Cover Photo: Untitled, by Katie Willison
A PDF of this issue is available here.

On Umbrellas by Jayson Weingarten
Designer Babies by Alyssa Kaplan
Border Towns by Daniel Felsenthal
Poetry: [Untitled] by Valeria Tsygankova
How to Deal by Sydney Scott
Photospotlight: [Untitled] by Aude Broos
Poetry: Roach by Mikaela Pedlow
Poetry: Opium by Ghalia S.
Without a Plan by Charlie Isaacs
Comic: Muffler by Dan Markowitz

Columnists: Charlie Isaacs, Sydney Scott, Alyssa Kaplan. Prose: Daniel Felsenthal, Jayson Weingarten. Poetry: Mikaela Pedlow, Ghalia S., Valeria Tsygankova. Photography: Aude Broos, Katie Willison. Art: Amy Tarangelo, Natalie Gravier, Dan Markowitz.

It’s a very stereotypical question: “What is the greatest invention of all time?” Is it the printing press, the internet, the cooler, TV maybe even the wheel? There are great arguments for all of these objects, but a better question to ask is “What is the worst invention of all time?” While many products come to mind (snuggie, anyone?), I think the answer must be the umbrella.

To start, the umbrella simply does not do what it is supposed to do. No matter what, you always get wet. Rain always seems to find a way to pass through the umbrella “barrier” to the point where you aren’t really dry anymore. Maybe if there was no wind and water was lightly falling straight down you would be protected, but we all know that just doesn’t happen. Here at Penn, we’ve all walked through the dueling tampons, the so called ‘win tunnel’ in the middle of a storm. You get bombarded with water; it splashes everywhere and it seems to ran sideways.

To make matters worse, umbrellas always seem to break; a tiny silver rod is broken, the fabric has disconnected from the rod, the rods are crooked, the umbrella doesn’t stay open all the way, the umbrella won’t open, or you are stuck with ever so popular the umbrella blows out into a bowl. The bowl-brella is my personal favorite. It is so funny to see people’s reaction to having their umbrella blow inside-out. The best ones are the times people don’t notice their umbrella has blown out. They just continue walking, but now catching the rain.

For a seemingly simple invention, things just never go right when it comes to me and umbrellas. Maybe we just don’t along. I have had a few bad experiences in the past. The first day it rained here at Penn, I brought my nice new umbrella with me to class. As I walked out of the Quad, the dome blew off the stick, and I was standing on 37th street with what could only be used as a walking cane. It was an embarrassing moment for a young freshmen!

People always seem to keep these broken umbrellas like souvenirs from a vacation. You wouldn’t dare throw out that perfect sea shell from the beach and I have found that people tend to cling to umbrellas with the same sentimental value. They are not irreplaceable, they are pieces of junk. I will never understand umbrella horders. They are worse than coupon clippers, at least coupons have some value (1/100th of a cent).

How much would you pay for an umbrella? For something that doesn’t work, $25 seems like too much. And $50 for a golf umbrella? I’d rather enjoy a nice steak dinner than buy an exponentially degraded piece of garbage. You can always buy one from a street vendor, $5 or $10 cash, but how could you trust that umbrella? You might as well buy a poncho that says “I love wasting money” than a street-brella.

As bad as they are for one person, umbrellas are never good for two. I always find it humorous when someone rushes to get under my umbrella. They are simply too small to share, and we are both bound to get wet. Since you have to walk so close to someone to share the device, there is no doubt that one of you will trip or stumble. Doing the grapevine, crabwalk, or three legged race is easier than the umbrella share walk.

The other day I saw a frog-brella: a green umbrella with two eyes and tongue sticking out of the dome. Who wants that? Now you’re not just getting wet, but you look like an idiot in the process. And to the people with huge umbrellas that are big enough to hold a small convention underneath: please get a smaller one. It is just a matter of time before you poke someone’s eye out. You look as strange as the girl with the frog-brella.

Companies love giving out logo umbrellas to customers, clients, and potential buyers. There was a company that came to Penn last year and gave away some free umbrellas to potential internship applications. I saw one of the umbrellas in the trashcan a day later, two rods broken off from the fabric. I don’t get why a company would give you a ticking time bomb. Is that really good advertising, a broken umbrella? Maybe they want people to think that the company is broken and no good too. Hopefully the company is better than their broken umbrella. What’s wrong with just giving out a nice pen, a pad of paper, or a water bottle?

