Sick Senior Quotes

It wasn't like I was expecting Senior year to be some amazing experience. If anything, I was prepared for it to be pretty much a letdown. Everyone would be looking ahead to college and getting sick of seeing the same faces we've been looking at for the last three years.

if you desire within your heart, riches, to help the hungry, the unclothed, the sick, the afflicted, the imprisoned, you will receive beyond measure, as you work to serve, and as you give.

This should’ve been the best, most exciting time of my life. It was my senior year, and my dream program had accepted me. Instead of celebrating, I was moping like a…well, a heartbroken teenager. And even though that was half correct, I was sick of it. Sick of letting men who didn’t give two shits about me have this hold over me. Sick of being the object of pitying looks and worried whispers.

When talliea are taken, companies wind up wondering why 99 percent of their senior employees ae white men. Then they blame us -- accusing women, for example, of having "opted out" to take care of their children. But in many cases I knew about, women left because they were sick of all the boorish ice-cream licking, real and metaphorical, not because they were seized by a sudden overpowering desire to take their babies to Gymboree class.

For her first summer vacation, my sister went to California with a couple of friends on a package tour put together by her agency. One of the members of the tour group was a computer engineer a year her senior, and she started dating him when they came back to Japan. This kind of thing happens all the time, but it's not for me. First of all, I hate package tours, and the thought of getting serious about somebody you meet in a group like that makes me sick.

Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension. If we want to study a profession, the government’s schools are there to teach us. If we want to open a business, the bank loans us money. If we want to build a house, a construction company builds it and the bank gives us a mortgage, in some cases subsidised or insured by the state. If violence flares up, the police protect us. If we are sick for a few days, our health insurance takes care of us. If we are debilitated for months, social security steps in. If we need around-the-clock assistance, we can go to the market and hire a nurse – usually some stranger from the other side of the world who takes care of us with the kind of devotion that we no longer expect from our own children. If we have the means, we can spend our golden years at a senior citizens’ home. The tax authorities treat us as individuals, and do not expect us to pay the neighbours’ taxes. The courts, too, see us as individuals, and never punish us for the crimes of our cousins. Not only adult men, but also women and children, are recognised as individuals. Throughout most of history, women were often seen as the property of family or community. Modern states, on the other hand, see women as individuals, enjoying economic and legal rights independently of their family and community. They may hold their own bank accounts, decide whom to marry, and even choose to divorce or live on their own. But the liberation of the individual comes at a cost. Many of us now bewail the loss of strong families and communities and feel alienated and threatened by the power the impersonal state and market wield over our lives. States and markets composed of alienated individuals can intervene in the lives of their members much more easily than states and markets composed of strong families and communities. When neighbours in a high-rise apartment building cannot even agree on how much to pay their janitor, how can we expect them to resist the state? The deal between states, markets and individuals is an uneasy one. The state and the market disagree about their mutual rights and obligations, and individuals complain that both demand too much and provide too little. In many cases individuals are exploited by markets, and states employ their armies, police forces and bureaucracies to persecute individuals instead of defending them. Yet it is amazing that this deal works at all – however imperfectly. For it breaches countless generations of human social arrangements. Millions of years of evolution have designed us to live and think as community members. Within a mere two centuries we have become alienated individuals. Nothing testifies better to the awesome power of culture.

Time was minutely calculated everywhere in the vast plant so that top managers knew precisely what everyone was supposed to be doing at a given moment. Bell was struck, for instance, by how General Motors “divides the hour into ten six-minute periods…the worker is paid by the numbers of tenths of an hour he works.”27 This minute engineering of work time was connected to very long measures of time in the corporation as well. Seniority pay was finely tuned to the total number of hours a man or woman had worked for General Motors; a laborer could minutely calculate benefits of vacation time and sick leave. The micrometrics of time governed the lower echelons of white-collar offices as well as manual labor on the assembly line, in terms of promotion and benefits.

Just ask the Iraqi Kurds and the Shia of the South. When the Kurds responded to US provocations, leaflet campaigns, and promises by rising up against Saddam in 1991, Bush Senior let them be slaughtered. I was in touch, occasionally, with someone in the DIA who’d taken part in getting the Kurds to rise up, and asked him how he could live with himself after that. He shrugged and said, “They’re just animals.” Which made me sick, actually.

