Small World Phenomenon

Here’s another one from Joyce Evans, a Milwaukee journalist, who submitted it about a week ago.

While brainstorming for my novel, thoughts popped into my mind about my job-hopping days, and I was amazed about two of the experiences I had about how small the world really is. It was in Moline, Ill., when I met the brother of a classmate. We all graduated from the same high school in North Carolina. He was working for John Deere, and he told me his sister worked in Washington, D.C.

While working in the nation’s capitol, I took a taxi to the train station for a job interview in Philadelphia, and the cab driver was a classmate too. He told me the D.C. classmates were having a reunion in Rock Creek Park that weekend and I should attend. “Everybody will love to see you. We’ve got a lot of Eppes High School graduates living here in the District. I went and saw people I never expected to see

In an unrelated, synchronous small world event: Last night, I decided to write President Obama about my subsidized family loan experience. I planned to tell him that my experience wasn’t an isolated incident because tens of thousands of other families were going through this complicated tangled web, which has allowed private lenders to benefit. Low and behold, I woke up Friday morning, checked the internet, and found the story about President Obama’s plan to change the system of subsidized loans.

“In the end, this is not about growing the size of government relying on the free market, because it’s not a free market when we have a student loan system that’s rigged to reward private lenders without any risk,” Obama said. “It’s about whether we want to give tens of billions of tax dollars to special interests or whether we want to make college more affordable for eight and a half million more students.”

I immediately wrote the letter to thank him and to share my experience.