Vanishes as soon as you have proper sexual intercourse.

Can you drive it?" "No. I can't drive a stick at all. It's why I took Andy's car and not one of yours." "Oh people, for goodness' sake...move over." Choo Co La Tah pushed past Jess to take the driver's seat. Curious about that, she slid over to make room for the ancient. Jess hesitated. "Do you know what you're doing?" Choo Co La Tah gave him a withering glare. "Not at all. But I figured smoeone needed to learn and no on else was volunteering. Step in and get situated. Time is of the essence." Abigail's heart pounded. "I hope he's joking about that." If not, it would be a very short trip. Ren changed into his crow form before he took flight. Jess and Sasha climbed in, then moved to the compartment behind the seat. A pall hung over all of them while Choo Co La Tah adjusted the seat and mirrors. By all means, please take your time. Not like they were all about to die or anything... She couldn't speak as she watched their enemies rapidly closing the distance between them. This was by far the scariest thing she'd seen. Unlike the wasps and scorpions, this horde could think and adapt. They even had opposable thumbs. Whole different ball game. Choo Co La Tah shifted into gear. Or at least he tried. The truck made a fierce grinding sound that caused jess to screw his face up as it lurched violently and shook like a dog coming in from the rain. "You sure you odn't want me to try?" Jess offered. Choo Co La Tah waved him away. "I'm a little rusty. Just give me a second to get used to it again." Abigail swallowed hard. "How long has it been?" Choo Co La Tah eashed off the clutch and they shuddred forward at the most impressive speed of two whole miles an hour. About the same speed as a limping turtle. "Hmm, probably sometime around nineteen hundred and..." They all waited with bated breath while he ground his way through more gears. With every shift, the engine audibly protested his skills. Silently, so did she. The truck was really moving along now. They reached a staggering fifteen miles an hour. At this rate, they might be able to overtake a loaded school bus... by tomorrow. Or at the very least, the day after that. "...must have been the summer of...hmm...let me think a moment. Fifty-three. Yes, that was it. 1953. The year they came out with color teles. It was a good year as I recall. Same year Bill Gates was born." The look on Jess's and Sasha's faces would have made her laugh if she wasn't every bit as horrified. Oh my God, who put him behind the wheel? Sasha visibly cringed as he saw how close their pursuers were to their bumper. "Should I get out and push?" Jess cursed under his breath as he saw them, too. "I'd get out and run at this point. I think you'd go faster." Choo Co La Tah took their comments in stride. "Now, now, gentlemen. All is well. See, I'm getting better." He finally made a gear without the truck spazzing or the gears grinding.

goodness tries to get the upper hand in us whenever it seems to have the slightest chance—on Sunday mornings, perhaps, when we are set free from the grinding hurry of the week, and take the little three-year old on our knee at breakfast to share our egg and muffin; in moments of trouble, when death visits our roof or illness makes us dependent on the tending hand of a slighted wife; in quiet talks with an aged mother, of the days when we stood at her knee with our first picture-book, or wrote her loving letters from school.

There certainly are some women who treat their male partners badly, berating them, calling them names, attempting to control them. The negative impact on these men’s lives can be considerable. But do we see men whose self-esteem is gradually destroyed through this process? Do we see men whose progress in school or in their careers grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are fleeing to shelters in fear for their lives?

Every now and then, I’m lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists—although heavy on the wonder side and light on skepticism. They’re curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I’m asked follow-up questions. They’ve never heard of the notion of a “dumb question.” But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize “facts.” By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts, has gone out of them. They’ve lost much of the wonder, and gained very little skepticism. They’re worried about asking “dumb” questions; they’re willing to accept inadequate answers; they don’t pose follow-up questions; the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. They come to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in. Something has happened between first and twelfth grade, and it’s not just puberty. I’d guess that it’s partly peer pressure not to excel (except in sports); partly that the society teaches short-term gratification; partly the impression that science or mathematics won’t buy you a sports car; partly that so little is expected of students; and partly that there are few rewards or role models for intelligent discussion of science and technology—or even for learning for its own sake. Those few who remain interested are vilified as “nerds” or “geeks” or “grinds.

Mom?” Then again, louder. “Mom?” She turned around so quickly, she knocked the pan off the stove and nearly dropped the gray paper into the open flame there. I saw her reach back and slap her hand against the knobs, twisting a dial until the smell of gas disappeared. “I don’t feel good. Can I stay home today?” No response, not even a blink. Her jaw was working, grinding, but it took me walking over to the table and sitting down for her to find her voice. “How—how did you get in here?” “I have a bad headache and my stomach hurts,” I told her, putting my elbows up on the table. I knew she hated when I whined, but I didn’t think she hated it enough to come over and grab me by the arm again. “I asked you how you got in here, young lady. What’s your name?” Her voice sounded strange. “Where do you live?” Her grip on my skin only tightened the longer I waited to answer. It had to have been a joke, right? Was she sick, too? Sometimes cold medicine did funny things to her. Funny things, though. Not scary things. “Can you tell me your name?” she repeated. “Ouch!” I yelped, trying to pull my arm away. “Mom, what’s wrong?” She yanked me up from the table, forcing me onto my feet. “Where are your parents? How did you get in this house?” Something tightened in my chest to the point of snapping. “Mom, Mommy, why—” “Stop it,” she hissed, “stop calling me that!” “What are you—?” I think I must have tried to say something else, but she dragged me over to the door that led out into the garage. My feet slid against the wood, skin burning. “Wh-what’s wrong with you?” I cried. I tried twisting out of her grasp, but she wouldn’t even look at me. Not until we were at the door to the garage and she pushed my back up against it. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I know you’re confused, but I promise that I’m not your mother. I don’t know how you got into this house, and, frankly, I’m not sure I want to know—” “I live here!” I told her. “I live here! I’m Ruby!” When she looked at me again, I saw none of the things that made Mom my mother. The lines that formed around her eyes when she smiled were smoothed out, and her jaw was clenched around whatever she wanted to say next. When she looked at me, she didn’t see me. I wasn’t invisible, but I wasn’t Ruby. “Mom.” I started to cry. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be bad. I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry! Please, I promise I’ll be good—I’ll go to school today and won’t be sick, and I’ll pick up my room. I’m sorry. Please remember. Please!” She put one hand on my shoulder and the other on the door handle. “My husband is a police officer. He’ll be able to help you get home. Wait in here—and don’t touch anything.” The door opened and I was pushed into a wall of freezing January air. I stumbled down onto the dirty, oil-stained concrete, just managing to catch myself before I slammed into the side of her car. I heard the door shut behind me, and the lock click into place; heard her call Dad’s name as clearly as I heard the birds in the bushes outside the dark garage. She hadn’t even turned on the light for me. I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, ignoring the bite of the frosty air on my bare skin. I launched myself in the direction of the door, fumbling around until I found it. I tried shaking the handle, jiggling it, still thinking, hoping, praying that this was some big birthday surprise, and that by the time I got back inside, there would be a plate of pancakes at the table and Dad would bring in the presents, and we could—we could—we could pretend like the night before had never happened, even with the evidence in the next room over. The door was locked. “I’m sorry!” I was screaming. Pounding my fists against it. “Mommy, I’m sorry! Please!” Dad appeared a moment later, his stocky shape outlined by the light from inside of the house. I saw Mom’s bright-red face over his shoulder; he turned to wave her off and then reached over to flip on the overhead lights.