Natasha took his arm, gushing to him that she was ready for outrage from PETA, a protest or two, an Op-Ed in the New York Times that would be publicity gold. Ping Xi nodded blankly. I called in sick the day of the opening. Natasha didn’t seem to care. She had Angelika fill in at the front desk. She was an anorexic Goth, a senior at NYU. The show was a “brutal success,” one critic called it. “Cruelly funny.” Another said Ping Xi “marked the end of the sacred in art. Here is a spoiled brat taking the piss out of the establishment. Some are hailing him as the next Marcel Duchamp. But is he worth the stink?

It is not really capital punishment that bothers sentimentalists, though they use it as the cutting edge of their argument. They object to punishment itself; and that is because they deny the existence of justice; and that is because they deny that man is free, that man is responsible for his acts. Crime, they say, is sickness. It must be cured or, better, prevented by a prophylaxis of the spirit, by the extermination of free will altogether so that men will react like Pavlov’s dogs to sensitivity training and even to psychosurgery and drugs. Crime, they say, is caused by a psychological malfunction. It is unjust, they say, to punish a man for heart disease and so unjust to punish him for theft.

We were both seniors in college when we learned she had cancer. By then we weren’t at St. Thomas anymore. We’d both transferred to the University of Minnesota after that first year—she to the Duluth campus, I to the one in Minneapolis—and, much to our amusement, we shared a major. She was double majoring in women’s studies and history, I in women’s studies and English. At night, we’d talk for an hour on the phone. I was married by then, to a good man named Paul. I’d married him in the woods on our land, wearing a white satin and lace dress my mother had sewn. After she got sick, I folded my life down. I told Paul not to count on me. I would have to come and go according to my mother’s needs. I wanted to quit school, but my mother ordered me not to, begging me, no matter what happened, to get my degree. She herself took what she called a break. She only needed to complete a couple more classes to graduate, and she would, she told me. She would get her BA if it killed her, she said, and we laughed and then looked at each other darkly. She’d do the work from her bed. She’d tell me what to type and I’d type it. She would be strong enough to start in on those last two classes soon, she absolutely knew. I stayed in school, though I convinced my professors to allow me to be in class only two days each week. As soon as those two days were over, I raced home to be with my mother. Unlike Leif and Karen, who could hardly bear to be in our mother’s presence once she got sick, I couldn’t bear to be away from her. Plus, I was needed. Eddie was with her when he could be, but he had to work. Someone had to pay the bills.

1. "Ahem. I know you hate Mondays, madam, but you picked the absolutely wrong one to play hooky. Or be sick. Yes, I suppose it's vaguely possible that you are actually sick. Anyway, here we are at lunch, Sadie and I, witnessing total social disorder. Your friend Alexander Bainbridge is sitting at the usual table, but facing the room. Amanda Alstead is sitting at Table One. Or, should I say,sitting more or less on a Phillite senior boy, whose name is unimportant, at Table One. A very nice young lady at the next table over-you know, the one who writes about Mr. Darcy-has just informeed us that Amanda dumpled Alex over the break. On Thanksgiving Day,no less. By e-mail. No telling how much truth is there, but a lot more than a kernal, I would say. We have a large, seven-dollar bag o' movie popcorn here. Thought you'd like to know. Call me.

The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension. If we want to study a profession, the government’s schools are there to teach us. If we want to open a business, the bank loans us money. If we want to build a house, a construction company builds it and the bank gives us a mortgage, in some cases subsidised or insured by the state. If violence flares up, the police protect us. If we are sick for a few days, our health insurance takes care of us. If we are debilitated for months, national social services steps in. If we need around-the-clock assistance, we can go to the market and hire a nurse – usually some stranger from the other side of the world who takes care of us with the kind of devotion that we no longer expect from our own children. If we have the means, we can spend our golden years at a senior citizens’ home. The tax authorities treat us as individuals, and do not expect us to pay the neighbours’ taxes. The courts, too, see us as individuals, and never punish us for the crimes of our cousins.

Bigotry disturbs me, too," I said, "but prejudice and segregation alone do not constitute the root of all evil. There are many nonracial elements common to humanity as a whole that create problems from the cradle to the grave regardless of race, creed, color, or previous condition of servitude." "But when you add a black face to all that," said Simple, "you have problem's mammy. White folks may be unemployed in this American country, but they get the first chance at the first jobs that open up. Besides, they get seniority. Maybe some white folks cannot read or write, but if they want to go to Ole Miss to learn to read or write, they can go without the President calling up the United States Army to protect them. Sure, white folks gets sick, but they don't have to creep in the back door of the hospital down South for treatment like we does. And when they get old, white folks have got more well-off sons and daughters to take care of them than colored folks have. Most old white folks when they get sick can suffer in comfort, and when they die they can get buried without going in debt. Colored folks, most in generally, do not have it so easy. I know because I am one.

