pencil fortresses and health care

I was feeling pretty good Thursday afternoon. My Criminology exam was fairly easy, and my professor now knows not only my name, but also that Matt and I are avid viewers of The Office due to our pre-exam reenactment of seconds 8-11 of this video.

Our classroom is a lecture hall, so our "desks" are actually one long table with the chairs attached, but Matt and I wanted to make sure we each had our own exam-taking space. As the rest of the class filed in and got settled, Matt penciled lines to show his side, my side, and no-man's land. He was penciling barbed wired in no-man's land when I told him if there were spaces in the table I'd just line it with pencils. Without missing a beat, Matt grabbed an imaginary phone and pounded my imaginary pencils down. We both looked up to see Dr. Shippee leaning back in his swivel chair, beer-stein-shaped coffee mug in hand, smiling and nodding at us.

After the exam I had three hours before Poverty and Social Justice, which I used to continue reading Aurora Leigh. I'm pretty sure I can guess what's going to happen with our witty and brilliant narrator, but I don't care because she has such a way with words.

For maybe the first time this semester, I made it to Sr. Sally Ann's class early. She's really good at keeping the class relevant (ie, reading Mountains Beyond Mountains right after the earthquake in Haiti) and Thursday was no different. With the congressional health care meeting underway, we watched Sicko, Michael Moore's documentary on the state of the American health care industry. I'm not sure what comments to make. He does make valid points on the "sickness" of health insurance in America, but he is also biased and I have a hard time fully trusting the story of anyone with skills in cinematography--it's those smooth talkers you have to watch out for. I guess what I mean is, yes, America's health care industry is broken and favors the rich and healthy, but other systems do have problems too.