I’m conflicted. Surely, knowing what I wanted to do with part of my life would help, but I think I’ve bought myself some more time to make this decision.

Isn’t college fun?

If you see me in my daily life, you know this by now. However, this blog community is neglected, and it’s time for some loving.

I’m about 90% sure that I’m going to attempt a double major of Computer Science and Political Science at Tufts. I think those two majors pretty much sum up the intersection of my interests in this world. Sure, there’s no cohesive element between them, and I’m fairly certain that a focus on one diminishes my focus on the other, but thinking about this double major makes me happy. That’s what matters, right?

I’ll likely be declaring this soon, but there are a few details to work out. We’ll see what happens.

Hey Everyone, I am Sam, I am 27 and live in London, England.

Thanks for all the useful information on this site. I had my Tympanoplasty on Friday afternoon. I felt no real pain until the early hours of Sunday morning and I have been on painkillers every 4-5 hours since (it’s now Tuesday evening). I am experiencing sharp stabbing pains, throbbing which is like listening to your own pulse, my head also feels like it is in a bubble, diziness and a sore jaw and also a strange numbness in my tastebuds on the right side of my tongue. From reading everyone elses stories this would appear quite normal and all part of the healing process.

I had a myringoplasty (I believe its a similar procedure) around 14 years ago. This was unsuccessful due to infection. After 14 years of worsening infections and some hearing loss I elected to have surgery again and hope this will releive the infections. Without wanting to sound unpleasant having discharge running out of your ear every few weeks was beginning to get me down. I am hoping that if this attempt is successful I will be able to swim and wash my hair without fearing I may trigger yet another ear infection.

I am glad I stumbled across this site and feel that through reading others experiences I have been able to put my worries to rest. The pain I am experiencing appears as normal as it can be!

Thanks for your help and good luck to anyone else going through this x

Thanks, Sam!

I have a MacBook Pro 15 Inch, 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3GB RAM running Mac OS X 10.5.8 and experienced the same problem with my Matshita DVD-R UJ-867 drive after downloading an Apple Security Update.

I tried everything from spraying air into the drive, a DVD Lense Cleaner Disc, Power resets and even banging the case. I’ve even flashed the DVD Drive but still couldn’t get the MacBook Pro to read either CD or DVD media blank or recorded or commecial discs.

Finally, before I jumped to buy a new drive I decided to buy a set of Torx screwdrivers containing a T-6 Torx driver so I could disassemble my MacBook Pro and remove the Matshita DVD-R UJ-867 drive.

I eventually removed the drive and removed the screws opening the actual drive to reveal the DVD-R drive contents inside. Onnce open I sprayed the optical lense with a can of compressed air and cleaned any dust on the lense and the rest of the inside of the drive. After that I replaced the DVD-R cover and replaced the screws. I then replaced the DVD-R drive back into the MacBook Pro and screwed it all back together.

Once I’d put it all back together I then powered the MacBook Pro up, booted the machine and inserted a music CD THE BEST OF BILL WITHERS and low and behold the CD disc mounted.

So stripping the DVD-R drive and spraying compressed air directly onto the optical lense removed the problem of not being able to load either CD or DVD discs. Now I can read any disc possible and the fix has returned the Matshita DVD-R UJ-867 drive so it now reads both CD and DVD discs as before.

The process is a fiddly but worth the effort. It is my guess that 99 per cent of Superdrive problems experienced by Apple MacBook Pro users using this hardware cleaning method will return their Superdrives to working state so they should be able to read and mount both CD and DVD media..

Job is a good one..

Regards

Kevan

P.S. post this on any and all MacBook Pro forums and blos as possible so other MacBook Pro owners can use the fix to repair their DVD-R Superdrive problem no being able to read and mount CD and DVD media.. Do what I did above and you’ll get your drive back without having to buy a new drive.. If your MacBook Pro is under warranty with Applecare then go to Apple. If the warranty has expired use my fix to repair your Superdrive..

Worth a shot if you’re out of warranty and need to fix that SuperDrive.

As I went to sleep that night, I knew the world had changed forever. However, I was at an age where I was not old enough to fully grok the implications of that day, as it happened. The course of events that was set off has dictated national and international politics from that day forward, and obviously, stole loved ones from the people of the United States and the world. Living so close to the city, I still get emotional when I think about the day in terms of personal and human tragedy, rather than history and politics, and I’ve brought myself to tears in writing this post.

Today, feelings are complicated, as the grief and ramifications of September 11, 2001 are swept further into the past. The United States will never fully recover from the attacks, and they’ll be with me for the rest of my life.

