No Fair!
Maybe I shouldn’t brag, but I did a 5K last weekend and ran a blazing time, blisteringly fast. Would have won my age group. Except for two trivial details— inconsequential really. I wouldn’t even mention either or them except that this Blog has always focused on unexaggerated accuracy.
The first minor issue is that the 3.1-mile course was hilly. Up and down, up and down. No flat spaces at all. People think that since you go faster on the downhills you make up the time you lose going slower on the uphills. But people are wrong. Because you spend more time going slower on the uphills.
The second reason that I did not win my age group is that there was another runner in his late 60s who ran seven minutes faster than I.
Which is totally unfair.
Speaking of unfair, a Wall Street Journal article last week mentioned how parents are crying foul about college admissions. Students with diagnosed learning differences are allotted more time to complete their college entrance exams. Which may give them an advantage over their neuro-typical peers. A licensed clinical psychologist is required to administer the tests to discern whether a student has learning differences. The private licensed clinical psychologists chargesup to $10,000 according to the article. Or, parents can get their children tested for free through the school system. Although the wait time for the testing can be significant. Indeed, some anthropologists argue that the dinosaurs were killed by an asteroid spewing dust in the atmosphere. Whereas I wonder if they the dinosaurs didn’t just become extinct waiting for a licensed psychologist in the school system to test their kids for learning differences.
The Wall Street Journal article went on to mention a student who did not get extra time on the test and enrolled at the University of Virginia. The implication was clear. Unfair! Unjust! Ungood! If the student had had more time on the test, the student would have gotten a better score on the SAT. If the student had gotten a better score, they would have been admitted to a good school rather than being forced to endure four dispiriting years in Charlottesville.
To determine just how brutally the unfairness has affected the rejected student, I visited the University of Virginia on Saturday to determine just how inequitable this situation—not having diagnosed learning differences and not being allowed extra time--is. Here are the notes from my campus tour:
Peeling paint in stadium. Student Union in sinkhole. Disgruntled maintenance workers. Underpaid faculty. Ubiquitous fire code violations. Broken pinball machine in stagnant pond middle of campus. Only offering in Cafeteria: Purée of toad parts. English Department in disrepair. Chemistry building destroyed by fire. Plagues of locusts displaced by packs of roving, presumably rabid, dogs. Raw sewage in History Department near radioactive Superfund site. Stench of sulfur noticeable in what remained of library after pillage by Visigoths. Screams of students muffled by exploding guillotines. More flesh-eating reptiles than comparable ACC institutions. Pickleball courts in good shape. Go Cavs!*
(* For the chronically irony impaired, none of the above paragraph is remotely accurate. The University of Virginia campus is a gem – – academically, physically, socially – – by every measure.)
If comparisons are odious, then competition is execrable. Your 18-year-old is heading off to Allegheny College in Meadville rather than Penn State? Your student is matriculating at Eckerd College rather than the University of Florida? Your high school senior will be attending the University of Redlands rather than Pomona? Your child is enrolling at the University of Virginia, rather than a “good“ school?
Two words: “puh” and “lees.”
Reality check. Your kid has 10 fingers and 10 toes. Your kid has the ability and motivation to succeed in college. You can afford four years of undergraduate education without selling body parts. What exactly are you complaining about?
British actor and comedian Terry Thomas famously griped about the hotel shower running out of champagne. Imelda Marcos apparently wasn’t kidding when she complained that there wasn’t enough milk to fill up her bathtub. While people The Philippines went with without bread never mind cake.
Is it unfair that students have to attend the university of Virginia rather than a “good” school such as—I don’t know—Princeton or Columbia?
I can only think of a few examples that might be comparably unfair: deciding whether to buy cough medicine for your child with a bronchial infection or spending that money to pay the heating bill. Or walking 45 minutes every day to get freshwater and living on an income of about a thousand dollars a year. Not having access to any education or health care at all might be other illustrations.
I would try to come up with more examples of unfairness, but I am going to get back to thinking about not winning my age group in the 5K last Sunday. In the meantime, I’m going to ask parents to think long and hard before communicating to their kids that going to this college rather than that one is somehow unfair.