education

i'm cleaning out my old word documents. [a dangerous business that could keep you up far too late on a saturday night laughing at yourself.]

i stumbled onto some of my humanities papers from sophomore year in college. [oh, to be a sophomore in college again! when i could spend evenings on my balcony eating pudding swirled with cool whip and talking about existentialism and mascara.]

i can't stop laughing. and i really feel the need to share this little paragraph with you. [i'm sure if my old students could get their hands on these pretentious snobby meaningless sentences they'd all come screaming back for me to change their grade.]

Animals wander about their natural habitat killing, feeding, and resting as they please, urged on by some primal instinct. Naturalism attempts to carry this metaphor of the natural world over into the seemingly more complicated day-to-day existence of humans. Through this philosophy, the rationality each human believes he or she possesses dissipates into a disparate well of confusion, frustration, determinism, and pessimism. Rational thought is replaced by instinct, and compassion is left mutilated on the battleground of competing economic forces. Eugene O’Neill’s character, Yank, in The Hairy Ape is the quintessential example of such a man lost in his own primal nature. Every action and attempt to grasp hold of sense in the world around him leaves Yank increasingly more confused and dissatisfied with his existence.

the irony is, i have absolutely no recollection of yank or his hairy ape. so much for education.