In which Matthew gets a pair of new eyes

On the bus between Errand 38 and Errand 39 yesterday, on the phone with Emily: "My teaching, it's draining me. By mid-semester I usually have everyone at least engaged with the class material. But now what I have to work with is half pre-med and half pre-business students who signed up to fill a requirement, just like any other requirement, without even looking at the discussion topic or thinking about why it's required, and we're supposed to be having deep discussions of Old Norse and Old English sagas in order to foster critical thinking and inquiry... I just don't get it. I have presented critical thinking -- a basic skill essential to human culture, and essential for the development of mind and soul -- I have demonstrated critical thinking, explained it, modeled it, drawn it, diagrammed it, led it, anecdotally thought through it, metaphorically explored it, begged for it, provided for every learning style thrice over, but the majority of the students simply refuse to conceive of any task that requires them to innovate, to think outside the box, to present something new and just tell it to me, one human to another. This is such important stuff, but I'm pulling teeth here. It's never been this hard before. I'm lost. I know some things come more naturally to some people than to others, but this --"

I arrived at the contact lens place, Site for Sore Eyes (yes), and found that my prescription had expired. Enter the on-site optometrist. Reticent, hunched, plaid; if he ever looked at me directly it was with intimidation. He just wanted to do his thing and do it the same way he did it yesterday, the same way he'd been taught it. In every way, physically, vocally, sartorially, he was the time-lapse version of many of my current pre-med students. But he had heard me say I was in a rush, and as borderline-autistic as his demeanor was, he was good. Snap, snap, snap. Read the lowest line of letters; is One stronger or Two; now do it without your contacts. "You're still using the Acuvue 2?" he asked. I wasn't sure, uh, I was using, uh. "You're using the ones you bought from us last year?" Yes. "Those are two-week disposable contacts?" Yes. "Have you been removing them every two weeks?" Um. "Okay. What I'm going to do for you here is prescribe a one-month disposable contact, but that does not mean that you should then remove them every two months. You already have a lot of deposits on your contacts, and it's dangerously drying out your eyes." This wasn't the first time I had been told this, I know, I could really damage my sight, but. "Are you going to remove these on time, though?" Yes. Probably. Yes. Yes. I'll try. "There's no real drawback in using the one-month version, they were made because people just couldn't keep up and dispose of their contacts on schedule. I never understood why. I never understood why. But it is really important that you take these out on time, okay?"

Beneath his degrees and certificates, he shooed me towards the front desk, where they filled the prescription. He didn't mean to talk down to me -- actually, judging by his tone, he barely realized I was there -- but I did come off as a bit of a schmuck. Beneath it all was the complaint -- even the simplest instruction, just to do it on schedule, as you had been taught to do it, as you had done it before, the majority of people the optometrist came across just couldn't get this most basic skill down. Even though we endanger our sight when we fail to just pay attention.