Four days of school and a week of living in the Krankenhaus down. Probably a quarter of my friends are currently abroad and overwhelmed (perhaps the election of Obama will bring them home, too)--what they don't know or have already forgotten is that the resurgence (I know what you're thinking: resurgence--really? and I'm here to tell you: really, really) of Michigan's school year never fails to knock a townie's socks off.
I have decided that my experience of U of M is akin to how I feel about Times Square: I certainly don't belong here; the monolithic secret is that nobody does. (If the medium is the message, then this is what the Big House was built to prove, and celebrate.) Thus the variety-over-coherence approach that helps place my "Dynamic Planet" professor Dr. Lyn Walter--intermittently passionate geologist, proud alcoholic, grade-A misanthrope (though she really believes in you if you're under 30), and especially virulent anti-academic--atop Faculty Hill, where her seniority and readymade persona must cause more conventionally earnest up-and-comers to cower beneath her like the ads for impressive off-Broadway productions that get eaten up by the creepy glow of a million Sarah Jessica Parkers. None of which is meant to imply that Lyn Wlater is a bad or unworthy teacher or, conversely, that Sarah Jessica Parker and that one show she was on--you know, that phenomenon Chuck Klosterman accurately summed up as "four moderately attractive women talking like gay guys"--deserve the attention they continue to receive. (You're it, Sex and the City aficionados, no talkbacks.) My concern is with the reality of any overstimulating environment, which everyone intuitively understands: A multitude of interesting options exist--many are clearly good and many more are clearly bad--any ou cannot decide between them because humans are not meant for decision-making at this speed and intensity level, so you assume that the biggest and brightest offering is the most relevant one in terms of keeping you in touch with the rabble (of which hopefully you know yourself to be a part), and that reasoning has a history of being right. Thus, you base your silly little selection--probably more than you realize--on your sense of where you are located within or in opposition to that dreaded generalization "the culture at large."
I am not using this extended analogy to assert that cultural relevance equals aesthetic or educational value. I'd like to think I'm explaining one facet of capitalism in an unnecessarily convoluted way. (Incidentally, I just realized I am also stealing this entire argument from George Saunders's essay "The Braindead Megaphone" in his book of the same name, so, credit where credit's due, George.) And I could bemoan capitalism and my university's obvious ideological kinship with it, but Marx can do so a lot better (and knows it). So I will choose instead to say that, even after two years in college and 20 in the Deuce, I rarely have all my bearings when I'm on this campus and have the potential to sink into loneliness and ennui just a few blocks away from it, yet lock me in Angell Hall between the hours of 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. and I'm liable to believe the thrill is ever-present.
Yours, and only yours, and barely on schedule,
JMan
I have decided that my experience of U of M is akin to how I feel about Times Square: I certainly don't belong here; the monolithic secret is that nobody does. (If the medium is the message, then this is what the Big House was built to prove, and celebrate.) Thus the variety-over-coherence approach that helps place my "Dynamic Planet" professor Dr. Lyn Walter--intermittently passionate geologist, proud alcoholic, grade-A misanthrope (though she really believes in you if you're under 30), and especially virulent anti-academic--atop Faculty Hill, where her seniority and readymade persona must cause more conventionally earnest up-and-comers to cower beneath her like the ads for impressive off-Broadway productions that get eaten up by the creepy glow of a million Sarah Jessica Parkers. None of which is meant to imply that Lyn Wlater is a bad or unworthy teacher or, conversely, that Sarah Jessica Parker and that one show she was on--you know, that phenomenon Chuck Klosterman accurately summed up as "four moderately attractive women talking like gay guys"--deserve the attention they continue to receive. (You're it, Sex and the City aficionados, no talkbacks.) My concern is with the reality of any overstimulating environment, which everyone intuitively understands: A multitude of interesting options exist--many are clearly good and many more are clearly bad--any ou cannot decide between them because humans are not meant for decision-making at this speed and intensity level, so you assume that the biggest and brightest offering is the most relevant one in terms of keeping you in touch with the rabble (of which hopefully you know yourself to be a part), and that reasoning has a history of being right. Thus, you base your silly little selection--probably more than you realize--on your sense of where you are located within or in opposition to that dreaded generalization "the culture at large."
I am not using this extended analogy to assert that cultural relevance equals aesthetic or educational value. I'd like to think I'm explaining one facet of capitalism in an unnecessarily convoluted way. (Incidentally, I just realized I am also stealing this entire argument from George Saunders's essay "The Braindead Megaphone" in his book of the same name, so, credit where credit's due, George.) And I could bemoan capitalism and my university's obvious ideological kinship with it, but Marx can do so a lot better (and knows it). So I will choose instead to say that, even after two years in college and 20 in the Deuce, I rarely have all my bearings when I'm on this campus and have the potential to sink into loneliness and ennui just a few blocks away from it, yet lock me in Angell Hall between the hours of 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. and I'm liable to believe the thrill is ever-present.
Yours, and only yours, and barely on schedule,JMan
1 comment:
yes please.
Post a Comment