2. Tell us about something you learned in college.
When I transferred from a community college to a four-year university and enrolled in my first English courses there, I’ll admit I was a tad nervous. I’d remind myself of my insightful-ness and I’d wonder if the professors at the University would be as impressed with my writing skills as my brilliant community college professors were.
But as I quietly sat in class after class, soaking it all in, it began to dawn on me that perhaps I didn’t really know as much as I thought I knew. We read American Literature, English Literature, and Shakespeare together. I wrote papers about the concept of Victorian Beauty and memorized poems written in Old English. But I’d listen to my fellow scholars debate and carry on and quite frankly, I felt completely lost. What were they even TALKING about?
Was it possible a line in a poem about divorce was written with repetitive R’s because the poet simply liked the sound it made? Perhaps there was no underlying meaning?
No. It was not. The poem used that alliteration to replicate the r sound a roller coaster might make on it’s track…and what powerful imagery….divorce as a roller coaster and all those rrrrrrr sounds…don’t you see the symbolism in it all!?! How could you MISS that!?!
I missed it.
All of it.
My classmates would be asked difficult questions and I would watch them scrunch their eyebrows, ponder the meaning of it all and then respond by saying, “It’s ambiguous really…” before spouting off about the ambiguity of it all.
Ambiguous.
The meaning was ambiguous, the solution was ambiguous, the symbolism was ambiguous. Ambiguous, ambiguous, ambiguous…what did that even MEAN!?!
I went home one evening determined to find out what this puzzling word meant and why it was that everyone was using it.
What I found was:
Ambiguous means “open to more than one interpretation; having a double meaning. Unclear or inexact because a choice between alternatives has not been made. Vague. Uncertain. Obscure.”
In other words…it means “I don’t really know…there might be multiple answers to this question and I’m stupid…”
All of these smarty-pants scholars I was sitting next to in class didn’t know what the hell they were talking about either. They just knew bigger words than me!
Learning what the word Ambiguous means changed my life.
Now, instead of “not knowing the answer“, I scrunch my eyebrows in a very thoughtful way and say, “Gosh it’s ambiguous isn’t it? The ambiguity of it all has me feeling many ambiguous emotions that can’t ambiguate themselves in an ambiguative manner…”
It’s the perfect way to dodge any question while still sounding very very smart.
Thank you college!!!
Now it’s your turn!
Choose a prompt, post it on your blog, and come back to add your name to the link list below. Be sure to sign up with the actual post URL and not just your basic blog URL (click on the title of your post for that URL). For good comment karma try to comment on the three blogs above your name!!
The Prompts:
1. Share a favorite summer recipe.
2. Tell us about something you learned in college.
3. Write a blog post in exactly 9 lines.
4. Write a blog post inspired by: wildlife.
5. Share a memorable road trip story!
6. Tell us about the lake you used to swim in when you were a kid.
Jerralea Winn Miller says
Maybe part of the college learning experience is finding out our instincts are good! Or, maybe we are all afraid of saying … I don’t know.
John Holton says
I was just thinking about this the other day: When I was a freshman in high school, our English teacher had us get a book called Six Weeks To Words Of Power, which was a book of quizzes to help expand your vocabulary. Go out to Amazon and search for “word power”, there are hundreds of books on that very subject, things like “500 words you need to know for high school,” “1000 words you should know before you take the SAT,” etc. Ninety percent of college is just learning the words they use. Get the books for your kids!
Patty says
In the “Politics for Dummies” handbook, the very first thing all aspiring politicos learn is to use the word “ambiguous”…..every effing chance they get. That word is the foundation of everything each will say and do throughout their political careers.
Abby says
The collegiate way of saying, “I dunno”. Priceless.