Last November, I quit my useless office job at iWebmasters to pursue grad school and the Dream of Becoming A Member of the Academe. Despite my sometimes self-deprecating humor, which is really just for show, I don’t have any real issues about myself and my abilities. Not this time, though. Lately I’ve been plagued by the thought that I might not smart enough to do this grad school thing.
My frustrations come from the fact that I think and view the world in what the structuralists would call “ordinary language.” (See what I did there? I’m using words that end with -ist to make it appear like I’m learning something!) I don’t use fancy terminology, I can’t quote academics because half the time I forget the connection between the idea and the name and the other half, I just plain don’t get what they’re trying to tell me. Put an academic text in front of me and my mind shuts down. If I were given the same text in the original French or German instead of the English translation I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. It’s as though these damn literary critics think on an entirely different plane of thought and use a language only academics understand, and for the life of me I can’t grasp how that language works and therefore, how their thoughts work.
Well okay, maybe I exaggerate. After crying a lot and smoking a lot, I go back to the text, read and read and read until my head is swimming in concepts I only have a vague understanding of. That’s the thing that bugs me. I only have a vague understanding of everything I read.
When I was in college, I used to roll my eyes at people who would freak out over their school work. It’s different now. This Dream thing is all I have and I feel pressured to live up to it. Unfortunately, I’m just an ordinary person with an average mind who would like to understand literature and the world and so far it’s looking like I’m not even competent enough to do that.
What I find really funny is that despite my plummeting self-esteem, I know I’m going to keep on crying and trying. Not necessarily because I want to achieve The Dream (at this point, I’m just keeping that on the distant horizon so I can fool myself into thinking that my life has some sort of purpose and direction) but because the only other alternative is to go back to being an office monkey, and I would rather kill myself than be chained to a cubicle again. That, and I have way too much pride to allow myself to get defeated by academic essays written by dead guys.
So yeah, I guess I’m going to cry some more then go back to studying. Maybe this time I’ll be able to make sense of whatever I’m reading.