Aug
31st
Wed
31st
Also, I remember that everything at that time was very fuzzy and abstract. I took a lot of psychology and political science, literature. Classes where everything was fuzzy and abstract and open to interpretation and then those interpretations were open to still more interpretations. I used to write my class papers on the typewriter the day they were due and usually I got some type of B with ‘Interesting in places’ or ‘Not too bad!’ written underneath the grade as an instructional comment. The whole thing was just going through the motions; it didn’t mean anything—even the whole point of the classes themselves was that nothing meant anything, that everything was abstract and endlessly interpretable. Except, of course, there was no argument about the fact that you had to turn in the papers, you had to go through the motions themselves, although nobody ever explained just why, what your ultimate motivation was supposed to be.
— David Foster Wallace, The Pale King (ยง22)
