Down With the Sickness

Everyone wonders where my backpack is. My golden body in flight, unencumbered by the tangible stresses of academia, has caused concern and envy. After a couple years with the trusted NorthFace, a couple ill-advised weeks with the man purse, I’ve decided to go commando. So now I wear a post-modern backpack which focuses more on the back and less on the pack. When people ask where my books are I simply inform that “it’s not Yale.”

And this reveals not the illness, but instead a mere symptom.

Did you know there are Anthropologists who are writing their dissertations on cross-cultural comparisons of pubic hair and its social repercussions? Are you aware that there are tenured professors at top universities who focus their studies on readings of cereal boxes? Are you familiar with studies in post-modern Gothic cinema?

It’s all frighteningly true. There is something wrong with this picture. I know, because I’m right in the middle of it, waving and smiling at the camera.

The ambiguity, cultural relativity, pluralism that continues to unravel the education system certainly says something about the professors and complexion of knowledge in a post-modern setting. But it says even more about our society and culture, which is to say you and me, the ones who subject ourselves to it daily.