Random Acts of Kindness, Senseless Acts of Beauty
There's a saying, "Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty." Why should you? Well, there's really no reason apart from treating people the way you would like to be treated. If you're religious, you might try to be nice because God is watching. If you don't have that faith, why should you try to be nice to anyone? Here's my reason: If everyone started to be kind to everyone else, we could end war and virtually eliminate unhappiness. It has to start somewhere, so it might as well start with you. Try going out of your way to be nice to someone, especially someone who needs a boost. You'll feel good about it, and so will they. The internet is a good example of a caring community that can degenerate so easily into locker-room talk, insults, and racism. Don't let the net become another ‘inner city'. Use it to do good and make friendships with other people of different races, nationalities, ages, sexual orientations, and interests than your own.
Horrible Homework
Homework is essential. Sometimes we need a computer to do our homework. Unfortunately, we don't all have computers at home. The PDHT labs are open for you to work in the evening and on Saturday morning. You may realistically have to come in to school to do your homework. Most of our PDHT classes require you to do two hours of homework every week, according to government guidelines. In high school, your teachers probably checked to see if your homework was done. In PDHT and other CEGEP programs, we rarely check. We assume that you have done the homework. If your homework is reading, it is easy to slack off and not do it. But if I assign some reading for homework, it's for the very good reason that I think there is something useful in the reading that you need to learn. So please play along with me and do the reading. If you read with a pen in your hand, you can make notes right on the book itself. This will help you to study later. If something that you read is unclear, you can put a question mark in the margin and ask me about it later.
The Easy Way Out
You can "cut corners" or take the easy way out, in your education. I'll give you a couple of examples. Doing your project in Composer, when your teacher is teaching you to hand-code with HTML. Following the step-by-step instructions in your Shelly- Cashman textbook without thinking why you are pressing the keys that they're telling you to press. Copying someone else's ideas for a layout instead of coming up with a cool idea of your own. These examples aren't examples of cheating but they do cheat someone— you! They cheat you out of opportunities to learn, and that's what you are here at school for, after all. Instead of cutting corners, make a resolution to take the maximum advantage of your opportunity here at Abbott to learn the absolute most that you can. Our most skilled graduates can earn way over $30,000. You don't earn that kind of money for rusty, sub-standard, or mediocre work!
©Susan Regan, Ph.D. May 1998