Oh it's long. How short can I make it?
I took part in a series of "leadership seminars" in college... brainchild of the dean of student life... not a great idea, or at least not all that well-executed. Anyway one of them was led by a prof from the philosophy department -- in fact the head of the dept. I don't remember exactly but I think we were discussing the "philosophical ramifications" of being in a position of hiring and firing employees. There was some dead horse being beaten -- and in my opinion an irrelevant, moot horse. I said I thought it was "pointless" to discuss such-and-such further. Yes, I had grown impatient and bored, and perhaps it was sourpussy or wet-blankety of me.
Instead of saying something like "well, the majority of the group think it merits further discussion" or "this is just the sort of thing you might have to endure in a boardroom someday, missy, so get used to it!" or any number of things, even sharp-tongued things, he simply said something like "Well, maybe it is pointless, so I guess this discussion is over." In stunned silence, we watched him pack up his things and leave, twenty minutes into a fifty-minute session. Two people said things like "don't worry about it -- he's done this kind of thing before" or "it's not your fault." That helped. Still, it made me feel like an awful, awful person. I know I'm not awful; I know I'm compassionate and civil. So I had a little death of those beliefs. No, they fell into a coma and awoke eventually.
Aren't ya glad ya asked?
Wanna ask about the time I overslept for my art history final and threw on a bra and ran for my life across the campus, grabbed a blue book and slipped in just in time to see the last thirty seconds of the first slide (a Rembrandt etching), thank God? Or the time I walked into "Topics in Human Biology" and realized we had an exam, unknown-about, unstudied-for? Or the time I was drunk and stoned and accidentally sat down on my friend Cerissa's popsicle-stick project? "My masterpiece!" she wailed, and then a minute later forgot about it. I say, if you're going to have drunk and stoned people in your dorm, put any popsicle-stick projects on high shelves.
