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zormatoform gave me Veronica Mars, Pushing Daisies, and Torchwood.

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Mistakes Were Made

I’ve been reading the blog Study Hacks recently, religiously, going back through old posts.

I’m not sure why, as I think a rather large proportion of the advice is silly. I think the note-taking and test-studying skills are way too time-consuming. While I’m theoretically in favor of schedules in the end actual time-blocking stresses me out. Even the entries I find useful, like this one about adventure studying (a.k.a. getting yourself the heck out of the library to study) are hardly earth-shattering.

But I think the appeal here is the illusion it offers of safety: if you do this, this, and this your college career will go well, you will not take useless classes, and you will not realize at the end of your sophomore that you cannot in fact double major in history and Russian because of university course requirements which somehow never before now penetrated your thick skull.

By you I of course mean “me.” I don’t know where or why, but somewhere I clearly picked up the idea that mistakes are UNACCEPTABLE, and having made some – even mistakes this minor in the cosmic scheme of things – I’m rather at a loss.

The thing no one says about the liberal arts education (probably because students wouldn’t believe it, or wouldn’t come if they did) – all of this faffing around, trying on courses like new clothes, means that you’re going to make mistakes. Not every random course you take will open new vistas. Some will just suck up space and time and twist your future schedule out of true.

I am sure this is character building. I’m sure it’s good for all of us obsessive over-achievers to get it beaten through our thick skulls that mistakes are inevitable. But dammit, I liked my illusions.

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(In case you were wondering: I’m majoring in Russian. You can study history extracurricularly, but languages not so much. Besides, I have this great idea for a Russian honors project.)