Thinking about school
Being in school again has me reflecting on my previous bouts with academia. They were truly bouts; they felt at the time like moments characterized by opposition. Myself, poised against boring classwork; the expectations of my dad; my own fears of not fitting in; ennui stemming from a lack of knowledge of what I wanted to become and a lack of interest in finding out.
My current experience with school is… maybe not diametrically opposed to those things, but it does seem more fulfilling. I have a sense of purpose and focus that eluded me during the Years of Fucking Around. To be fair, I did experience these same feelings when I was taking the classes that led up to my math degree from UCI… you know, the one that I don’t really use. But to juxtapose that experience with those of high school or UC Riverside, where I just did the bare minimum in order to exist without actively failing out, shows how far I’ve come in being able to do more with educational facilities than merely occupy space within them.
Part of me wonders what I’d be like if I’d been the kind of person in high school (or earlier) to really engage with and make use of all the books and coursework and lessons I was supposed to be studying. Apropos of nothing, I thought of “The Swimmer” by John Cheever. I believe it was assigned to me junior year of high school. I did not read a single word of it–it seemed very far removed from what I was interested in (sci-fi, gloomy music). Now I could wish that the sum total of my responsibilities would be to read a short story and analyze it.
I did end up reading “The Swimmer” after writing the bulk of this post, because it felt weird to put effort into complaining about not having read something when it’s so easily available now. It is a very good story: spooky in an unexpected way, and insightful into the ways we hide within our own lives. Made me want to read more Cheever–or maybe some Rabbit Angstrom stuff?
But of course, there were a million things–in high school and afterward–that fall in the double-shaded Venn diagram region of “things I was not interested in” and “things that would be worth knowing about.” Why be upset about a particular one of those things, or fixate upon it? Just as I wasn’t the sort of person to get really into analyzing my English class assignments, then earn straight As so that I could do the same at some tiny liberal arts college, first as a student and then a professor, for the rest of my days; I also missed out on becoming a long-haul truck driver, or a bank robber, or a grindset type. The real distinction here is that the latter occupations are ones which I wouldn’t currently want to be doing.
Sometimes I think of missed opportunities, of chances given away for lack of convenience, and I almost find myself breathless at how much space all this nothingness can take up in a person. It’s like becoming aware of the vast void at the edges of your field of vision, and of the small area you can actually see, and of its paucity compared to everything behind you or even just off to the sides a bit.