[More nonsense. This is likely Part I of II.]
Prehistory
Scratches in tree bark, soft stone and dried mud.
Roman Britain
Army ledgers. The poetry of names and strategy.
731 A.D. Ecclesiastical History of the English People
For the benefit of legions of young military-age men educated in monasteries and elsewhere, the Venerable Bede produces a history "textbook," a literary genre designed to bore school-persons into submission and in this case thereby to reduce resistance to Christianity.
1000 A.D. Beowulf
A baying wolf from Sweden goes on an epic rampage against an early teatotaller and his mother in Denmark, and decades later dies when he attempts in vain to remove a fire hazard from his kingdom. After this tragic incident, possibly pure fiction, Swedish children were taught to "stop, drop and roll" and the first fire trucks — wheelbarrows and rainwater — were constructed.
end of 14th cent. Canterbury Tales
In a court unsettled by the Hundred Years' War, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote bedtime stories for the beleaguered nobility much as Giovanni Boccaccio had done in his Decamerone in Florence.
1589-1613ish William Shakespeare's Plays and Sonnets
A cabal of English Literature professors at Oxford University decides to write plays plagiarized from ancient and newer sources to establish an authorship controversy whose resolution would procure funding for their successors in perpetuity. William Shakespeare is the hapless tool who must produce the plays and pretend to be the figurehead of the thing.
1611 King James Bible
As the head of the Anglican Church King James I considers it infra dignitas to have it known that he has read a Puritan translation of the Bible, and reading it in ancient Greek or Hebrew or the Vulgate is a drag, so he commissions his very own.
1667 Paradise Lost
"A smalle whyte dogge by the name of Paradys has been loste on the road twixt Southampton and Dover. Any kind sirs having knowleddge of his presente lodgynges please to despatche a messengere to J. Milton, 34 Hay Roade, Chalfont St. Giles Bucks."
1671 Paradise Regained
Hiding in hay-cart all along.
1712 Rape of the Lock
A consortium of millowners is highly wrought after the Leafley river is reconstituted into a canal and the old lock above the juncture to the Finch tributary is demolished. They turn to Alexander Pope to tear into the enterprise with a sarcastic editorial using his preferred weapon, heroic couplets.
1722 A Journal of the Plague Year
Six decades after an unspeakably horrid year in dress fashions, pamphleteer Daniel Defoe bravely broaches the collective trauma of English society and describes the monstrosities in lace and velvet which lurched and broddled through Whitehall.
1729 A Modest Proposal
After a bitter babysitting experience a young policy-maker in the Foreign Office advocates cannibalism, only to be sternly told that he must evince greater sensitivity to the public and obtain knowledge in the art of child care through apprenticeship in a nursery. Later in his career it transpires that it was he who (under the influence of hallucinogens) had anonymously published (1726) a highly spurious account of his travels in lands for example where horses reign (known afterwards by the name of hippocracy, sometimes spelled hypocrisy). It offends so many diplomatic missions who read it as ridicule of their own nations that the War of the Austrian Succession two decades after is but an extension of childish insults by other means. Yet the authorship has come as no surprise to his superiors in the Foreign Office, who have placed no great reliance upon his dispatches after the first; their initial panic after reports of Rose-coloured Pachyderms preying upon the docks of Marseilles proved greatly unfounded.
1794 The Mysteries of Udolpho
England discovers southern France and Italy only to be shocked by the depravity of the upper classes and surprised by the similarity of its scenery to paintings by Watteau and etchings by china-manufacturers. As Mrs. Ann Radcliffe reported in this and later works, Italian marquesses are greatly prone to killing off their families and conspiring with clergymen.
1813 Pride and Prejudice
A naive and unobservant young novelist, daughter of a rural parson, suggests that one should marry for love rather than rank, money, or suave manners. Her work unleashes a firestorm of denunciation which, particularly among women, inspires animosity against her and her works to this day.
