"Nothing is better or worse, just different". These are words are forever sketched into the back of my eye, and to make matters worse, they play on loop in the recesses of my mind.

In fact, I can still picture when I first heard them - glossy-eyed and half-asleep in what was possible the single coldest classroom I've ever had the odd pleasure of being in. While delivering what were some rather cross (but albeit correct) remarks about British-American idiosyncrasies, dear old Teach took extended his overly dramatic pause.

Then he scanned the frigid lecture hall looking for a poor Yankee to berate, and of course he chose me (just my rotten luck). Teach locked right trough my soul and made sure that my re-fired brain cells made note of his Majesty's final remarks. It goes with out saying, that he was quite effective as his truism was forever imprinted in my mind.

After playing off this rather odd student-teacher interaction with my friends, I then spent the rest of that semester debating whether these were truly words of wisdom or just an other odd-ball professor's catch phrase being thrown in my direction.

What's funny about all this is that it took all of my poor choices catching up to me to realize just how right Teach was with his truism.