Score (Part II)

The morning symphony swells, and that is the point, really. You no longer wake at dawn, but strip a bit later than that, plunge into a hot shower and hustle off to the battle stations downstairs and beyond. For now you work at that Death Star of educational institutions.

Shirt and tie, for the air-conditioned classrooms make it possible. And if your students must endure discomfort, similarly dressed, so should you. You're an officer of the High Command, and you are only four years into service. It is enough to make a U-Boat captain weep.

Yet, in the grimy underbelly of the beast, you know there is enough pain to go around. Things are going well, but things are not always right. And what is well for some of you may not be good for the monster machine that you are helping to govern.

Can a man do what is right without doing wrong? Too often we stray. In class, you lie to students all the time, in the guise of simplifying concepts, attenuating the truth, making nice clean clear narratives out of fog and mist.

Everyone goes home happy. But happiness is not joy.