Suzy Says

In my delusional youth, I not only assumed I’d go to college, but that I’d go to grad school, because that’s what you did. Dad had enough letters after his name to fill a bowl of alphabet soup, and Mom had enough for a cup.

I did go to college, but it wasn’t the incredible intellectual awakening I had envisioned. Not only did I discover almost immediately that I had no idea how to study, having coasted effortlessly through school, merrily collecting A’s as I went (I remember getting a 98 on a Latin test in high school, and my mother asking me “What happened to the other two percent?”), but that the actual point of school is to teach you how to work within The System and to get you a job that actually makes money, no matter how irrelevant your degree may be.

Mine couldn’t have been more irrelevant. I ended up drifting into a degree in linguistics, possibly one of the most pointless degrees ever invented. I realized too late that all you can do with a linguistics degree is get another one, and you won’t get paid all that much more. I saw my life vanishing into a haze of ever more arcane semantics, with the horror of teaching when the haze cleared. I didn’t want to teach. For one thing, I hated school, and for another, I can’t stand most people. The last thing I wanted was a room full of people staring at me and expecting wisdom from someone as widsom-free as Me.

I ended up getting a job in finance, and I’ve worked in that field (or swamp) ever since. I have never had a job that had anything to do with my degree, but I bet they wouldn’t have hired me without one. The System, you see.

What my degree really did for me, or to me, is to make me irrationally irritated by people saying things like, “It’s between him and I” or “I could care less”, and spelling/grammar errors in books, magazines, and newspapers. Lately I have come to hate the following expressions:

Big-time: As in, “Barry Bonds is an asshole, big-time.” Or, “You owe me, big-time.” Yet I am unperturbed by “Suzy is a big-time spender.” Go figure.

Bump, (variant: baby bump): As in, “Angelina Jolie proudly showed her bump” or “Katie Holmes’ baby bump seems to change size.”

Channel: As in, “Jamie Fox channels Ray Charles” or “The starlet channeled Edie Sedgwick, wearing capri pants and a mink jacket.” Change the channel, I’m begging you.