Books? Yes, I read a lot, I’ve always read a lot. No, I’m not sure we do understand each other. I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression. Believe me, expression is insanity, it arises out of our insanity. It also has to do with turning pages, with hunting from one page to the other, with flight, with complicity in an absurd, solidified effusion, with a vile overflow of verse, with insuring life in a single sentence, and, in turn, with the sentences seeking insurance in life. Reading is a vice which can replace all other vices or temporarily take their place in more intensely helping people live, it is a debauchery, a consuming addiction. No, I don’t take any drugs, I take books, of course I have certain preferences, many books don’t suit me at all, some I take only in the morning, others at night, there are books I don’t ever let go, I drag them around with me in the apartment, carrying them from the living room into the kitchen, I read them in the hall standing up, I don’t use bookmarks, I don’t move my lips while reading, early on I learned to read very well, I don’t remember the method, but you ought to look into it, they must have used an excellent method in our provincial elementary schools, at least back then when I learned to read. Yes I also realized, but not until later, that there are countries where people don’t know how to read, at least not quickly, but speed is important, not only concentration, can you please tell me who can keep chewing on a simple or even a complex sentence without feeling disgust, either with the eyes or the mouth, just keep on grinding away, over and over, a sentence which only consists of subject and predicate must be consumed rapidly, a sentence with many appositions must for that very reason be taken at tremendous speed, with the eyeballs performing an imperceptible slalom, since a sentence doesn’t convey anything to itself, it has to “convey” something to the reader. I couldn’t “work my way through” a book, that would almost be an occupation. There are people, I tell you, you come across the strangest surprises in this field of reading . . . I do profess a certain weakness for illiterates, I even know someone here who doesn’t read and doesn’t want to, a person who has succumbed to the vice of reading more easily understands such a state of innocence, really unless people are truly capable of reading they ought not to read at all.

But I can cite ten other reasons for not being a father." "First of all, I don't like motherhood," said Jakub, and he broke off pensively. "Our century has already unmasked all myths. Childhood has long ceased to be an age of innocence. Freud discovered infant sexuality and told us all about Oedipus. Only Jocasta remains untouchable; no one dares tear off her veil. Motherhood is the last and greatest taboo, the one that harbors the most grievous curse. There is no stronger bond than the one that shackles mother to child. This bond cripples the child's soul forever and prepares for the mother, when her son has grown up, the most cruel of all the griefs of love. I say that motherhood is a curse, and I refuse to contribute to it." "Another reason I don't want to add to the number of mothers," said Jakub with some embarrassment, "is that I love the female body, and I am disgusted by the thought of my beloved's breast becoming a milk-bag." "The doctor here will certainly confirm that physicians and nurses treat women hospitalized after an aborted pregnancy more harshly than those who have given birth, and show some contempt toward them even though they themselves will, at least once in their lives, need a similar operation. But for them it's a reflex stronger than any kind of thought, because the cult of procreation is an imperative of nature. That's why it's useless to look for the slightest rational argument in natalist propaganda. Do you perhaps think it's the voice of Jesus you're hearing in the natalist morality of the church? Do you think it's the voice of Marx you're hearing in the natalist propaganda of the Communist state? Impelled merely by the desire to perpetuate the species, mankind will end up smothering itself on its small planet. But the natalist propaganda mill grinds on, and the public is moved to tears by pictures of nursing mothers and infants making faces. It disgusts me. It chills me to think that, along with millions of other enthusiasts, I could be bending over a cradle with a silly smile." "And of course I also have to ask myself what sort of world I'd be sending my child into. School soon takes him away to stuff his head with the falsehoods I've fought in vain against all my life. Should I see my son become a conformist fool? Or should I instill my own ideas into him and see him suffer because he'll be dragged into the same conflicts I was?" "And of course I also have to think of myself. In this country children pay for their parents' disobedience, and parents for their children's disobedience. How many young people have been denied education because their parents fell into disgrace? And how many parents have chosen permanent cowardice for the sole purpose of preventing harm to their children? Anyone who wants to preserve at least some freedom here shouldn't have children," Jakub said, and fell into silence. "The last reason carries so much weight that it counts for five," said Jakub. "Having a child is to show an absolute accord with mankind. If I have a child, it's as though I'm saying: I was born and have tasted life and declare it so good that it merits being duplicated." "And you have not found life to be good?" asked Bertlef. Jakub tried to be precise, and said cautiously: "All I know is that I could never say with complete conviction: Man is a wonderful being and I want to reproduce him.

