On May 27, 2001 an F2 tornado hit my house while I was inside. The tornado was 200 ft wide and had winds of up to 120 miles per hour. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries.

However, the past two days have unleashed horror on some folks in Alabama where Tornado’s have claimed at least 247 lives, as of this writing, and these events keep bringing me back to that day when the tornado hit my house. That day looked like this:

It was a warm, sunny day and family and friends were at my parent’s house. Some people were outside barbecuing, some were in my brother’s room hanging out (room facing the front of the house), and I was in my room with my cousins (room facing the back of the house). We were all chatting, joking around, doing what anyone would do … Read More »

Both work, right?

In high school, I quit wrestling at the peak of my wrestling career. I had just come off a nice run at kid states taking first place at a big qualifying round, I was going to be made a captain of the varsity team, and I was just beginning to master some advanced techniques. Techniques that I learned at a wrestling clinic an hour away called the Edge, taught from 6 – 8pm, after already having high school practice from 2 – 5pm (not to mention school from 7am – 2pm – about a 15hr day all in). And during that time when I had all of that momentum, I flat-out quit.

Why?

At the time I realized that wrestling, for me, had a very low ceiling. Even if I became the best in my weight class, I wasn’t sure I liked … Read More »

We are experiencing academic inflation. This is a theme I can’t seem to shake and its something that I think is only getting worse. Much worse, so long as our educational institutions keep up the status quo.

If you break it down, the logical train of thought should go something like this:

Go to school
Do well
Graduate
Get a job
Make lots of money
Live your life

Somewhere along the road we ended up at a place that looks something like this:

Go to school – if you can even get in
Take adderall to do well on tests
Do well – assuming the class isn’t beaten up by a ridiculous curve
Graduate
Not qualified enough to get a high paying job so repeat steps 1 – 4 (or you just want more job security)
Graduate
No jobs, student loans, and you realized you were passionate about something completely unrelated to the previous 8 … Read More »