They said it, we read it — this new section will include quoted text from readings that the Candor editors have encountered in the previous month and considered wisely stated/thought-provoking.

The fight is being waged on all fronts, and the most insidious idea employed to break down society is an undefined equalitarianism. That this concept does not make sense even in the most elementary applications has proved no deterrent to its spread, and we will have something to say later about modern man’s growing incapacity for logic. An American political writer of the last century, confronted with the statement that all men are created free and equal, asked whether it would not be more accurate to say that no man was ever created free and no two men ever created equal. Such hardheadedness would today be mistaken for frivolity. Thomas Jefferson, after his long apostleship to radicalism, made it the labor of his old age to create an educational system which would be a means of sorting out according to gifts and attainments.

Such equalitarianism is harmful because it always presents itself as a redress of injustice, whereas in truth it is the very opposite. I would mention here the fact, obvious to any candid observer, that “equality” is found most often in the mouths of those engaged in artful self-promotion. These secretly cherish the ladder to high designs but find that they can mount the lower rungs more easily by making use of the catchword. We do not necessarily grudge them their rise, but the concept they foster is fatal to the harmony of the world.   – Richard M. Weaver in Ideas Have Consequences, 1948.

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At state conventions in the North and West, brutal altercations broke out, swiftly dispelling Taft’s hope for a high-minded campaign based on the issues. In Michigan, Taft’s forces secured a victory after what one newspaper described as “the worst riots that ever occurred in a political gathering in the state.” More than 1,800 men arrived at the Bay City Armory to claim 1,400 seats. The Taft men, the New York Times reported, were admitted first and filled the hall “despite the frantic efforts of the Roosevelt men to gain entrance through side doors, windows, and the basement.” With the aid of the state militia, delegates without proper credentials were “seized bodily” and thrown to the back of the crowd. Eventually, four hundred Roosevelt supporters were admitted, and “then the fireworks began.” When the chairman of the Taft delegation attempted to open the meeting, the Colonel’s men “set up a roar,” making it impossible for him to continue. One Roosevelt advocate rushed the platform only to be flung backward, landing atop the newspapermen’s table. More than a hundred men joined the fight before police “charged on the combatants and restored order with their clubs.” — Doris Kearns Goodwin in the Bully Pulpit (2013), describing the Republican Party primary race of the 1912 presidential election.

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In resolving the paradox of how a species smart enough to have discovered the Big Bang, DNA, and vaccines could believe so much superstition and nonsense, I came to realize that institutions were vital—communities that run by truth-enhancing rules, like liberal democracies with their checks and balances, the judicial system with its adversarial process and presumption of innocence, science with its empirical testing and peer review, responsible journalism with its editing, fact-checking, and source-verification, and academia, with its commitment to free inquiry and open debate. Ideally, they allow the flaws in one person’s reasoning to be corrected by others. When universities are suffocated by cancel culture and other kinds of repression of intellectual freedom, we are disabling our only known means for approaching the truth, and sapping the credibility of the institutions that people must trust if they are to replace their superstitions and folk beliefs with our best understanding of reality.  — Steven Pinker, Heterodoxy  Academy interview on Feb 8, 2022

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Over the past half-century, blue collar workers across the country have seen their plants shutter, their salaries stagnate, and a whole way of life upended. That’s because of automation, globalization, China, and the rising cost of American labor tied up with all of the above.

Alongside this, the Democratic Party has gradually abandoned its historical commitments to the working- and middle-classes: good schools, safe neighborhoods, and, most important, social mobility. Instead it has embraced a progressive politics that jibes with the sensibilities of wealthy coastal elites—and has alienated pretty much everyone else. Unsurprisingly, a lot of everyone elses are rushing toward the GOP.  A Bloomberg News analysis from 2020 found that truckers, construction workers, carpenters, builders, electricians, cops, mechanics, and maintenance employees were among the occupations most likely to give to Trump. (By contrast, Biden got the lion’s share of teachers, professors, therapists, lawyers, HR department staff, finance professionals, and bankers.) — Baty Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor of Newsweek; appeared February 8 in Common Sense.

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“Emerging Voices,” designed to encourage youthful participation, lives on, but Candor will now publish these contributions in sections of the journal where they best apply. Scroll down to see previous submissions.