1814-29 Waverley Novels
Sir Walter Scott uncovers a similar vein of depravity in England and Scotland. Brides stabbing unwanted husbands, Scots stabbing unwanted English, Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert trying not to execute unwanted love interests, etc., and everyone from astrologers to highlanders conspiring against everybody else.
1836-7 Pickwick Papers
An inventory of the finances of a small town outside of London by name of Pickwick. Followed by Oliver Twist, a monograph on an obscure Elizabethan poet; A Tale of Two Cities, contrasting the street waste disposal methods of Paris and London; Great Expectations, predicting a stark rise of the gross domestic product in London and outlying towns between 1862-5; Little Dorrit, a comparison of the types and quantities of fish which were caught off a tiny Dorsetshire port in 1857; and Nicholas Nickleby, a philosophical look at the relative merits of hempen and wood-fibre paper as described in the diary of a 17th-century scrivener. Charles Dickens was a minor and dry writer with a profoundly limited insight into the realities of human interaction and greater social problems, and so despite an impassioned reevaluation in the 20th century he never truly acquired influence.
1847 Jane Eyre
In an investigative report the Yorkshire freelance writer Charlotte Brontë concludes that it is best for well-born but poor women not to become governesses except if the surname of their employer is Rochester, and finds at the same time that any woman in an engagement should secure her footing in the eyes of the law before the ceremony by inspecting the betrothed gentleman's house from roof to cellar to ferret out concealed dependents.
1847-8 - Vanity Fair
Having consumed too much cotton candy, the writer William Makepeace Thackeray indicts a rambling denunciation of society and the sugar industry at large, and the sugar industry at street carnivals in particular, concluding that the brief surge of energy is in the end a hollow good.
1891 - Salome
The great playwright Oscar Wilde suffers fraught relations with other personages of high society. Pushed past the powers of endurance by one particular grande dame, he decides to spoil her appetite for dinner by putting in theatrical form a Biblical tale of a young lady who, on a momentous occasion, orders not a salad, not a soup, not a proper met of any sort, but the head of a prophet on a platter.
Et cetera.
Friday, February 25, 2011
The Hamster Ball
Yesterday evening, having gazed upon the latest offerings of the sartorial art in Milan, I watched the new season premiere of America's Next Top Model, having been forewarned by a certain blog (namely Jezebel) that it would be tremendously stupid.
So it was and yet not repellently so. This time the group of obligatorily shrieking girls who were anointed unto the "Top 13" were told at first by the cryptic medium of a blank piece of paper in an envelope that they were unanointed, so that their shrieks were muted into sobs amid the shrieking of, presumably, actresses, who it was pretended were the successful contestants. Tyra Banks magnanimously explained to the pseudo-rejected girls, as they meditated the ignoble heap of their suitcases in the staircase, that they were through after all, and that she had only been trying to give them the experience of rejection. Why she would consider that the girls had not encountered rejection yet, particularly those who had already worked as models, remained unexplained; so it must be surmised that this little trick was designed for the benefit of the television viewer. Anyway, she pulled away a curtain to reveal their home — perhaps due to the vagaries of the camera lens the atrium looked roughly the size of a high school gymnasium — and with piercing cries they revelled in their material surroundings.
The perennial circus of the contestant interviews was not broadcast this time, but Tyra exercised her actorly predilections by imitating three common contestant types. I consider it a little unprofessional to make fun of young people half your age who are guests on your television show, as it were, but the second impersonation was good.
The next morning, at least in terms of artistic compression, the girls were hailed out onto the lawn where they met Erin Wasson. Her status as supermodel and stylist and jewellery designer was elucidated; and I could have sworn that she also had a fashion line which showed during New York Fashion Week and which was discontinued due to fiscal pressures — this, at any rate, was not mentioned.
