Get your brown nose outta your navel, son.

Day one was a "get to know" day---a day for the quiet students to find the best burrowing holes and the louder ones to test the acoustics.

During the first thirty minutes of surveying the class, it occurred to me that most of the people in the room (though no one knew anyone else from Adam or Eve) were sharing the same thoughts. We were forming the same questions, making the same judgments--formulating and sizing up--as we evaluated the terrain of ENGL295.

Jumping at the opportunity that every "get to know" day presents, one boy asked a question (the question), which was a bit off topic, but that he'd already made up his mind to ask. This question, he thought (or had observed from experience) would win him some brownie points, or better yet, set him apart from his classmates.

"What inspired you to pursue English?"

...asked the student of the teacher professor doctor of English, taking little to no consideration of the fact that this woman had probably been asked that exact question by countless brown-nosers with polos and iPads just like his and was running painfully low on original responses.

What he didn't know, however, was that, one desk to his right, I had recently formulated the same question (in similar words even). But just before raising my hand, I'd decided against it. I took another path of thought---one informed by the fact that that question, at that time, even if it was genuine, would seem artificial, cliché, and might even stink a little of the arrogant English monster major that lurked inside every single person in that room.

But I digress.

Unrelated. But funny. Always.

The real point is that from a very short psychological distance away--back just a few turns down this boy's thought map, I could see that our brains were doing the same thing. We both thought of the question--both motivated by a desire to impress. We both considered asking it. We both weighed the benefits of speaking out, "being brave", and demonstrating our "genuine interest".


Regardless of who was "right" or more socially apt in the classroom setting, we were both concerned, not with whatever worn out answer the doctor of English would give, but what she would think of our asking it. And it was at this moment that I was impressed to consider how much could be gained in a room where 20 heads are spinning and gearing over the same handful of self-centered concerns. These are anxieties that are completely irrelevant to the fact that we have woken up at an unholy hour of the morning and walked a half mile in the snow to put our butts in a desk and LISTEN. Rather, I suspect the majority of people, not just us eager English majors, have at the forefront of their minds, not "What is the task at hand?", but "How am I perceived by those around me?"

20 heads. 20 people that traveled from their native land to learn more than they already knew, and for one entire class period, we stared at the professor and navel gazed.

How much valuable brain power is shoved down the shredder when this energy sucking fascination with "Me" is the filter through which all useful information must pass before landing in the fertile soil of honest, unselfish consideration? We don't ask, "What will my question or my comment say?" We ask, "What will my question or my comment say about me?"

Maybe this is why we have "get to know" days. To "get self-consciousness out of our systems" before the real work begins.

In the words of Jack Welch,
"It is more important to be interested, than to be interesting." And I humbly and hypocritically suggest we reevaluate for which purpose we are raising our hands.