High school juniors are currently struggling with college application essays. Nobody enjoys writing to begin with. If anybody did enjoy writing, that person would not be an adolescent effervescing over the crafting of a personal statements for admissions and in the extraordinarily unlikely eventuality that anybody enjoyed writing personal statements,
Once upon a gentler time before “Kill the Ref!” became the norm, parents used to chat amicably on the sidelines while their little ones imitated hordes of lemmings on the soccer pitch. Adorable seven-year-olds would flock gleefully around a careening ball. Comfortably ensconced on lawn chairs, moms and dads would
In the mid 1950s, my grandparents bought a 700-square foot two-bedroom, one-bath, summer home in western North Carolina. They paid $5000. Their first visitor considered the shoddy construction, the 25-foot wide lot, the peeling paint, the obscure location hundreds of miles from Brooklyn and the rest of the known universe.
John Irving’s character, Garp, defined gradual school as “where you go to school and you gradually find out you don’t want to go to school anymore.“ I, to the contrary, loved graduate school, would still be there if I could. The coursework, professors, and colleagues were invariably awesome. What could
A silver medal in the Olympics is better than a bronze medal. Duh. Second place is better–by any reasonable definition of the word “better”–than third place. Given a choice, wouldn’t you want to stand higher on the podium? You certainly would want your child to be second rather than third
Division is my thing. I love how a dollar can be perfectly divided into four equal parts each one of which has its own name, a quarter. I love seven as a denominator. The repeating six digits have an eloquent pattern. One seventh equals .142857… Two sevenths is .285714… It’s
Fixating on only one potential romantic partner leads nowhere good. Ooh, I love her so much, I’ll never be content with anyone else is the voice of a wallowing adolescent not a rational adult. The reality is that my unrequited affection for Sophia Vergara is my problem–not hers. She will live a
How many loving parents would encourage their children to smoke cigarettes? How many sensible moms and dads would recommend that their kids take recreational opioids? What about student loans? Would any rational parent recommend that their students be graduated with more debt than they are likely to earn in a
If 80% of life is just showing up, then an even greater percentage is filling in forms. “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” is bad advice when trying to qualify for a loan. When the refinance people ask
A man goes to the doctor’s office. He points to his shoulder, says, “Ouch! That hurts!” The man touches his knee, says, “Ow! That hurts too!” The man touches his forehead, says, “Wow, that hurts a lot!” The doctor says, “Your finger is broken.” I have been pontificating in these columns
Copyright © David Altshuler 1980 – 2024 | Miami, FL • Charlotte, NC | (305) 978-8917 | [email protected]
