Student Fiction
Just a little fiction I wanted to share with Tumblr. This was inspired by my not-so-long-ago days as a student.
Sometimes when I’m sitting at my desk at school, I realize that I haven’t learned anything.
I glance at the other students around me, wondering if they’re learning something. And if it looks like they are, I try to rationalize it—“No they aren’t. They’re faking it, obviously.” But what If they are learning something? I get so envious of their abilities to concentrate on facts and history. Meanwhile, I count the freckles on the ginger kid next to me.
I’ll stare at their furrowed eyebrows, which are so focused on a statistics problem, while my own eyebrows are furrowed, desperately trying to figure out what they must be thinking about.
Instead of actually paying attention to the professor or the overhead projector, I watch the eager faces of my classmates and I silently will them to let me in on their little learning binge. Let me have a taste, too. Just one tiny sliver of motivation.
I spent most of my undergrad years like this. Wondering what learning was like for other people, instead of actually experiencing it for myself. I fear that this is how I am spending grad school as well.
An old roommate works at Facebook. Another friend works at Google. They are making gobs of money and will probably end up on MTV Cribs and buy the entire Ralph Lauren spring 2012 collection (the one that I masturbate to nightly, before I fall asleep on the floor in a twin-sized bed).
It’s been ten years since I graduated college, and I am actually worse off now. At least then, I had a frame.
