So what did you do this winter break? Some spent it lounging around in a semi-vegetative state, secretly thanking the family dog for cleaning the crumbs 'better than I would have done.' Others worked to get that extra bit of income to help lubricate the rough and costly edges of the semester to come. And of course there were those of us ' many of us ' who celebrated some holiday and left Madison for more, shall we say, ancestral residence.
What we all probably did, to some extent, was stop learning. Finally we could stop flexing our intellectual muscles, and, maybe you'll agree, it is possible to physically feel yourself not thinking. But woe to those who stopped thinking for too long. Just because classes finished doesn't mean lessons weren't still being taught.
Life is a lesson, which I once heard on 7th Heaven. I think the middle sister said it, you know, the one who can't be described as 'the hot one' or 'the young, adorable one.' I think she recently had a personal crisis on the show deciding whether to go to the movies with her friends or to marry a single father who was secretly addicted to Flintstone vitamins. I might have my facts mixed up since I don't really follow the series, but that doesn't make what I heard any less true.
One chance to learn this break came from South Africa. After holding up a couple with a knife, a mugger who jumped a zoo fence to hide from authorities, found himself in a tiger enclosure with two inhabitants, and obtained a mild case of mauling ?? oh, and he was dead.
This wasn't even the first time a zoo animal in South Africa thwarted a criminal. In 1997, Max, a gorilla, was shot twice by a fleeing gunman and still detained him until authorities arrived.
There are some very important dos and don'ts one can learn from these stories. The mugger was successful, for a brief period, in his goals. So maybe a lesson is 'do take fate into your own hands and don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.' Or you could cite the clich?? 'crime doesn't pay (unless you're the good guy in a heist movie, then it's cool).' Another take might be 'don't hide out after a felony anywhere near a zoo in a country where animals are celebrated crime fighters.'
But these stories weren't the only opportunity to learn. In Italy, five years after opening, the local McDonald's in Altamura closed due to competitive sales with the local baker. One might expect this to be because of a better marketing strategy and steep discounts given by the local baker, but one would be wrong. The baker did nothing different than he had before the global fast food giant showed up. Residents simply bought what they preferred.
Don't take this as a message of anti-corporate globalization. I'm not a fan of the ol' golden arches, but the loss of 20 jobs in a small city isn't a good thing either. This is a good example of why you should do your own thing, do keep with what you believe in, and do learn to make damn good food.
Ultimately, these two cases are just the tip of what you could learn from what goes on every day. Don't take my interpretations too strictly, it's up to you to figure things out your own way. But do think things through, do form your own opinion, and don't take anything too seriously. Oh, and do have a good time this semester.