My favorite unbearable umbrella moment is when you need to get into the car. Instead of just jumping into the car, you fiddle around with a wet umbrella, and then bring it into the car. The inside of your car gets wet, and nothing stays dry. And it takes longer to get into the car, so now more raindrops fall in to your interior. Instead of making one less wet, the umbrella has just made matters worse.

Watching people using a newspaper or briefcase to stay dry is very amusing. The point is to stay dry, but now people are sacrificing one of their belongings to stay dry themselves. I’d much rather be wet and have my work stay dry than ruin a book or bag. I sometimes even see people using a computer to stay dry. Someone ought to tell them that electronics and water don’t mix before they write another check to Computer Connection.

Umbrellas have been around since being invented in Ancient China. Have we not evolved since then? We have the printing press, the internet, the cooler, the TV, and the wheel. These great inventons have all been improved and changed since invented, and we are all better for it. Umbrellas? No, still the same bad wood and cloth invention. Why do we still use umbrellas? Jackets keep us warm and our clothes dry, and ponchos, while not as stylish, surely do the same. I will never get why people continue to use inherently flawed tems.

There is only one good thing about umbrellas; sometimes they come with drinks at a pool bar. That is the only time umbrellas are an acceptable accessory.

One of the biggest upcoming issues in the world of genetics is the idea of “designer babies.” It’s safe to say almost everyone has heard this term being thrown around, but do we really understand the science and meaning behind it?

The actual term is preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD. Through this process, geneticists use in-vitro fertilization to combine eggs and sperm to make a number of embryos. The doctor can then inspect the embryos for signs of genetic diseases and specifically not implant those into the woman, discarding the defective ones. It seems like a simple enough process, but this topic actually raises a multitude of ethical questions that could have a serious impact on everyone.

First of all, how do we decide when to use this technology? Who gets to decide what diseases are bad enough to warrant PGD; which lives are worth fixing ahead of time? It’s not an easy decision to make, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. It seems logical to say, however, that this technology should only be used for those illnesses and conditions that hinder a normal life, those that kill before the age of 10, or those that cause more pain than happiness.

But the decision to use PGD can’t be just one doctor’s opinion; there have to be national regulations in place. If not, this could lead to serious debates and legal issues. Furthermore, the issue of money plays a huge role. In-vitro fertilization is expensive, and not everyone has insurance or can afford it. Some people worry that if the trend continues where the middle and upper classes are able to use PGD to avoid deadly diseases, those illnesses could come to be associated with being in the lower class. Potential for more discrimination exists.

What most people are scared of are the familiar undertones of eugenics and the possibility of this science being taken to a frightening level. The fear that geneticists could have the power to create a world of blue-eyed blonde-haired babies is real. What if parents can breed super-babies that are professional-level athletes or musicians by the time they are ten? There are, however, still two sides to the debate. Some say that once we can select or deselect certain genes in order to prevent disease, we will be able to code for certain traits and physical appearances. Others argue that there is no one specific gene that causes a person to be kind, for example. But the truth is, science is advancing rapidly, and there is the possibility that we could discover those gene combinations.

This debate leads into another classic — the nature versus nurture argument (that is, assuming that we achieve the science necessary to code for certain characteristics). Even if we do discover that certain genes will cause a person to be brave, what role will the environment play in actually causing that to come about?

Let’s say one person grows up in a household as an abused child, constantly put down and bullied. Most people would say that in this type of situation, being brave would not be a likely trait for this child; more likely, he will be scared and meek after years of behaving that way. Of course, this is not an absolute; there will be exceptions. But overall, environment does play a certain role in behavior. Genetics can only cause predispositions for traits; it doesn’t mean the person will definitely possess them.

The relationship between parents and their child also could potentially be severely impacted through the use of PGD. The term “selection drift” has been used to describe how what parents consider attractive traits in their children has been slowly rising over the past few years. The more technology we are able to use to manipulate the genetics, the greedier people will become. This, of course, portrays a very negative view of humanity with which optimists might not agree. The truth is, though, that parents could start wanting better and better children. Moreover, once a parent is able to choose any aspect of their child, the entire idea of loving your children for who they are will disappear. Parents won’t just accept their children’s flaws; they will remove them entirely.

