I’m trying to convince David, my roommate at Taft Camp, to continue his education. A few months ago I wrote a blog describing David’s graduation from the GED program. Since then I’ve urged him to continue with studies at Taft College, but he’s losing interest. Like many prisoners, David’s being seduced with the “easy money” he’s sure that he can earn by learning how to chart commodity prices. He’s spending hours every day writing closing market prices and trading volume, but he has such a poor math skills, he can’t truly grasp the meaning of those numbers.
I asked Carole to order a basic math book for me today. It’s the same math book that the Taft College uses to teach students who enroll in the remedial math course. I’m trying to motivate David to master every problem in this book, and since we share the same cube, I’ll be able to help him when he needs help, and push him to study harder when he slacks off.
It’s crucial for David to develop his education. The world is advancing, and he will not find much fulfillment if he can’t function at even a basic level. He struggles with simple percentages, fractions, decimals, even arithmetic. If he works consistently, and I coach him, in one year he’ll master this book, and he can then advance to the next. I’m hopeful that he’ll stick with it.
This morning, I woke at 1:35, and I had an excellent session of writing new content for chapter nine. I wrote through page 381, bringing me to the section where Carole first moves to New Jersey to begin our life together as a prison family. These memories make me fall in love with her all over again.
I ran 10 miles in the early morning. My running tally now stands at 2,251 miles over the past 254 days.
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