Expert of Nothing

Wall. Coffee date. April 2011.

When it comes to school, I pride myself in not being a BSer. I do all the reading. I am honest when I don't understand things. I research extraneous information for context. Yet, sometimes, even I end up saying things in class discussion a little too positively, a little too sure. Then I have classmates who outright say in passing they didn't read, they don't understand concepts, they don't even like the class...and they speak anyway.

I mean, that was the majority of my undergrad experience, but this is grad school, and it still happens. How did we get programmed to be happy to do what is least required of us? And this is how I understand people just...don't KNOW what Stonehenge is. Because information gets passed from one generation to the next under a veil of laziness. Through a river of BS.

I am an expert of nothing. It boggles my mind that so many people in academia pretend they could ever be an expert of anything.

Last night we went out to the orchard in the snow.
There in the constellations, the big dipper far below.
We walked through the blackness, felt the endless space around,
and you bent down on your knee and picked an apple from the ground.