On June 18, 2021, actor Anthony Mackie caused a Twitter ruckus by stating in an interview with Variety magazine that men can be friends with other men. If you think that’s an obvious fact, you’re in the minority, at least among the angry users who replied to the 2:01 tweet linking the article.

The context: Mackie portrayed the character Sam Wilson, AKA the superhero Falcon, in Marvel franchise movies such as Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Endgame. He most recently reprised this role in the television show The Falcon and Winter Soldier, which focuses on Wilson’s relationship with Bucky Barnes, AKA The Winter Soldier (portrayed by Sebastian Stan) after the disappearance of their close friend Steve Rogers. And while the purpose of Variety’s interview was Wilson’s character and not his relationship with Barnes, discussion inevitably wound its way there:

The other half of Sam’s journey on the show is the transformation of his relationship with Bucky Barnes… from simmering resentment to a lasting and profound friendship. That translated into several scenes of emotional and physical familiarity between Sam and Bucky that some fans interpreted as a budding romance — similar to how some Marvel fans desired Bucky and the first Captain America, Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers, to be a couple.

Mackie, however, resisted this interpretation:

“There’s so many things that people latch on to with their own devices to make themselves relevant and rational,” he says. “The idea of two guys being friends and loving each other in 2021 is a problem because of the exploitation of homosexuality . . . You can’t do that anymore, because something as pure and beautiful as homosexuality has been exploited by people who are trying to rationalize themselves.”

The wording of “trying to rationalize themselves,” in regards to the LGBTQ+ community, was unfortunate, especially since the article was published during Pride Month. The phrase “exploitation of homosexuality” also proved problematic, even though Mackie appears to have used the term as a synonym for queerbaiting, which is the process of media hinting at homosexual relationships to draw in viewers only to never fulfill those relationships. Fans of the Marvel movies and shows quickly voiced their displeasure: 

“marginalized people just wanna feel welcome, accepted, safe in this world, and Anthony Mackie reduces it to them wanting to feel ‘relevant and rational’? christ.”

“I don’t understand. When someone is starving and licking crumbs, the solution isn’t to take the crumbs away and shame them for eating them, its to give the person an actual meal.”

“Just let people think what they want to think. Why do you have to confirm or deny any possible relationship? Isn’t art supposed to be left to interpretation?”

[Quotes formatted according to original tweets.]

The third commentator raises a valid point: if art is open to interpretation, then is viewing Sam and Bucky’s relationship as homosexual really so awful? Why not let viewers see what they want to see regardless of how the relationship was intended? The answer is this: because constantly and consistently viewing any kind of male relationship in media as romantic rather than platonic contributes to toxic masculinity, which in turn debilitates intentional LGBTQ+ representation. 

Definitions of “toxic masculinity” differ, but it is essentially the concept that something is not truly masculine or male unless it is aggressive, dominating, unemotional, and overall tough. Think of cavemen, soldiers, and cowboys; think of Al Capone and John Wayne. They are the man’s man, a figure of testosterone, whiskey, and dirt. They are the pinnacle of masculinity, or so dictated by society. By contrast, those who fight against toxic masculinity reject the idea that being masculine—being a man—must conform to these standards. 

If toxic masculinity fights against the concept that “real men” are unemotional and aggressive, then it fights for the idea that men can be caring, nurturing—even “soft,” a quality that has long been anathema to American men. In short, it suggests that what are often seen as feminine qualities can also be found in men without making them any less of a man. And since these qualities are often most obvious in relationships, rejecting toxic masculinity rejects the idea that intimacy between men occurs only in homosexual relationships. For if caring about others and experiencing emotions are no longer verboten, then men can embrace the capacity to form close friendships with other men without fear that such vulnerability would prompt others to view such friendships as homosexual.  

As a result, if men resist forming close friendships with other men because they consider intimacy in terms of sexuality only, it follows that interpreting all close male friendships only harms healthy masculinity and instead perpetuates toxic masculinity. We don’t see fans interpreting nearly the amount of close female friendships as “something more” because such friendships have long been accepted as a normal part of being a woman. Close male friendships, however, do not enjoy that freedom under the reign of toxic masculinity because intimacy is automatically associated with sexuality.