The truth about productivity is that it's not really about the apps, it's not really about having a perfect system or about being disciplined or motivated more than anyone else. When I think of my own life and how I do things like: YouTube channel, entrepreneurship, medical school, being a doctor, none of it feels like suffering, none of it feels like a grind. So, when my housemate says: "It's 11 o'clock at night, why are you still working?", it's always a bit surprising because it really doesn't feel like work because it's actually fun. The main insight that I've realized is that productivity isn't really about getting more things done, it's mostly about LEARNING TO ENJOY THE JOURNEY.

By contrast, the merely good students had totaled eight thousand hours, and the future music teachers had totaled just over four thousand hours. Ericsson and his colleagues then compared amateur pianists with professional pianists. The same pattern emerged. The amateurs never practiced more than about three hours a week over the course of their childhood, and by the age of twenty they had totaled two thousand hours of practice. The professionals, on the other hand, steadily increased their practice time every year, until by the age of twenty they, like the violinists, had reached ten thousand hours. The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals,” musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any “grinds,” people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder. The idea that excellence at performing a complex task requires a critical minimum level of practice surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.

Now imagine what a change it would be for a young black American to grow up in a society where they didn’t have to settle for the worst schools, the worst health care, the worst jobs, or possibly be subjected to the worst carceral system on Earth. Imagine what it would mean for women if they were more easily able to leave abusive relationships or escape workplace harassment with the help of strong welfare guarantees. Imagine our future Einsteins and Leonardo da Vincis liberated from grinding poverty and misery and able to contribute to human greatness. Or forget Einstein and Leonardo—better yet, imagine ordinary people, with ordinary abilities, having time after their twenty-eight-hour workweek to explore whatever interests or hobbies strike their fancy (or simply enjoy their right to be bored). The deluge of bad poetry, strange philosophical blog posts, and terrible abstract art will be a sure sign of progress.

There was no modern cement until 1870 or so, and no modern concrete until after the turn of the century. Mixing concrete is as delicate a business as making bread. You can get it too watery or not watery enough. You can get the sand-mix too thick or too thin, and the same is true of the gravel-mix. And back in 1934, the science of mixing the stuff was a lot less sophisticated than it is today. The walls of Cellblock 5 were solid enough, but they weren’t exactly dry and toasty. As a matter of fact, they were and are pretty damned dank. After a long wet spell they would sweat and sometimes even drip. Cracks had a way of appearing, some an inch deep. They were routinely mortared over. Now here comes Andy Dufresne into Cellblock 5. He’s a man who graduated from the University of Maine’s school of business, but he’s also a man who took two or three geology courses along the way. Geology had, in fact, become his chief hobby. I imagine it appealed to his patient, meticulous nature. A ten-thousand-year ice age here. A million years of mountain-building there. Plates of bedrock grinding against each other deep under the earth’s skin over the millennia. Pressure. Andy told me once that all of geology is the study of pressure.

The very first dram Ronan had ever been truly proud of, truly euphoric over, had been a copy. It had been in high school. Ronan wasn't good at surviving high school and he wasn't good at surviving friendship, and so while his friend Gansey's back was turned, he'd stolen Gansey's car. It was a beautiful car. A 1973 bright orange Camaro with stripes right up its hood and straight down its ass. Ronan had wanted to drive it for months, despite Gansey forbidding it. Maybe because of him forbidding it. Within hours of stealing it, Ronan had totaled it. Gansey hadn't wanted him to drive it because he thought he'd grind the clutch, or curb it, or burn out the tires, or maybe, maybe blow the engine. And here Ronan had totaled it. Ronan had loved Richard C. Gansey III far more than he loved himself at that point, and he hadn't known how he was ever going to face him when he returned from out of town. And then, Joseph Kavinsky had taught him to dream a copy. Before that, all of Ronan's dreams--that he knew about, Matthew didn't count--had been accidents and knickknacks, the bizarre and the useless. When he'd successfully copied a car, an entire car, he'd been out of his mind with glee. The dreamt car had been perfect down to the last detail. Exactly like the original. The pinnacle of dreaming. Now a copy was the least impressive thing to him. He could copy anything he put his mind to. That just made him a very ethereal photocopier. A one-man 3-D printer. The dreams he was proud of now were the dreams that were originals. Dreams that couldn't exist in any other way. Dreams that took full advantage of the impossibility of dreamspace in a way that was cunning or lovely or effective or all of the above. The sundogs. Lindenmere. Dreams that had to be dreams. In the past, all his good dreams like this were gifts from Lindenmere or accidents rather than things he had consciously constructed. He was beginning to realize, after listening to Bryde, that this was because he'd been thinking too small. His consciousness was slowly becoming the shape of the concrete, waking world, and it was shrinking all his dreams to the probable. He needed to start realizing that possible and impossible didn't mean the same thing for him as they did for other people. He needed to break himself of the habit of rules, of doubts, of physics. His "what if" had grown so tame. "You are made of dreams and this world is not for you." He would not let the nightwash take him and Matthew. He would not let this world kill him slowly. He deserved a place here, too. He woke.

I see you are fixated on the least of my doings,” he said. “Very well, my abrupt departure from the Domain is easily enough explained: I am not at your beck and call, Madam Inquisitor. You cannot simply say to me, ‘May I call on you this evening, Your Highness, to discuss what you have seen?’” The Inquisitor thinned her lips. “Besides, if you had taken the time to inquire from my attendants, you would have learned that I had decided to go back to school at an earlier time, before the lightning came down. “Now, the hotel suite. I am a young man and have needs that must be met. Since that slum of a school Atlantis so strenuously recommended does not allow for such activities, I keep a place outside of school. As for why I left, I cannot imagine why I should remain once the deed is done.” “And where was your accomplice in . . . the deed?” “Left before I did. No need for her presence once she had served her purpose.” “There was no report of anyone coming or going.” Of course not, since she left with me. This time he had to swallow the words as they rose on his tongue. “Were you watching all the service doors? A large hotel has many.” “Where did you find her?” In a certain house in Little-Grind-on-Woe. Very well suited to wielding lightning, that girl. “In a certain—” What was the matter with him? He was an accomplished liar. Truth should never approach his lips.

