my amazing discovery
2004-11-19

Today I had a revelation. I have come to the nasty conclusion that:

I am stupid.

It's sad, because when I was a child I was very smart, but as I grew older I got stupider and stupider until I came to my present state. I realized that I was incurably stupid about the same time I realized that I didn't go to an Ivy League college, and didn't have a chance of going to an Ivy League [i]grad[/i] school to make up for it. Everyone who is anything in the world comes from an Ivy League university (define "world" as "United States of America" in the preceding sentence) and I had the misfortune to find that out [i]right now[/i] instead of my freshman year of high school. This applies not only to fields in which a solid college education is necessary, and the solider, the better (genetic engineering, quantum physics, rocket science, etc.) but in fields where one would think that education might possibly be a handicap (writing chicklit/pop culture columns). Personally I find this troubling and unfair, but since if I had had an Ivy League education I would find it perfectly fair, I'm disregarding my own opinion.

Anyway this means that I am doomed to mediocrity and also to transferring my own thwarted wishes to my children, should I have any. This is a long tradition on both sides of my family. My paternal grandfather, for example, never got over the injustice of the quota system keeping him out of his college of choice. Instead of getting over it and fighting the injustice of the system, he made up for it by making anti-Semitic remarks at family gatherings. Anyway the lesson is that there is nothing that hard work can't make up for - no, actually the lesson is that hard work is hard and self-loathing is infinitely easier. But I'll pretend that the first lesson is the real one because it's a lot more positive in nature.

I am confused now. What can be done about this situation? The obvious answer is nothing. All the good jobs have been taken up by Ivy League graduates and the hard-working, who incidentally I hope all have premature heart attacks and strokes from their efforts, and I am left with being yelled at about time sheets and writing dates out with the help of the autodater in Microsoft Word. If I could build a time machine and tell my young self not to get all dumb at 13, I would, and then I would magically come back with sunny job prospects in a career field prestigious and involving.* Also the world would probably explode from me messing around with the timeline, but I think it would be worth it.

* [i]Philosophical question: Would I still do it if it meant that I would come back with sunny job prospects in a career field prestigious and involving, but 50 pounds heavier? Or with a bad case of acne? What about if I had no legs? These are all good questions to ask myself as I certainly have the time to exhaustively answer them in my own mind.[/i]