Additionally, willfully misinterpreting how characters are written and portrayed is disrespectful to their creators. One might argue that art, once released to the world, is no longer the property of the artist—be they writer, director, or actor—and can thus be interpreted in any way. But I rebut that this is a juvenile way of consuming media, essentially the equivalent of sticking one’s fingers in their ears and closing their eyes. Bending and twisting fictional relationships to fit one’s desires is no different than trimming down the Mona Lisa to fit on one’s fridge—you could do it, but if you had any respect for the artist, you wouldn’t. 

Desire for more LGBTQ+ representation in media is understandable, especially since these characters are often tokenized or marginalized in shows and movies, and searching for non-heterosexual romance in the dearth of such representation is a rational reaction. But willfully choosing to view male friendships as homosexual does not result in more representation; it simply signals that closeness between men can never be purely platonic and that sensitivity in men always indicates homosexuality. And Mackie addressed this in the interview:

“Something that’s always been very important to me is showing a sensitive masculine figure. There’s nothing more masculine than being a superhero and flying around and beating people up. But there’s nothing more sensitive than having emotional conversations and a kindred spirit friendship with someone that you care about and love.”

In other words, lobby for LGBTQ+ representation and relationships in the media. But don’t make it happen at the expense of friendship. 

Within the odd, fogged over twilight years just before adulthood, the average student is at a crossroads. The life that has been predominantly led by their parents rather than them, under the safety net of those parents’ finances, is largely and very quickly altered. Primary education draws to a close, job opportunities open up, and the great rush of mobility is achieved with a simple standardized driving test. Diploma, Money, Car.

What’s next?

Well, for many, the future is dependent on the past. The stability of life for the young adult in earlier years of life is critically important in the decisions they make in the future. If they spent high school studying, saving, and preparing adequately for college, then the next step may be a simple one: grab a higher education at whatever place they can afford with whatever financial aids and benefits they were able to gather by the time of their high school graduation. Assuming these precautions were made, this type of student probably understands what their interests are, what they excel at, and under what practice they’d like to pursue a degree. Even if someone didn’t put great efforts into these preparations, it likely isn’t too late to apply for government help or loans and chase a career even years after the fact.

For many others, though, the same path might not be so simple or so accessible. Life, the whirl of responsibility and side stories that it is, can complicate the process of a higher education. On top of that, college simply isn’t for everyone, is not accessible to all, and is not what all might desire in the first place. In this instance, the most profitable (and certainly the most inclusive job market) is trade: plumbing, electrical work, general and home construction, and mechanics, to name the most common types. For whatever reason, there’s a general consensus that these jobs are more robotic and less mentally demanding, and not worth the effort required. The result of this thought process is an absence of workers in the trade field and more desperate, more willing employers. Trade is simply in demand, and will always be. As a simple rule of human society, things must be built. Because humans are all that we are, those things will break. A good tradesman who pays the right attention, uses the right kind of common sense, and performs their tasks well can become influential in their field, and make terrific amounts of money from it. Few

people, if anyone, goes into debt to learn a trade, and the skills learned are practical, always needed, and open to those without much experience. If someone is physically able, it isn’t too late.

If passion and risk-taking are more the forte of our hypothetical young adult, entrepreneurship is a high risk, high payout option. Creating a thriving business is not only profitable but also establishes a legacy, and can offer similar paths for future generations of family to follow. In the extreme of these cases, local businesses can become more than that, statewide, regional or nationwide, or even international. Granted, starting a small business with goals that large in mind can be premature and unrealistic, but the possibility to excel is always there. With the advent of the Internet, online marketing options can allow what would otherwise be a small operation into a worldwide phenomenon. It’s not all mom-n-pop shops in the business world, and if you’ve got the right skills for the right people, no matter where they are, money is there to be made. Writing, coding, and other information services are marketable from anywhere, to anywhere. Like trade, these services can be taught and learned for cheap, but might require a degree before entering a less freelance and more professional field.

