Column: Living under a rock can be embarrassing
Jamie McGhee/ Staff Writer
Issue date: 4/8/05 Section: Opinions
 Jamie McGhee |
These are things that simply growing up has not taught me. Most of these things I learned within this past year. I would not say that I am stupid, just naive. I came to learn about nostalgia by thinking that it was a disease. I thought empathy was a computer program and propaganda was a business proposal. I thought affluenza was the flu, and I used to think that Denmark was a state where Maine resides.
Why, for me, did it take making an idiot out of myself to learn definitions of seemingly common words or information about current/recent events? This is why: lack of news.
I don't watch it on TV, and I don't read it in the paper. I don't listen to it on the radio, and I don't discuss it with friends or family.
Scratch that.
I am recalling a conversation I had with my roommate last weekend in which she explained to me the whole Bush-Gore Florida situation in 2000. Talk about a close election. Wow.
I also learned that night about how Saddam Hussein is being held as a prisoner of war, what the three branches of government are and how they work, the number of officials in the House of Representatives is determined by population and each state has only two Senators. Good to know.
So how could I get so far in my education (and my life, for that matter) and not gain such common knowledge and key points? I don't know, but my point is that it's not too late to learn. Start. Start learning.
My EIU 4165 Media in Society course requires its students to read USA Today three days a week for weekly quizzes. This is such a pain in the butt because I have to make a special trip every day to get the stupid thing, then I have to take time to read it, take notes because I won't remember them otherwise and then go over them again. The politics bore me and the sports don't interest me; there goes over half the paper. It's a hassle, and I despise doing it.
But it's the best requirement I've ever been assigned from a class. I never realized how many things a person can pick up from the news. Not only do you get, well, the news, but you also learn about vocabulary, geography, history, legislative practices, etc., without even realizing it.
Eight weeks of reading the newspaper has done more for my brain content than all my years of high school. It has created a domino effect, as well. I actually caught myself stopping at CNN on my way from "Judging Amy" to "Sex and the City" because I recognized the Schiavo story... a story that I thought had ended years ago.
Baby steps is the way to go. My personal plan is to keep reading, and eventually read the paper every day. Heck, I might even get a subscription after college. Next might be nightly news, but it's not good to plan too far ahead, so we'll leave it at that for now.
But as a future educator, it's important to be knowledgeable about the world we live in. I thought that Anchorage, instead of being a city in Alaska, was the opposite of leniency. Come on, if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. But something like this could potentially cause embarrassment in any classroom, especially if I'm the one who's teaching.
The Daily Eastern News encourages on-topic, civil discussion on its articles posted online. It is our policy not to screen comments before they are posted or edit them after they are posted. However, we reserve the right to remove comments that are off-topic, malicious, libelous or include excessive foul language. The DEN also reserves the right to turn off all comments on any story it deems necessary.
Comments violating copyright law will also be removed.
Users who repeatedly violate this policy will be banned from commenting.
If you have any questions on our comment policy or wish to report a comment that you feel violates these standards, please e-mail a link to the article to our Online Editor at DENNews.com@gmail.com.