I keep getting in trouble with my English teachers for being too mean. This has been going on for a while.

There’s something very uncollegy about the check-plus, check, check-minus system. Like they’re afraid to tell us if something is good or bad.

Like we’re children.

In my early-level courses, I was grateful for the sugarcoating. Writing is a vulnerable act, and early on encouragement is probably more important than honesty.

After a while, I began to distrust this plastic layer of niceness.

Now it’s reached the point where I completely distrust anything positive about my work.

The problem with English majors is that they’re goddman sensitive. Everyone’s got some common problem with a simple solution, but instead of trying to solve the problem they expect the universe to change around them.

I wrote all this last week. If it reads as a condemnation of people feeling bad for themselves then good – I fooled you. I also fooled myself. That’s what I was really trying to do.

But you can’t run away forever, and it looks like things have finally caught up to me.

Oftentimes when I make fun of things, it’s because I’m trying to expel something I see in myself. That’s what I was trying to do with the first half of this post, but I just couldn’t finish it.

I’ve been posting every Thursday for a while now, but I missed last week because I was staring at my computer, wondering what was standing in my way.

I like to think of myself as the type of person who is in control of their emotions, but that’s only because I know I’m not. My outside behavior is a product of carefully maintained self-manipulation.

I don’t think this is unusual, and everyone does it to some degree, but for me it’s a constant process. When I see people acting in complete disregard of their own insignificance it enrages me.

I’m going to try to be more empathetic.

~Fin