Critical Hit
Gather round children (I'm actually younger then anyone who reads this, but just go with it) and hear the story of my Essay.
No comparative literature is no simple class, It is one that cannot be bested by simple effort, but it truly a test of your insight and inborn talent. Now the class is comprised of some three-hundred people, roughly 5 of which are on my floor. Of the ten and five score of us I am one of the lone few who asks any kind of question. I'm also the only one who has raised an effective challenge to anything he's said. There's a standard presenter rule to never show direct defeat, but he did give the equivalent which is "come talk to me after class about that." As such I am assumed to be extremely good at that class. This may or may not be true, but it's an assumption and in the mind of a college student that's good enough. This made me somewhat of a Buddha figure on my floor, insofar as Justin and a girl whose name I don't know would routinely come to me for help, either with questions or asking me to read their essay and make changes to it. I found this mildly amusing and never much of an inhibition, plus it was something I filed into the category of "generally a Good Thing To Do"
My essay was done 3 days before it was due, which I considered a monumental achievement, but being done only means that it's complete and would probably get a passing grade. It goes through stage after stage of revision before it''s actually handed in. It was done (expected grade B) at around 19 hours before being due at which point I had a revelation
Potential cannot exist in short term time because it's a purely reactionary timeframe, Only in long term time can the idea of promise or potential exist, and only in a moment of clarity in long term time can we accurately see that potential
That's not important right now, but that is, I think, the driving message or idea we were supposed to figure out. I spent the majority of those next 19 hours rewriting my paper to fit around this new burst of insight I had. Damnit all that readiness for nothing! I didn't bother to share it with anyone though. Because I spent so much of time rewriting to fit this new idea I was unable to go up to Justin or unnamed girl and say "Hey, throw out your old essays I just figured out something that's gonna blow it out of the water" I feel bad about that, but it's way too late now.
I got that essay back today.
4.0
Booya!
The most amusing, albeit slightly evil, part of this is the standard post essay "How did you do" thing. I avoid asking and only say when asked (My parents are concerned about my grades so this blog post doesn't violate this rule, if they knew I'd gotten it back they would have asked.) because I think it causes less problems that way. One of the many curses of masculinity is the inborn drive of one-up-manship. I've mostly overcome that but it's still a thing males do that makes me sad to be a part of our fraternal order. Anyway Justin came up to me after class with a standard male "I just did something great, I'm going to beat someone at this because I did well" look on his face and asked the standard "How'ed you do on the essay" I responded in a nonchalant way "4.0" he immediately deflated and just kind of wandered off. Unnamed girl (I really should learn her name) asked how I did while I was walking down the hall earlier, when told she just said "oh" and just kind of wandered off. I admit I take guilty pleasure in this (I haven't fully suppressed my drive to be better then rather then simply good) but I think it's also a look at the potentially damaging nature of contest. I could go into a full rant at this point but the entire thing can be summarized at "I'm not sure if contest is good because it motivates some and anti-motivates others. This means that it's a force of change with a net effect of 0, in the same way that the continuous cycle of death and recreation is, making it part of the universes pattern of constant equal change, all relating around the fact that the only constant is change, and that change is inherent to existence."
No comparative literature is no simple class, It is one that cannot be bested by simple effort, but it truly a test of your insight and inborn talent. Now the class is comprised of some three-hundred people, roughly 5 of which are on my floor. Of the ten and five score of us I am one of the lone few who asks any kind of question. I'm also the only one who has raised an effective challenge to anything he's said. There's a standard presenter rule to never show direct defeat, but he did give the equivalent which is "come talk to me after class about that." As such I am assumed to be extremely good at that class. This may or may not be true, but it's an assumption and in the mind of a college student that's good enough. This made me somewhat of a Buddha figure on my floor, insofar as Justin and a girl whose name I don't know would routinely come to me for help, either with questions or asking me to read their essay and make changes to it. I found this mildly amusing and never much of an inhibition, plus it was something I filed into the category of "generally a Good Thing To Do"
My essay was done 3 days before it was due, which I considered a monumental achievement, but being done only means that it's complete and would probably get a passing grade. It goes through stage after stage of revision before it''s actually handed in. It was done (expected grade B) at around 19 hours before being due at which point I had a revelation
Potential cannot exist in short term time because it's a purely reactionary timeframe, Only in long term time can the idea of promise or potential exist, and only in a moment of clarity in long term time can we accurately see that potential
That's not important right now, but that is, I think, the driving message or idea we were supposed to figure out. I spent the majority of those next 19 hours rewriting my paper to fit around this new burst of insight I had. Damnit all that readiness for nothing! I didn't bother to share it with anyone though. Because I spent so much of time rewriting to fit this new idea I was unable to go up to Justin or unnamed girl and say "Hey, throw out your old essays I just figured out something that's gonna blow it out of the water" I feel bad about that, but it's way too late now.
I got that essay back today.
4.0
Booya!
The most amusing, albeit slightly evil, part of this is the standard post essay "How did you do" thing. I avoid asking and only say when asked (My parents are concerned about my grades so this blog post doesn't violate this rule, if they knew I'd gotten it back they would have asked.) because I think it causes less problems that way. One of the many curses of masculinity is the inborn drive of one-up-manship. I've mostly overcome that but it's still a thing males do that makes me sad to be a part of our fraternal order. Anyway Justin came up to me after class with a standard male "I just did something great, I'm going to beat someone at this because I did well" look on his face and asked the standard "How'ed you do on the essay" I responded in a nonchalant way "4.0" he immediately deflated and just kind of wandered off. Unnamed girl (I really should learn her name) asked how I did while I was walking down the hall earlier, when told she just said "oh" and just kind of wandered off. I admit I take guilty pleasure in this (I haven't fully suppressed my drive to be better then rather then simply good) but I think it's also a look at the potentially damaging nature of contest. I could go into a full rant at this point but the entire thing can be summarized at "I'm not sure if contest is good because it motivates some and anti-motivates others. This means that it's a force of change with a net effect of 0, in the same way that the continuous cycle of death and recreation is, making it part of the universes pattern of constant equal change, all relating around the fact that the only constant is change, and that change is inherent to existence."
posted by Max at 11:52 PM
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