Pretend

I was just watching the opening segment of the The Tonight Show With Jay Leno and I couldn’t help but let out a rather loud chuckle when he had quipped about the subject of “pretending to be a student”. He had opened the joke by plaintively stating how this famous guy (the rockstar Tommy Lee I think) had complained about how tough or disagreeable it was for him to be pretending to study for eight months—-referring perhaps to the television reality show “Tommy Lee Goes To School” that he starred in.

And then Mr. Leno said that Tommy Lee was just complaining too much and being a sissy for he (Leno) himself did not pretend to attend school for only eight months, BUT for four disagreeable years. And then I laugh so hard inside me and bented out that loud chortle.

Who really says school is fun? If there is anyone out there who think it is, please raise your right hand.

I am not saying that attending 5 to 8 classes everyday (as it is in college) is such a disagreeable activity. I know some of us here are educators and wouldn’t take it quite so well if somebody else says they hate it to be within your area of practice or occupation. For the record, I didn’t hate attending college. But at the same time——just like most of the population—-I was not exactly very fond of it either. Maybe just somewhere in between; liking to be at school half the time and being lazy at some other time. Maybe this was the reason why I haven’t got “A” grades in my college years—-unlike in my elementary and highschool years.

Education is really mostly of motivation. What drives the student to thrive harder in school? What’s their incentives other than still a mostly mythical success in the future?

I have seen some of them excelling almost all the time and I thought I should have reasonably equal intelligence quotient with most of them, maybe even higher at that, but somehow I was just not so industrious to be a wunderkind in the classroom.

There were many times back then that I had daydreamed about the day when finally I would be free from classrooms and all those mushy blackboards that was in front of me almost on a daily basis. At that time, it was nearly a utopic idea for I was still planning to take up law after my accounting degree.

I had wished then that I should be like a bird (with wings of course) and fly away from all the lazy afternoons that I got myself stuck in classrooms that could be so eerily silent—-especially when the respective teacher was a known terror—-when all I wanna do then was take a nap. But one could not just say to oneself “I shall take a nap” when one is in a classroom with a bespectacled teacher holding a long wooden rod, ready to whack one’s butt if one make the slightest mistake. I know that there aren’t no more whacking in college; but I just felt that some of my college teachers were so much inclined to harm us physically—-especially when almost everyone had blank stares, not being able to fully absorb the lessons she or he had blabber-mouthed all afternoon.

So there I was, trying to hold off sleep in some lazy afternoons while attending accounting classes full of “income statements” and “journal entries”. There were times that I just could not listen to the lessons being given for my mind was so windy and fragile, like I wanted to be somewhere else rather than inside the four corners of an electricfannized room. I believe that I had passed all my accounting subjects by mostly self-studying at home, not really listening to the lectures in classes I have attended but merely cramping up in my solitary room when the night comes and read the lessons taken for the day all by myself or read future lesssons in advance. I like it that way. I was more comfortable with that self-imposed learning system and luckily, I passed all my accounting subjects—-the hardest subjects for me—-and did not repeat any of them. That was some feat I realized by now.

So mostly when the lazy bug had hit me then and I found myself stuck inside a classroom and the class is often more than an hour—-like one and a half hour or sometimes for straight three hours—-I just sit at the back of the room oh so quietly and open up a thick textbook (or maybe some other book) and pretend to read and then giving stares at the teacher blabbering in front once in a while, and pretend to listen.

You know if anyone thinks that studying hard is so difficult, then he or she hasn’t tried “pretending to study hard”. It was just so bad and thorny, like being held by a Gestapo officer and tied to a wooden chair.

Now I ain’t downgrading here the value of education or boost up the crazy comfort of laziness. Education is so important for all of us and I do realize now that If I weren’t so lazy then, I would have had a better occupation by now, and have more money in my pocket. So kids, if ever any of you happen to read this, remember to study hard and don’t imitate Major Tom on this aspect. And also, always remember that smoking is always dangerous to your health.

Gaining that accounting degree in the end wasn’t so easy for me. It was tough and rigorous especially when at times I got too bored with numbers and statistics, having nightmares. I think numbers was just not for me. But there was I, by some circumstances, studying how to count other people’s money.

And it was not easy counting at all. You could count bills from one to a million and that’s easy. But in accountancy, we got to learn to count the monies by using hordes of yellow-colored and very wide worksheets and must know how to balance some balance sheets (they ain’t balanced all the time especially if one didn’t study too hard) and got to reconcile bank statements almost often that at one time, when I got so freaking out tired of all the numbers, I had wanted to ask my accounting teacher why the bank statements won’t better decide to patch up their differences and stop fighting with each other, and be reconciled? Why the hell did we have to reconcile these bank statements by ourselves? But apparently that was a very brainless question, so I didn’t ask anymore.

Oh, I had meant this initially to be fully a humorous post. Now I think it had gotten a little too serious and stern.

But honesty is a virtue. It was hard for me to study. But it was even more difficult to pretend to study. That I have learned before and Mr. Jay Leno could joke about this for all I care.

This post by the way reminds me of this REM song“World Leader Pretend” which is to me the most politically sarcastic song and comically brings and raise up the tragical state of our present global politcs……This is my world… Michael Stipe sings, “…And I am world leader pretend..I sit at my table,
And wage war on myself. It seems like it’s all for nothing…. Listen to it, maybe you’ll like it. Like I did and made it one of my all-time fave rock song. See complete lyrics here.