Elegantly Random

A question of earning.

If you haven't already read the fascinating article The Shadow Scholar on The Chronicle of Higher Education's website, you really need to go check it out right now. No, seriously. This isn't just some geeky something or other for those of us who work in higher ed, although that's how I first heard about it. This is an article written by a guy who works for a custom-essay company, making his living helping students cheat their way to bachelor's, master's and even doctoral degrees. And it is truly alarming.

I'd like to point out several things about this article. I attended a small liberal arts college in Ohio, where I studied English, music and theater. I knew almost all of my professors, and most of them I studied with repeatedly, taking as many as 5 or 6 classes from the same person. Those professors knew me, and they knew my writing. They would have known if I turned in a paper that wasn't my work. I whole-heartedly believe that. From the article...

"For those of you who have ever mentored a student through the writing of a dissertation, served on a thesis-review committee, or guided a graduate student through a formal research process, I have a question: Do you ever wonder how a student who struggles to formulate complete sentences in conversation manages to produce marginally competent research? How does that student get by you?"

I find myself pondering the same question. I can understand how, at a larger university where a student in a given class might be one of two or three hundred, a professor might not realize that an essay was plagiarized or ghost-written, but at least at my college, I am pretty sure this would have been tough to get away with. 

But for me, the blame shouldn't necessarily fall on the author of the paper, though I would question his or her sense of ethics. I don't believe it's actually illegal to write papers for someone. I'm not even sure that it's illegal to ask someone to write a paper for you, although it certainly would be a breach of most any school's honor code. But I wonder, if you are a doctor or a lawyer or hold some other title reliant on various advanced degrees, and you didn't actually do the work...is THAT illegal? Is it illegal for someone to collect money for services if they didn't really do the work that would prove they are competent to hold their job title?

Recently, I was discussing the whole issue of advanced degrees with several friends. We all agreed that nowadays, in many circles, just having a bachelor's degree is deemed inadequate - not just by employers, but by our peers. Those of us who haven't gone on to earn further degrees often feel judged or looked down on by our friends who have more than one plaque on their walls. But the members of the conversation were divided on the real merit of these degrees. Many of us felt that for those who aren't pursuing a career in a highly specified field, on the job experience and supplemental training can be just as valid, if not more so, than a master's degree. My husband and I both work in communications, and neither of us has ever felt the need for another degree, though we both love school. The return on investment is pretty small in our cases, and so it's unlikely that either of us will go back to school unless it's purely for our personal edification (re: getting a master's in English lit for fun).

I find this article really maddening when I think about the number of times I've gone around and around about graduate school, and wondered if I would be more respected, higher paid, happier, etc if I had an MBA - a degree I have zero interest in - or some other master's degree...and then I think about the number of people who have those degrees and do make more money than me who maybe didn't even write their own damned work. 

A fun anecdote - I've never cheated on a paper, but I remember a time during my senior year of college when I was extremely swamped - working on two plays at the same time and finishing up a very full semester - and I turned in an egregiously sub-par paper in one of my lit classes. The professor of that class was one of my favorites, and also my advisor, and he was a huge fan of mine. I had been too busy to really do a very good job, but I knew that he liked me and figured I'd get my normal A with very little effort, so I cockily turned in the assignment having spent about 25% of the time I normally would have writing it.

When I got my paper back a few days later, it had no marks on it. Unusual. Even though I always wrote A papers, this professor always made a point to highlight certain things he thought were very good, or ask me questions, etc in the margins. No marks. On the very last page, in red ink, he'd simply written a C- and the line, "If any other student had turned this paper in, I'd have given it an A."

I remember being so angry at the time, but not really at my professor - he was right. He was holding me to a higher standard - the standard I had set for myself. He was also teaching me a lesson - that if I wasn't willing to put any effort into my assignment, then neither should he be.

I'd just like to take a minute to say thank you to all the teachers who taught me so well over the years - Lucy Schall, Andy Price, Michael Olin-Hitt, Doug Hendel, Rudy Roggenkamp and so many more. Thanks for making me accountable to myself.

Tree hugger in training.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Earth recently. I can't really pinpoint one specific thing that's causing me to do this, but it's probably a combination of moving to Seattle and being amongst the granola hippies of the northwest, downsizing to an urban lifestyle, and the reading and viewing material in our house lately.

