teaching and drinking on friday nights
i really don't like spending $50-ish on alcohol in one night and ending up relatively sober when i get home and getting home before 2am (and all the $50 of alcohol went into me).

i feel really bad for the girl with whom i spent the bulk of the evening--she's in her first year of teaching high school at an inner-city charter school and she went into it really honestly believing that she could make a difference for every kid^*. i really wanted to be able to convince her that making a difference for one kid is enough to justify one's existence, since if she weren't there to make that difference, it's unlikely that there would be someone else who could make that difference, but i'm not sure i was convincing enough. it also doesn't help that "making a difference" is just a side benefit to me, that i teach because i enjoy it and not because it's a "good" thing to do.

* i think she's even looking at "making a difference" as being an immediate thing, and i tried to suggest that even if she has given up on a kid, she at least tried with that kid which is probably more than most (or all) of that kid's previous teachers and that just that little bit of trying could make a world of difference to that kid over the course of their life... but that's a hard sell.

the starfish story
There was once a wise old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. One day as he walked along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. As he got closer, he saw that it was a young man, and the young man wasn’t dancing, but instead was reaching down to the shore, picking up starfish, and very gently throwing them into the ocean.
“Good morning! What are you doing?” asked the wise man.
The young man paused, looked up, and replied, “Throwing starfish into the ocean. The sun is rising, and the tide is out. And if I don’t throw them in, they’ll die.”
“But, young man, don’t you realize that there are miles of beach and thousands of starfish all along it? You can’t possibly make a difference!”
The young man, listening politely, bent down and picked up another starfish, throwing it into the sea past the breaking waves.
Turning to the old man, he modestly replied, “It made a difference for that one.”