Likewise, some researchers have compared the process of PGD to dating rather than conceiving a child. Parents will be searching for good qualities in their children in the same manner they do in a mate. The entire relationship could be altered.

One of the most instigative and touchy issues that PGD brings up is abortion. Everyone has the right to his or her own opinion on this issue, but this technology complicates the question. Because geneticists pair multiple eggs and sperm, those that are not used for implantation are destroyed. Some people consider this abortion, so this aspect of PGD must be considered in the arguments for and against it.

Many people believe PGD is an essential technology not only because it can prevent lives with serious diseases. The body also naturally aborts many defective fetuses in what is called a spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage. Often, embryos with severe genetic abnormalities that would not be able to survive outside the womb are terminated before ever reaching the second trimester. Some argue that because the body does this naturally, it is no different to perform the procedure in a laboratory ahead of time. Some researchers have also made an interesting comparison between organ transplant and PGD. They claim replacing an organ is the same concept as replacing a gene, except with a gene it also affects future generations. Essentially, the defective part is removed, but it means that the person’s children and grandchildren will most likely never have the same condition.

The topic of preimplantation genetic diagnosis is complicated and raises many questions and arguments about what it should be used for and the potential complications it could cause. There are so many possibilities both for help and for harm that we as a country need more research to truly determine what the regulations should be. Before we can utilize this technology full-time, more studies should be performed.

The trunk was lined: two suitcases, Jim’s stuff, Kate’s stuff, a large sleeping bag, some food. Easy-to-make food, canned food, even some Lunchables. Literally Lunchables. Like they were nine years old. Lining the bottom of the suitcases were twelve grams of weed and rolling papers. Kate was asleep in her bed. Jim’s dad was there with Jim, leaning on the trunk of the rust-colored Wrangler.

“Listen, I can pay for a train to Laredo, at least.”

Jim didn’t want support, economic or otherwise. Being born in the trust-fund generation is a burden, he thought. It’s a weight.

“No, it’s fine dad, I just wanna do this without help.”

“Yeah, I get it Jim. It’s just worrisome.”

“It’s fine, Kate’s with me.”

Jim’s dad scoffed. Jim feigned offense.

“You think she can protect you? Mexico is violent, Jim. It’s scary. I’ve been watching the news.”

Jim knew Kate wasn’t exactly the road-trip type, or the drive-around-the-desert-smoking-pot trip type. But it was fine, because they were no longer together and she wasn’t coming. They broke up the previous night in a flurry of anger that turned to violence. He didn’t hit her, he wouldn’t have, but her nails left imprints in his tan Texas skin. He cut himself shaving, he told his dad. Bullshit.

Jim kept Kate’s stuff because they packed the car early the previous night. It was before things went sour, before they went to her house and he found out about the baby and she told him he needed to stay. And she had everything in there, all the canned food and supplies; she even had four grams of his weed in her bag, and he was too lazy and high to transfer it. He didn’t want his dad asking questions, anyway. And in a small way, he needed her suitcase, and he wasn’t thinking about the pot, although he probably needed that too. Really, he needed something to remind him. And that’s why his trip was doomed: he wanted to be reminded.

But still, this was it, he was leaving, it was done. Rich, rah-rah Austin, Texas; a piece of personal history. Jim shut the trunk and turned back to his father. His dad looked old in that moment, melancholy and lonesome. His face drooped like a sad clown’s, the unshaven gray hairs on his cheeks stark and lonely. His face seemed to plead safety, and Jim almost pocketed the keys and gave up. But he didn’t, because he had too much history behind him, too many memories of his nine and ten-year-old self poring over maps in his childhood bedroom, dreaming of adventure. There wasn’t any turning back.

“Dad, don’t worry, I’m gonna be fine,” he said instead, and he and his father awkwardly embraced, as though their bodies didn’t exactly connect. It was a second too short, the hug, a physical motion lacking in finality. Jim wondered if his dad smelt any substance on him. And then it was done and Jim was gone, his father left in the dust, sonless and wifeless and utterly alone.

