Picture this: You walk into an English class and discover that you’ve read the wrong assignment. When the conversation digressed to the book’s discussion about mental illness, you realize that your reading about puppies wasn’t helping you to understand. The professor decides to call on you and you freeze, uttering some generalized statement that sounds something like, “I thought the characters were just misunderstood.”
To which the professor replies, “Considering he murdered his mother, I think that’s pretty obvious.” This evokes a few chuckles from classmates that vocally express your embarrassment. You just retreat behind the cover of the wrong book.
This starts a trend. You can’t get things quite right. Even when you do the proper homework, it doesn’t seem to matter. You begin to learn that improvisation is the most important skill to possess and that you haven’t mastered it yet.
This girl off in the corner of the classroom enlightens the room with insights like, “The dehumanization of the characters made rectifying their pasts more difficult,” or, “I think this book is really about coming to terms with sexuality.” You look down at the open text, hopelessly trying to pick meaningful passages to share. By the time that you find the right page, the class has already moved on to global warming. You’ll wonder why the topic has even been brought up, as the book seems to be about this nobody guy who finds this chick attractive and who becomes buddy-buddy with this supposed millionaire that throws memorable parties.
More classmates shout out themes and analyses that don’t seem to relate to the book at all, but the professor only nods. They blabber on about how a character’s yellow shirt can mean that he’s scared and you have no choice but to scribble that down in your notes next to a bunch of doodles of a beach or a forest–any place other than the stuffy classroom. It’s been an hour and you begin to question your ability to read. When class ends, you vow to read the assignments more thoroughly next time.
Does this sound familiar? It probably does to some extent.
Professors can be intimidating and classmates can be obnoxiously great at improvising. If you ever feel inadequate again, just remember: other people probably feel the same way and the book will be read and enjoyed regardless.