A pool game mixes ritual with geometry. The slow spaciousness of the green felt mirrors some internal state you get to after a few beers. Back at school, I’d been trying to read the philosophy of art, which I was grotesquely unequipped to do but nonetheless stuck on. I loved the idea that looking at a painting or listening to a concerto could make you somehow “transcend” the day-in, day-out bullshit that grinds you down; how in one instant of pure attention you could draw something inside that made you forever larger. In those days the drug culture was pimping “expanded consciousness,” a lie that partly descended from the old postindustrial lie of progress: any change in how your head normally worked must count as an improvement. Maybe my faith in that lie slid me toward an altered state that day. Or maybe it was just the beer, which I rarely drank. In any case, walking around the pool table, I felt borne forward by some internal force or fire. My first shot sank a ball. Then I made the most unlikely bank shot in history to drop two balls at once after a wild V trajectory. Daddy whistled. The sky through the window had gone the exact blue of the chalk I was digging my cue stick in, a shade solid and luminous at once, like the sheer turquoise used for the Madonna’s robe in Renaissance paintings. Slides from art history class flashed through my head. For a second, I lent that color some credit, as if it meant something that made my mind more buoyant. But that was crazy.

What is ADHD, anyway? For those still wondering what ADHD is, here’s the briefest summary I can muster: ADHD shows up in two areas of our brain function: working memory and executive functioning.[7] Working memory allows us to hold more than one thing in our brains at once. If you’ve ever run up the stairs, only to find yourself standing in your bedroom wondering what you came for, you’ve experienced a failure of working memory. Again, everyone experiences this from time to time. People with ADHD experience it nonstop, to the point where it impairs our ability to function normally. Working memory holds onto information until we’re able to use it.[8] In addition to forgetting why we opened the refrigerator, having a leaky working memory means we lose information before our brains can move it to long-term storage. We forget a lot of things before we have a chance to act on them or write them down. Our executive functions, on the other hand, give us the power to delay gratification, strategize, plan ahead, and identify and respond to others’ feelings.[9] That’s some list, isn’t it? In the same way a diabetic’s body cannot effectively regulate insulin, imagine your brain being unable to control these behaviors. This explains why ADHDers’ behavior so often defies norms and expectations for their age group — and this persists throughout their lifespan, not just grade school. ADHD isn’t a gift. It isn’t a sign of creativity or intelligence, nor is it a simple character flaw. And it’s more than eccentric distractibility, forgetfulness, and impulsivity. ADHD is a far-reaching disorder that touches every aspect of our lives. If we leave it unchecked, it will generate chaos at home, at work, and everywhere in between.

Ahh, it’s true. Secret rocker. So, is the science teacher just a facade? Kinda like the real Peter Parker? Do you secretly save the world on your off time?” I’m smiling at him, enjoying the banter. His frame seems so much bigger, being in the small space. He’s not saying anything, so I go on. “Did I just bust you out? You gonna have to keep me quiet now?” I laugh. But he doesn’t. He leans over and wraps his strong hand around my neck, bringing our faces close, our lips pressing together. I can’t remember the last time I ever made out in a car, if that’s what we’re doing. The old-school French kissing outside the parent’s house until the lights go on and we have to break apart. But this time, I’m an adult and no one’s going to stop us. Not sure what comes over me, but I lean forward, letting him know I want more. His response is just want I want as he pulls my body over the center console to his side, my legs now straddling him. My body is on fire, being in this position. I shamelessly grind forward, loving the friction the hardness between his legs brushing against my covered clit causes. His grip around my ass tightens and he growls into my mouth. Our kiss becomes brutal, my hands working their way up his tight chest, up his neck and into his thick, dark hair. I grip handfuls into my fists and, as I cock my head to the side for a deeper kiss, I accidently knock his glasses off. “Shit, sorry,” I moan into his mouth. He doesn’t skip a beat, grabbing my ass cheeks tighter and grinding what feels like a gigantic sized monster against my sex. This is not how I saw this going, but man, am I glad. His mouth, his strong hands, his hard cock, everything has become a pleasant surprise. The sound of Axl Rose singing in the background while we kiss and grind, our teeth scraping, our tongues dancing around one another, while our hands explore, squeezing, pulling and pinching. It’s almost becoming too much and the buildup is going to cause me to orgasm. I should stop this; this is immature what we’re doing. Dry humping in a car, god, what’s wrong with us? His grip is strong and intense, pushing, pulling, as our bodies move.

Just as the stereotypes of the one-sided academic grind or the obsessed genius are myths for high school valedictorians, also false is the conception of academic achievers as troubled individuals effective only in school.

Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut album stands as a death knell for the idealistic hippie dreams of the Sixties. Inspired by horror movies, bad dreams, drug come-downs and the terminal grind of the factory floor, it was designed to unnerve and unsettle

They measured, surveyed, and allocated whatever land had not been distributed. They built roads, bridges, fences, livestock pounds, and public landings. They exported barrel staves and imported “salt and Barbados goods on reasonable terms.” They authorized the building of a warehouse whose owner would “supply the town of Lyme with salt and certain woods upon reasonable terms,” and they prohibited the cutting of timber on common land and the “transport of the same out of the town” because “all sorts of timber grow scarce among us.” They also managed the operation of the gristmill to keep it “in repair continually for to grind the town’s corn all winter and summer,” and they decided the length of the school year, authorizing two dame schools “for teaching young children and maids to read and whatever else they may be capable of learning, either knitting or sewing.” In 1685 they decided to erect “a pair of stocks & scaffold to answer the laws within a month at the meeting house.

The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks. The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try.

