School

I love school. Really, I do. Apparently when I was four I declared to my mother that the time had come for me to go to school and that I didn't want to stay with the babysitter and my infant compatriots anymore. I think it was because I'd somehow got wind that preschools had markers and I really wanted to try those things out. Now that I'm grown up, I still love school (lack of Crayola products notwithstanding) and I think I figured out why.

It's all about the ego-boost. I suck at the real world. I couldn't cook you a decent meal to save your life (or mine), and yesterday it took me three hours to find a place that ended up being ten minutes away. (Although, admittedly, I had the wrong address during the first two hours... more on that another day, though.) Oh, and today I could not for the life of me figure out how to operate the coffee-machine at work. (You have to push the button with the cup of coffee depicted on it. Go figure.)

School, though. I'm good at that. Give me a chapter of (preferrably interesting, but I can cope if not) stuff to learn and I will highlight and take notes and rearrange and then spit it back out at you in the form of multiple choice answers or true/false decisions or essay answers. If I'm really doing well, I can just read and remember. I love that. Either way.

At school, I can look at an essay prompt and bang out 1000 words of decently written prose with correct grammar and a few semi-colons thrown in just to show off and feel good about myself. "You write well," the teacher/professor/thesis advisor says. Ten points out of ten. Oh, the affirmation. It's so good.

I think I figured out how it all evens out in the end, though. People who struggled in school, do you remember when there were spelling tests and you worked so hard to sort out the vowels in ridiculous words like 'neighborhood' and 'facetious' (aside: really, English, what were they thinking when they designed you?)? And those little straight-A brats like me were sitting there blithely throwing in words like 'conscientious' and 'liaison' for extra credit? Well, guess what? Now you are out there having successful lives and even if you can't spell 'mischievous', no one will ever know, because yay, spellcheck! Meanwhile, I have to go around a roundabout three or four times before I figure out which way is west, and being able to read a quiche recipe in French doesn't help me with the fact that for some reason the filling of mine always leaks into the crust and makes the crust disgustingly soggy. I can't even reliably turn the stove on, and let's not even get started on telling one's right from one's left under pressure.

I wish I could send a message back in time to say "Little fourth-grade Self and fellow-nerd friends, enjoy this while you're ahead. It won't last long. And the rest of you... don't begrudge us our grade-school glory. You'll have the rest of your lives to make fun of us for everything else."

This post brought to you by the fact that I decided to take a few online courses this semester and so I'm back at school, in a manner of speaking, and... I love it.