TBT #86: Razed Potential

Quick note: I accidentally posted an incomplete and unedited version of this early. This SHOULD be the final draft, assuming I didn’t screw something up again. Enjoy! Second note: Comments are available on this post. I don’t know why they were turned off!

When I go to the library, which is not often because I hate the library, I usually work on the third floor. There’s a spot there that I hate slightly less than all the other spots in the library. It’s near a bunch of french books about french people. Most of them have ‘ouevre’ in the title, which I think is the French word for ‘classic.’ There are little study areas like this on every floor of the building — they are pretty cozy with a nice shelf above the desk for your books and a hook for your jacket and a handy outlet for your computer, but most of them don’t allow for wireless internet. They’re too isolated, I suppose. Generally if you want to get online, you have to work out in the open, surrounded by a bunch of people who love to talk about whole bottles of tequila and the things that happen afterwards. Sometimes they’ll order food and eat it, right there at the tables in the library. Once a bunch of girls ordered a lot of chicken. So I was sitting there, trying to write an essay, listening and watching these girls eat what seemed to be a whole chicken. They really liked it too. They kept saying so.

So I’ve found this hiding place. I only get a couple of bars of connection, and occasionally some people come along muttering French words, but it’s way better than that open-air hellhole with too much chicken-eating. I sit here near the blue concrete walls, nowhere near a window, tracing my fingers over initials etched in this desk, and, eventually, I get work done.

I heard a lot of rumours about the Killam Library. It’s probably the biggest architectural blunder at Dalhousie University. And that’s saying a lot, as the Life Sciences Building is a labyrinthine mess of a building with stone-walled classrooms and hidden passageways and rooms that can only be located using maps. (Many of these rooms house dead, dying or otherwise marked-for-dead animals, and Promethean science experiments, but I don’t think you can fault the architect for that.) The Killam, though, trumps that, with its bizarre window-less structure, situated around what I suppose was meant to be a sunny, lush atrium area that is, in fact, a kind of dank and weird-smelling cafeteria with really uncomfortable chairs. My tour guide in first-year, showing me around campus, told me that the building was originally meant to have dozens and dozens of windows, but due to an engineering error they had to instead be replaced with sturdy, opaque concrete. Otherwise the building would have fallen down.

I heard much the same story from a weird and possibly stoned guy sometime in second year. He told me how much he hated the library as we walked towards it. I did not want to talk to him but he insisted. He pointed a lot and in retrospect I think he might have thought I was someone he knew. “I hate this building,” I offered, trying to involve myself in conversation, and he launched into the tale. The main difference between his story and the one above was that, in the end, he blamed the Koreans. The architect was Korean, he explained. And the Koreans can’t build shit.

Sitting here now, next to concrete, wishing I was next to a window, I still can’t really find it in my heart to blame the Koreans. Even if they did screw up the library, it was years ago, and I really can’t see staying mad at an entire nationality of people over a potentially disastrous architectural decision for more than three or four years. Five tops. Instead, I’m thinking about everything I’ve done here over the last four years. I should be thinking about the paper I’m supposed to be writing. It’s about the Roman World. It’s the last one I have to write this year. Hell, it’s the last one I have to write ever, really.

I don’t want to start.

I never liked school. I know that most people, especially boys, start that way. In elementary school, it’s not cool to like school. When someone asks what your favourite subject is, you’re supposed to say “recess” and grin like a maniac. It’s the only sensible way to do things. For that time in your life, school is the enemy: it represents everything oppressive, controlled and otherwise un-fun about adult-life. It’s all tied together with going to bed early, with eating vegetables, with not watching too much TV and with saving your money instead of spending it on junk like toys and comics and other useless things.

These are the things we are supposed to fight against as kids. Maybe I just took the cartoons I watched and the books I read a bit too seriously. But in any case, as I entered high school and watched as people actually, you know, started caring and even, in some cases, liking school, I was confused. As I skipped class and devised ways to bang out research papers mere hours before the deadline, it felt like I missed something.

Now I’m 22. And, you know, I still don’t really like school. Nor do I like going to bed on time or eating vegetables. I probably do watch too much TV, and I am damn sure not that great at saving my money. I like to spend it on junk like toys and comics and other useless things. And, as I sit here in this ugly library without windows, next to French books, I feel like I missed something.

If you could see out of this building it would fall down.

When I was in Grade 11 I was so sick of English classes. I was sick of the relentless structure of it all, the pandering to the students who had no intention of ever reading anything beyond in-flight magazines, I was sick of endless explanations and tests all geared towards teaching us what the difference between an adjective and an adverb is. And I was tired of writing papers about novels that went no deeper than explaining how this novel, like every other novel you read in high school, is about the loss of innocence.