Among athletes, the unlikely source is the stathead who’s spent time in uniform, satisfying Sarason’s condition that the ideal go-between be embedded in the community, “rendering some kind of service within the schools, requiring that in some way they become part of the school.” These rare birds of baseball, fluent in front office and dipped in dugout wisdom, are “perfect conduits to get a message from high theoretical guys down to guys who are just used to grinding it out on the baseball field,” San Diego Padres manager Andy Green said in 2017. “Unless that message gets translated where a guy speaks both languages, it usually ends up falling on deaf ears. It can be the perfect game plan laid out by the front office, but if it doesn’t run through one of those conduits, it tends to, one, not be understood, or two, not be implemented at all or maybe even spurned altogether.

The truth about productivity is that it's not really about the apps, it's not really about having a perfect system or about being disciplined or motivated more than anyone else. When I think of my own life and how I do things like: YouTube channel, entrepreneurship, medical school, being a doctor, none of it feels like suffering, none of it feels like a grind. So, when my housemate says: "It's 11 o'clock at night, why are you still working?", it's always a bit surprising because it really doesn't feel like work because it's actually fun. The main insight that I've realized is that productivity isn't really about getting more things done, it's mostly about LEARNING TO ENJOY THE JOURNEY.

Are you still mad?” “Not as much,” I admit, glaring back toward the school. “She looked at your penis.” “So did the kids. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have shifted in front of them.” “She blushed.” I grind my teeth and fist my hands. “And?” “And?” I face him, my rage rising again. “That’s my penis!” He beams at me. “Say it again.” Narrowing my eyes, I poke his chest. “My. Penis.

One thing I flatly refuse to give money to is the support of any college. I’ve been wooed by some of the finest universities in the land, but I tell them they will not get a cent from me unless they put in a trade school. Our colleges are crowded with young people who are learning a lot about liberal arts and little about earning a living. There are too many baccalaureates and too few butchers.

He seemed surprised to hear from me now, his tone holding a note of shock. “Saint, how are you? What can I do for you?” “Kenneth. I just heard about the new volunteer counselor. I was hoping to get a copy of his credentials. As you know, the situation with some of the kids is pretty tenuous and new people scare them,” I said. “Oh! Didn’t you know he was coming? He said he had been approved months ago but he had delayed his start date due to traveling out of state for a family death. His name is Roland Cunningham. He’s been a high school counselor for fifteen years and now he’s semi-retired and wants to give back. He says that he saw so many gay kids who needed an ear.” I rolled my eyes so hard I almost hurt myself and Rio frowned at me questioningly. I shook my head and pulled in one deep breath before I spoke. “No, he hasn’t been approved for months. I’ve never heard of him. I suspect he’s a spy who belongs to Clay Greene.” I could hear Kenneth suck air, then chuckle disbelievingly. “Oh, no, Saint. That’s impossible. He had a copy of a volunteer application that you signed and dated in January. You probably just forgot, I know you’ve had a lot on your mind with your sister and everything.” I heard him click his tongue and had to work to not reach through the phone and wring his neck. “He’s going to make sure the kids have someone else to talk to. Don’t worry about it, I’m taking care of everything.” Rio’s frown had morphed into mild alarm, and I wasn’t sure what my face was doing that was causing it but whatever it was must have been interesting. He edged closer as I took several deep breaths. “Kenneth. Listen to me. You need to be cautious. Have you seen the security reports from Mr. Rao? Did make sure you let him know about this Cunningham? Did you run the background check?” “I glanced through the reports, yes, but no, I didn’t tell him about Roland. Mr. Rao is the night guard and Roland is scheduled for afternoons.” He chuckled lightly. “I didn’t see the overlap.” I did not grind my teeth, but it was a near thing. Rio hovered, not touching me, which I was grateful for. Once I got off this phone I was going to go off. “What about the background check, Ken? You know the background check policy.” “Oh, yes,” Kenneth said. “We did the background check. Completely clean, exemplary record with several awards from his career. Really, you need to calm down. I have it all under control.” “Right,” I said. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it then, Ken. Thank you.” I hung up before Kenneth could reply and Rio looked at me warily. “I am going to have him kicked off the board so fast his fucking head is going to spin. Shouldn’t be too hard, it’s full of ball bearings and broken gravel,” I snarled. “So that didn’t go well,” Rio observed quietly. He was still hovering, clearly unsure of how best to handle me.

In L.A., emotions over undocumented immigrants are high and conflicted. Our schools and hospitals have become swamped with non-English-speaking illegals. Liberals want their votes, conservatives want their sweat, but nobody wants them.

Even when a new venture is launched within an existing business, culture clashes become class warfare if there are two classes of corporate citizens—those who have all the fun and those who make all the money. The designated innovators, whether an R&D group or a new-venture unit, are identified as creators of the future. They are free of rules or revenue demands and are allowed to play with ideas that don’t yet work. Their colleagues are expected to follow rules, meet demands, and make money while feeling like grinds and sometimes being told they are dinosaurs whose business models will soon be obsolete.

HARVARD DIVINITY School was proud, and justly so, of what it called its pluralism—feminists, humanists, theists, liberation theologians all pursuing truth together—but the price that pluralism can cost was dramatized one day in a way that I have never forgotten. I had been speaking as candidly and personally as I knew how about my own faith and how I had tried over the years to express it in language. At the same time I had been trying to get the class to respond in kind. For the most part none of them were responding at all but just sitting there taking it in without saying a word. Finally I had to tell them what I thought. I said they reminded me of a lot of dead fish lying on cracked ice in a fish store window with their round blank eyes. There I was, making a fool of myself spilling out to them the secrets of my heart, and there they were, not telling me what they believed about anything beneath the level of their various causes. It was at that point that a black African student got up and spoke. “The reason I do not say anything about what I believe,” he said in his stately African English, “is that I’m afraid it will be shot down.” At least for a moment we all saw, I think, that the danger of pluralism is that it becomes factionalism, and that if factions grind their separate axes too vociferously, something mutual, precious, and human is in danger of being drowned out and lost. I had good times as well as bad ones that winter term. I was able to say a few things that some of my students seemed to find valuable, and some of them said things that I value still, but if there was anything like a community to draw strength and comfort from there at Harvard as years before there had been at Union, I for one was not lucky enough to discover it.