Erin and the fashion shoot director Jay Manuel announced a runway fashion show in one of Alexander Wang's lines and Erin Wasson's jewellery. So far, so good, I suppose. As a clincher, however, the models were to walk on a 12-inch-wide transparent strip jutting into a pond and they had to walk inside a plastic bubble where bits of reddish material would drift along the bottom like confetti in a hamster wheel. Why self-respecting designers would participate in a runway show set up to be more or less impossible, humiliating for the contestants, and too fussy or weirdly arranged to permit a good view of the fashion which the models are supposed to be modelling, remains another unanswered question. In the event two or three of the contestants fell, could have hit their heads on the edge of the runway and been knocked unconscious (a litigator's dream) but fortunately didn't, and had to crawl inside the sphere until it bobbed back to the runway where their feet could gain purchase. Idiocy, I say!
Behind the scenes the photographer Russell James staged what is called "beauty" photos at Style.com. I think it is a public relations invention intended to humanize the models and by extension the fashion industry, and to counter the nasty insinuations of cruelty (invented as it were by the rational people amongst us who don't think that fashion transcends the human right to comfort and dignity) against the latter. Models obligingly pose with a sandwich, a respectable book (no Harry Potter, though I guess that would be endearing), curling-irons, make-up brushes, mirrors and each other, and smile with the serenity which inevitably accompanies 12-hour-workdays, painful high heels, hair extensions which it will take hours to remove, and other stresses perfectly natural for people who are deracinated from their homes and not yet old enough to graduate from school.
Based on these backstage photos or on the desired narrative of the show's producers, the girl named Angelia was sent home. I was pleasantly surprised that some of the contestants did look like they could be models. This also means being as slender as possible; to the fashionable mind I don't think that models are ever too slender for the runway and only perhaps for print work it might be awkward to have the lateral dimensions of a piece of paper.
***
Last cycle was the first "high fashion cycle," where presumably by grace of André Leon Talley — a friendly giant of sorts — designers from Diane von Furstenberg (who was really impressive and a revisitation of the 1940s and 1930s, European-accented American high society) to Zac Posen were hooked into appearing. Karolina Kurkova made a slurried drink of healthy, healthy fruits and vegetables, which though it ended up tinted a respectable blueberryish lilac was greeted with muted enthusiasm, and evidently inspired less enjoyment than the batch of deep-fried Oreos with which the contestants were likewise regaled by one of their number.
Franca Sozzani made an appearance too as the editor of Italian Vogue; I think I would like her, but I do find it a bit tiresome how she is part of the handful of fashion industry members (also like Emmanuelle Alt, Carine Roitfeld and children, etc.) which is always photographed everywhere. Then there was a painful non-conversation between a model raised in rural America who was unable to decipher Gallic-accented English and the photographer Patrick Demarchelier, both bored and on edge. As high fashion television I thought the season was a bit of a bust, though a painful degree of ambition and kowtowing permeated it, which doubtless resonated with the target audience of 13-28-year-olds who are enduring or still able to recollect the vicissitudes of attracting the favours of the fashionable clique in their schools.
***
Lastly and somewhat unrelatedly, I've been keeping track of the fashion weeks in New York and London. New York's week was so excessively tasteful and at times boring that one or two years ago I would have made sage remarks about the Recession; and for once I looked to London for relief, eager for the heady dash of discombobulating vulgarity by way of contrast, only to find that here too was a sad dearth of offensiveness. In Milan so far some conspiracy is going on, too, because the shows I've seen so far tend to plunge into "jewel tones," which means intense and saturated cobalt, amethyst, emerald and so on and so forth. At least familiar model faces like Natasha Poly and Anna Selezhneva and Coco Rocha have reemerged there; they had not much appeared elsewhere and I didn't know whether they were superannuated, keeping out of the spotlight for a while on a publicist's advice so that their allure remains fresh, or bound by exclusive contracts to make Milan Fashion Week (which has been a trifle moribund) particularly attractive. By the way, I have not seen Anna Wintour anywhere. Maybe this means that Carine Roitfeld, so newly deposed by Emmanuelle Alt, will be at American Vogue after all, or maybe it means that I haven't been looking at the relevant front row photos. As for the season's fads, the one I've noticed most is the colour scarlet.
