make them care

Guilt. I love it.
Cynicism. I crave it.
Make me feel worthless.
Make me want to learn.

Make me cry aloud for the sheer wonder
that I still can
I can shed tears--

make me because for a few minutes,
I will still feel human.

And I will still feel the unknown
hope that something can change
that by sensing the core of our
injustice, our wrongness, our disease
I will know that something can
be right.

_______________________________
Note to higher education:
even in honors classes, they (we) don't start our papers until the night before (if you're lucky.) WE freely admit that WE didn't read the pages assigned (there were too many, the language was too dense, too much other work to do, project runway was on). And we don't care: it's become the game of how little we can get away with doing. (I'll win). WE sit silent when the prof asks a question. All we care about is lunch, and music, who-said-what-about-your-outfit and WTF did Britney do to her hair??? and where the next soul-containing shot is going to come from--Monday, as I walk across the quad I hear the essential question: We drinking tonight? (No. It really doesn't get boring. Still waiting--and glad it doesn't).

Until now.
This is what college is supposed to be.

And it's pathetic that it takes 3 honors classes and junior year before I encounter two days of this one class. That one simple question not let slide is all it takes to make me believe I'm truly thinking --- that my brain, my heart, my mind isn't lying dormant.

But once through those doors, like he says, we won't look back. "Anyone think about what we were reading? Anyone? No...good. You didn't break the code."