My teacher that year was Mrs. Cohen, who was British. She also had numerous other qualities, but being British was the big one. I loved the way she pronounced the names of students like Amanda, who became “Amander.” I had had Mrs. Cohen before, in Grade 9, where we studied Romeo and Juliet and the Diary of Anne Frank, both of which were about the loss of innocence. And while I thought the Diary of Anne Frank was a staggeringly boring work — even with the surprising lesbian overtones — I liked Mrs. Cohen enough to not dread having her as a teacher. At least she wouldn’t make us read A Separate Peace.

The class met in a room in the library. Surprisingly, our first assignment wasn’t to write an essay about how such-and-such book is about the loss of innocence, but rather to write an essay comparing two things. Any two things. That was the only criteria for what we were doing, and I latched on to it. This was great, because it meant not only would I not have to write once again about the fucking loss of innocence, I’d also get to be creative, something I had craved in English classes as long as I can remember. As I went home that day, I was actually excited about an assignment. I knew I was going to knock this one out of the park.

I don’t know what happened. My essay, entitled “Writing Essays versus Procrastinating”, was a tour-de-force, in my eyes. Sure, the jokes probably seem a bit lame and corny compared to my current offerings which are as hilarious as I am humble, but at the time, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I wrote it in a kind of real-time style, documenting how I could write an essay, or I could not write an essay, and instead do other things. Then I compared those two options. That, I thought, would cleverly fulfill the parameters of the assignment. It ended on a nice flourish, with me ending my essay by saying “I have no idea how to resolve this conflict!” but, ha ha, by writing that I had, in fact, resolved the conflict: I had written an essay.

When I got it back it just said “Please See Me” across the top.

Mrs. Cohen sat me down after class. She told me she thought my paper didn’t fit with what the assignment was. She told me she was surprised, because she had always enjoyed my papers before. She said it was malicious and insulting in that she perceived it to make light of her, the course, and the assignment. I fought back, mainly by telling her that I thought it was funny, and well-written, and isn’t that enough? But I was young and not exactly confident. Eventually I relented and reluctantly agreed to what she was saying. She told me that I could rewrite the assignment if I wanted.

And I did, because that’s what you do when you’re 15. I wrote a new comparative essay, comparing the music of the day to older, awesomer music like Pearl Jam. It wasn’t as funny, nor as creative, I thought, but it was safer. Good enough to not get a “Please See Me” instead of a grade. It took just a little more than 20 minutes.

The next week in class, I still hadn’t gotten my revised essay back. We were studying the Great Gatsby, which I have to credit Mrs. Cohen for, because it remains one of my favourite books. When we had finished talking about how Nick’s moving to West Egg represented a loss of innocence for him, Mrs. Cohen reached into a folder and pulled out my paper. Instead of handing it to me, she held it up as she talked to the class. She referred to me by name. She explained how her and I had had some issues with my work on this assignment, but she wanted to show me just how much she liked my paper. “I’ve had Matt in my class before,” she said. “And this just confirms what I’ve seen before: you’re a very creative and talented writer.”

So she read it out loud, to the class. Afterwards people came up and told me how much they liked it. It was my first encounter with real praise directed entirely at something I had written.

I don’t want this to sound like a story of suffocation. It’s not about bridled creativity or unrealized genius. It is merely meant as a comment on her comment, left in red ink at the bottom of the page: “You have so much potential.”

Potential, I thought, walking home from school. Potential, I thought, throwing the paper, like all my papers, into the trash immediately after getting it back. This, like so many labels, was not freeing: it was constricting. Potential does not say you can be good at anything. It says you can be good at this.

“And only this?” I wondered, writing about the loss of innocence again.

I do not blame the Koreans for this library. I’m not even sure it was them. The concrete walls and dark hallways have been enough for me over the last four years. I’ve gotten what I needed to get done finished here. I’ve written about english and history and journalism. Most of that writing was passionless. Most of it done at the last minute, hastily-sourced and culled together by a series of miracles. Some of it was just generally really bad. But all of it was good enough to get me out of here.

I don’t know if I’m the only one asking, now, at the end of all this, why exactly I did it. What have all these courses, all these papers, all these dark hallways really brought me? But usually I just shrug, and move on to whatever’s next, unwilling to question too much of the past, afraid to look too far into the future.

It’s really dark here. Looking past the french books I can see into the atrium. It looks dark there too. Without my computer I’d have no idea what time it is. Everything just looks so dark. But, thinking about it, it must be still light outside. For a moment I think about going to check. For a moment I wish that I could see.

But then I think that if I could see out of this place it would fall right down. It would have fallen down years ago.

Matt