I ventured into the dimly lit darkness towards the blaring disco music and crowded dance floor. The enclosure reeked of poppers (alkyl nitrites), a recreational drug often used by gay men to heighten their sexual arousal. The club was hopping with the latest disco hits from the popular disco queen of 70s, Donna Summer. Half-naked and almost naked men were crowding the dance floor, grinding their perspiring bodies against each other in a sensual and sexual trancelike state. Men in various stages of foreplay were gyrating their muscular and sinewy bodies against each other in preparation for impulsive back-room romps. After taking to the dance floor for a couple of songs, I embarked on an exploration journey towards the back of the house. It was difficult to make out the abundance of naked bodies loathering in the dark in various stages of copulation. When I ventured into a large room with a sling in the middle, I heard a familiar, high-pitched groaning voice. It was a voice I had heard several years ago in class at the Bahriji School. It was a soprano voice that I could never get out of my head. Surrounding the voice was a queue of mesomorphically built men, waiting their turn to satisfy their sexual desires on an equally muscular hunk lying on the suspended, swinging sling. The man’s legs were spread above his torso. They were strapped to either sides of the hanging chains and so were his wrists, tied securely above his head. Although the ‘bottom’ was blindfolded with a black kerchief, I instantly recognized him as none other than the famous supermodel, Rick Samuels.

I liked action. But I spent a lot of time thinking about things. I’d imagine all kinds of situations and how I would handle them. “What are you doing Raymond?” my mother would ask. “Nothing. Just thinking.” “Daydreaming you mean,” she’d say. “Danny Dreamer is at it again.” They called me Danny Dreamer a lot, even later when I was in high school and would come home all excited about some scheme I’d thought up. I never considered my dreams wasted energy; they were invariably linked to some form of action.

I had spent the previous summer and lunch hours during the school year working in my uncle Earl Edmund Sweet’s drugstore soda fountain in Oak Park. That was where I learned that you could influence people with a smile and enthusiasm and sell them a sundae when what they’d come for was a cup of coffee.

Today was the first day of summer, she realized, her spirits lifting like a kite. She loved milestones of any sort: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, checks on the calendar, notches on a growth chart. Today would be special, brand new. She felt it deep inside. Summer was here with sunny days and balmy nights, the informality of barbecues and dips in the swimming pool. She was so relieved to have the grind of the school year finished. She missed playing with her children.

Cultures grow out of the keystone habits in every organization, whether leaders are aware of them or not. For instance, when researchers studied an incoming class of cadets at West Point, they measured their grade point averages, physical aptitude, military abilities, and self-discipline. When they correlated those factors with whether students dropped out or graduated, however, they found that all of them mattered less than a factor researchers referred to as “grit,” which they defined as the tendency to work “strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.”4.26,4.27 What’s most interesting about grit is how it emerges. It grows out of a culture that cadets create for themselves, and that culture often emerges because of keystone habits they adopt at West Point. “There’s so much about this school that’s hard,” one cadet told me. “They call the first summer ‘Beast Barracks,’ because they want to grind you down. Tons of people quit before the school year starts. “But I found this group of guys in the first couple of days here, and we started this thing where, every morning, we get together to make sure everyone is feeling strong. I go to them if I’m feeling worried or down, and I know they’ll pump me back up. There’s only nine of us, and we call ourselves the musketeers. Without them, I don’t think I would have lasted a month here.” Cadets who are successful at West Point arrive at the school armed with habits of mental and physical discipline. Those assets, however, only carry you so far. To succeed, they need a keystone habit that creates a culture—such as a daily gathering of like-minded friends—to help find the strength to overcome obstacles. Keystone habits transform us by creating cultures that make clear the values that, in the heat of a difficult decision or a moment of uncertainty, we might otherwise forget.

mozzarella. I do not buy them in packages already grated as there might be something in it that keeps them nicely separated. My parmessan and pecorino romano cheeses are bought in chunks from the delicatessen. When in a rush, I sometimes have them grind it for me. Memories Right after the war, to promote some semblance of sanity, schools were immediately reopened. No longer were the pages

Back-benchers and Last-rankers in School; they have determined hands, powerful minds and courage to turn the mountain of opportunities in their favour, grind challenges and mould desires and dreams into Grand Realities.

Yet the grinding logic of austerity—passing on the bankers’ bills to the people in the form of public sector layoffs, school closures, and the like—had not yet been normalized.

The McDonald brothers kept their potatoes—top quality Idaho spuds, about eight ounces apiece—piled in bins in their back warehouse building. Since rats and mice and other varmints like to eat potatoes, the walls of the bins were of two layers of small-mesh chicken wire. This kept the critters out and allowed fresh air to circulate among the potatoes. I watched the spuds being bagged up and followed their trip by four-wheeled cart to the octagonal drive-in building. There they were carefully peeled, leaving a tiny proportion of skin on, and then they were cut into long sections and dumped into large sinks of cold water. The french-fry man, with his sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, would plunge his arms into the floating schools of potatoes and gently stir them. I could see the water turning white with starch. This was drained off and the residual starch was rinsed from the glistening morsels with a flexible spray hose. Then the potatoes went into wire baskets, stacked in production-line fashion next to the deep-fry vats.

