i has a semi-stupid

at least since i got out of high school and largely stopped giving a shit about what other people thought of me (except in obvious, socially necessary ways like making sure i wear clothes in public and speak english), i've rarely been troubled by thoughts of inadequacy as far as academia goes. this isn't because i think i'm really freaking smart or anything; it's more just because i've always figured i'll try as hard as i can and regardless of the outcome i'll learn to happy with that as the central fact through which i define my academic usefulness. you can control how hard you try, even if you can't necessarily control the response to that effort from others.

i'm sure i've spent the requisite grad-school student amount of time being amazed at how smart other people are and how much better they are at my job than me, and i've occasionally felt inadequate as a result, but hardly to the degree that a lot of my peers seem to (ironically, a lot of the same people who worry about being awesome enough are the people i idolize for being awesome). i think i'm decent at what i do, and i don't worry about being better for other people's sake, generally. i do, however, worry about being better for my own sake.

ever since i was in college i remember being jealous of a certain kind of person. a few of my roommates at the time fit into this category, and now a decent amount of my grad school cohort does as well, including a few of my better friends: the type of person i like to think of as "terminally interested".

this is the type of person who is always reading, always learning, always finding connections in things, always somehow finding the time to do everything. if they go home and watch TV after work at night, they can regale you the next morning with the ways in which that TV show sync up with derrida's or heidegger's theories. they can accomplish more in a day than i can accomplish in a week, and yet they can be very laid-back about it, and provide you with a theoretical meta-analysis of everything that's happened to them.

my response to people who can do this isn't so much any sort of guilt over not being that interested myself, but more like a jealousy. i like to read. i like to write. i like to have other hobbies and go on crazy adventures and exercise and watch good TV shows and movies and do a million other things. but usually at some point in the night (around 8-9pm usually) my brain just shuts down and it's all i can do to find something brainless to keep my occupied until i can feed myself and go to sleep. i wish i could spend that time directing my higher brain functions at some issue or some form of art, but i just can't. i only have so much energy for taking in new things and learning each day, and it's hard sometimes to see people who have more and not be angry at myself for not being like them. again, not because i feel obligated, but because there is just so much great stuff out there to absorb and experience and i miss so much of it in those lazy hours of the day when i'm doing nothing. i also have preternaturally bad retention skills, so it's especially bad when someone i'm studying with can read 10 articles and summarize each of them in 3 hours, where i'll have to read one article 3 or 4 times before i can even remember the general gist of the thesis in connection with the name.

i've always been this way, and it's frustrating. because i'm interested, and i care. but for some reason i can't transform that into this all-encompassing ability to treat the world like a buffet of knowledge like some people apparently can. it makes me wonder if that kind of ability really is genetic. or if maybe i have some weird diet deficiency that makes a certain part of my brain not work as well as some others. it also makes me frustrated. i want to be more interested, but my brain doesn't want to cooperate.