Knowledge is the Key
By JFarrell
Knowledge is the key to betterment
Whether knowing how to split the atom
Or to open a tin of beans
Without knowing how to do it
You’ll get nowhere.
What we ALL see can be changed
War, famine, homelessness, injustice
But, knowing how to change it
Is the tricky bit
Everyone and no-one has answers
It is our responsibility, all of us
To LEARN, get an education, gain knowledge
And WE CAN ALL learn
And that also involves
Stopping letting people telling you what to think
Your mind is unique and great, as are you
And this is your world too
Please get involved and start making it better
I am making my dreams, a better world, reality
Come and join in, it’s your world too, take some responsibility
You Have The Power
By Jfarrell
(inspired by a class discussion we had today)
The power to change the world is in your hands,
All of you;
You, you and, yes, you;
And not one word here is a lie,
Or wishful thinking.
Look around,
What do you not like?
What disgusts you, angers you,
Saddens you, depresses you?
You name it,
I won’t make suggestions,
I don’t need to,
You know what makes you angry.
You can change it,
Make it better;
And you only need to do 2 things:
Believe in yourself.
It doesn’t matter who you are,
How smart, or not, you think you are.
Every great person who ever lived,
Believed in themselves.
Whether we speak about Einstein,
Or Bill Gates;
What makes them different from you?
Nothing.
So, believe.
Act.
Give a homeless person some food,
Help that mum with her buggy,
Run for election.
Here endeth the lesson.
Believe and act.
He sits across me
Uncomfortably fitting in the big chair
Still catching his breath
He sounds of a labored old truck going up the hill
I look at him
This catastrophe of modern times
An impending disaster, an epidemic
And ask
How can I help you?
A faint smile plays on his lips
Maybe he did not expect such politeness
After all everyone has told him
It’s his fault
He’s been eating too much
Lazy sod, can’t live without crisps and fizz
Now his urine’s gone sweet and he can’t sleep
Unless the machine that sits by his bedside
With Darth Vader reverberations helping him survive the dark and lonely night
He says he has tried hard
But the damned weight wont move
I sense his motivation
I speak of options, life-changing operations
Restrictive vs. malabsorptive
Their impact on his future
The pros and cons, the risk of dying, the long road he needs to climb
He looks through me
His expressions speak I have had enough
I cant live like this
I want my life back
You have the key to my self-esteem
Somewhere between the lines
I see a drowning man clutching for a straw
And at the far end of that abyss
I see the Bariatric team
He loved symphonies, and surgery
And then it started
A trivial fall, first unnoticed
He said he could hear whispers
A static sound, buzzing in his ears
It appears coded he mentioned
Wondered what was going on
May be my ears have gone dry or its wax
The local surgery found none
Prescribed some nasal drops and suggested Valsalva
Would balance the pressure in middle ear
He said he felt the cosmos moving in circles as he lied down
Out of balance, he was afraid to drive anymore
Till one day they found him swaying down the corridor
Then came the CTs and MRIs
And results of the MDT
“It is sitting close to the nerves, the size is too big”
“Can’t guarantee complete excision
And there’s risk of facial palsy, or permanent damage”
“ There are options, Radio Ablation,
Have you heard of the gamma knife?
It can cut within nanometers and the hazards are small”
He said he had to take the gamble
Couldn’t bear the slow decline
A year on I see him,
He sits in quiet solitude
And holds out a paper
Beethoven’s playing the moonlight sonata
Can you hear?
Mario is walking to the class. In other times he would look all the faces around him. He would evaluate them and he would make inferences about their life, about why they act the way they do, how they end up like that, but not today. Today he is thinking about his future, is the only thing that cross his mind. He is looking to the empty. Even the memory of Samantha´s tender look has gone off his thoughts.
He took a while to get to the class. He is finally there and decides to wait in a corner to confront her . All his medicine classmates look at him in a pity way. Mario ignores all of that. His only thought right now is his teacher. Samantha is at a tree located 50 steps from him. She was looking to her friend when in an instant she turns her head and looks directly at Mario with her deep and black eyes. Mario flips his head. He is yelling inside him. In all his life he has never flipped his head when a girl look at him . Why he did that now? He tries to focus on what matters now. A friend get close and ask him “Are you nervous?”. “No, I am excited” Mario says. “Excited? Are you nuts if you don´t answer correctly the questions you are going to fail this class and lose a year” his friend says. “Yes” say Mario smiling.
Suddenly, the teacher appears crossing the hallway. Mario look directly at her eyes. She get close to him and says “If you apologizes in front of all the class right now, we don´t have to do this”. Mario says “I will never apologize”.
Inside the classroom, the teacher orders to Mario to pass in front of the class. “Mario has questioned my methods of teaching. I will make him three questions, if he mistakes the answers he will get a zero on this class, but if he answers all the questions correctly I will accept my mistake and will change my methods of teaching. Are you ready Mario?”. “Yes” Mario says.
