Mr. Obama,
I listened to your speech tonight. And you spoke of health care and a student who had to work the night shift after a long day of class and still couldn’t pay his sister’s medical bills. And you want to “solve” that problem, but what I don’t think you understand is that it sounds like that student is already solving the “problem.”
Working while in school, especially a full time student, clarifies life and make you stronger. It makes one focus on what is real and what is important. While other students frolic about coasting through college, doing just enough work to get through in about 4 or 6 or maybe even 7 years, the student working at night to pay for a sister’s health care will most likely make that student a stronger person, a better student, and most likely a highly producive member of society.
You see an opportunity for a hand-out, a new government program, and you look down on someone that may have had life thrust upon them and is chipping away at the difficulties of daily life. You sell it as compassion to give them money for college, money for health care, and sympathy, but it’s really condescension and mass marketing.
You see, I am that student plus 11 years. I worked while a student (full-time), and many times until the wee hours of the morning. It made me stronger, not weak nor bitter, it made me focus…focus on school and work. It made me better.
It prepared me (even though I didn’t realize it at the time)…for the time in which life would slap me around a bit.
You see, Mr. Obama, my wife of almost 8 years (an educated woman…MS in public health and stay at home mom of a two year old and an 8 month old) was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis two weeks ago.
And no offense to you, but I am not looking for your “change” to solve any of my family’s problems…especially our healthcare problems. But you use people like my family or hard working college students in your speeches to make people feel like you care.
I have no doubt that you do care, but that’s about where it ends. An emotion…caring. No offense, Mr. Obama, but emotions are not going to cure MS, pay for a single MRI or drug treatment, or solve any of our country’s issues that you see as problems.
But hard work, self reliance, and determination will. So quit feeling sorry for hard working young folks…they will usually end up being the ones that don’t need and don’t want any handouts.