On May 6th, three incredibly courageous volunteers in wet suits dove into the flooded basement together197. The divers were Alexei Ananenko, a senior reactor mechanical engineer who knew the valves’ location, and two colleagues: Valery A Bezpalov, a turbine engineer who would turn the second valve, and Boris Alexandrovich Baranov, a shift supervisor who acted as a backup/rescuer in case of an emergency, and who also carried a flashlight. They were aware of the stakes and what radiation levels were like in the basement, but were apparently promised that their families would be well taken care of if they died.198 “When the searchlight beam fell on a pipe, we were joyous,” Ananenko told the Government-controlled news agency TASS, shortly after his return.199 “The pipe led to the valves.” Their light failed moments later and the poor men had to feel their way along the pipes in darkness. Once the valves were opened, “We heard the rush of water out of the tank. And in a few more minutes we were being embraced by the guys.” With the valves open, the pressure suppression pool was drained of its 3,200 tons of water, but all three heroic men were suffering from radiation sickness symptoms even as they emerged from the water, and each soon succumbed. Or so the tale goes.200

Incredibly, it transpired afterwards that no proper, full fire drill had ever been conducted at the plant. Even the procedure for fighting fire at Chernobyl was almost identical to any other industrial fire, with no regard for the possibility of radiation exposure - so presumptuous were senior figures that nothing could ever go wrong.153 By 6:35am, when all but the blaze within the reactor core were extinguished, 37 fire crews, comprising 186 firemen in 81 engines, had arrived to battle the flames.154 A few brave firefighters even ventured inside Unit 4’s reactor hall itself and poured water straight into the reactor. The radioactivity was so intense that they received a lethal dose in under a minute. As with most other efforts to cool the reactor over the following days, this only made the situation worse. They were pumping water into a nuclear inferno so hot that most water either split into a dangerous hydrogen/oxygen mix or instantly evaporated, while any remaining water flooded the basement. Many firemen fell ill in the process, and were rushed to hospital in Pripyat, though it was not well prepared to deal with radiation sickness. Doctors and nurses were also irradiated because the patients they treated were so contaminated that their own bodies had become radioactive.

Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension. If we want to study a profession, the government’s schools are there to teach us. If we want to open a business, the bank loans us money. If we want to build a house, a construction company builds it and the bank gives us a mortgage, in some cases subsidised or insured by the state. If violence flares up, the police protect us. If we are sick for a few days, our health insurance takes care of us. If we are debilitated for months, national social services steps in. If we need around-the-clock assistance, we can go to the market and hire a nurse – usually some stranger from the other side of the world who takes care of us with the kind of devotion that we no longer expect from our own children. If we have the means, we can spend our golden years at a senior citizens’ home. The tax authorities treat us as individuals, and do not expect us to pay the neighbours’ taxes. The courts, too, see us as individuals, and never punish us for the crimes of our cousins.

Romantic literature often presents the individual as somebody caught in a struggle against the state and the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The state and the market are the mother and father of the individual, and the individual can survive only thanks to them. The market provides us with work, insurance and a pension. If we want to study a profession, the government’s schools are there to teach us. If we want to open a business, the bank loans us money. If we want to build a house, a construction company builds it and the bank gives us a mortgage, in some cases subsidised or insured by the state. If violence flares up, the police protect us. If we are sick for a few days, our health insurance takes care of us. If we are debilitated for months, national social services steps in. If we need around-the-clock assistance, we can go to the market and hire a nurse – usually some stranger from the other side of the world who takes care of us with the kind of devotion that we no longer expect from our own children. If we have the means, we can spend our golden years at a senior citizens’ home. The tax authorities treat us as individuals, and do not expect us to pay the neighbours’ taxes. The courts, too, see us as individuals, and never punish us for the crimes of our cousins. Not

