All Stops Out
Remember when you first said you hate school. I despise school. It just gets in the way. That book I was reading on the beach that day, that had nothing to do with school. It was a book by someone I read about in a book about the novel we’re supposed to study. I hate the stuff we’re supposed to read, there’s so much to read that’s better, more interesting, more exciting, I keep reading that. I have to force myself to read these books. Whenever we’re supposed to read Romeo and Juliet that’s when I want to read Jane Austen. When we’re supposed to read Andrew Marvell I want to read Isaac Asimov. Have you read Foundation and Empire? It’s great. Whenever we’re supposed to read Keats I want to read Jude the Obscure. I love reading but I hate school. It’s torture. But I have to do it. If only I was free to just read whatever I wanted, just get lost in books and writers and ideas. But you have to come back to the theme of Romeo and Juliet and character in the modern novel and compare and contrast Andrew Marvell and… and a two headed cow. I don’t even want to do Law. God, what am I saying? I’m doing it for my mother. Everytime she looks in on me with my desk lamp on and all the books stacked around the desk, I can feel her wanting me to be a genius, to get 501 out of 500 and become the world’s greatest lawyer. All I want to do is read a book about something that’s not on the course. I’m a fraud.
What would be really great would be if they just said read fifty books and see fifty films and go to ten foreign countries and learn ten poems and join a rock group and come back in two years and we’ll give you the Higher School Certificate.
But we’re stuck with this stuff. Cram it in and forget it two days after the exam. Oh let me out of here. I need some air.
Hence, knave, avaunt thee outside to thy bike.
