A Wonderful Example

I just wanted to take time out to say what a wonderful example our congress is setting for all of us.  Since whenever just about ANYTHING comes up someone says "but what about the children?" I just thought we should be sure to highlight what we're showing our kids.

Somehow I turned out to be a professional teacher by trade, or at least that's a significant piece of my portfolio.  Although I am teaching project management, drafting, scenic construction, and rigging a significant part of what I actually teach is time management, respect for deadlines, and productive collaboration.  How do you think the grades would be for our congressional representatives would be for those three very basic skills.

They had something on the order of 500 days to prepare for this fiscal cliff thing and yet here we are, deadline plus 2 days before we came to a solution.  Congrats congress; if you were a theatre company you would have lost two performances.  If you were a scene shop that would have been two full days with trailers sitting empty on your dock.  Good luck getting payment on that final invoice.  500 days to come to some kind of resolution without any real action and then a flurry of activity at the end.

Is anyone surprised they missed the deadline?  None of my students would be.

It's pretty clear that the poor time management lead to a complete failure to meet their deadline - a deadline they set mind you.  The unthinkable entertainment analogs above are all about failing to meet deadlines.  In my world people depend on me to meet deadlines.  Aren't there people depending on congressmen to meet deadlines?  Of course there are.  There are/were huge implications to the legislation coming late.  Why aren't our elected representatives more sensitive to the impacts of missing our deadlines?

Maybe they ought to go to do a summer of stock.

I don't even know where to begin to discuss the total lack of collaboration on display.  The "my way or the highway" attitudes of pretty much everyone involved is really sad.  Full grown adults with their heels dug firmly in insisting they get their way in spite of terrible consequences.  I just don't know.  Didn't they see Willy Wonka?  Don't they remember Verruca Salt?  "I want what I want when I want it..."

They had to send her to the juicer, right?

As long as folks are thinking about congressional reforms, working over the filibuster and whatever, why not take a little time to restructure things to better encourage healthy collaboration, respect for deadlines, and time management.  At least then we could be sure our congressional representatives would have a reasonable chance of success as college sophomores.