Deadground

part 2 of my fictional saga

It didn’t take too long for the rains to come. The weatherman has been promising showers all week. Of course they would come now. Why couldn’t this tragedy happen during the summertime? What are the odds of the shit hitting the fan now? Pretty good I guess.

My cigarettes got soaked. It’s not a big deal. They’re no good for me anyway. They’re probably the last thing that I need right now.

As soon as the rains came I ran to seek shelter. It’s not as easy as you might think. I’m still looking. I’ve tried getting into house after house around town, but the houses that haven’t been completely destroyed are locked solid. I’m probably going to have to break into one of these houses. I’m just a little nervous to do that. But hey, I’ve got to survive right? And considering the circumstances I think that breaking and entering is a completely okay thing to do, right?

While trying to find some reliable cover from the rain I walked by a playground. It was probably the most disturbing thing that I’ve ever seen – so many dead children. Kids dead on the slide, slumped over swings, on the see saw and in the sandbox. One of the teachers lay dead on the ground with a whistle in her mouth.

I took the whistle. I don’t know why, but I think that there’s a possibility it could come in handy.

I’ve got to get out of this rain.

Insert Cool Ethical Title Here.

  I took an ethics class last semester. I took it simply because I thought that it would be an easy A and I needed the 3 credits to be eligible for full time financial aid benefits. Let me tell you that (for me) it was the hardest darn class that I’ve EVER taken in my life. And I’ve taken some relatively hard classes. I’m going into the health field (although now I’m thinking that Finance sounds fun) so I’ve taken Microbiology, Chemistry and all of those upper end science classes where you have to study all day and night long to get by. Ethics was much more difficult.

Ethics was hard because it wasn’t as simple as memorizing, something that I happen to be REALLY good at. With all of my other classes it was a matter of simply memorizing information and spitting it back out. I didn’t really have to fully understand it per say. But with Ethics there were endless discussions that we were required to be a part of (participation was a BIG part of the grade) and there were many papers to write. Technically there were no right or wrong answers, which might make it seem like the class should have been easy. But it wasn’t – by any means. It was highly challenging. The kind of class where you really have to use your brain and understand what various authors are saying enough to be able to interpret their words into your own.

I hated the class at first. The readings took me hours to complete. And I still didn’t feel like I fully understood what people like Plato were saying. I found the readings very interesting/stimulating, but they were way hard to comprehend. And I’m an A+ honor society student.

Initially I thought about dropping the class. I really considered it. Mostly because of the big group project that was assigned. Ick! And the project had to be – gulp – presented in front of the entire class, which was about 30 people. I hate oral presentations and I hate group projects. My mouth always goes dry and my voice gets all shaky and crackly when I have to speak in front of groups. The other thing I hate is group projects. To me they feel like a waste of time. I feel like I can get things done much quicker if I do them myself. For instance, the group project was assigned at the beginning of the semester. If it were something that I could have done myself I would have had it done within the first few weeks. No lie. But being that it was a group project and everyone wanted to dilly dally we didn’t have it done until the week before it was due, which was 3 months after it was initially assigned. And I still ended up doing 95% of the work anyway. Ugh.

For the project we were supposed to write and present a modern day ethical issue. I was trying to be into the group thing at first so I came to class prepared with a list of possible topics. The one that I really wanted to do was the issue of mandatory AIDS testing and disclosure. Would you believe that people in my group actually said, “No, that’s stupid. I mean anyone who has AIDS is dumb if they don’t want to tell other people that they’ve got it. That’s not an ethical issue.” Man that PISSED me off being that my Dad passed away from AIDS and that they have no idea and can’t even imagine what living with such a disease is like. Ignorance!

The group turned down all of my other well thought out ideas as well. I literally had spent over an hour coming up with possible ideas and even went to the extent of printing out information on each possible topic. They poo pooed all over each one of my ideas and in the end decided to go with Abortion. Yes, I understand that it is an ethical issue, but come on! It is the most overplayed ethical issue. I’m sure that every single semester the ethics teacher has someone present that issue. She must be sick of hearing the same thing over and over. We all know all about it. Why not do something that is less talked about? And frankly, more interesting.

It doesn’t matter too much. I ended up being able to write my paper on AIDS after all for a different non-group project and in honor of my Dad I have posted (previously) my ethics paper. The original paper title was ‘Step Out of the Cave’. We were supposed to compare our modern day issue with some of the readings from our textbook. I compared the AIDS issue with Platos idea of the cave. If you haven’t read this work by Plato I highly recommend it. Even if you’re not usually into such readings, you may find yourself actually enjoying it. I did.

In the end I am very glad that I stayed in the class, because lo and behold I did learn a lot. Ethics is nothing like what I thought it would be. I thought it would be simple questions of right or wrong, but it is WAY more than that. It is very philosophical and HEAVY. Some people are naturals with the subject, but for me personally it is not my strong point. I definitely grew from this class and feel that my powers of critical thinking have improved at least slightly.