Yes, teachers and their bizarre "projects" are out of control. Yes, other parents are always annoying people with the overweening ambition to get their toddlers to the Ivy League. But apparently we are not supposed to believe Ms. Waldman is one of them, despite the fact that she told her young child who currently hates school to expect "17 more years" of it.

Now, my math is a little rusty, and I wasn't expected to do 60 math problems in four minutes (instead, like everyone else who grew up in the 70s-80s except, apparently, Ms. Waldman, I was expected to finish 100 multiplication problems in three minutes, and then two, and have my score posted on the wall along with the rest of the class) but that adds up to more than a high school education for a kid who's already overwhelmed by school. Has Ms. Waldman considered that maybe some of the pressure is coming from home?

Life is full of pain. A lot of it is newsworthy and is going on around the world right now. In case the Salon editorial board hasn't noticed, this isn't exactly a slow news week. Can you people maybe get out there and report on some of it, and stop giving this woman big font every time she wrings her hands about her kids? I don't care whose wife she is, it isn't news, and it doesn't merit a headline.

Isn't this where you can't get out of bed, or alternatively can't sleep, can't focus on one thing long enough to secure a fabulous book deal, make complicated travel arrangements, etc., can't stop crying, can't function? Isn't that what debilitating means? I haven't know many "debilitated" people with the level of function required to plan a fabulous year long voyage around the world.

Like many skeptics of this book have written - been there, done that (the debilitating depression, I mean) and it briefly destroyed my professional career. I have not purchased the yoga shirt bearing the name of an ashram for well-heeled Americans on designer-clad spiritual pilgrimages.

It's striking how "Eastern" religious and philosophic traditions, which tend to deemphasize (some would say devalue) the individual, have been most enthusiastically embraced in the West by exactly the sort of middle class to wealthy, self-absorbed Yuppies who jet off to an ashram in India, and seek red kitchens in pristine island cottages in order to find themselves. And then get paid for it. Only in America.

A miracle for those with chronic insomnia. I'm willing to trade dependence - and I have no doubt I'm dependent - for the ability to function during the day because I got 8 hours of sleep. But anyone who washes it down with alcohol has bigger problems.

And LeCastor, we get it, you're in law school. Mazel tov. You display the characteristic arrogance of the 1L that hasn't yet been wiped away by a bad judge, psychotic partner, opposing counsel, or just the bitterness of mucking the sewers of other peoples' problems day after day. Assuming you make it through, you'll figure out what I mean.

And the lawyers who smoke weed regularly are not, on average, particularly high functioning attorneys. You have to keep a lot of balls in the air to practice than to sit in Civ Pro and recite the holding in International Shoe. Pot has a tendency to make you a little more interested in chilling with a bag of chips and some Buffy DVDs than in preparing your client for tomorrow's settlement conference, returning the 30 messages you have to return, and writing that motion to dismiss you've been putting off.

At least the Ambien lets me work the other 16 hours a day, which is what it takes sometimes.

Male or female. For some reason, unlike most of you, I assumed LW is male.

The cold responses of people who claim to reside in cold climates ("I'm from Massachusetts, where we know from cold, why by god I had to wait 45 minutes for a Green Line in an unheated station, and I would NEVER impose on a friend like that") are more than disheartening. They're examples of why people are so damn miserable everywhere.

I live in Alaska. We know from cold. Cold can be a matter of life or death or at the very least, frozen plumbing. If a friend called me at 8 am and was cold in a blizzard, it would not occur to me to freeze him out.

My first concern would be about him traveling across town in a blizzard - I was on the East Coast for the spring blizzard of 1993, so I know how clueless you people are - but if this was someone I considered a friend, I would assume that he had not already weighed the risks of traveling v. the risks or discomfort of staying in his apartment. LW dismissed his judgment as well as his personal needs. That is patently offensive, and is justification alone for the friend's subsequent actions.

A real friend gives a friend the benefit of the doubt - in this case, that he was calling because he needed to, and that he had the sense to make the determination what he needed. And that he would not unnecessarily impose on a friend.

LW is not a real friend. S/he is a twit who is now, because of being criticized, complaining that s/he was wronged. Public condemnation of bad behavior, such as exhibited by LW, is a traditional activity of northeasterners. LW is just lucky he won't be shunned or burned at the stake like some of his forebears.