Reality Check

Driving home from work, I heard a hip hop song with some kid singing "I know I can, be what I want to be if I work hard at it". Guess what kid, shit don't happen like that. Tought titties. I'm 5'10. I could have worked my balls off 80 hours a week starting at age 5 at basketball and you know what, my chances of getting into the NBA are as good as me winning a Pulitzer on this post.

This society has problems, we teach people that they can do whatever they want, however unrealistic the goal is, if they just try hard. Some goals can really be achieved if you work hard at it, such as a college degree, a good physique, etc, etc. But some goals require much more than hard work, they require physical, mental, or creative talent, things that we can not work on. Somewhere along the line we need someone to slap people in the face and be the voice of reason.

We've all gone to high school. The definition of average means that there is at least 1/2 of the population below or equal to average. This goes with everything, physical ability to mental ability. While I am definitely an above average chemical engineer, relative to the rest of the chemical engineering field, I'm definitely a below average artist, probably compared to society as a whole. While a dream of mine to be a professor of chemical engineering is a possibility, a dream of mine to have one of my works of art displayed in MOMA probably isn't. However, I've had no one say to me, "you know what John, you can't draw for shit".

My point is that we need someone along the way to act as a reality check, tell us that our dreams of being a baseball player, of being a famous actor, of being a lawyer, of being a porn star should stay that...dreams.

The reason I say this is that I'm teaching an early chemical engineering class.  There are some students who try really really hard, but they're just not getting the material.  The reason they aren't good chemical engineering students isn't due to their lack of trying.  My problem is that no one will fail them, and they will get a degree in chemical engineering.  The problem is that they are a hazard in the work place and they are a danger to their co-workers.  Even some of my fellow ph.d. students really should not have gotten a degree in chemical engineering in my opinion, as they don't know VERY basic fundamentals.