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Old 09-09-2009, 04:03 PM
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LikeAWillow LikeAWillow is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ghost_Tracker View Post
Dani I hate to say it but I think I agree with what this person and others are saying today. Trust me on one thing: It's easy for a smart person, when they're 17, to feel that they completely understand something or to feel that they "have something under control." And it's natural to feel that you have enough life experience at this point to understand what's going on. That's the trap, and it's easy to fall into it - almost everyone does, in one way or another. Part of being smart is being wise and yielding to the voice of experience; and listening to people who are older and wiser than you when they tell you that you may be wrong and that there may be more going on than meets your eye. You're saying you know how to solve this Freshman-level calculus problem, and a bunch of professional mathematicians are telling you that it's actually a graduate-level exercise in 12-dimensional math.
Maybe we've all made "too big a deal" - but so what? Nobody gets hurt if you listen to the voice of experience and carefully, logically consider what some fairly wise friends are saying to you, en masse.
Here's the thing. I agree with you that everyone who's posted has given really good advice, and generally has the attitude of the objective observer trying to give a little perspective. I mean, really, I don't think anyone here's calling Dani a harlot except me. And that's neither here nor there.

I'm going to keep up with Ghost Tracker's math analogy to give my thoughts on the situation. This might get a little more suspect than Stevie Nicks's grasp of grammar. I apologize in advance.

Like I said before, we're all standing outside the classroom (no pun intended) and trying to help her see that the homework problem she's working on isn't as easy as she's presented it to be. Advice, though, is only as valuable as the knowledge that goes into it. In our case, we know the graduate level mathematics that we think are required to solve this, but what we're hazy on are the actual details of the problem...because Dani hasn't shared them.

Is this man a current teacher or a former teacher? Does he have any actual power or authority over her? Just how old is he? What details/tears/emotions might Dani have already shared with him that pushed their relationship from teacher/student to friend/friend? How far is Dani from 18? Has he ever entered into a relationship like this with a student previously? Just how much sex was actually in the "sex poem"? How much of Dani's "obsession" is an actual crush, and how much a glamorization? And, of course, to what extent do we all tweak the true details of our lives when we present them to others?

I think the answers to these questions determine whether or not this man should be judged for his behavior (because I think most of the fervor sparked by Dani's post stems from the sex poem, a work whose contents we have no idea of), but whether or not we judge the teacher, the student should be implicitly blameless. If we're assuming Dani should have known better than to get herself into a bad situation, we're also assuming she's an adult capable of making those decisions, and if she's an adult, then why are we bothering with this relationship at all?

The moral of my story is really that Dani shouldn't share anymore, because she ruins everything. God.
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Last edited by LikeAWillow; 09-09-2009 at 04:06 PM..
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