The problem isn’t getting options, though, it’s picking the right one. One choice may look as endearing as the other, only to fall through when things go awry, either due to poor decisions or poor timing. How will we know that the choices we make today on the path we think is best are choices that we won’t regret twenty years from now? If student loans are the only choice for the degree we’re convinced we need, are they worth paying off for a decade or two? For this, the only advice to offer is to trust yourself to do what you believe is right. Talking with professionals in fields of interest, comparing job demand and annual salary online, and simple discussions with family and friends before major decisions are all necessary. Some believe that there is no reward without risk, but what risk there is should be minimized as much as possible.

Whatever is in question, recklessness is never the answer.

The ​closest approximate weight of a trillion single dollar bills -- our famous cotton duplicates of George Washington packed together, crammed into 44,080 eighteen-wheelers trucking along with 25-ton carrying capacities -- is over 1 million tons.

Like currency, numbers will lose value when too much enters the table at one time. A “million” is impossible to mentally picture. A “billion” less so. The higher we go -- a trillion, a quadrillion, a quintillion, and so on -- the less anyone is actually able to understand. It takes the world’s largest squadron of imaginary eighteen-wheelers to hold our focus on what numbers that high might, but never will, look like. Simply put, we can’t ​see ​what a trillion dollars of debt looks like.

But we can feel it.

1.71 trillion dollars, that more than 1 million tons, is thinned out, diluted, spread over the United States, and pressed down on nearly 45 million people, who will, on average, spend twenty years of their lives relieving it. To find a career, begin a family, begin paying mortgages and monthly rents, to begin the slow process of growing old while only just finishing payments on an education that (hopefully) served them well enough two decades ago to keep them afloat now, is almost comical in an economically advanced society. Especially in a time when some Americans consider the value of a college degree at all, with online courses being so prevalent, run by professionals in the field of study or college professors themselves, generally cheaper and sometimes completely free.

Nonetheless, according to the ​Bureau of Labor Statistics​, a college degree still reigns in the most profit, with about as much as $1,000 average difference between the weekly earnings of those with professional or doctoral degrees and those with only high school diplomas. With that kind of incentive, it remains for high schools in the United States to push for high college preparedness standards. More than half of current high school graduates will be enrolled in college at some point before their mid-twenties, many of them entering the debt cycle before they’ve entered their own apartments.

Now that we know the numbers, we understand that they are drastically high. However, with a bit of research, a lot of time, and a whole heap of hoping, steps can be made by the people and by the government to lessen -- and perhaps one day exterminate -- the stress and consequences of college debt.

Because colleges, both public and private, offer a multitude of scholarships, and the government does much the same thing with financial grants, it is relatively easy for students today to find at

least some help with the unforgiving cost of a higher education. However, some suggest the government take a much larger step forward, offering drastically reduced, or free, tuition for students of public colleges. Part of President Joe Biden’s rumored ten year college relief plan, estimated to cost anywhere from $750 billion to more than $1 trillion, is to cancel out the cost of college for students in household families which produce less than an annual salary of $125,000. While there is as of yet no confirmed cost for this plan, nor a confirmed method of execution, the general idea is to tax the wealthy in greater amounts, and to maximize the middle class.

More radically, some have thrown out the idea of simply cancelling all student loan debt at once, for everyone, as proposed in ​this article from the Roosevelt Institute. Simply stopping the charge of the better part of two trillion dollars is no small feat, though the article claims that the overall macroeconomic impact will be positive, slightly reducing the unemployment rate and exporting stress from household balance sheets into the hands of the federal government.

Is it possible for the American people to trust the government enough to handle another trillion dollars of economic weight and responsibility? Sensible funding and a refresh of government spending priorities may offer a more optimistic answer.

Whether or not college should be completely free is theoretical. It’s an extreme change to centuries-old economic standards, with inherently problematic costs and retaliation by those affected, government officials and civilians alike. To say that it should or should not be so may be a rush to judgement -- to say that it should be scrutinized, examined, tested, and then adopted over the course of a generation or so, or however many it takes (Rome was not built in a day), is something worth discussing.

Most will agree, though, that changes must be made in the name of economic and social fruitfulness. Changes ​will be made. Who will make them, and when, and their effects, are not predetermined. For the future of American children, American workers, and the American economy, no amount of eighteen-wheelers is too many.

