5 things that make me worry (AKA do you know the three branches of gov't?)
Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 5:54PM 1. This article from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute states that most Americans would fail a basic civics test. In fact, the average score of the pool of test takers was 49%. The average score for a college educator - not someone who is college EDUCATED but instead someone who TEACHES college - was 55%. Frightening - no, utterly terrifying. Yours truly scored an 82%, thank you. Of course, with a Masters degree, I believe I should have had at least a 90 so I am disappointed in myself but happy to know I didn't fail. Take the quiz - and if you do, let me know how you do in the comments. No judgments. My father outscored me. No surprise there, but I just hate being beaten at anything.
If that few Americans know how many branches of government there are, no wonder they don't know what powers each branch has, helping the outgoing administration stretch (break?) those boundaries with so little outcry. The ignorance in this country terrifies me.
2. This article on MSNBC talks about how the current state of the economy will probably cause many people to put off plans to start or grow their family. This worries me because, once again, I am a statistic. My husband and I are broker than broke, deeply in debt, earning below our potential, and totally unable to start a family any time soon. Unfortunately, I am 33 and don't have all the time in the world to wait and become a bit more financially secure. I know you're never "really" ready (financially or otherwise) but there's "Oh money will be tight" not ready and "We live in my parents' attic because we can't afford our own place" not ready. We're the latter and so really just not ready but yet without a large window of time ahead of us. It sucks. (Some other day I will get to writing about how saying women can have it all is a fallacy. Something is ALWAYS compromised.)
3. I worry about people who have nothing to talk about other than their jobs. I find job talk SO remarkably boring unless the job itself is something inherently fascinating to me (i.e. someone works in the same field as me or is an astronaut or something really unique, like a beekeeper or something, lol). In perusing Wordpress tags yesterday, I noticed that a lot of them are about work/people's jobs. I understand why this is (we all spend more time at work than anywhere else, probably) but aren't we all far more interesting than that?
4. I am set to proctor a placement exam in 11 minutes. Five students are scheduled to be here; none have shown up yet. No one really follows the "arrive 15 minutes early for everything" adage anymore, do they? (This would also be filed under "things that make me sad".)
5. My wedding photographer emailed me on Friday to say that we'd be getting our pictures this week. We haven't gotten them yet. I fear that this is because we appear so weird in all of them that they required massive photoshopping and have thus been delayed. Alternately, I fear that the pictures are all boring because, as super amazingly awesome as my wedding photographer is, she can't turn a boring event into an exciting-looking one. (Note: no, I was far from bored at my wedding. It truly was the best day of my life, as cliche and cheesy as that is. I just fear that it was the best for us and not everyone else.) I'm sure that once I receive the pictures this worry will go into the "things that make me look dumb" category as I'm sure they will be fantastic... I hope.
NaBloPoMo, money, things that make me sad, things that make me worry, work in blogging, life 
Reader Comments (3)
I hope # 5 finally comes and that the pics turn out cute! :) We never got ours....long story but the guy was a fraud!
Oh no! That's terrible. That happened with a huge photo place near me last year - tons of people lost their photos. I hope you had lots of guest photos!
Luckily we did.....but Hubby still gets sad over it :(