Bad Day Better

Posted on August 30th, 2006 by gail helen.
Categories: Relationships, Education, Personal, Omnia Vanitas.

On Monday, I started my teacher certification classes at Mount Mary College, a private women’s school in Milwaukee. I’ve loved this school ever since I did my freshman year here, but it is surprising how a bad day can take the shine off one’s glowing nostalgia. The weather was rotten, the drive from Chicago took almost 4!!! hours, I was an hour late for my first class, my rented room has neither internet access nor cell reception which are required for me to keep my job that I can’t afford to lose, our company email wasn’t working, I was lonely and tired and stressed and quickly dissolved into my “eating worms” mood (”Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms . .”), and so when I got a message about needing to go the switchboard, I was sure it was going to be the final straw, like my tuition check had bounced or something. But then I got a lovely surprise:

Flowers of Welcome

My boy sent me flowers! It’s funny how such a small thing just woke me up to what a whiney little bitch I was being. Particularly since we’ve been having some growing pains (yes, you still get them after 10 years), it really meant a lot to know that no matter how busy we are, no matter how far away, no matter how insurmountable the rubble between us seems to be, he’s still my guy. Always and forever.

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The Cost of Abstinence Education

Posted on August 15th, 2006 by gail helen.
Categories: Relationships, Education, Politics, Feminism, Current Events.

Sex Ed Changes At School With 65 Pregnant Teens - Carolina news station WYFF issued a report today that a Canton, Ohio school board is expanding their sex education program from promoting abstinence to also teaching students who decide to have sex how to do so responsibly, following the revelation that 13% of one high school’s female students were pregnant last year.

“The new Canton school board program promotes abstinence but also will teach students who decide to have sex how to do so responsibly, bringing the city school district’s health curriculum in line with national standards . . . Health textbooks, older than some students, will be replaced . . . The Ohio Department of Education doesn’t require schools to provide sex education, particularly when it comes to using contraceptives. The state curriculum calls for venereal disease education, which often is taught along with nutrition and the effects of drugs, alcohol and tobacco . . . According to the Canton Health Department, statistics through July 2005 showed that 104 of the 586 babies born to Canton residents in Aultman Hospital and Mercy Medical Center had mothers between the ages of 11 and 19.”

Killfile, who seeded this story into Newsvine, states the obvious point: “Teens are going to have sex. They just are. If you tell them to say “no” and don’t prepare them in any other way the end result is going to be high pregnancy rates, high std rates, and high drop out rates. Why is this so hard to understand?”

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