—

Twenty minutes later and Jim was cruising. I-35 was empty, the sun still a solid half-hour from rising. It was just Jim and Pink Floyd at seventy-five miles-per-hour, Dark Side of the Moon serenading the Dark Side of the Freeway. It was times like these that Jim was happy to be alone, happy to have his music and nothing else. He didn’t need Kate with him; if she was here she would want to talk, she would fiddle with the volume incessantly and eventually insist that he switch to KGSR radio, so they could listen to Eric Clapton one second and Marvin Gaye the next. Jim didn’t understand radio, it was too sudden, filled to the brim with sound bites and lacking in real musical ideas. He thought life should be lived suddenly; music should be experienced in broad strokes. Kate was the opposite. That’s why she wanted him to stay. That’s why she wanted him to wait the long nine months with her, and who knows how much longer.

There I go, he thought, thinking too much again, thinking about her. The darkness was beautiful, easy, just him and the music and the eighteen wheeler ahead. It was the daylight that was the problem, when the rush-hour traffic bloomed out of those tiny hot towns and sped toward San Antonio. When Jim got frustrated, when he got stuck in between those early morning commuters, that’s when he wanted someone there, someone to occupy him. She should be here, he thought. She was supposed to. But she told me at the last second, the last damn second. Like he was just supposed to take the shit out of the car because she started throwing up and he found out. Because she couldn’t hide it from him anymore, because she wasn’t “fit for travel.” She had two months to tell him. Two goddamn months.

By mid-morning, he was nervously drumming along to the stereo and thinking about calling her. She would probably be up by now; it was already ten. He took his phone out and had already scrolled down to the “K’s” before he realized there was nothing he could say. Sorry just doesn’t cut it sometimes. He had left her at home with a long three months before she would start at UT and a huge mess growing in her stomach. His huge mess.

Five minutes later and Jim was arched over the front seat, pulling Kate’s bag from the back into the passenger seat. I’ll use the stuff in her suitcase first, he thought. He had a couple joints pre-rolled in each bag, an old habit from when he would drive around downtown Austin every night with Kate, laughing and hot-boxing his car. This traffic, though, was barely driving. He could roll one up before the cars even moved.

The weed made him feel better, made him think about the music again. He was already at track seven of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. It was one of his parents’ favorites, a remnant of his mother’s adolescence and Jim’s childhood, an album that evoked the same feeling every time: an intense need to travel. Aimlessly usually. Or at least to some place aimless.

It was adventure, something grand and distinctly American that brought back Jim’s nostalgic childhood memories of atlases and road maps picked up at local gas stations. I was so smart when I was younger, Jim thought. He didn’t think it in a self-adulating way; if anything he was disappointed in himself. But still, he always knew his path led him here, to this highway, to this soundtrack. He wasn’t exactly academic, just smart, smart enough not to go to college, he always thought. His dad thought otherwise, but who the hell was he? Some big shot doctor who’ll practice medicine until he’s seventy, pay his taxes, move to a nursing home when his brain goes at eighty-five, and die a few years later. It’s all so predictable, so boring and stupid, Jim thought. His mom knew, the crazy, wild-haired hippy who somehow ended up with his father. She knew how to run; she did it when Jim was nine. She knew how to disappear, how to live with the land, and eventually how to die: frozen to death in some northern Canadian province.

By early afternoon he had switched from pot to Lunchables. Pepperoni pizza Lunchables — the best kind. The land was becoming more and more barren, filled with thin, yellowing shrubbery and pale sand. The ground looked scorching, foreboding. His original plan to take the scenic route with Kate around the desert, smoking and sleeping in the car for a of couple days, didn’t seem all that appealing after all. But maybe it would look different if he was with her, if he wasn’t angry and obsessed with the idea of speeding to Mexico as fast as possible. A direct trip was necessary now; if he didn’t put as many obstacles between him and Kate as possible, he might decide to abandon his trip and go back to her. He knew it; he wouldn’t admit it, but he knew it. Some things are more powerful than dreams.

