On Becoming a Robot

So, grad school is setting in. And not in the way I expected at all. With the risk of sounding either incredibly vain, or incredibly insecure, my classes are so disappointing. I say vanity because I can think of no other word to describe the hours I pass sitting in class thinking that I already know about the topic of which the professor who is obviously significantly more educated than I am seems to endlessly droan on about (is that right to put two prepositions in succession, and nonetheless at the end of a sentence?). I say insecurity because it is the only emotion with which I can truely qualify the hours I spend in class thinking that maybe the point of the class which I claim to know so well is so subtly over my head that I am completely missing it.

Insecurity and vanity: the "median" emotion of these is emotion-less-ness, they truly cancel each other out in the mathematics of personal feelings. So, I have become a robot. I exist between not caring about my insufficiently challenging classes because I already know it and the panic that I am not gleaning everything I can from the infinite wisdom that I obviously am not capturing. Emotion-less-ness. Where is the excitement of my youthful ideals of helping break cultural perceptions, of opening the worlds eyes to horizons as of yet inexperienced, of showing the vast marvels that surround us even in our own backyard? How can I reach any of those ideals if I can't get my students to conjugate verbs correctly, let alone show them there is more to Latin America than drugs and tamales.

Where are my youthful ideals? Lost in the nothing-ness of grad school robotics. Where is the desire to make a change, when I don't care if my students don't pass a test, when I lower my standards to the normal bell curve, when I myself don't see the point of teaching something that in 2 weeks, after the chapter test, will be quickly forgotten. How can I interest others in a topic that I vainly dismiss as "already known" or subconsciously ponder as "completely foreign"?

Hearing the Dean of the Graduate School speak about how generations of knowledge are been entrusted to us to perserve and expand once was gratifying. Now it is nothing: what knowledge if I already know it (vanity), or what expansion can I offer if I never understand it (insecurity).

And the question of the hour is brought to light: between this vanity and insecurity, I must ask, "DID I MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION?" The vain side of my brain (I would say this is my right side, logical, egotistical) says, yes and keep showing those bastards how much smarter then them you are and that you wouldn't have as much time to think about this if your classes were challenging. The insecure side, by definition, says, well maybe this is wrong. Existing in the betwixt is my life.

Isolated and emotionless, routines become meaningless and life goes plowing ever on. Where I am in the happening of it all is just quite unknown, for I seem to not be able to carve out my own place, and am just dragged meaninglessly forward, towards some end that I cannot imagine. Indeed, the life of a robot.