Jay has been consumed with the works of Michael Pollen (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food). I've been reading Bill Bryson's science 101 review, A Short History of Nearly Everything. We've also been watching Life on the Discovery channel, among other things. When you get HD, you suddenly find yourself watching a lot of Discovery channel. The icing on the cake? We sat down and watched the horrifying documentary Food, Inc. 

Because of all these things, the conversations lately in our home have been circling around issues of food, the health of the planet, sustainability, animal and vegetable farming in America, the fishing industry, and more. And let's just say we've both found these conversations a little bit scary and a lot sobering.

Basically, here's the issue. I think humans are very self-absorbed. For one reason or another, be it spiritual or scientific or technological, most people think we're the top dog, the culmination of millions of years of evolution of life on this planet (or the magical work of God and his embodiment on Earth). But reading some things about the history of the universe has reminded me what teeny, tiny specks on an infinite radar we are, and it all feels pretty presumptuous to me. To quote Bryson,

"It is almost impossible for us whose time on Earth is limited to a breezy few decades to appreciate how remote in time from us the Cambrian outburst was. If you could fly backwards into the past at a rate of one year per second, it would take you about half an hour to reach the time of Christ, and a little over three weeks to get back to the beginnings of human life. But it would take you twenty years to reach the dawn of the Cambrian period."

And the Cambrian Explosion wasn't the dawn of life, either. It was merely the moment (in a geological moment, meaning millions of years), 530 million years ago, of progression from earlier lifeforms to more complex ones. Think about it. We've only been here for the blip of an eye. And we could easily vanish in another blip, and likely will at some point.

And the Earth will probably go on, as it has in the past when other things have occurred to wipe out a species. But all that said, we're kinda fucking it up. We're escalating things to a level that's a little scary, for us and for our other friends who share our space. And I'm sorry to go all touchy-feely granola girl on you, but I kinda feel bad about it. Two years ago, when I first really found out about the realities of farming in America, I was pretty horrified, but you know, it's hard to make big changes. Something has to happen, a light bulb has to go off in your head. And the more I know, the less I can ignore the truth, which is that humans are raping the ever-living shit out of the planet.

And regardless of what that means long-term, after I'm dead, it sucks for me NOW. It sucks to realize that the food you eat, be it animal or vegetable, isn't good for you, in fact may be poisonous. It sucks to realize that the air we breathe is poisonous because of all the cars we drive and the lead we create. It's not fun to open your eyes, and so most people don't. You know the offshore drilling crisis has a lot of people angry, because a bunch of politicians said it was okay to drill offshore. Why anyone ever would believe that, I don't know. Use your head. You are drilling for oil inside a huge ecosystem. What could go wrong here?

So here's where we are, Jay and I. Our eyes are open. We're making some changes around here, talking about some more things. We already eat healthy, for example, but we're upping our commitment to eating non-processed foods. Do you know how hard it is to avoid processed foods? It's hard. We're talking about reusable goods - I'm looking into reusable feminine products for my "time of the month." We're cutting back on the meat we eat, and we're going to attempt to eat as much meat as possible that's been raised sustainably. We already ditched a car, and now we only use a tank or less of gas per month. We moved into a smaller, more energy-efficient abode. Granola? Maybe, but it's the right thing to do.

Michael Pollen's mantra in his books is, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." He doesn't mean be a vegetarian - in fact, he supports eating meat in small amounts. But what meat are you choosing? How has it been farmed? How were the animals treated? Was it even good for you? Same with the plants you put in your body - were the doused in pesticides? Chances are, they were. What resources were used in order to bring you your food? Pollen says food is the most important thing you buy, so spend more on it, not less. Buy local. Aim for quality, and also for integrity.

We'll never be able to get it all right - at least, not anytime soon. But our eyes are open, and we're trying.

Word nerd.

I'm a big nerd. We all know this. And I was once an English major. Literature was more my focus than linguistics or grammar, and I'm certainly human and make mistakes, but I still can't take it when people can't tell the difference between "it's" and "its" or "their," "there" and "they're."

In addition to my impatience for grammatically-challenged users of the English language, another pet peeve: the social embrace and perpetuation of bastardized pronunciation. Put another way - entire societies saying a word incorrectly all the time. And not realizing it.