An hour later, and Jim saw the letters. Huge, red, white, and green, they spelled out “Mexico” like some poor imitation Hollywood sign. Still, Jim didn’t need grandeur, he knew what Mexico was, what lay ahead. Was Mexico really where he wanted to go, given a choice? No. He had dreamt more of hidden Amazonian tribes and the Northern Lights as a kid. But still, it was there, five and a half hours without traffic. And people were afraid. So afraid that they wouldn’t go anywhere near the border. Jim was always intrigued by the border towns. It was weird, how much spilled over, the culture, the people, even the violence. It’s a rarity, he thought, a permeation of the American bubble. A wake-up call to the privileged.

Crossing the border only took a few minutes; no one was going into Mexico now, only trying to come out. He put Kate’s bag in the back, made sure anything incriminating was hidden and entered the “Nada que declarar” line. The search was painless. The man who checked his passport looked him over, spending several seconds on his facial features, as if this little white boy had a fake passport. The man spoke in broken English.

“You really wanna go Nuevo Laredo señor? Solo?”

“Estaré bien.”

The man smiled mirthlessly at something. Maybe it was Jim’s Spanish, maybe it was the thought of a pinprick American teenager getting mutilated by Mexican gangs. Jim thought his Spanish was fine; he didn’t worry about language, or any of the more dire possibilities.

And then the desert stretched out once again, hugging the gray dullness of the highway. This time, the burning sand was Spanish tinged; it was Mexican. It was where no one in his high school, none of his friends, none of them would go. It was what he wanted. He had made it.

By the time he was prowling Nuevo Laredo, he was fascinated, encapsulated in his new environment. It was strange. The streets of Nuevo Laredo were nothing like the Streets of Laredo. There were no glorified cowboys, the storefronts were mostly abandoned. People walking on the sidewalks wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t acknowledge his existence. They were all in their own spheres; they walked quickly and avoided connection with anyone.

And then Jim passed the police station. It was empty, the windows broken, the sign covered in blood-red spray paint. The walls were pockmarked with holes. Suddenly, Jim was scared.

It was probably the packed back of the open-air Wrangler that set them off. It was an attractive nuisance, you could say, filled to the brim with brands not sold anywhere on that side of the Río Grande. And so they attacked. They broke the glass of the passenger window first, smashing it to smithereens with their Remington, jabbing it against Jim’s head, yelling “¡Salte del carro!”

Within seconds Jim was on the ground, pleading. He saw a woman across the street, just standing, watching in fear, like she couldn’t move. He tried to yell “¡Ayúdame!” but she just ran, dropping her plastic purse on the way, never looking back. And within seconds, the gang grunts had bashed him over the head with the Remington. He was so scared he didn’t even feel it. He tried to lift his head, but it was heavier than usual. And then they hit him again. And this time he didn’t move. Everything went black.

—

And then he was broken. On the floor, legs against the wall, teeth in the back of his throat, in some dingy basement. His hair was matted down, bloody. He had been punched, kicked, beaten, yelled at. They threw his weed at him, told him they would come back and kill him. And he screamed, he kept on screaming, “please, I have a child!”

Jim was worried now, his brain sputtering, overloaded. A peaceful death wasn’t waiting for him.,. He wondered what his mom felt, stranded in that Canadian winter, when frostbite kicked in and her movements became slow. He wondered if it was like this, this certainty of death. If she thought about anything. Did she think of him? Did she wish she had been with him that last year of her life? Was she able to think about anything besides survival? Did she even want to survive? He wanted her to. That year she was gone, that was the only year he ever prayed. He was about nine years old, and every night before bed he kneeled at his bedside and prayed that she would be okay. He would pray to anything, bibles, atlases, even his Spider-Man Comics. Anything substantive, anything he could appeal to, anything that might absorb his incomprehensible grief. He really believed it would help. It was the last time he believed in much of anything; the rest of his life had been one long opposition, one long rebellion. Not even his mom went that far. She was just flaky, crazy, untrustworthy, and ultimately, completely irresponsible. Like a repressed memory, he suddenly understood something for the first time in years.

She hurt him.

This trip was doomed. He knew it since Kate told him he would be a father. It was all too perfect, too similar to be coincidence. He knew, somewhere deep down, that his life-long idolization of his mother had led somewhere, to some parallel existence, and ultimately, to death. He just didn’t know what that meant.

