Funny Words

to Xiu

I went to college late in life. They call it "Adult Learning" in the States nowadays. They called it strange back then, over here. We're catching up with our American cousins like everything else and there are more people my age advancing their educations at advanced ages.

I was different than my fellow students not only because I was older than most of them, but also in that I didn't have any particular reason for being there. I studied things that had no connection whatsoever to how I made my living and with no intention of using it in the future. Like a seamstress buying a welder.

Now I see that the "reason" was how I saw myself. I didn't feel as good as those guys that had done the smart thing and finished college before setting out in life. They never rubbed my nose in it and I suspected that I was every bit as intelligent as they are, but nevertheless that's how I felt.

Now days they have funny words for the reasons I had for going back to school – "self validation" and "peer recognition", but there are old fashioned words for it too. Vanity. Ego. I would knock myself out cramming my brain with stuff I didn't care about in order to impress profs that didn't care about me. After exams they'd post our scores on a board outside the administration office, and like everyone else I would search for the numbers beside my ID number to get the verdict. It was never enough for me to have done well – if it wasn't the best I walked away disappointed. Even then I knew how pathetic it was, how vain, but I couldn't help myself. And the worst part was that I didn't dare tell anyone because everyone hates the smart kid.

Donald Miller talks about the ol' lifeboat dilemma in his book "Looking For God Knows What". Imagine this lifeboat and there's a young mother and her baby, an aged WWII war hero, an escaped convict, a scientist who can find a cure for cancer – and you. Only 5 people can stay in the lifeboat, six is too many and the boat will go down with all aboard. Who do you kick out?

Nobody wants to chuck out the baby, and by default that means the mother is safe. If you keep the scientist there's the bonus of saving millions of cancer patients. It's not right to kick out the war hero (Even though some people do because he's old and besides those hero types jump out to save the others anyway.) That leaves you and the convict. Some people want to keep the convict in the boat because they want to give him a chance to redeem himself (a very noble notion). But that's what it comes down to; most of us are trying to prove that we're more worthy than the criminal and deep down we know that we're not because deep down we all know that we're all sinners.

Miller says that this lifeboat mentality is the root of all the rottenness and sickness in society. We are all competing for a place in the lifeboat, scared to death that our peers will find out what we already know – that we don't deserve a seat with mothers and scientists and heroes. We need self validation and recognition like lifesavers to save ourselves. Vanity is fear.

The funny thing is that it turns out that there's room for everyone in God's lifeboat. – even for the ones that don't deserve it. And if you realize that, there's no need to compete, no reason to validate or be recognized. You can go to college, and even excel, if you want – or not. It doesn't matter because you have a reserved seat in the lifeboat.

I kept my marks a secret all through college. Outstanding students, or rather ordinary students with outstanding GPAs, get diplomas with some funny Latin words added on. "Summa cum something". They get called up first at the graduation ceremony, and since my last name came first alphabetically, I was the first in my class called up to receive my diploma. My cover was blown. My friends were aghast. I felt a little sheepish.

I don't know Latin. I bet those funny words on my diploma mean something like "really vain" or "huge ego". I hope I got more from college than a piece of paper with funny Latin words on it. I hope I learned something.

Because now I'm at a crossroads, and it looks like I'm going to do it again, if unwillingly. I hope that if I do it again I will do it different. Maybe if I put my mind to it I will even be able to fail once or twice.