I could go on a tangent now about how the English language is on its deathbed. Because when words are pronounced the wrong way by enough people, we just accept it and it becomes the new norm. It's so very American, isn't it? To just say a word however we feel like it, trusting that everyone around us will just go with it and ultimately CHANGE IT IN THE DICTIONARY. *sigh*

Let's look at a few words that NO ONE knows how to pronounce anymore, starting with a few that are still absolutely black-and-white as far as pronunciation and then continuing on to the ones that are becoming lost causes.

Simple mistakes: grocery
Correct pronunciation: groh-suh-ree
Bastardized pronunciations: grohs-ree, grohsh-ree

I think this one is just born of sheer laziness. I'll even find myself saying it the wrong way if I don't stop and think about it and do what's right. Because not paying attention to your pronunciation makes you a sheep! A stupid sheep with ugly wool!

Inexplicable addition of sounds: realtor
Correct pronunciation: ree-uhl-ter
Bastardized pronunciation: ree-luh-ter

Friends. Look at the letters, okay? There's no "uh" in between the L and the T. There just isn't. This is a pretty simple one, so let's just try it together a few times now, okay? Deep breath and...Real...ter. REALTOR.

Sheer disregard for rules: coupon
Correct pronunciation: coo-pon
Bastardized pronunciation: kyoo-pon

Coo. COOOOO! Coo like a dove, friends. Embrace that gentle, soothing sound and then stick a pon at the end. COOOPON! COOOOOOOOOPON. Not kyoooo-pon, you hick.

The curse of the hick: vehicle
Correct pronunciation: vee-i-kuhl
Bastardized pronunciations: vee-hik-uhl

There's really no nice way to say this, but only two types of people say "vee-hik-uhl" - people trying to sound really intelligent (like the ones who pronounce the word human "yoo-man" - so, when the h belongs there, you don't say it, and when it doesn't you do...LOGICAL) and complete hicks. The word is "vee-i-kuhl." And yet there does seem to be an explanation for the error. Let's look at what Dictionary has to say about it:

Because the primary stress in vehicle is on the first syllable, the [h] in the second syllable tends to disappear: [vee-i-kuhl]. A pronunciation with primary stress on the second syllable and a fully pronounced [h] is usually considered nonstandard: [vee-hik-uhl]. In the adjective vehicular, where the primary stress is normally on the second syllable, the [h] is always pronunced.

Did you follow that, folks? Pronouncing the word like "vee-hik-uhl" is considered nonstandard. In other words, IT'S WRONG. Unless you're saying "vehicular" which most people are not. So stop being a hick (or a jerk) and ditch the H!

Lost causes: February
Correct pronunciation: feb-roo-er-ee
Bastardized pronuciations: feb-yoo-er-ee; feb-oo-er-ee

This is a tricky one - it's tough to achieve the double-R thing. It takes work. Lazy speakers over the years have changed this word almost irrevocably into "feb-yoo-er-ee" - I suspect (and so does dictionary.com) that's largely influenced by the month of "jan-yoo-er-ee." I am sad to say I doubt we'll ever be able to teach the American public to properly pronounce this word.

These are just a few of the words that tick me off just about every time I hear them botched by friends, coworkers and passers-by. How about you? Which frequently abused words just make your skin crawl?

I hate you, week.

I think some weeks are sent directly from the hottest corners of Hades to try our very souls. This is one of those weeks.

Jay is out west this week, so I'm home alone with the doggie. I'm directing a children's play which goes up next weekend, and this week is consequently FULL of rehearsals. I'm also cat-sitting for a friend this week, so I'm not getting home till about 11 pm most nights. 

Yesterday (Monday) was a really irritating day because of the length of it but also because, at 1:30-ish, I learned that I have a particularly nasty virus on my work computer which rendered all productivity impossible for the remainder of the day. I spent the afternoon waiting for our very busy IT department to return my call, trying to fix it myself (to no avail) and doing some office cleanup, but it was worthless. When I heard back from IT at the end of the day and learned that it might take several hours to fix the thing, I decided to work from home on Tuesday so I could actually get stuff done.

SO. I get home last night, quickly scarf something and I head to bed to pass out.

