Domo arigato

A couple of weeks ago, I came out as a nerd to everyone watching on "the internets" and I'm here to reprise my role. I talked about my love of learning, and nowhere was that more apparent than when I would look through the catalog at courses I could take in college. I'd flip through, read the descriptions, check the pre-requisite courses, and get almost giddy at how interesting so many of them would sound.

I majored in English and minored in Spanish, and those departments offered a wide array of classes that I'd never dreamed of before. I took a literature class called "Cultural Representations of the Body," in which we debated whether or not the body is the screen on which one's soul projects itself, for example. Strange stuff, and exactly the type of thing that would catch my eye when the next quarter's Schedule of Classes would come out.

As is the case with most college programs, I had General Education requirements to satisfy in addition to my major and minor requirements. This was in essence why I wanted to go to college: so I could leave with a well-rounded education in addition to the specific knowledge I'd learn from my major. (Are your Nerd Alerts going off? If not, they need to be tuned.) There were so many choices that I felt boring every time I took the introductory course of a department. So, for a social science course, I got to take an Anthropology course called "Understanding Africa." I figured that I knew really nothing about that entire continent, so what the hell. It was some fascinating stuff, and I can sometimes still draw from that when watching Jeopardy. Speaking of which, I took a Linguistics class called "Word Origins" specifically with Jeopardy in mind, but now I get nervous when that's the final category because I feel like I should know the answer (or question) automatically.

For one of my final requirements, my friend Greg and I both signed up for a Comparative Literature course called..."Robots." The description in the catalog didn't give us much information, so we were solely going off the title. As it turned out, the course probably should've been called "The Philosophy of Existence," because that's mainly what we discussed. However, we got to watch and/or read Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Frankenstein, and others. We talked about how can one prove that he is not a robot, since there's no way to truly prove free will, etc. Our French professor named Didier navigated us through the topics with his oh-so-French accent and his patented move of putting his right elbow in his left hand and then continuously moving the open right hand in a circle as he spoke. Continuously.

The class had only two graded parts to it: the in-class midterm and the final paper. The midterm was pretty simple for anyone who had paid even the slightest amount of attention, so I got an A- on it. For the final paper, he gave us four topics to choose from, but told us we could do something different if we cleared it with him first. The day before it was due, I was stuck. I kept trying to write about the only prompt I liked, but it wasn't working. Then, in a moment of clarity, I had one of my greatest ideas of my college career: I was going to bullshit the hell out of this paper.

The whole class was really bullshit, and Philosophy majors would raise their hands and say circuitous crap that sounded like it came from Bill Clinton's deposition. They'd smugly say stuff like, "If I know I exist because I move my arm, then my arm must also exist because it has the power to recognize that command. Thus, my arm has its own innate free will since it chooses not to disregard my mind's existence," and expect oohs and ahhs afterwards. I felt like I could write anything with conviction and lofty language and have it eaten up, so it was almost like a perfect storm of bullshit.

I started typing, and before I knew it, I was writing a term paper in journal form, stating that I had been a robot in the class, observing the nature of beings with free will. This wasn't one of the prompts, and I hadn't cleared it with him first, so it was a risk. But I thought about how this would all play out: Didier would get it and think that it was either bullshit or brilliant, he'd immediately check my midterm grade as a reference, then upon seeing the A- determine that it must be brilliant. So I laid it on thick. I wrote about how I was programmed to sit in a different seat on the second day of class to avoid looking robotic, but since the humans all sat where they had before, I adapted. "This does not compute," I wrote several times throughout, and ended each daily entry with "End program."

I wrote about HAL in 2001, and how humans misinterpreted his message as he was "dying" and saying "I feel it" over and over. "My programmer uploaded all of the romance languages onto my hard drive," I wrote, "and I know that HAL meant to say 'I feel it' in Spanish, or 'lo siento' which means 'I'm sorry'. I dare not speak up for I did not want to call attention to my advanced knowledge," and crap like that. I just went through my notes, found little things I had jotted down, and turned them into a robot's journal entries.

And my plan worked beautifully. Because of probably the best bullshitting I've ever done in my life, I got the only A+ I ever received in college. I sometimes wonder what Didier's reaction was while reading my paper (and moving his hand in a circle), and whether he put it aside as proof that he really got through to a student. All I know is that because of that class, I now do more than just a robot impression when I hear "Mr. Roboto" by Styx; I also think about my arm deciding to accept my mind's existence. Long live General Education!

Knowledge for knowledge sake

In the first Austin Powers movie, Vanessa Kensington begins to unpack her suitcase. Upon seeing how incredibly organized her packing was, he exclaims, "Nerd alert!" (He says something British before that like "good limey" or something, but I'm having trouble finding that online.) That exclamation is very appropriate for today's post, because I'm coming out to all of you as a nerd. Wow, it feels great to get that off my chest.

I enjoy knowledge quite a bit. I love watching Jeopardy because it serves two of my most-enjoyed hobbies: learning and feeling smart. The things I learn inevitably come up in board games, crossword puzzles, or basic conversations and I love being able to call up something that I didn't even know I stored away. (Your Nerd Radar should be reading high levels by now.)

I remember sitting in class once as people around me started discussing their favorite Shakespeare passages or speeches. I chimed in, noting, "Nothing really surpasses the emotion of the St. Crispin's Day speech in Henry V for me." They all agreed that that scene was great, and then class started. Listening to the lecture, I realized that I had just come across as a Shakespeare buff to those people. It's true, I knew a good amount about him at that stage in my life, but what if that was the only thing I knew about Shakespeare? What if there were little things like that about every topic that I could insert into conversations and appear to be extremely knowledgeable?

I wrote a brief article about this for our residence hall's newsletter. I said that if you're around people who are discussing great feats in sports history, mention that "Jordan dropping a double-nickel on the Knicks at the Garden just 5 games after his first comeback" was pretty frickin' sweet. They'll all agree with you, and they'll assume that you're a pretty knowledgeable basketball fan. I had a couple of other examples too, but you get the point.

The next few times I was in a bookstore, I looked through the reference sections, eager to find something like what I was searching for. I wanted a book to help me learn a little about everything. Just enough to artfully have conversations on the topics, but not much more or less. A couple of years later, I was thrilled to see that Bill Bryson had come out with A Short History of Nearly Everything. I truly enjoyed other books by him (and own four or five), so this reference book (in the reference section) seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. And it was...to an extent. It's full of fascinating topics, like an extensive explanation of how scientists know the weight of the Earth, etc. It's a little too dense to just pick up and learn something, but it is packed with info. I like it, and I certainly like his writing of this information, but it didn't satisfy that need I had completely. It was much more science-based than I hoped, rather than a broad stroke across the education spectrum.

I came home last night after work, and I saw a book on the kitchen table. Our friend Danielle (who will be giving birth to little Tyler any minute now) sent us a gift because, well, she's an incredibly sweet person. I picked it up, and it's called The Intellectual Devotional by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim. The subtitle is Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class. Perfect! I opened it up, and there are pages of information for each day of the year. It covers literature, science, visual arts, religion, and more. I know I can't stick with one page a day (even thought that's the intended purpose), so I think I might read the week's worth a few times each week before moving on. Last night, I read the synopsis of James Joyce's Ulysses, and I learned about the plot, the writing style, and a little history about the book itself. Basically, I'm hooked.

I know, I am such a nerd, but I don't care. Unknowingly, Danielle sent us something that I had been searching for. I'm going to learn about the suffrage movement, Verdi, stem cells, and so much more. And when I'm done, you'd better not be on the other side of the Trivial Pursuit board.