Teachers and Books

Teachers and Books

``I never let schooling interfere with my education``- Mark Twain

I would love to go to class more, I really would, but I can’t shake this strange feeling that I’m surrounded by zombie babies.

My Professor is prone to keen prattle, accentualized by overzealous hand gestures, dripping with a sincere desire to show conviction and instill passion. She means well, and I’m sure she is just as frustrated as I am that this class has taken the turn that it has.

They are all hanging off the teet like parasitical parrots, and their minds have been gutted by God knows what type of 'opium of the people' their will has succumbed too. I wish I was older, so that I could approach these types of thoughts with more humour and patience, but I fear that cynicism is a young man`s game.

Hemingway told me once in The Radio, The Nun, and the Gambler that bread was the opium of the people, but I think he was drunk

A group of girls in front of me spend their time taking panicked  notes-  e-mailing professors with paranoid insecurities-  checking their Facebook with mounting desperation and need. Them, all these people, care so much about succeeding and care so little about learning, it makes me feel cheated.

They might be smarter than me, God knows they get the grades, but they are not here to learn, they are here to be told what to do, how to write, what to think, and how to say it.

Mark Twain said everything I`m feeling in one sentence, but I forget the exact quote. Damn it all.

People really don`t like it when you say this kind of stuff to them, it screws with their gears, grinding the clockwork to a halt for just a little too long, and even when it speeds back up everyone is left with goosebumps. I swear to you, these people always know the time. I bet they are always going somewhere, and I can see how it would be comforting, to know the time.

The Italians have an expression for what I`m getting at- Il belle far niente, meaning `the beauty of doing nothing`. Everyone is so worked up all the time, it`s a wonder anyone accomplishes anything at all. It`s a wonder they`ve dodged a heart-attack.

Sociology students who sit in the front row, in my opinion, are missing the point. How in the hell is one supposed to observe a damn thing from the front row?

The term zombie babies might seem silly to you at first, but I think its apt; doddering hunks of meat, neither ever fully alive or dead, yet yearning for attention and confirmation and handling. Play nice Dick. Play nice Jane. That’s a good baby, now let go of my ankle.

They would be more dangerous if they had teethed yet.