Now he did. Death can’t be worse than this; this physical pain washed over with gallons of regret. Regret for the child that will pray every night for his father, the single mother who will inevitably drop out of college, the old man rotting away over TV dinners and a dead family.

Jim started rolling over, detaching his frail body from that cold wall. But before he could do anything, there was a bang. Then a second. Then some yelling in Spanish and then some more. Jim couldn’t look down, he didn’t want to think about what he would find, what they did to him. They say it takes a minute to feel the bullet. He couldn’t imagine it. The last thing he would see is this gray fucking ceiling, this broken light. His whole life, it came down to one room. A broken light and some bad decisions.

And then someone lifted his chair and he was surrounded by men with guns. Tons of them, everywhere, everyone with a blue jacket on, like some dumb gang insignia. The Mexicans were on the floor. It took him a second, but then he understood.

“Geez,” the DEA agent said, “you’re some kinda stupid pot dealer, aren’t you, kid?”

“No, sir.” Jim replied, wheezing in relief. “My dad’s a doctor.”

Back in the old
        liminal
places
                we made
        this bread

we
      made a
                stick-
stacked
        ????? when

we were
            ????
                when we

imagined
        each-other’s
                faces as

                        from the
                ???????
        we walked
to the orchard.

My freshman year was a bit shocking. I came from a very nurturing private school — the kind that wants you to be “whatever you want to be.” The kind that thinks every student is a unique and above-average individual who will go on to do great things. The kind that weaved subliminal messages like “You’re amazing!” into its curriculum. Okay, well maybe there were no subliminal messages, but you get the idea.

As far as I knew, all my comments, questions, and concerns were as unique, wonderful, and special as I was. I was still in this mindset during my first micro-economics recitation. I sat in the front of the class off to the right (because front and center would be sucking-up) and scribbled down everything the TA said. She began going over the homework, and she asked a question about something or other. I promptly pointed out something minor about the unrealistic set-up of the problem. Apparently, it was irrelevant. I know it was irrelevant because her response was, “No, that’s stupid. It doesn’t matter.” I was quiet for the rest of class, and I never went back to that recitation section after that.

Now part of the reason this response was probably so harsh was the language barrier. (My teaching assistant was from Taiwan, I believe.) But just because other professors can soften the language doesn’t mean that they don’t share the same thoughts occasionally. Officious students with irrelevant questions or comments are plain irritating. I am personally convinced that my TA just said what professors often think.

Let’s face it. Sometimes, students need to be informed they are not all that special. Their comments are not always wonderful. My TA took her role of informing students about their unhelpful comments to the extreme. Everyone, though, has been in a class where the professor allows a student to pontificate about a tangent, about something unrelated, or about his or her own brilliance. It’s infuriating.

My point is a question really. What is the right approach to the problem of the student who wastes class time? Too “informative” or harsh a teacher is humiliating. Too lax a teacher is frustrating to everyone else.

First, the professor needs to decide just how unhelpful the student’s input is. If the student’s input is useful, then the professor or TA is just going to have to internalize frustration concerning exactly how “stupid” the question is. In other words, brilliant professor, suck it up. It’s tough to remember, but most of the students are actually just beginning to learn the subject. On top of being novices, they may not be as facile learners. We can’t all be brilliant.

But some questions, comments, and concerns are clearly a waste of time. If I am sitting in a 200-person lecture, I really do not care that you already know the physics of meta-physio-economical whatever. Really. It can go the other way too, but the opposite phenomenon occurs less often (at least at Penn). Sometimes students are very behind on the material, and asking questions that they would probably already know the answers to if they were up on the reading, or, my favorite, not scrolling on facebook/digg/textsfromlastnight when the professor explained it the first time.

Either way, the professor is faced with a problem, or more specifically a student who has not learned when his or her special and unique thoughts might be best kept inside. They are simply, in one way or another, not useful.

The professor has to respond to the student, even if that response is a lack thereof. In responding, or ignoring, he is inevitably going to make some sort of statement. As much as he may desire to be neutral, it really just isn’t possible.

Given that a professor cannot react neutrally to the obnoxious student in the front of lecture, he should deter these questions and future questions like them.

