O.K., So I'm Not As Smart (x)

One of my four classes is a poetry workshop. I cross registered in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The class is kind of intimidating.

I feel pretty comfortable in the Graduate School of Education. Yeah, it's Harvard and all, but it's education. The only think I've really done with my life is teach. I've been on the front lines in one way or another for the last 15 years. The average amount of teaching experience for those in my master's is 4 years. I've taught longer in public high schools than any of my professors. They may be smart, they may have published books, but I still have the moxie to listen to what the say, and if I have to, respond (in my head) "nice theory Cambridge boy, but it wouldn't play out that way in the trenches."

But the Graduate School of Arts and Science is a different story. I'm not an academic, and I certainly never was Harvard material. I sort of backed in to the education program because of my wealth of experience, not my neurological makeup. So when you get out to the arts and sciences schools, you're amongst geniuses.

My poetry workshop is populated with undergraduates. And me. 15-20 years their senior. And they're all smarter than me. Sharp, articulate, their comments about poetry are the best I've ever heard. I'm outclassed. Think about it, you're some smart kid in high school, the very best in your class, and your writing/analyzing abilities are in another orbit. You won the genetic lottery on this one. Where would you go to school? Harvard.

So they're all already better than me. In fact, I originally didn't make the cut to get into the class. The only way in was to submit 5 poems, and then a cadre of professors read them all and select the best 15. Not me. Then at the last second someone dropped, so a spot opened up, and I was at the top of the waiting list. Which means, in the eyes of the professor, I am officially the worst poet in the class.

So I had to assert myself in some way, I had to get some kind of upper hand in some other arena. I started by wearing a t-shirt from the electrical worker's union (my cousin's). That way they would know I'd been in contact with the real world, with the workers, with the day to day grit and grime where reality happens. And then when we were going around the room introducing ourselves I emphasized my Chicago roots (they didn't need to know I grew up in a milquetoast white suburb), because all Chicagoans have a flinty toughness. As they went around the room, the undergrads would introduce themselves, and then say what dorm the lived in . . . because at Harvard you stay in your dorm "house" all four years. When I found this out I pounced. I said "What? You don't live in a house or an apartment at all? Not your junior and senior year? When I was an undergrad at the University of Illinois, when you were a junior you got a house with your friends, ran your own affairs, had parties, etc. It's an important part of your development." So I pulled rank, I let them know that they may still have their youth, and they undoubtedly have their brains and prestige, but I have hard-earned experience, and coolness. Boo ya.

And that, basically, is what the Robin Williams character says to Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. You end up thinking a lot about that movie when you go here. In that scene Robin Williams concedes that Matt Damon has an unmatched brain, but he hasn't yet lived. And there's no substitute for that. In fact, I want to read it again. It will make me feel better about myself. It's a little embarrassing to like something that Ben Affleck had a part in, but Matt Damon is still cool isn't he? Anyway, here it is:

"So if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written . . . Michelangelo? You know a lot about him I bet. Life's work, criticisms, political aspirations. But you couldn't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. And if I asked you about women I'm sure you could give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and maybe you've been laid a few times too. But you couldn't tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and be truly happy. If I asked you about war you could refer me to a bevy of fictional and non-fictional material, but you've never been in one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him draw his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love I'd get a sonnet, but you've never looked at a woman and been truly vulnerable. Known that someone could kill you with a look. That someone could rescue you from grief. That God had put an angel on Earth just for you. And you wouldn't know how it felt to be her angel. To have the love be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand and not leaving because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term 'visiting hours' didn't apply to you. And you wouldn't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself, and you've never dared to love anything that much. I look at you and I don't see an intelligent confident man, I don't see a peer, and I don't see my equal. I see a boy."