Freedom To/Freedom For

If you're ever took a philosophy course in undergrad, then at some point, you probably had the "freedom to/freedom for" discussion.

This being the Fourth of July here in America, I thought it would be a good time to have another Jamie's Undergrad Days Flashback Corner.

I remember this discussion, in one of the so-called "fishbowl" Hamilton center classrooms (affectionately known as "Ham center") during a course called Freedom in Christian Thought, in which I Faked Reading A Lot of Philosophy, including Cornell West's Prophesy Deliverance! with the end result that I screamed and pointed yesterday when I saw him on public access t.v. giving a sermon at some church (those lucky church going bastards!) but wouldn't be able to tell you anything important about his works, except I think I probably should have tried reading them.

Any way, one of my beloved professors from that Great Era of Jamie's Pseudo-Intellectual Life always had these funny little anecdotes. Like once, he was talking about Kantian moral agency in terms of a us all being on a "space vehicle" which was about to blow up. The one about freedom to/for involved free agency involved in him "becoming a Harlem Globetrotter." It was very funny, and we all laughed, and I'm sure, learned something from it.

Thus endeth my token Fourth of July reflections on Freedom. (Yeah, that's it. I didn't say there was going to be a point to any of it, just like apparently no one in the government promised that there would be a point to the war.)

My day was spent at work, making time and a half, with only three patients. Talk about heaven. Okay, so cleaning up vomit, urine and--extra special!--liquid shit twice in one day (once while the patient was in bed lying in said mess) was not exactly the most celestial of nursing duties. But it was a good day, because I got time enough to spend with my patients. A nurse-patient of mine (who revealed she was a nurse only at the end of my shift) said she spent forty years as an ortho-neuro nurse. Forty years. I'm not even that old yet. Any way, she called me an "excellent nurse." I blushed madly with pride and thought, Isn't this the best job ever?! even as I carefully bundled away sheets full of liquid yellow poop and carried them to the laundry bin.

I always get all stressed about work, and there are days when I'm just so f-ing tired I could just about cry, but this job is just so much better than my old job that on a regular day I walk around in some kind of daze like, "Wow, I really like my job. It doesn't suck to be a nurse! That's like, soooo friggin' cool!" But then I go home, have a couple days off, and the PTSD incurred from my old job comes back, and I get all afraid of going to work and having something horrible happen. Then I go to the new job, and it's like having a come-to-Jesus moment at work almost every single day. I mean, dude, the charge nurse asked me if I needed help with a code brown. At Old Hospital, you could barely get a charge nurse to help you with a real code.

Soo--Whooo! Fourth of July! America may suck, but making time-and-a-half today with a stellar patient load didn't.