Into that strange scene came my future mentors in the hamburger business, the McDonald brothers, Maurice and Richard, a pair of transplanted New Englanders. Maurice had moved out to California in about 1926 and got a job handling props in one of the movie studios. Richard joined him after he was graduated from West High School in Manchester, New Hampshire, in 1927. Mac and Dick worked together in the studio, moving scenery, setting up lights, driving trucks, and so forth until 1932, when they decided to go into business for themselves. They bought a run-down movie theater in Glendora. It provided a very sparse living,

Between culinary school, a year and a half of apprentice stages all over the world in amazing restaurants, ten years as the personal chef of talk show phenom Maria De Costa, and six years as Patrick's culinary slave, I am nothing if not efficient in the kitchen. I grab eggs, butter, chives, a packet of prosciutto, my favorite nonstick skillet. I crack four eggs, whip them quickly with a bit of cold water, and then use my Microplane grater to grate a flurry of butter into them. I heat my pan, add just a tiny bit more butter to coat the bottom, and let it sizzle while I slice two generous slices off the rustic sourdough loaf I have on the counter and drop them in the toaster. I dump the eggs in the pan, stirring constantly over medium-low heat, making sure they cook slowly and stay in fluffy curds. The toast pops, and I put them on a plate, give them a schmear of butter, and lay two whisper-thin slices of prosciutto on top. The eggs are ready, set perfectly; dry but still soft and succulent, and I slide them out of the pan on top of the toast, and quickly mince some chives to confetti on top. A sprinkle of gray fleur de sel sea salt, a quick grinding of grains of paradise, my favorite African pepper, and I hand the plate to Patrick, who rises from the loveseat to receive it, grabs a fork from the rack on my counter, and heads out of my kitchen toward the dining room. Dumpling followed him, tail wagging, like a small furry acolyte.

I drive into the high school parking lot with my mind more on my sister than on the road. My wheels screech to a stop when I almost hit a guy and girl on a motorcycle. I thought it was an empty parking space. “Watch it, bitch,” Carmen Sanchez, the girl on the back of the motorcycle, says as she flips me the finger. She obviously missed the Road Rage lecture in Driver’s Ed. “Sorry,” I say loudly so I can be heard over the roar of the motorcycle. “It didn’t look like anyone was in this spot.” Then I realize whose motorcycle I almost hit. The driver turns around. Angry dark eyes. Red and black bandana. I sink down into the driver’s seat as far as I can. “Oh, shit. It’s Alex Fuentes,” I say, wincing. “Jesus, Brit,” Sierra says, her voice low. “I’d like to live to see graduation. Get outta here before he decides to kill us both.” Alex is staring at me with his devil eyes while putting the kickstand down on his motorcycle. Is he going to confront me? I search for reverse, frantically moving the stick back and forth. Or course it’s no surprise my dad bought me a car with a stick shift without taking the time to teach me how to master driving the thing. Alex takes a step toward my car. My instincts tell me to abandon the car and flee, as if I was stuck on railroad tracks with a train heading straight for me. I glance at Sierra, who’s desperately searching through her purse for something. Is she kidding me? “I can’t get this damn car in reverse. I need help. What are you looking for?” I ask. “Like…nothing. I’m trying not to make eye contact with those Latino Bloods. Get a move on, will ya?” Sierra responds through gritted teeth. “Besides, I only know how to drive an automatic.” Finally grinding into reverse, my wheels screech loud and hard as I maneuver backward and search for another parking spot. After parking in the west lot, far from a certain gang member with a reputation that could scare off even the toughest Fairfield football players, Sierra and I walk up the front steps of Fairfield High. Unfortunately, Alex Fuentes and the rest of his gang friends are hanging by the front doors. “Walk right past them,” Sierra mutters. “Whatever you do, don’t look in their eyes.” It’s pretty hard not to when Alex Fuentes steps right in front of me and blocks my path. What’s that prayer you’re supposed to say right before you know you’re going to die?

Oh, the confusion when he’d mentioned girlfriends. He didn’t know how to explain himself to Rob. Then again, he didn’t know how to explain himself to himself, so that was nothing new. He was thirty-eight years old and tired. He’d known since high school that he was bisexual—except guys weren’t bi. They were either gay or straight. If they were bi, then they were just on their way to being gay. Or liars. He

The only thing I really enjoyed about school was debating. Here was an activity I could get my teeth into—figuratively, of course—but I would not have hesitated to bite a debate opponent if it would have advanced my argument. I loved being the center of attention, persuading the audience that my side was right. One debate that I remember in particular was on the question “Should Smoking Be Abolished?” As happened more often than not, I was on the side of the underdogs, trying to defend smoking. It was a very spirited exchange, but my opponents made the mistake of painting the demon tobacco too black, too vile, too evil to be countenanced by a sane society.

Some people just aren’t meant for the grind. I was in one of those huge public middle schools, taking seven different classes a day. I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t even remember my locker combination! So I started shutting down—figuratively and literally, during classes. I’d been fully alert at ten years old; then I turned eleven and suddenly I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I’d fall asleep right there at my desk. And not because I wasn’t totally well rested; I totally was! It was so weird. And in the next class, I’d nod off again, at a different desk.

Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support.

Meritocracy harms the elite as well. Meritocratic schooling requires rich parents to invest thousands of hours and millions of dollars to get elite educations for their children. And meritocratic jobs require elite adults to work with grinding intensity, ruthlessly exploiting their educations in order to extract a return from these investments. Meritocracy entices an anxious and inauthentic elite into a pitiless, lifelong contest to secure income and status through its own excessive industry.

The ongoing problem with most American poetry & poets today is their lack of belief in themselves & that they don't expand upon their ideals or experiment enough with their craft. That's why we are all stuck in the same old literary grind & groove still pushing out old ideas, listening to ridiculous banter of egotistical critics & still worshipping the old schools & movements of long past yesterdays from decades ago. Dead icons, dead ideas, dead slams and an established academic system that's biased and too busy promoting all the cliche events that they believe are all about community but mainly promoting their own of which are not open to all poets without degrees but mostly only to students & the inner sanctum. Poetry is for everyone and it needs a new vision of our times. The 21st century. The majority of poets who are producing new & original works are being ignored. Poetry should be independent and free of bias and uncategorized. Workshops or classes are not the solution.

