If you woke up as a giant cockroach what would you do? What would your primary concern be? Author Franz Kafka poses these questions through Gregor Samsa's character in “The Metamorphosis.” Gregor isn't too alarmed at the sight of his spindly legs nor the hard bulbous shell that was once a human body. His only worry is being late for work. With the weight of his family on his shoulders he shakes at the prospect of being fired; his utmost efforts to mobilize his insect frame out of bed are directed towards what he thinks defines him--his role as a worker and provider. It’s hard not to let out a laugh at how ludicrous the situation is but this laughter is derived from the disbelief at how the form of his body doesn't make him tremble with fear. His sense of self is not anchored to his physical form but neither is it tied to any internal self-recognition. It is found in his self-perception as a worker, his societal role.
As absurd and Kafka-esque the whole scenario is, I’d argue that we all at times confuse ourselves with our roles. This reductive view of self isn’t helped by GPA, a system that quantifies intelligence and translates worth into a numerical system. I’m from London and in the U.K, much like in the U.S, we undergo many forms of standardized examinations. At the age of 11, you take the SATs (not to be confused with American SATs) which dictate what secondary school you're eligible to attend. In secondary school, when you're 16, you take your GCSE’s which dictate what College (equivalent to junior and senior year of high school in the U.S) you can go to. In College, when you're 18, you take your A levels or IB which dictate what university you go to. Growing up it seemed as if the whole of life was strung along a succession of numbers. A number was your goal and this number represented you.
When I was preparing for my IB exams a friend told me she’d tattoo 40 on her arm if she got 40 IB points out of 45. Teachers always told me that I’d be branded with the grades I get for the rest of my life but this girl really took it to heart it seems. I won’t pretend that grades don't matter at all but you're not a failure if you fail an exam. I honestly believed that life would spiral down if my grades did but the older I get the more I understand that life has its own twists and turns ungoverned by assigned numbers.
I often get nervous and ask myself how GPA and college experience are going to translate into me getting a job at the end of all of this? I need to get a good job because your job becomes your life. But if I woke up a cockroach I wouldn't care about any of that. It's a crazy thing to think about; yet, it's so important to imagine the absurd in order to really reflect on what matters. Our jobs aren't our lives, we aren't the roles we play and we’re certainly not numbers on a sheet of paper. GPA as a measure of personal achievement is valuable but I don’t think we should depend on it. In Kafka’s tale, Gregor Samsa states that as soon as he pays his family's debts he can be free from his job, but he is always free and so are we.
