Should I try to get into graduate school for engineering? It is too late to get in for September, because I don't have much time to apply, take the GRE, and all, and I keep putting it off. But everyone asks me if I am doing it, like they see me as the type that would. And it is starting to appeal to me, I guess, but I am not sure of the reasons why one would choose to or not.

Also, I got like 5 tickets on my car because it is disabled and I left it in a school parking lot. Should I just tow it back to my place and ignore the tickets (from a university public safety), or should I contact them and tell them that it won't start, and so I had no choice but to leave it there, and try to get them to drop it? (Which is not actually true, since I towed it there in the first place. My roommate said they don't give tickets, so we left it there.)

That is all.

Jonathan

My Dearest Jonathon,

Ah, who can know, how can we know the reasons for which things are done? Even within our own selves, is it not the case frequent that we find our original reasoning to have been lacking, or even a ruse, the mind (be it truly magnificently and terrifyingly huge, or merely a few hundred cubic-centimteres atop on all-to-fragile spinal column, itself precariously lurching forward on a pair of spindly legs that resist strange surface gravity but little) mounting walls against itself, attempting to make the button hooking end run around its own intentions? It is a strange matter, causation and causality, teleology and the attention to First Cause and Final Result.

As such, I can bring to imagination a plethora of reasons for the approaching and avoiding of the graduated school. Firstly, let me applaud your choice of the engineering of things, as this is indeed a noble pursuit which has brought human civilization a variety of products, allowing them to begin to imitate the inborn qualities of fishes, birds, whales, pork-yo-the-pines and other lower animals. Your submersibles, aeroplanes, protective garments and long-distance communications networks are quite a start in taking up the slack which nature has paid out to you, and generally increasing your lot and standing in this highly competitive world of predators and prey. Of course, recent developments in and bearing fourth from my lab and vehicle garages will (and, by way of a hint-hint as to the nature of at least one invention I bare in mind, have already, and will have had, and might begin to already have, and soon shall be in the process of . . .) abrogate(d|ing) the significance of these miniscule leaps and lame bounds, but . . . well, but that matter is to the side. Go forth, engineer to the best of your simian capacity. I have pride in you, like the father supportive and fine.

Or, in due consideration of an alternate manipulator, do not do so. Many of my most valued assistants lack any formal education in the matter of engineering, and yet the marvels they tinker together— well, let it perhaps suffice to say that, in many cases, your clever monkey-like paws and quick little wits— not to mention general impetuousness— should be qualification enough in the field of mechano-forging and gearcraft.

The Spider Brothers, my crack mechanics and glorious friends of late, have explained to me the nature of these tickets for parking (and the way in which they differ from tickets of theater, tickets of movie, tickets of musical performance and tickets of raffle.) Thus, as for the vehicle, I am similarly made to understand that many workers hard have a variety of insurance for such eventualities. Can your vehicle draw from this insurance based upon its disability and thus begin to absorb the cost of its infractous parking? Were this the case, then I might advise your ship be left to set for as long as her disability insurance might effectively defray the cost. Otherwise, I am at a loss, although the Spider Brothers strongly suggest setting the vehicle a-flame and collecting of the insurance monies. This, it seems, is a time honored tradition among their cohort, and a highly regard manner to resolve such situations, not among the thuggee of Hindu tradition, in my estimation. Is there a desire greater than that for the pyre? Do not all plots tend deathward? It seems to me that ethicist Peter Singer has, quasi-recently, outlined much the same argument. Perchance he can guide your thoughts, viz. your automobile unwell and the moral implications of euthanasia in its case?

With Regards to Engineering and the Disabled,
Your Giant Squid