Life as a bad musical.

Now that I am on the verge of graduating, I have come to appreciate my life as a student more than I have before. It's similar to how so many people on the verge of death seem to appreciate life so much more than they ever did while they were in the midst of living it. Funny how that happens. Coming back from that digression, though, as much as I appreciate my position as student, there are still some things that I don't like so much, and which I don't see myself missing once this time in my life is behind me.

One of those things is this: I am often called upon to write about things I know nothing about, and to do it intelligently, and convincingly enough to fool people into believing I actually do know what I'm saying.

Like now, for instance. I have a take-home mid-term in my Restoration to Eighteenth Century English Lit class. Two essays on two subjects he has provided out of a list of nine, and it's due tomorrow. I'm working on it right now. But I really don't feel like I know enough to write two essays.

I almost feel like I'm lying, intentionally misleading. Like my school career has been, in part, a lesson in how to be a good liar.

One way to look at this is that I've subjected myself to it. I decided to go to school and be an English student. I decided to play by the rules of the system and agree to mostly comply with the expectations of my teachers, and while those expectations do not always require writing comprehensive papers on things I do not understand, if I wish for a good grade, it is expected that I will do everything I can in order to get it, and to not try to do so, even when I'm mostly clueless, is a lack of effort on my part, and possibly a sign of laziness. Therefore I talk in intellectual circles that use carefully crafted language to make it sound like I'm making progress, and not pulling a Ren Stevens and singing a two-minute song whose only content is the fact that the first moon landing was in 1969, or trying to emulate the clever cast of Whose Line being challenged to stop the show.

Of course, another way to look at it is that I haven't subjected myself to it, that I have no choice in the matter, that's just the way things are, and everybody has to do it at some point.

Either way, I don't like it. Practicing deception goes against the way I desire to live.

And I'm not very good at it. Especially not in day-to-day interactions with people. Don't ask me to lie for you. If I have to keep it up for very long or try hard to make it convincing, it won't hold water. I do admit I am better at faking it in writing, but anybody who contains a measure of shrewdness can see through it. Which is why my papers where I'm pulling a Ren Stevens don't make excellent grades, and have comments like "You're falling into explication here. The assignment wasn't to retell me the story, something I already know." Well, yeah, I'm retelling the story, because I don't know what else to say! And I'm hoping that my rambling will cover that up.

But it doesn't. (Fluff my Garfield!)

"A man of knowledge uses words with restraint...." Proverbs 17:27


As an addendum, I was recently declared by a woman I know to be "anti-establishment," and I'm certain this is evidence of that. I agree with her assessment.