There is nothing like a new semester to bring you to your knees or to usher in a tsunami of humility. You finished last semester weary but in fine form, and you were feeling the end-of-semester momentum. Yeah, some of you passed with flying colors while others of you simply passed, but as a friend of mine once aptly put it, “you can’t spell degree without a D.”
The holiday break was refreshing, and perhaps you even came back to school feeling like you were ready for anything and everything the professors may ask of you. That was until you noted the due dates of the first paper in each of your classes.
Suddenly, that all-too-familiar wave of dread passed over you: You have to decipher, in a mere four-week span, how to please these people. What does this particular professor want to hear? In what ways am I going to have to modify what I truly feel and how I truly want to say it, in order to get the grade I truly want?
I find these thoughts that I have just as frequently as the rest of you (if not more so) quite disconcerting.
College is supposed to be the time of life and the playground of free thought and expression. Great minds are educating and inspiring younger great minds, people are discussing and forming ideas? Well, that’s what it is supposed to feel like anyway.
College always has been and continues to be little more than a series of hoop jumping.
Oh sure, learning occurs in the process, though only as a bi-product or a latent function to the one skill that we all aim to master if we are to get out of this alive? that is the skill an outstanding high school teacher of mine called “the fine art of BS.”
My father, an educator in public schools for the past 30 years, refers to this technique as pulling out the “golden shovel.” To explain, just start digging and just start piling it deep. Now, I fear there are those of you reading this right now saying, “I never do that and I never could!” Not only do the rest of us not believe you, but you are also the person in the class that we all despise.
You are as unaware of your vocal brown nosing as you are of it in your writing. The more adamant you are of your inability to dig with the best of them, the better you are at it. You are undoubtedly labeled the class kiss-up.
Mastering the skill of handling the golden shovel in each particular classroom situation is crucial for survival. It takes a little work and a little bit of effort, but putting forth the energy rewards 10 fold. There is a little secret that I think it is time a few of us let you in on. Professor Janet Kaufman of the English department at the U brought this to my attention in one of her classes.
The key clue is the syllabus.
Without going into too many hairy details (I’ll spare you the grammar lesson and the color coding), concentrate on the style of that highly emphasized piece of paper.
Does your professor write short and choppy sentences? Or perhaps the sentences are very active or very flowery? When you’ve deciphered a style there, imitate it. There’s nothing a professor likes to hear more than someone who sounds just like him or her. Presto! You’ve got an A.
Now that I’ve filled you in on this fine and delicate art, the bigger issues come to light.
The fact that this secret had to be discovered and revealed at all is ludicrous because of the collegiate values it undermines.
College students are not supposed to want to please the masses nor the individuals; they are supposed to be rebels and freedom lovers. They are not supposed to simply tell the big guys what they want to hear; they are supposed to embrace liberating ideas and see what come from them.
The saddest part of all is that this is nothing more than a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. What we are supposed and want to be and what gets the job done are two different things.
As the Indigo Girls sing, only after you’ve spent “four years prostrate to the higher mind” can you get your “paper” and be free.
So serve your time, study the syllabus, and hold off for a while on the philosophy until you can safely form your own opinions.
Katie welcomes feedback at: [email protected] or send letters to the editor to: [email protected].