How do seasonal darkness and personal setbacks shape judgment, resilience, and attention to public scandals?

In this exchange, Rick Rosner recounts how dark, wet winters amplified school despair: flunked classes, a transfer from the University of Colorado to Excelsior (formerly Regents), and a painful hemorrhoidectomy year marked by medication, embarrassment, and lost confidence. Scott Douglas Jacobsen presses for what “bad year” means, prompting Rosner’s blunt inventory of failure, coping, and unlikely Dean’s List rebounds. They pivot to the news cycle: delayed Epstein-file releases, Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future fraud prosecutions, and claims about Governor Tim Walz’s response, ending on a wary note about upcoming unemployment and inflation figures. Throughout, Rosner ties mood, memory, and politics together.

“I set alarm clocks and scattered Legos across the carpet, then put the clocks across the room so I had to step on Legos to shut them off. The pain was supposed to wake me up. Instead, I stepped on Legos, turned off the clocks, and went back to bed.”

Rick Rosner: This time of year is not smart. The days are short, it is cold, and it is wet. Today, the sun did not come out all day, and it bummed me out. When I was in school a zillion years ago, by this time—if I was having a disastrous school year—it felt hopeless.

You start falling behind in September and October, and you think you might be a bad student. From time to time, I was a bad student. I had entire years where I sucked ass. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What does “bad student” or “bad year” actually mean?

Rosner: It meant flunking classes. Dropping classes. Flunking classes because I could not be bothered to drop them. At the University of Colorado, I accumulated, over the years, a full year of Fs. Then I transferred to Excelsior College—formerly Regents College—which was created by the Board of Regents of The University of the State of New York as an external degree program and later received a charter to operate as a private, nonprofit, independent institution. Regents College changed its name to Excelsior College on January 1, 2001. “Excelsior” is still a terrible name, because it sounds fake.

But it is not fake. When I transferred, I was able to transfer only the credits I wanted to count toward the new degree, which meant the Fs did not carry over in the same way. I was lackadaisical. I followed my own thoughts. I was more impressed with my own shit than I should have been. My best semester at CU happened because I had a girlfriend and wanted to show her that I was not a fuck-up.

That was a good semester. I also had a great semester where I quit taking math and science classes and took a bunch of dance classes where everyone gets a pretty good grade. I made the Dean’s List a couple of semesters—the one where I behaved myself for my girlfriend, and the semester or two where I loaded up on dance.

I bounced at night—bars, ladies’ nights, strip clubs—and took dance classes to try to become a better stripper, which did not really work.

I also had terrible years. There was the hemorrhoid year, when I was a junior in high school. I went out for wrestling, went on a weird diet, and started running about twenty-five miles a week. That lasted one week before my hemorrhoids got dramatically worse and I was in extreme pain. I did not want surgery, but my mom got me a prescription for Percodan (a combination of oxycodone hydrochloride and aspirin) and, in that medicated state, I was easier to persuade to have a hemorrhoidectomy. 

They removed the hemorrhoids. I ordered a pizza delivered to the hospital to look cool because my friends came to visit. I ate the pizza. Twenty-four hours later, trying to pass it was brutal and felt like it tore me open. That sucked. I went back to school still on pain medication, out of it, and unhappy, because my athletic career had ended in a humiliating way—with no glory, just me wearing a pad in the back of my pants.

I accumulated a bunch of Fs. American studies was a double-credit class, so that counted as two Fs. I dropped chemistry, or I got an F. I quickly dropped AP Physics. 

Jacobsen: Was that the same year? 

Rosner: I do not know. I stumbled around the halls on pain medication.

I was sad and farting because my sphincter had not fully recovered and could not reliably hold in gas, and the medication did not help. I would walk down the stairs of the three-story high school and just let them rip. None of this helped my popularity.

That was pretty much a lost year. Even though I had the highest SAT scores in the school, I was flunking and farting. In my class, there may have been some sophomore who did better on the essay portion, but regardless, it was a disaster year. Senior year was also a disaster. I was mad that I was head boy—which is basically student body co-president—and I still could not get a girlfriend. I flunked a bunch of classes then too, even though, again, my SAT scores were very high.

The months from October through December were disastrous. I tried to force myself to catch up by setting two alarm clocks. I scattered Legos across the carpet and put the clocks across the room, so I would have to step on the Legos to turn them off. The pain was supposed to wake me up. Instead, I stepped on the Legos, turned off the clocks, and went back to bed.

All of this happened as the days were getting shorter. Our house had tiny windows, partly obscured by trees, so we barely got any natural light. We were up against the mountains in Boulder, and the sun went down very early in the afternoon. You know how that is in Canada—once it is November or December, daylight disappears fast.

Would I have done as badly if I lived somewhere sunnier? Maybe. I do not know. I just do not like this time of year. In Colorado, if you did not have a girlfriend by Halloween, you were basically out of luck until late winter or early spring, when the days started getting longer and warmer and people began going out again.

I had an intense discussion with Carole today. Can I blame the time of year? Not exactly, but it happened during a time of year I already dislike.

Jacobsen: As for other things: there are updates on the Epstein files. The Justice Department is reviewing millions of pages and has said further releases are delayed by the volume and victim-protection redactions, with reporting indicating the next major tranche is not expected until around January 20–21, 2026. 

Rosner: What is new is renewed rabble-rousing about Minnesota fraud tied to pandemic-era child nutrition programs—often framed as “daycare fraud,” but most prominently associated with the Feeding Our Future scheme. Prosecutors and watchdog reporting have put that scheme at roughly $250 million, with extensive prosecutions already underway. The timeline is not “late 2010s” in the way people imply: red flags were noted before the pandemic (including in 2019), the nonprofit sued the state in late 2020, the FBI investigation is described as beginning in early 2021, and the case became publicly visible with raids/charges in 2022.

The person widely described as leading Feeding Our Future was Aimee Bock, a white woman—so yes, the Twitter “Karen” discourse writes itself. The political move now is less “new discovery” than “new framing”: acting as though the fraud story just materialized, when in reality it has been investigated and prosecuted for years. 

The narrative in some conservative media is that Governor Tim Walz “let it happen.” What is clearly documented is that Minnesota has been under intense scrutiny, and Walz has publicly pushed an anti-fraud posture—including a 2025 executive order directing agencies to intensify fraud prevention and enforcement efforts. 

We will see new numbers soon for unemployment and inflation. We will see.

Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.

Photo by Ray on Unsplash

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