I’m sitting in class, waiting for the pile of syllabi to make its way to me. The fluorescent lights are dim, and the door is open, letting in fresh air and the faint sound of a guitar in the distance. The pile passes from each of my new prospective peers to the next, winding toward my desk. I look at the people sitting next to me: the middle-aged mom returned now that her children have flown the nest is on my left. I eye her rolling backpack with disdain. I note her lack of social awareness and look to my right. The blue-haired, button-clad liberal arts student is typing away on his netbook with force, hard at work on another top-scoring Reddit comment. I contrast his pose and straighten in my seat. My juxtaposition is palpable. The pile of syllabi gets to me, and I skim it quickly until my eye lands on Group Work – 25 percent. The image of a tennis net flashes before my eyes.

Moments later, the professor is talking at us. She instructs us to read aloud for her what we’ve already parsed the gist of, and I check out, reading ahead. Skimming, my eye lands on the "First Day Inventory" questionnaire. Sometimes these things are funny, or reveal some personal detail about the professor, so I start reading.

1. What books would you tell me are on your bookshelf if you wanted to impress me?

2. What books are actually on your bookshelf?

What stupid questions, I think to myself. These two answers are most likely going to be the same, right? If you care about impressing people, then your shelf is either full of highbrow classics and you’ll tell the truth, or it isn’t, and you’ll lie. If you don’t care about impressing anyone, question one doesn’t compute and question two is the only valid one in this list that is already 16 questions long and probably stretches onto the next page. If you don’t care about what people think, then at this point your patience is wearing thin. Why would you lie, anyway? But if you’re like me, and you care at least a little bit what sort of impressions you make on other people, the full effect of these questions will hit you in the same way.

I would lie.

I wake up to reality briefly enough to note the halt of popcorn reading, and the start of an icebreaker exercise.

“Everyone please say their name, and a piece of good news they’ve just received.”

How old are we? I wouldn’t really lie, I convince myself. That’s child stuff, I decide, and think to my bookshelf at home. Two large fantasy novels with "Rothfuss" on the spine immediately come to mind, but my pen would rather write something like "Vonnegut" or "Hemingway."

Holy sh*t, I would lie big time. But why? Why do I care what some professor thinks of me? I start to expand on the questionnaire’s prompt: what else would I lie about? What sort of things do I have or do simply for other people rather than myself? I look around me and note again the rolling backpack to my left and blue hair to my right, polar opposites. Mom over here couldn’t give a crap, while Mr. Reddit might say he doesn’t, but we’re all pretty sure he actually does. I think about my Instagram account, Facebook posts, and other highlight reel services of my life that ignore the behind-the-scenes, the secrets, the things that I don’t want people to see. Are these values a result of social media or age? Will I, will we as a series of generations, grow out of the incessant need for approval from people we don’t know? I think back to the last clothes I bought and Tyler Durden came to mind: "Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.” Social media, my clothes, my hair -- they’re all advertisements for ME. But what am I selling?

“You there, blue-shirt guy!” The professor says, “Tell us your name and some good news.” I’d been spacing out again, and hadn’t been so lucky as before. I was stuck. Caught off guard, I couldn’t come up with anything to say that would sound smart or make sense or be funny. Eyes started turning to me. I felt holes being bored into me from my right, so I looked left, and was met with a kind smile.

“Well, go on!”

“My name is Keaton,” I said, “And I’m a liar.”