Blog Post #6

I am the product of my schooling: an idea reconfiguring, information regurgitating, language-processing machine. I am incapable of independent thought—the ideal citizen! I am a color commentator. I do well on tests and can write essays. I know how to use a semicolon. I clear bureaucratic hoops with the grace of a gazelle. I am punctual. When I elide prose, I can pass for a poet. I spent years learning and relearning how to be a student. I have no marketable skills. My prose is clear and error-free. I will never leave school because I have evolved to survive in an academic habitat. If I learn to wear socks-with-sandals and plaid button-ups in a spectrum of eggshells, creams, and off-whites, I may be a successful professor. I have nothing original to say. I can combine old ideas prettily and in various metric patterns. Sometimes in rhymes, but I try to be subtle. I know which lies to tell in what contexts. I work for the approval of authority figures, real or imagined. I stand against intellectual yardsticks on tiptoes. I measure myself against my peers, real or imagined. I am enlightened beyond concerns with physical beauty. I am intensely superficial regarding intellect. I can never hope to satisfy my own ideals.