That's the Rules

Question: Why do we have laws and rules? Answer: To help maintain order and to increase our quality of life. When problems arise, someone comes up with an idea on how to help manage or prevent the problems. So each rule or law has a reason for existing, at some point in time there was a specific reason for each rule coming to pass. That’s my take on it anyway; I think it’s fairly straightforward and logical; by the way I am a huge supporter of common sense.

Here’s where I start to rant. If we get so carried away with enforcing a rule or law and eventually lose sight of the reason for its existence we’re just blindly follow policy. In many cases the automatic unthinking obedience to a rule or law can actually contradict the purpose of the rule. For example, and this is not the reason for choosing this topic but it’s the most recent example I can think of, at school there is a fairly new mentorship program in place for the electrical techs.

The program pairs up each first year student with a second year student so that the second year student can help the new guy. The second year is there as a resource for the first year student, he answers questions, shows him around, shares first year experiences, gives advice and maybe even helps the first year student with homework. Sounds great right? I agree. It’s a good way to get the new guys on track and it’s nice to have someone with experience that you can talk to if you want, or to get help from when you need it. The problem lies in the “when you need it”, you see, this program is mandatory and they set up mandatory meetings between mentors and mentees every month after class. The pairings are pretty much random so its luck of the draw (my guy can hardly speak English, minus 5 points in usefulness for not being able to carry on a simple conversation). They even make us sign a contract.

So when one finds himself with no questions to ask or help needed, with homework to do and exams to study for, one suddenly finds himself assembling a puzzle (while not allowed to speak) with his mentor. Other lame bonding exercises have and may include drawing caricatures of each other, building bridges out of newspaper, making lists of common interests and going for simple scavenger hunts. These activities take about an hour unless you want to factor in the rush hour delays, buses missed, and carpools held back, that go hand in hand with staying late. With a midterm the next day and a project due the one after that, precious time ticks away, spent uselessly instead of the way you’d like to.

In this situation blindly following the rule that was created to help me is now doing the exact opposite by hindering me. I have someone looking at crowd of people, which I happen to be standing in, and throwing out a suggestion to the mass of us, ignoring us as individuals. That’s just fine, so long as I retain the right to choose whether or not to use that advice. No one likes being forced to do something they know isn’t in their best interest and don’t like being called stupid.

*This has gotten pretty big and there’s still a lot I want to talk about so I will continue this later*