Golf

On Thursday, I'm participating in a golf scramble (run by the LSO's, of course) to honor the retirment of our division chief. Anyway, "we" (as in collectively: the young people in the analysis groups who play golf at the office scrambles twice a year and don't go on golf vacations like the boring grown-ups in the division do, prefering instead to hike mountains and travel the world), don't play golf very well. There are some exceptions. Like our ringer, Jen M, who was, unfortunately for her, subjected to years of childhood golf. Though my parents tried the same with me, I resisted more wholeheartedly, since I find the "sport" interminably boring, and never really learned to golf well (or hardly at all), prefering instead to trot behind my dad at the golf course, fishing up used balls out of the ponds.

Ok, that was a long lead-in to the funny part. Anyway, we have developed a bit of a reputation to sucking terribly in these golf scrambles, and perhaps finishing a little slow compared to the other foursomes (conveniently, with the blind handicap, we get such a large handicap that occasionally we win some cash). So, our assistant division chief just came into the office, and sat down... and as managers tend to do, instead of coming out and saying "You guys suck, we're worried you'll be to slow and mess up our plans to finish off a few kegs after the gold tournament, so we want you to just speed it up or not play" (which, quite frankly, is probably what I would say, and the reason why I'll probably never succeed in business or politics)... he comes in and starts getting all conversational "So, we have a lot of teams playing on Thursday. I'm a bit worried about how we're going to get everyone in, what do you guys think we should do to make sure the game keeps moving?" And we respond "We know we suck, just put us at the end and we won't bother anyone... " But, he doesn't want to offend us, so he keeps saying "Oh, no, its not that,... blah da blah blah" Anyway, it was quite clear he came specifically to us, because if he wanted advise on how to actually run the tournament better, he would go talk to one of the Golfers (yes, with a capital "G") who participate, rather than come talk to the young people who suck at golf (and know it).

So, we all had a good laugh after he left.

College

On, other topics, here's NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe's resignation letter. The handwriting makes it difficult to read, but basically his reason for leaving public service is because his daughter (the oldest of 3 children) departs to college next year, and he feels that it his obligation to her not to have her burdened with debt to pay for college. (Now, there probably are more reasons for his departure than just that.) Apparently, his position as the senior executive at NASA does not provide sufficient income to pay for his three children's college education - something that he (like most Americans) consider crucially important.

So, I have a number of personal thoughts on this - because right now, I think the barriers to going to college are the biggest hurdle to saying we are an "equal opportunity" nation:

1. College is way too damned expensive. It needs to be better subsidized by the government and/or private donors. There are ways to do this. Sliding scales of tuition based on parent's income, etc. I'll leave it to you to think about this. I really liked Pres. Clinton's idea of nationalizing the Georgia HOPE scholarship, where top high school students automatically would receive tuition waivers to the state college of their choice.

2. The system we have set up to pay college expenses is ridiculous. Very poor students are well taken care of - if they can brave their socioeconomic conditions and actually make it to college - there's a system of grants and aid to help them. The wealthiest student's parents can afford to pay college in cash. The rest, in the middle, are often burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in loans that they have to spend decades repaying. Is that the way we really want it to work? The sliding scale I mentioned before should be tied to both income level and merit -- changing each year, depending on continual success or failure at university.

3. What does it say to the 15,000 public servants at NASA and the hundreds of thousands throughout the government that even at the highest levels of executive service you won't be paid well enough to provide your child with a quality education?

4. If someone who is in the top 2-5% of income earners in this country can't afford to send his kids to college without seeking out a higher paying job, what does that say to the other 95% of us?

5. After extended conversation at dinner last night, we all agree that someone with the salary of a senior government executive should be able to afford to send all his three children to school without making them take out loans. The children would just have to be careful about where they choose schools, taking into consideration scholarships offered and pursuing in-state (rather than private) educations. The rest of the family might take a bit of the lifestyle change while the kids are in school. But this particular executive used to be the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), so he should be able to sort out how to budget and save for htose things.

6. Do we have a country of equal opportunity when Student A has to decide between taking out $120,000 of student loans to pay for Harvard or go to University of Florida for free, where Student B can just go to Harvard with his parents paying? Does Student A really have the same opportunities as Student B to get his life off on the right foot when he has to either go to a less prestigious school or start out his life with massive debt?

Other

Wow, I was feeling really wordy today. Though I admit, I wrote about half this entry last night after dinner - drafting is one of the neat new things I can do with this diary. Yeah new blog! I promise I will add the links to all my friends blogs later and in the meantime, my diaryland site is still up so you can get them from there.

Oh, and its also official, I ordered the Foreign Service Exam study guide last night. I don't know if I'll actually take the exam this year (or ever for that matter). But, I'm going to start preparing, reading some of the suggested material and maybe take a practice test just to see how far out of the realm of reason doing this would be. Consider this my backup plan for if and when I stop getting to be a part of putting humans into space. About 40,000 people take the written each year and about 3,000 pass, of those, only a few hundred pass the oral exam that follows, so, even if I really wanted it, I don't know how large my chances would be.

And, happy day after your birthday to Nick and Karen!!