Failure

Obnoxious people often say, “if you never set goals, you never achieve them” which is, obnoxiously, true.  However, what these individuals refuse to acknowledge is the psychological toll of repeated failure.  If you repeatedly set goals and then fail to achieve them, it begins to feel like the very act of setting the goal dooms the entire enterprise to failure.  For instance, I had goals for this summer.  I was going to write, study for the GRE, produce a poem a day, practice guitar, lose weight, blog, and not complain about work.  Of those, I’ve achieved one–I’ve been blogging with more regularity than in previous months.  However, as I’ve often been using blogging as a self-indulgent method of whining about life (see current post) I’m not really feeling the warm glow of success.

I’m not saying that I never succeed at anything–it’s just that the things I end up succeeding at are not the sort of things I set as goals.  I don’t make it a goal to do well academically; it’s just an expectation, and since it’s unacceptable (and out of character) to do otherwise, I tend to live up to that expectation.  I only set goals for things that have proven really difficult for me to do on a consistent basis.  Either they are distasteful, or they require mental focus, or they are just time-consuming and call for more energy than I keep on tap.  Maybe I have too many at once.  For instance, if I said screw everything else–I can just watch Buffy and sleep away my free time–but goddamit I’m going to get fit, perhaps that would be more effective than having a list of goals.  It may be worth a try, but all I know right now is that every time I re-dedicate myself to a goal and then fail to achieve it, my confidence that I will ever achieve that goal sinks.

Latin!

Occasionally I find myself pleasantly stunned to realize again how well-suited I am for the life of professional geekdom that I hope to live. Or, perhaps, what is stunning is how ill-suited I am for the mainstream workforce and how lucky it is that “lit nerd” is a viable career option. Anyway, one of those occasions was this morning, when I learned that I will probably be able to take a course in beginning Latin next semester. I’ve wanted to learn Latin since elementary school. Why? Well, initially because I thought the Romans were the most super-cool ancient civilization ever. I had a computer program in which you could build simulated Roman cities (I dug it out over Christmas Vacation, and it’s still so cool!) and read the book Rotten Romans until the cheap binding fell to pieces. I still think that their empire is at the root of our current society, and that’s neat. Although I continued to love the Romans, my desire to learn Latin took a new turn in my teens, when I realized Latin was a part of the old-school educational system learned by the characters in the classic British literature I had begun to read for fun. Why, I wondered, did they get to learn all that cool stuff like Greek and Latin back in the day, and now we have to take dumb classes like phy ed and health? Now, while I still harbor a love of the Romans and a secret wish to have lived a few centuries ago, I have other additional reasons for wanting to learn Latin. There’s a language requirement in graduate schools–for most, you have to know at least two languages (besides English) well enough to read them. My Spanish is rusty, but could be recussitated. However, I need another language and Latin could provide a nifty and potentially useful option. If I were a medievalist (which is, at the moment, probably not what I’m interested in doing but it’s a close tie for second) I would of course need to know Latin. Since I don’t know for sure that I won’t be a medievalist, it’s probably in my best interest to learn the pervasive literary language of the middle ages.

Isn’t it sweet when you can further your budding career goals by fulfilling a childhood desire? How often does that happen?

Justifying an Academic Career

Every once in awhile I have to step back and remind myself that what I am doing is right. When I could have become a scientist and developed a cure for AIDS, or become a nun and cared for the orphans of India, am I being incredibly selfish and wasteful of my able-bodied potential? Being an English professor will, perhaps, help foster a love of English in future generations, but that may be nothing more than perpetuating intellectual luxury that does no material good to anyone. If I were a novelist or a poet maybe I could make a social impact on the minds of the population at large, but my interests and goals seem to be pulling me down a different path. As a result of these doubts and fears, I’ve come up with a set of “truths” with which I feel comfortable and which validate my choices and my dreams. It may be nothing but a lame attempt to reconcile who I actually am with who I feel I ought to be, but it works for now.

Justification for a Self-Indulgent Career Path

-The goal of life is to be happy (what else can it be?)
-A good person tries to increase other people’s happiness, therefore helping them accomplish the goal of life.
-Disease-curing scientists, nuns, etc. have careers that are good because they are helping other people to be happy (disease free, adequately fed, loved, etc.)
-As an English professor, I too can help people be happy. Literature makes me happy…thus there are probably other people who would also be made happy by its study.
–But more importantly: one’s career isn’t one’s only chance to be a good person. A career is a way of making money to keep yourself alive and happy. If you can find a career that makes you happy as well as making you money, that’s another victory for the happiness objective in life. In your life outside your career, there are numerous opportunities for improving the happiness of others.

There. I’m satisfied. Now I can start researching my senior thesis in peace and good conscience.