So I was going to wait a few days before making another post, considering there isn't much of interest happening in Lubbock, and I don't want to bore the readers of this blog with inane rambling about stuff that people outside of Lubbock wouldn't care about.
However, I was presented with an interesting (to me, at least) topic this afternoon while making my second trek onto campus via our wonderful bus system. (No seriously, they really are great. And they provide wonderful fodder for things like this.)
It was roughly noon, and having had my second morning class canceled and no classes until 2pm, I had gone home to relax for a while before heading back to campus. So there I was, on the bus near the back and minding my own business when one of my greatest pet peeves in the world made itself known: Ridiculously Loud Cell Phone User. It's not that rare a breed, they're everywhere. I'm starting to consider capturing them and selling them as entertaining pets. Enterprising, no? Anyway. Yes, more often than not in situations like this, such as public transit, I am caged in with a wailing iPhone lunatic with no escape until the nearest stop approaches. Usually I just try to grin and bear it and block out the news about grandma's colonoscopy or just exactly how many beers Big Tyler consumed over the course of an hour (which is apparently still under debate on a Monday afternoon) at whatever party in Lynnwood was the chosen destination last night. I don't want to know, and I don't care. Be that as it may, it's hard to miss everything.
Let me also say, as a caveat, that I have a hard time having respect for your privacy if you voice your private matters at such a volume that the driver can hear you all the way from the back of the bus. If you didn't want me to hear, and subsequently air your conversation on the internet, then you would talk in a more private level. So, you know, there's that.
Anyway, on with the particulars of this story. So, a seemingly sweet, nasally (and also blatantly sorority) girl sitting about two rows away from me is chatting it up with an unknown acquaintance when I hear first that she spent all of yesterday--Sunday--laying in bed. I started with longing to do the same. Innocent, right? Yeah. She went on to say it was well deserved, considering she partied until 4am Friday and Saturday (to be honest I wasn't all that shocked because hey, sorority). My thoughts at that moment started to lean towards pity. Is there no other acceptable topic on a Monday afternoon in college than partying? Apparently not.
Next, she began to complain about stress. I started thinking, okay...you would probably have less stress if you did your homework instead of partying, but that's just me. She then began to lament about something very close to my own heart, simply because I am practically the poster child for just such a statement. I will attempt to quote her as directly as possible, since I was petty enough to whip out my phone at that moment and start copying down her words. She complained that she wished she was "a little bit smarter. You know, like just a teeny bit"..."You know, like, there's, like, those people in class who, like, barely study for tests or homework or whatever, and they still make all A's. Like, they don't even try, and they ace everything." Her voice had taken on a particularly whiny tone at this point which was grating on my nerves most acutely, but lo and behold, my pity only grew stronger. "If I could just be, like, a teeny bit smarter and not have to study or whatever, my life would be so stress-free."
And that's where I lost my shit. (Pardon me.)
I had to actually fight off the urge to turn around and offer a decidedly socially awkward shoulder-pat. First of all, as I said, I'm basically the poster child for this. I hardly ever study, apart from skimming over the notes before whatever exam I'm walking into. And yes, I've maintained honor student status in this regard since high school. Hell, since middle school. I've never once actually taken heed of things like the 2 hour rule (in which you are supposed to spend two hours studying for every 1 hour you're in class, which is in itself an temporal impossibility given the limited number of hours in a day and the fact that I would like to sleep and eat somewhere in the midst of said day), or making flashcards for vocab or whatever. And yet, still, I get perfect scores on exams. It keeps happening, so the behavior is inevitably reinforced. It's worked well for me, and I'll graduate University with honors in two disciplines.
The kicker is this: no matter how much they try to shape it that way, school is not the real world. Face it, there isn't going to be a syllabus at your day job, in which the deadlines for the next six-eight months are clearly delineated for you, and you can bring an actual suit against the professor for requiring something that was not on said document the first day of class. No one is going to baby you about your performance potential and tell you there's ways to get extra credit and not to worry. I highly doubt that if you screw up the Graham case by forgetting to turn in your investigatory materials prior to the trial, your boss is going to relent and tell you that you can just provide a little more detail in the closing argument and you'll be fine. Not hardly. Graham has already gone to jail because you're an idiot and you chose to party instead of defend him to your fullest potential.
My point here, sweet sorority girl on the bus, is that life isn't about being smart enough to not study. Sure, it makes school a shit-ton easier at the time. I'm not going to deny that. However, I wouldn't call my life stress-free because of it. If anything, I'm more stressed, because Lord knows I'm going to have to learn time-management and study skills at some point in my life, and I look around and see everyone else developed them ten years ago while I'm still living in the "fly by the seat of my intelligence" thing. I'm a realist; I know this won't work forever. And the closer I get to "real life" as opposed to "school", the more antsy I get. I'm waiting for myself to grow up all of a sudden, and know how to function as someone who isn't an easy-going A student, but I know that's not going to happen. Therefore, until I get my butt in gear, so to speak, you (sorority girl) are actually ahead of me. At least you know how to really, truly work for the grades you get instead of relying on the genes your genius mother gave you. Sad, I know.
And let's face it, while I'm fretting over growing up in the next 4 months, you always have your MRS to fall back on. So really, your life is tailor made to be stress free. Have fun.
P.S. I stuck around through the conversation long enough to hear her ask for another thousand dollars by next week, and to tell her daddy she loves him.
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