Remember way back when in March of 2006 where I wrote a post about dumbing myself down in school and not talking in class much for fear of seeming too smart?
Well this semester I've found this real big comfort zone in my theory class where I find myself talking a lot (I think it helps that the professor seems very anti-elitism and a bit Marxist) and getting decent amounts of good response from the professor.
Last night, however, made me a tad uncomfortable. A week ago we turned in our first papers of the term. Last night the professor put up overhead transparencies of the three she thought were the best written papers. Mine was one of them (and I can't help feeling my mention od socialism and elitism might have influenced this slightly).
Yes, yes, yes, I know. Congratulations on a job well done.
Still, I'd rather have not been made a public spectacle like that (regardless of our being praised anonymously, most of the class knew the paper was mine). There's a few reasons for this:
First, now I have to feel as if there's now an expectation set before me that I have to maintain or surpass from here on out, which is much easier and less stressful when you don't know you're the teacher's favorite writer.
Second, it created the notion of classist segregation: now those who didn't meet her top tier are resentful of those of us who did, and I have to be honest and say that it did make me feel a litle proud to know that, if at least for a short while, I was better than my peers.
It's almost enough to make me want to shut up again.
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