I’ve been doing some hard drive cleaning, and I recently came across some papers I wrote in college.
The one I embedded above is from a class I took my senior year called BiSci 003: Developing Ecological Consciousness (or something like that). It was some real hippie shit. I believe learning about vegetarianism and the evils of cars has it’s place, but one day we just put on blindfolds and ate dried fruit.
I wish I could clean up some of the writing today, but for accuracy I am presenting the paper to you as I turned it in. I’m pretty sure the assignment was to choose one of several “ecological practices” in our textbook (which was by the professor) and write a few pages about our experience. As I recall, I chose the one about “trying to think about nothing.”
This class kind of asked for it, but I wrote a lot of silly papers in college. For my expository writing class freshman year we had to write a position paper, and I turned in five pages on why Snorlax is the best Pokemon (he doesn’t go into a ball and does whatever he wants). When we had to write a persuasive letter, I wrote to Cartoon Network and asked them to stop showing the episode of Scooby Doo with the Harlem Globetrotters so much (I included stats on how often they showed it compared to the one where they go to Gilligan’s Island). For my telecommunications class we had to try to use the Internet to answer a difficult question, and I wrote ten pages answering the question, “Why did anybody like Three’s Company?” If I didn’t get a job at CollegeHumor.com, I have absolutely no idea what I would be doing today.
I realize not everyone’s going to want to read the entire paper, but at least let me tease you with my favorite excerpt:
Should you ever attempt this practice, be forewarned, the quickest way to thinking about nothing is not to think about thinking about nothing. Then you’re thinking, and that’s really just beating yourself. The trick is to not think about thinking about nothing. But you can’t think about anything either. You just have to turn your brain off, and think about nothing. It’s kind of like day dreaming, but more conscious. It’s also kind of like regular dreaming, but less conscious. It’s also more dangerous because you’re walking around not thinking instead of laying safely in bed.
I don’t think I really nailed thinking about nothing until my fourth of fifth try. I knew I had done something right when I ended up at my old apartment and couldn’t remember much of what I had thought about between class and the moment I realized I don’t live in Beaver Terrace anymore. I think (in retrospect, I was quite unsuccessfully trying not to think at the time) what happened was when I left class I was thinking about stuff I would have done if I was a kid on Double Dare. Like if I would have been a good contestant, if I could have found all the flags, etc. You know, whatever. Anyway, I was trying to figure out what my balloon popping strategy would have been and my thoughts just started to wander. I don’t know what I thought about exactly, or how my body moved. I just sort of stepped outside of time for a bit, but not in the Rocky Horror Picture Show kind of way. Not even in the drinking way. It was more of a relaxed kind of time stepping.
That’s right, I used the sentence “You know, whatever.” in a paper my senior year. I don’t know what I got on the paper, but I believe I got a B or so in the class.
If you enjoy reading this, let me know and I’ll post the next assignment. We had to write about our personal beleifs, and how they shaped our current ecological views. I took this as an opportunity to present a chapter from my future self’s autobiography. I called the book “Lightning Strikes Thrice - The Jeff Rubin Story” and the section I turned in was “Chapter 83 - The Mobius Affair.”
(oh, and if the embedded thingy is giving you trouble you can click through and read it here)
