Title: Josh's Coffee Run
Author: Kristen
Written: June 2, 2001
Genre: general - Josh POV
Disclaimer: actually, this time, he's all that's not mine. Everything else is a figment of my imagination.

Summary: "In those four hours, I learned a few things"

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There are days when I would just like to hook up an IV to myself and pump caffeine intravenously. It would save me the energy of bothering with coffee.

Today was one of those days.

Zoey Bartlet told me once that I looked like death on a Triscut. If she could only see me now.

Sleep is not something I'm expecting to get tonight, my brain is flying around at about forty miles an hour and shows no signs of slowing down.

I had every intention of going home and staring into the void, but I got side tracked. The Barnes and Noble down the street from the White House was open. It was midnight when I left the office and the
bookstore usually closes at eleven, so I was rather confused. Flinging open the door, I made my way to the checkout.

"Excuse me," I said to the girl behind the counter, "why are you still open?"

She smiled and answered a question I could tell she was sick of answering. "The National Honor Society at GW is hosting an AP study session for DC high school students all night tonight."

"AP?"

"Advanced Placement. You know, taking college credits in high school." She quickly went back to her magazine and I made my way to the café. Getting myself a cup of complementary coffee, the strongest brew they had, I sat down near two boys and a girl who were obviously not studying anything.

"You seriously don't remember that day? That was the greatest day our class ever had!" The girl was laughing.

"I'm telling you, I was absent that day," the Indian boy responded.

"Vivek, you were there. You were just hung over," the other boy took a sip of his drink.

Ah, college kids.

"Guys, lets get back. I've got to get a five on this test. Hopkins gives me mad credit hours if I get fives," the girl reached into her book bag and pulled out a book. How to Crack the AP American History
Test.

High school kids? AP high school kids get hung over? Interesting.

"Rebecca, you're going to ace every test you take. We're the ones that need help," Vivek explained.

I'm eavesdropping on three high school kids. I really need a life.

"How many are you taking again, Becca?" The other boy, who was obviously very interested in Rebecca for more than academic reasons, pulled a similar book out of his bag.

"The same ones you're taking, Caleb. American, Euro, English Lit, Macroeconomics, Statistics, Calculus, Physics and Music Theory."

She's taking eight AP tests? I wonder what her SAT scores were.

"You're ridiculous," Vivek commented.

"But oh how you love me," she grinned. Caleb reached under the table and took her hand. I was right.

"He can only dream," Caleb smiled.

"Oh!" Rebecca exclaimed suddenly, "Vivek, did you get your GPA thing straightened out?"

He nodded, "Back up to where it belongs."

"Which is?"

"4.3."

The other two nodded approvingly, as did I. Three tenths of a point above perfect is pretty darn impressive.

"I still don't see how Yale turned you down. 1430 on your SAT's, 4.3 GPA, number 5 in our class, you're the perfect applicant," Caleb remarked.

"Don't forget ladies man and all around nice guy," Vivek added.

"Oh, yes. Who could forget?" Rebecca responded in a way that's freakishly like CJ.

I wonder how she's doing…

"We all got turned down, though. None of us got into our first choice," Vivek frowned.

Caleb shrugged, "Who wants Princeton, anyway?"

"Or Harvard for that matter," Rebecca lamented.

"Becca, you got, what, at 1500?" Vivek asked.

"780 verbal."

I spit out my coffee.

780 verbal? What are they feeding these kids?

A good portion of my coffee landed on the trio, who responded by jumping up out of their chairs and staring at me like I was a Republican or something.

"Sorry," I managed.

"Is something wrong?" Rebecca asked, as she made her way to the napkin container.

"Your SAT Verbal scores are amazing. I only got a 760."

"I know," Caleb grinned, "isn't she nauseating? Brilliant, gorgeous and musically talented."

She raised an eyebrow, "Try short, klutzy and boring."

Vivek took a step forward, "Hi, I'm Vivek Murali," and offered his hand.

"Josh Lyman."

Rebecca was next, "Rebecca Belden."

Caleb was close behind, "Caleb Robison."

"Nice to meet all of you. I'm horribly sorry for eavesdropping…"

"But you're a politician," Vivek interrupted.