Please respond to any or all of the sections in Candor by emailing us at editor@candor.news

During the difficult year of 2020, many people have been denied the ability to outwardly journey. This makes it a perfect time to reflect inwardly on what pilgrimage can be, if it doesn’t require outward physical movement. Both The Road (2006) by Cormac McCarthy and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) by Annie Dillard present thought-provoking depictions of pilgrimage, despite being very different books. The Road is post-apocalyptic fiction, while Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has yet to be adequately classified in any genre, but has been called a nature-writing, a memoir, and a book of theology. Both works show that pilgrimage is defined by choices, and by learning to truly see the path before, around, and behind you. An invaluable journey is one where every step is valued.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a “meteorological journal of the mind” (p. 11), describing a year Dillard spent living next to Tinker Creek in a valley under the Blue Ridge Mountains. However, this work is much more than a mere nature-writing, and readers aren’t long fooled by the seemingly peaceful setting. Pilgrim opens with a vividly gruesome description that sets the stage for the rest of the narrative. She describes her tom cat leaping through the window, patterning her body with bloody pawprints in the early morning. An author might be forgiven for feeling the need to give her readers a jump-start, but Dillard never ceases startling them. She witnesses and expresses in detail every revolting aspect of nature she comes across. Her narrative often shows her to be nearly as horrified as her readers are, questioning constantly the sort of God who would make the world this way, while dwelling upon repulsive, grisly sights, whether parasites devouring hosts from the inside out or newborn mantises tearing apart their siblings.

If Dillard is determined not to ignore the horror of the world, then McCarthy is bent on creating a world consisting of nothing but horror. His two nameless main characters, father and son, spend the entire narrative walking down a desolate road, in a world that has come to its end with no explanation. McCarthy introduces many elements of cruelty and violence throughout his story, from bloodthirsty bandits to outright cannibalism. He retains a detached manner. The sole objective of the minimalistic plot is for the father to take his son to safety. After suffering through nearly three hundred pages of bleak hopelessness, readers are left with an open end, in which the father dies and the fate of the boy is left to the imagination.

The two novels are hardly comparable under most criteria, but they have in common the element of horror. Both works, infrequently hinting at fragments of hope or wavering optimism, leave readers to debate at the end whether their final view of the world should be optimistic or negative. Dillard’s is a more obvious study in contrasts, often noting the natural beauty and horror of the world side by side. She strives to show her readers a complete picture of the world, whereas McCarthy is less balanced and prefers to present his world as darkly as possible

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek frequently observes a sort of religious debate. Dillard asks herself, and her readers, what sort of creator would make a world containing such cruelty? Are we merely being toyed with by some higher power, like a child’s collection of insects within a mason jar?  She is unafraid to exhibit the beauty of life beside the horror of it. Her entire narrative is a work of balance between light and dark, beauty and horror, birth and death.

McCarthy’s fictional world seems to be utterly lacking in morality, except for that of the two main characters. The mother of the boy committed suicide alone after failing to persuade her husband to kill their son and himself. The man could not bring himself to kill their son; he struggles with this throughout McCarthy’s novel, debating at what point it is worse to keep living than to die. The man commits violence only out of need, and only ever in order to protect his son. He talks to God sometimes; but we are left wondering what sort of God would let cruelty escalate to this point.

Dillard devotes an entire chapter to “seeing.” She muses on people who were blind at birth, taking in the rush of color and form for the first time after their cataract surgeries. This was the most heartbreaking section of Dillard’s narrative. She writes about the newly sighted girl who chose to close her eyes and walk blind because she felt more at ease that way. Another little girl stood utterly speechless before a tree for the first time, and after identifying it by touch as a tree, called it “the tree with lights in it” (p. 28). Later in life, Dillard stumbled upon the tree with lights in it, outlined in fire, and was knocked breathless.

Here we can draw another parallel between the two stories. Dillard saw the tree of fire and McCarthy’s characters often refer to “carrying the fire.” This is a symbol that represents all the goodness left: the love between father and son, the persistence to stay alive, and whatever kindness and innocence remain in the boy. Both Dillard and McCarthy seem preoccupied with one form or another of seeing: the former wants us to see nature’s cruelty, and the latter wants us to see a glimmer of something in a world of nothing.