Samantha is in the middle of the classroom. Her beautiful black eyes make that Mario feels a little nervous. While the teacher prepares the book ,Mario remembers the incident. The teacher had put them in groups of three. She asked one of the members of the group one question about the class of Biochemistry. If he doesn´t answered correctly the question the group would have a zero. Mario always studied all the chapters, and all the questions the teacher asked he knowed them. He accumulated 3 zeros in that class and in front of all the students he said that this was wrong. All his fellow students were surprised. This teacher was the most strict in the campus and no one has never said something about her methods of teaching. She said to Mario that he has to prove her that she was wrong. She would make him 3 questions about proteins.
The teacher is ready and asks the first question. “Name the three essential aminoacids that the body uses as source of energy in starvation”. Mario answers immediately “isoleucine, leucine and valine.” The teacher looks at Mario´s eyes and says “Are you sure?”. “Yes” Mario says. The teacher looks at the window and makes the next question “What is the only aminoacid that is essential and no essential?” the teacher asks him. Mario answers “Arginine”. The teacher looks at a sheet of a paper in the desk and smiles , Mario looks at the class, he noticed that outside the class, students of other semesters are watching inside. “Last question. Mention the four enzymes that produce gout when they doesn´t function normally.” “Four? Four?”,the class murmur something that Mario already knows, the principal book of this class only mention three regulatory enzymes. The teacher smiles and Mario answers “PRPP synthetase, glutamine PRPP amidotransferase, HGPRT and …glucose 6 phosphatase” . The teacher´s look changed. “Correct. You can sit”. No one could believe it. The teacher accepts that her methods were wrong. All are surprised.
Mario feels great, his friend asks him how he knowed that last enzyme, and Mario says that he studied all the books in the library even the book that the teacher studied when she was in medicine school. Samantha who sits close of Mario flips his head and smiles to him. With the confidence earned he returns the smile.
This story was written by Irvin Iván Estrada Hernández
Mario is walking to the class. In other times he would look all the faces around him. He would evaluate them and he would make inferences about their life, about why they act the way they do, how they end up like that, but not today. Today he is thinking about his future, is the only thing that cross his mind. He is looking to the empty. Even the memory of Samantha´s tender look has gone off his thoughts.
He took a while to get to the class. He is finally there and decides to wait in a corner to confront her . All his medicine classmates look at him in a pity way. Mario ignores all of that. His only thought right now is his teacher. Samantha is at a tree located 50 steps from him. She was looking to her friend when in an instant she turns her head and looks directly at Mario with her deep and black eyes. Mario flips his head. He is yelling inside him. In all his life he has never flipped his head when a girl look at him . Why he did that now? He tries to focus on what matters now. A friend get close and ask him “Are you nervous?”. “No, I am excited” Mario says. “Excited? Are you nuts if you don´t answer correctly the questions you are going to fail this class and lose a year” his friend says. “Yes” say Mario smiling.
Suddenly, the teacher appears crossing the hallway. Mario look directly at her eyes. She get close to him and says “If you apologizes in front of all the class right now, we don´t have to do this”. Mario says “I will never apologize”.
Inside the classroom, the teacher orders to Mario to pass in front of the class. “Mario has questioned my methods of teaching. I will make him three questions, if he mistakes the answers he will get a zero on this class, but if he answers all the questions correctly I will accept my mistake and will change my methods of teaching. Are you ready Mario?”. “Yes” Mario says.
Samantha is in the middle of the classroom. Her beautiful black eyes make that Mario feels a little nervous. While the teacher prepares the book ,Mario remembers the incident. The teacher had put them in groups of three. She asked one of the members of the group one question about the class of Biochemistry. If he doesn´t answered correctly the question the group would have a zero. Mario always studied all the chapters, and all the questions the teacher asked he knowed them. He accumulated 3 zeros in that class and in front of all the students he said that this was wrong. All his fellow students were surprised. This teacher was the most strict in the campus and no one has never said something about her methods of teaching. She said to Mario that he has to prove her that she was wrong. She would make him 3 questions about proteins.
The teacher is ready and asks the first question. “Name the three essential aminoacids that the body uses as source of energy in starvation”. Mario answers immediately “isoleucine, leucine and valine.” The teacher looks at Mario´s eyes and says “Are you sure?”. “Yes” Mario says. The teacher looks at the window and makes the next question “What is the only aminoacid that is essential and no essential?” the teacher asks him. Mario answers “Arginine”. The teacher looks at a sheet of a paper in the desk and smiles , Mario looks at the class, he noticed that outside the class, students of other semesters are watching inside. “Last question. Mention the four enzymes that produce gout when they doesn´t function normally.” “Four? Four?”,the class murmur something that Mario already knows, the principal book of this class only mention three regulatory enzymes. The teacher smiles and Mario answers “PRPP synthetase, glutamine PRPP amidotransferase, HGPRT and …glucose 6 phosphatase” . The teacher´s look changed. “Correct. You can sit”. No one could believe it. The teacher accepts that her methods were wrong. All are surprised.
Mario feels great, his friend asks him how he knowed that last enzyme, and Mario says that he studied all the books in the library even the book that the teacher studied when she was in medicine school. Samantha who sits close of Mario flips his head and smiles to him. With the confidence earned he returns the smile.