Day in the life of Dr. Joe

On the first day of class we received the assignment that would be due the last week of class. We had all semester to work on it. I got started on it that first day and handed in the well researched, well written, well edited, well typed, polished paper the first day of the last week of class. I was proud of the paper and received the A+ I deserved. I did that with every assignment throughout college and I got lots of A's. And I enjoyed my classes.

In high school I frequently put things off to the last minute and with angst and drama I managed to usually get things done and in at the last minute. I still got (mostly) good grades, but I surely did not enjoy the academic process as much, and the finished products in no way truly represented what I was capable of producing.

Every year the state legislators must come up with a budget by the end of June. For some reason, they are far from having the assignment done today, June 30th. The government is going to "shut down" and we the people are going to suffer because of it. I am told that they wait to the last minute on purpose, not because they work best under pressure, but because they are playing a bizarre game of partisan "chicken" with our money and our governmental funding. I suspect there is a logic and a value to this perennial game, some covert political advantage or gain.

This last minute pressure stresses everyone and results in a haphazard and ill-conceived budget. They act as if someone told them just a few days ago, "Oh, by the way, that assignment, the budget, is due next Friday!"

For goodness sake! They knew it all along. They should have been working on it from the beginning of the year, from last July, so that at the beginning of this week, last Monday, they could have handed in a well researched, well written, well edited, well typed, polished budget. One they could have been proud of and one that would earn them an A+