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative. It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys. Take as an example something that happened on our journey from Auschwitz to the camp affiliated with Dachau. We had all been afraid that our transport was heading for the Mauthausen camp. We became more and more tense as we approached a certain bridge over the Danube which the train would have to cross to reach Mauthausen, according to the statement of experienced traveling companions. Those who have never seen anything similar cannot possibly imagine the dance of joy performed in the carriage by the prisoners when they saw that our transport was not crossing the bridge and was instead heading “only” for Dachau. And again, what happened on our arrival in that camp, after a journey lasting two days and three nights? There had not been enough room for everybody to crouch on the floor of the carriage at the same time. The majority of us had to stand all the way, while a few took turns at squatting on the scanty straw which was soaked with human urine. When we arrived the first important news that we heard from older prisoners was that this comparatively small camp (its population was 2,500) had no “oven,” no crematorium, no gas! That meant that a person who had become a “Moslem” could not be taken straight to the gas chamber, but would have to wait until a so-called “sick convoy” had been arranged to return to Auschwitz. This joyful surprise put us all in a good mood. The wish of the senior warden of our hut in Auschwitz had come true: we had come, as quickly as possible, to a camp which did not have a “chimney”—unlike Auschwitz. We laughed and cracked jokes in spite of, and during, all we had to go through in the next few hours.

Little Robin had been brought by Lord Orthallen—although he had the feeling that his lord did not realize it. The boy was a part of his household, though Orthallen seemed to have long since forgotten the fact; and when the order came to pack up the household and move to the Border, Robin found himself in the tail of the baggage train, with no small bewilderment. He'd been at a loss in the encampment, wandering about until someone had seen him and realized that a small child had no place in a camp preparing for warfare. So he was sent packing; first off with Elspeth, then pressed into service by the Healers. They'd set him to fetching and carrying for Dirk, thinking that the child was far too young to be able to pick anything up from the casual talk around him, and that Dirk wouldn't think to interrogate a child as young as he. They were wrong on both counts. Robin was very much aware of what was going on—not surprising, since it concerned his adored Talia. He was worried sick, and longing for an adult to talk to. And Dirk was kind and gentle with him—and had he but known it, desperate enough for news to have questioned the rats in the walls if he thought it would get him anywhere. Dirk knew all about Robin and his adoration of Talia. If anyone knew where she was being kept and what her condition was, that boy would. Dirk bided his time. Eventually the Healers stopped overseeing his every waking moment. Finally there came a point when they began leaving him alone for hours at a time. He waited then, until Robin was sent in alone with his lunch—alone, unsupervised, and more than willing to talk—and put the question to him. Dirk had no intention of frightening the boy, and his tone was gentle, "I need your help. The Healers won't answer my questions, and I need to know about Talia." Robin had turned back with his hand still on the doorknob; at the mention of Talia's name, his expression was one of distress. "I'll tell you what I know, sir," he replied, his voice quavering a little. "But she's hurt real bad and they won't let anybody but Healers see her." "Where is she? Do you have any idea who's taking care of her?" The boy not only knew where she was, but the names and seniority of every Healer caring for her—and the list nearly froze Dirk's heart. They'd even pulled old Farnherdt out of retirement—and he'd sworn that no case would ever be desperate enough for them to call on him.

There exists a home for senior dogs where sick, handicapped old mutts live out their days in a homey setting. They are given a great deal of individual attention and, if necessary, hospice care. It’s run by an organization called the Djimba Foundation. There’s a drawing on the Djimba site of a blind guide dog with a cane and dark sunglasses. I am not making this up.

Hamlet doesn't fully see that his metaphysical miseries constitute a subliminal symptom of grief; and this was exactly my case. I thought I was sick, I thought I was dying (maybe that is what bereavement actually asks of you). Literature gives us these warnings about the main events, but we don't recognize the warnings until the events have come and gone. Isabel, my senior in the loss of a sibling, told me that you just have to take it, like weather—yes, like sleet in your face.

You quit? I thought you said it was too dangerous to quit, Alex. You said people who try to get out die." "I almost did. If it weren't for Gary Frankel, I probably wouldn't have made it. . . ." "Gary Frankel?" The nicest, geekiest guy in school? For the first time I scan Alex's face and see a faint, new scar above his eye and nasty ones by his ear and neck. "Oh, God! W-what did they d-do to you?" He takes my hand and places it on his chest. His eyes are intense and dark, like they were the first time I noticed him in the parking lot that first day of school senior year. "It took me a long time to realize I needed to fix everything The choices I made. The gang. Bein' beaten to within an inch of my life and branded like cattle was nothin' compared to losin' you. If I could take back every word I said in the hospital, I would. I thought if I pushed you away, I'd be protectin' you from what happened to Paco and my dad." He looks up and his eyes pierce mine. "I'll never push you away again, Brittany. Ever. I swear." Beaten? Branded? I'm feeling sick to my stomach and tears sting my eyes. "Shh." He puts his arms around me, rubbing his hands across my back. "It's all right. I'm okay," he chants over and over again, his voice catching.