At 4 IN THE MORNING, I wake up to a god-awful noise - some kind of alarm is going off in my house. My dog is panicking. I locate the box making the noise, and it's something on the ceiling with no purpose that I am aware of. It's also got no switch of any kind to stop the dreaded noise, and so I go out to the garage to get Jay's toolbox to crack open the thing and investigate. Please understand, it's still blaring at a decibel that is indescribable. I procure the tools and begin to unscrew the screw that holds this thing to the ceiling. The shell then falls in my face, along with plaster and dust. Inside, there is STILL no switch of any kind, just dubious-looking wiring that I'm hesitant to yank out at 4 am and electrocute myself. The dog, she is panicking.

So. It's been ten minutes, I'm half deaf, and I decide I have no choice but to call Jay and ask him if he knows what to do. It's 1 am out in Seattle (1:30, rather), and so it takes several tries before he picks up the phone. When he does, he is understandably alarmed (no pun intended). He walks me through opening the circuit breaker and such, and I fool around with it, dodging palmetto bugs prancing merrily across the garage floor and me in my bare feet and beginning to feel somewhat hysterical. Nothing happens. I go back in the house defeated and reattach the bleeping machine - and it magically shuts up. It's now 5:25 am.

I'm breathing a tentative sigh of relief now - maybe I can go back to bed? Maybe? Did I mention my period is all messed up and I've been having it for seriously 8 days now? So I'm crampy, I've had a bad Monday, I'm tired - I want to SLEEP. I head back to bed, I get in - and all of a sudden, I hear beeping. BEEPING. I get up and it takes me several minutes to LOCATE the beeping, until finally I trace it to our defunct security system, which to my knowledge has never ever worked. (Don't tell anyone, the last thing I need is someone breaking into my house!) The last beeping alarm was a blaring, nonstop, skull-breaking beep - an incessant, ear-splitting, cannot-stay-in-the-house-with-it sort of beep. THIS beep is more of a soft, quiet, intermittent, nagging kind of beep, with spaces in between each tone juuust long enough to make you think it's over when it's assuredly not.

I open the panel up on the little alarm system doohickey and there is astoundingly little there to help me. I start pushing buttons and nothing happens, and so I start hating my life a little bit. And then I get out the phone book and begin looking up electricians - as if any of them will come to my house at 5:30 am. I decide I'm just going to go to bed and try to sleep through this horrible beeping, but on a final whim I hit a random button on the little panel and, lo and behold, the beeping stops. I think I seriously shed a couple of tears of joy at that moment.

Seriously. This kind of stuff only happens to me. You know what's happening to JAY, the magical alien, this week? He's getting to work and explore in two awesome new cities, look at water and boats and ginormous mountains, eat awesome food, stay in a swanky hotel, and get upgraded to first-class. Ain't that always the way of it?

Belated!

Oh, my goodness! In all the hustle and bustle of daily life, I completely forgot to celebrate this blog's birthday! It turned one year old on March 4. Sorry, bloggie. I still love you, baby. No, shhh, shhhh...it's ok, baby. Don't speak, it'll ruin the moment.

...I think I just creeped myself out.

In the past year of blogging, I've covered everything from the election to babies to knitting to traveling the world. I scolded Octo-Mom, exercised my right to the shameless criticism of organized religion, blasted Generation Y and mocked the tween sparkle love-fest surrounding Twilight the Movie. I droned on and on about fitness and health, World of Warcraft, and the pursuit of the ever-elusive bliss, and hopefully it was judgmental and interesting and funny - at least most of the time.

Because it's Friday, and because it's my birthday (kinda), I thought I would take this moment to share with you some of my favorite posts from the past year. If you're a new reader, I hope these don't turn you away forever!

One last thing - if there's anything in particular that you loved/hated this year on this website, let me know. I'd love to know what things were the most interesting or most offensive to you, etc. Feedback is grand, and I love going through the emails and comments I receive. Thank you for reading!

A Look Back...

May 3, 2008
Something to believe in.

April 11, 2008
Actually...

April 29, 2008
The perfect prom you'll never remember.

May 6, 2008
The Empire Strikes Barack

May 15, 2008
Cali gets it right.

June 11, 2008
Where I draw the line.

June 18, 2008
To meat or not to meat.

July 2, 2008
Post-coital cigarette, anyone?

July 10, 2008
Like, what's a cassette tape?

July 11, 2008
If you're a man, and you work in an office with women...