Perhaps the largest common vein is that both works center on the theme of pilgrimage. Dillard’s pilgrimage is one of the mind; McCarthy’s, a physical journey. They’re both learning to see, and thereby to journey somewhere. Dillard says that once she knows about or sees something, she cannot forget it. McCarthy’s main characters spend the entire book struggling with choosing to let go of some things and hold onto others. The man leaves some things on the road behind them, but starts gathering things again at the end of the story, while the boy does vice-versa. This theme of gathering things is closely intertwined with seeing. We can’t choose what we need to hold onto if we can’t truly see how it has affected us.

Can you journey without awareness? Certainly we can, but how much more will you get out of your journey if you are aware- if you truly see? Anyone who opens their eyes to the world, who focuses on every minute step they take, is a true journeyer. McCarthy’s journey is not defined by the many miles his characters walked, although the distance is not inconsequential. Their journey is defined, rather, by their experiences. The man’s end goal is to bring his son to safety, yet we can tell that he spends every moment on the way to that goal loving and caring for the boy. “Hold him in your arms… kiss him quickly” (p. 114). Ultimately, the man succeeded in carrying the fire, and leaves it now for his son to carry. He saw at the end that he couldn’t hold his son dead in his arms, but had to let the boy live, for better or for worse.

Any opinion of The Road or Pilgrim is bound to be shaped by whether the reader has a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty philosophy. Some people seem to have a terrible difficulty seeing that they’re on the wrong road, while we, the outsiders, cry in frustration at our inability to persuade them. Others seem to see nothing but the road ahead of them, intent on conquering the miles. Still others only see the road behind them, mourning the wrong turn they took while doing nothing to fix it.

Dillard tells us to spend the afternoon, because “you can’t take it with you.” But we must learn to see the afternoon. Misperceptions lead to missteps. Take each step with more purpose, “stalk the gaps” before they vanish, and look around you.  Find stillness on our pilgrimage. Re-examine what we really need to hold onto and what parts of our lives we are better off letting go of. Yet, nothing should be thrown away without being treasured at least briefly.

My own journey is too often spent looking at the miles ahead of me. Does tomorrow really matter if I’m not seeing today? I’m inclined to say it doesn’t. Tomorrow will take me much further if I first slow down to see today’s journey. McCarthy says, “People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn’t believe in that. Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them. It didn’t even know they were coming” (p. 168). Tomorrow is unaware of us. We shouldn’t be in such a hurry to meet it.

The ultimate goal isn’t how quickly you reach tomorrow, how many steps you take, or how smooth and fast your road is. It can be a muddy one full of potholes and wide fissures, with flooded ditches and cast-aside roadblocks. Maybe your footprints have churned up the mud in wandering circles and back-tracks. Maybe the landscape is as bleary and dreary as McCarthy’s.

As long as there’s so much as a centimeter of metaphorical movement, it is a journey. Journeys are not defined by how far you’ve come. They’re defined by the things that make it difficult, the things that bring you screeching to a halt or lunging desperately forward. Pilgrimage is about being willing to grow, to make that desperate lunge. Pilgrimage is about learning to see the landscape blurring past you. It’s about seeing that the rushing water flooding the road was an obstacle, but it washed the mud off your shoes and when you came up on the other side, the road was dry. 

Pilgrimages are further defined by choices. When you’ve truly seen your journey, then how will you shape the remainder of it? What do you choose to hold onto? What do you choose to let go of? Will you willingly contrast beauty with horror, or will you turn a blind eye towards one or the other?

These questions can only be answered by the individual. As for myself, I think I could use a little more practice stalking gaps. They do seem to shift and vanish frequently. How many afternoons have I spent with the mindfulness that I can’t take them with me? I have so many more afternoons left in my life pilgrimage, and in my college journey that has started two years early.  I don’t want to waste a single one. Even when the light at the end of the tunnel is dim and distant, we can still make something of the journey towards it. We can still hold onto our morals and our hopes, and choose what parts of self to let go of -- fear, anger, hate. The choice is ours; the seeing is there for the taking.

It is odd being caught with such an arsenal of days, these little, quiet, quick-flowing things. When boredom becomes something mandatory - the lack of available work doing its thing - it becomes so necessary to improvise entertainment.

For me, the last few months have primarily been spent doing one of three things in my absurd amounts of free time: one, spending more time than I ever have with family. Two, spending more time than I ever have browsing the aisles of used bookstores. Three, spending ​far​ too much time on the Internet.

