like i'm fifteen again
October 10, 2002 03:37 PM

I was in class today.

I've been thinking about academics. I mean. I wasn't in a college class today, it was training. But I've been thinking about the great Disillusionment of 1993. That is. The year I arrived at college only to realize that it was not the academic mecca promised me.

Not to say that I went to a bad school (although I did go to the school I could afford). Or even to say that college had no value. It clarified a lot of things for me. Solidified me in a way.

But college did not satisfy me intellectually. I did that for myself, typically in off hours.

I've been thinking for awhile about getting an MBA, but I'm afraid it will mean more of the same. More academic squalor.

People are just. Generally speaking. Really slow.

This class I took also highlighted some things I need to work on. Like the fact that so many other people are doing the job I want without knowing the things I know. And that I just need to be more assertive. I know all these things, and I'm not practicing. I'm just teaching other people.

And it's partly that I'm naturally bossy and need everyone else to do things right.

And it's partly that I really do think my purpose is to change things for the better [meaning my way].

But sometimes I'd like to just do the job I've organized myself to do.

I thought of something else as I waited to turn in my test at the end of class. We have this rhetoric about ability and smarts, but it's still considered an inappropriate show of skill to be the best. Like you shouldn't make others feel badly by doing things like finishing tests that others are only half through. This worked out nicely for me, as I had breezed through the test and miswritten two answers; the pause before turning it in meant I realized the mistake and got everything right. But still.

Maybe it's a girl thing. Like the idiotic things I imagine sometimes (that people expect me to be meek because I'm a girl, or stupid because I'm fat, as if I have a damn clue what they're thinking).

I'm tired of being smart. I'm proud of being smart.

I really expected to grow out of this by now.