Ingredients: First, add unresolved tension with one Jack Campbell, who is either out sick or out participating in the Senior Skip Day shenanigans taking place during the school day. Mix in nearly twenty-four hours without contact from Wolf, two seconds after essentially baring my soul to him by showing him the thing I am most proud of in this world. Add what is proving to be the most awkward hangout with Landon and a large group of incredibly drunk teenagers on the face of the earth. Add chocolate chips, butter, flour, salt, cocoa powder, eggs, and more embarrassment than the body of a teenage girl can possibly contain, set the oven to a bajillion degrees, and set the whole damn thing on fire.

Alvarenga began to look forward to his strolls to the store—it not only calmed Córdoba but also allowed him to imagine life on land. Dr. John Leach, senior research fellow in survival psychology at the Extreme Environments Laboratory at the University of Portsmouth, England, suggests that by nurturing his sick mate, Alvarenga was building a foundation to maintain his own mental health. “If you’ve got a task to do, then you’re concentrating on that task, which provides a degree of meaning in your life. That’s one of the reasons that people like doctors and nurses have quite a high survival rate in concentration camps during wars,” says Leach. “If you’re a doctor or nurse in camp, you’ve got an automatic task, you’ve got a job that gives meaning to your existence, which is looking after others.

Here is a stark example. If you have time, I suggest watching the YouTube video of the January 2000 presentation by the president of Enron, Jeffrey Skilling, and his senior management on the launch of Enron Broadband.2 I dare you not to be impressed. The guys are poised, confident, and, at least to my eyes, extremely competent. It is hard to find fault with their strategy or vision, and their execution plan for broadband services seems spot on. However, in less than two years after this impressive presentation, Enron went bankrupt, and in 2006 Skilling was sent to prison for perpetrating a massive fraud.3 Except for a few short sellers, no professional analysts or investors could have guessed what was going on at Enron even though the management was quite open to the media and regularly gave interviews. I know what you are thinking. Am I building my entire case on an outlier like Enron? Let’s look at it another way. I assume you have read the interviews of many CEOs or company presidents. Did any mention that they don’t care for the customer, that they have stopped innovating, or that they hire people who have been rejected by other companies? Have you ever heard a company leader disparage their products or services or admit that their competition is doing a better job or that they are sick and tired of company politics?

This should’ve been the best, most exciting time of my life. It was my senior year, and my dream program had accepted me. Instead of celebrating, I was moping like a…well, a heartbroken teenager. And even though that was half correct, I was sick of it. Sick of letting men who didn’t give two shits about me have this hold over me. Sick of being the object of pitying looks and worried whispers. Maybe I was that person in the past, but not anymore. Anger and indignation rushed through my veins, compelling me to get out of bed and rifle through my drawers until I found what I was looking for. I put it on, covered it up with a hoodie and jeans, and shoved my feet into boots. I walked down the stairs and found my friends huddled in the living room.

there was no profession in the state of Texas with worse job security than that of high school football coach. Coaches were fired all the time for poor records. Sometimes it happened with the efficiency of a bloodless coup—one day the coach was there at the office decorated in the school colors and the next day he was gone, as if he had never existed. But sometimes he was paraded before school board meetings to be torn apart by the public in a scene like something out of the Salem witch trials, or had several thousands of dollars’ worth of damage done to his car by rocks thrown by irate fans, or responded to a knock on the door to find someone with a shotgun who wasn’t there to fire him but to complain about his son’s lack of playing time. When Gaines himself went home that Friday night at about two in the morning he found seven FOR SALE signs planted in his lawn. The next night, someone had also smashed a pumpkin into his car, causing a dent. It didn’t bother him. He was the coach. He got paid for what he did and he was tough enough to take it. But he did get upset when he heard that several FOR SALE signs had also been punched into Chavez’s lawn. Brian was just a player, a senior in high school, but that didn’t seem to matter. “That’s sick to me,” said Gaines. “I just can’t understand it.

In Western society, he argues, the sick are sidelined, and stripped of their humanity. “Once you get admitted to a hospital,” he says, “you become a leukemia. You become a hypercholesterolemia. You become a diagnosis.” Whereas in Lourdes, he reckons, the sick are treated not as diseases but as people, equal to the most senior doctor. “It is normal in Lourdes to sing together, to pray together, to chat, to dance, to have beer.