Glorious Bank Holiday

What exactly is a bank holiday? I've been wondering that since I rolled into this country last August. I've heard Brits describe it and their tale is absurdly laughable. A bank holiday "is a day when all the banks and government offices are closed and most businesses too." Yeah, no sh*t. But really, what is a bank holiday?

See, as long as I live here, I'll never understand the concept. In the US, when we have a holiday it's for a reason. Not in Britain. Instead, they just up and decided that they needed some days off of work so they built some into the schedule. What I don't understand is why they don't give reasons to their bank holidays. They have "remembrance day" which is akin to our Memorial Day. Shouldn't the day that you remember and honor your WW2 dead be a national holiday? Nah. Instead, we'll just have some bank holidays. The Brits, from my experience, would be utterly confused by my concerns. This is just how things are. They have an amazing capacity to simply accept things like this.

Today is a glorious day. The sun is shining, it's warm, it's beautiful. Unfortunately, I have a 4,000 word essay due on Friday and I've written maybe 400. I have work to do. Now, I've researched and read a ton, but North Korea is a huge topic and I'm just starting to narrow down my focus to an actual argument. This is one thing that separates me from many of my classmates. I noticed this recently, but it must be universal. When I write a paper, I search for an argument, when I find one I like, I build my case around that argument. When my classmates write a paper, they look for a topic, write about that topic, and hopefully stumble across an argument. You could make a case that their style has greater academic integrity except that my style doesn't search for any argument, it searches for an argument that I find mostly true, or as close to the truth as I'm likely to discover.

At any rate, I've been trained for years to do this via debate, so perhaps I have an unfair advantage over my mates. I'm not so concerned about that. They're a mostly lazy bunch of people and hard work always makes up for inherent advantages. Not like we're competing or anything. But still, some of my classmates are genuinely talented individuals and it pains me to see them give a half-assed effort. I know all too well what it's like to waste talent (see undergrad years) and my assumption was that people who chose a MA course would be more serious students. Sadly, I'm a bit disappointed. Maybe at Harvard, but not at Webster Graduate Study Center London (say that 10 times fast). Of course, the real thing that separates me from my mates is that I do work hard and I have some learned advantages that they don't have. So poo on them.

Ok, enough procrastinating. I've read all there is to read about the NBA, all I want to read about MLB, and the rest of the news. It's time to buckle down. I need 3000 words by the end of the night.