Deaf or Blind?/and or Traffic

Hypothetical scenario, if a person could choose either to go deaf or blind, majority of responses would tilt towards being deaf than being blind. Carefully considering the options, being deaf means the subject couldn’t connect to people anymore while being blind means the subject couldn’t connect to things anymore.

From the popularity of going deaf as oppose to going blind, we could extrapolate that majority of the respondents are more “materialistic” because they would rather connect to things than connect to people.

Last week, the media came out with the news that among the population of around 94 million Filipinos, around 11.3 million are unemployed. Now this is a very significant figure because officially, more than 10% of the population is unemployed. This figure is directly related to the statistics that this coming school year, 1 out of 4 students or 25% wouldn’t be able to come back to school because of poverty. This is a ticking time bomb that is certain to hound the republic because it has been established and agreed upon decades ago that education is the silver bullet that could finally slay poverty. When 25% of expected enrollees are not enrolled, then something is terribly wrong.

Two of my practicum students were reported to have committed buddy punching their timecards and when confronted, both have admitted to the deed. Strictly speaking, in the professional world, such an offense would have merited an immediate termination in the workplace. In the academic world, such an offense would automatically merit an expulsion – for dishonesty and conduct unbecoming of a Fatima student.

The response of the university is to immediately pull out the students from the site, have them repeat again the 200 hours of practicum and one month suspension. An initial glance of the punishment, such would appear harsh, a closer examination however would show that offending students got a mere slap on the wrist. For one, they are not expelled – just suspended. Number two, the suspension could be used to make up for their loss OJT time. And lastly, and most importantly, both students are not failed from the subject. They are just made to take the same OJT somewhere else. Instead of failure which automatically mean a re-enrollment and paying again for the same subject, they simply transfer to another site without any waste of money. The students only got to throw their time (and summer) away. With tuition money being scarce nowadays, and like what I said before, just a mere slap on the wrist.

The bigger question now is whether; I remain deaf to the pleadings and excuses of the offending students or go blind and execute a life-long lesson that would serve them in the long run.

Traffic

Last year, a Regus study about the impact of traffic on one’s health. Long story short, accordingly, traffic is bad for one’s health because of the enumerated reasons:

1. Traffic raises one’s blood pressure.
   


2. Traffic leads to musculoskeletal disorders.



3. Traffic produces hostility.



4. Traffic lowers cognition performance.

The research also recommended that in order to avoid traffic, the following could be considered:

1. Leave earlier.



2. Transfer of abode.



3. Consider flexi-time.