GOING TO COLLEGE
By Reid Baer

I grew up in Indiana -
a university town - with
parents as university
professors in a family
of compliant scholars where grades

Were like money and I had none
to speak of … left alone in a
desert to fend for myself and
now I’m glad I did find my own
spiritual instincts the hard way

Through profound misunderstanding
about me – who I was – or what
language I spoke condemned me to
an environment, maternal,
barren, unable to locate

A clued-in educator for
my particular temperament.
I survived, and I pray you will
too in higher education
where the air is thinner and the

Culture suffers from a super-
abundance of pretentious hacks,
corner-watchers, hall monitors,
felonious fragmenters of
humanity specializing

In summarized values stuffed through
a gap in your head and filled with
vast amounts of information
void of clarity, grace or form.
Modern university is

Out of touch with mainstream reason.
Simply put, that pillared building
is grandiose housing for an
illegitimate bathhouse steeped
in perverse philosophy taught

By the elite pied pipers of
rhetorical progressivism
cut off from the temple of truth
distant from the virtuous whole
far from the wisdom of the soul.
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