Saturday, October 8, 2011

This blogpost was meant to be posted late

Rachel and Sabrina stood outside of Bradford Auditorium.

Undecided, they were undecided.

Their friends tempted them to forget about schoolwork, to indulge in the freedom of Friday nights.

Sabrina voiced, “But we have a lot of work to do. Like that paper…”

Rachel nodded in agreement.

Their friends urged them to abandon their obligations.

Sabrina turned to Rachel and said, “If you leave, I’ll leave with you. If you stay, I guess I will too.”

“I don’t know what to do!” Rachel exclaimed.

“Let’s flip a coin,” Sabrina proposed. “You flip. Heads will be no.”

Rachel gave the coin a mighty flip, and it fell to the floor.

Sabrina bent down to observe the results. Abraham Lincoln stared back at her.

“It’s heads,” she announced. “I guess that means we’ll be working tonight.”
Rachel paused. Here came an idea.

“Or we could watch the movie.”

Sabrina objected, “Didn’t we say we would flip a coin?”

Rachel shrugged. “But remember what we spoke about in class about the I Ching?”

The two looked at the doors of the auditorium longingly.

THE CONCLUSION---a half-hearted haiku:

WHAT SHOULD WE HAVE DONE?

BURDEN OF DUTY AND FATE

FLIPPED COIN, WATCHED MOVIE.

2 comments:

  1. Ah, beat me to it. This was an interesting demonstration of how flipping a coin can just show you what you really want to do. I knew that I truly desired to stay, watch the movie, and eat free candy (lots of candy...). But I also knew that I should be writing my paper. So like you described, flipping a coin was the best option to make that tough decision for us. However, I interpreted the flip of the coin as a clarification of my true desire rather than just listening to it. Abraham Lincoln could not force us to go do work, only we could decide what our true feelings were. Just as the I Ching can be interpreted differently depending on the person, the flip of a coin can also be viewed from different standpoints. And since we connected decision process with this course, that counts as work, right?

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  2. love it! (and, no, don't think it counts as "work"... but it certainly counts for something!)

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