Now some professors are very, very nice. They do not want to discourage questions and comments. They politely listen to a student, rarely if ever cutting the student off (although the student may often cut the professor off, ironically). They try to cultivate curiosity and encourage exploration. Ultimately, though, they should either go teach at my old high school or grow a more iron-like fist.

Think about it. As much as we want to encourage curiosity, letting students frequently pontificate about their own brilliance, or letting them ask questions that have clearly been covered already, merely inhibits this growth of intellectual vivacity. Most of the other students can be seen giving each other looks of positive irritation, shaking their heads, and pulling out their crackberrys to pass the time. Allowing these questions is actually detrimental to the goal.

Obviously, more deterrence of time-wasting does not imply the professor should call students stupid. There is no need to publicly humiliate the student. Usually, subtlety works. Just cue the student that his or her question might be inappropriate for the venue. Perhaps mention that you will answer that question after class (but do not then continue to listen to it/address it in class), or maybe you can refrain from calling on a particularly unproductive student very often. It is only in the rarest of cases that these types of nudges, when applied consistently, do not work.

Of course, sometimes they won’t. There will inevitably be a student who just doesn’t get it. These are the most interesting of cases, besides all the psychological questions they trigger. (Did the girl in the front have a rough childhood? A chemical imbalance? A particularly scarring incident with a clown?) Still, the answer is along the same lines. If you want to foster intellectual curiosity, you must sacrifice answering the questions of one person so that you may engage the interest of many. Similarly, you probably still should not go for public humiliation. It is really never necessary. In fact, although some professors might get a little power orgasm from it, it is plain cruel usually. If it has reached the point where there seems to be no alternatives—the student has ignored the polite nudges, pushes and shoves—then it is probably best just to talk to the student. A few words about how irrelevant questions (or only tenuously relevant questions) often infringe on the productivity of the class is probably all the student needs. And let’s face it, getting a talk like that is embarrassing enough anyways.

Everyone asks an impertinent question once in a while. All these questions cannot, and should not, be encouraged as positively wonderful, unique, and individual. Doing this undermines the goal of creating an intellectually intriguing atmosphere. Yet as much as some professors may admire the Puritan-style enforcement method of outright public humiliation, this is obviously not the correct approach either. Polite, slight, but powerful nudges should be employed. This is not only the best method, but the only appropriate method to creating the type of class environment for which we all strive.

Sporadically rocking on its brittle brown back,
Antennae and legs sprawling this way and that,
It was shrouded alive by a square one-play piece,
Which muted its movements of fierced frenzied flee -
A premature pall for a fiend and a fow
Encroaching on freshmen at UPenn this fall.

Opium
Sweet and pure on my tongue
Delicate and endless in my head
I breathe you
And you are my opium
My very own hallucination

I wished for your presence
Yesterday, or before
Maybe it was during slumber
Or during a life I never knew
And still
I only see you
When my eyes are blinded
And I only feel you
When my senses
Are lost to ether

Recurring symphonies of you
Seep into my heart
And allow my breath to escalate
I breathe you again
I breathe you till eternity
My sweet
Ephemeral
Opium

I remember listening to my older brother in complete disbelief as he described a day without recess. I remember watching him do his homework, and thinking, I’ll never learn how to read or write. I remember there being hope, fear, and a complete lack of knowledge about where I was headed. To some extent, I still feel that way.

Picture me now, burning holes in all these various blueprints for the future. I am a man that cannot make music. I am a man that once blinked my eyes and said, “I was born to make movies.” My dad is a doctor, so I can’t do that. Might as well go to law school. Try to run this country someday. Right?

In college, one of the things I learned to do was to rip paper with words. I used words that were destructive to construct vivid images. I said my child-self would “kick my ass if I disappoint.” Well, kid, am I letting you down? I’m a philosophy major searching for inspiration. I’m itching to prove a theory that continues to accommodate the ideas of greater predecessors. I try not to observe time. I try not to observe decisions. I focus on choices. I focus on the moment at hand. Forward-thinking with a whole new meaning.

And also, no meaning.

Recently, and by recently I mean a year and a half ago, I started believing in government for the first time since sophomore year of high school. I figure, these people can actually make differences. These people can, in fact, make progress, even if nothing is perfect or ideal. I used to think it was bullshit. But there is nothing bullshit about feeding people.

