I need help. I was hanging out at my neighbor's, watching the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding catfight that never quite materialized. Her strong reactions to the events unfolding on the television sparked a subconscious deconstruction of the event which led to an epiphany.
"Oh my God!" I realized, "Derrida was right! This whole media circus, which purports to be drama but is actually nothing more than a carefully choreographed text, is a metaphor for the construction of Literature; its inherent pathos appeals to our non-existent notions of Truth, which, as Focault has proven, repeatedly manifest themselves in our grand narratives; the trite sentimentality which is being exposed before me is nothing more than an absurd attempt to restore my fragile human psyche to the delicate position of equipoise it enjoyed before the downfall of religion, which was brought on by advances in science and the disturbation of the social rubric; I've spent the past four-and-half years of my life studying Literature, which as Eagleton clearly states, does not exist! It's all been constructed by the Romantics!"
I need help. I was walking down the street one day when I saw a sign which read, in part, "You will be given the same courtesy." This bothered me, so I went inside and spoke to the woman behind the counter. "Excuse me, ma'am, but did you realize there is a passive voice sentence with a false dative and no agent in your sign?"
I need help. These are not rational thoughts or utterances. They are a product of a mind teetering on the precipice of insanity, and the worst, most isolated kind of madness at that. Drunks are at least fun to party with, manic depressives always have a place on The Jerry Springer Show and schizophrenics have themselves for company. But he who diagrams sentences until 4 a.m. does so alone.
I need help. Actually, I need to graduate. Oh, how I want to graduate. My soul yearns to cry "Goodbye, University of Houston!" Instead, my soul just cries as my mouth is constantly being forced to answer the question every half-wit and imbecile feels compelled to ask.
"So, like, when are you going to graduate, dude?"
My answers range from the rude ("What do you care, since you're not paying for it?") to the crude ("Why don't you Lewinsky my dangling participle?"). From the antiquated ("When the AFC wins a Super Bowl!") to the jaded ("Never!").
Sadly, the hope which springs eternal is fading rather quickly. I don't even remember why I majored in English in the first place. All I know is that I've been here for four-and-a-half years, and I've got at least another year and a half to go.
I just can't take it anymore. One can spend only so much time around English academicians without the poison of intellectualism seeping into one's mind.
Surely there's life outside the university. I crave the freedom that graduation offers, the freedom to fully appreciate (if you'll pardon the split infinitive) all that life has to give outside the hallowed walls of college. As Hamlet once said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." That's Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5. I didn't even have to look that up. Maybe it's already too late.
I used to live with a guy who took six years to get his engineering degree. I would think to myself, smugly and self-righteously, "What kind of idiot takes six years to graduate?" Now I know. He's the kind of idiot who's now making $50,000 a year ... because he had the good sense not to major in English.
Pennell is, and forever will be, a senior English major.