People who’ve spent time on high country trails know the heartbreak of a false summit. When all you want is for the incline to stop kicking your ass, it tricks you into thinking you’ve made it, only to reveal that you aren’t even close! But you don’t have to be a trail rat to know that feeling. In life, there are plenty of false summits. Maybe you think you’ve rocked an assignment at work or school, only to have your teacher or supervisor rip it to pieces or tell you to start over again. False summits can come in the gym when you’re doing a hard circuit workout and think you’ve hit the last set, only to hear from your coach or trainer—or from a quick glance at your own notes—that you have to go back through the entire circuit one last time. We all take a punch like that every once in a while, but those who tend to crane their necks looking for the crest of the mountain as they beg for their suffering to end are the ones who get smashed the most by any false summit. We have to learn to stop looking for a sign that the hard time will end. When the distance is unknown, it is even more critical that you stay locked in so the unknown factor doesn’t steal your focus. The end will come when it comes, and anticipation will only distract you from completing the task in front of you to the best of your ability. Remember, the struggle is the whole journey. That’s why you’re out there. It’s why you signed up for this race, or that class, or took the damn job. There is great beauty when you are involved in something that is so hard most people want it to end. When Hell Week ended, most of the guys who survived cheered, wept tears of joy, high-fived, or hugged one another. I got the Hell Week blues because I’d been immersed in the beauty of grinding through it and the personal growth that came with it.

I was busy climbing my ladder, which was sturdy and practical and aimed straight up. If I’d stopped to think about it, I might have realized that I was burned-out by school—by the grind of lectures, papers, and exams—and probably would have benefited from doing something different.

Be the best you can possibly be at your career. Get good at it. Your skills might very well be the thing God uses to place you before kings. And when you are there, tell them about Jesus. Slogging your way through law school or grinding through a grueling internship might not feel godly, but it might be the very thing God uses to put you in a place where people have no choice but to listen to you. Few things adorn the gospel as much as a fervent work ethic.

me, and nobody was talking to anyone. I didn’t even know if We Stink had just broken up, or what. Which was too bad, because we’d just played the best show of our lives. After all the bands performed, they finally brought all of us back out onstage for the results. We stood there in a big line while Mr. Swivel got up in front of the families again. “Well, well, well, isn’t this exciting?” he said, and you could just feel all the kids onstage grinding their teeth down to little nubs, waiting to hear who had won. I still wanted this. I wanted it so bad. Then maybe we could start to put the whole stupid fight behind us and just keep going. “And our winner today—” I mean, I could live with not winning if I had to. I just didn’t want to have to. “—is a band that showed the musical chops to stand toe-to-toe with the one and only Lulu and the Handbags—” “JUST SAY IT!” someone yelled in the audience, and everyone laughed. Mr. Swivel kept going. “As hard as this decision was, it was also unanimous,” he said. “So, without further delay, the winning band is…” I swallowed hard. It felt like choking down a rock. No pun intended. “Extra Creddit!” A big spotlight came on and Extra Creddit was high-fiving and jumping around, while the rest of us stood around like a giant pile of leftovers. And just like that… it was all over. Truthfully, I never thought we’d get as far as we did. But once that happened, I wanted to hear Jordy Swivel say “WE STINK IS THE WINNER!” as much as I’ve ever wanted anything. Now, the girls and I were just standing there with nothing to say. And I was starting to think that We

The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks.

It’s a dystopian nightmare, and it could happen tomorrow. An uncontrollable pandemic overwhelms public-health systems and wipes out millions of people in less than a year. Business and industry grind to a halt. Up to $3 trillion, a tenth of the country’s global gross domestic product, evaporates as fear of infection stifles travel, tourism, trade, financial institutions, employment, and entire supply chains. Children stop attending school. Rumors abound; neighbors scapegoat neighbors. Millions of unemployed poor, always hit the hardest, resort to theft and violence in an effort to stay alive. People starve, even in the U.S. Those who do survive are left with their lives turned upside down.

Michelle, the girls, and I visited a sprawling favela on the western end of Rio, where we dropped in at a youth center to watch a capoeira troupe perform and I kicked a soccer ball around with a handful of local kids. By the time we were leaving, hundreds of people had massed outside the center, and although my Secret Service detail nixed the idea of me taking a stroll through the neighborhood, I persuaded them to let me step through the gate and greet the crowd. Standing in the middle of the narrow street, I waved at the Black and brown and copper-toned faces; residents, many of them children, clustered on rooftops and small balconies and pressed against the police barricades. Valerie, who was traveling with us and witnessed the whole scene, smiled as I walked back inside, saying, “I’ll bet that wave changed the lives of some of those kids forever.” I wondered if that was true. It’s what I had told myself at the start of my political journey, part of my justification to Michelle for running for president—that the election and leadership of a Black president stood to change the way children and young people everywhere saw themselves and their world. And yet I knew that whatever impact my fleeting presence might have had on those children of the favelas and however much it might cause some to stand straighter and dream bigger, it couldn’t compensate for the grinding poverty they encountered every day: the bad schools, polluted air, poisoned water, and sheer disorder that many of them had to wade through just to survive. By my own estimation, my impact on the lives of poor children and their families so far had been negligible—even in my own country. My time had been absorbed by just trying to keep the circumstances of the poor, both at home and abroad, from worsening: making sure a global recession didn’t drastically drive up their ranks or eliminate whatever slippery foothold they might have in the labor market; trying to head off a change in climate that might lead to a deadly flood or storm; or, in the case of Libya, trying to prevent a madman’s army from gunning people down in the streets. That wasn’t nothing, I thought—as long as I didn’t start fooling myself into thinking it was anywhere close to enough.

When we are children, we often have no real responsibilities. We don’t have to earn money to buy food or pay the rent. Because of this, when we are children, we can dream big because there are no obstacles to stop us. We imagine the life we want to have when we become adults. As we grow, the responsibilities pile up. We need to get good grades in school. We want to make enough money to buy something we desire. We get married and have to raise a family. The accompanying stresses also pile on. All of them grind us down little by little until we either have to alter our original dream of what our life would be like or defer the date we expect to achieve our goal.