August 25, 2008
For the love of fugly...

August 26, 2008
The Huxtable Factor

September 10, 2008
Worse Than Now: Tudor England

September 17, 2008
This one was inevitable.

September 24, 2008
Go ahead, get mad.

October 6, 2008
Apparently, Jesus hates Halloween.

October 16, 2008
Palin as President!

October 17, 2008
Worse Than Now: The Salem Witch Trials

November 3, 2008
In good company.

November 10, 2008
Did you know it's Christmas?

November 17, 2008
Missed congeniality.

December 16, 2008
Hope you like crap...

January 5, 2009
Following the hell out of my bliss.

January 27, 2009
Don't get your panties in a wad over this one, but...

February 10, 2009
This is why you're fat.

February 18, 2009
Viva Gen X!

How not to get a job.

Subject line: employment

Hi,

I'm currently seeking employment. Are their any positions available with your department. I graduate in May from XXXX with a degree in: mass media communications. I've interned with Fox-Charlotte and Charlotte Magazine. Any help, jobs or information that you can provide would be greatly appreciated. If you would like a copy of my resume, I would be glad to send it your way.

Thanks,

XXX

I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I've certainly never begun an inquiry letter with "Hi."

To write or not to write...there is no question.

In case you haven't already noticed, I'm a pretty opinionated gal. And most of my friends seem to like this about me. Although I tend to be rather vocal about my opinions, it's because I crave conversation and debate about things that are important to me. I want to hear what you think - even if we disagree.

Last week, it would seem that my writing cost me a friend of 10 years. This person sent me a message via a social networking site to tell me that he found my writing tough to read and clearly biased. He told me, and I quote, to "give it a rest already." I was really, really offended by this - because he knows me, and nothing I write should come as any surprise to him whatsoever. Furthermore, as much as I might disagree with someone's politics or religion or any other issue, I would never tell a friend to stop writing or talking about things they feel passionately about. Ever.

So I responded to him by saying, "Look - if you don't like what I write, then don't read it." And he promptly de-friended me. As in, removed me as a friend on this social networking site and blocked me so that I can't send him a message. (Are we 17?!) I emailed him, but have heard nothing in response. This wasn't the kind of "friend" who you haven't talked to in 7 years and they found you online. This was a guy I was close to - had his number in my cell phone and we talked semi-regularly and had what I considered to be a close friendship over the years.

I'm hurt. I'm shocked that something I wrote would cause one of my friends to un-friend me. I'm even more dismayed that he didn't feel it was worth talking to me about. We never even engaged in a political conversation, so I don't even know for sure what it was that offended him so deeply. Maybe nothing. But it's a really shallow, heartless thing to do when you've been friends with someone for years. Seriously? You don't want to be my friend anymore because you're voting for McCain and in the past 3 months I've written...what, 5, 6 blogs about my views? Seriously?!

This makes me all the more appreciative that I do have so many people in my life with whom I can discuss issues and respectfully disagree. If people only talk to those who agree with them, nothing in this world will ever get solved. We have to keep trying to find middle ground, to hear each other's opposing views with open hearts and minds. And I will not be told what I can and cannot write about. I'm not going to silence myself on subjects that matter to me.

Post Script: I just want to say that, prior to now, the subject I've written about that has had the most people upset? Coach bags. Seriously - I got emails from people I don't even know. Defending Coach bags. What's that say about the state of the world? :) Heeee!

The worlds' gratest nation, is *#cking illiterate.

I work in communications at a private university. I love my job, and I love getting to work with students. What I don't love is the daily reminder that people around me are completely lacking in basic writing skills. You would think that in higher education I'd be surrounded by the smartest and the best. Sure, there are a ton of smart people here, and I respect everyone, bla bla bla. But I'm alarmed each and every day at the stuff I see - everything from shoddy grammar to incomplete sentences to downright confounding, near-illiterate writing. It's resumes, it's term papers, it's emails, it's printed collateral that's distributed to students and to the outside world - it's everywhere. The lack of writing capability around me is staggering.

You wouldn't believe the things I see coming from these students. I have been handed countless resumes and cover letters to consider or to distribute that I could have written better at age 10 than these seniors can whip up. And it's not just here at school, or just the kids - it's absolutely everywhere. Is writing really that difficult? Am I missing something here? Is an apostrophe really that tough to conquer?

