Friday, April 3, 2009

Karma in Action


Yesterday I arrived at school an hour and a half before rehearsal was set to begin, so I thought I’d head down to the computer lab and do some studying for today’s pseudocoelomate exam. Of course, if I’m set up with a computer and Internet access, I’m unlikely to do much studying, but that’s beside the point. When I arrived at the lab, I found it full of people. A glance at the sign on the door informed me that I was just in time for the “Access Missouri Letter Writing Workshop.” “Come in,” a man told me, and pulled me through the door.

They were writing letters to senators and representatives about the plans to cut funding for scholarship programs statewide. While I don’t benefit from this money, they were asking from support from anyone who would help, so I figured, “What the hey, it’s a good cause and it should only take a minute.”

Roight.

First, my nine-digit zipcode was not listed in the online database, so I couldn’t find out who my state representatives were. Several people scampered to my aid, but after a long and fruitless search, they gave it up as a lost cause and told me to write only to the Senate Education Committee. So I drafted a nice letter and proceeded to hit “print.” The computer froze. Nothing that I or the advisers did had any affect whatsoever. I hadn’t saved the letter draft, either, because it had come off of a template filled with and the like. Eventually, I again gave up and lost my work. I redid it, saved it this time, retried printing, and again the computer froze. So I attempted to email it to myself, but the Internet was down. Finally, I saved it on my flashdrive, went to another station, and voila! My document was in hand and signed.

Forty-five minutes later, I walked out of the room to a chorus of “thank you for coming by!” I had accomplished no studying. I was a little peeved.

And then today I got the email that, thanks to my participation in the campaign, I had been entered in a drawing and won a $10 Starbucks gift card. Hey, it’s not much, but it’s a little compensation for my frustrating afternoon. It’s the thought that counts, after all, and now I get to enjoy a mocha-frappa-something-or-other. OK, I’ve never been to Starbucks before as I’m not a big coffee drinker, so this will be a real experience. A little bit of good karma, right? It's nice to be rewarded for a good deed every once in a while.

The illustration, by the way, is Carousel, a piece I made in my Visual Arts class my sophomore year of high school, when I was in my “horse as a metaphor for humanity” phase. I was mighty proud of it at the time, and I still think it’s kinda cool. ;)

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