How does a mediocre high school principal demonstrate what’s wrong with America? Why is “The Queen’s Gambit” a delightful yet thoughtful exploration of what is needed to truly MAGA? Read to find out

 

The way our leaders in the USA, Texas and local communities, et al have responded to the 2020 Covid pandemic reminds me why we (my Rice University friends and others from high end quality schools) are in fact different, and yes special. Not the faux “everyone is special” bs. Not like Lake Wobegone where every child is above average. We do live in a bubble and the diff is: We were not only intelligent- there were lots of smart lazy kids at my hs who wanted to get in to RU yet didn’t - we did the work. The grind. And the work ethic set us apart. 

When I was teaching I always said : Give me a hard working student over a “smart” one, bc the hard working one will achieve things. The “smart” ones are generally entitled assholes and so are their parents. (“Billy needs to get an A so he can go to Harvard,” they’d tell me at Open House. And I’d think, “Then Billy needs to learn that you don’t get into any college with that attitude.”) 

It’s not glamorous.... Day in day out the hard work - studying, reading, going the extra mile. Self discipline. Building up skills in the process. Asking Q, finding solutions. Willing to risk and to fail.

As a teen, I gave up Thanksgiving ski trips w my fam, starting in 8th grade, to write research papers (always due right before xmas). Off they’d go, parents plus sis left town for Colo, leaving me alone in the house with food money. Age 14, 15 w no adult around to nag me, I’d get up early and catch the bus out front to SMU library, do research all day long, come home in the evening, work more. (My dad was in law school at SMU at the time, so he showed me how to navigate there and back, and how to collect info, org research materials.) Written, 100% my own work: 8th grade paper age 14 “French Utopian Colonies in Texas”. 9th grade paper age 15 “IQ and Cruelty: Analysis of Nuremberg War Crime Trials”. Who tf as a young teenager does that? (It’s a habit I continued throughout college - a sustained week of work on one single project, at Thanksgiving. Got into a groove.) Helicopter parents micromanaging their kids every second, take note. You cannot do it for them. 

Wanna know why/ how I got into Rice? Bc of all the other smart kids out there, a dime a dozen, each with Top Ten GPAs and 1300+ SATs, I won second place IN THE NATION in a Nat’l Latin Club academic competition . (Who won first place? Ronald J. Mann. Look him up. All my life that guy was in my way.) But I didn’t win bc I’m a genius, bc I’m not..... I won bc I read a book. One book. I did the work. 

On a 3 day long bus ride to the nat’l Latin Club competition in Fla, I asked one of the older kids in the group what materials to study for the exam. (We were signed up for the same one.) The girl hands me a reference book and says, this. So while all the other kids on the bus spent those 3 driving days playing cards or making out, she and I moved to a back corner of the bus and alternately read sections of the book to each other, (only had the one copy), and grilled each other on the info. Didn’t even have stuff to make flashcards. Just organized outlines of material, wrote lists, made mnemonics up, memorized shit. You know, stuff you learned how to do in school but most people ignored. Passed the time on the long boring bus ride. We were like that girl in “The Queen’s Gambit”, learning, practicing chess. The “smart boys” ignored or laughed at us. Until they didn’t......

I came in 2nd, my friend came in 3rd. In the nation. 

But this isnt a rant about my awesomeness, bc I’m not. Not even in the same league as other folk I know (and I dated that same Ronald J. Mann my soph yr at RU - he taught me how to study. Really study. And that if you get organized early on, and keep it up, it’s actually less time and effort, than not. And that practicing is part of studying.) .....

......it’s about how most people on this planet are too fucking lazy to just do the fucking work. Any work. Not even hard work. Just do their f-ing jobs. WTF do these people do all day to pass the time? Gov Abbott, tRUMP, the chancellor at our local uni, other leaders. Just a LITTLE bit of organization, analysis, and effort at key points in this whole past year could have saved 100s of thousands of lives. 

You know how my friend, a local middle school principal, spends her days? She walks the halls: greets kids as they come off the bus. Chats w teachers in the halls in-between class periods (where most of the real work of the school gets done - short convos during passing time) . Pops in unannounced on all classes and teachers. Personally mentors new ones screwing up and on probation. Knows the face and circumstances of every single (out of 1000) students in her school. Knows the face and circumstances of every single (out of 200) teachers in her school. Knows who is sick, hungry, is going through a divorce, needs help, car just broke down, or someone to pick up their sick child, or who just did something awesome. Who wants to earn a promotion and works w them on how to use the talent he/she has, so everyone’s happy. Knows where all the campus fuse boxes are, which goes to what, and how to fix them when they blow. Not afraid to crawl into the attic or basement and get dirty to fix it. A hands on approach. (PS She is my hero. See? It’s not all negative about education on this blog.) 

You know how the principal at the hs where I worked spent his days? Hiding in a fucking closet. No lie. An actual, literal real closet. Along w his 2 bff coach buddies.,... once, I had to chase him down for a signature for something. His school secretary said, look here, look there. As I went here and there, others along the way said look over there. I went to his office, the field house, teacher lounge, golfcart shed - all over that huge fucking campus. These people were lying. They knew where he was. It was a wild goose chase to make me go away (I got my 10,000 steps that day.) Finally someone said, if you can find coach “X”, he’ll be with him. 

So I go to coach “X”’s classroom (he didn’t actually teach a class, just ran the school store from there that sold junk food to teenagers), which was dark and empty, and in the back wall, hidden behind pallets of candy chips and soda, there’s a locked door that clearly has a light on inside, which is seeping out from around the edges. I can hear male laughter. I knock on the door several times, say “I’m not going away” and eventually it opens. A thick hazy fart cloud rolls out..... it stung my eyes, was as dense as cigarette smoke- and there in that closet (yes the irony) is my principal, Coach “X”,  and another coach, lolling about on beanbag chairs, eating beef jerky, laughing, farting, having a good ‘ole time. In the middle of a school day morning.

Guess which school has stronger academic results? Lower teacher turnover, higher moral? 

It’s the same with running a country or trying to resolve a pandemic crisis. People just need to do their fucking jobs. Why not pass the time that way, instead of goofing around, hiding from responsibilities? If your job requires you to know about something, you better research it. If your job requires you to be good at something, then practice. Do the work.