***
Anyway, despite the pretentiousness of my statements and the scarcity of qualifiers, I am evidently not inside the heads of the people who put on New York Fashion Week, London Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week, or American's Next Top Model, so the preceding may be pure invention.
So it was and yet not repellently so. This time the group of obligatorily shrieking girls who were anointed unto the "Top 13" were told at first by the cryptic medium of a blank piece of paper in an envelope that they were unanointed, so that their shrieks were muted into sobs amid the shrieking of, presumably, actresses, who it was pretended were the successful contestants. Tyra Banks magnanimously explained to the pseudo-rejected girls, as they meditated the ignoble heap of their suitcases in the staircase, that they were through after all, and that she had only been trying to give them the experience of rejection. Why she would consider that the girls had not encountered rejection yet, particularly those who had already worked as models, remained unexplained; so it must be surmised that this little trick was designed for the benefit of the television viewer. Anyway, she pulled away a curtain to reveal their home — perhaps due to the vagaries of the camera lens the atrium looked roughly the size of a high school gymnasium — and with piercing cries they revelled in their material surroundings.
The perennial circus of the contestant interviews was not broadcast this time, but Tyra exercised her actorly predilections by imitating three common contestant types. I consider it a little unprofessional to make fun of young people half your age who are guests on your television show, as it were, but the second impersonation was good.
The next morning, at least in terms of artistic compression, the girls were hailed out onto the lawn where they met Erin Wasson. Her status as supermodel and stylist and jewellery designer was elucidated; and I could have sworn that she also had a fashion line which showed during New York Fashion Week and which was discontinued due to fiscal pressures — this, at any rate, was not mentioned.
Erin and the fashion shoot director Jay Manuel announced a runway fashion show in one of Alexander Wang's lines and Erin Wasson's jewellery. So far, so good, I suppose. As a clincher, however, the models were to walk on a 12-inch-wide transparent strip jutting into a pond and they had to walk inside a plastic bubble where bits of reddish material would drift along the bottom like confetti in a hamster wheel. Why self-respecting designers would participate in a runway show set up to be more or less impossible, humiliating for the contestants, and too fussy or weirdly arranged to permit a good view of the fashion which the models are supposed to be modelling, remains another unanswered question. In the event two or three of the contestants fell, could have hit their heads on the edge of the runway and been knocked unconscious (a litigator's dream) but fortunately didn't, and had to crawl inside the sphere until it bobbed back to the runway where their feet could gain purchase. Idiocy, I say!
Behind the scenes the photographer Russell James staged what is called "beauty" photos at Style.com. I think it is a public relations invention intended to humanize the models and by extension the fashion industry, and to counter the nasty insinuations of cruelty (invented as it were by the rational people amongst us who don't think that fashion transcends the human right to comfort and dignity) against the latter. Models obligingly pose with a sandwich, a respectable book (no Harry Potter, though I guess that would be endearing), curling-irons, make-up brushes, mirrors and each other, and smile with the serenity which inevitably accompanies 12-hour-workdays, painful high heels, hair extensions which it will take hours to remove, and other stresses perfectly natural for people who are deracinated from their homes and not yet old enough to graduate from school.
Based on these backstage photos or on the desired narrative of the show's producers, the girl named Angelia was sent home. I was pleasantly surprised that some of the contestants did look like they could be models. This also means being as slender as possible; to the fashionable mind I don't think that models are ever too slender for the runway and only perhaps for print work it might be awkward to have the lateral dimensions of a piece of paper.
***
Last cycle was the first "high fashion cycle," where presumably by grace of André Leon Talley — a friendly giant of sorts — designers from Diane von Furstenberg (who was really impressive and a revisitation of the 1940s and 1930s, European-accented American high society) to Zac Posen were hooked into appearing. Karolina Kurkova made a slurried drink of healthy, healthy fruits and vegetables, which though it ended up tinted a respectable blueberryish lilac was greeted with muted enthusiasm, and evidently inspired less enjoyment than the batch of deep-fried Oreos with which the contestants were likewise regaled by one of their number.