My jaw dropped, "You know who I am?"

Rebecca nodded, "Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman. You can't live in the United States and not know who you are after…" she trailed off.

"My thing," I smiled at her tact.

"Yeah, " she grinned sheepishly.

"So, you're all studying for the AP American test?" I pulled my chair up to their table.

Rebecca finished wiping up my coffee residue and returned to her seat next to Caleb. "For the next hour, we are. Then there's a conglomerate type thing upstairs for Macroeconomics at 2."

"I wish the President would have known about this. He would have loved to come," I remarked to myself. "Just because I'm curious, what are you all doing after you graduate? Because there's this really annoying intern at the DOE who's in college and I'd like to redeem your generation around the White House."

And thus began the most interesting conversation of my recent life. I spent four hours talking with three 18-year-olds about the downfalls of the American Education system. In those four hours, I learned a few
things. One, teenagers are a whole lot smarter than we give them credit for.

Ok, humor me with a sidebar here for a minute. Mary Marsh and her merry men are always trying to convince us that the next generation is full of Satan-spawn who are all drugged up, drunk and high on MTV. While Caleb, Vivek and Rebecca all admitted to getting drunk, none of them have seen MTV for three years. They're all virgins, and if Rebecca has her way, Caleb will be for a while. Listening to the statistics that Mary is always spitting out at us, the next generation is crap.

I met three of them tonight who proved her wrong.

Another thing I learned is that we put the bar too low. If we truly expect the youth of America to achieve greatness, we have to demand greatness. We have to stop settling for apathetic dropouts who have no direction and teachers who are so stressed out that they're really getting paid to baby-sit. We need to give students incentives to achieve that are more than just being able to get into a good college.
We need to give teachers incentives to make school a place of enlightenment instead of a place of war.

And it's not just schools, either. We have spent so much time applauding people that bare their midriffs for a living that we have completely neglected everyone else. We claim that the standard American is shaped like a Barbie doll and has an IQ of negative four and is only concerned with superficial things, while the truth is that 2/3 of this country is overweight and the rate of suicides attributed to depression about looks is skyrocketing.

I know, I know, any time I want to use punctuation…

If parents are concerned about their teenagers, why are they blaming everyone else but themselves? Did it ever occur to them that their kids are becoming people and are no longer their little puppets? If you put
kids in cages, they're going to rebel. So, why not nip the rebellion at the bud and give them stimulation for creativity and innovation instead of anger and violence. You want to know why Marilyn Manson is so
popular? It's because he's screaming the things that are running through those kids' heads. Their fear is manifested in the form of anger and in turn, parents are running scared.

Our society is completely ok with the status quo and yet we expect to get better at things. We have a drug problem in this country. It's not going away anytime soon unless someone does something radical about it. And until someone does something, the President will have to keep hearing about the Columbian Cartels on a regular basis. It's just a thought, but if what we're doing now isn't working, shouldn't we be
trying something else?

The amount of people that we have to get permission from before we can do whatever we want is staggering.

My job is to change the world. Plain and simple. When you boil down all of the jobs of the Senior Staff, it all really comes down to changing the world. The thing that's starting to scare me is that I just met
three kids who think we suck at it.

"Mr. Lyman," Rebecca said earlier tonight, "I know that you are all working terribly hard to fix the problems in our society and I'm thankful. But do you realize why everyone hates the government? It's
because it seems like all you guys do is run around in circles and try to prove that you're better than the other party. It always seems that you're too busy being politicians to be statesmen and legislators. Just
as a friendly warning, you better watch out. Some day soon, there's going to be a revolution. One of us," she gestured around the building, indicating that she meant her generation, "is just going to get fed up
with it and we're going to do something about it. And then the walls will come a-tumblin' down."

For seven days, the Israelites walked around the walls of Jericho. They were told to say nothing until the seventh day. Then, Joshua told them to give a mighty shout at the sound of the trumpets and the walls of
Jericho crumbled, giving Israel their promised land.

Well, Rebecca, Caleb and Vivek, you better start warming up those trumpets, because I don't know how much longer I can march.