Dermatologists say Marines' tightened shaving waiver could hurt Black members' careers

[DFW]

30. That last year, 12th grade, was a low point for me, though I learned from it

It pointed out things that Nixon’s America tried to hide from the masses. “More” didn’t mean “better,” it only meant “bigger quantity.” And “prestige” was very much in the eye of the beholder. The more that eye was opened, the less prestige it perceived.

It was my only pre-college year of boarding school, and the most important things I learned were not learned in the classrooms. Talk about George Carlin’s big club that I was not in! I learned not only why, but more importantly, that I didn’t care (the most important lesson of all). Once you don’t care, the club holds no sway over you, so they do their best to convince you that what matters to them should matter you. Once you don’t give a rat’s ass, you are free of their social yoke, but schools like that did their best to make sure their students never figured that out.

Only one of my daughters ever expressed an interest in attending a boarding school in the USA, and the one she was interested in was six time zones away from the one in Massachusetts that I went to. I went with her to look at it to make sure it was nothing like the one in New England that had tried to break me. It was twelve time zones away from our home in Germany, so the other side of the world, but this was MY kid, and I was leaving nothing to chance. It turned out to be just fine, very nice people, and she did end up going there.