Franca Sozzani made an appearance too as the editor of Italian Vogue; I think I would like her, but I do find it a bit tiresome how she is part of the handful of fashion industry members (also like Emmanuelle Alt, Carine Roitfeld and children, etc.) which is always photographed everywhere. Then there was a painful non-conversation between a model raised in rural America who was unable to decipher Gallic-accented English and the photographer Patrick Demarchelier, both bored and on edge. As high fashion television I thought the season was a bit of a bust, though a painful degree of ambition and kowtowing permeated it, which doubtless resonated with the target audience of 13-28-year-olds who are enduring or still able to recollect the vicissitudes of attracting the favours of the fashionable clique in their schools.
***
Lastly and somewhat unrelatedly, I've been keeping track of the fashion weeks in New York and London. New York's week was so excessively tasteful and at times boring that one or two years ago I would have made sage remarks about the Recession; and for once I looked to London for relief, eager for the heady dash of discombobulating vulgarity by way of contrast, only to find that here too was a sad dearth of offensiveness. In Milan so far some conspiracy is going on, too, because the shows I've seen so far tend to plunge into "jewel tones," which means intense and saturated cobalt, amethyst, emerald and so on and so forth. At least familiar model faces like Natasha Poly and Anna Selezhneva and Coco Rocha have reemerged there; they had not much appeared elsewhere and I didn't know whether they were superannuated, keeping out of the spotlight for a while on a publicist's advice so that their allure remains fresh, or bound by exclusive contracts to make Milan Fashion Week (which has been a trifle moribund) particularly attractive. By the way, I have not seen Anna Wintour anywhere. Maybe this means that Carine Roitfeld, so newly deposed by Emmanuelle Alt, will be at American Vogue after all, or maybe it means that I haven't been looking at the relevant front row photos. As for the season's fads, the one I've noticed most is the colour scarlet.
***
Anyway, despite the pretentiousness of my statements and the scarcity of qualifiers, I am evidently not inside the heads of the people who put on New York Fashion Week, London Fashion Week, Milan Fashion Week, or American's Next Top Model, so the preceding may be pure invention.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Rambling about Tricherie
I am once again in the Throes of a Cold, this time with a sore throat throughout Sunday, then intermittent loss of voice on Monday and Tuesday. And my legs are weakish when I go to the bookshop and my head feels disproportionately hot. Yesterday, however, I discovered a miracle cure when I decided to roll around in the chair in the bookshop's office. Whether it is the cooling effect of the wind compounded with the cardiovascular perks of the exertion of pushing one's self around with the feet, or the release of endorphins, or a more complex explanation, it made me feel much better. But I also gargled a little chlorhexamed this morning.
When I came in this morning Mama summarized a TV discussion about our defence minister Guttenberg's (whom I somewhat dislike and therefore pronounce in English so that the name has "gut" at the beginning) plagiarism in university. I haven't read the details, but I have never really bought into the virulent denunciations of plagiarism. It's a ratty thing to do in itself, but I think it's more sad than depraved, because it means that one doesn't have the same pride in one's work and hasn't benefited by the same process of clarifying one's thought and preparations; so in the end it carries with it a hollow benefit. Besides not all essays and theses are written with love for the field, or written on a topic which is genuinely interesting and useful, so morally and spiritually I find them a hollow exercise at the outset. In this particular case one might guess that the denunciating party doth protest too much; certainly I think that neglecting a German citizen in Guantánamo or accidentally dropping a bomb on hundreds of civilians is more shameful.
