Delusions

ARMEN BERJIKLY

    "Hello, Mr. Gatsby, it is a pleasure beyond words to meet you..."

    Rudely, I awoke before Mr. Gatsby had a chance to return the greeting. Christine had asked me yesterday which fictional character I would like to meet if given the chance. Much like a response to an insult, I guess my mind had been slow in addressing the question. "Stupid alarm clock," I thought. Then I realized I was wrong to lay the blame on my dutiful bedside companion when the true fault lay with the institution most people refer to as school. "Perfect example," I said to myself . "Finally I have an opportunity for some intellectually creative activity and leave it to school to kill it in its infancy."

    You can probably tell that I don't like school very much. It's not that I didn't do well in school, because the fact was that I did. I just felt that there was much more of an emphasis on memorizing random facts rather than actually learning; committing one batch of useless information to memory for a test, and then just as quickly clearing out our artificially limited mental capacity for the next round. This cycle made me sick, and that explains why I looked forward with all my heart to summer. Summer, I felt, was three months where our minds would be allowed to revert to the way they should be-- independent thought, unstifled creativity, and dreams actually allowed fulfillment.

    Being the break before my senior year, I could not allow myself to doze off the summer, and I signed up for some classes. Hypocritical, you may think, but these courses were at the University extension, not petty high school. There, I thought, they must really know what they're doing.

    On my drive to school every morning, I would pass through the gorgeous business district of our little city. I would always drive slower on that part of the trip, I could even be guilty of lingering. I looked with admiration on the business people out to lunch or on the way to their office. "Here," I thought "are people that are happy-- independent, successful, and satisfied." I would cross the sky to be in their shoes,. They motivated me, in a sense. To see them every day, their sheer power and glory in action, was intoxicating. If I had to suffer through school for a few more years, then so be it, if what was at the end would be as utterly gratifying as the lives of my heroes must have been.

    Catherine and I spent a lot of nights talking. One night, she seemed really depressed about "how fast" our lives were going or something like that. I don't really know, because she didn't make any sense to me. Why anyone would bother enjoying such a stifling time was a wonder to me, and it annoyed me that she would be so shortsighted. Then she even started criticizing me for my "obsession" with grades and material things. That made me angry. I didn't see anything wrong with that, anyways. You needed good grades to get into a good college so you could get a good job, and then and only then, achieve satisfaction. I didn't feel like wasting my time telling her that, so I just left. While walking to my car, I looked up at the sky for a brief moment, and was diverted by the stars. I had an astronomy class in my schedule, and I proudly regurgitated all I could about what I was looking at. I mused about their situation: gigantic balls of gas, billions of them, shining brightly in their cold solitude while making their way through an infinite universe. I started to wonder what the stars might think of me as I gazed upon them. I had to stop almost immediatly, though. I had a test the next day, and I really needed to get home and study.