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ON THE NEED TO STUDY
I didn't know it would be a rainy Monday, and that they would be too tired to listen to a lecture;
I didn't know I would teach about the Lawrence Strike and forget my best anecdote;
I didn't know I wasn't going to get enough sleep the night before and that I would be talking in slow motion;
I didn't know a head-on collision would occur on Water Row;
I didn't know that a girl in my class would be the niece of that young man in the poster lying motionless on the ground at Kent State;
I didn't know I would be alone in a room with a student when she learned her father was lost forever in the White Mountains;
I didn't know Jimmy Mac would be struck down by a disease they'd later call AIDS;
I didn't know that Cathy and Burr would die before I did;
I didn't know Timmy would hang himself at Walden Pond, or Eric in his apartment, or that Chey would die in a fog in Australia.
I didn't know that Judy would be murdered in Boston.
Had I only studied harder, maybe....
December 31, 2007