The closest I came to plagiarism was probably during a group project for English 120(?) when we had to write an annotated bibliography for a poem by John Donne. It was the day of the Bush/Kerry elections when I had to finish it. In between hectically refreshing the election map at nytimes.com I tried to read the books, summarize them in three to fivish sentences, and gauge their usefulness given the subject as we were supposed to. But eventually my mind was overstuffed and I had to go to sleep; so with one of the books I just checked the index to see if the poem is mentioned, summarized the table of contents and propped it at the head of my bed and was trying to read it anyway when I went to sleep for two or three hours. It was quite clear that Kerry had lost by then and after that it was one of the worst days of my life. When the bibliographies were handed back a couple of weeks later the professor or teaching assistant or both first of all made a speech about plagiarism to the class, and I think I felt rather guilty. Then there was a little note on my bibliography in which the TA explained that she had checked the annotated books because the phrasing of my annotations sometimes seemed unlikely, and that I had squeaked by but should be more careful.
There were three cheating incidents in school: when I was in Grade 1 or 2 we had "minute drills," where we each received a piece of paper with math questions on it and we were supposed to solve them as many of them as possible within a minute or two. I disliked the pressure and was afraid of disgracing myself, so I surreptitiously answered a handful of questions beforehand. After a couple of times doing this I realized that it was unnecessary and stopped. And honestly I didn't feel that bad about it, firstly because I was good at math, secondly because I wasn't trying to do better than the others, and thirdly because I wasn't caught.
In Grade 9(?) we watched a film in Social Studies and were asked to answer a worksheet or write something about it. I thought then as now that watching films is really no substitute for substantive learning material, and besides it wasn't a big deal; so I didn't put up much resistance when a clique of classmates sitting around me asked to copy what I'd written. Somewhat to my surprise we were asked to hand our work in. I'd forgotten about it completely, when a couple of weeks or months later the student teacher asked us to step outside the door one by one and inquired whether we had copied things off of each other — said that, in fact, it was evident that this had happened — and asked me specifically whether I'd been put under pressure. I tried to remember but couldn't, and I detest tattle-tales, so I honestly said that I wasn't put under pressure and didn't remember. What did irk me was that I then received a 0 for the assignment. Later someone intermittently tried to copy off of me during the Spanish final exam, but as I said to her it was unlikely that I'd gotten everything right, besides which it would have been difficult for her to see what I'd written because she was across the aisle and my writing is tiny and somewhat indecipherable. I did find that rather obnoxious but maybe she needed the boost to her self-confidence as much as I had in Grade 2, and she was very good at spoken Spanish.
Lastly, and very ignominiously, I went to a provincial-level geography quiz during Grade 8, because I had misunderstood the teacher during the school-level finals and forewent answering a question which I should have answered and would have gotten wrong. I realized that I had misunderstood him when he prompted me to answer the next question. For the rest of the day I was in agonies of conscience, but was far too ashamed to tell the teacher and forfeit, which would now seem the sensible alternative. The third-place winner seemed cleverer than I was; in terms of the score I think I would have had one point less than him. Anyway, for these and many other reasons I am glad to be out of an academic environment.
It must be admitted, though, that this kind of competitiveness and artificial frames which almost coerce one into cheating are present outside of school — the job search, for instance, or work contracts, or writing competitions, and many other things. Competition is fun enough if one can win it fair and square, but otherwise it seems degrading.
What I like about not working is not that it's easier, which it isn't even after I was inoculated against serious depression two years ago, but that it gives me freedom. The material freedom of earning an income might be equivalent, but it likely does not encourage one to think and act independently, nor to strengthen and expand one's inner life. But since I have had that, I think it is worthwhile now not only to gather experiences and earn an income but also to profit by the raised threshold of physical and therefore mental activity. The work at the bookshop is quite invigorating that way already.
When I came in this morning Mama summarized a TV discussion about our defence minister Guttenberg's (whom I somewhat dislike and therefore pronounce in English so that the name has "gut" at the beginning) plagiarism in university. I haven't read the details, but I have never really bought into the virulent denunciations of plagiarism. It's a ratty thing to do in itself, but I think it's more sad than depraved, because it means that one doesn't have the same pride in one's work and hasn't benefited by the same process of clarifying one's thought and preparations; so in the end it carries with it a hollow benefit. Besides not all essays and theses are written with love for the field, or written on a topic which is genuinely interesting and useful, so morally and spiritually I find them a hollow exercise at the outset. In this particular case one might guess that the denunciating party doth protest too much; certainly I think that neglecting a German citizen in Guantánamo or accidentally dropping a bomb on hundreds of civilians is more shameful.