Law school means politics. Politics mean a harsh existence with the possible payoff of standing far away from the world and saying, “wow, nice job.” But would it really be me moving the world? I could help. Okay, that might be good
enough. But what does that mean? My dad was a doctor. He had patients. I can’t imagine having patients. I can’t imagine doing things on a person-by-person basis. But is there really a way to help all the people at once? Not without
the gamble of long hours in a lab coat in a room without windows, conducting experiments the results of which you will never know and the meaning of which you may never find. Maybe there are other ways. Maybe it’s on a chalkboard, cracking solutions. But I’m afraid that if I were given a chalkboard, I would start drawing pictures.

Someday that’s going to happen. It’s inevitable. I will revert back to my youthful spirit of sitting on my knees in front of the television drawing dragon after dragon after dragon and naming them. And then building after building, plane after plane, city plan after city plan, planet after planet, shark after shark, and so forth and so forth.

I’m a philosophy major. Really? I step into a room at age 12, an academic summer camp, because everyone did summer sleepover camp and I wanted to be like them, so here I am, in this room, taking a class called “Philosophy” and I don’t even know what that means. Mom says it will help me improve my vocabulary. So what does the teacher do? He yells at me. He yells at me for looking up the definition of “justice” in a mini dictionary. And that’s when I realized there are no easy answers. Not even when the crazy old guy with a white beard asks, “what is just?” and you look it up in a dictionary.

Philosophy means love of wisdom. More than that, philosophy means treating ideas like women: I get turned on when they play hard-to-get, when a chase is involved, when I get rejected but welcomed back in and then treated strangely and then sent home empty-handed. The only difference is that I soon enough realize there is no answer to the question. But hey, there is a woman in front of me. I’m not lying about that.

A lifetime, eh? A lifetime of chasing down the meanings of words, trying to pin them up on a billboard and tie them to other points until I get some strange constellation. And then I’ll take a few feet back and realize everything. That moment will happen. It will, as they say, “hit me in the face.” None of these points matter. Perhaps that’s it. Maybe it’s a cycle I’m bound to undergo, returning again and again to the same systematic elimination of concepts from my belief system. I don’t believe in time. I don’t believe in meaning. I don’t believe in purpose. Good. Right. Knowledge. I am a person that does not know anything, and yet, anything can happen. Thank you, quantum physics. The obliteration of my future. So now, whatever I do, it won’t be out of any affair with an ideal way of life. It will be something stupid and practical. Nice going. From moderate nihilism to heavymetal pragmatism.

Let the music bleed into my skull and I will like it. And I will have a wife and kids and the rest will be history. I don’t know what I want to do. Maybe my true, true calling is not yet something apparent to me. Maybe my real shot at life is something nobody else has ever done before. Or maybe I’ll just settle for something ordinary. And then, people can always say, he’s smarter than he looks.

So it’s back to helping people, with a special emphasis on gaining credit for things. But what’s that? Okay, how about movie-making? But everybody tells me, if I can imagine myself doing anything else, I should do that instead. But I can always imagine myself doing anything. That’s been the problem. And I never fail. I failed miserably only at two things: making a movie I thought I could make, and finding the secret to life that I thought I could find. And the music thing. I could never make music. So where to now? I have no idea. I don’t know anything. Like I say at cocktail hours and Thanksgiving and dinner parties, “I’m taking suggestions.” Mom says architecture. She’ll say something else if I start doing that. Dad says that whatever I do, do it the best way possible and in the most prestigious place possible and not in California. Unless it’s San Francisco. A weight trainer told me to combine what I love with what makes money. My brothers don’t know. My sister says I’m special. My philosophy teachers say, “become a professional philosopher” and then they laugh.

Hahaha.

My friends say “Don’t do law school.” My advisor in high school said “economics.” Someone else said “psychology.” I once said I would dance for a living.

Hahaha.

I guess I do not know, but I will always write, and I will always love writing, and I will always analyze the hell out of something until I confirm that it, too, does not matter.

And most importantly, I think I’ll take three pieces of advice with me. First, an old friend told me to grow and stay afloat and never let the water get over my head. Second, my grandfather said I should just make choices and do what I want. And finally, one of the last things he ever said to me, “Fear not.”

I am a man without a plan.