I cannot help but recall a powerful experience I had in my high school two years ago. A year ago from today, I reposted my recounting of that experience. I’ve elected to repost it again, because I find its narrative compelling.

I had an intense experience this morning, and I’ll never forget it. At Dover Middle/High School, HS Student Council members have to say the pledge and read the morning’s announcements each day. This month is my assigned month (and some other people’s), and I had an additional duty this morning. Directly after saying the pledge, I was to instruct the student body to remain standing for a moment of silence to remember everyone impacted or stolen from us six years ago.

While reciting the pledge and this unique announcement, I became very emotional. I was certain that I would be fine before doing it, but upon saying, “I pledge,” I felt immensely sad. Completing sentences was painful, and I’m amazed that I was able to finish the task without stopping completely.

It was obvious that I was troubled by the task, but people were kind enough not to say anything to me about it. I wish I didn’t have to do that this morning. To a much greater extent, I wish no one had to.

The fact that no one ever commented on my emotional stumbling over the pledge that day resonates with me. Those moments of shared understanding are rare and powerful.

…

If you’re looking for something else to read today, I highly recommend this post from Christopher Penn.

Those remarks are quoted after the jump…

The President: “Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.”

“Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book.

Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.”

Richard thanks for your article. Around July8th, I was surfing, and was tossed straight to the bottom, left side of my head first. The impact, and the hydraulic pressure caused by a earful of seawater caused my eardrum to rip away from the edges, not typical, they say. If you look at a clock face, from 9 o’clock to 4-5o’clock was peeled back, like halfway peeling the seal from a yogurt container foil seal.

I knew what had happened immediately, as I had a very slight traumatic perforation in 1998, when thrown from a Jet Ski. It was two little holes near the middle of the eardrum, which healed on their own. When you perforate your tympanic membrane in water, you lose all sense of balance, the first time in ‘98 I struggled, the recent one I nearly drowned, as the impact was so hard, it sent seawater through my Eustachian Tube and into my throat. I was in 3-4 feet of water and could not stand up, it was a bit scary.

Knowing what had happened, I finally got out of the water, and told my wife, “we have to go to a doctor, I perforated my eardrum”. She gave a weird look, and asked when.

“Now”, I said. We gathered the children, dropped them off with my sister in law and headed to the beach doctor.

Of course they sent a Physician Assistant to come see me. I told her what happened, she looked in my ear, and ZIP, BANG, she was off to find a doctor.

They gave me Vicodin, and some Antibiotic drops, and said it would heal on it’s own. Funny thing, they assumed this without seeing the hole. “We can’t tell how big it is because of all the blood in there, but it’ll be okay”.

A month later, no improvement, and a pending job offer is temporarily declined, until i get it fixed. I go to an ENT. He said the first doctor was a bit negligent with his “it’ll be okay” diagnosis. I was scheduled for Tympanoplasty.

My surgery was today, technically yesterday morning. They were able to use tissue from my Tragus to use as a patch. They also were able to do everything through my ear canal, so I didn’t have to get my ear half cut off to get it fixed; this was relieving.

Right now I’m bandaged like in your picture above. In the morning, I go to see the ENT Doctor/Surgeon (same guy). I have a ton of questions, as it affects my employment, but also stuff like, swimming, flying, sneezing, etc; when can I do those again?

Sorry for the long post, but I’ll come back here with follow up info, as your site was the first to pop up on Google, and was helpful to me. I’m 35 years old by the way. Thank you.

Robert

I really enjoyed this feedback. Robert, you’re welcome, and I hope you heal up perfectly! I cannot even imagine what it must have felt like to have that happen. The fact that you knew you had perforated is remarkable.

Carry on.

One year ago from today, children, students, and adults gathered in the heart of Dover Plains to campaign for then-Senator Obama, as he ran for President against Republican John McCain. The aim of the gathering was to be noticed. The young people wanted to show the world that even in firmly conservative town of Dover Plains, in the unshakably blue state of New York, students found a reason to be excited for change.

With the of some very good friends, organizing Register for Change was my last action in Dover Plains before heading off for college. To this day, it’s the personal project I’m most proud of. Watching students stand on street corners, yelling desperately at the top of their lungs, hoping to overcome eight years of mistakes from the Bush administration, is an image that will never leave me.

One year later, I’m re-acknowledging the accomplishment and re-thanking my friends. Without the truly motivated and resourceful people who organized the event with me, we wouldn’t have helped Dover register for change.