The closest I came to plagiarism was probably during a group project for English 120(?) when we had to write an annotated bibliography for a poem by John Donne. It was the day of the Bush/Kerry elections when I had to finish it. In between hectically refreshing the election map at nytimes.com I tried to read the books, summarize them in three to fivish sentences, and gauge their usefulness given the subject as we were supposed to. But eventually my mind was overstuffed and I had to go to sleep; so with one of the books I just checked the index to see if the poem is mentioned, summarized the table of contents and propped it at the head of my bed and was trying to read it anyway when I went to sleep for two or three hours. It was quite clear that Kerry had lost by then and after that it was one of the worst days of my life. When the bibliographies were handed back a couple of weeks later the professor or teaching assistant or both first of all made a speech about plagiarism to the class, and I think I felt rather guilty. Then there was a little note on my bibliography in which the TA explained that she had checked the annotated books because the phrasing of my annotations sometimes seemed unlikely, and that I had squeaked by but should be more careful.
There were three cheating incidents in school: when I was in Grade 1 or 2 we had "minute drills," where we each received a piece of paper with math questions on it and we were supposed to solve them as many of them as possible within a minute or two. I disliked the pressure and was afraid of disgracing myself, so I surreptitiously answered a handful of questions beforehand. After a couple of times doing this I realized that it was unnecessary and stopped. And honestly I didn't feel that bad about it, firstly because I was good at math, secondly because I wasn't trying to do better than the others, and thirdly because I wasn't caught.
In Grade 9(?) we watched a film in Social Studies and were asked to answer a worksheet or write something about it. I thought then as now that watching films is really no substitute for substantive learning material, and besides it wasn't a big deal; so I didn't put up much resistance when a clique of classmates sitting around me asked to copy what I'd written. Somewhat to my surprise we were asked to hand our work in. I'd forgotten about it completely, when a couple of weeks or months later the student teacher asked us to step outside the door one by one and inquired whether we had copied things off of each other — said that, in fact, it was evident that this had happened — and asked me specifically whether I'd been put under pressure. I tried to remember but couldn't, and I detest tattle-tales, so I honestly said that I wasn't put under pressure and didn't remember. What did irk me was that I then received a 0 for the assignment. Later someone intermittently tried to copy off of me during the Spanish final exam, but as I said to her it was unlikely that I'd gotten everything right, besides which it would have been difficult for her to see what I'd written because she was across the aisle and my writing is tiny and somewhat indecipherable. I did find that rather obnoxious but maybe she needed the boost to her self-confidence as much as I had in Grade 2, and she was very good at spoken Spanish.
Lastly, and very ignominiously, I went to a provincial-level geography quiz during Grade 8, because I had misunderstood the teacher during the school-level finals and forewent answering a question which I should have answered and would have gotten wrong. I realized that I had misunderstood him when he prompted me to answer the next question. For the rest of the day I was in agonies of conscience, but was far too ashamed to tell the teacher and forfeit, which would now seem the sensible alternative. The third-place winner seemed cleverer than I was; in terms of the score I think I would have had one point less than him. Anyway, for these and many other reasons I am glad to be out of an academic environment.
It must be admitted, though, that this kind of competitiveness and artificial frames which almost coerce one into cheating are present outside of school — the job search, for instance, or work contracts, or writing competitions, and many other things. Competition is fun enough if one can win it fair and square, but otherwise it seems degrading.
What I like about not working is not that it's easier, which it isn't even after I was inoculated against serious depression two years ago, but that it gives me freedom. The material freedom of earning an income might be equivalent, but it likely does not encourage one to think and act independently, nor to strengthen and expand one's inner life. But since I have had that, I think it is worthwhile now not only to gather experiences and earn an income but also to profit by the raised threshold of physical and therefore mental activity. The work at the bookshop is quite invigorating that way already.
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