I get really irate when people tell me it's just because I was an English major that I notice all this stuff. I'm sorry, no. By the time I was an English major, I could already write, and you don't study grammar in college. Idiots. As an English major, you read and write and analyze and research, but it's not like we go over how to make words plural.

The thing is, just as basic math skills are essential for every single person, so are basic writing skills. When you send someone an email or a letter, oftentimes that's the first impression of you they're getting. I find it incredible that we allow children in this company to grow up without a mastery of the English language. It's insanity. Don't even get me started on how most college kids have never picked up a book for fun in their lives.

Sure, we all make typos, that's human. But I can tell the difference between a typo and you being a total dipshit. You shouldn't send something without making sure it's right - and no, Spell Check isn't always enough. Read and re-read before sending or submitting something, because I'm here to tell you - when I get an email from someone that looks like it was written by a dyslexic second grader? I'm judging you. Hard. Master's degree or no.

So, in short, people are forgettable.

Yesterday, Spragg and I had a long discussion over instant messenger about a book she's reading called 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl by Daniel Pinchbeck. The Publishers Weekly review says the following:

Pinchbeck...has set out to create an "extravagant thought experiment" centering around the Mayan prophecy that 2012 will bring about the end of the world as we know it, "the conclusion of a vast evolutionary cycle, and the potential gateway to a higher level of manifestation." More specifically, Pinchbeck's claim is that we are in the final stages of a fundamental global shift from a society based on materiality to one based on spirituality.

So we got to talking all kinds of crazy deep thoughts about how there'll likely be some kind of moment of reckoning, so to speak, when the Earth will go ahead and solve all the problems that we humans have created with our overpopulation and mistreatment of the planet, etcetera. For instance, everyone's favorite national park, Yellowstone, is guaranteed to basically blow at any time due to all the volcanic activity below the ground (here's an article about it). Something like that could wipe out life on most of the planet, theoretically.

Ironically enough, Jay and I were winding down last night and stumbled upon this program on the History Channel called Life After People, which basically used computer simulation to show what the Earth might look like at various points in time after humans have ceased to exist.

This show was simultaneously fascinating and terrifying. It's mind-blowing to realize that in the greater scheme of the lifespan of our planet, our presence is a mere blip on the radar, so to speak. Even more mind-boggling was the evidence the show gave that, despite all of our amazing advancements and inventions, after we are gone, almost everything we have created will have crumbled and vanished in just a few hundred to a thousand years. Looking for an even bigger head rush? The Pyramids will likely last longer than any structure we have created during the common era. That could all be pretty depressing if you let it get to you, but take heart - it's pretty likely the Earth would basically swallow up all that we've built and reset itself as an even healthier ecosystem. The oceans would flourish. New York City would once again be made up of streams and mountains. That's pleasant.

If you want to catch the show, it's airing again Sunday at 3 p.m. on the History Channel. Then you can join me in discussing the cosmos and life as we know it.

You, too, can be a Hemingway...

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the way the internet has empowered people to live out their dreams of greatness. Take this blog, for example. I've always wanted to be a published writer - well, what easier method is there than signing up for an inexpensive website, where I'm free to write to my heart's content? Or say you've always dreamed of having your own business, but the costs (and risks) involved in the startup are just too worrisome? Thanks to the internet, you can live out your dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur, virtually risk-free.

It's a beautiful thing, this ability to hop online and tackle your dreams in a virtually fail-proof environment. What's the worst that happens? Only a handful of friends read your blog - but you still have something impressive to call your own, and you're paying less for it than you would to see a couple of movies at the theatre.

The downside? Everyone wants to be a star! One thing I've noticed is that the internet seems to bring out the inner Hemingway or (if we're being honest) Nicholas Sparks in people who you might never have expected to ever take up a pen. Everyone wants to be a writer - and they can. But the sad fact is, not everyone should be a writer, or an artist, or a businessman.

So is the internet in effect cheapening these noble pursuits? Are we going to be forced to sift through unprecedented amounts of crap in order to find the gems? Maybe. But for now, this amateur writer/artist/crafter/communicator will revel in the possibilities - at least until there's the possibility of real, tangible success. And as I've said before - I'd settle for being just the next Nicholas Sparks. That guy? He makes a lot of money.