My first class was today! Humanities Core discussion. A rather small room with 20 students in desks with reclining seats (!!!!!) all pointed towards an updated version of David Clarke. Except his name is Brian Thill and he's a little bit more current and hip than David; he watches Lost and the Office, texts on his Blackberry, and keeps his hair short and trim. Other than that the two are pretty similar: melodious voices that soothe you to sleep (had to keep my eyes from drooping), energetic and super knowledgeable about lit and everything concerned with it, and very genuine, approachable, and pragmatic with a hint of sarcasm.
Towards the end of class, he started taking role. Since the theme of my HumCore class this quarter is "Thinking, Making, Doing," he requested that we share our favorite thinker after he called our name.
After hardly even finshing saying her name, the first girl promptly responds, "Thoreau." And goes into a little schpeel about why Thoreau is the greatest and how he really embraced his philosophical ideals and married practice and preaching and yadayadayada. It was a brilliant, well-thought out answer -- much more so than I had expected from anyone on the first day of school. Which obviously put more pressure on me.
As he goes down the list, the students call out names like Plato, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare...even some obscure philosophers I haven't even heard of. Damn, I think. Everyone is so damn smart. Hell, after that first response I started delving deep into my mind to think of the last time I was really actually, profoundly, impacted by a thinker. Hell, all I came up with was the guy who wrote Fight Club. Seriously, that guy was the man! But I didn't want to be the girl who says "UH, the guy who wrote Fight Club" on the first day of class. I seriously don't even know his name! So I cast that idea aside and resumed my hunt for a remotely interesting thinker.
Luckily for me, AP Lit prepped me well enough to know how to spew some big names out and by the time he reached my name, I had decided to hop on the nerdy bandwagon and say Albert Camus. What a lie, I pretty much hated reading The Stranger until the last three freaking pages. God. After I said that I pretty much hated myself for not going with my gut instinct and saying "that guy who wrote Fight Club." Not as intellectual sounding I guess, but at least it'd be real and honest. So that left with me a pretty sad feeling, but it's something for me to work on and it's definitely nothing a nice walk around Aldrich Park can't fix.
Side note: I LOVE ALDRICH PARK! Such a nice place to cancel out calories from last night's two corndogs, aka heaven in corn dog form.
5 comments:
if i was you, i wouldve said like russell peters or chris rock or something if i blanked. they arent that great thinkers, but they are funny ones.
also, im not sure me or my saint francis affiliates would approve of the phrase "JESUS IN MY MOUTH."
that is...wrong.
I would have said David Clarke!
HAHA Natalie commented what I was going to
Chuck Palahniuk :P
hahah yeah.. thats the guys name. i know what you mean by being put on the spot for a class like lit. i always choke and go with a well accepted answer too. i feel like a shallow beezy after though.
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