I'm Not Smart

I'm not smart. I know I'm not smart because I know of so many people who are so much smarter than I ever will be. People who rattle off about Marxism and any other ism you can possibly imagine all in the same breath. And I'm not just talking about the simplistic capitalist relations between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. I'm talking about real, oh my god what the fuck are you talking about kind of Marxism. I have friends who spend hours of their lives debating over things like that. I've always been fascinated but apart from poking holes and posing questions, never quite had enough smarts to say anything earth shattering. Its easy to pose questions, to question everything, to make everything into a "social construct" of sorts, but its not easy trying to answer questions, to put you head on the board and commit to some form of non-relativistic position.


You're probably wondering where this is coming from and where this is heading. You see, I msn-ed an old classmate today and she is one smart cookie. She probably never thought very much of me. Sure we were both graduate students and had up to that stage in our lives, achieved pretty much the same academic accomplishments, but we both knew she was so much smarter than me. I had gotten good grades only out of sheer hard work, she had gotten good grades because she was smart and would have probably done far better if the academic schools of thought at NUS had been on her side. I spend my spare time reading Dan Brown and watching Star World. She spends her spare time reading Eric Hobsbawm and Sylvia Plath. I respect her a great deal. She's smart because she is totally devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. I study only because I had to. She studies because it defines who she is. I will never be that smart and I will probably never have the tenacity or the sheer guts to drop everything to go do my PhD like she did. I can't. I can't because I know I will hate it. I know I cannot live for the pursuit of knowledge alone and because I can't, I will never excel at it and have no desire to either. I wish her luck. We need people like her to push the boundaries of what we know, because god only knows, only people like her with that purposeful commitment to knowledge can make the human race that much more profound.