Let it Go: college magazines from 2004-2014 edition

Why is this still so hard?  I have about a decade's worth of my undergraduate college's magazines that it's difficult to throw away.  This reluctance makes no sense.  It's not as if I am going to read them.  It's not as if someone else needs them.  Recycling them so they can be something useful like toilet paper seems obviously preferable to having them lie around gathering dust.   

It's just that it feels so final, like another acknowledgement that I have given up my dream of teaching there.  As if, if I were to apply again, they would get up to the contract stage and then say, "Do you have all your alumni magazines?  Did you read them all cover to cover" and then when I said, "No," they would have to regretfully inform me that since I didn't keep the  magazines and now couldn't read them all cover to cover, they couldn't hire me.  As if my problems with them theologically and otherwise would even let me get to that point.   

Time to let go.  Maybe a symbolic, purposeful burning ceremony would be better, but I'm pretty sure my condo association has a rule against that.  To the recycling bin with ye!  May you be made into bicycles for the poor in other countries or toilet paper or printer paper or something else people will use.  Seriously.

an encouragement to kids going back to school

Your dreams are not guaranteed to come true.  You do not have unlimited potential and all that crap.  You have limited time and potential.  But unless you have dreams and pursue them, you will never know if you can make them come true.  So it's better to have dreams and try hard to make them come true than to deny yourself and automatically fail by eliminating even the chance of success.  Probably.  : )

College Prep in Elementary School?

I recently received a postcard in the mail that made me wonder how on earth I got onto that mailing list.  It was for a college prep elementary school.  I am not making this up.  My initial reaction was, "Seriously?" 

I mean, I've always been a total brainy nerd, and in elementary school, I had no idea our school was, like, three grade levels above the average, and I had a wonderful time there.  But I think it would be different if the school's name and purpose was aiming for top college placement from Kindergarten.  It's almost Japanese . . .

Would you have enjoyed a highly competitive elementary school?  Did you ever wish your elementary school did more to make you college ready?  What was your school like?  Did you enjoy it?