My alma matter and great men.

(I hope I spelled that correctly.) I drove around the school, where I received my undergraduate degree, today. I held my camera out of the moonroof and drove around in circles taking pictures. Unfortunately, it was sorta grey today, and the photos are not very good. It was weird to be back to the place that used to be home to me for four years, though. I will never ever feel the same affection for where I got my Masters, perhaps not even where I go now. My parents actually insisted on getting me a school ring from Goucher, being the first person with my last name to get a BA and all that mess. I never think of my education as a very big deal. To me, it's mandatory training in order to get the job I want: professor of philosophy. Why the hell else would I be almost 25 (August 30th!) and still in school? Besides, I have little to show for it. Hell, I majored in thinking. I have a master's degree in thinking, and I am spending the rest of my 20s getting a doctorate in thinking. I am at a loss as to understand why anyone is impressed the way that my family seems to be sometimes. My friend Chris from Blog Collective, who is a brother to me, is in the US Navy. He's had wine, women and adventures in places I will never even go to, and he is one of the most honorable people I know. That is impressive. My brother survived bootcamp last year, after voluntarily enlisting -- right before the start of Bush's "war" in Iraq. He plays the saxophone in the Maryland Army National Guard Field Band, and he is a full-time student. That is impressive. My other brother is training to be a CPA, and he does his own taxes. He can even build and program a computer by himself. That is impressive. I won't even go into the hero that my father is. He just retired from almost 36 years of military service. He started a Boy Scout troop on his own and has run it for 14 years. For these and a myriad of other reasons, he is the greatest man I can imagine, and everyone knows it. That is impressive. I know lots of great men (and women, too, but that's another post, to be sure). I just sit around, read Phenomenology and American Pragmatism and write papers about dead guys' ideas. I'm a professional thinker already, it seems. I have lots of time for a weblog, for obsessing about pens and Moleskines, for reading poetry and driving around country roads at questionable speeds. But I'm not doing anything like the great men whom I know. Maybe I should be doing something more...or at least, something different?