I've made a great effort in keeping myself out of the house, a place where I began to feel less relaxed and more liked a caged bird when the pandemic began. It seems the rest of the world has had things to do but me, so I've been happy to spend that time out helping my family - helping my sister move, helping to watch her children, helping my brothers around their new farmhouse, and especially helping my aunt and uncle refloor their basement (a task which took many weekends from many months, and which they were kind enough to insist on paying me for).

Being helpful has been a strange thing, too. I've become acclimated to doing it less out of boredom and more out of the fact that I care about these people more than I'll try putting into words.

The other considerable amount of my time has been spent mostly on the Internet, discovering a love for Hogan's Heroes as well as stumbling through an absolute wasteland of job opportunities. Thankfully, I've got good work to look forward to at the start of this new year, so I'll be plenty more occupied with that than YouTube and video games.

I'm most productive at night, when I'm dead tired, so around midnight I've picked up the habit of journaling the day's events and reading something historical - the Civil War is my most recent infatuation. If I'm in a particular mood I'll make something up, writing my own thing for a while, before finally crashing until the next morning. If I don't already have something planned for the next day, something surely comes knocking, and another day I haven't earned becomes a day well spent.

The most important lesson of the pandemic I've received is appreciation for the time I have. Days are little, quiet things, flowing quickly by, and the struggle to find new work has been a heavy process which emphasizes that shortness. Time is limited. Dollars are limited. Bills require both, and are unlimited. It pays well to be helpful and to learn. Goodness knows we've all done a lot of learning this year.

This section is reserved for high-schoolers and collegians.  The topic for October and November 2020 is “What do you do to stay entertained during the pandemic?” Responses submitted to editor@candor.news will be considered for publication.

Illustration by Ainsley Christofferson

This section is reserved for high-schoolers and collegians.  The topic for September 2020 is “During this Covid-19 pandemic, what did you learn about yourself or others that surprised you, or solidified views that you already held?” 

Response from Jacque Walters

Covid-19 has exposed some of the cracks in many of the systems that once made the United States exceptional. Being a student and an aspiring teacher during this time has forced me to reckon with the state of my own education, as well as the condition of the educational system I hope to soon join. For my own part, Covid-19 has made classes shorter and easier. Where I once would have had frequent spelling and handwriting tests to ensure that as a future teacher I had the bare minimum skills necessary to help my students, now I have a simple, self-graded test. Before Covid, classroom observations were a must- every future teacher needs to get experience and see examples of the current teaching techniques. Now, all you need to do is watch a few short clips of teachers on YouTube. My classes have all been cut in half, at least, and my professors rush through as much lecture as they can before they need to excuse us so they can sanitize their classrooms before the next set of students come in. 

None of this is the fault of my professors, of course, and many of my fellow students relish the reprieve from three-hour classes, stressful tests, and observations that require a full day or two off work. To me, all of this change serves as a reminder that becoming an educator in this state, and perhaps in this country, is all too easy. Here in Kansas, you don’t even need a degree in education to teach. With a “relevant” undergraduate or graduate degree, you can teach for three years while working towards your teaching license. While I have no qualms with people changing their careers, this fast track throws people with no teaching experience into the classroom, all because Kansas finds it a Herculean task to entice people to teach.  KMUW reports in their 2018 article “Kansas' Worsening Teacher Shortage In Four Graphs” that teacher shortages grow each year and the amount of college students pursuing teaching degrees remains stagnant.

To the few of us remaining in the various teaching programs in the state, Covid-19 has made our education a not-so-funny joke. I am left asking myself if I feel prepared at all to be thrown into a classroom soon, especially after seeing the lack of support and general vitriol directed towards teachers during the pandemic and ensuing educational crisis. If Kansas had problems finding teachers before, after the pandemic wanes I can only assume that the problems will grow exponentially. My biggest hope is that Covid-19 will force a reckoning in education, that teachers will finally be valued and paid as they should be, which in turn will make an education degree as valuable as a medical degree, but that seems less and less likely. For now, I will watch my YouTube “observations” and takes notes, hoping and praying that they will somehow serve me during my first years of teaching.

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Photo: Candor Visuals