So–I’m a Canadian student, finishing my undergraduate degree in about six weeks. I just wanted to offer some remarks of solidarity, here.

I am, or at least will be, an academic; I’m not much proud of this, indeed, am grudgingly resigned to it. I’d like to be a world-class rock climber, or a top-notch executive, or maybe a paramedic. But I’m not, I can’t be, and the reason is decidedly because I enjoy writing down my opinion at length and making other people read it in a context which demands that they convincingly appear to care about having done so. This experience is critical for issuing vitality into the tenuous hold I’ve got my ego, and as such, am grievously wounded by the complete inability of my ‘peers’ to speak, write, read or apparently think in English. It’s actually terrifying; whereas I will go to grad school, and then probably onto a PhD where I will be locked safely inside the ivory tower and only let out once in a while to conduct an ethnography which virtually no one will ever read, these people will go on to hold positions in corporations, government, and NGO’s. They will decide whether or not my tax forms arrive on time (they will decide in favor of this yet nonetheless completely fail to accomplish it), they will decide how to spend the money I donate (and they will hire one or another Hollywood Square to talk about their mission rather than accomplish it), and they will choose how to create an advertising campaign that will convince the masses to consume their product (this they will accomplish, though it will have nothing to do with the merit of their work but rather the reflexivity with which a startling number of their peers obey consumptive instruction). This student actually has a wonderful imagination and real intuition for rhythm; the sad part is, without the vocabulary, critical thought and positive reinforcement that would furnish his innate talents with the means to develop, he will probably end up getting frustrated at his inability to complete the crossword in the Times and convincing himself that he reads Playboy for the articles. Worst of all, if all of us were simply that badly off, that would, at least, be something. But that young man, in fact, was an honors English student.

So we’ve got to keep writing, and reading, and speaking to each other, because if language could rise out of premodernity to a place where it recognizably has entered a descent, one can at least surmise that it could rise again–hence my hello. /wink

Healthy kids. Language is a virus, they’re naturally resistant.

Cue Floyd’s “The Wall”. Curl up in a corner, oppressor.

(ridendo dicere verum, etc.)

Wow! The Whitman paper reminded me of the same satirical “college entrance essay” that you linked to. I recall first reading it back in college about 20 years ago when a grad student instructor of mine taped it to his door, and have often thought about taking the time to find it again and re-read it.

Thanks for the link. Of course, that made me want to find out a bit more about it, and a quick Google search found this followup on urbanlegends.com related to the essay:

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blbyol3.htm